Finally have some time to play civ. I decided to start with this one because unlike #1 (which seems pretty tedious) and #2 (which may not be doable with my level of micro and planning) it seems pretty straight-forward.
I've added Pericles on top of the required opponents because I consider him to be an excellent trading partner. Mansa alone may not be sufficient as far as tech trading goes. We'll see.
My start was a pretty decent one and moving away from my starting location improved it further as I swapped a lot of plains tiles for grassland. I soon discovered I'm pretty cramped between Asoka and Peter. BW revealed Copper, which I settled with my 3rd city and I decided to Axe-rush Asoka. Now this may seem controversial in a culture game but... a) Asoka settled Bombay right at my capital's border and I knew it would revolt at some point; b) I scouted Asoka and he was running "farmer's gambit": 3 archers total for 2 cities, just finished The Great Wall and entered the missionary-spamming mode.
It worked out extremely well... Bombay revolted, so I took it while its Archer was injured. Delhi built another missionary
woohoo
instead of an archer and my force of 5 axes and 1 warrior was sufficient to take it. The warrior managed to grab a worker from a dying indian nation. Delhi obviously has TGW and is the holy city of both (!!!) Hinduism and Judaism. So I already have access to 2 religions.
So this is what I'm currently looking at, I think it's a pretty solid position.
The short term plans are:
a) Scout the area around Corn for additional food resources; if there are any then consider makind that spot my Gp farm instead of Bombay. Bombay can be used as a hybrid. Speaking of Bombay it's actually a really good city for such early capture - it has Corn farm, FP farm and can borrow Plains mine - this accounts for a Worker every 6 turns. Gonna build at least 2 there right away.
b) Build a road to Russia ASAP. I can get 3 additional
straight away. (at least I hope Peter has all his cities connected
)
c) Connect Fur, because capital is at its happy cap. I really can't complain about the distribution of resources here, I got Ivory, Gold, Fur, Wine, Silk and Incense within reach and possibly Gems if I decide to go for them. The Whales are a bit out of reach and Optics is really a dead end in a Cultural game.
d) Tech Aesthetics. Hopefully somebody will pursue Alpha soon. Maybe I should build the Parthenon as I have access to Marble and can always use the GP boost.
e) Spawn Great Scientist for an Academy in the capital. I can't go Artists only because Delhi will start producing spy points soon. Great Spy is not bad but it doesn't help me as much as the early academy.
f) Settle city #6. Corn if there is indeed another food resource nearby, Sheep if not. (to block off Peter)
So yeah, hopefully I don't screw this one up like I tend to do. It looks really promissing.
While the general Hall of Fame is an ongoing competition, we are running a series of ten games called the Hall of Fame Challenge Series. Standard Hall of Fame rules (*) still apply, but any games meeting the settings of one of the games will be counted towards the Challenge.
Yeeeeah, I anticipate to play this one.
So, he's the one to blame for including Napoleon in what should be a peaceful game. 
