I’ve been playing here and there over the last week so a bit sketchy on the details but here’s where I am and here’s (how I think) I got there.
Where I am
I think this is probably won but it's going to be a grind.
25 cities (some marginal) and just started a 12 turn golden age for factory building. The plan is artillery and infantry on the other continent.
How I go there
I used the rest of the golden age to tech feudalism so I could trade engineering for guilds with my good friend Shaka. This allowed me to trade guilds for civil service with Mansa and paper with Ashoka and get to pretty much tech parity (once you ignore the junk the AI techs) while maintaining a monopoly on astro. I switched to bureau at the end of the golden age but otherwise stayed in my civics because I needed to finish off a great person for the next MoM golden age. I also got going on galleons and settlers because there was a lot of land and iron to be had.
I triggered the next golden age teched towards steel and got some nice trades like gunpowder and a couple of 1k techs for nationalism with one city Mansa. I then used nationalism to get printing press from two city Ashoka. The AI tech costs are absurd on deity. I eventually gave up my astro monopoly to get chemistry from WvO and eductation from Ragnar. I gave Shaka chemistry for replaceable parts and then I gave him steel and astronomy for lots of money plus rifling. I could have given him education instead of astronomy because it would have helped him less but I wanted to get him warring ASAP.
My plan had been rifles and cannons on Willem or Ragnar but I decided I didn’t have the production to build and transport an army sufficient to crush either of them given:
- motherland happiness lowered my effective happy cap;
- I had 12 cities but a chunk of those were culture crushed;
- I didn’t have a good globe city (ie lots of food and at least some production to build it) to compensate for lack of cities to draft from;
- Shaka had ineffectually attacked Ragnar so he was in unit production mode and was losing anything given Shaka's stack got wiped out in a couple of turns;
- Willem was teching fast and even if he did Willem things and avoided rifling, he was always going to get the military techs he skipped in trade from a friendly Ragnar or Sal.
Therefore, I decided to grab the two islands and go for communism and then attack somebody when I had more production. The military tech path I'd embarked on was not wasted though as I got some good trades. I was able to trade rifling for the communism prerequesites, plus economics, and got it first. As well as the econcomy salvaging civic, I got most of physics and constitution for communism. I teched steam power and corporation and Shaka gave me most of assembly line for physics.
This is Shaka's stack. It hasn't moved since declaring war on Ragnar, triggering Saladin to declare war on him under a defensive pact. He just had a stack of knights and rifles wiped out. The AIs' naval invasions in this game have been every bit as awful as I've seen it.