Open Class
Domination in 1710AD
Fireaxis & Jason score both around 5500
This was definitely one of the toughest games I played in a long time! I was about to resign at four different points,
[wife's comment: I wish he had...]
but out of inertia I played on and somehow survived the crisis each time. Actually this is the kind of game I like: challenging uphill struggles where it is not clear for a long time, whether I will be able to win. But this time it was a bit too much, even for me... At some points playing this game was real physical pain... for example when the Spanish took my capital in a ROP-rape, while we had the best relations!
The game started pretty well thanks to the good starting location. I settled in place and sent the first settler down, where a 4-turner was possible. No big problems with barbs in the beginning, so I played a kind of farmers gambit with only slight military protection...
I should have known better...
After the first couple of contacts I got some good tech trading going and caught up with the AIs at the end of the AA. Then the uprisings began, and suddenly there were barbs everywhere! Stacks of 20 horsemen were approaching from every direction, killing population, killing one or two settlers and a couple of workers, destroying the production of halve-finished graneries, killing many units and taking lots of gold. (Didn't have anything useful to spend it on. Probably should've gifted it to the AIs for better relations, but I thought the barbs would leave my population and production alone, if I had enough gold in the treasury. However, that didn't always work...) In short, they completely ruined my game and for many many turns I was doing nothing but fighting barbs and not getting anywhere.
Then the French landed a single regular horseman on my shores... Normally I would laugh about that. But it attacked a town defended by a veteran spearman and took it! Two turns later it attacked the next town, killed another vet spear and took it as well!! And the next turn it razed an undefended town. At the same time the Spanish had also sent a single horseman, which took another of my undefended towns...
At that point I thought: Ok, is this enough? Shall I quit? But I could no longer switch to GOTM79, because I had already read the spoilers. So I said to myself, even if this is not going to be a great score, if you want to submit something this month, you have to stick with this game...
Fortunately at that time the barb invasions began to cease and I was able to build a couple of units, which slowly managed to retake my lost towns (except for one, which surprisingly got razed?! I thought a town of your own nationality will not be razed, even if it's of size 1 and has no culture?!). The Spanish had settled a couple of towns on my continent and I was also able to take two or three of those. Then there followed a long phase of recovery, during which I managed to secure the horse resource far out east. But the next crisis didn't wait long: I had made quick peace with Spain and lateron we had very good relations again with many trading opportunities and a ROP. Then out of the blue a lone Conquistador ROP-raped me and captured the undefended Constantinople!!
The Pallace jumped into the next city, which had already built the FP! I tried to recapture Constantinople immediately with two Knights, but somehow the Spanish had already completed two vet Pikes in it, so the attack failed. Where did those come from so fast??
I had to wait a couple of turns, complete a few more Knights nearby and bring some back home from their engagement with the English, and then I was able to retake it. But the damage had already been done: 5 pop points lost, a temple, a library and a marketplace lost, Palace and Forbidden Pallace now in one city...
I'm not exactly sure what effect this has on corruption, but spending 1000 shields on rebuilding the Pallace was out of the question, so I left it that way until the rest of the game. (Unfortunately I had only two leaders during the entire game, which were both urgently needed for Armies.)
By now I had seriously fallen behind in tech. No chance to catch up, neither with own research nor with trading. But good luck saved me again: I noticed, that the Arabs were fighting the French and slowly getting the upper hand. The French had no iron, but they had built the Great Library in Paris...
So after I reached Chivalry, I set science to 0% and used my money for completing the infrastructure in my core and upgrading horsemen. For many centuries I went like this. (Actually I wanted to take the GL much earlier, but tough wars with the English, Ottomans, Indians and Spanish prevented me from getting my invasion force ready.) When I noticed that France was almost finished and Indian and Arabian troups approaching Paris, it was about 5 minutes before 12. I sent over whatever I had (a handful of Knights and MI) and took Paris literally a few seconds before the Indians would. The first two Indian Cavalries had already attacked Paris, but had not yet taken it. Fortunately I already had a decent beachhead on French territory with direct road access to Paris and I had a ROP with France, so I was able to block the advance of the Indian Cavalry with a couple of workers...
This had been a close shave, and had I not managed to get the GL, the game would definitely have been lost. Taking it from India would have been impossible, as they already had riflemen. But as it was I gained 22 techs in one turn: the entire Middle Age plus Steampower, Medicine, Communism and Fascism. This was 970AD. A bit of tech trading the next turn netted me Nationalism and thousands of gold, and suddenly I was back in the game!
I stayed a few more turns at 0% science in order to buy Industrialization from the Indians and then immediately started research on Electricity, which no one yet had at that point. (I had already setup libraries in my core, but research was still surprisingly slow, like 10 turns for Electricity and close to 20 for Scientific Method.)
