Hi all, I've lurked in the GOTM forums for a while now... about 6 months. Basically, after playing on my own and happily reloading like a maniac (at deity though, but still, it's a lot easier when you win every battle...), I decided in march (I think) to play honestly. So, I decided back then to play all the GOTM's. First, I played the Indians at warlord, then all the regent and then monarch games. For emperor level, I thought what the heck, let's play for real this time. I mean play this month's emperor game and submit. Well, I'm very happy about my result: domination in 410 AD for a score of (am I not supposed to say this?) about 9300. The only sad thing is that I never saw a single samurai. Even though a saw more than enough the last time I played against those damn japanese. Here's a breakdown of my game:
Started one step north of the starting spot. Popped a hut and wow, settler! Settler moves north and wait a minute, the chinese are sighted and we settle a little to the south. Anyway, I figure at emperor I have no chance for an early warrior attack so I decided to found some cities. After one more city, I realise that I've basically ran out of space. So, I built two barracks and then 10-12 warriors, all waiting to be upgraded, if I have any iron, of course. In the meantime, the french declare war on me (for not giving them 25 gp). And then desease strikes, I lose 2 pop points and my almost finished settler is converted into a temple. There goes my early advantage. Btw, I think the chinese also got a free settler. Anyway, things were not looking good (and could have looked even worse if the stupid french had decided to attack me instead of going for the pyramids...)
Anyway, I get iron working, I have some iron! I call the french and they give me peace and some gold, youppi! And then a chinese city flips to me, another yippi! So, my stack of 6-7 swordsmen quickly capture beijing, I make peace, upgrade some more warriors and then capture more chinese cities. By then the chinese have one city and I'm bigger than France. However, they have very good lands. Their only weakness is that after building the pyramids, they're now building two wonders! What a waste when 15 swordmen are massing at your border... No human would be so dumb.
Anyway, the persians complete one wonder, Paris' shields go to waste and I invade. But, at the last second (move...) a settler hops on a boat and heads north-west.
So I had to ferry my swordmen to that damn island, capture their new city and ferry them back. That was the most costly "mistake" of the game.
By then I have contact with the other guys and have started my forbidden palace in beijing. At first, when I started the fp, I thought the "other" continent would be huge. I guess I'm used to large maps (anyone remember the greeks gotm?). So I had in mind to have my fp on my starting continent and then move my capital to the other (captured) continent. When I saw the whole map, I quickly realized that this game would be over pretty quickly if I just map tons of swordmen and horsemen. Well, that's what I did but with a little twist.
In my game, the persians had no iron, only the germans and romans did. Plus, the germans iron wasn't connected to their capital (I think anyway). So, I decided to conquer the persians (and then finish with the germans). The obvious choice tactically would have been the romans because they were closer but I didn't want to fight their 3 def legions with my 3att swordmen. I've read that a lot of people had to fight the romans. Ouch. I hit domination in 400-410 AD (can't remember exactly). Thanks for reading and good luck.
Beijing was size 23 and I hammered it to size 1. 
