My first save was after the initial land grab phase, and that's when my first screenshot comes from.
As you can see I managed to expand peacfully to 4 cities. Later I'll also take those 2 barbarian cities and manage to sneak in one more city down south at the Khmer border. So that's 7 cities total. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
My initial research started with AH, and seeing that I have horses nearby I skipped archery. Utrecht (by the horses) was my first city, acting as a pure commerce generator. It also had gems, so I made Iron Working a priority.
I think Rotterdam was next, blocking off Ceasar, but unfortunately it would loose that wheat to Rome, so was a little food poor. For now it served as a hybrid city, generating some commerce but also building my first chariots.
The Hague was next, and it served only one purpose throughout the entire game - to build military.
I've got about 2 workers / city which enabled me to improve my land quickly.
Notice that thanks to amazing luck the whole continent follows one religion, which enabled me to get a state religion boosting relations with everyone, and also use religion civics without actually pissing off anyone.
Here's a look at the capital at this time
Here, after producing enoguh settlers and workers I let it grow to the happy limit. As soon as that library finishes I'll hire 2 scientists to build an early academy.
Notice the unimproved stone. I simply didn't have time to detour to get masonry. Another thing to notice is that every, and I mean every, tile in the BFC is a river tile. So later on Dike (dutch unique replacement of Leeve) would net me additional
20 hammers!
25 BC
Let's jump ahead.
Here's the capital just after completing Great Library in 25BC.
Starting on national epic immiedately, I'll need those great scientists to be first to liberalism. Academy is already built, and the next scientist will lightbulb philosophy, then we'll change civics to pacifism to generate yet more scientists. I'm running hereditary rule / slavery combo now.
Thanks to good relations with everyone I was able to trade aesthetics around pretty much to everybody without worrying about "you traded with our worst enemies" thing. Don't remember extacly, but I'm sure I got mathematics, monarchy and alphabet from those trades.
At this time my military city finished Maoi Statues and started on heroic epic (thanks to experience from barb fighting I was able to build it already).
After it completes, this city will do nothing more than produce military till the end of game (with occasional break to build some health or happy buildings)
For now I was letting it grow, working mostly water tiles and farms, that way it'll have more production power later, when war comes.
And a shot of my empire at this time
The plan for now is to befriend everyone, not get declared on and get to civil service (beaurocracy!) ASAP.
That plan failed miserably
In 150 AD Sitting Bull declares war on me. I'm totally unprepared, but luckily I have lots of axeman/spearmen on military police duty (hereditary rule, remember). Also, he doesn't go for my capital, but for Rotterdam, which was on a hill and was not such an important city, so I could whip it hard. Thank goodness he didn't have maces yet.
I managed to hold my ground until 325 AD when I discovered Civil Service. That allowed me to bribe Ceasar into war, and boy did that work or what!
He immiedately show with a huge stack of knights and preatorians (soon to be macemen) and saved the day.
He arrived with this huge stack at Snaketown, Bull's city on my border but since Bull is protective and has Totem Poles, Ceasar had hard time cracking this city (Bull had CGIII longbows everywhere).
And I thought, what the hell, let's take my army and try to capture that city after Ceasar weakens it.
And it worked!
At this point I just kept all my troops in that city utill I could sue for peace. Bull had really hard time defending his other city from Rome, so he wasn't a threat really.
The great side of this war was that Ceasar actually became friendly. This is huge. I don't have to worry about him backstabbing me. I could put all my troops down south on the Khmer border.
Notice on that screenshot above, that I'm about to discover Education (thanks to lightbulbing) and that I'm about 4 turns away from Liberalism (next scientist will lightbulb it)
If you don't trade for machinery, a scientist will not have an option of lightbulbung optics, and goes for liberalism instead. This is useful to know.
1050 AD War preparations.
Time to repay Bull for his kindness and grab more land at the same time. It's time for war!
8 turns to rifling, Hague pumps out 1 maceman per turn and send it to a nearby hill. (btw that's another useful thing to know - you can shift click on a tile to create a rally point, so that every unit produced in that city will automatically go there).
Earlier on, I used my Taj Mahal golden age to generate a great merchant (slipping into caste system, and setting maximum number of merchants in capital, even starving it a bit). He awaits here till his time comes.
I also sold a tech for cash whenever there was such possibilty, and deity AIs have lot of cash on their hand often.
All in all when the time came I was able to mass upgrade almost 20 maces to rifles, and they all had city raider II.
At this time I was running nationhood, dratfing each of my cities (except capital) twice, which, with support of Hague building 1 rifle per 1,5 turn, gave me another stack of rifles.
My main attacking force:
I was capturing cities quickly, loosing about 1 city raider II rifle for every 3 longbowmen killed, even without bombarding down city defences.
Before declaring I bribed Ceasar to attack Hammurabi, so that he won't pile on Bull. I wanted all this land for myself. Which worked fine, but it lead to futue Rome vs Babylon wars, which resulted in capturing Babylon by Julius and vassalizing Hammurabi. But again, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Around this time I also met the other continent, Justinian and Pacal. It turned out they had religious differences and fought quite often. Not so much later Justinian will win the war and vassalize Pacal. Here's the tech situation now, Justinian is not so advanced, but later he'll become a monster.
Back to war. I won
Here's my empie just afterwards.
Will that be enough land to win?
I dont think so. Other AIs, especially Ceasar and Justinian are teching very quickly. Take a look.
I had to grab more land, and Khmer was my next logical target. They had the best land.
Let's take a glance at my capital at this time.
After building Dike it became both production and commerce powerhouse. But I switched from beaurocracy to free speech anyway, because I had quite large empire now with lots of cottages, also I was being culturally pressed by Rome in my newly acquired lands. Also I switched to universal sufferage, emancipation, free market and free religon now.
Adopting free religion was an error though, because I lost the diplo bonus with Ceasar, who was now only pleased, and therefore I couldn't trade techs with him (the dreaded WFYABTA limit). Later on I realized my error and switched back to org. religion.
If you take a look on that screenshot showing my empire, you'll notice that Ceasar started a was vs Khmer during my war with Bull, and managed to capture one city which allowed me to immiedately plant 2 more cities on the Khmer border.
The war ended soon after that, thanks to AP resolution.Ceasar built the confucian AP but Khmer were "secretary general" now and proposed to end the war)
Of course I voted for the war to end, I wanted all these Khmer lands for myself.
Khmer converted to christianism soon after, making me elligible to be leader of the AP, but I never managed to get more votes than Ceasar, and kept voting for him to boost realtions further.
To be continued...
Stay tuned for Khmer wars
Here's the save from 1410 AD if you're interested
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/131446/Raf_AD-1410.CivBeyondSwordSave
