Turn 0 (500AD): As usual when inheriting a succession game with a lot happening, I take about 20 minutes or so just to familiarize myself with what we're doing. I'll start with military stuff. It looks like we have two main fronts, one down in the south by the Egyptian city of Akhetaten (where we have 3 knights + 1 treb + 1 pike) and then another front over in the west by Kayseri with 2 knights + 2 trebs + 1 crossbow. There's one Great General with each group, nice. That's almost all of our military, aside from a couple of scattered units elsewhere. I notice that we have an injured horseman in Cumae; is there some reason for this unit not to be a knight (?) I go ahead and spend the 150g for the upgrade, since I don't see anything telling me not to do so. We are nearly last in military power on the Demographics, only just about Egypt, which isn't a good sign. Hopefully some upgrades will help us out in the rankings. The good news is that Siam's power has fallen below France, which means that alpaca and uberfish have hurt them pretty badly. Nice work!
I go through our cities and try to do some microing. I'd like to plant signs on the map designating which cities are set up for production and specialist/science use, but there are no signs in Civ5. Then I decided that I would rename the cities to indicate that, and had to search for ages before finally discovering how to rename them. The answer is that tiny, tiny little "Edit" button next to the city name. Hmmmm. A lot less intuitive than simply clicking on the city's name, but it does work. Now notice that the patch has broken something else: the food box in the top-left corner always shows as full now from the city menu, no matter how much food the city actually has. There's no graphical representation whatsoever of how close you are to growing, without mousing over the food box or canceling out of the city screen entirely to the world map. Argh!
What a pain. Really dislike the whole interface system in this game. I mean, it looks pretty, but it's sure not that functional.
Here's how the cities are now set up:
Production
Istanbul
Edirne [has barracks]
Bursa
Gold
Constantinople
Byzantium
Ankara
Science/Specialists
My Little Pony
Ayshe's Vinyard
The other cities are too immature yet to have their roles completely determined. Generally speaking, we want the production cities to crank military units or settlers, so they don't need any infrastructure beyond a colosseum. The gold cities will want market and bank emphasized, although I'd still get a quick library too so that we can run more Scientists as needed to avoid overflow. The last group prioritizes universities over markets, to boost their Great Scientist output. I went through and stuck a P = Production, G = Gold, or S = Science at the end of these city names to help distinguish them. Some of our current builds don't make a lot of sense for this specialization, which is understandable given that this is a succession game. Hopefully we can use city renaming to make it easy to remember the roles of our filler cities from here on out. Of course, we can and will have to micro this for the research of each and every new tech to avoid wasteful overflow...
I don't sign a research agreement with Montezuma, because I very much doubt we'll ever see a tech out of that. AI will likely declare war before 30 turns are up.
Turn 1 (520AD): Gunpoweder tech discovered. I decide to go for Chemistry next, as we have quite a few trebuchuets and exactly one pikeman that can be upgraded to a rifleman. Seems like having cannons would be more helpful in our current situation. The tech costs 990 beakers; I micro it down to 6 turns of research at 165 beakers/turn.
Egyptian front is very quiet, but two French musketeers and a treuchet are moving up towards Cumae. I shift a couple of our units around in that direction, although unfortunately a lot of our units are injured and healing this turn. I'm building a road from Kayseri to Cumae to simplify things over there, also plan to add another city in that region with our next settler. Purchase a janissary in Edirne (460g) to deal with the one stray elephant wandering towards Kyoto. In all honesty, we should probably build an armory in Edrine next, and then just rush-buy all our units there for the free experience. Having one single city with barracks/armory seems like a good idea, since at least half of your units in this game will be rush-bought and can magically appear anywhere on the map.
Turn 2 (540AD): Quiet turn. Still no advancement from the Siamese units on the Egyptian front. I am tactically sloppy at Cumae, killing the trebuchet but only damaging one of the musketeers. We shouldn't lose any units, but I could have done better. Still getting used to the details of road movement and zone of control in very crowded areas.
Turn 3 (560AD): France... retreats with both units without attacking?! Ummm, OK. I kill one of them with our crossbow + trebuchet as it tries to walk out of range. That's no smarter, AI! Other one is too far to pursue. Our frontiers are really stable right now; I think the best place to advance is in the southwest against France. Just seems like the easiest place to make some headway. We can also adopt a new policy and I take Freedom, taking us from -1 happiness to +6 happiness. Very nice. Forbidden Palace is still due in 6 turns for even more happiness.
