GOTM 06 second spoiler - everything else!

[jesusin]

jesusin, contender, cultural victory, 1816AD, 23 hours, score 2086->15595.

Initial moves where exactly the same as @drkodos, settled on the third turn on the western hill after having seen the sheep and the corn. After the first expansion I saw that the stone was one expansion further, so I decided to go for the Pyramids.

I arranged it all: the worker would connected the stone the same turn as Masonry was researched…. But then decided that I preferred building Workers and Settlers… so my worker moves and my tech-path makes no sense. I built pyramids in 600BC, when I had already 4 cities and one settler.

In the meanwhile, my scout got warriors from goodies (warriors, experience, maps and gold) and my exploring warrior stole 1 worker from Bismark, 1 from Musa and 3 (!) from Mao, just for delaying them. Being so busy with Mao, it never realized that Mao and Bismark where neigbours; I believed the whole game that the map was a long string.

Only around 1AD I realized that I had been playing without a plan, that the world was too big to conquest and that I had no (real) time to finish the game if played militarily. So I pondered my options and decided to go for a cultural game, as I hadn’t done it before and it is supposed to be much more quicker in real-time. It was a good decision as I have been able to finish the game.

Choosing a plan so late is a very bad idea: I lost the raze to Partenon and this had a huge impact on the final date. Also I couldn´t trade techs with anyone but Elizabeth, as they where mad at me because of the worker wars (with them or with their friends).

I built 9 cities, 3 on the jungle S of Japan, 1 on the strait, 5 on my peninsula. It was very difficult to choose the 3 cities, the capital was cottage spammed very soon, so it was 1. The strait city had a lot of production and built Pyramids, GLib, hermitage and a Epopeia, so it was the second. The third one was in the E, could have been the one in the NE. A lot of cities had spare food, so I used a lot of artist specialists, and built the Sixtine Chapel and the other Epopeia, as well as being pacifist.

I adopted the religion of Japan to avoid war, founded 2 religions, got 2 spreaded, built 36 temples and 8 cathedrals (I had to delay pacifism to have the missionaries out without monasteries).

Stopped research in Liberalism + Military Tradition + Print in 1360AD.

Got 2 free GP plus 13 of my own. 1sci for Academy, 1 engineer for Sixtine Chapel, 1 wrong sci for another Academy, 1 wrong merchant (I thought that city would never produce a GP, so used merchants to keep 100% culture) joined capital

The strait city reached legendary 3 turns before the other 2… which was very bad, as I had 1 GP artist left which wouldn’t do any good to the final date.

So the pacifist-cultured Kublai won a pacific game, although he was the 2nd or the 4th in the power graph the whole game.

The map seemed much more difficult than noble.

In every future game I will check at 3000BC that I have a defined plan.

 

[jaspax]

First GOTM, and first post. I only get to play 1 game a week if I'm lucky, but I win 90% of the time on Noble. Unfortunately, this was not one of those times .

Made several early mistakes: tried for an early religion, but lost Hinduism, Judaism, and Buddhism to others. I did get the Oracle and used that to get Theology--but by that time I was hurtin' for a religion to keep my people happy.

No early wars. Instead, I built out my home peninsula and controlled the choke point, giving me a good defensive position. But the map was big and I ignored naval techs, meaning that my early trading was in the pits and my cashflow was terrible for a while. It was the late middle ages before I finally got my war on.

I started with a brief attack on China, which had posted two colonies on my borders. Then I hit Germany hard, took Berlin and the rest of the German heartland. Left Bismark with four cities, two at the south end and two at the north end of his empire. At the tail end of this war Japan attacks me. I'm weakly defended on my northern border, but my cities hold out and I'm able to bring my forces up and clear out his attackers after a few turns, until he agrees to peace.

I take a breather and beeline Cavalry, and use them to smash the remnants of Bismark's empire. Then I turn back onto Japan and take out several cities. However, Japan is starting to build Riflemen, limiting the effectiveness of my Cavalry, so I wait until I can step up to Infantry. With Infantry I start the war, and then halfway through the Tanks arrive, and it's all over for Tokugawa. He gets to keep two cities on an island, because I have no navy.

