I don't know when I last played a Prince game - Whenever I do these challenges it just launches, I never get a choice of difficulty...
Early on I should have been suspicious about there being no City States as all the CS slots were switched to Wildcards! Regardless, my plan was still to get Cartography to plunge into the wonder and discover new islands filled with CS in the corners! (No such luck. I mean, I did it with 2 Caravels to get the boost for Exploration, but quit searching when no CS appeared where I got zapped.) I actually only worked one tile of the Triangle in each city early to get a jump start on tech, otherwise I only worked one tile in Washington the rest of the game. Early needs were military, Housing, Gold, and Lux. So I think I built several Builders first, and when possible in expos built Harbors and CH first.
I also built Stonehenge relatively early, got a Religion with Zen and Church Property to get Amenities and Gold, but I gapped out that I couldn't buy Missionaries from the wonder. I did build a Holy Site in Philly reasonably early, but my religion would not spread there! I built the Gov Plaza in cap when I should have built a HS at pop 10. I kept getting hit with dust storms and such the first several dozen turns so my food tiles kept getting wrecked. I was finally one turn from pop 13 when I popped the GE who gives an extra district, lol. I think I popped my 1st Missionary around T95. In the end I had 11 cities converted so that certainly helped, especially since I had run out of tiles to pillage. I had never made much use of the Raid card, it is obviously OP.
As usual, Barbs were the biggest threat, esp West of the cap. I got a city SW next to the Whales to start to head towards Australia. I figured hitting him before he had extra cities would lower his production bonus a lot. There was also a pretty straight line towards him. I then worked counter-clockwise. Canberra t63, Mistawasis t77, Buda t91, Pella t102, and Amsterdam t110. I could have shaved some turns off if I added to the 2nd army earlier, or if I hadn't mixed up my GG who gave the boost to later units. I couldn't scoot and shoot my Bombards vs Dutch and when one was still a Treb it almost died.
I ended up with 14 cities as I razed all but a few, and settled 4 (one on 4 spokes) to prep for movement and to keep Barbs at bay. I just hit Frigates the last turn but that wouldn't have helped with the capitals. One of thing that severely handicapped the AI was their Encampments all were located AWAY from the obvious attack vector.
I built Stonehenge, Pyramids, and Terracotta Army.
As usual, the AI neglected to kill off Barb Camps only a few tiles from their cities, and completely quit building units. (I encountered ONE Xbow of Alex and ONE Quadreme from Wil - no other navy, even though ALL civs had ports/Harbors.) I captured so many Settlers and Builders, I ended up using to Settlers to bust fog. This does not bode well for Civ VII as I just heard that Ed thought the tactical AI was in a pretty good place in VI. On my final push at Amsterdam, I had 2 city strikes and 2 Archers each fire at a different target. It could have easily killed 1 or 2 units, but killed none. What a joke.
All in all a fun little exercise. Its too bad the teleportation aspect didn't come into play at all. I had never played very far in a Spoke or whatever map this is, certainly not from the center.
...oh well, at least I can pray heavy armour into existence
