Settle in place. Build workboats, tech Bronze Working.
Mean neighbourhood. Murderous Monty to the south. Charles De Backstab and Sitting Bastard on the mainland. Shifty Sal and Freddy Dogpiler to the NW. Need a roadkill - show 'em I mean business. Monty is nearest and has a holy city.
Copper in terrible spot. Settle a junk city? No, too slow. AI is weakest early, during initial expansion. Plus I need to get wonders built soon, so the quicker I get this war done, the better.
Random event: archers get combat1. Archer rush? Too weak on their own, but horses have appeared to the south and Horseback Riding can be done as my settler arrives.
York settled on the horses, while workers build road and London spams archers. Chop/whip horse archers. Rush Monty. Suicide cover-promoted archers to weaken his defenders; HAs finish the job.
HAs go exploring and manage to capture four (!) nicely placed (!!) barb cities, which grab all the territory I'll need for the time being, and a quite remarkable range of resources.
Oracle for Code of Laws, Pyramids for Representation, GS lightbulbs Philosophy - the old ways are often the best. Settle island near former-Montyland to grab marble.
Charles and SB have the mainland to themselves, and will become very powerful if they ever start to co-operate. I could invade SB, but that's too big a war, and risks letting Charles become too strong. They don't like each other atm, so I bribe Charles to attack (twice). Now they'll hate each other forever. Sorted.
Thinking about culture cities. My capital and Monty's ex-capital will be perfect, but I will need a third. Weakling Freddy's capital looks ideal. And he's settling those islands to the west - all that seafood could be very handy later on...
Golden Age with unwanted GPs, run Caste/Pacifism and as many Artists as I can in my two culture cities. Save the resulting Great Artists to kickstart Berlin. Spreading my four religions (three of which I have shrines for, thanks to low-odds Prophet pops), and building up for war.
Conquer Freddy's mainland cities in no time. I vassalise him, partly so I can have his seafood later on, and partly to make me look more threatening to the others. Saladin loves me, so I can move the whole army to my chokepoint city on the mainland, next to the isthmus. SB won't be coming through that lot in a hurry, and Charles can't reach me at all. I am secure.
Proceed with Operation Templespam. Religions are spread, Temples are built in all non-culture cities, Cathedrals in the big three (Berlin gets the Hermitage too). Workshops, farms and mines are the order of the day.
Four tech-targets: Liberalism (Free Speech), Economics (free Great Merchant), Biology (+1
from farms), Medicine (Sid's Sushi), in that order.
AI civs are teching so slowly I end up selling them twice as many techs as they research themselves, and still maintain a big lead despite runnning a hammer-heavy economy.
Once enough Cathedrals are up and running, I give the Artists free rein in my culture cities. Earlier Great Artists were settled, but now I start to bomb them. Biology gives a big boost, but more to my overall economy than to the culture cities.
Cities are settled wherever necessary to pick up more seafood. The desert city I took from Monty (the one several of you guys razed) is the better of my two non-culture shrine cities, so it gets workshopped up in preparation for the mighty Sushi Corps.
After the GM I saved from Economics has done his work, I quickly blast out three executives and send them to my culture-cities. The Sushi city then gets Wall Street built to cover costs. I beg, buy and bully every seafood and rice resource I can from the AI.
With the help of the massive food and culture from the corporation (20
and 85
iirc), all three culture cities are soon generating more than 1000
each.
Victory comes in 1738, for a 54k score. Not bad, given it's so long since my last culture game. But I made a few glaring errors - for example, London went most of the game without a Granary (so careless!). And I reckon I could've shaved off at least 100 years if I'd planned things better, cut a few corners, taken more risks, and micromanaged a little more thoroughly.
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