And now, the end times are come. When I learned that a new empire close to Spain needed my help, I decided to play this game as quickly as possible, and therefore this update may be long.
Research and Development
In the 1770s, Infrastructure and research were the key buzzwords of the hour. Research labs began getting constructed everywhere, the railroad network was finished from the north to the south, and wonders began giving the Aztecs incredible inspiration to continue building the greatest empire in the world. To improve production, Montezuma introduced a five year plan, which was so popular it was renewed every five years since then, and has improved production considerably.
In 1802, research labs were completed in the capital, Hamburg, and Paris, while the Kremlin and Neuscasten were built in other cities. With the bonuses provided by these buildings, Montezuma created an iron curtain policy, which encouraged self sustainability, and internal trade routes in the future. This year was a great year for Germany, and gave Montezuma the confidence he needed to set his eyes back on warfare.
The 12 years war
In 1804, world war broke out. With a little incentive from the Aztec Empire, Babylon declared war on Germany, and with a broken promise from Montezuma, Germany declared war on Portugal. Then, Montezuma joined in this world war against the German Axis of one nation. Experts were predicting a long, drawn out war, but the war turned out to be well worth the effort. The shrines of Buddha gained more sacrifices in these twelve years than in any stretch of recent history beforehand, and once Germany was feeling beat up, Bismark came to Monty for a peace treaty. In the treaty of Munich, Germany agreed to give up their second largest city (ie: only city outside of their capital) in exchange for peace.
Diplomatic results
Despite conquering four cities from opposing forces over the course of the game so far, nobody saw the Aztec Empire as a warmonger. Only one city was conquered by force, which made cities far more productive than they would have been otherwise, and decreased the warmonger penalty significantly. The free Mayans denounced us, and France and Germany had a long standing deep and searing hatred for the Aztecs, but other than that, diplomatic relations were overwhelmingly positive. I regularly got declarations of friendship from Portugal, Babylon, Brazil, and the Iroquois, and even Spain and the Ottomans liked me for some reason I never understood.
In 1822, with me and the Mayans being the only nations with an ideology, order was passed as the world ideology. With near full patronage and large sums of money being spent on city states, I controlled the world congress.
France, what are you doing?
Immediately after the treaty of Hamburg, a rumor started that France still had luxury resources in their empire. Montezuma was distraught upon hearing the news, and two great generals were sent out to remedy this situation. Unfortunately, France still had untouchable two luxury resources in the city of Troyes. This was the third and fourth luxury resource we had stolen from France this game. Who says that Honor doesn't provide happiness benefits?
20ish years later, Uranium was discovered to go kablooie if it was mixed in one way, while providing a nice production boost if mixed another. Montezuma also discovered that France might have some of this resource, and could not let that stand.
Poor France... If my count is correct, I think I used 5 great generals against them over the course of this game.
The Last German War
Eventually, the peace treaty with Germany was over, and The Aztecs declared war on them again. The war was short, and Berlin became part of the Aztec Empire. The German civilization was no more. Indeed, the Aztec Empire committed genocide on a people, but the people remaining became a part of the far better Aztec Empire.
Woohoo! Now, I've read on these forums before that committing genocide is almost impossible to come back from diplomatically, so what were the consequences of this? Well, France hated me for the rest of the game for understandable reasons. The Mayans denounced me every once in a while for reasons aside from the warring. Otherwise... Basically nothing. Germany was at war with every other major power on the continent at the time (my doing), so they didn't care at all about Germany's extermination. My DoFs with everyone else went in the world. So far I had captured two cities by force, and liberated one (major penalties/bonuses for each). So, they had early concerns about my warring still, but I had more than enough positive modifiers to offset any problems in my capital. I liberated Brazil and had DoFs with them from a while back, and gave my religion to Babylon and Portugal, which made a huge diplo difference.
Basically, I did a decent amount of warmongering. I exterminated a civ and captured two capitals over the course of the game. Unanticipated Diplo consequences were almost 0.
1858
Upon the discovery of Satellites, Montezuma discovered two cities that were not on any maps he had seen before. He sent out his fastest non-jaguar lancer to investigate, and in 1858, we discovered two isolationist landlocked city states. The lancer brought a large sum of money with him from the Aztec Empire, and these city states allied immediately. While it would take a little bit of time to fight off Spanish coups to ally every city state in the world, it did happen eventually. Also to note, diplo victory was off, but I did this anyway.
Also...
In 1862, this was awesome.
The Mayans went on a late game conquering spree, so I was second in land by the end game, but I remained first in every other demographic, which I find pretty cool. I'm not sure I've done that before on Emperor. I still win by dominating tech most of the time, but I'm usually behind on land and population. Basically, through my taking cities through peace deals, I had a lot of very well developed cities.
1890
1890 was another great year for the Aztecs, as we hosted the world fair in the new Sydney Opera house in Orleans. Even though France submitted content to the fair, we did not show it there. In fact, the placement of the fair was meant to be as insulting as possible to our French neighbors.
World Projects and the Space Program
In 1901, the world agreed to participate on the International Space Station Project. In 1902, the first man was sent to the Moon as the Apollo project was completed in our Capital. While the space program lagged behind a little bit in the Aztec Empire, the science was there and ready. After the ISS was completed in 1910, being commanded by Aztec captains, mostly built by Aztec scientists, work on a monumental space ship began in six different cities immediately.
In nine years, the space ship went from being started to completed (no great engineer bonuses either), and in 1919, the Aztecs launched a space ship to find new worlds to hate and conquer.
Notes and Final Thoughts on the Game
I'm feeling better about this now than I was last update. I didn't follow the every three production condition, but I did do this without taking rationalism or tradition. I ended up with 5 cities with a population above 30, two more cities with a population above 25, and had Berlin as my lowest pop city with a population of 16. That's a lot of population spread out among a lot of cities, and I managed to get it that way by taking all the cities I could through peace deals. I also am feeling better because I finished my conquest of Germany. In fact, I probably should have finished them off earlier. I definitely could have.
Honor is pretty good if you actually use it. Times of war can actually give you a fair bit of money if you're smart about it, and can make your troops a lot better. The opener is awesome when you're the Aztecs too.
Warmongering without diplo penalties is possible if you are smart about it. Just don't do it randomly, and choose very carefully what you want to get out of a war. If you're a hoard mercilessly conquering every city you see, that's going to get you hated, but if you choose a couple civs from the start of the game that you hate and are active in making friendships with everyone else, you can become a leader in setting the world diplomacy.
Religion is awesome for warmongers. If you're going tall/peaceful, you don't really need the diplo benefit from a shared religion, but warmongers do need this. I think Babylon and then Portugal starts to hate me if I don't have a religion, and the game plays out very differently for me. I actually think honor then piety may be a very solid strategy for a lot of civs, as terrible as that sounds at first. Also, religion is great at giving out happiness and gold, which is something that tall peaceful civs often have a lot of, but warmongers desperately need. It's a lot of production that is not spent on growth and development, so it sounds scary to try, but it works out quite well.