Spoiler 1: Ancient Age (4000BC-800BC)
Spoiler 2: Middle Ages (800BC-370AD)
Spoiler 3: Industrial Ages/Modern Times (370AD-1365AD)
I gifted the Russians/Persians/Ottomans into the Industial Ages and immediately traded Medicine (my free tech) for Steam power. I then had a little hunt for Coal. It didn't surprise me to find there wasn't any in my territory, but I expected there to be some in the Indian territory! At this point I resigned myself to having difficulty trading for Coal, so I decided on Diplomacy rather than Space as I would really need rails to get high enough production to make Space feasible.
I continued researching at max and was eventually able to trade for Military Tradition in 430AD. It took a while to upgrade my Horses to Cavalry, and even then I was weak compared to India.
1st India War (490AD-630AD)
I declared war on India in 490AD, and traded techs to the Vikings/Persians/Dutch for an Alliance against them. I managed to trigger my golden age during the 1st turn of the war by lethal bombaring an Indian Galley with my Dromon. At this point I had 16 Cavalry and was weak compared to them, so I razed the 1st Indian town at the choke point, then attacked the Indian War Elephants as they entered my territory. The Indian War Elephants were slowed by the hill so were unable to attack my troops healing in Chalcedon and I was able to pick them off easily:
I gained 2 leaders during the skirmishing, which I used for armies. In 560AD I was still weak compared to the Indians, but the War Elephants had slowed to a trickle, and I was pretty confident with my armies. I captured Delhi in 620AD complete with The Great Library (obsolete), The Oracle & Smith's Trading Company. I was feeling a little over-extended at this point having suffered fairly heavy losses against the Indian Riflemen. This along with increasing war weariness, which was now slowing my tech rate, triggered my decision to make peace at this point. I didn't realise until later that at this point I broke the military alliance deals with the Vikings/Persians/Dutch .
Here's a minimap at 630AD:
2nd India War (830AD-1060AD)
I had continued to build up my military since the previous India war. When my golden age finished I mobilized so I could continue my rapid Cavalry builds, and was now finally average compared to them. Unfortunately India started upgrading to Infantry just after I started this 2nd war, so I had to resort to using Artillery to soften the cities up before taking them with my Cavalry and armies. This was slow going. I had quite a few flips to the Indians during this period, and I was starting to wonder if they were going to flip back faster than I could take them. Capturing the horses helped quite a bit as I didn't have to worry about far-reaching Cavalry attacks. I finally took the last Indian town in 1060AD to wipe them out and ensure no more flips.
This was my first use of Mobilization as it's normally disable in GOTM (I guess the previous bugs in / have been fixed in ?). I was a little surprised that the extra production for mobilization didn't apply to Artillery!
Here's a minimap at 1060AD:
Diplomatic Objective (1060AD-1365AD)
My research had stopped towards the end of the India war as I had run out of techs to trade for luxuries, and I ended up needing all my income for entertainment. I managed to trade for Coal with the Carthaginians for 20 turns, long enough to build rails from coast to coast and around my most shield-rich city. I continued with the research, and started on a Palace prebuild for the UN in 1110AD.
I was pretty close to not getting the UN victory.
1st I was later getting Fission that I expected. I was hoping to either get it as my free tech or to trade my free tech for it. I got Computers, so did the Ottomans, the Persians got Fission. The Persians wouldn't trade, so I had to research Fission. I had to drastically cut the shields in my Palace pre-build city to avoid accidentally building the Palace before the UN was available, so much so that it couldn't get enough food to support the population. Every time it shrunk the citizens would get reassigned to shield tiles again!
2nd, I declared war on the largest civ (Carthage) and attempted to get everyone else to ally against them. Unfortunately this didn't work too well as:
- I couldn't get everyone to ally against Carthage, even for lots of expensive techs. This was probably partly due to my accidental deal breaking earlier.
- The Carthaginians didn't remain the largest civ for very long once attacked by the other civs.
The Ottomans emerged as the largest civ. I then declared war on them too, and got more alliances against them with Russians/Vikings/Persians. I thought this would be enough, but unfortunately the Carthaginians had made a trade embargo deal with the Vikings against us, and this was still in effect when I built the UN, so the Vikings abstained.
I wasn't really in a position to do anything in the war against the Carthaginians/Ottomans, so just fought defensively. By the time the 2nd UN vote came up in 1360AD the embargo had ended and I got the 4 votes for a diplomatic win with a fireaxis score of 6324 and Jason score of 7419.
Here's a log of my tech pace:
380AD Democracy (Traded)
380AD Steam Power (Traded)
430AD Military Tradition (Traded)
490AD Artistry (Traded)
500AD Electricity (Researched)
560AD Scientific Method (Researched)
620AD Atomic Theory (Free ToE tech)
620AD Electronics (Free ToE tech)
690AD Replaceable Parts (Researched)
690AD Nationalism (Traded)
690AD Communism (Traded)
690AD Industrialization (Traded)
750AD The Corporation (Researched)
760AD Fascism (Traded)
830AD Steel (Researched)
890AD Sanitation (Traded)
890AD Ironclads (Traded)
1000AD Espionage (Traded)
1110AD Refining (Traded)
1110AD Combustion (Traded)
1170AD Mass Production (Researched)
1230AD Motorized Transportation (Researched)
1240AD Flight (Traded)
1240AD Amphibious War (Traded)
1240AD Computers (Free new era tech)
1295AD Fission (Researched)