Ok, so i recently upgraded to regent, the level before monarch and am doing very well in it, usually scoring 1st, sometimes 2nd, i'd like to always be first before i try to move up.
I started as china on a small continent with india, i had all grassland and hills, one mountain, and no iron, so i had to kill india if i wanted to compete, i did so quickly with an archer rush, i settled the whole continent within about 20 turns. i then churned out workers and suicidal galleys, the workers made sure every tile had a road, and improvement (grasslands hills, mountains=mine plains, desert=irrigation had no tundra but i put forests down on that).
within 30 turns one of my galleys made it to the main continent which had everyone other than india and myself (india's dead anyways tho
) i buy several techs, sell construction, republic, and mathematics.
in the mid middle ages i find that i have no saltpeter, i found an island only 3 tiles away from my continent that had alot of nice teritory, 1 wheat tile and 1 game tile, a nice sized lake and some of the saltpeter i need! well, on my way there, japan ( neck and neck with persia for 2nd, behind me
) gets a settler set up on MY saltpeter! i quickly turn persia on japan, persia takes several good japanese citys right after the expansion age ends, which from japan never recovered (dont worry, persia gets their reward too >
) i got my saltpeter, and i was all fine and dandy for about 40 turns.
Then things got dull, i was pulling ahead of japan and persia was staying about 40 points behind me at all times. so i decided to stir things up a bit on the main continent, i got zululand (4th place slightly behind japan) to attack rome ( last ) in the end i flexed my naval muscle by blockaiding all of the roman penninsula, i destroyed a dozen roman galleys and galleons trying to escape with settlers or military forces bound for my continent, i took 2 roman 12 population citys and kept them, because by then rome was nearly dead, the zulu took rome and 3 other citys, the greeks took one, and the opratunistic persians took out a colonial city near their coast, rome was gone, the world was at peace.
As the times went on many small wars came up, one that i took interest in was with egypt (last place other than rome and india who were in downward spirals), the greeks and zulu were attacking the egyptians, for what reason i dont know, but the egyptians were weak, and they had rubber that i needed, i swooped in with 2 galleons, 3 calvery, 4 infantry and a settler. i easily took out the closest city and put down my own on the rubber, now i didnt have to trade for zulu rubber, this isnt my last recorce problem.
So things go well till i reaserch combustion , i see that there are 3 oils, one is in a persian colony far in the north, if i go to war the zulu will undoubtedly take this, one belongs to the zulu, who i really didnt want to attack (they were within one turn striking distance of my rubber) and one was in the heart of persian territory, i decided to take the one in persian territory, i sent 8 galleons full of infantry ( 32 ) straight into the middle of the gulf of persia as i call it (admit it, you name landfeatures in your games too
) i unloaded and xeres declared war, i took his capitol and blockaided his citys, i lost 12 infantry in the initial assult, several of my infantry were ambushed while unloading so i had 18 infantry left, i rushed a settler in perseopolis and placed it on the oil, the zulu did as i predicted, they attacked persia, i signed an official alliance with him and gave him MPP and ROP, greece joined us in destroying persia, within serveral turns persia was in shambles, the zulu had almost doubled in size (the zulu were at a crossroads in a geological standpoint, every country had to pass thru his territory to get to eachother so i predicted he'd come out on top of the main continent).
i got another city up for wines, fortunatly when i reaserched rocketry i found that alunimum was right next to the new city for wines i had founded, then i found that uranim was next to one of the two roman citys i owned, i sold perseopolis back to the persians for about 1300 gold, the zulu took it in less than 3 turns, the persians were eliminated by 2000, in the year 2004 i had about 1450 points, 60k culture total, the biggest military, the highest GPT (135) at least one of every luxury ( another oil spawned right under the former indian capitol)
My closest competetor was the zulu, at 650 points, and a gpt of somewhere around 10GPT and a military that's 90% outdated (most are just ending the industrial age when i'm near the middle of modern times) their military is sheer numbers is more than 3x what i have, but it's mostly riflemen and calvary, while i have MI and MA.
i then tried a new tactic on the greeks, i dropped a culture bomb, i set down a city and hurried every upgrade building with any cultural value, i turned half of their citys and several zulu citys before it got close to the capitol and stopped working. in 2047 i won by 100k culture, and was 8% under what i needed for teritory win, after that i think i should definatly move on to monarch
EDIT oh i forgot to add to the industrial age: i was EXTREMELY lucky with coal, i was one of 2 with coal (greeks had a small island with some) and i was the only one with excess coal, i had 5 tiles of it
