My first (semi-)isolated start. Help me please!

[Heavymachinegun]

I got my first diplomatic victory!!! In 1921!!

Spoiler :

I had to reach an impressive +11 with Monty: (only +10 didn't work, don't know why)

Spoiler :

If "cheese victory" means "easy victory", I think it's not so cheesy at all... Expecially if you have few available turns. The diplo points versus the friend civ are very unstable! They can change every turn without notice. And even if you reach +10 at the polling day, it's not sure until the end if the friend will vote for you or will abstain. It's a very "unsure" victory!


@coanda:
Thank you for the saves! One of the main differences (among others) is that you built some wonders, where I didn't. I used to follow a simple three-step strategy:
1) Beeline to Iron Working, gain Iron, build preats, kill as many civs you can.
2) Make peace, improve economy, discover catapults and trabuchets, build many of them.
3) Make war, go for domination victory.
I know, it's very brutal. No wonders, no big economy, etc. but it's very effective on pangea or large continents! Clearly it's not so effective on isolated starts...

I'll try your strategy when I'll have some free time.

 

[Ghpstage]

If Ghpstage ever gives it a shot, his save would be the one you'd want to really dissect. I was rather sloppy (playing with some distractions in the background), and he's just a better player than me too.

i'm not so sure i'm a better player, and it wouldn't matter as I did the same! To be honest, I played like tiger Wodds did in the Ryder Cup, just noone got hurt
You've done a heck of a lot better than me.
The main point of playing that I saw was to highlight how a city with desert tiles isn't necessarily useless, how an early city settled to claim more resources quickly will speed up rush time considerably, and that the 'desert' as the OP called it isn't as bad as it looks.
Unfortunately Hatty failed to found a religion before I attacked (founding it later in a trash city ), and after I took techs for peace I lost interest and decided to troll the AI by building the mids and GLH very late

I'll attach a save a few turns after settling my second city, a turn before war started (Turn 78), end of 1st war (turn 85), 1AD and 760AD.

Playing properly I would have opted for what Mylene mentioned, a capital centric wonder heavy approach looking to use Hatty to trade with and develop the land for me.

If "cheese victory" means "easy victory", I think it's not so cheesy at all... Expecially if you have few available turns. The diplo points versus the friend civ are very unstable! They can change every turn without notice. And even if you reach +10 at the polling day, it's not sure until the end if the friend will vote for you or will abstain. It's a very "unsure" victory!

Later in the game its not that easy, in yours it was the only way to victory and you had a tight time restriction, but if you plan it earlier in the game its incredibly easy (hence cheese) once you understand how the mechanics of it work.