Well, I gotta say the AI is pretty intelligent. Two civs are blocking me in with no Open Borders so I can't send my missionaries everywhere beyond. The one city that I had a little further away they took. Btw, Boreal is one tough map...only deer and a few other resources and everything is slow, slow, slow.
Impressive, but this gauntlet will get done, likely at the expense of the minor 26 and 25 which I already gave up on even though it vexes me to no end.
EDIT: OK, just finished at about 1760. This game was crazy!
but fun indeed. A couple of things that happened:
* played as Ramses which can be a gamble not starting with Mysticism. You could play against civs without it as well, but those ones tend to pick on you and be, ah, really mean
* founded 3rd religion - choose Islam and built Stonehenge just before that
* Had one city spamming missionaries and the other developing and spamming workers and settlers.
* got the religious quest and founded about 2-3 cities to get it. The map had a huge number of mountains between Korea and Mali and nearish to me. I plopped a settler down on ice with the hopes of getting some Mali deer or horses and some mountains. Popped a GA without MMing the GPPs and his Great Work had me handily winning the quest. This was sweet.
* I build only 13 Islamic missionaries the entire game and I finished it with 3! I actually only send one in to each of the other civs largest cities and they went absolutely nuts! I mean, if you are founding all the religions after the first two, then it is pretty easy. Secondly, don't the civs want to get the hammer bonus from the AP?
* everything was going smooth until votes were held for the AP leader and I lost! other civs had much larger pops! Worst of all, I hadn't reached Khmer with my missionary yet. Just as he gets, there everyone decides to stop trading with them. Closed borders, no missionary into the hethen lands!
* eventually the AP crowd votes to go to war against Khmer. Keep in mind the whole world is Islamic, every city, except them. I start building up troops to conquer their cities for a two-fold effect. 1) I eliminate the one civ without any Islamic cities. 2) I gain land and population to have more of a vote sway.
* had one Golden Age I started with only one GP, is that possible now? Had the Mausoleum wonder for a GA of 12 after building the Taj Mahal. Then, during the second turn on GA completed the Colosseum quest and chose the Zeus option, thinking it would be periodic Olympics. Instead, BOOM! another 12 turns of Golden Age for a total of 24, running Rep, Bur, CS and OR.
* Out of the blue, every other civ makes peace with Khmer. When I try, they want one of my cities to do it. Screw that and screw them, I say. Second round of wars against them and at some point before that I had a mediator come up to make peace and improve relations with them by +1, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the -8 or so they have. I forget it. Then, just as I am in a position (even with some silly errors, like not unfortifying some units during an attack and leaving them for the next turn) to take one of their cities, they become a Vassal of Churchill the Warmonger and I am now forced to make peace.
* I had some great food resources and on the strength of large cities and being a nice-guy tech-broker to others, regained control of the AP. I believe this had something to do with the 2 or 3 Korean cities and 2 new cities of my own that all converted to Islam because of some event I had. I also helped out Vicky, TWICE with my food surplus and attitudes where singing my way again.
* Churchill's land flirted with the 50% release threshold, but I was starting to think I would never convert the Khmer. Then, they converted to Confucianism. I quickly convert likewise and start building missionaries. During this time I discover SM and now only have a few cities to build them in as I foolishly build missionaries before monasteries. When the vote came, Churchill was closer to winning.
* after trying almost every turn to see if the Khmer would open borders, I notice a redded out option to convert to Islam. I instantly switch back and trade/give away techs to get the vote on my side.
Stats:
11 cities
Thebes had 12 wonders
+46 gold from Masjid Al-Haram
I finished the game middle in power rating, very few units built
On a side note, I had a crash again from the Civilopedia and after finished I had some graphics issues, take a look.