First spoiler:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3915922#post3915922
Short synopsis of early game:After founding 6 cities, I went the military route and swiftly conquered America and England. In 550AD, I was researching Construction, had 12 cities, a total population of 58 and 16 blood-thirsty swords and 14 fearsome axes ready to take on the rest of the world!
Research:
I intended to reach at least macemen to upgrade my units. Alas, never did I reach this goal! After struggling along with a science rate of 20-30% and still a negative balance, I decided to go for 100% commerce upon completing metal casting. Even still I managed a couple of turns with units on strike!
At least I did reach the goal of completing theology and feudalism for vassalage and theocracy civics. It turned out that my foes were also hopelessly backwards, so it wasnt until the very end that longbowmen turned up I never saw any more advanced units.
Order:
Currency-Theology-Monarchy-Feudalism-Metal casting
Internal affairs:
All of my main cities were of course busy churning out military units, mainly swords and axes, but later also catapults and longbowmen. Too many units tended to be the problem of the late game, not too few, and my economy did suffer. I had two breaks from unit production: the first one around 910AD when I built colosseums (for production bonus) and marketplaces. The other around 1225AD when I built temples to counteract war weariness which was rampant, and also just for a break in unit production to save my economy from crashing.
New cities all got same build order: colosseum, library and courthouse. Rather arbitrary, I know, but I never paid much attention to developing new cities as I had a sufficient core of cities to produce my units.
I did capture a barb city in the SW corner of the map, mainly to get access to the silver for happiness.
In 1060AD, just as I got Feudalism, I converted to Vassalage (new units +2 experience points, more free units), Serfdom (workers build 50% faster) and Theocracy (+2 experience points) for me the ultimate warmonger combo. Police state (+25% military unit production, -50% war weariness) is also nice, but was never an option in this game as it requires fascism. I had been holding off on Theocracy for a long while to revolt to 3 civics in one go.
The last part of the game was a bit hairy with maurading barbarian units attacking from all directions a consequence of razing cities, leaving large portions of the map in darkness, I guess. I never did much to counteract this they never posed a threat big enough for me to shift focus from my main goal; annihilation of my opponents.
A nice bonus from going the warmonger route however is the extra free workers captured along the way they worked diligently to improve tiles everywhere (on auto with orders to leave forests and past improvements). After the initial expansion were over and the war had started, I never paid much attention to city and worker management I was hellbent on reaching conquest as soon as I could!
External affairs:
After kicking the Americans and the English off the map, I proceeded to declare on the rest, save a few breaks in between to regroup and redirect my units.
After kicking Vicky's butt in 550AD, I needed a few turns to build new units as well as letting my war-weary units have a breather, hence the delay before knocking on Napoleons door.
War wih France (760 - 960AD)
Good ol friendly Napoleon had 6 cities 3 main ones Paris, Orleans and Lyons, and 3 smaller satellite cities. I kept the main ones and razed the others. At this stage I had not yet decided which victory to aim for nonetheless I did not want to be disabled by lots of useless cities filled with garrisoned units.
My catapults arrived in the battle theatre during this war and significantly reduced the number of units needed to capture Paris and future cities. I probably used 4-5 catapults or so for each city at times in the game I had as many as 3 squads of swords/axes/catapults attacking separatete cities. I just used catapults for bombarding city defences until longbows appeared. At that point I needed to soften them wih collateral damage, which needed a constant resupply of catapults from the productive core which significantly delayed the advance. (Why siege units die off is beyond me and a very annoying part of CIV4 I remember the good old days in CIV3 when all I needed for the whole game was 10 catapults->cannons->artillery and thats that!).
War wih Arabs (990 - 1025AD)
Interestingly, during my war with the French, Monte wanted to join the fun and declared on Saladin (those two had never been very friendly with each other anyway
) and I did see a window of opportunity for taking advantage of this. Monte declared in 850AD then I declared on Saladin in 990AD, as soon as I could after the French war.
The Arabs had already been beaten up fairly bad by Monte when my units arrived at the scene in fact poor Saladin only had 2 or 3 cities left. Monte grabbed Mecca and I cleaned up a few others, keeping only Damascus for myself.
I couldnt help but feeling a bit thrilled as Saladin became history here I was in 960AD with only 2 civs left to go I dont normally play for fastest victory, but for the occasion and difficulty level I thought Id give it a try.
edit: after reading some truly outstanding strategies in the first spoiler, i cannot help but
a little at my rather *late* result...
Situation with 2 civs to go:
Monte was clearly my biggest opponent with 5 quite decent cities and 3 minor ones from Saladin and a dozen units already in the area.
