1800s Space Victory
Just after 1 AD, I had 5 self-settled Cities and Munich, captured from the Germans, to my name.
The island start was really slow and although I FELT like I'd expanded quickly, reviewing my progress now clearly shows otherwise.
My offensive army was only 10-units large at that point, including Swordsmen, Axemen, Spearmen, and Catapults.
I had settled southward, following the River, settling by 2 Gold Resources, with the other 3 Cities on our starting island.
I had my Academy and The Great Lighthouse, but nothing else special by that point in time.
Alex joined the war with me, cementing our alliance.
I hadn't managed to find a Horse Resource ("There are no Horses on your island" let me to avoiding Animal Husbandry for a while such that I didn't think to research it just to find exactly where the Horse Resources were located), but Iron was good enough given how the Germans didn't have their Iron within their Cultural Borders.
By 450 AD, the Germans had been eliminated and I was up to 10 Cities, one of them having Culture-flipped from Huayna (the Christian Holy City, which was just across of the water from our starting island, but he was Jewish).
Meanwhile, Huayna had been hording the Wonders, the Religions, and the techs, being several techs ahead of me and not liking me enough to trade techs, as I was running Hinduism as my State Religion (along with Alex), even though Huayna had founded Hinduism himself.
Victoria was the next target, as Huayna already had Longbowmen and Alex was well-equipped military-wise, with mostly Chariots, Horse Archers, and Catapults, then later War Elephants, showing up on the scene. In fact, I don't recall seeing any Phalanx having been built by Alex, whereas in my game, Hatty (I) didn't build any War Chariots.
As I was gutting the far eastern edge of Victoria's empire, Huayna took it upon himself to be opportunitistic and declared war on me. Okay, fine, I lose a border City right away, not a big deal, I can start sending my troops to the west. Oh, my, the second turn and third turn of war showed stacks of 15+ Military Units bearing down on my Cities which had either an Archer or a Spearman defender. It was time to get serious about whipping and the war and Victoria was spared so that I could focus fully on Huayna.
It didn't help that I had JUST traded away my tech advantage to Alex the turn prior to the war with Huayna... can an AI actually watch for such a condition?
My economy was in trouble, too, as it had only been City Capture Gold keeping me afloat. Losing a few border Cities to Huayna actually eased the economic pressure.
Huayna is a sneaky bugger, too. He builds Combat I Quechuas and then upgrades them to Combat I Macemen, so that he can pump out a large army in a short period of time, given how the AIs get a significant discount to the cost of upgrading their Military Units.
I had War Elephants, but Huayna did not, as I'd gotten them in my first City capture (Munich) and my Culture had held on to them, despite Huayna's nearby Culture. I lost the City temporarily, but not until after Huayna had Pillaged the Ivory, haha.
Still, stacks of Horse Archers, Combat I Macemen that then got 2 more Promotions (Vassalage, Theocracy with well-spread Judaism, and Barracks for Huayna), Catapults, and Longbowmen, coming in reasonably-large waves, made for some harrowing times.
Fortunately, I'd given Alex Tribute sometime shortly before the war, so Alex was Friendly toward me (instead of plotting to kill me). Of course, while I was busy warring, Alex nabbed Liberalism, grabbing Divine Right (sigh), and then he decided to switch into Free Religion, which he never switched out of for the rest of the game (ugh, no Altered Gameplay from the [mostly] "Unaltered Gameplay" BUFFY Mod to help out here--once he started running his Favourite Civic of Hereditary Rule, there was switching his mind on other Civics).
With Alex going down to Pleased toward me, he'd be willing to accept a stack of techs from Huayna for war against me, which would have certainly spelled the end of the game for me. So, I splurged my cash reserves plus the 1 tech that I had up on Alex (Drama) to get him to declare war on Huayna.
It took a concerted effort, but I was able to stem the tide of Huayna's Military Units and I even took back 2 of the 3 captured Cities plus one of Huayna's Cities. But, then my war effort stalled until Alex's forces arrived.
Alex's help was welcome, but also dangerous, as he had large stacks... looking at some of the saved games, I see a stack of 12 Military Units with mixed Maces, War Elephants, Catapults, and a Crossbowman, and there were multiple such stacks. It took a lot of effort keeping an eye on Alex's troops and balancing where I deployed my troops, in order to prevent Alex from capturing any of Huayna's Cities.
As of 1500 AD, I was just stacking up Gold reserves while waiting on teching Astronomy, and I had stacks of War Elephants, Cats, and some other mixed Military Units facing off against tech parity from Huayna, but there were 5 of Huayna's Cities still yet to be captured, with Alex having War Elephants, Maces, Cats, Musketmen, and Knights roading in Huayna's territory.
By the time that I was safely able to grab the last of Huayna's Cities that I wanted to keep, Alex has Grenadiers and Riflemen on the scene!
Fortunately, a Friendly Alex meant that I could trade techs with him, and he became quite a useful tech-trading partner, getting me such techs as:
Gunpowder, Chemistry, Guilds, Banking, Economics, Constitution, Corporation, Replaceable Parts, Rifling, Steel, Railroad, Combustion, and 1 turn saved on teching Artillery.
Alex had captured 2 Barb Cities, one in each of the far corners of the map (he was in the NE, with the Barb Cities in the SE and the SW). With a Culture Bomb in the SW one, his Cultural Borders helped with me staying away from the Domination Land Limit, along with me having to slowly gift Cities back to Huayna.
There was a crisis moment when Alex raised Victoria's remaining City and I shot up to less than 0.5% being away from passing the Domination Land Limit. Fortunately, I'd built an extra Settler which I had fortified close enough and I resettled that City and gifted it to Huayna; doing so bought me enough time to gift him more Cities to avoid triggering Domination.
The end game wasn't special, as I had to rush through it just to meet the submission deadline. Berlin had Ironworks and I used a couple of Cities that still had Forests to Chop out the last of the Docking Bay and the Life Support Spaceship Parts.
I finished the last Spaceship Part 1 turn after the end of my 4th Golden Age.
My Wallstreet-enhanced Hindu Shrine was worth 51 base Gold at the end of the game.
Thanks for a unique and fun challenge! The Small Map Size meant that the game didn't drag out tediously, but it was still challenging non-the-less. The starting island provided us a safe haven, but also wasn't enough area to win the game, so one had to be willing to venture forth and make one's presence known in the rest of the world in order to stand a realistic chance of victory; without the gift of War Chariots, it wasn't an easy task, but it was certainly an enjoyable one to play through!
