Well I'm not submitting my game, but may as well put a write-up anyway 
. I don't think I'd be eligible to submit because I had some hardware problems which forced me to reload the game a couple of times (though I tried to be honest about it and retraced the same moves as far as I could remember them).
First serious emperor game (albeit on adventurer level) and I certainly learned a lot from it - in particular how powerful a small sea-based empire can be for science.
My overall strategy was to go for a cultural win, including building lots of early wonders.
Like just about everyone else I was planning to settle my first city in-place, but luckily I moved my adventurer-bonus worker onto the other hill to start mining first - and he immediately saw the fish to the East. So I moved my settler east and founded the city there instead to get the fish. I think for the adventurer game that's a particularly suitable location because early production isn't as important.
I then sent the two archers westwards, between them covering the fertile strip of land to the west. One of them discovered Alexander, the other headed NorthWest and got destroyed by barbs. OK I was silly - the archer got injured by a bear. But there was a goody hut right there, and on the other side of it an English scout (about 0.1 health, obviously recovering from a similar fight). My archer was on 1.7, but I didn't want to risk the scout taking the hut so I went in. Of course, they were hostile, archer died immediately. My one consoling thought was that the English scout probably died too! So having thus thrown away 25% of my adventurer bonus in a single moment of stupidity…. Anyway the loss meant I had to abandon plans to nick a worker off Alexander. I had another barb lurking near Delhi just as my settler was to head off so I needed the remaining archer back home (Funny that - if I'd been playing on contender, I'd have found a way to get by with just a warrior back home, but now I have the archer, he's essential).
Early research - I originally planned to do polytheism first but when I saw it would take 17 turns I abandoned the idea on the assumption I had no chance of beating the AI to hinduism. So I did fishing first so I had the option to use the sea-tiles to maximize science as appropriate. Then bronze working. As soon as I had fishing, I had Delhi build work boats. With two work boats and a mine, I could then build a settler quite quickly (10 turns as it turned out) without chopping those two meagre forests around the start location.
The adventurer-bonus settler headed off to found Bombay as soon as I had the terrains scouted out. SouthWest, by the river, as on the screenshot. The river location was to keep science high while upping production. That worked well - and by the time I had bronze working, Bombay was so close to completeing Stonehenge that only one chop was needed to finish it off.
Madras was trickier. By then I was worried about science, so I sent the newly built settler out just to sit on the intended site until I had polytheism and so could start building the parthenon - which I pulled off with some chopping. Notice the site I chose - it misses the copper. I spent a fair few minutes after I got BW trying to figure how to site the 3rd city to get the copper - since it was going to be a wonder-producing city and needed the production. But bottom line - if I couldn't get the wheat square in the radius, there was no way to get food up enough to make much use of the copper and hills anyway.
After polytheism I researched masonry, (to get the marble for the parthenon) and to get the great lighthouse. Chopped the great lighthouse in Delhi - no more forests there at all now. Lighthouse plus 3 coastal cities *really* helped my science. Less good news though - Oracle got built in a faraway land before I'd even started researching priesthood. And Bombay was only ¼ through building pyramids when someone else built them. Not having stone hurt.
By now I was getting hungry for land and getting severely boxed in by Alexander. My first three cities were earmarked as cultural centres which meant I needed somewhere else for my military production, plus I eventually wanted 9 cities for the cathedrals. So I got Delhi to build a boat and settler and sent them off with an axeman, and they started sailing round Spanish territory.
Since I wasn't ready to go to war, I decided to try to expand along the coast. So I then sent another settler up to where Bangalore is - along the coast NW of my main empire area. I was worried about distance costs so wanted to just hold the land and have a settler ready to land-grab those bananas and dye later on, when I was about to get calendar. But I got there the very turn that Alex's settler was arriving. Phew! One turn later and Bangalore wouldn't exist.
I also quickly sent some axemen up to pester a barb city just past Bangalore. I could see there was no way I could capture it immediately - barb archers fortified in a city on a hill, one with city defence 1 and 2 promotions too! - but I hoped to fortify my axemen up in some neighbouring jungle, allow barb attacks to promote them enough to build the heroic epic, and capture the city immediately after a failed AI attempt had weakened the defences. The plan worked beautifully. Razed the city coz it was too close to Bangalore and immediately founded Lahore, further along the coast.
