I chose Qin as my leader.
I chose him for several reasons. First, I wanted to be Industrious as that would take 33% off my Pyramids time. Second, I wanted to start with Mining so that I could go straight for Masonry. Third, I wanted Agriculture so that I could improve the food in my capital right away.
I rolled a few times until I got a corn start. I had to turn away pigs since I didn't want to have to waste time getting AH. I was also looking for trees since I'd be chopping for much of my production.
You can see that my first city build was a worker. Worker first is super obvious (since I re-rolled until it was super obvious). In terms of tech I debated going BW first, but decided that Masonry was better. Just to be clear, I was not crunching numbers here. This was just for fun and I'm certain two or three turns could have been shaved off of this start.
For my second technology, and only other important one in the round, I chose Bronze Working. This would allow both the chopping of trees and the whipping of population. You can also see that I haven't explored. I don't want any fear for our safety unhappiness and I'd rather just keep the warrior I start with home. The first worker came out a few turns later.
He went one square east to farm the corn. This would allow growth in my capital which was going to be necessary to work the good tiles and whip a few times.
I thought about chopping now or mining the marble. But food man food is where it's at. So I went ahead and farmed the other corn.
There's not point waiting.
So I revolted right away. This costs a turn, but definitely saves at least 3 or 4 from my finish time.
Again, my worker micro is questionable. I opted against chopping out the next worker and instead decided to do this:
Mining the marble is far superior to quarrying it. Even in non-gambit games I often mine my Masonry resources when the extra hammer is worth more than the commerce. I obviously quarry over them when I need the resource, but in this time and place the 5
tile is going to be very useful.
After that I moved the worker one north.
I had him put this chop into the pyramids. After the chop, I switched to a worker.
I didn't consider the possibility of growing to size five and then doing the same thing as I was about to do. This might have been faster. I waited two turns for maximum overflow.
I've now got my workers on full chop duty.
A few forests later and I can whip in the pyramids.
Fitting, no? (Is it still too soon?)
And on turn 50:
50 turns isn't too bad. My empire now has the pyramids and two workers. I'd be interested in seeing somebody who actually pays attention to micro try this also, so I'm attaching the save.