Open
Link to AA:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=1979524&postcount=5
I actually finished this very enjoyable game back on July 6, but I have been away since.
I decided my goal was a rapid domination win. I went for a dom win in COTM01 as well, but the way I figure it, I was not nearly as fast as the top dogs so I have much to learn in this mode of victory still.
Contacts
I made all of the contacts in the AA. When I realised, that we were on an island pretty much to ourselves, I assumed that th emap would probably be an island map. In the end it turned out to be more a continets map, but the idea of making contacts as quickly as possible was clearly relevant in spite of this. I started sending out suicide curraghs before even completing a circum navigation of the starting island. For this reason I found England first in 1650BC. Because my first contact required traversing across the sea, I decided to prioritise building the great lighthouse, which also would help to maximise the seafaring ability. The other contacts came in as follows:
1450BC - Spanish
1375BC - Inca
1200BC - France
1000BC - Egypt and Maya
630BC - Zulu.
Tech
Because the Netherlands have a UU, the Swiss Mercenary, that gives the same defense as a musketman, but doesn't require gunpowder, is cheaper and available earlier, I reasoned that we would want to do most of our warring in the early middle ages to maximise our advantages vis a vis the AI. To my mind this meant rapid research to knights, and then basically turn off
research and reap the benefit. My research path was writng at min, then at max - map making, code of laws, philosophy and the slingshot to republic. In many ways I suspect that Monarchy would have suited my game plan better, but I had not tried this approach before and so decided to try it here and compare the effectiveness of the republic versus monarchy that I used in COTM01.
Tech Trades
I paid cash to the English in 1600 BC for Ceremonial Burial, because there werea few cities that I wanted cultural expansions in. In hindsight, if I had held off a few turns, this would have been a much cheaper trade. Still I had the money from my min research on writing.
I then held off any further trades until I was just three turns shy of philosophy. I was regularly checking to see if any AI had researched it, and was pleased to find that none had. So in 850BC, I traded writing aroung to the 6 civs I knew for all tech knowledge held amongst them, plus a bunch of cash. At this point I was down only Construction and Currency before the MA. So I could have rushed the discovery of these for a much earlier end to the AA, but chose not to. My thought was that the competition is a seperated Monarchy level AI who are down quite a few techs, so I may well be able to wage war with attack four units versus defence two units and make rapid progress. I suspect that this decision was actually a mistake, and a faster tech pace until I reached Chivalry would have played better into my hands. I would appreciate anyone's views on this topic.
I became a republic in 670BC and finished self research to enter the MA in 400BC. At this point I did contemplate gifting tech to scientific civs to assist my research path to Chivalry, but as there were no scientific civs, I decided against any gifting, and ended up having to self research feudalism, monotheism and Chivalry. As I had no libraries, was also building up infrastructure and had to support wars, it took to about 500AD to reach this point.
I did pick up additional tech but it really was not a priority.
Wonders
The only wonder I considered worth building was the Great Lighthouse. By successfully building this wonder, I could effectively shut off research at Chivalry instead of pushing on to Astronomy, and or Navigation. I completed the wonder in 190BC. I am fairly certain that it was worthwhile in my game. It opened up my path of approach to all my opponents very early in the game, and denied the capabilities to the AI, especially sea faring AI, thus isolating everyone, except the Spanish from attacking me.
Warring
Incan Phooney War
In 410BC the Inca, who were my closest tech competitor, but definitely behind, chose to demand the republic, and when I refused they declared war. I saw no reason to cave, they did not know where I was, and had to get past two civs to reach me. I proceeded to dogpile the Spanish, the French and the English on them, and otherwise ignored them. Eventually after the MAs ended, I made peace with the Incan. The Incan actually were able to use this war to make headway against both England and France, however.
Spanish War
I had taken a long time to start colonising the southern tundra due to sending unescorted settlers down to what became barbarian infested lands. I eventually learnt my lesson, and sent enough military down there to sort the problem, but then I was too slow to follow up with escorted settlers, and the Spanish settled there first. To make matters worse they then built the statue of Zeus. I decided to attack pre-Chivalry, and declared war in 310AD. I was able to land troops next to the SoZ on turn one. Within four turns I had removed the Spanish from my continent, captured the SoZ (Santiago) and another Spanish city on that continent. 350AD -
War with MI is slow, and costly due to no retreat, so progress was slow. Also in 500AD, I suffered a flip, and had to retake Salamanca. About this time my knights entered the fray. In 530AD, the Spanish finally find a little backbone and attack back triggering my golden age as my Swiss Merc won. In 590AD, I eliminated the Spanish.
French War
I repositioned troops, then declared on France in 600AD. France was down to about 4 cities at this time, and did not hold out long. In 640AD, they were no more.
Incan War
Buoyed by the French crumble, I declared on the much stronger Inca in 690AD (after repositioning troops).
I should have waited a bit longer. The Incans had moved a bunch of troops to our shared border and it took a bit to break through and start making progress. The other issue was the Incans had a much stronger culture resulting in quite a few flips in spite of a reasonably aggressive raze/replace policy. I razed cities above size 6, except where the knights templar was built, and the great library. Incidentally, the GL bumped me up to Astronomy, and then I razed the city. The KT city flipped at least once, but was easily retaken. My first leader of the game was generated in 700AD. Given the amount of elite victories to that point, I would say that that was long unlucky streak - still obviously that can not be blamed on the slower Incan campaign. The Incans also manage to drag England into the camapign on their side. Possibly I should have got England to fight the Inca, but they were not very strong at this point so I hadn't bothered. Around 1000AD, I finished off England, and then decided that since the Inca had no contact with the other continent, I could risk making peace and breaking the deal early. I made peace for three of the remaining 6 Incan cities. In 1060AD I redeclared and in 1090AD the Incan were gone! Sure enough this had no impact on my trading with the other civs!
Egyptian War
It took until 1160AD to be in position to attack the other continent. I chose the Egyptians first, and brought the Zulu and the Mayan in on the war. As it was taking a while to transfer troops from the other continent and reinforcements from home, progress was again a bit slow. Then the Egyptians got gunpowder, and things really slowed down. In 1270AD I made peace with the Egyptians while I hastily increased the numbers of trebuchets in my force to help crack these harder defences. I decided to keep the land gain happening I would ROP rape the Zulu. I could have wiped them out in a single turn, but for a one tile island that the Zulu possessed, so instead I took all their other cities (mainly defended by Impi) in one turn (6 in all). I then moved the forces back into position for Egypt. With the help of the trebuchets, we were able to redeclare and move through the remaining Egyptian cities fairly quickly. In 1390AD they were gone. In 1395AD the domination target was reached.
I think I will post lessons learned in another post.