Now I'm comfortably ahead in score and have enough time to make a late Domination victory... but I've fallen behind in tech. Mali has stayed out of war for most of the game, and he's started the space race way ahead of me. I have no chance of catching him on the spaceship, so my only option is to take him out--but he's also upgraded his defenses to Jet Fighters and Mech Infantry while I was building all my tanks. War will be difficult.

I wait until I have the techs for Modern Armor, then empty the bank upgrading all of my forces. Mali is actually pleased with me, so I convince him to give me 1000 gold to buy some Jet Fighters... heh. A few turns later I declare war and blitzkrieg his second-largest city. It falls, and for a while it looks like the attack is a success. But the counter-attack is brutal, and I dedicated all of my up-to-date units to the blitz. Mansa Musa takes back his city and two of mine before I sue for peace. At this point the game's over. I'm still over 1000 points ahead in score, but he launches his spaceship in 2017.

This was actually the first time that I've waged a serious war in the modern era. Most of my past victories have been finished in the early 20th century with tanks and cavalry, and I've never really built an air force before. All in all, it was an interesting game, and one that I could have won, had I played a little bit better.

 

[Pexicus]

Cheers all,

First-time GOTM for me as well, although I've been lurking on the forum awhile.

Well, the experience ended in tears.

Start was fairly nice, Germany was overrun by Mongolian axe-murderers and Berlin was a good grab. After a short period of road-building and enhancing the troops brave Mongolian grenadiers, supported by keshik, taught Tokugawa a few bitter lessons. Soon mainland was purged of Tokugawa's cohorts and Japan was confined on its island and peace declared.

After that everything went slowly downhill. I probably should have attacked Mansa downright after Japan's downfall, now I got stuck on third position after waiting too long. Soon both Mansa and The Chinese (my buddies) had too strong military to be reckoned with, my feeble attempt for cultural victory was in fact doomed from the start and finally I was defeated by space race. Mansa sent his followers to Alpha Centauri.

At least I can comfort myself with the thought that I had the most gold and land. Not a bad retirement prospect, eh?

 

[Steve2000]

Diplomatic victory in 1964AD. But the picture below tells what kind of game I had! (click the picture to enlarge)


I built the UN in 1904 and proceeded to just bairly lose the vote for 60 years!!!!

First I miscalculated and one of my friends - Mansa - was the opponent... oops. Then I attacked him to reduce his population. I kept Bismark and Elizabeth as buddies and emphasized food. Finally I got the matchup I wanted - vs Qin who all the AIs hated. It took me about 4 tries of voting after that including this penultimate vote that had my blood boiling - 1 stinkin vote!

 

[GenMarshall]

I am still figuring out how to get a diplomacy victory.

 

[Wallabulla]

I settled the peninsula first, and got two cities from barbs at the chocke point.
Took a couple of cities from the germans. Then Toku declared war, and after about 3 wars I destroyed him.
i lost the spacerace too China, 4 turns before I could build the last part. The reason I lost was that I thought that I had all the techs to build all the parts, so I turned off science to get money for my spies, but I had forgotten to get Fission and fusion, so thats why I lost.. argh!!!

 

[Mad Professor]

Mediocrity is the word when you talk about my finish, but this was my first GOTM and I had a lot of fun doing it. I finished with a domination victory in 1967.

I decided from the beginning to go for domination and hoped to rush someone with axemen early. This early period I wrote about in the first spoiler thread so I won’t spend much time on it here. Basically, I was disorganized early, did not explore well due to having scouts eaten by animals, and did not declare war on anyone until just AD. It was Bismarck who was my target and I snatched three cities quickly to the east of Berlin, but I failed in my assault on Berlin, and accepted Bismarck’s peace offer. He then slipped a couple of settlers out between the captured cities, and that takes us to just after 500AD that I wrote about in the other thread.

