After I took out Vicky I spent a few turns getting my empire all in order and my tech rate started pick up big time. I pushed way ahead the of the last 3 civs especially Rags and Toku. They have been at war pretty much the ENTIRE game like since around 1500 bc or even earlier and it has really been killing their teching.
So anyways while I am tiddying up building commerce and science and what not and my workers are all imporoving tiles. Round this point I tech dvine right education and since noone has education yet I hold off on lib to get some other techs first I tech gunpowder nationalism and mil trad to turn my Knights into curissars.
I use a GE to hurry spiral for more gold per turn so I can have nest egg to upgrade my Kights as ASAP. After spiral is done in my new cap I set on working Taj. Soon Mil Trad gets done and I upgrade Knights.
Once all knights are upgraded and I build a cpl more I group em all together with some maces and trebs and cats and go after Toku. RIGHT before I DoW on Toku a gp pops in one of my cities. now I DO have a cpl of holy cities needing shrines BUT Taj is almost done and I also have MoM so with visoions of nice long 48 turn golden age I burn the GP for a GA. And then go after Toku. I take him out pretty easy and good thing too Rags JUST got zerkers so Toku wasnt long for this game anyways so if he is gonna fall it better he falls to me and NOT rags hehe
. After the first city is taken I split my stack. My currisars go off on their own while the wounded currisars and one movement units heal. The curriosars against longbows and swords and maces do pretty good on their own. Even v. protective longbows with 60% culture defense I dont lose to many since even the ones that lose usually retreat since I have been giving MOST of my mounted units flanking1 and 2 right out of the box. So by splitting stacks and sending two movement units out on their own I manage to get Toku done in lke 6 turns or so
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After that its like bfore I wait for tokus old cities to come out of revolt and send workers to tidy up around them. At this point still nobody has education so I hold back on Lib still and go for Repalcement parts and the rifling to turn my curs into caves and maces into rifles and then have em go play with Rags zerkers
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After I get rifling I then go after economics and us efree merchant to go do a misison in Justinians cap for 5100 gold. I use that gold plus gold I been saving from GA econmy to mass upgrade all my maces to rifles and curisassus and eles to cavalry. I get together two stacks one mostly rifles and what trebs I have left and another of all cav and dow on Rags.
I take two of Rags cities (well REALLY they were more like old Toku cities that Rags took from him) the turn I Dow on him and then when our little war is ONLY 1 turn old Ragnor the big bad warmonger is too afraid to fight a girl by himslef--the big sissy goes and vassalizes to Justinian which of course means Justinian DoWs on me.
Luckily I had two good size garrions in the two cities closest to Justinian. Noy cuz I was too worried bout him DoW on me (although I WAS keeping eye on city where he was using as rally point for his troops) but also mainly because they were geting pressed by his culture and a city with big garrisons less likely to flip so I made sure those cities had a good number of troops to avoid flippage hehe.
AT this point I have JUST finished chemistry. I STARTED to work on steel since I figured cannons would be handy BUT very next turn one of justinians caravlas that I guess was off exploring around swoops in and sinks a gally so I switch to lib which only needs 4 turns with plan to pick Astronmy so I can have frigates protect my fishing boats and maybe harrass Justinian.
And I get lucky break right when I do that a GP pops and it turns out Great Prohets can bulb liberalism hehe. SO he bulbs from 4 turns to 1 so very next turn I have frgates and galleons already to protect my coasts.
At this point Justinian has good size stack going fater one of my cites close to his border but good ONLY in size. Cataphracts MAY be all that usually but against fortified rifleman then not so hot hehe.
I decide to go after Justinan first now that he is in the war. For two reasons A) his cities are closer and his culture is pressing a cpl of my cities and B) to teach the little jerk next time Im in middle of war he should JUST mind his own beeswax hehe.
So I keep my cav only stack to guard the north in case rags decides to make a move up that way and send my stack of cavs and rifles to take the first of Justinans cities right by my borders. I also take care of that stack he had harrassing my city.
I also decide to tech democracy. Now I know I know the SMART move would have been steel for cannons but everybody knows Im NOT a smart player. Rags ticked me off by being a sissy and vassalizing to Justinian and Justinian ticked me off by sticking his nose in our war and accepting Rags vassalation so I wanted to just give em a lil more grief by getting democracy and switching to emancipation before my GA ended JUST to make their cities even unhappier hehe.
Now while I was waiting for my units that took that one city of Justinians and that killed off his invading stack something wierd happened. I hit end and then all of sudden as next turn starts I won domination hehe.
I didnt even think I was THAT close. Now I have been over POP % neceeasry for LONGEST time and right after last of Tokus cities came out of revolt I was at like 58% land and needed 64% for domonation so I figured I still need to take a few more cities.
But I figured this is what happened.
A) I was running mercantlism and had sistine so that mean free specialist with extra culture boost in the captured cities so tokus old cities got their firt pop pretty fast.
B) and this is what probably really put me over. Rem like I said Justinian culture was pressing on two of the cities I took form Vicky BIGtime. so not only did I have big garrisons in them I was building theaters temples monastaries libraries even castles any building that could make culture I had em built there. Now they wrent do MUCH to push back justinians culture but I think between that and having big garrissons it helped to make sure they didnt go into revolt. But after I took out that city that was doing most of the pressing on them all of sudden boom almost like a culture bomb the borders around popped bigtime. So I think that plus all of the cities I had captured earlier popping pretty quick is what put me over.
So that wa smy game I ended up with final score of 97036 my fourth highest score ever hehe
I even got to try two things I have NEVER done before. First I moved my capitol to new city because sheesh I HATED starting site. But it was like a trap site was sucky but it was ALL hills so moving settler round trying to find better would have taken waaay too much time so I bit bullet and just settled in place. ANd when I had a city in better location I had it build a place and it worked out very nice
It worked out for empire since better capitol placement REALLY made big difference in economy but it also worked out nice for starting city. It may have been sucky capitol but all those hills plus heroic epic, maui statues and two settled GGs it made an EXCELLENT millitary pump
Second. I used spies in a war to take down defenses. Usually I just use siege but I was behind in tech against Vicky and she had engineering AND guilds at that point and I didnt and cats on castles take FOREVER so I figured best move would be use spies to take down defense and then suicide my cats so my outdated units could handle her better ones and it worked out pretty good hehe.
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. I vote you keep up the smackdown...economy can wait
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and wars that went on for way too long I'm way behind in tech, basically I have keshiks, axes, war ellies and cats... everyone else has maces, pikes, xbows and trebs. 
rage, but serious weedy stuff... and that kind of ascetic city furniture too 
