Settle 1S for more hills. This later reveals that I miss the iron, which turns up in an awwkard spot outside all my cities' BFC. Crap.
The capital is barely food adequate, has mediocre potential as a cottage capital but okay hammers. There is a promising bureau capital site to the north with some food, lots of riverside and floodplains, and gold. We have marble nearby but stone is pretty far away (and a barb city appears there long before I can think of settling it). So, do I play the map rather than the leader and begin longterm plans to move my capital? The hell I do.
No, instead I hatch a hare-brained wonderspam strategy centred on building the Pyramids without stone or the Industrious trait. This is wasteful and risky. Don't do this (although it seems that some other players did the same thing
).
However, I am very confident that I have enough space for the cities I need, so delaying settlers to attempt the 'Mids is a calculated risk, and if my plans fall apart then there is always the plan B, the move the capital to the floodplains plan (although I gave the gold to another city).
Asoka annoys everybody on the map merely by existing, and gets attacked by Gilgamesh in 500BC - even though they are the same religion.
In 475 Berlin gets its first piece of infrastructure.
Pyramids without stone or industrious is always a terrible play, just remember that.
Brennus joins in the Asoka-bashing and sets the tone for the rest of the game, pretty much.
The fact that Asoka is everyone's worst enemy (even those of his religion) keeps me safe. I go Hindu along with Justy (and Shaka, as it later turns out), get him to friendly and spam wonders. Everybody else is Buddhist except for Brennus (Judaism). Tech trading is pretty brisk with Justinian, Gilgamesh and Catherine on the map, but the AIs don't seem to trade amongst themselves much. Gilgamesh is cautious forever but since he keeps DoWing Asoka I am safe for now.
I was sort of in the modd for a peaceful game this time around after playing a lot of warlike ones recently, but having Gilgamesh spawn next to me changed my mind. I hate that guy.
1AD snapshot. I added the barb city soon after.
I built a pile of wonders. The capital got 'Mids, Sankore, Great Library, Angkor Wat and Shwedagon Paya. Other cities built the Parthenon, Taj, Sistine Chapel (specifically to give that jerk Gilgamesh a taste of his own medicine and steal his tiles), and even the Mauseleum and Notre Dame! Yep, I was busy.
My hope is to Lib my way to cannon and massacre Gilgamesh, since I'm not overly fond of Gilgamesh. I have found that with settled specialists under rep I can usually win Lib without having to bulb aything, and this game is no different. Unfortunately Catherine messes up my plans by teching Education before I can get Chemistry, so I have to take Military tradition instead. Boo.
A cannon and draft war was more appealing than a mounted one because 1) I failed to unlock the HE from barb hunting making the draft better than conventional war buildup, and 2) Gilgamesh has the Chichen Itza on top of his natural PRO resilience, so cannon would have been nice.
After Lib, I got a little sidetracked, instead of going after Gil. First I went after Economics and surprisingly I won the Great Merchant. Then, upon discovering that there is still plenty of unclaimed land out there, I postpone my war plans since I can expand further peacefully first. My city count rises from 7 to 13 in a short time as I settle a bunch of new cities - two backfill ones on the main continent and a number of overseas colonies. No point in letting anybody else get them, although the costs are pretty crushing until State Property arrives. I manage to win the race to Physics after Justinian traded me Sci Meth.
Meanwhile, everybody has just been fightin relentlessly. Apart from Gil, Brennus and Catherine tag-teaming Asoka in a seemingly endless merry-go-round, Shaka has, of course, been busy as well, DoWing anybody he can reach which means he's been alternating between Brennus and Catherine all game long. Sometimes while he's fighting one of them, the other will join in and dogpile him, but he seems to handle it quite well and even holds onto a few Celtic cities. Gil gets the better of Asoka and eventually caps him after thousands of years of war.
I just expand peacefully some more and mind my own business:
And I end up with more cities than anybody else, and I also unlocked the HE while bringing enlightenment to the local savages and using the for target practice. Better late then never.
There is one little bump in the road though:
Imagine my surprise when a barb HA came charging out of the fog and into my undefended city!
Not to worry, I just recaptured it immediately.
Diversions out of the way, it was time for the main event - it's time to Kill Gil!. I built a load of cannon, drafted riflemen, and got down to business.
Note with pleasure Sumeria's completely crushed borders. The Sistine can be fun.
More importantly, I also invited my good buddy Justinian to join the action.
I was sort of hoping he would provide some sort of distraction for Gil's stack, but he didn't. He did, however, manage to get himself dogpiled by Brennus who was briefly enjoying some respite from the ministrations of Shaka, who in turn was occupied with Catherine again. Shaka then made peace and dogpiled Brennus - yet again.
So there I was kicking the shinola out of Gil in a pretty routine manner, when my wandering Confucian sage noticed something curious and brought it to my attention:
If I didn't know better, I would say that that's a stack of Catherine's troops coming to attack me...
I didn't pay too much attention, as I was busy doing this:
And then:
Yup, apparently I had rebuffed one of Catherine's many impolite demands, and she had decided to punish me for it. Except I had infantry and she sent Grenadiers. So I killed them. And then, amusingly:
Well, that was pretty easy!
I wiped out Gil, then Asoka. I was now on the brink of winning domination, so I moved to attack Brennus, who as you may remember was fighting Justinian and Shaka, but before I could do anything he capitulated to Justinian.
I was in no mood to betray my friend Justinian (who is a sterling fellow, after all), so I started researching down the Mass Media line for the UN.
Incidentally, this has to be the unhappiest city I have ever seen:
48 unhappy. Impressive.
Not much more to report. I built the UN, and that did the job.
into 
than me.
. I quite enjoy culture victories, I must attempt one again soon.
+2
from specialists:
and 2 Great Engineers
), also relating to our previous sentences in this thread 
:
and some 
