1740 Diplomation.
I settled in place. Hadn't checked Gwaja's spoilers, so I got a very nice surprise
Did the scouting thing - mostly with a warrior since my scout got eaten by a bear.
I stole my early game strategy from AbsoluteZero's latest deity game on youtube: get a couple of cities up, then go Priesthood and chop the Oracle.
AbsoluteZero did it to get Alphabet so he could trade.
I did it for:
The plan was simple.
Build a forge, run an engineer, and hopefully spawn a GE instead of a prophet. Not that prophets are bad ... 2 hammers and 5 gold is helpful in the early game. But a GE gives you lots of interesting options.
Spread to 5 cities, and was just massing to take a barb city to my south when Alex declared on me. I think it was a dagger, because he didn't have all that much to attack with, and I don't recall seeing a WHEOOHRN fist. He razed my newly-placed 5th city.
Unfortunately for him, I had several swords for a counter-attack (I just had to march them north) and my GE popped soon after. It let me bulb Machinery to a 1 turn tech.
Alex, meet crossbows.
I killed the greek stack, such as it was, then took a city off Alex in compensation for the one he razed. Alex bribed in GK on me, but was swiftly willing to end his own part in the war:
GK had melee troops and Keshiks. I easily walled him with xbows and spears, and took a peace treaty (no gold paid or received).
I headed for Construction, then Currency, CoL and then CS. As soon as Construction came in, I started to build up a force of catapults, xbows and elephants. The plan was to hit GK.
But Alex the doofus declared on me again, despite my 1.2 power advantage.
So I sent my forces east instead of west and started to batter my war through Greece. I also used another GE to bulb most of Engineering, which was a big boost.
Soon enough:
I now had 1.3 times Hammy's power, he lacked Machinery, and I had a stack of macemen, 'phants and trebs with nothing left to do after the Greek war.
It was a pretty one-sided affair.
I looked around the map. Liz had extorted Metal Casting from me while I was fighting Alex the first time, so I had a score to settle with her, but GK was closer, had declared on me in the past, and was slowly being ground into the dirt by Cyrus.
So I decided to show the Mongols what it was like to be stabbed in the back.
Khan refused to cap until he was down to three cities.
Make that two cities. What an idiot.
So who else was I upset with? Oh yeah ...
Saladin was also attacking Liz - he declared the turn before me, in fact. I had mostly macemen still, with some Knights and elephants. Musketmen were starting to come out. Liz had Redcoats however, so the maces were actually a better choice.
Redcoats are tough, but they can't deal with 4:1 odds.
Anyhow, around this town my vassal Hammy won the AP vote, and I had a sudden though.
I switched to Judaism and spread the religion to those few of my cities (the Mongolian ones, basically) that didn't have it. Next time leadership came up ...
I declared on Saladin twice while this was going on. First time didn't go great. I wasn't in danger of losing any cities, but I didn't have the forces to take any, either. The second time I declared, I had 20 Cossacks. And was building lots more
Meanwhile, one city pumped some missionaries so I could spread Judaism to Khan and Cyrus.
And soon enough I had a choice of votes to pick:
With the inevitable result:
Saladin, having lost two cities to me in the second war, was also willing to capitulate on the final turn of the game. So if anything had gone wrong with the vote, I would have won Domination in short order. Given the way the game works, it probably would have meant an even higher score than the actual one I got:
Still, this is my highest ever score, my first Emperor win, and as far as I can recall, my first AP win. So I am pretty darn satisfied with the game!