Early on I see Asoka left of me, and since all other AI I met at that point turned up to be warmongers and I was a bit fed up with warfare (been practicing that my last few games) I decide to not attack Asoka and use him as a shield. Maybe go for a cultural victory or something as I have not tried winning culture yet on monarch. I expand peacefully south and west :
The mass mountains were a strange sight, but some spots were still nice for cities. In the placement I cover chock points in case I get into a defensive war later, come to think of it these mountains are perfect for that. They are my big fat natural castle.
Having met asoka in my last 3-4 games, I know he will be annoying by tech leading and garbing all my wonders. Not this time buddy!
Check the "490 gold" on top of the screen. I beat him to haegia by 10 hammers (if only AI could feel pain!) and a few others by very close too. I had no marble and was tech late (he got oracle and i am guessing was lucky with huts too) so I had to use engineers to rush a couple of marble wonders. He still got the library and whatitsname, but no biggie.
He spread hindouism to ALL AI except hannibal and the koreans. So hell, I'll steal the apostle palace with my other engineer.
Check top, he had 290 hammers into the apostle. Engineers FTW.
I keep making wonders and seeing hammers turn into gold.
I come close to an apostle victory a few times, always missing a couple of points to get someone to friendly. It seems they won't vote for you even if they are 8+, they need to be friendly. A win here could have been cool, 666 votes needed :
At some point Asoka takes #1 score position from me and start getting an annoying 2-3 techs lead. He does the incredible stupid move of dropping hindouism for free religion, and I bribe to get a war started between him and Shaka!
At that point Shaka had vassaled the weak koreans and hannibal, so it was the perfect attack dog. Bismark sides with Asoka (as planned) and the two sides were evenly matched. I keep feeding techs to the losing side (knights, gunpowder, etc) to keep the conflict balanced and not create a superpower that would be hard to stop later. At that point I have a defensive force and enough barracks and decent production to make a decent army fast if needed, but I won't have to since the side effect of going apostle victory (even if no luck with it) was that I had a firm grip on the diplomatic situation.
The war goes on for a while, and I manage to get my cultural victory. My little multiple GP farm experiment gave decent results too, I got 17 great persons : 6 artists, 4 engineers, 4 prophets, 3 scientists.
The end screens, Production :
Notice the 53 farms but only 27 towns. I was surprised to still having the best economy, and by far :
My empire :
Asoka got thrashed at the wonder game :
Little secret : I put enough EP on Asoka to be able to see what he is researching, then I raced him to it and built the wonders he was going for. Espionage seems his weak point in general.
The 3 legendary cities (which also happen to be GP farms) :
Culture slider was at 100% yet I was somewhat up to date on tech (kthx GP economy) :
Notice how all 3 cities are synchronized. I was getting a GP from each of them, alternating.
And yes I could have made more GP with more farms instead of the few cottages I made, but keep in mind I was keeping all 3 cities under a precise ratio so that they all generate great persons and none fall behind.