After that, I knew I was going to take way too long to finish this game, but I settled down to enjoy it anyhow, slow though it might be!

I decided to rebuild my army and have another go at Bismarck. Unfortunately I had an economic crisis to deal with and that took me some time to manage in the turns following peace with Bismarck. I had built about enough to crush Bismarck into a pulpy mess and was about to declare war on him again when Tokugawa attacked me. China had founded Hinduism and had been sending missionaries all over the world, so that me, Bismarck, and Tokugawa had all converted to Hinduism. Being a “brother in the faith” doesn’t mean that much to Tokugawa and he hit me anyway, sending a couple of stacks of catapults and Samurais in, aiming at two cities I had near his area, Essen (which I’d captured from Bismarck earlier, and Bantu, a barbarian city I’d taken at the same time I had the first war against Bismarck). My defenses were adequate finishing off his first wave, and by the time the army destined for Germany arrived, I could see Tokugawa was about to go down big time. I flattened him, taking the northern coast of the continent where Japan had been, but he was also on the islands off the north east coast but I left him there – it wasn’t much land and I was going for domination, not conquest.

Having squished Tokugawa, I turned my thoughts yet again to finally finishing off Bismarck. Meanwhile, I’m busy trading techs with Elizabeth and Mansa Musa, the only ones who seemed willing to trade, and since I was trying to study techs they were less likely to go for, I kept having things to offer them, and kept up in the tech race. I had my science slider backed off a bit – I didn’t manage my economy as well as I might have.

I let my army heal, built some more recent stuff, and brought it back south to hit Bismarck, and in about 1850, I launched the last series of wars that finished the game off, and at last I moved in a style which pleased me for a change. Bismarck was quickly crunched, and I moved army through China to Alexander’s border. 1902 was the date when I declared war on him, and he was completely gone by about 1940. I was pleased with that time frame given the distance I was operating with before flight. Elizabeth opportunistically declared war on him near the end when he was nearly gone, but she didn’t take any cities. I regrouped, healed units, and then went for Elizabeth, starting the war in about 1950. She went down like a pack of cards 8 cities all fell before 1960. By now I had a few airports, and I was able to drop units in from all over the place. Then it was just a few turns for the riots to stop and the territory around those cities to become Mongolian before a domination victory was declared. I was preparing to take Tokugawa’s last island in case I need a few more tiles to finish it off, but it proved not necessary. My adjusted score was 14525.

 

[caperkins]

Class: Adventurer
Victory: Domination-1934
Score: 21K (Although, when I submitted my score on this site it posted 18K, why would that be?)
Fav. Civic: Police State

Dear Mongolia,

If you're reading this, you most likely are aware that we are now the dominate power in the world. Congratulations and you're welcome. If I had to look back on the events of the last 6 Millenia, I'd say the key to our newfound (or newtaken) status was utilizing our powerful Keshiks to severly cripple Germany during our early expansion. Also, Alexander of Greece served as a great Ally to keep China at bay while we became the most technologically and militarily advanced culture on this fractal planet.

Admittedly, I got a little too cocky and we suffered a setback by China's Cannons/Riflemen when Japan deployed terrorists to destroy our farms and plantations. Mongolia didn't forget; and after struggling to gain Japan's southern most city (I can't pronounce them either) our northern conquest went fairly smooth. Please visit our Samurai exhibit at the national museum as their perseverance taught our armies a lot.

The Malinese gave us their lands with little resistance during the late 1800's after we redeemed Mongolia's honor in China. And, we'd like to welcome Canterbury into our nation (sorry for the broken glass).

I'd like to thank you for your patients during our time of war. Your reward is eternal peace and some nice new coastal property.

With honor,

Kublai Khan

 

[drkodos]

I'd like to thank you for your patients during our time of war.

Funny pun.

 

[Steve2000]

I am still figuring out how to get a diplomacy victory.

