Also got this one done early. Fortunately I was able to solve my Great Wall problem without too much effort: I did not have to go back two auto-saves, but only one: I noticed that at the beginning of the turn that had triggered the crash, I still had two horses within reach of one of the threatened towns and I did not yet own the second threatened town: I got it in a peace treaty from France during the turn... So I just had to replay the current turn with two small modifications: send those horses into the empty town instead of towards the front (the barb Impi then did not attack the protected town) and obtain a different town in the peace treaty from France
From then on I had no more problems with the Great Wall, only a small "hickup" later on: upon settling a town somewhere in the void west, a barb horse at distance 2 was revealed, and I immediately had to disband the town again, as no military unit was within reach. That was the "most short-lived town" in my entire Civ career...
When I got Map Making and traded maps with all known contacts, I noticed that our main continent had enough tiles for Domination, so I never built many galleys (only a few to settle the small island north of Zululand and to get settlers faster into the void west) and consequently never met the Persians... (I can't remember many games of mine that finished before I had all contacts...
) But as I sticked with horsemen for the rest of the game and never planned on using knights, missing out a scientific civ did not matter much to me.
As probably everyone else, I had a very early war against Korea, as I needed their territory... (One of their towns even was at the perfect distance for my second ring...
) That war went on, while I was still busy setting up my core. Afterwards the remaining troops from the Korean war (and reinforcements from the core) went on to France, where they captured the Pyramids (and the notorious Great Wall
) in Paris (using a RoP Rape), and more importantly gained my first and only MGL of the game. It was hurried back to Seoul to rush the Forbidden Palace there.
Shortly afterwards my first ring was up to size (thanks to worker joins), and I started the GA with a timely Impi-victory. During the GA, Zimbabwe and another first-ring city made 30spt, while Seoul and 7 more cities could be brought up to 20spt (or 21-23spt, I didn't care too much as long as it was at least 20...) In those cities I cash-rushed a worker for 80g and then finished a horseman in one turn. Also there were a few second-ring cities (as well as first-ring around Seoul) that were able to produce 10spt or even 15spt, so on average I was producing around 15 horses per turn during my GA. These were first sent to France to finish them off quickly, and then a second army was formed, which rolled northward through India, Scandinavia and Russia, while the remains of the French war took care of England. Russia and Scandinavia had beaten on each other for centuries, and also I had formented a few early wars between India - England, India - Scandinavia and France - England, so my forces did not meet much resistance, when they arrived there...
Then in the final turns joining captured slaves to size-1 towns and cash-rushing settlers to fill the gaps in conquered territory finally pushed me over the Dom limit in 380 AD - just a couple of turns after the GA ended, so I guess that worked out ok (or perhaps I could even have started the GA a little earlier?!) I think for this phase it pays off to invest early into the "cash-producing" infrastructure. Marketplace in all core cities are a must, and I also hand-built The Colossus and The Hanging Gardens in order to generate more cash. (That also help with getting 1-turn horses in all those 20spt cities.)
I liked the map a lot, especially the fact that it was so "straight-forward". For once there was no need to use heavy ship-chaining (
), which greatly reduced the "real time" required to play this game. I think I needed less than 20h (game time says "34:06:55", but I played this partly on my netbook, where I simply close the lid when done playing, so the game keeps running in sleep modus). So for once I was able to submit way ahead of time. (Alan and Piú will be glad to receive no last-minute requests from me this time...
)