Problems with Emperor

With respect to Kyoto's great city radius, there's relatively few good available settling positions after founding the second city - which should be somewhere near the Marble to the west provided you can beat the Romans to it. There's also every chance you'll get stuck in the middle of a religious war between the three Spiritual tribes on the continent (including 'Insane Issie' and 'Mad Monty'). To add insult to injury, you've got an iron-resourced Rome as a neighbour, and yep, when you meet Alex and Huayna Capac, they're likely to be a tech' age ahead and irritated by your converted religion.

While I'm yet to win this, my gut feel is to go with a peaceful victory (but that's my Achilles' heel to begin with!) ; keep Montezuma 'on side' throughout, and take two shots at Mansa to knock him out. I found that he was stuck with largely Skirmishers for the early game, so a combination Swordsman and Axeman rush should be sufficient to take at least three of his cities, and then a Samurai and Catapult combination later on should be sufficient to deal with the remainder of Mali. If you want to expand 'naturally' in the Ancient and Classical Eras, the west seems to be the only option, as in my attempt Mansa filled the area to Kyoto's south-east very quickly.

While Tokugawa probably has the worst traits imaginable to win a Cultural victory, if you can engineer things right, and pick up a few of the Marble-aided wonders such as The Sistine Chapel and The Great Library, this victory may obtainable. You also need to be a little lucky in getting a sufficient number of religions to make their way into your empire, and any AI invasions are mild and managable. In the later part of the game, I had a handful of enemy cities flip to me.

I'm looking forward to giving this game another go at some point.

Tokyo's starting location was great, but with all that jungle and Mansa/Caesar so close, there wasn't really room for expansion. I initially figured I'd build 2 more cities for military production, while the capital concentrated on commerce. I put my second city (Osaka) near the marble, but so did Ceasar just north of me. His culture beat me to it, but I still had a nice place for military production for the entire game, eventually building the Heroic Epic there. By the time I had founded Osaka, Mansa was already moving westward under me in the jungle, and Ceasar had another city to the west, which left me no good spot to place a 3rd city. The Iron at Tokyo was a lucky break, so two cities was plenty to build up an army.

I didn't make notes, but I believe my Initial build order was Work Boat, Worker, a few Warriors, Settler, Library, Oracle.

Research went something like Bronze Working, then straight to Alphabet. After getting Alphabet and doing tech trades around 1400-ish (had met Monte, Isabella, Ceasar and Mansa by then), it looked like I'd probably still have time to chop a couple forests and finish up the Oracle while researching Code of Laws.

So, luckily nobody build the Oracle before me, and I picked up Civil Service at around 1000 BC. Switching to Bureaucracy gave me plenty of beakers to easily stay in the tech lead. I built a few Swords and Spears while researching Monarchy and Construction, switched to Hereditary rule, and put in an Aqueduct.

Diplomacy at this point had Montezuma disliked by most, as well as behind in techs, so I went with open borders and did tech trades with everyone except Montezuma. I decided my first victim would be Montezuma. His disposition became worse as I refused his demands.

After Construction I started stockpiling catapults and went straight for Machinery. Montezuma declared war on me during this period, and I was able to bribe others into the war with techs. I did lose my mines and worker at Osaka however, due to those damnable horse archer pillagers, which put a damper on my forge and catapult construction. In 80 BC, I finished research Machinery and began producing Samurai.

Mansa, Caesar and Isabella were all Pleased with me at this point, so I didn't expect to have to worry about my back while I went after Montezuma.

My Samurai captured Tenochitlan (Buddhist holy city) and I made peace with Montezuma in order to build up my defenses. Isabella and Mansa didn't stay at war very long with Montezuma, and consequently, Osaka wound up taking the brunt of his attacks, leaving it with pillaged lands and only a single warrior left to defend.

I converted to Confucianism, along with Caesar and Mansa, then switched to Theocracy. I didn't want my closest neighbors backstabbing me while my defenses were low, so I went with the religious buddy system. I figured this would tick Isabella off, and after I finished up Montezuma, I'd take her lands next.

My research plan was to continue to trade techs, while hording my military advantage with Civil Service + Machinery. In this save, I had clicked on Liberalism, but I'm pretty sure I researched Engineering next for the +1 road movement. Mansa, with only 3 cities, was already starting to get away from the pack in research at this point.

I wiped out Montezuma.

After researching Engineering, I went for Optics to meet my distant rivals, and was the first to circumnavigate the globe in the process. On the other side of the world, it seems that Alexandar has put his thumb down hard on Huyana, leaving him with what looks like only 2 small cities on an island. They are both backwards in techs, but Alexandar has a lot of land now and will catch up quickly when he meets my closer rivals.

Caesar and Mansa are Friendly with me, while Isabella is now only cautious. Isabella does not seem like a threat, however, so I decided to next take a slice out of the current top dog on my continent, Caesar.

Liberalism is due to me next, and I'm taking Astronomy for my freebie.

Caesar is toast. I left him with a single tundra city down below Isabella's territory, and yet he's still pleased with me. Isabella is pleased despite our religious differences, and Mansa is still friendly. Mansa is in the way however, and despite his small land holdings, he's running away from the world in techs. Mansa's time has come and I've bumped him to the top of my list.

Alexander is not so backward any more on techs. With all his land, he'll run wild soon, and I should take the fight to him. He is annoyed with me, as I've stopped trading with him; He doesn't need my help. This is where I usually blow my Emperor games. Loading up boats and taking the fight to the other super power is such a hassle, so I'm probably just going to go for another space race. We'll see how it goes. Maybe I'll get to use nukes this game.

For techs, I researched toward steel for grenadiers + cannons, while continuing to use my Samurai. Due to my growing empire, I'm going for Railroads next before Rifles so that I can move my troups more quickly.

Alexander jacked my Timbuktu. He has too many Cavalry, so I'm going to let it slide. Since I've already nabbed Mansa's holy city, I made peace with Mansa (he's still pleased!). I'll let Alexander fight for Mansa's other city so he wont turn on me next, and hopefully he'll burn some of his units while I reinforce mine.

I'm going to go after Isabella's capital and holy city next. I'm also going to set up a city to pump out Great Prophets, to build shrines. I'll be going wild with missionaries as well.

Not much else to say about this save.

I've finally claimed the rest of my continent, with the exception of the two cities that Alexander took from Mansa. After taking Isabella's capital, I made peace and then waited until I had tanks and bombers for the last wave. I have 4 spies ready to go overseas on a transport, so I can mess with Alexander. As soon as that transport is close, I'll declare war and take those two cities.

My Great Prophet farm has worked out nicely, and I now have six holy shrines supplementing my income.

Alexander has catapulted ahead in techs, but I'm not far behind. He's way ahead of me on the power graph, so I'm going to prepare bombers and destroyers to protect my coast.

Took a break to tell my story. I'll post the end later.