I went on the PH, but not the stone. Yes it is a 3
city tile, but improving the pig is limited by researching AH, thus settling on the stone would actually delay improving the pigs by one turn. I scouted SE with the warrior, so I did not see the northern rice, which actually makes the stone settle much better. I proceeded to mine the stone for a 5
tile, mine a grassland hill, and just build workers and settlers in Beijing for the early game.
I made one relatively big mistake in going AH -> BW, as my economy could not support my production. Getting TW first would have been much better, Pottery before BW would also probably have been better than BW directly. I did not whip anything before granaries anyway and only chopped a few forests, although getting the copper for Shanghai (NW pigs) really helped. I never saw any barb archer with a few warriors to fogbust.
Here I am at T58:
As visible, I could not use my forests yet and Willem settled the NE.
I decided to go for Cuirs, due to the ample land available and thus went into peaceful teching mode. This way greatly helped by everyone except Monty going Hindu and Monty soon attacking Willem. I moved my Capital to Guangzhou, 1N of the sheep. This allowed me to go Caste/Pacifism outside of a golden age, as there was nothing I wanted to build, netting me 3GS, 1GM and one almost finished GP that I earmarked for a GA.
In 1 AD things are fine, although there are few resource trades available and I made a mistake with Chengdu.
The obvious targets for Cuirs are Rammy and Willem, with me favouring Rammy due to the longer border and him being closer to culture.
So I bulbed Philo, double bulbed Education (I traded for Machinery earlier, so no Lib bulbing.), but had to Lib Nationalism, since the Tech pace was quite fast, with all techers being in such a love festival. I did trade rather actively, even giving out MilTrad shortly before my attack for PP, Const, eco, as there was no way this would end on Cuirs. I bribed Mansa (who cancelled being a vassal to Willem after Willem switched religion), on Willem to keep my back clear, later bribing Willem off Mansa as Sury joined in and Monty went after Willem again. I did attack Rammy on T154, and here we are on T155:
I did somewhat underestimate Rammy, as he had lots of cultural defence and I had to wait for reinforcements around Thebes, which is bad when attacking with Cuirs. Attacking one or two turns later would have been better, but that is with hindsight. I left him Giza for keeping the culture on others and trading me some tech. In the around 10 turns to build up and 15 turns to conquer him I went form being up Lib, Gunpowder, MT, sharing PP only with Huayna (he was friendly before switching religions), and few having Constitution to the non Monty rest of the world being close to Assembly line. Also Monty started plotting while in enforeced peace with Willem and stacked on my border.
Meanwhile I made another mistake, as this is one of the few situations where AL before communism would have been good, due to Monty plotting. I did the standard Commu -> AL line and barely had factories up when Monty attacked. (Yes I should have built some Infantries before.) Fortuantely he only had 3 trebs in his massive Rifles/Cavs stack, so I could have let him take a city and suicide his stack on the next, but I did not stop to think and had the genious idea of throwing my cuirs at his rifles (on a hill) to flank all but one treb out, buying me time. This did work, but nonetheless was a terrible idea. He suicided his stack into CG3 Infantry.
I did capitulate him while fighting of Willem (In a four turn war I ended via AP), went for Tanks and ran over Huayna, Willem, Mansa in that order to win domination.
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