Meanwhile in terms of techs, I tried a gamble for a religion, still having none. I had a great prophet, and hadn't joined him to a city coz - I didn't yet have any city that obviously needed him. Christianity had yet to be discovered. The prophet was offering to discover meditation for me (yeah right - anyone ever feel diddled? ), but if I could research meditation, priesthood, writing, and monotheism, hopefully he'd offer to discover theology for me. At this point my research was going at a fair rate - eg. monotheism would be 4 turns - so I decided to risk it. It meant leaving alphabet, iron working, agriculture and animal husbandry - all very urgent techs - in the hope of a religion.
Lost it. With 2 turns left to go on writing, someone else founded Christianity. In all that was something like 10-15 turns of very good research time wasted that seriously delayed my discovering alphabet. Not long afterwards, someone built the Sistine Chapel too - that's a significant blow to my hopes of a specialist-fuelled cultural victory. Anyway, after losing Christianity I changed tack and beelined for animal husbandry (2 turns) then alphabet (12 turns). As I expected, alphabet revealed I was well behind the average in terms of tech, but I still managed to trade a few things, picking up all the early worker techs I'd missed, plus iron working and mathematics. Had to trade alphabet to get them, but by then several other civs already knew alphabet so it wasn't much of a loss. With my eye on culture I then headed for literature - music - drama. Still looking to the cultural win.
Then I had my big break. A great scientist popped up in Delhi - offering to discover philosophy. At this point I could've really used an academy but I wasn't going to turn down the chance to get a religion of my own, especially with my great prophet still waiting for something to do. Taoism and Dao-Miai-thingy in Madras in one turn! I spread Taoism to Delhi and then used one of the real pluses of a spiritual civ. I didn't want to convert to Taoism long-term coz I'm still trying to butter up other civs. So I converted temporarily - just to help Delhi and Madras complete the hanging gardens and great library with Organized Religion, with the intention of converting back to no religion as soon as they were finished. (No religion because of diplomacy - I had no religion available that anyone else was following).
Got the great library in Madras, with some chopping, and - to my surprise, I managed to build the hanging gardens in Delhi without any chopping or poprushing. By now I could see my science was catching up with the AI - all those sea squares were having an effect. And I was very happy to see my civ score gradually moving up into 4rd place, not too far behind the leader Hatshepsut. At emperor level??? Wow!
That's about when I founded Calcutta. Not at first sight the most sensible place for a city, miles from my capital on another continent. But the thing is, Isabella withdrew open borders after I swapped to Taoism and that meant my galley/axeman/settler were trapped on a little peninsula - Isabella's borders blocking one way, and a glacier square blocking the other way. Now there was a city site with access to copper so it could defend itself a bit. AND I was about to build the hanging gardens if you get my drift.... That was too irresistable… Worked out quite well, Calcutta started paying for itself very quickly.
Diplomacy. I've struggled with it in this game. I know there's no point being friends with Alexander coz sooner or later I'll want his land. So I tried to be friends with his enemies, but - who are they? A lot of AI civs were pretty late making contact with each other, which didn't help. Elizabeth, on the other side of Alex's borders, was the obvious hopeful friend but it took a long time before I could get her to be pleased with me. I had Judaism spread to my cities very early but didn't convert coz noone else was running Judaism. Ditto Hinduism (Well Alex was Hindu, like I cared!). Isabella eventually came to like me too after I converted to her religion, buddhism (fat lot of good that did me - the entire time afterwards she still refused to trade techs with me because 'we fear you are becoming too advanced'. I guess on emperor level I can take that as a compliment
)
Then had what I thought was a stroke of luck. Alexander finally declared war on the English. That's it! My chance to finally build my military then I can hopefully relieve him of one or two cities that I'm sure are nothing but a burden to him to maintain. I'll kinda be doing him a favour y'see.. (It's not just a land grab thing. My empire was very long and thin, wrapped around Alex, making my borders almost undefendable. I knew I had to do something about that soon.)
