I'm thinking I've got a lock on the Wimp of the Week aWard. Luckily,
Erkon is known for squandering his brilliance on snail-paced end-games, but it's clear to me that his REX strategy was better than mine. Pity too, because his BW first is so lame, you can't imagine, especially if you want to REX fast. Obviously, either AH>Agri>BW or Agri>AH>BW is significantly better for REX (and the worker is never idle, btw).
After a some scouting, my plan was to build 2 production cities in addition to my capital, Lowther Castle, one in each direction. By capturing cities, I would gradually add production sites without overrunning my budget with too many cities. So far, so good.
When neither horses nor copper showed I was Royalled. I had already missed my chance for the better REX that
Erkon did, plus I didn't fancy the idea of facing JC's praets so I went for an archer rush...first time in my life.
Sent my first stack to JC, since he had the closest resources. But when my stack of 12 archers arrived at Rome, he was having a unit orgy, so I decided to make another settler and just settler near a four-legged furry. So I captured the two appropriate cities, kept the one with a resource, razed the other, which was stupidly located and settled my hooves.
After finishing off JC, then I took out Mao.
Four AIs left. My plan was to conquer the farthest two first, to keep my finances and WW manageable, while enabling me to finish faster. I had a good stack prepared, but then changed my mind and decided to attack one of the nearer neighbors first. A turn or two before I was to DoW, the chump finished the Oracle and happened to be the only Cretan who had already researched Monarchy. Yup. Longbows all over that empire...So I went back to the original plan and sent the army toward the farther empire.
Meanwhile, I was building another stack for the other farther empire. This second one became the first one I Dowed for certain reasons and as of 500 AD, it's about 10 turns from extinction.
Now, my brilliant plan used the stop-research-early approach, so I didn't research Alpha, I GSed maths kind of late, and started Construction at 0% with my only 2 available scientists in Lowther Castle. So at 500 AD, I aint got squat, and it's not looking too quaint. But that's partly because the 2nd GS I popped wasn't useful for Alpha, as I had thought, but instead for Compas!?! Another brain fart. My third brain fart was to capture some distant cities, poprush to death, gift back and then re-capture, thinking I could then raze them. Beeeeep. Nope. Not an option.
I was at least lucky enough that the Cretan with the LBMs also researched Alpha, so I got IW from him. Because he was so nice (but mostly because he's got LBMs), I'll save him for last.
Oh well, I guess the aWard will be well-deserved.
. From there I just went along and don't remember where i was in 500 AD.
First research AH. No horses within 30+ tiles of Berlin 
And no copper either! Where is plan B....
.
Right.
But just to get this straight LC, when did you settle city two and three? I can imagine that others settled city two before me, but I wanted to have a worker available to mine the gold at once.
). Then I took fishing since since I had enough military units and Munich had to build something (work boat). Then pottery for granary in Berlin and Munich. It's better to build granary early than building farms...
so it's only a theory.
) and maybe even researched CS so he may be able to finish quite fast from 500 AD. It will be interesting to see if he can make up for all the time invested in building a strong core of cities.
), 
