106 turn, 11 Legacy points
Strategic thoughts,
Isabella and Maya were completely overpowered, so they are not a good comparison. With the new way of scoring, looks like 1 legacy is like 6-7 turns, between the knock on effect on next ages and the new formula. Egypt and Hatshepsut are a weak science combo, but should be Ok on wonders and culture, I absolutely want the +2 settlement legacy, kill one AI and get settlements on both coasts. In my head I need at least 15 turns more than with Isabella/Maya, so that would be 107-108 turns. There is no way I can go through the tech tree to maths and then back for the masteries in 108 turns, so war+culture+economics is my plan.
War, oof. In theory war allows you to finish on t95-t100 if you kill one AI or earlier if you kill two. But that is completely situational, you have to be lucky with the city spamming of the AIs and they need to be close, and it is only possible to do it and get a decent amount of legacies with an OP combo like with Isabella+Maya. H+Egypt is just not powerful enough. So I am going to try to kill one AI and hopefully end the age with enough wonders and military legacies, and likely resources, but probably with pitiful science. Culture should be OK. Abbasid is great for science to get up to speed anyway in the next age.
Last but not least, with a warry Antiquity, you really want the Barbarian crisis. If instead you get the Happiness one, you are screwed, as you will be over the cap settlement with war unless a civ spawns right next to you and you catch it with only 2-3 cities. Lets see what happens.
Edit: I just read Manpanzee's write up, incredible player, wow. Similar to mine in concept, except that I went with 3 galleys first and got a lot of money pillaging and harassing the southern cities while he had mostly a land war, more difficult than mine I think. I only built one chariot. And of course I forgot to mention that I got the happiness crisis, not the barbarian one, had to manage happiness all through the game. I had a lot of trouble getting the resources and resource slots, and ended up with more settlements than I wanted. Anyway, a lot of fun, thank you GoTM staff. I will play Exploration and Modern as soon as I can, but have a business trip and Easter in the middle, so not sure when. Also forgot to mention the Tjatys, I got 2 wonder ones and one that gave me a codex.
Second edit: reviewed the post to use the right terminology (settlements, cities and towns, I always just write cities) and fix a couple of typos. Also to note my regrets:
1. I would have wanted to convert one more city, but did not have the money to do it.
2. I would have wanted to save some money and influence for next age, but again I had to use all my money to convert Rome in the last turn and the crisis left me without any influence generation. In fact I went negative.
3. I wanted two armies, one East and one West, I wish I could have built Terracotta, but I only had one army in the end, on the West.
4. Of course the issue with galleys is that you lose them at the age change.
5. The war would have been a lot easier and with no need for the peace if the map had a southern pass for my navy. But it did not and I discovered that too late, so had to have a peace to scramble together a decent land army. First time this has happened to me, lesson learned. Explore better!
The game:
So what happened is that all AIs were really far away. Planted the first three cities around turn 25, I took some notes on the build below. I tried to be organized in my post like Acken but failed miserably. Choose the culture+wonders goverment. Explored with 2 scouts and one lancer from a goody hut. Expanded north towards the natural wonder, 2 cities. Not sure if that was a great idea, but I neglected exploring my east coast until later in the game and did not want to send settlers blindly. I did not get a pantheon until t42 and I think I did not build any altars, so that was useless. I chose God of the Sun, as usual with late pantheons.
I saved my influence to befriend the culture CSs, there were three of them, and I managed to be the suzerain of all three, but that was it. Took me a long time to save the influence and that also meant I did not do the usual culture and science agreements. I am fairly certain after the game that this was not the right thing to do, but I wanted the free civics and the extra culture, badly.
By turn 42 I still only had 3 settlements, mostly because I did not want to go over the settlement cap. This was a mistake, I should have gone over the cap for a few turns and planted my 4th settllement by t35, but I did not. I was getting nervous, so bought a settler and sent him West and slightly south to plant my fourth settlement, Men Nefer. Friedrich had already forward settled me and planted a town in the south coast, Ostia.
By turn 57, Friedrich had already denounced me to decrease our relationship, nice of him to warn me. This was great for my plan, so I built and bought a couple of galleys and I declared on him as soon as he turned hostile, as the plan was now clearly to kill him and take his West coast cities. I only had 1 slot before reaching my settlement cap, so I decided that I would conquer Ostia and then harass him with galleys (he had another city in a navigable river in the south, more to the west) and get some abusive peace, while I waited to up the settlement cap and build the land army. I waited the 10 turns to stabilize and build my army and attacked him with everything I had.
This took longer than I expected, as he did not agree to give me Puteoli until t82. By my calculations I was running late, like 5 turns late. Meanwhile I was spamming wonders in my capital and the natural wonder city to the north (Behdet) with the help of the Tjaty. I saved a powerful Tjaty to see if I could get Nalanda at the end, and I did, with some turns to spare. List of wonders below.
Finally, very slow last 20 turns as I needed to calculate to get the remaining resources for economic. Had to wait 3 turns to get the last resources and some money to turn Rome into a city for teh extra slot before killing his last city on t106 and ending the game. I was hoping to get Navigation stolen from Trung Trac, and had money ready to buy the lighthouses, but I got engineering instead.
This was a difficult game, specially after Isabella/Maya. But a lot of fun. I tried to take notes, but I think I forgot from time to time. Here is what I can cobble together from memory and the notes.
Tech:
Pottery>Animal Husbandry>Writing>Irrigation>Sailing>Masonry> Bronze Working>Currency>Writing II (I wanted to get this one way earlier, before Bronze Working, but I forgot!)>The Wheel>Engineering stolen and then went back for the codex masteries
Civics:
Scales of Anubis>Discipline>Arrival of Hapi>Mysticism>Code of Laws>Light of Amun Ra> and then the settlement civics dont remember the order. Then Citizenship>Literacy and that was it. Somewhere in there I got the mastery to build the Gate of Nations but I forgot to note when.
Build
Scout>Scout>Granary> (buy Settler) Settler>Library>Unique district
Wonders:
Great Steele>(buy some units) Hanging Gardens>lost Petra>Gate of Nations>Mundo Perdido>Emile>Colosseum>Nalanda
Government:
Clasical Republic (20% Culture, sometimes chose the accelerate wonders option)
Goody huts:
Culture+happiness, Gold, Happiness, Gold, Gold+Damage, and a few more that I forgot to note, prioritizing Gold at the beginning to buy settlers then Happiness and Culture, least priority was Science.
Resources in capital:
Caolin, Wine, Pasture lambs in that order.
CSs:
Sugunia (culture), Ofumato (culture), start befriend Sugunia, Divodurum (warrior), Tollan Xicotitlan (Culture). I befriended the three culture ones, and dispersed to accelerate wonders a couple of the production ones, one to the North East and the other on the West between Friedrich and I.
Last turn save game:
