I won domination in 1170AD.
I found all the civs and explored most of the map fairly early with an open borders deal with bismarck and sending a scout through. I settled one city by the iron to the north and allied with a couple city-states early both with gold donations and doing the quests. The military city-states really weren't any help as they gifted me a scout 4 out of 5 times which I promptly gave back to them. I think the only useful units I got out of them was 1 archer early on, a pikeman mid-game and a knight late game that never got into the action.
I took far too long taking Bismarck out. I had like 2 legions, 2 archers and a chariot archer at the time and didn't lose any of them in the attack. I don't remember the date but I know I could have taken him out probably 20 turns sooner.
Then I started my long march towards Japan which was just a huge pain in the butt on this map. I hadn't learned optics yet so none of my units could embark and all the city-states and AI's would park their units in the strips making it really difficult to move my units through. And then even when I did learn optics my units still couldn't embark because they don't get the ability until they enter friendly territory. I really didn't enjoy this map design with 1upt.
I got really lucky with Japan in a couple ways. First, Japan took out Montezuma for me before I even reached him. Then they declared on a city-state to the east and had their whole army over there when I arrived. So Japan's 2 original cities fell like nothing (lost the chariot archer only) and I got a city-state ally out of the deal. After that I made peace and let them keep Montezuma's cities and took everything he had (which wasn't much).
I moved on to China with my same army of legions and archers and I think 1 horseman. China was an absolute joke. She had 2 cities and 1 military unit, a swordsman. So China was destroyed with no losses.
I annexed all these cities as I was well over the happy cap.
So all that remained was Persia, who I also got pretty lucky with. When my units arrived on Persia's borders he had all kinds of immortals and archers set up in all the defensive tiles just outside his border. So I was like "oh crap, this might be harder than I thought it would be". But then I realized he wasn't defending his border, he was off to attack Japan's Aztec cities. So I gladly stepped aside and let him throw all his units into Japanese territory and went around behind them. At this point I had knights and they just demolished Persia's cities. I mean I think my first knight attack on a city took the city to half health from full.
So yeah, victory in 1170AD. I'm not a big fan of warmongering. Too much troop movement for my taste. And troop movement is a real pain with this 1upt system. 1upt is still better than stacks, but it definitely causes some hassle. My newly built units that I was sending on long trips to the front lines would need new orders almost every turn because some unit got in their way. I hope the next one will be a peaceful victory condition.
Thanks for the game, though. It was still quite fun overall.
edit: As for social policies I just went down the honor tree to double xp and then grabbed the first 2 in the patronage tree (influence decays slower and allied city-states give science bonus).
Science I went for calendar first, then iron working, then optics, then chivalry for the most part.
One mistake I made - early game I was worried about moving my troops through city-state territory due to lost influence. Late game I didn't care. In hindsight, I should have been just marching through their territory the whole game.
edit2: I didn't post my score. Won on turn 177, 1170AD. In-game score was 844. Hall of Fame score is 1865. It's interesting that my score is so much worse than pretty much everyone else despite my date being pretty decent. Here's my in-game score breakdown:
104 from cities
208 from population
116 from land
320 from wonders
96 from technology
I wonder if the AI built less wonders for me than other people. Of course there were probably some in Monte's capital that I never captured.
I found all the civs and explored most of the map fairly early with an open borders deal with bismarck and sending a scout through. I settled one city by the iron to the north and allied with a couple city-states early both with gold donations and doing the quests. The military city-states really weren't any help as they gifted me a scout 4 out of 5 times which I promptly gave back to them. I think the only useful units I got out of them was 1 archer early on, a pikeman mid-game and a knight late game that never got into the action.
I took far too long taking Bismarck out. I had like 2 legions, 2 archers and a chariot archer at the time and didn't lose any of them in the attack. I don't remember the date but I know I could have taken him out probably 20 turns sooner.
Then I started my long march towards Japan which was just a huge pain in the butt on this map. I hadn't learned optics yet so none of my units could embark and all the city-states and AI's would park their units in the strips making it really difficult to move my units through. And then even when I did learn optics my units still couldn't embark because they don't get the ability until they enter friendly territory. I really didn't enjoy this map design with 1upt.
I got really lucky with Japan in a couple ways. First, Japan took out Montezuma for me before I even reached him. Then they declared on a city-state to the east and had their whole army over there when I arrived. So Japan's 2 original cities fell like nothing (lost the chariot archer only) and I got a city-state ally out of the deal. After that I made peace and let them keep Montezuma's cities and took everything he had (which wasn't much).
I moved on to China with my same army of legions and archers and I think 1 horseman. China was an absolute joke. She had 2 cities and 1 military unit, a swordsman. So China was destroyed with no losses.
I annexed all these cities as I was well over the happy cap.
So all that remained was Persia, who I also got pretty lucky with. When my units arrived on Persia's borders he had all kinds of immortals and archers set up in all the defensive tiles just outside his border. So I was like "oh crap, this might be harder than I thought it would be". But then I realized he wasn't defending his border, he was off to attack Japan's Aztec cities. So I gladly stepped aside and let him throw all his units into Japanese territory and went around behind them. At this point I had knights and they just demolished Persia's cities. I mean I think my first knight attack on a city took the city to half health from full.
So yeah, victory in 1170AD. I'm not a big fan of warmongering. Too much troop movement for my taste. And troop movement is a real pain with this 1upt system. 1upt is still better than stacks, but it definitely causes some hassle. My newly built units that I was sending on long trips to the front lines would need new orders almost every turn because some unit got in their way. I hope the next one will be a peaceful victory condition.
Thanks for the game, though. It was still quite fun overall.
edit: As for social policies I just went down the honor tree to double xp and then grabbed the first 2 in the patronage tree (influence decays slower and allied city-states give science bonus).
Science I went for calendar first, then iron working, then optics, then chivalry for the most part.
One mistake I made - early game I was worried about moving my troops through city-state territory due to lost influence. Late game I didn't care. In hindsight, I should have been just marching through their territory the whole game.
edit2: I didn't post my score. Won on turn 177, 1170AD. In-game score was 844. Hall of Fame score is 1865. It's interesting that my score is so much worse than pretty much everyone else despite my date being pretty decent. Here's my in-game score breakdown:
104 from cities
208 from population
116 from land
320 from wonders
96 from technology
I wonder if the AI built less wonders for me than other people. Of course there were probably some in Monte's capital that I never captured.