Shaka brooded on his throne in Ulundi. No one could see past his grass-wreathed bald head and vicious spearfighting vanguard. Everyone considered him little more than a warlord, little better than... than Genghis Khan. Shaka would show them. He would turn the Zulu nation into a shining beacon of culture. Shaka had the heart of a poet. Admittedly, it was in a glass case next to the hands of a sculptor and the scalp of a criminal, but that was a minor detail...
I started the round by hitting Hannibal up for a long-delayed military tech:
Hannibal is not to be trusted, but Mathematics isn't a gamebreaking military tech. And it's hardly a monopoly anymore.
I also negotiated with Saladin for the finer points of written language:
So the Zulu tongue uses the Arab alphabet. I wonder how that looks on paper. Anyway, this will allow us to trade with anyone we feel like trading with, which is always a good thing.
In 320 B.C., our German brothers of the faith enlisted us in a crusade against the heathen Russians:
I always feel a little bit nervous going up against Stalin. He is... intimidating. But, then, Shaka wasn't exactly a limp-wristed milquetoast, either, so bring it, Russkie! It was a fake war, anyway, which was eventually called off.
I even traded Mathematics to our future victims:
I needed Polytheism to start on the Parthenon in Memphis. And Archery is just one of those backfill techs that I had to grab eventually. So what if Mansa gets Catapults? They're more of an offensive unit than defensive, anyway. Hannibal, bellicose halfwit that he is, demanded Polytheism in tribute. I rolled my eyes and gave it to him. He's lucky that his territory is useless to me.
In 260 B.C., my Scouts discovered the fate of India:
Babylonia!? Wow. This is the new Southeast Asian Hatshepsut! Oh, and France apparently fell. Probably for the best. de Gaulle is kind of a jerk. Paris is currently in Roman hands. Looks like the Praetorians finally saw some use.
We received the Sports League quest:
I forget- Is that worth it? Given the tight nature of this map, I don't think we'll have much competition for it, but I don't want to build 11 near-useless buildings if I don't have to.
Drama bought us a boatload of religious techs:
I dialed up Monotheism and set about building Monasteries and Temples.
Memphis and Thebes finished up their World Wonders:
Those are decent starts to building our former Egyptian sites up as cultural powerhouses. I still don't have Timbuktu, but I'm building up a force of Catapults and Elephants to make that happen.
I finished up Currency and ended the round. Here's a look at Eurasia as I know it:
Suleiman is doing a heck of a job curtailing Persia's expansionistic tendencies, and Babylon, with a foothold in India, seems to be turning into quite a power. Sadly, religious differences with Moscow and Constantinople prevent me from checking out Europe.
Here's our quaint little empire:
I barely beat Saladin to the second Madagascar site.
The incredibly complicated Diplomacy screen:
And a representative sampling of the Tech screen:
We're not ahead, we're not behind. We're just... different. Our tech path is pretty divergent from everyone else's.
So we have a couple of Elephants and a couple of Catapults waiting to descend upon the Malinesian nation, but they're not enough. I only have Ulundi seriously building units. I think I've focused overmuch on infrastructure.
Thoughts?
The save:
to be a military threat. 
and +4 
. GAs are pretty sweet, and the bonus happy from the cols might come in handy since you won't have the world spanning empire necessary to grab all the 