The key is to build up at least two good friends, who are in the middle of the pack. You don't want to befriend your potential rival in the vote. Remember that the two civs in the vote will be the civ that built the UN, and the civ with the greatest population. If the civ that built the UN has the greatest population, it will be the next highest population. It is crucial that your friends also be friends with each other. In this GOTM, I waited to get really buddy-buddy with anyone until I found out that Elizabeth and Bismarck loved each other, and since Qin and Mansa both had higher populations and Alex and Toku were at the bottom, they were the perfect two to allign with. I got into several wars against Alex and Toku with Bismarck and Elizabeth as my allies. We shared a common religion (at least until free-religion) and we traded tons of technologies in a vain attempt to keep up with Qin.

In my game the only mistake I made was letting Mansa's population grow too quickly and he passed Qin just before I built the UN which had me facing him instead of Qin. Qin hated everyone so he kept abstaining, but I am pretty sure I could have gotten Mansa's vote. I had to attack Mansa (with Bismarck's help of course) and take some of his population so that I would have enough votes to win. And as I said I also emphasized food in all cities which helps a lot!

 

[Zanthra]

This is the second GoTM I have submitted. Are there any rules on how many times you can start the game over again, because I tried several different starts to get one that I liked.

So I decided to do something unusual in my start, so I spend three turns moving my initial settler east untill I got to a point where I was one square from the pigs, and positioned the rice and the horses within my fat cross. I let my town build up to size three before I built a worker by building scouts. Once I got my worker I put a pasture on the pigs and the horses and had agriculture by then so I could get the rice too. I started pumping out settlers and put a mine on the hill to the south for production.

It worked pretty well, because with one 6 food tile, one 4 food tile, one 1 food 4 production tile, and one 4 production tile it was good for building settlers and I started building cottages everywhere as soon as possible to help fund my empire as it grew.

In the end however I got lazy and was building hospitals and recycling centers when I should have been building space ship parts, ended the game with 5000 something pointts and a spaceship loss to China, year 2014.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

This is the second GoTM I have submitted. Are there any rules on how many times you can start the game over again, because I tried several different starts to get one that I liked.

Yes there are: You can't restart. You're only supposed to submit your first attempt at the game.

So I decided to do something unusual in my start, so I spend three turns moving my initial settler east untill I got to a point where I was one square from the pigs, and positioned the rice and the horses within my fat cross.

Not sure if I've misunderstood there, but if you're saying that you knew where the horses were before you built your first city, then - ummm - how did you know that? Because you restarted? (if so, that illustrates perfectly why you're not allowed to restart - you shouldn't know that at the start) Or did you get exceptionally lucky with exploring goody huts before you settled?

 

[urbis]

This was my first GOTM played competitively (tried a couple of the earlier ones retrospectively, reading the spoilers, to learn as much as possible). Loved the suspense of wondering how I was doing compared to others, and loved reading the spoilers afterwards to compare and learn - thanks all!

The early game

Played the contender start. From the pregame discussion I formed a starting strategy was to build a few cities and get horses and keshiks quickly for early taking of neighbouring cities.

Moved around and settled W, NW, NW to have corn and sheep in fat cross and to be on the plains hill for extra hammer (at cost of not being on river or coast and 3 turns moving).

Researched Animal Husbandry for horses, then Agriculture for farming corn. Built a scout, then a worker to farm corn and pasture sheep. Popped goody huts for Fishing, experience, gold, and several others I didn’t keep track off (no settlers or workers, I think more gold and maybe maps).

Once I realised horses were some distance away, and I had a lot of land to myself, and neighbours were even further away, I changed strategies and aimed for about 6 really good cities fairly close to capital for a thriving economy, and later to fill in our peninsula. Hoped Germans or Japanese would populate the big land area next to our isthmus with good cities I could take when ready to expand.

Got alphabet first, and traded with lots of other techs with great success without giving away alphabet, and noone else researched it for ages, so I got ahead and stayed ahead in tech.