Didn't quite work - Trouble was, being all sea-based I simply didn't have any cities with very high production. Bangalore was the highest production city that I hadn't reserved for culture, but it was far from ideal (at most 10-12 raw production) so I built heroic epic there, resigning myself to accepting the best of a bad job. And then I made my fatal mistake. Kept seeing too many infrastructure things like libraries that needed being built, and I kept thinking, I'll just build this THEN I'll start getting my military up to attack Alex. I'm pretty sure if I'd resisted the temptation there and started building military ruthlessly the game would've gone very differently.
Of course Alex finished his war with the English, and all of a sudden he declared war on me. It was around 1400AD. Big stack of - I think about 10-12 knights/cats/maces on Bangalore, plus various isolated knights roaming my territory. I immediately bribed the English - they declared war on Alexander in exchange for military tradition. But it was too late. My pikemen took out all the odd roaming knights and I did have enough units in Bangalore to destroy the stack. Trouble is, another stack just as big arrived the next turn. Bangalore's defenders were still weak from the first turn and the city fell.
And at that point I abandoned the game. I could see where it was going. With my main military city gone (and with it half my army), and my empire now in three disjointed pieces, it didn't look very likely I could prevent Alex from totally shredding my Indians. And since I knew I probably couldn't submit the game anyway there didn't seem much point playing on to the actual defeat. Decided I'd already learned the main lessons from the game anyway. Like I can play on emperor with a strong science-based empire (yay!). But I really need to sodding learn to BUILD UP MY MILITARY. Till next time…
Oh - and one completely irrelevent but quite amusing thing. Sometime around 1300AD a galley exploring the tundra south of Spain discovered an unopened goody hut. I quickly got a scout there, dreaming of the advanced technology I might get. I got .....
wait for it....
A warrior.
Oh how my macemen and pikemen and knights must have felt inadequate next to this fine - umm - warrior, just added to my military.
About two turns later the new warrior got killed by a marauding barb archer.
. I don't think I'd be eligible to submit because I had some hardware problems which forced me to reload the game a couple of times (though I tried to be honest about it and retraced the same moves as far as I could remember them).First serious emperor game (albeit on adventurer level) and I certainly learned a lot from it - in particular how powerful a small sea-based empire can be for science.
My overall strategy was to go for a cultural win, including building lots of early wonders.
Like just about everyone else I was planning to settle my first city in-place, but luckily I moved my adventurer-bonus worker onto the other hill to start mining first - and he immediately saw the fish to the East. So I moved my settler east and founded the city there instead to get the fish. I think for the adventurer game that's a particularly suitable location because early production isn't as important.
I then sent the two archers westwards, between them covering the fertile strip of land to the west. One of them discovered Alexander, the other headed NorthWest and got destroyed by barbs. OK I was silly - the archer got injured by a bear. But there was a goody hut right there, and on the other side of it an English scout (about 0.1 health, obviously recovering from a similar fight). My archer was on 1.7, but I didn't want to risk the scout taking the hut so I went in. Of course, they were hostile, archer died immediately. My one consoling thought was that the English scout probably died too! So having thus thrown away 25% of my adventurer bonus in a single moment of stupidity…. Anyway the loss meant I had to abandon plans to nick a worker off Alexander. I had another barb lurking near Delhi just as my settler was to head off so I needed the remaining archer back home (Funny that - if I'd been playing on contender, I'd have found a way to get by with just a warrior back home, but now I have the archer, he's essential).
Early research - I originally planned to do polytheism first but when I saw it would take 17 turns I abandoned the idea on the assumption I had no chance of beating the AI to hinduism. So I did fishing first so I had the option to use the sea-tiles to maximize science as appropriate. Then bronze working. As soon as I had fishing, I had Delhi build work boats. With two work boats and a mine, I could then build a settler quite quickly (10 turns as it turned out) without chopping those two meagre forests around the start location.
