Immortal Challenge 9: America Continents

Dream start, settled on the aforementioned hill NE. Scouted a bit and got beaten to 3 huts by Dido and Theodora. Clearly, they must die. A few good city spots in the middle of the continent, so I opened Liberty and opted for Pyramids.
Build order: Scout - Monument - Shrine - Worker - Scout - Pyramids.
Pottery before mining, so I was a bit worried about being in time for Pyramids, but amazing production did it.
Picked DF as the (first) pantheon, dropped 2 cities on riverside hills in the desert. Dido started hating me immediately, but Theodora was friendly. So I built-upgraded 6-7 CB, dropped another city downstream and proposed DoF to Theodora. She accepted, and I went killed Carthage. Was easy, lots of flatland to shoot and she was Honor. Then I was indecisive about attacking Theodora because friends and that stuff, I was afraid the world will know me for a villain even if she dies alone. You know, someone always tells.
So i devised a cunning plan: I dropped a city at her doorstep (Atlanta on the screenshot), DoW'ed her favourite city-state and told her to buzz off. She went mad and denounced me, and then I was free to attack without the backstab penalty. Mwahahahahaha.
Constantinople was 27 strength and had a dromon inside when I attacked it, but as I no longer cared for my CB's, I killed it in three turns. I've a continent for myself now, with enhanced religion (DF + Burial + Ascestisism + Pagodas + Reliquary), Petra in the desert city and 2 Policies deep in Patronage. Built Terracotta Army and Oracle apart fom Petra and Pyras. A bit late on tech and still no NC, but I think I'll catch up with such amazing land all for my own.

I settled in place and food and production allowed for the capitol to grow quickly and get a lot of achers fast. I planned to go for Composites, rush Dido or Theodora, then swing around and crush the other, pref Dido first because of easy acces. Now byzantium did offer a DoF wich I accepted but she also forward settled on me just when I was going to settle my second city. A few turns later and i get DoW'd by Dido. With CB the attack wave was beaten very fast and I then went to puppet all of her cities, I kept an eye on Byzantium but nothing happened. Then I went after Theodora and captured all but her capitol and a city she had far to the north. With all that jungle near her capitol and a wounded militairy, plus a lot of dromons defending the capitol, I signed a peace treaty.

With a large deal of the continent under my control I focussed on science and did some exploring aswell as getting some CS allies. Because of the many cities and enough food to grow them relatively quick I overtook the tech leader(England) and with some research agreements I eventually worked my way trough the tech tree. Theodora did declare war a few times but it was never serious with peace following soon after each DoW. It was quite a late victory, turn 313 sience victory, England had finished some parts too. Made some mistakes when it comes to policies, too few research agreements and lacking alunimum wich I had to buy from other civs.

Enjoyed the challenge!

t172 In my game, I went writing>construction. I paused to build ToA and then I took Carthage. But first, I bribed her to attack Byzantium. Not wanting a diplo hit, I left her with one city. Carthage had Zeus in it. To pay me back she sat and build units which she used to against me later.

Byzantium forward settled me in the desert river, so I attacked them and took all three cities. That's when I broke my promise of just passing through.

I settled NY on the GBR and met the Mongols. They hated me and after Byz went down I got a double DoW from Dido and Genghis. I lost NY but destroyed Dido then went back for NY.

I have full liberty and 3 honor. I have good cash and am annexing the cities I took as soon as I have 600. The ToA E popped and I took Machu Pichu in Washington.. I have a religion, its weak but should be good enough: Monument to the Gods, Divine Inspiration, Tithe. I will open rationalism next and hunker down with 8 cities for a cash fueled science win. I have met England & Russia and I have caravels out searching.

Solely due to my horrible planning mistakes. I'm sure pre-250 is totally achievable.
I missed the moment to mass bulb my scientists by so much that I've discovered the entire tech tree and 7 future techs while building the SS parts, and I missed the Rationalism finisher.
So, soon after I killed Theodora (turn 123) I met the other two AI's on my continent and discovered that in fact I have not the entire continent for my self but only a small part, separated by mountains from the other, larger area.
They both started hating me because Theodora had denounced me before she died, and they likely knew and loved her. I built some frigates in the small closed ocean to the east of Washington (I didn't know it was closed) and attacked GK. Soon it turned out that I only had coastal access to a city of his and two CS's he puppeted. Still, his huge army was good training for my frigates, and liberated city states were of some use. Later I dropped a city to be able to navigate my fleet to the World Ocean. I shouldn't have done this in retrospect (GK war I mean), I thought it would be a start of a great world conquest rampage, but it turned out to be just a huge time sink.
Policy-wise, I closed Patronage before going Rationalism, and that's most likely a huge mistake too. Scholaticism beakers soon became negligible, and Educated Elite was of little use too. I believed I would be able to close Rationalism too, but Nebby couped my two cultural CS's constantly.