Religion

I didn’t try for any of the early religions (ignored that whole tech path and traded with others for them later); founded Christianity and Islam. Didn’t adopt Christianity until I was no longer worried about attacks from unhappy Germans.

Diplomacy

Decided to try and have as allies:
- Malinese – they adopted my Christian religion early, are proving a good trading partner, and being surrounded by others seem unlikely to become a superpower.
- Greece as they’re far away and weak.
- England as they’re far away and weak, friendly with Malinese, and dislike the Japanese.

The rest:
- Germany I plan to conquer first.
- Japanese don’t like me (or Malinese or Germans or English) and are in the big block of land I want to take over, so expect to fight.
- Chinese are technologically doing well, and I hope to squeeze them between me and Greeks after conquering the Germans.

500AD

I have 7 good cities filling most of the peninsula (spaces for 2 more planned), 7 axemen, 3 swordsmen, 3 spearmen and 3 warriors providing security (no keshiks yet as haven’t bothered getting horseback riding yet), 50% ahead of the others on score and ahead on tech. The Church of the Nativity is starting to generate a small revenue stream, and am about to found Islam as my second religion.

War

At 1000AD starting to be ready to expand and impatient waiting for AI’s to plant good cities in the nearby area, so planted a city called Westwatch in the middle of the big block of land to NW of our isthmus (and build Versaille in it to anchor the cities we’ll later have around it and make them more economic).

Soon after that ready to go to war. Was planning to attack Germans but the Japanese are annoying everyone and encroaching from north, and were militarily thin. Used macemen and keshiks and catapults to attack, timing the attack for a few turns before I’d have cavalry – started the upgrades to cavalry using the plundered cash, and managed to take most of their cities before making peace.

Soon after that I attacked the Germans and took all their cities with cavalry and catapults, excepting one distant city of theirs I’d mistaken for an English city. By this time I’ve spread Christianity to all my cities and most of Mali and some of England, making Mansu Mansa a firm ally and making the holy city wealthy.

Around 1700AD wanted to take the Chinese out but they’ve achieved Riflemen just a bit sooner than I expected and my cavalry will find the going tough. However the Greeks are backward and weak and small, and England declares war on them. Not waiting for the request for a coalition of the willing I send a dozen cavalry tailed by some rifles and catapults thru china (still got open borders with them), and we take the 3 southernmost of the greek cities before making peace in exchange for 400-odd gold from the greeks, leaving them broke and with 3 marginal cities under attack by the English. At the same time my 3 galleons dispatch a small war force to take the remaining 2 japanese cities on the northern island, and I take their other mainland city, destroying their empire, and I take the last German city.

One of my captured greek cities is totally enclosed by Chinese culture, putting it at risk of culture flip. Fortunately I can put a dozen units in it to hold it down. At this point the Chinese get stroppy and close their borders to me, which makes things interesting – I’m not wanting to fight them until I have tanks, but they may make the first move. I have enough military force to easily hold them off, but it could be an irritating war at this point.

Endgame

At 1750AD I have an unassailable tech lead, am generating several hundred surplus cash a turn (50% science rate, and investing the surplus cash in buying infrastructure for captured cities and upgrading more units). Have built most of the wonders in the game. Am looking like a domination win is most likely at this point – get tanks, then take all Chinese lands, and if that isn’t sufficient to reach 64% grab some land off one of my more friendly neighbours – England or Mali.

Shortly after 1800 my Islamic shrine is generating good revenue making a good second money-generating city, but nothing compares to the southern city with all the furs and many cottages, the Church of the Nativity, and Wall St – this city is generating 225 gold per turn with science on 50%!

1878AD took last Chinese city.

1900AD waves of my tanks and gunships are swarming over the English empire, including amphibious assault armies that took London on the first turn of the attack (battleships to soften defenses, artillery firing from transports to soften defenders, marines and tanks attacking from transports) – land% creeping up towards domination victory.

1906AD England only have a small island left, the Malinese are good friends and far behind on all measures, and I achieved domination victory. Base score 6724, final score 37011 in the Hall of Fame view.