The adventurer-bonus settler headed off to found Bombay as soon as I had the terrains scouted out. SouthWest, by the river, as on the screenshot. The river location was to keep science high while upping production. That worked well - and by the time I had bronze working, Bombay was so close to completeing Stonehenge that only one chop was needed to finish it off.
Madras was trickier. By then I was worried about science, so I sent the newly built settler out just to sit on the intended site until I had polytheism and so could start building the parthenon - which I pulled off with some chopping. Notice the site I chose - it misses the copper. I spent a fair few minutes after I got BW trying to figure how to site the 3rd city to get the copper - since it was going to be a wonder-producing city and needed the production. But bottom line - if I couldn't get the wheat square in the radius, there was no way to get food up enough to make much use of the copper and hills anyway.
After polytheism I researched masonry, (to get the marble for the parthenon) and to get the great lighthouse. Chopped the great lighthouse in Delhi - no more forests there at all now. Lighthouse plus 3 coastal cities *really* helped my science. Less good news though - Oracle got built in a faraway land before I'd even started researching priesthood. And Bombay was only ¼ through building pyramids when someone else built them. Not having stone hurt.
By now I was getting hungry for land and getting severely boxed in by Alexander. My first three cities were earmarked as cultural centres which meant I needed somewhere else for my military production, plus I eventually wanted 9 cities for the cathedrals. So I got Delhi to build a boat and settler and sent them off with an axeman, and they started sailing round Spanish territory.
Since I wasn't ready to go to war, I decided to try to expand along the coast. So I then sent another settler up to where Bangalore is - along the coast NW of my main empire area. I was worried about distance costs so wanted to just hold the land and have a settler ready to land-grab those bananas and dye later on, when I was about to get calendar. But I got there the very turn that Alex's settler was arriving. Phew! One turn later and Bangalore wouldn't exist.
I also quickly sent some axemen up to pester a barb city just past Bangalore. I could see there was no way I could capture it immediately - barb archers fortified in a city on a hill, one with city defence 1 and 2 promotions too! - but I hoped to fortify my axemen up in some neighbouring jungle, allow barb attacks to promote them enough to build the heroic epic, and capture the city immediately after a failed AI attempt had weakened the defences. The plan worked beautifully. Razed the city coz it was too close to Bangalore and immediately founded Lahore, further along the coast.
Meanwhile in terms of techs, I tried a gamble for a religion, still having none. I had a great prophet, and hadn't joined him to a city coz - I didn't yet have any city that obviously needed him. Christianity had yet to be discovered. The prophet was offering to discover meditation for me (yeah right - anyone ever feel diddled?
), but if I could research meditation, priesthood, writing, and monotheism, hopefully he'd offer to discover theology for me. At this point my research was going at a fair rate - eg. monotheism would be 4 turns - so I decided to risk it. It meant leaving alphabet, iron working, agriculture and animal husbandry - all very urgent techs - in the hope of a religion. Lost it. With 2 turns left to go on writing, someone else founded Christianity. In all that was something like 10-15 turns of very good research time wasted that seriously delayed my discovering alphabet. Not long afterwards, someone built the Sistine Chapel too - that's a significant blow to my hopes of a specialist-fuelled cultural victory. Anyway, after losing Christianity I changed tack and beelined for animal husbandry (2 turns) then alphabet (12 turns). As I expected, alphabet revealed I was well behind the average in terms of tech, but I still managed to trade a few things, picking up all the early worker techs I'd missed, plus iron working and mathematics. Had to trade alphabet to get them, but by then several other civs already knew alphabet so it wasn't much of a loss. With my eye on culture I then headed for literature - music - drama. Still looking to the cultural win.
Then I had my big break. A great scientist popped up in Delhi - offering to discover philosophy. At this point I could've really used an academy but I wasn't going to turn down the chance to get a religion of my own, especially with my great prophet still waiting for something to do. Taoism and Dao-Miai-thingy in Madras in one turn! I spread Taoism to Delhi and then used one of the real pluses of a spiritual civ. I didn't want to convert to Taoism long-term coz I'm still trying to butter up other civs. So I converted temporarily - just to help Delhi and Madras complete the hanging gardens and great library with Organized Religion, with the intention of converting back to no religion as soon as they were finished. (No religion because of diplomacy - I had no religion available that anyone else was following).