Took money from GK for peace, sailed to babylon, upgraded to BS and waited for Nebby to DoW, then killed him outright. Strangely, after his death he still had a spy in Monaco rigging elections in his favor.
Lizzy declared on me along with Nebby, but her ships were nowhere to be found, so I sailed east to her and had enough time to capture three of her cities before the end.
Finally got to feed one CS to another

Took a restart at the beginning because dido went maniac on me and i was just upgrading archers. On second attempt, went archery earlier, settled second city on hill on west edge of the desert, close to byzantium's forward planted city. CBs took Dido leaving her one tundra city at the bottom of the map.
Meanwhile, took DF as pantheon, but my desert city got pressured into byzantium's religion so faith plummeted -- took 100 turns to get enough faith to convert it back.
Got GL, went liberty, but probably should have gone trad. I was going to use the GE from finisher to build petra but that went around turn 70 or something. Planted 3rd city along the desert river. Didn't build any more cities.
Education popped around 105 then pathed over to xbows. Upgraded xbows took out all byzantium, but only just. She had a bunch of wonders that made her cap irresistable.
After that it was cruise through science techs until Nebby declared war, but 6 frigates and gattlings made short work. Russia was closest rival, but never attacked. Main issue being juggling happiness and CS.
Map was a horror -- lots of blind alleys and hard to move ships and troops to willing victims so domination was out.

I had two units like that, a third archer was killed earlier by accident. You can see how they are stripping the 50 and 60 defense cities.

In this game thanks to the isthmus, a small force was able to fend off Genghis all game long. Note the citadels. I was at war with him all game long and the archer units were firing two shots a turn every turn to get that way. Taking the left side of Honor allowed the units to get that way, gave me 4 or 5 GG and allowed me to kill 3 civs with a smaller force. The eight units you can see are the most I ever had over there. Most of the time it was 2 archer lines, and pike supported by one ship.

Once rationalism kicked in, I eclipsed the Mongols and went to infantry almost over night. I achieved great economy of force in this one. I was never in a hurry to kill Genghis.

Since I killed 2 guys (girls) early, I had happiness problems all game long. It never went away until I took the right side of Freedom. Losing NY, my second city also set me back, but that is not a reflection on the strategy, just my bad play.

Compare and contrast to not choosing 3 in Honor.

276 science victory..
great starting location.. good food and production allowed me to wonder spam.. this played into my religion pretty heavily as i didnt build any faith buildings except the first shrine.. i took faith from quarries, tithe, pagodas, faith from wonders, religious texts.. did two great profit spreads on the mongols (one from HS), bought three scientists and two engineers with faith.. 78 gpt from faith in the end.

dido declared on me pretty early but her cap had poor production so she couldnt back up her initial wave with any units so i took the cap and the city to the south then made peace.. previous to that war i had gotten the girls into a cat fight for 300 gold.. theodora ended up with the last laugh finishing dido off after i made peace..

then theodora declared on me just after our second DOF wore out.. they attacked carthage and her ally hong kong attacked washington.. i upgrade to crossbows and wiped out her army and marched on her desert city with limited casualties.. stole a fully loaded GP which i planted at cap.. settled for peace by taking her undamaged jungle city with a very nice 14 population and university.. bought the rest of the jungle tiles in the area and spammed trading posts then annexed asap..

i was swimming in gold and luxuries the entire game i didnt hard build one science building in any of my four cities..

as soon as the war with theo was done we signed a DOF and went thru two waves of RAs.. friends with the mongols the entire game and signed two RAs.. a late DOF with england secured a final RA towards the end..

russia was nasty to me after mid game and was the initial runaway but i trounced everybody in science.. nobody hassled me in my borders.. had to use one GG for a citadel because theo's culture was pretty good and her expanding borders were threatening my trade route.. this of course led to a later denunciation and her military hip hopping around my borders which forced me to upgrade some of my archers and elephants and cannons to dissuade her from getting frisky..

fun game but the map layout was unfriendly to a warring civ like the americans so after finding all the civs with regular units i didnt even bother with caravels.. i didnt want to annex carthage until their pop hit ten..

tradition two city NC start.. two policies in patronage.. left side rationalism, two down in order, then rationalism finish..
happiness never an issue.

missed leaning tower and machu pichu on the final turn on each of them..

I don't mean any offense but I don't think left side Honor was really much use to you. Well maybe that MG of yours would have 1 less promotion have you taken another tree, of maybe you had had to build two more units to hold of GK. It's really not much use of left Honor if you're not steamrolling anyone, and on this map you only have GK (logistical nightmare) and Nebby (coastal = too easy) to steamroll.
Did you try the French tundra start Immortal game?http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=497684
I think left side Honor is better on maps like that, at least I went it there and actually had some time to reap the benefits.

Decided to take a stab at one of the immortal challenges for a change. What annoyed me was that the AI was so poor, none of them could even buy my luxuries.... so I decided to kill them. I opened tradition, settled 2 cities, and rushed to CBs (got Carthage's capital with archers, got byzantium's captial with CBs)

Their capital cities are quite nice, with plenty of luxuries, hopefully the other civs I meet can afford to buy them

My goals now: Let Adrianople finish razing so I can get out of the red.
-Explore the west with my 3 scouts
-I'd really like the petra for NY but the hammer production is so painfully low, I might just try and GE it with pisa or something
-Play passively and wonder whore while just keeping my army on hold for the time being (I really want to tech til the bombers and just unleash them all muahaha)

Composite bow rushed both Dido and Theodora and settled up the island. Mostly just tech to victory after that. Met some AI's too late though too, had less gold from trading than I'd have liked.