Since nothing went the way my early plan had predicted, I'm actually not too disappointed with the finishing time. I made the mistake of expanding to cities 4 & 5 before NC, thinking I'd just rush-buy the libraries, but needed the gold for unit upgrades so NC went very late (t106) as I had to hard build those libraries. I didn't get Education until t127 as I had diverted to get Xbows…….they were needed considering the size of Harold's early army.
Finished Tradition early, and got 2 more tenets in Honor before opening Rationalism. Harold accepted bribe to DoW Pacal and took his capital. After Education I went straight to banking and hard built 4 Hanses (bought the 5th in capital). Growth was slow as I used no internal trade routes, instead sending all TR's to CS. This made for a pretty low mid-game population and I struggled to work all scientist slots. So yeah…..very slow science start.
I had built a trireme and sent him around the world exploring and he got to England in time to see a massive Polynesian fleet simply pummeling England. At this point, Russia had the largest army, but they wouldn't DoW Harold (well, they did for about 10 boring turns). Harold came at me 3 times, but I knocked him back each time and settled for white peace. By now, I was surrounded by CS allies on all sides, so was feeling pretty secure, but realized any warmongering would have to wait for Modern Era, so I focused on tech.
I got beat out by Egypt for PT by 3 turns, but won WF in a landslide on t182. I didn't even work on WF in 3 of my cities for the final 4 turns (I was already at 1000). This is probably because everyone was fighting……even without much encouragement from me.
About religion…..as mentioned earlier, 4 religions went early and I had the only pantheon showing. Then, somehow, Kamehameha founds a religion without ever having a pantheon and not building any faith Wonders……not sure how he managed that. So I was forced to use Ethiopia's blah religion and bought 4 Monasteries to help with faith/culture. It was needed as I barely was able to finish Tradition, Honor, Rationalism, and at t319 completed Freedom.
I was going to go Autocracy but Kamehameha got there first and he was turning into a runaway, bulldozing England off the map and leaving Russia with nothing but a stray city she built SW of Berlin. So…….2nd ideology (t198…….Oxforded Radio) I took Freedom. I usually go for FL's as the first 2nd level tenet in Freedom, but given Egypt and Polynesia being cultural beasts, I was going to need the happiness first, so took the specialist happiness tenet. I got my FL's just in time to join the global Jihad against Harold and researched Plastics the same turn, so Harold went from thinking his Ski Patrol were bad dudes to facing 6 very angry Infantrymen who knocked the @$#^^@ out of him. He had GG bombed my gold mine NE of Hamburg, so my first act of war was to GG bomb some coal and a silver mine from him down South where my coastal Frankfurt was. I had traded for coal earlier as I didn't have any, so didn't really need it……but it was satisfying.
Harold had also built SoZ, Alhambra, and most importantly Big Ben in Copenhagen, so this influenced me going Freedom. I got 6 oil from CS allies (I only had 4 oil total in my 5-city empire and I wasn't going to divert tech to get to Offshore Platforms as I was playing tech catch-up). I built 5 GWB's but they couldn't knock down Copenhagen until they upgraded even though I had it surrounded by 6 Infantrymen.
I finally took Copenhagen t286 and then it was just turtle time, as Kamehameha was a freakin runaway. He seemed to like me despite different ideologies and he asked me to DoW Egypt, who I thought was pretty strong. Kamehameha rolled him too. Ramses sent a fleet of tugboats and Ironclads, but by then I had subs and bombers and he had to sail through 2 strong CS allies of mine. He gave me 29 GPT in peace pretty quickly and Kamehameha had his capital pretty quickly. I'd have had a tough time holding ground if Kamehameha had come after me.
Pacal was pretty useless but he and Haile had joined me in Freedom (I got SoL though). Haile was pretty quiet all game until the end when he and Pacal DoW'd Polynesia. At the end, Haile actually had the strongest army, so I'm lucky I didn't go down the warpath. I didn't have the oil for Panzers anyways.
Wonders built in Capital are in screenshot, and I also built Neuschwenstein in Cologne t269 and CN Tower in Hamburg t308 just to help finish up the culture. I went total research around t315, hard built 4 parts and bought the last two.
Considering the very slow science start, I'm not unhappy at all. Nobody else even built a spaceship part, and limited resources kind of limited my options. Kamehameha only got influential on 1 civ. Diplo was spit very evenly with Polynesia, Egypt, and myself each holding 12-14 votes for most of the game.
The Hanse is a simply awesome building (+40% production in all cities), but it does hurt not to have Internal TR's. I was hoping to use the Panzers…….next time.