I settled in place and founded Cherokee. With my exploring warrior, I very quickly found out that I am on an small island, and Montezuema is on the island next door. I research fishing->hunting->mining->bronze working, then beelined for the oracle, and founded confucianism. Next I cottaged the whole island and emphasize commerce. Next I met the Indians, Cyrus, and the American, who also lived on the same island. From 500 BC till the 1600 AD, Montezuema went on numberous military rampages and proceeded to wipe out Cyrus and Washington, and also took all the cities except one from Asoka. Even though I was two or three techs ahead of Montezuema, I knew it is only a matter of time before he surpass me in tech with his massive land and population. So I concentrated on space techs, and had a relatively light military. I was the first to liberalism, and took astronomy as my free tech (even though Alex had that tech already). In the 1700s, Alex decided that I was a ripe target, so he invaded me with cavalry and grenadiers. Instead of fighting him off myself, I bribed Montezuema with a tech to go to war with Alex. Montezuema proceeded to wipe the floor with Alex, took and razed most of his cities, then finally killed off the Greek nuissance. Interesting things is, even though Caesar discovered rocketry before, I beat him to finishing the Apollo project, guess his production was lacking. During this phase, I set most of my cities to build research, while the core cities built the SS parts. My military was quite lacking, and Montezuema could've easily wiped me out and get domination victory (This is only game where I see an AI civ so close to domination victory). I also bribed montezuema again to wipe out the Indians, just to slow down his SS building effort. For good measure, I also sent spies to sabatage Aztec and Roman SS projects (successfully for Aztecs, and failure for Romans). Anyway, I eventually won the Space victory in 1995. Imagine that, barbarians building space ships, and sending a horde to Alpha Centauri.
Here are the key saves.
