I settled on the hill between Stone and Cocoa. I hate settling on a flat tile, probably irrationally so. Had I treated it better the last 100turns it would have been a great city in the end. Religion and war (converting AI holy city) made me pick Liberty.
I built Scout-Stele-2xScout-Granary-2xArcher-6xSettler and then something. Probably Stone Works and Stable, dont remember exactly.
Tried to build some wonders in there as well. Lost Mausoleum at some point, lost Pyramids at another point and Oracle at a third point
-> Selaisse the Spiteful was born. The rest of the world quickly uncovered his true nature, so not much trading in this game.
I freed some Chinese, Byzantine and Dutch volunteers to improve my land. Both Theodora and William were kind enough to run into my devious caravan-ambush. Hong Kong also graciously made a donation.
My new cities built Stele and then depending, the early settlements probably got a caravan or two + some archers before library. I settled two cities toward Wu. They built Archer first, then Stele and Library.
When I settled city #6, Wu & William decided to "attack". Poor Wu was feeling like a human player in this game, with Rome and Ethiopa gunning cities down her throat the first 60 turns. Their "war" never made a dent in my empire. Eventually it resulted in Wu getting a nice boat ride to St.Helena.
I had my 7 cities on t59 according to my screenshot. National College was built at some point. I didnt take a screenshot of that, so dont remember. Around t80-85. I did use Liberty engineer to get it done. Wasted 15-20 turns building wonders I didnt get, so needed some tempo.
Early tech was masonry first, then Construction -> Philosophy -> Machinery. After that Edu->Dynamite->Archaelogy->Flight->Radar
I founded Catholicism by worshipping Stone. Got Tithe and Pagodas. Enhanced it later with faster spread and +1 happy from Shrine. I got 2 missionaries before enhancing. Theodora, Wu, Montezuma and Pachacuti decided to compete - blissfully unaware that this was a big mistake.
My plan was to raze every heathen city, inquisit the Holy Cities and make the atheists wear my blue jeans in the end. But founding 7 cities does not comply particularly well with fast domination. Still, having 7 cities w/ Stele made me quite confident I would get a decent spread of the true faith.
Got Machinery at t100ish, Constantinople at t125 and Beijing at t155. But kept a pretty decent economy in the meantime. "Wasted" a lot of resources building stuff like temples compared to a normal dom game. I was also exceptionally sloppy in this phase of the game, losing a lot of units. Having to raze a lot of cities also slows down the progress, took detours to get rid of Byzantine and Chinese cities I would normally just walk pass. The heresy must die!
Evil Inca had spread their religion to the Roman empire, so had to set the entire thing ablaze. Oxforded Artillery at t163, surprisingly OK given that I had 7 cities and not great growth. Julius had plenty of units though, so Rome fell on t181.
At this point, I just kept doing the same thing - plowing through units slowly razing the Incas and rest of Rome. Around t225 Pachacuti joined Wu in early retirement. I had to halt my progress to avoid revolt (more than 20 unhappy can make a city flip). Rome had very little art, but Inca was culture leader so I stole 15 GW or so + all the cultural wonders. After diligently putting my spy in the cap I´m attacking for ages now, it finally paid off when I could let Cusco complete the Eiffel Tower before I occupied it.
At this point my war continued towards Tenotchitlan. Washington was, ironically, bullying poor aztecs the entire game so it was a US city at this point. Captured it fast with range+log artillery, but he got B17´s at some point (his GWB was always out of range) so had to gift it to Montezuma to ensure access. He was banished by the imperialists to live on the small islands, so he could only give me 1 horse for it. Washington refused to make peace though until like 3t before the end, had to retreat and wait to avoid the loss of my precious religious people.
Won International Games getting over 3000! hammers. A great war between William,Gustav,Washington,Theodora,Aztec and me served as a nice distraction. After that, it was just "next turn" until I could finally make peace with Washington, move in my Prophet to convert Tenotchitlan while buying 3 gm´s to finish it off. Got Radar just before the end, but never got much use of Airports. The biggest benefit was the ability to put 10 bombers in my cities to mow through some annoying dutch troops.
So slow to play this game with a lot of units, probably wasted a lot of turns in the end. Better concentration could have led to all achievements and probably 10-15 turns shaved. Getting 7 cities was very effective for religion, but extremely taxing on my happiness. That, combined with erasing so many cities, made the AI extra angry in this game. Couldnt buy a lux the entire game, and all CS decided to settle next to gem
It also took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that this map had 9 players...
Anyway, thanks for the map - lots of fun
