Budweiser Immortal Challenge - GP CV

I suppose I always think I'm doing worse than I am, but this game is disappointing so far with no religion. Plus I screwed up early and built Pyramids and am now building Oracle -doh! I don't know if I want to start over, this game seems very silly. Religion is one my favorite components to the game. Planted one GP so far, have built no rel bldgs yet. Had happy and gold problems early.

I settled 1 W of start, and quickly got an expo by the salt, back on a hill, very defensible. Chopped forest for better range firing. Settled NE on hill 2 S of wheat, and again way S in the pass by the citrus to also get ivory. Pretty defensible. Not really wanting to settle the swamps SW - would like a buffer city, but not eager to get near Alex and Khan. There IS a hill snugged between mtns that could reach another fur and iron though. Plan to settle the coast NW of cap and 1-2 more N of cap.

Went Liberty for reasons I don't understand - lots of space maybe? Early DOW on Assyria to get workers, lost my Warrior and his worker immediately. Later got a worker with a Scout and took peace. He only has one city. (?) Built a bunch of Picts to DOW again if he moved Settlers my way, but none. He did have one by the E coast, no idea where it went. My scouting has been way behind. I can now build NC, but am saving the Liberty GE for Machu. Like I said, I screwed up already, haha.

* - I gapped out and built Pyramids, finished Oracle, and used Liberty GE for Machu. I can't imagine winning the way my game played out without those - Alex became a mega-beast with 1/2 the map and all but 1 CS for 2/3 of the game. Every CS needed 250-700 influence to beat, sheesh. I paid through the nose to keep Merc Genoa allied, but both gold and jewelry got banned by Alex, great.

The biggest problems involved Spain and Alex hammering on Khan, but as it worked out, Spain took his cap AND his last city, so even though Alex took way more cities, she got all the hate. Alex promptly steamrolled her once mighty empire into a 4 tile ice cave and even took Assyria's 4th city And Sweden's 3rd city. He was rolling tanks and air waaaay before anybody had any kind of counter-measures. I did get Fighters up, and so kept him at bay in our 3 wars, if I remember correctly.

One time he had GGs lining up, was all Friendly and crap, even gave me OB for a while - but I've seen that movie before, so I killed one of them (he did citadel me earlier). Made peace but never got OB from him again, which really hurt tourism. Used 3 GMs and miss-timed it as he had just finished SoH and so his culture jumped once again, but only 3 turns of war before victory.

The second big hurdle was that Spain didn't spread Catholicism enough to me before Khan captured her 2nd GP. So I only had 3/8 cities with Sacred Sites and Mosques most of the game. Without a religion I couldn't spam it, Theo had spread way too hard. Worse, Alex had 27/29 cities with Mosques, happy Temples, and SS! My culture was decent, but he was banking over 1,2500 cpt at one point - I really don't know how I caught up, I almost quit. Also, I had to take Volunteer Army to stay alive way before New Deal, which set me back dozens of turns, I assume.

The modified rules seemed like a fun idea, and it was Immortal, but man it was not fun to play!