My goal was not to win in the best time, but to really make the Ottoman Empire great (again). I wanted a wide empire with good science, military, culture and a powerful religion. Maybe it was the roleplaying that got to me.. I don't know. So even though my scouts were sometimes moved by invisible hand I got a really strong start off, had good scouting, found decent ruins, decided to go Liberty after not getting a culture ruin. BO in cap was something like Scout / Scout / Shrine / (Buy Scout) / Monument / (Buy Archer). I stole 1 worker from Alex, found 1 in a camp, stole 2 workers from the same CS and started settling like wild as soon as I got to CR. My plan was to plop down 8 cities, I settled for 6 in the end, never making peace with CS so I could conquer it between ST and Plastics for another TR and more lategame science. Built lots of units early, ended up getting 3 CS allied and a lot of friends. I had excess happiness out my a.. 20+ Smiles with 5 cities allowed me to get a very early GA, before the one from Liberty. After CR I dipped into Piety for one point, just to get my Shrines faster. I settled my last city way too late which really screwed with my growth and culture game. Got my Liberty finisher T90 and took a Prophet. Egypt would have founded
literally next turn.. I'm now 100+ turns in but don't want to talk too much since I am not sure this is the run I want to finish. We'll see.
Being dissatisfied with my Liberty start I wanted to try a fresh one, without any bugs. I wanted to play violent SV with Tradition, seeing as I didn't like Liberties performance. This try I did so, so much better.. Due to better (nonbugged) scouting I met almost all CS by T50. Got like 10+ ruins in total. Stole a total of 7 Workers
without DOWing a CS. I got a 2 from Camps, 3 from Spain and 2 from Greece. Just like in my other game I was permanently parking scouts on greek borders to stop any chance of expansion. He didn't even dare to settle north of his cap until T90
Diplo was good, all my cities were better, NC came 10 turns earlier, everything was going great. All religions but 1 were gone, but no one else had a Pantheon even. I felt secure.
Then it happened. Egypt just built Hagia Sophia. They had no Pantheon, took last religion from me on T90. Just about four or five turns before I could've gotten mine. This made me ragequit. I am now torn between playing to amazing openings, both of which I want to try for different reasons. For now I will be playing the Liberty one, updating you guys regularily. Both are roughly T90 to T100, both have lots of CS allies, lots of Worker steals, all the city locations I wanted and decent diplo.