I skipped liberty completely and went honor #1, tradition #1, then filled out the rest of honor. I also relied on piety for a massive puppet empire.
Augustus declared on turn 46 - which was nice. I had planned an archer rush anyway and already had 4 made and purchased/built 3 more. Rome fell on turn 61. I really wanted to get more mileage out of the army before Cho-Ku's but had a hard time navigating the mountain ranges (hadn't completely finished scouting).
Russia asked me to go back to war with Augustus, and since he had 3 more cities and my army was sitting around I accepted. I took one and raised on before making peace.
Meanwhile Harun was building some nice wonders for me - The Hanging Gardens, Chichen Itza, and Machu Picchu. I used Hagia Sophia for a GS to bulb Machinery kind of late - 110. Then it was on. Harun built the Porcelain Tower and Himeji Castle on consecutive turns - the rewards for this conquest were getting sweeter! Harun was the tech leader and bulbed Astronomy with the PT GS. But Hiawatha and Cathy also joined the fight and we made quick work of him.
Unfortunately, Cathy took Kufah (Harun's 2nd to last city) as I was laying seige to Damascas (which had Machu Picchu). I really wanted to keep the guy alive for some future RAs, but not at the price of leaving MP on the table. I did lose my first of the 7 original archers when an unexpected Caravel popped up in Mecca as I was laying siege. I would've brought him back later when I took back some of his other cities from Hiawatha and Cathy but I guess if you are the one to take him out of the game, you never get that option.
Anyway, on turn 159 Harun had left the building never to be seen again.
By this time, my initial warrior (turned LS) was a marching, blitzing, city-sieging freak and many of my Cho-Ku's also had March / Seige. I turned toward Cathy who had a slightly stronger army. Things started well, until out of the blue Hiawatha back-stabbed me and slammed into a Cho-Ku in the woods with a Mowhawk.
Cathy also managed to down a Cho-Ku or 2 with her vile Knights, but I successfully took Moscow on turn 159 before the attack stalled.
I had a Beijing and a bunch of puppets, so I was able to get out the Ironworks and also had been getting a ton of policies. I did Annex Mecca soon after, which was almost as strong a production powerhouse with the HG and all the hills around. I built a Barracks/Armory in each city and the Heroic Epic in Beijing while a round of research agreements came in (thank you Harun for the PT!) and universities were fully-staffed. I slipped in a few builds like the Taj Mahal (thank you Harun for CI!) and Oxford and got dynamite around turn 190.
I had pumped out 3 Heroic Cho-Ku's before Rifling and then started on Cannons. Once artillery came into my hands a massive wave of carnage struck the land. The good kind of carnage! Onondaga fell on 213 and Hiawatha was really the only one close to competing. Thebes fell on 219. Athens on 237 after navigating the narrow mountain ranges. And Genghis who was my game long friend (until Athens fell and he denounced me - guess he knew what was coming!) lost his lone city Karakorum on 242.
Never really had any financial or happiness problems. When I was on the warpath and hit -10, I would annex a previous capital and purchase a courthouse and other happiness buildings if needed. I made it into Autocracy and the +3 happiness per courthouse policy and had scouts (many Heroic scouts
) sitting in each city for the happiness and culture bonus.
per turn under GA. I wanted to see if it's possible to reach a huge empire very soon and manage to keep almost all of them. Well yes it is. Many rant threads focus on the impossibility to achieve this kind of achievement. It's not that hard i think. They maybe just need to work a bit more about their strategies.
). 