The next phase went pretty smoth. Even though I wasn't the first at Scientific Method, my prebuild secured me ToE and then about 10 turns later the Hoover Dam was mine as well. I felt pretty confident again. However, the next crisis did not wait long: no oil on my continent!! And no chance to buy any or capture any, because my Cavalry would have been no match for Infantry or even Tanks... Having no oil really sucks! Now I begin to understand G.W.Bush's motives... From here on the game turned into a fight for resources, either in order to gain access to them myself of for denial purposes.
Fortunately after a while Arabia began to decline, because India, Spain and the Ottomans had dogpiled on them. I prepared two Cav Armies, sent them to the Arabian oil fields and managed to capture them just in time before the Indian troops arrived there.
Shortly after that we arrived at the modern age and India started to build the UN in a pretty productive city, and I thought, that's perfect: they will surely finish it first, and then I don't need to fear a diplomatic loss, because except for the Ottomans everyone was at war with India, so they will definitely not trigger an election... But to my surprise it was the Ottomans, who unexpectly finished the UN. They had started about 10 turns later than the Indians and their city looked about the same as the Indian one in terms of size and mined mountains?! This came as a real shock to me, because I was absolutely unsure, how the election would turn out, if they held one next turn! There were five nations left at that time. I would vote for myself and Spain would either vote for me or abstain, because they had been at constant war with the Ottomans. But India would certainly vote for the Ottomans, as they were in a mutual protection pact for most of the game. So all would depend on England's vote, and I hadn't noticed a single war between England and the Ottomans during the entire game! So I crossed all fingers and toes and pressed <enter> and --- no election!!
In order to prevent a tight situation like that for the future, I decided to remove the English from the game. My original plan on how to reach the dom limit had been to attack Spain first, because they had no rubber and thus no Mech Inf. But with Spain gone the next UN election might definitely go in Osman's favour, so I had to change my strategy, regroup and prepare an invasion of England first. And they made it easy for me: I had already tried to plant a spy in England a couple of times, but had always been caught. I tried one more time, and this time the English were so pissed that they declared war! Great. I first sent a Modern Armor Army over, which disconnected their rubber, and then my MAs & Artillery took over England in 4 or 5 turns.
Next phase consisted of taking all rubber and aluminium sources from India and Osmania. The first to stop them building Mech Infs (they had already build around 150 each) and the second to prevent them from building further spaceship parts. (Osman had already finished 5 and had two more in production, so it was about time to pay attention to that...) Fortunately no rubber nor aluminium was located on the Indian/Osmanian home continent, it was all on former French, Arabian and Spanish territory, and the Ottomans still had three towns in the north of my continent, which provided them their only two source of aluminium. Attacking their home continent would have been a tough nut, but as usual the offshore cities were not too well defended and with Artillery, Modern Armor and 10 Armies I made good progress. The only drawback was: they still had their MPP, and the very first turn after I attacked them, they dropped almost their entire nuclear arsenal on me! 6 ICBMs and a tactical nuke!
This disconnected all my rubber and oil sources! And the next turn I got two more nukes... This slowed me down quite a bit and cost quite a number of Fireaxis points, because in an attempt to maximize my score I had joined most of my workers into cities, after my railroad network was complete. I had only kept a decent pollution control squad.
Anyway, that didn't stop me and in a couple of turns I had taken over the rest of the French/Arabian continent and the island between Arabia and Spain. And the Ottomans finally stopped building spaceship parts after completing 8, uff.
BTW: needless to say that after my experiences in GOTM77 I razed all Ottoman and Indian cities and replaced them with my own. I didn't have to do this with the majority of English cities, because I eliminated England so quickly that they didn't have a chance to flip back...
Now I estimated the missing tiles for domination and found that a difficult invasion of the Indian/Ottoman home continent would not be necessary. The last 10 turns or so consisted of rushing Libraries in my newly founded towns and of finally taking over Spain to reach domination in 1710.
After this nerve-racking game I'm looking forward to a nice and relaxing COTM49...
Lanzelot
Fortunately, there was only one, and I was able to vanquish it via the always popular medieval infantry and longbowman - on - tank violence. Not quite 
, but close. Having gotten the Indians off the island, I quickly made peace, actually picking up a tech along the way.
Switch prebuild to UN. Roughly 8 turns to go. India had started the UN build, but I thought I had enough time. A couple pollution events slowed things down... and ONE turn from completion, in 1768, India builds the UN in Delhi. 
It also let me observe that India had neither aluminum nor uranium--though uranium was one space across the border into Ottoman territory. (This was TRULY a game of inches in so many ways). Between my extra coal source (which evaporated early in the modern, naturally) and extra horses and iron from conquering my island, I was able to get a decent supplementary income which was allowing me to catch up in tech with India, and stay ahead of everyone else who COULD build a spaceship.
Having no swords or horseman for most of BC was heinous. 
I simply could not keep enough warriors alive to protect my settler factories and escort new settlers. Of course I didn't research Bronze Working for spears because I was going for the Republic sling. 
democracy.
...