Got the great library in Madras, with some chopping, and - to my surprise, I managed to build the hanging gardens in Delhi without any chopping or poprushing. By now I could see my science was catching up with the AI - all those sea squares were having an effect. And I was very happy to see my civ score gradually moving up into 4rd place, not too far behind the leader Hatshepsut. At emperor level??? Wow!
That's about when I founded Calcutta. Not at first sight the most sensible place for a city, miles from my capital on another continent. But the thing is, Isabella withdrew open borders after I swapped to Taoism and that meant my galley/axeman/settler were trapped on a little peninsula - Isabella's borders blocking one way, and a glacier square blocking the other way. Now there was a city site with access to copper so it could defend itself a bit. AND I was about to build the hanging gardens if you get my drift.... That was too irresistable… Worked out quite well, Calcutta started paying for itself very quickly.
Diplomacy. I've struggled with it in this game. I know there's no point being friends with Alexander coz sooner or later I'll want his land. So I tried to be friends with his enemies, but - who are they? A lot of AI civs were pretty late making contact with each other, which didn't help. Elizabeth, on the other side of Alex's borders, was the obvious hopeful friend but it took a long time before I could get her to be pleased with me. I had Judaism spread to my cities very early but didn't convert coz noone else was running Judaism. Ditto Hinduism (Well Alex was Hindu, like I cared!). Isabella eventually came to like me too after I converted to her religion, buddhism (fat lot of good that did me - the entire time afterwards she still refused to trade techs with me because 'we fear you are becoming too advanced'. I guess on emperor level I can take that as a compliment
)Then had what I thought was a stroke of luck. Alexander finally declared war on the English. That's it! My chance to finally build my military then I can hopefully relieve him of one or two cities that I'm sure are nothing but a burden to him to maintain. I'll kinda be doing him a favour y'see.. (It's not just a land grab thing. My empire was very long and thin, wrapped around Alex, making my borders almost undefendable. I knew I had to do something about that soon.)
Didn't quite work - Trouble was, being all sea-based I simply didn't have any cities with very high production. Bangalore was the highest production city that I hadn't reserved for culture, but it was far from ideal (at most 10-12 raw production) so I built heroic epic there, resigning myself to accepting the best of a bad job. And then I made my fatal mistake. Kept seeing too many infrastructure things like libraries that needed being built, and I kept thinking, I'll just build this THEN I'll start getting my military up to attack Alex. I'm pretty sure if I'd resisted the temptation there and started building military ruthlessly the game would've gone very differently.
Of course Alex finished his war with the English, and all of a sudden he declared war on me. It was around 1400AD. Big stack of - I think about 10-12 knights/cats/maces on Bangalore, plus various isolated knights roaming my territory. I immediately bribed the English - they declared war on Alexander in exchange for military tradition. But it was too late. My pikemen took out all the odd roaming knights and I did have enough units in Bangalore to destroy the stack. Trouble is, another stack just as big arrived the next turn. Bangalore's defenders were still weak from the first turn and the city fell.
And at that point I abandoned the game. I could see where it was going. With my main military city gone (and with it half my army), and my empire now in three disjointed pieces, it didn't look very likely I could prevent Alex from totally shredding my Indians. And since I knew I probably couldn't submit the game anyway there didn't seem much point playing on to the actual defeat. Decided I'd already learned the main lessons from the game anyway. Like I can play on emperor with a strong science-based empire (yay!). But I really need to sodding learn to BUILD UP MY MILITARY. Till next time…
Oh - and one completely irrelevent but quite amusing thing. Sometime around 1300AD a galley exploring the tundra south of Spain discovered an unopened goody hut. I quickly got a scout there, dreaming of the advanced technology I might get. I got .....
wait for it....
A warrior.
Oh how my macemen and pikemen and knights must have felt inadequate next to this fine - umm - warrior, just added to my military.
About two turns later the new warrior got killed by a marauding barb archer.
