Turn 173, 1740 AD
Randomly played Montezuma to get the flavor of the map which I turned to 5 billion years old with a Hot temperature and Wet climate. 5 billion years old to smooth out the terrain (think that was what it did in IV). Hot and Wet to try to generate more jungles for Jaguars... which really didn't matter much in the end.
Set Barbarians to raging.... the computer (city states and civilizations) doesn't seem to cope very well with the extra barbs. Rescuing workers led to a good bit of freebie influence with city states because Raging really does produce a lot of units. It almost felt exploitative the computer handles the barbs so ineffectually. The culture generated by the Aztec UA was useful at the beginning of the game and could be milked more efficiently through the game than I did.
I played the whole game with 1city and puppeted every other city. Had the first three enemy capitals at Turn 17, 37, 64. Germany was the only civ I didn't take over completely.
Social policies I didn't put much of any thought into. Filled out the Honor tree completely, then the Patronage tree, then a hodgepodge of other trees mostly into Rationale though. Again was almost zero thought put into where I was putting my points.
Research I concentrated on the bottom of the tech tree to upgrade my jags after taking over the 2nd and 3rd capitals. Almost needed to take Mining first for trade reasons.
Now to more silliness. I handpicked my opponents to include only leaders which I've had a decent time negotiating / trading with in the past. Russia, Germany, England, China, India, Siam, Ottomans. None of them had an early special unit that bothered me... India got 1 elephant before dying, England was just getting Longbows when I conquered them. I've had a pretty easy time trading with all of them in the past, which is more of the reason for picking them.
The most silliness (and I would even call it using a blatant exploit) came with how I managed diplomacy throughout the game. When I met a civ I would trade them anything I could to empty their treasury. This includes what i think is the most broken mechanic in the game... trading turn based items (GPT and Resources) to the computer for lump sum gold. I would immediately declare war after the trade. Why they reintroduced this to the game baffles me. There were zero repercussions for me doing this. The AI would come looking for peace (including giving me MORE gold and GPT and resources) in a few turns and I would accept peace. As soon as the peace treaty was done I would repeat the process. The computer NEVER learned from its mistake. The computer would ALWAYS trade me at least some gold in this manner. Hopefully it's a mechanic they fix/change or the HOF bans its use.
After I won, I played 1 more turn to see if if it was possible to Annex all of my puppets and sell all of their buildings and all of my units. It was indeed possible. So if you need a little bit of extra gold to buy City States you can do this. The sole remaining AI civ didn't have enough money for me to try to sell them a city, though I imagine it is possible to get more gold this way also. Annexing puppets to sell buildings, selling units, and selling the cities themselves all feel exploitative. Don't see much difference between doing this and doing the already banned selling of cities after amassing enough culture to win with a single city.
Didn't use this bug in this game, but I came across it in different game. If you can fill two different Great Person bars in the same city on the same turn, you will get both Great People. I got a Scientist and Engineer at the same time. It also doesn't raise the required points for the next person by two people, they're both counted as a single person for determining the increase. EDIT: Neuro pointed out that it does raise the req by two people which I verified thru a save.
Gonna definitely play a few more of times in this gauntlet even though I hate Quick speed games.
Just a quick summary of problems I found that the HOF staff should consider:
1) AI doesn't seem to handle Raging Barbarians very well
2) Resources for Gold trade then declare war
3) GPT for Gold trade then declare war
4) Annexing puppeted cities to sell buildings and the city itself to generate gold for buying city state votes the turn before the election.