I started my round with a GA, provided by a GM that I had kept for the ocasion....
I promply changed civics for PS + Natio, and started drafting and building Rifles and berserks ( I never researched MilSci to be able of building them... then I upgraded them to rifles.... Normally it is not a good idea, but this is one of the few ocasions where we can buy a promo, and in top of that a very valuable one for the map overlay we had ). My uberfast boats could put them in the other continent in 4 turns and soon I was ready to smash Justinian.
Justinian had a sizable stack of his UU and trebs near the frontier with Wang ( I believe that he was preparing to resume war vs him ) and could do some damage to my cherished CR rifles. After discovering that he was heading to A. wat ( the city , not the wonder ). I decided to do this:
A aplication of the
Empty Fort Strategy.... and unlike a human ( like
Zhuge Liang did to
Sima Yi.... a classic ), Justinian fell like a duckie in my trap.... 2 turns later I regained the city, smashed Justinian SoD with the loss of 1/2 cannons and finished any hope of defence from Justinian side. To sweeten the thing, justinian cities were all coastal except one... after finishing that non coastal city and captured one coastal one ( that served as a naval platform for my amphibious attacks ), the Justinian cities started to fell at a nice rate of 1 per turn ( bombarb with frigates, strike with airships ( had discovered Physics soon in the turnset and mass builded Airships ( completely unbalanced unit and easy to move from one continent to another... how could I resist? )) and conquer with my ex-CR3 berserkers turned riflemen .. leave a CG I rifle or 2 as garrison if necessary)
Just to Isolate Justinian, I made this deals:
The Korean one had other purpose as well, was to remove Korean response force out of capitol ( I postponed the capture of a southern city just to drag Wang forces the furthest away possible.... ). Justinian territory was enough to meet Dom if wang culture didn't eated a lot of ex-justinian territory... Like I was not sure that I would not need to conquer a Korean city or two, I decided that was abvisable.
Well, like I said war with Justinian was swift ( I was expecting at least more 20 turns of war ( counting with a ceasefire or two in the middle ), a thing that made me under estimate the Dom victory date ( sorry Oz.... if necessary give QSH to someone else in MLG 4 ) ) and I was counting tiles. After a while I decided that it was better to start the war with Wang anyway... but he had a small thing in capitol that could be damaging to me: the SoZ. Too bad for Wang that Seoul was coastal
....
After the taking of another coastal Korean city and of being in the verge of capturing the only non coastal Korean city ( much alike I already done to Justinian ) I was suprised by this:
It looks that I didn't needed the Wang territory to win.... Too bad for him
Some more pictures....
and some considerations:
In this game the viking UU was not the berserker ( in spite of the nice services that this unit made in Shaka's , Izzy's and in the beggining of the Surya wars ) but the Combat I CR 3 Amphi Rifle, a fearsome unit in this map, especially when facing foes with almost none non coastal city. Combined with fast frigates and galleons and with airships, the last phases of the game were like Nimitz advance against the Japanese in the WWII : city hopping with healing in ship and massive air support.
The financial trait and the water wonders that I made helped a lot in the stabilizing of my empire..... in the end of the first shaka war I was running 10 % with deficit ( courtesy of the massive WW I got killing the Shaka stacks )... with a non-fin civ I would had a nice strike...
In resume a nice game ( congrats Ozbenno for this...
), in spite of the somewhat tense beginning with a ReXing shaka with Mids.... a thing that only made the last wars ( where I was pwning the AI ) even more sweeter ( and raiding 1 city per turn is fun
). And let the MLG 4 begin....
. It was interesting to see that Kodii (the most aggressive early gamer) had the exact same finish date as Ralph_Jackson (the most peaceful early gamer). 