An excellent game requiring strategic thinking and creative warwongering. From reading other posts I can see some people achieved domination wins much earlier and other wins with better scores, so am keenly looking for more learning. Looking forward to the next GOTM!

 

[AlanH]

This is the second GoTM I have submitted. Are there any rules on how many times you can start the game over again, because I tried several different starts to get one that I liked.

So I decided to do something unusual in my start, so I spend three turns moving my initial settler east untill I got to a point where I was one square from the pigs, and positioned the rice and the horses within my fat cross.

Moderator Action: Please read the rules of this competition. You are NOT ALLOWED to replay ANY turns, least of all to replay from the start. Your game is disqualified.

 

[Zanthra]

Yes there are: You can't restart. You're only supposed to submit your first attempt at the game.

Hmm... I remember reading the rules before submitting my first GoTM, but I did not recall seeing anything about restarting. I guess that disqualities my game. Such as life. Not as if I was anywhere near winning anything...

Sorry about the mixup, or I should say my error.

I had fun playing the game, and that's what matters to me.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Hmm... I remember reading the rules before submitting my first GoTM, but I did not recall seeing anything about restarting.

IIRC It's covered implicitly by the rule that says you can't replay any turn to change any decisions you made (since by restarting you are in effect replaying every turn you've played)

I guess that disqualities my game. Such as life. Not as if I was anywhere near winning anything...

Sorry about the mixup, or I should say my error.

I had fun playing the game, and that's what matters to me.

Indeed. And you'll know for the next GOTM - see if you can get a victory next time...

 

[EsatP]

The first course - a mistake. Has moved settler NW in forest! The capital is constructed with loss of a wood.
In all cities first barack, next Keshik-Keshik-Keshik-Keshik-Keshik....
More 180 Keshik was constructed and more 100 it is killed...
Result 70+K with conquest in 1350AD.

 

[Spoony]

Sounds like a good game EsatP

Final year at uni means exams next week, so I tried to race through this one. Keshik rush is definately the way I should have gone. No practice games and never playing as this leader before resulted in me not realising the strength of the keshik's only taking one movement over any terrain.

My game concluded in 1615AD for 55k. I settled on the plains hill northwest taking 3 turns before I settled. It turned out ok as I ended up with a GL factory in my capital and I manged to build a lot of wonders. This would have been shrewed if I was playing on a higher difficulty but on noble it was completely unneccessary. Also I didn't think we would all start on the same continent.

Thanks to the staff for another interesting game.

 

[mushroomshirt]

I guess I am in the surprising position of actually submitting what seems like a pretty good game. Domination victory in 1555 with slightly less then 71,000 points.

For the last several GOTMs and in my own games I have been trying to emulate since deluche's fast conquest victory in GOTM 3. It was a really instructive save file for me even though there were no spoilers written.

Anyway for this game I was trying for high score so I went for domination, but I tried to apply some of the lessons from deluche's game which are basically (my interpretation):
1) all war, all the time
2) minimal infrastructure (courthouse, granary, barracks only in almost all cities - deluche skipped the granaries)
3) minimal (or no) wonder builds (I did build heroic/national epics, forbidden palace, and great library and steal a few other wonders)

Luckily for me, Germany founded Confucianism, built the pyramids and Stonehenge (got me a great prophet for the shrine). They were pretty easy prey for the keshiks and axemen I threw at them. I made peace a couple of times to extort tech, but made sure that I always kept their copper cut off.

During the peace with Germany I attacked china first, then japan. My main technique was probably pretty standard - I would send in a two or three keshiks to pillage the copper or iron that they had then hit them with my attack keshiks and swords.

After taking out Germany and severely wounding china and Japan I was comfortably ahead. I attacked with macemen for a while and then switched to knights until the end game.

One really, really good thing is that up until the end game no one had built hanging gardens. I was salivating at the prospect of building that right before winning.

