Babylon is a fun civilization to play to the end because of the constant challanges of new aggressive civ's spawning near you. Monarch mode, latest patch.
My starting plan was to get early cottages up at Babylon to make full use of the fact that Babylon start very early and floodplains is good for it.
Not get too many cities too not get the sience costs and city costs too high.
Founded Babylon on spot building a barracks and teching hunting -> archery, I didnt have any usefull workertechs so no use building a worker first. Build 3 bowmen and use them to capture Dehli, which would be my great people farm later. I was lucky Dehli only had 2 warriors, they have decided to build settler and new city too south east instead and was no problem for my three bowmen. I decided to raze the other indian city to not get behind in the sience race to Great Wall.
After the 3 archers I build 2 workers and researched pottery, mining, BW, Masonry, Animal Husbandry, to improve Babylon where I whipped a granery, before I started to build spears to prepare for Persia.
After that I teched Writing, Math...
Disbanded Sur and Shusha when they flipped.
When Persia spawned I realise I couldn't take their cities, spears cannot beat fortified archers, so I realised I need catapults for it. Persia declared war on me and we had a long fight, where I sat with spears outside Parsa before the catapults arrived.
It cannot be emphazied strongly enough how important it is to get greatwall as soon as possible, because of all the horse archers coming from Sammarkand.
In Dehli I built a library when I got writing and started to get 2 sientists to get an academy in Babylon, before I started hiring priests there to get Shrines.
Now it was soon time for Arabia and Parsa and Babylon started to build elephants and catapults to meet the camelarchers.
One strange thing happened in my game, christianity was founded in Yerusalihm, which was an independent city for quite long. That doesn't happen often. But of course was great for me.
With the elephants and cats I took Yerusalihm and a workboat get contact with Cartage. Before Arabia spawns I moved home all troops to Babylon and let they have Yerusahlim when they spawned.
It is very important to never ever refuse a flip, because then most of your army will go to the enemies and join the liberation war. It's better to wait 5 turns after liberation and then attack them. (I don't use the exploit to kill them when they spawned before they have founded their first city and you want the Religion in Mecca anyway).
The war was surprisingly easy, elephants are good against camel archers.
I only kept Yerusahlim and Mecca.
Timely enough Egypt collapsed and I attacked and kept Niwit-Rist and Per-Wadjet (a misstake Athens culture made the city useless).
One big problem was stabiliy, I never got anything better than unstable/collapsing. It was the economic stability rating that kept me down, must have been because of low amount of resources traded as I had nearly everything. Parsa liberated 2 times, it's easy to get back but you loose all building which is annoying. For that reason I kept most of my troops in Babylon. Per-Wadjet also liberated but I didnt take it back.
Soon it is time for Turkey, luckily Yerusalihm is outside their spawning place, so no cities will flipp. And I decided not to attack them, they were too strong for it anyway. They haven't declared war on me yet and a strong Greece in Constantinopel keeps them weak.
Rome and Cartage collapsed early, but Greece is going very strong. But wil probably collapse soon, I have 4 galleys ready in Yerusahlim to take Athens if it happens.
In 1400 a surprisingly strong Ethiopia declared war on me (China also declared war, but they cant get to me). My elephants had to go there, I didnt have enough catapults to try to take any cities. But an AI stupidity which attacked my elephant stack with 10 horse archer outside their capital, reduced their army and i can probably have peace soon.
Teachwise Greece is way ahead, but Im on par with the rest of the europeans. I missed liberalism with 3 turns in 1530, maybe too japan?! I don't have optics either.
I got all 5 shrines in 1500, before I had any Shrines my sience was down too 10%, but now it's up too 50% at least. I built two more cities in southern India in 1500, which costs 20 g/turn for every new city. Is it always that high??
I will try to get any other city, except Athens if they collapse. Im abit production short for a spacerace, but very good tech-cities and highly specialised. The worst thing that can happen is that India/Persia/Arabia/Egypt respawns, which they probably will. That's the only real obstacle I see towards a spaceracevictory. I dont need Egypt, but if anyone else respawn I'll have to get the cities back.
Im at 1555 now, so I haven't finished the game yet. Babylon is most exciting before 1500 anyway. And there are lots of different starting tactics. Perhaps Another Pacifist has another starting plan for his Babylon spacerace?!
)
For Turkey it's so easy to expand either west or east, west being probably more productive (Persia has maybe 2 good cities while Germany and France have 4 good cities). Stability-wise I think Europe is worse for Turkey--I didn't have a single revolt since I was solid all the time.
