My science was positively alchemic, so I needed the following key techs quickly: I bulbed cavalry, Oxforded Dynamite and finished my research agreement with Spain for Rifling.
For guild specialists, I also popped 2x GW and GA as soon as they spawned.
I built Big Ben in Istanbul to further reduce purchasing costs.
I also made a point of buying as many CS allies as I could afford to (11 by the end), mainly to reduce the number of enemy ships swarming the map.
Navy:
Continuing from where I left off... on the first turn, 7 of Polynesia's ships died, 5 of which were converted
[Picture 1]. It's sort of unfortunate that AIs are so bad with ships; Polynesia didn't live up to his army score and Honolulu fell on turn 190
[Picture 2]. I left a few melee specialist Frigates to defend it until he gave me gold in a peace deal at around turn 200. The rest of them circled his island hunting for prize ships, making sure that if he attacked me again there'd be next to no navy; it's a great feature that converted ships also give you honour gold as if they were kills.
At this point I coup'd Kuala Lumpur for it's 12 Iron to support my growing pirate army.
London looked to be a good target for my land army, so I went for Spain (Isabella was top in army by then) with my fleet. I took my time and farmed as much gold as possible through unit kills and sea trade routes; the land army would definitely take longer. Once Madrid was conquered
[Picture 3], my navy chilled for the rest of the game with little to do.
Army:
The sole reason for it's efficiency was Riflemen with Janissary promotions; the 50hp/kill and 25% attacking bonus make them extremely overpowered, especially when combined with Cover II. About 10 of them led the way in a wide sweep of the continent; I was able to advance my entire army 1-2 tiles per turn because of their healing ability, without stopping for breaks.
I had saved about 4k gold for all of the following. To begin with I bought a military academy and 7 cannons in Jakarta. Most of the Janissaries were swum over from my lands. From then on I bought 1 unit per turn in Jakarta until the end of the game; mostly Cavalry but a couple more Artis too. Honour was able to finance this, and was definitely worth it at this stage of the game. Cargo ships from Jakarta also provided much needed gold; these only went to the closest city states so that I could mostly protect them. I had also built a road to Edinburgh for a quick attack.
I took out Cardiff first and razed it, thinking that I would have happiness problems; as it turned out I didn't need to. Since I'm actually Welsh irl I guess I should have taken sympathy on Cardiff and let it live
After Cardiff Attila had a lot of units blocking me from assaulting Edinburgh, so I warred him too and pushed both fronts
[Picture 4]. Again, Janissary Rifles alone made this possible.
Next Malang and Edinburgh fell, and I took white peace from the Celts. There was a handy road network from Jakarta to Malang and up to Kiev, so Cavalry could reach the front in 2-3 turns.
While I left a few units to slowly wear down Attila's court, most pressed on to England and Poland
[Picture 5]. Unlike The Huns and Celts, whose Rifles made advancing a lot tougher, they still had Muskets, and died quickly for it. Most of Lizzie's army was over to the west, which made taking Nottingham more simple. After Nottingham I surrounded and pillaged York but only took London.
At about this point both of my spies tried to coup Antanarivo from Poland and both died. To be fair up until then I had been lucky with coups, so it was about time I failed 1 or 2.
Most of Poland's units were west of Kiev
[Picture 6], so I bought it out and sandwiched his army against Polynesia's lands. He only had 1 Winged Hussar, which was disappointing. A final push north with a load of melee units and 3 Artis finished the game up
[Picture 7].
As an alternative strategy I considered taking the small Polynesian city just west of Warsaw, and buying a few units to lay siege to Poland's cap. In the end I decided not to simultaneously war Polynesia and Spain at the same time as it seemed too risky, but it may have resulted in a slightly faster victory.
Techs: Philosophy ---> Education ---> Metal Casting ---> Machinery ---> Steel (stolen) ---> Navigation ---> Industrlialisation ---> Chemistry ---> Dynamite ---> Rifling ---> Scientific Theory.
Social Policies in order: Honour 6, Commerce 4, Exploration 1, Autocracy 3, Commerce finisher, Autocracy 5.
Sorry to you non-German speakers if it's annoying that the screenshots are in German. I'm currently living here and learning the language and it's hilarious to come out with words like "granary" and "gunpowder" from time to time! "My disagreements with you have become too much to bear" is a personal favourite
