DanielTorrence
Warlord
Spoiler :OK, from memory...
I took the copper city, then the northeastern stone/floodplains, then the southern fish, and later the clams/elephants/iron spot (didn't know it was iron there until later but whatevs). Elephants were so awkward to get, the clams AND elephants were 2nd ring, and i settled it probably 8 turns too late, which delayed my elepult attack a little.
I used the stone to chop out the pyramids, a hammam, and the hanging gardens (figured why not? I have stone + math and hammam is > aquaduct). I built an academy in the cap and let my rep scientists slow tech me to hbr & construction, which led to a pretty late attack date around 200-300ad.
Cleaned up Kublai and kept most of his cities by 900-1000ad (slooooooooowwwwwwww), then used a great engineer on Taj Mahal for a golden age and went paci/caste (bulbed philo earlier), 2x bulbed education, 1x bulb on each of printing press and chemistry, and got steel with liberalism. China almost beat me to Lib.
Went Police State/Nationalism/Slavery/Theocracy as soon as steel came in and whip/drafted a nice army astoundingly fast (also upgraded some cats to cannons), then attacked Charly and crossed my fingers. He had huuuuuuuuuge stacks of knights and trebs but apparently cannons/janissaries do quite well against that because it was an absolute slaughter. I had to take 5 of his cities before he capitulated, including one which held both a shrine and the great lighthouse, which helped.
From that point on I just rolled through opponents, taking a few turns of peace to gather my army but not even stopping to heal as my army + production were huge.
My economy was total garbage but it didn't matter, trades + failgold + city captures + golden ages got me through it until the end where I built wealth instead of cannons. Took 20-ish turns to reinforce across the continent anyways =p
Spoiler :
I am surprised Kublai did not go after you, he came for me all the time. Building the mids synergises well with Suli, I guess, since he is philosophical, but I somehow miss the whole picture here. The maintainance for the stone city is a real drain to my research. Did you build some cottages for base commerce or did you directly go to writing?