Yeah, I'm absolutely amazed at how quickly you play.
I just finished up the game and it says 17:48 for me, and although I did leave the game running alot I still must have played 8-10 hours. But I do get alot of enjoyment from tweaking the small things and micromanaging.
I like the treb vs rifle assult, shows clearly how quantity is it's own source of quality.
A neat trick that you can use in the future, courtesy of
@Kaitzilla is that you can sabotage the walls of a city. If you do, then both walls+castle gets disabled, it's quite cheap too.
And if you do that, bombarding down cultural defence becomes super easy with trebs, either with fewer promoted to bombard, or just noone promoted to bombard, still takes waaay fewer.
Kublai did hook up his iron, but by a weird coincidence Pacal pops iron just the turn I reach gunpowder, so I trade with him instead so I don't have to pillage my resource to cancel the deal with Kublai.
Most cities where done with revolt, last city Uxmal up north I just zerged with some elephants I had left over.
He was gone T168.
After I had declared on pacal, I mostly just grew and ran some specialists, after pacal and once Monty finished constitution I gave him MT+gunpowder for constitution (felt weird giving my target that, but ok). Then I ran a paci-push.
Setting up and microing these things takes alot time, likewise I like constantly refitting tiles with the workers, swapping windmills<->mines, farms<->workshops.
These high sea level maps are nice because then it's manageable.
I got alot of GPeople, a 2person GA and then a 3PersonGA, both after I got MoM. Also rushed Ironworks and did an infiltration.
Monty had been plotting forever (started when we where friendly). I wanted him to deplete both himself and Washington, but he never seemed to get on with it.
Untill he did. I think Wash bribed Wang on him right away too. Monty looks scary on this end, but on the other side toward me, it's just longbows and some muskets. Wang came up with a pretty respectable stack and just trade it for about half of Montys, but Monty still had enough units to push through and Get Washingtons Washington.
Alot of revolts against Monty too. The evil fiend got democracy and started to build those nasty defense buildings. :|
Monty got that city just when he wanted to capitulate, so he gave me in the deal.
I right away started the second GA.
From here on, it's mostly just mass whipping and drafting, zerging and chain-capping. But I think it's worth to point out how lean and efficient the war against Pacal+Monty have been up to this point.
I seem to have upgraded 27HA/Elephants to Cuirs, and built 12 more, only lost 13 in total and now still have 26 standing.
Nice price for two AIs land and a vassal.
Ofcourse, all the revolt haven't been cheap and only the first few cities on both AIs where done at -50% discount.
But running spy specialists with jails (+50%) and nationalism (another +25%) and especially in the cities with Scotland yard (+100%!), quickly racks up the points.
Toward the end I was cold-whipping units every turn in every city I could, and likewise drafting muskets to just stand around. Wanted to bump up power rating and possibly get faster capitulations.
I did rush IW in Washington, and had a GGeneral there ready to make a military academy too, and did whip out some cannons, but only one poor guy made it to the front in time.