Here's how my game went this month:
I started out thinking "Pangaea with 7 rivals - should be perfect for a tricky Diplomatic win, lots of Civs in one large area, should be able to get one of them attacked by everyone else, then save that one to vote for me at the end." (Hah!)
The start position looked great for a fast build, even better as more of the area became visible. I didn't want to hit any rival early on. So I didn't explore much at the start, I focused on building quickly and expanding. I only opened 3 goody huts - one gave a tech, the other two had barbarians.
I met Babylon and Persia and started thinking that we could be on an island. By about 1000BC I'd settled most of the starting area (east of the chokepoint) and had started the first Galley on exploring the coast. I started building in the Babylonian/Persian area, to culture squeeze Babylon's iron out of her hands and to limit her expansion. I wanted a strong Persia to attack Babylon. I gave away all tech, intending to speed the pace of research, so that I could go for the space race if my diplomatic win plan failed.
I built the Lighthouse in 470BC. (It sure was possible to build up quickly on this map!) Some turns later I met the English, and through them all the other Civs. Sure didn't look like a Pangaea map! I had a vague hope (unfounded as things turned out) of China and Japan reducing the Zulu to rubble later on when Chivalry was available. I continued freely trading for tech and giving it away. At this point (when I saw most of the map) I probably should have switched to my backup space race plan, the whole game would have gone easier. But I stubbornly kept deciding to stick to my goal of a high score Diplomatic win.
I eventually built Pyramids (no one else was making any good progress on them
) around 300AD to trigger a Golden Age. Shortly after that I had some Elephants ready for action. I got tired of waiting for Persia to attack Babylon. I shouldn't have tried to strengthen Persia for this, it just wasn't working. So my Elephants went off to conquer Persia.
The hordes of Immortals I'd hoped Persia would send against Babylon were a pushover, all two or three of them.
I captured all towns instead of a raze+replace approach, and continued that throughout the game. India's culture was much greater than that of all other Civs combined. This approach worked fine - I didn't have even one captured city flip back during the entire game.
The second time I won a fight with an elite a great leader appeared! Since no one else was going to reduce Babylon for me, and I still (stubbornly) wanted her for my "friend" at the end, I'd decided to try to reduce Babylon to one city through a culture squeeze. This leader would allow me to move India's Palace right away. I switched one of the core cities beside Delhi to build Forbidden Palace. Once it was built I used the leader to move the Palace to be right beside Babylon's Palace. At this point Babylon had 5 cities in addition to her capitol. Over the following years I built towns at the borders of all of them and rushed cultural improvements in those towns. Despite the enormous resulting cultural pressure, it took about 150 turns before all five of the Babylonian cities had finally flipped to India.
After eliminating Persia my Elephants set sail for England. (I'd given Chivalry to the other Civs, still hoping to send Japan and China to war with their Samurai and Riders. So attacking them at this stage seemed like a bad idea.
) As I began the attack on England, the Zulu declared war on Germany. A long treck through the jungle, very strange. I took all of England's cities, then all of Germany's.
After taking Germany my Elephants sailed for Zululand. The Zulu were a logical target because of their fertile land, and because the only other remaining Civs had Samurai and Riders - not good units for my Elephants to fight.
Around the end of the conquest of Zululand we learned Military Tradition. I shifted production to Cavalry, upgraded the remaining Elephants, and went on to raze Japan. After Japan, China. It was a long fight due to the geography, regular minor losses of my units, and the long trip from the homeland for new units. But there was no significant resistance anywhere, the Warlord AIs were weak. I left two Chinese cities at the end, both surrounded of course. I got three more leaders during all the fighting. One was lost in a counter-attack, the other two were used to build wonders.
Then began a long milking phase. For a change of pace I decided to try a dense build on the large continent, to see if that would improve milking. I placed one city for every six or so tiles. The result was interesting. Unfortunately I don't think it reduced the amount of work in the milking phase. It did mean that there was no micro-management of entertainers (all working citizens were happy), and little building of Hospitals and Mass Transit. But because the cities grew at different speeds, many needed Marketplaces and some even needed Hospitals after all. It would have been possible to micro-manage them to avoid this, by reassigning working citizens frequently as they grew. But that looked like an even worse micro-management nightmare so I ended up not bothering, I just let them develop as they wanted to and added improvements where necessary. I do think that this approach increases score a bit. The dense cities grew to a maximum number of working citizens very quickly. And all working citizens being happy all the time sure helps.