Turn 4 (580AD): Ramawhatever of Siam asks us for everything we have in exchange for peace. Not so much, dude. Guess you forgot whose units did all the dying in this war. Elsewhere, France has retreated that musketeer completely out of the picture, and moved up an unsupported trebuchet instead. Hmmmm. If he moves it forward even one tile further, it will die without achieving anything. In the west, shuffling units and workers so that I can plant another forward city next turn. We should be able to keep step-stoning a little further ahead all the time, annexing more and more territory as we go.
Turn 5 (600AD): Alex requests mutual Open Borders. I actually would give this to him, but I'm afraid of incurring more permanent Open Borders zonkiness due to the game's bugs, and so turn him down. In the south/west, France moves up a trebuchet right next to our knights on open ground to get killed.
Oh my. He also moves up an unsupported knight, which gets trebuchet bombed and then cleaned up with a knight. Easy stuff.
A combat settler founds another city for us in a strategic location. Because I renamed Istanbul, the game now suggests the same name again, blarg. Let's change that to Twin Peaks, to reflect the location between two mountain ranges. From here, we should be able to capture Ravenna, owned by the weak city state of Ravenna. From there, we'd have the possibility to take Rome and cut off about a third of France's territory. Dunno if I'll achieve that, but let's see what happens. All of our front lines are secure and we have 1000 gold in the bank, we can afford to push a little bit. Would love to get down to the southern sea coast and bisect our continent to make defending easier.
Turn 6 (620AD): The west is quiet but now the southeast isn't, as Siam moves forward 2 elephants and a pike across the river at Akhetaten. So much for pushing forward anywhere...
First I recall our Great General from Cumae, who I had in position to defend either city as needed. Then I bombard with the trebs. The one in the back can only hit the Siamese pikeman, scratch one unit. Unfortunately both elephants are double-promoted with Shock, and get a 40% bonus when fighting on flat ground. Negates the -33% penalty completely, ouch! I don't see any way to kill both elephants without losing a unit, and so I make the executive decision to preserve our knights and let the pikeman bite it. I kill one elephant and damage the other one badly (4hp left) but Akhetatan will probably fall, and our pikeman inside the city with it. Depends on how smart the AI chooses to get. Another knight and our janissary are moving to reinforce the area.
Turn 7 (640AD): I was right, and Siam captures Akhetatan from us, killing our pikeman in the process. The AI also acted intelligently and managed to kill one of our knights as well, which was again due to some poor play on my part. You can't afford to be trading units at this difficulty level, and I've been doing too much of that. As long as the city itself doesn't die on this interturn, we'll be fine. Actually we'll be OK even if it does fall, but that would cost us another knight, which would be irritating. I've moved some more units over to this front, and cash-rushed another knight in Edirne to make up for the knight we just lost. So there's really no true danger here, but it's irritating to mismanage things the way I've done. (I will say that Siam's elephants are one of the worst possible unique units to have to face off against!)
We also discovered Chemistry, although I was using our trebs this turn and couldn't upgrade them. Metallurgy is next on the path to rifles, due in 5 turns thanks to some creative use of Scientist specialists.
Turn 8 (660AD): Darn it, the AI did the smart thing again and took Akhetatan with a combination of its ranged units along with its one elephant. I've totally messed this up, now having lost 2 knights and 1 pike on this front for no real reason. Terrible, terrible play from me.
The front is now stable, and we have control of the city, but I've caused us to take some losses here. We also now have to go deal with Siam's attack on Genoa, where there's an elephant and a pike and a trebuchet moving up into view.
Turn 9 (680AD): We build the Forbidden Palace and get a ton of happiness, now up to +19. Should pop a Golden Age very soon as a result. Happiness is a total non-issue, we simply need more land to plant cities! Egypt, Siam, and Genoa all continue to skirmish in the south, with us now being forced to defend a very wide front to protect Genoa from attack:
We are completely and totally dug in on the left bank of this river. It makes for a great killing zone, but I don't see us making any forward progress here in the near future. Probably have to wait for artillery to start pushing forward. Very tough slog at the moment.
Turn 10 (700AD): Alex asks us to declare war with him on Egypt. Umm, I think we have enough enemies already at present, thanks. I kill several more Siamese units and do some repositioning. Finally feel like that southern front is back under control again, so that's some good news at least.
I've got the save, and I'll try to play 10 turns. If it gets too time-consuming and I'm forced to do 5, I'll let you know.
My goal (without looking at the save yet) is to keep holding our lines and slowly pushing expansion forward, with the goal of making our real push for victory after we have Artillery in ~20 turns or whatever. Would be nice if we could reach the southern ocean and completely bisect our continent, although I have no idea if that's feasible. Probably not. 
Oh, and Methos plays there too! Maybe that's why the modhammering has been lenient on us recently xPPP