Mao had not expanded much and only had 2 main cities in the very NW corner of the map, with 3 minor ones settled due north of my productive core seemed like a fairly easy task deleting him from the scene
My combined offensive military force at this stage:
Swords 37
Axes 34
Catapults 19
I saw the chance to finish with a reasonably early conquest victory, and I went for it. I had razed way too many cities for domination to be a viable option anyway. Mao was definitely the easiest target at the time he was like a sitting duck waiting to be eliminated. Unfortunately, after the Arab war, most of my units were caught up in the NE portion of the map. Hence, at the time it made more sense to go after Monte, and thats exactly what I did.
War wih Aztecs (1025- 1090AD)
I didnt wait a second before declaring on Monte figuring he would already be weakened by the war with Saladin, I didnt want to give him any chance to build up his military. In hindsight, this might have been a mistake, as it turned out he was stronger than I assumed, and attacked my lightly defended Arab and French conquests as all of my units marched towards Tenochtitlan.
As a consequence of this, both Paris, Orleans and very nearly Damascus fell to his sneaky Jaguar warriors, and in 1090AD, burdened by severe war weariness, and not in the mood to loose more cities, I sued for peace.
War wih China (1090- 1230AD)
Not wanting to wait restlessly while Monte went to mind his own business (sacrificing slaves for the Sky God etc) I declared on Mao the same turn as I sued for peace wih Monte. His backwards little nation stood no chance against the might of the glorious Russian empire!
For quite a while, I had already planned this, as my new units stationed within the productive core had formed a sizeable force during the Arab and Aztec wars. Actually, all of my newly produced units were placed next to St. Petersburg, in between the two north/south rivers. Thus, they had started to march for Beijing while I was being beaten by Monte.
In 1090AD 9 swords, 8 catapults and 4 axes showed up south of Shanghai, Maos 2nd largest city. Shanghai and Beijing both fell quickly being only guarded by 1 longbow and a couple of axes/archers. The catapults did a good job against the longbows, softening them before the swords finished them off. Swords are really no match when up against longbows, especially with multiple city defence promotions. Due to by rampant economy, ready to break down at any time (and did twice!), I never reached Machinery and Civil Service to enable Macemen to be built.
The Chinese Campaign unfortunately dragged on for far too long. Without posing a real threat, Mao had just been annoying and founded a couple of more cities guarded by longbowmen in the far north. This really delayed the campaign as my only squad of units had to spend 2-3 turns to rest before marching on. In 1230AD, his last city fell. I ended up keeping only Beijing and Shanghai.
War wih Aztecs (1180 - 1315AD)
Before finishing off Mao, I had some unfinished business with Monte
A relatively small squad of units had dealt with the lightly defended Chinese cities, so meanwhile my Empire had been busy churning out units to finish those pesky Jaguar warriors off.
Of course, I started by recapturing my French conquests. Due to the distance of the Aztecs at the opposite end of the map, it did take some time before my Stack of Doom appeared outside Tenochtitlan. Two other squads had simultaneously marched towards his Arab conquests, so when the units finally arrived, it didnt take long before he was history.
Tenochtitlan was captured in 1210AD, just before Maos fall. At the last turn of the game, 2 squads razed his remainding two cities in the far NE corner of the map. Ah, victory sure is sweet!
Summary / lessons learnt
Raw score: 2497
Fireaxis score: 44768
Time played: 5 hrs 20 mins
This was an enjoyable game, and my first game on Epic speed. I found the extra time available quite nice. Using normal speed, I find the units become obsolete a bit too quickly.
I am sure I could have finished even earlier, the main delaying factor being poor logistics planning and a rampant economy. I find militaristic games can turn a bit tedious - troop movement taking up a large portion of the game. Not to mention the fact that I was initially going for
domination... oh well, it surely pays off to have a goal from the beginning and stick to it.
Also, city management turned out to be a bit of a drag, and I lost focus and overview as my noble swordsmen bravely captured city upon city. War weariness was a big problem on average 3 unhappy faces in each city as a consequence of this. I tend to turn off city growth as the city reaches its happiness and health limits. In this game, I had actually forgotten to turn on growth again after new luxuries became available. Thus, for instance, Moscow was at the last turn size 10 only, whilst its health limit was 11 (granary, no aqueduct) and happiness limit 17: +1 HF from religion, +3 HF from buildings (palace, colosseum, jewish temple), +8 from resources (fur, gold, gems, silver, +2 HF each). Actually, I cant understand how each luxury can give +2 HF, as other times in the game I swear each resource only gave +1
As a large population seems to count strongly towards extra score, I guess this meant I did loose out a bit here.
End note: having just read through some of the entries in the first spoiler, I am mightily impressed by the early finishes some have managed to pull off - with or without extra settlers - a pre-1000BC victory is simply outstanding
Just having a bit to much cities...
Looking forward to the next GOTM 
Im sure could have shaved off plenty of time if Id taken some risks. However, I also found the map was challenging for fast culture, there werent enough health resources to really crank up my key cities.