I didn't use the dense build on the home continent. Since most cities on the home continent were not at maximum corruption, the entertainment slider could be used to make all of those citizens happy.
During the milking stage Babylon surprised me by repeatedly declaring war. I was playing this part in my usual way, renewing peace and ROP regularly, and gifting something every 10 turns. Nonetheless Babylon declared war four times! I might have missed one of my "nice" turns the first time, I'm not sure. But the other three times I am sure I'd been careful. Each of those times a recent peace agreement was in effect. In all four "wars" I just ignored Babylon, eventually got peace, and then quickly got relations back to "polite" with a few gifts. The last war was scary for my plans. I had planned to be especially nice in every turn from 2029 onward (thinking of the frequently magic number 20), with a gift every turn. But on the 2029 turn Babylon declared the fourth of these silly wars. Worse, this time I just couldn't get peace! I thought my diplomatic goal was toast. Finally in 2049 (!) they were willing to talk. I got peace, then gave them almost everything I could in an attempt to make them happy on the same turn as our peace agreement. (Gave maps, contact with China, every luxury, and a pile of tech.) Then I declared war on China and bought an alliance from Babylon for another few techs. Finished the 2049 turn with fingers crossed. Babylon voted for India instead of abstaining! Yay!
I'm at a loss to explain Babylon's aggression during the milking phase. I've had a more aggressive Civ (Germany) bottled up in a similar way, at a higher difficulty level, without having this problem. In hindsight I have two theories: 1) Babylon and India were never at war with a common foe; our relations were not as positive as I've had when I did this the other way, "saving" the friend Civ. 2) Perhaps I should not have held back world maps until the end; maybe Babylon was more aggressive about busting out because there was much of the world remaining to be explored from her perspective.
I ended up with a pretty good score, higher than I originally thought possible on this map at Warlord level. But it could have been higher. I made the whole game unnecessarily complicated, first of all by planning on my usual approach to a Diplomatic win (getting the other Civs to knock one Civ down and then "saving" it), and then by stubbornly sticking to the plan when the map and the Warlord level AI weren't really right for it.
This map, at Warlord level, doesn't turn out to be a good case for differentiating Diplomatic wins from high score games.
I played a bit with government switching in this game since I had a big enough power margin to experiment. I tried Republic twice while starting a war instead of my usual choice of Monarchy. It didn't work well for me - war weariness set in sooner than I liked and I fell back to Monarchy both times before the war was over. So I am still not wild about Republic
I also twice flipped from Monarchy to Despotism for just one turn right after the end of a war. I used that turn to rush temples in all the cities captured in the preceding war. I'm going to use that trick again in future when playing as a religious Civ, it gives quite a nice boost in the right circumstances.
, but goes to show how your goal for the game determines what is a "good" sign versus a "bad" one. 
I didnt find the other continent til 1000 ad mainly from not trying to hard i guess. When i found the rest of the civs they were hopelessly backward. I was doing some peaceful cultural intrusion and preparing to demolish China when out of the blue the english declared war on me which was a riot since my closest city to them (aside from across the water which they didnt know how to cross) was at the opposite end of the contintent. Liz had been working on this for sometime since 15 units of english swordsmen and spearmen popped out of china and it must have taken them a hundred years to get there. Anyway i destroyed the english army and got the other civs except China to attack england for a few spare luxuries. So much for that war. While they were all scrapping i declared war on china and took most of their cities before my pop went to 83% war weariness. So i made peace and filled up all the empty spots with settlers. Soon i'll be a full era ahead of the ai in tech so mopping up will be easy, then its just doing the best re score one way or another.
...just as i began my conquest i built the colossus, triggering a golden age, which speeded up things even more...
)
I'm hoping that I can plow through this game quickly by maximizing my continent's production/research/money. I haven't set foot on the other continent. I have enough elephants left over to keep the other civs deferential to me, but I've been rushing city improvements and building rather than getting an army raised for an invasion. So I've put all workers on auto, got up to democracy, and make sure I get each new tech in 4 turns. I guess it's a race between whether I get a diplomatic, space race, or cultural victory, since the emphasis is on time not score.