Here's where I made some serious mistakes and why I never got around to milking:
1) I started to pursue military tradition even though my knights were dominant. Wasted a lot of turns I could have been heading for biology.
2) I build too many knights. At the end I had a TON of knights. I should have switched to farming and research for biology sooner.
3) BIGGEST, STUPIDEST mistake is that I stopped conquering when my land percentage was above 60%. A few turns later when the newly conquered cities came out of resistance, I hit the domination limit. I had settlers ready to go, all these wonders including hanging gardens set to be built. Oh well.

Not sure I really have the mindset / patience to be a true milker. Maybe I will try for straight fast victory next time.

edited for a few gramatical mistakes

 

[malekithe]

I managed a 1360 domination victory for a score of around 81,000. I could have been faster, particularly at the beginning when I spent way too much time before getting into hardcore warmonger mode. This was partly because of the amount of space between Mongolian lands and the nearest neighbors and partly because I thought I might have to actually focus some on commerce at some point. As we all found out, though, commerce was strictly optional in this one.

I didn't get the keshiks rolling off the assembly line until close to 500BC. Like everyone else, I conquered Germany first, with their last (of 4) cities falling in ~250AD. It's amazing the difference that a few hundred years at that point in the game can make. A'AA (I hope he's okay with the abbreviation...) got his army out ~500 years prior to me, and met much less resistance. I never encountered a city with fewer than 2 archers, and most had 3-4 or an extra axeman. Thanks to the Keshik's versatilty and manueverability, though, I was able to consistently deprive my victims of metals, but usually still encountered at least 3 spearmen per opponent (except my first two opponents, who only had 2 spearman between the two of them).

The other short-coming was the end of the game. Partly due to how late I was in starting the wars, I had trouble splitting my force to take on two seperate opponents. I also tried to mix in too many additional units. I produced about a dozen catapults that barely saw any action. They just couldn't keep up with the pace of the Keshiks. I produced axemen to follow the Keshiks, garrison cities, and deal with entrenched spearmen, but I found myself waiting on them to catch-up far too often. I even produced about 6-7 war elephants for some unknown reason (though they did notch a couple of kills against Horse archers and Malinese elephants). I probably should have stuck to just keshiks with some archers mixed in solely for garrison purposes.

I also started to fill in the additional territory with settlers later than I should have. I probably could have cut close to 10 turns off my win if I'd just changed from military mode to land-grab mode a little sooner. At the end I had to disband close to 20 Keshiks anyway (to save money). Those should have never been produced, in favor of settlers.

My economy was laughable the whole way through. I hit 0% on the research slider at around 300AD and never moved off of it till the end. This wasn't really by choice, though (I would have liked to have actually gotten to feudalism for vassalage). My treasury was bleeding red the entire game. At one point I was losing close to 100 gpt at 0% research. Fortunately, I was capturing cities at a fast enough pace to keep money in the treasury. I was eventually forced to switch to caste system and run a bunch of merchants to keep everything afloat. That wasn't for too long, though, as I eventually put up a forbidden palace (much later than I should have) and my money troubles went away (swung from -94 to +87, actually!). Overall, though, the money troubles didn't impact the game too much. Sure, vassalage or maybe even engineering would have helped, but I'm not sure they would have sped victory by more than a handful of turns.

If I had played better at the beginning and made better decisions regarding military production, I probably could have pulled off a victory closer to 1100 or so. Any earlier than that would have really been a stretch. Pre 1000 AD would have been nice, but I don't think it was within my abilities. There was just too much land to dominate and the game speed didn't help. I'm sure someone else will pull out a faster domination; probably somewhere around 1100. Faster than that would be very impressive.

I'll also be interested to see what the high score is in this one. It seemed like my score was consistently lower than I expected it to be. I expected closer to 100K for this effort and was a bit surprised by the relatively low value. The only reason I even got to 80K was because of a last-turn Hanging Garden for > 10K points. Given my experience, I'd be pretty impressed with a "milking" game that got over 200K. I think we'll have a small handful reach that threshold this time.