I won! Hurrah!
Not pretty, but squeked it out. I started with the GLib/Nat College opening, but saw the gems site near thebes and planted a second city there and had to make an extra library. But it was a very nice site, and glad I didn't have to fight for it.
I went from there pretty much beeline to Optics, then filled out the worker techs. I also went wonder heavy... can't remember them all. Then Edu and Oxford.
Optics got me a lot more ruins, which gave me a handful of teir1 techs and saved me the trouble of researching them. Also got some culture, and an upgrade, a map, and cash, plus twice got an extra citizen. So pretty good yields there.
I settled my 3rd city way up north at a 3 (or was it only 2?) iron island with fur. Then I took the whales site. Capitol was settled on the coast getting a fish (on the other side of the isthmus) and 2wine/wheat/banana/cotton. Eventually coal, but I didn't ever mine over my trading post there (+2 science for jungle at that point).
I also settled East of Thebes for the pearls, and got iron and 3 fish as well.
I was only involved in 1 war (thank goodness, since I played it very inefficiently, losing 3 units total). 2 longswords, a crossbow, a catapult, and a pike against Thebes with 2 pikes and an archer. Lost the cat right away.
Lost a GG right away to amphibious war chariot too.
But eventually got another longsword and pike up there and finished off Thebes, and took cash for peace. This got me Chichen itza and another wonder (forget which), that was very useful. Plus lots of whale that with wine was enough to trade around to keep my folks happy. I annexed Thebes too early... should have let the revolt end first, I think.
Anyhow, had to wait even further for enough cash to buy courthouse, so I times that badly. But was able to keep to just -1 happy, so it wasn't too bad.
So I had 4 cities on the mainland and 2 on islands. Never settled another.
Policies I took the firt two in Tradition (wonder bonus) and then filled out Liberty completely. Then took the first in commerce, the first in Rationalism, and the rest (all but two to complete) in Piety. Spammed markets/banks/stock markets and paved over all my farms with trading posts... was building cash at the end.
Never got to globalization (13t left when Aravia builds UN). I had 2 GE's saved for building the UN, too.
Oh well... At the time I had only 6 votes to Arabia's 4, but I used GE for golden age and was making 420 gpt... so was able to buy up the 3 non-aligned CS's for 1000 each, and then outbid England and Arabia for the rest I needed.
10 votes... could have got 11 but didn't need to.
What I should have done better.... hmmm.... probably focus on getting city states earlier... the bonuses they give are not to be disparaged! Instead I spent lots on RA's... which was nice, but less sustainable, I think. Tough balance, there.
Anyhow... despite aiming for an early jump on tech pace, I ended with a pretty pathetic tech rate (less than 200bpt) one until the end when the CS research bonus kicked in (400bpt).
Haven't figured out how to get a big empire with all the unhappy penalties. Is a big empire even the best way to get high GPT?
Oh well... not a contender for honors, but it was a pretty tight race (Arabia building space parts and landing massive army on my shores) so it was exciting at least. I guess king is the level where I am challenged but am still capable of winning. (At least on this patch, we'll see what the next one does..
).
Also, I noticed something weird (I think)... I had only 1 turn to go on a tech when an RA finished it for me, but I didn't see any carry over to the next tech. Did I just not notice, or is this the correct game mechanic (no overflow on RA's)?