Nobles' Club 374: Willem van Oranje of the Netherlands

[sampsa]

Willem seems like a good fit for a long-term builder personality. If you get to the top in land and have quality cities with water (coast, lakes, or river), you can tech using cottages, use Golden Ages to get Steam Power fast, build dikes everwhere, get Three Gorges Dam and Internet and even maybe Mining Inc, and then you win Space (at any difficulty). Almost seems OP.

Any leader will win the game if you can set up a solid core. I don't think there is anything especially OP about Willem...

 

[notslin]

Any leader will win the game if you can set up a solid core. I don't think there is anything especially OP about Willem...

I feel like dikes work well for a beginner play style.

I know experienced players disagree. I watched Henrik's video where he put dikes at A tier not S tier in his unique building tier list.

I do have gaps in my knowledge -- e.g., I don't know how to use workshops or communism -- so I favor certain techniques that "feel" simple.

And dikes "feel" simple. Here's why:

• Coast is more common than riverside.
• I guess for AI, you might see 25% river cities and 60% coastal/river/lake cities. (They often settle a tile from the river.)
• With creative, I guess you could settle 30% river and 60% coastal/river/lake.
• Either way, you can build ~2x as many dikes as levees.

That 2x is just a guess. But I think a city with a dike often jumps a tier higher (e.g. from C tier to B tier), so it feels like a couple extra cities of value.

Now the general path is easy:

Preconditions:

• You're playing as Willem.
• You have an early land advantage.
• You did lots of micro to avoid falling too far behind in tech.
• You're somehow able to get Replaceable Parts and Chemistry at about the same time as AI.
• You don't want to do another war, which would require cannons, cuirs, or rifles.

Now here's the Dike -> Factory -> Three Gorges Dam -> Internet -> Superconductors -> Apollo Project beeline:

• Tech Steam Power using a golden age.
  • You can probably trade for Education to build Oxford before the golden age for more beakers.
• Build dikes everywhere. The dikes will complete as your golden age finishes, so your production will stay strong.
  • If you can, trade for: Economics -> Nationalism -> Constitution -> Corporation. (Obviously, do civic switches with golden age.)
  • You may hit WFYABTA, but you may still be able to do a bit of trading (e.g. if you have a vassal, discover a new continent, etc.).
• Tech Assembly Line.
  • If you can, trade for: Steel -> Railroad. (I micro my workers to build railroads on mines for the production boost.)
• Build factories everywhere. Build coal plants in a couple high production cities.
• Beeline Plastics using second golden age.
  • You'll probably start by teching Combustion.
  • If you can, trade for: Sci Method -> Physics -> Electricity.
  • Have your vassal tech Biology or something (Medicine for health?) if they have nothing to do.
• Build Three Gorges Dam in your highest production city (which now has dike, factory, coal plant).
  • You should have a good shot at the wonder if the AI did not prioritize Plastics.
  • In the meantime, tech Radio -> Computers.
• Now you should have high production everywhere.
• Start building the internet, consider doing a third golden age, tech Superconductors, and build labs everywhere.
  • You can also build espionage buildings so AIs don't sabotage your spaceship later on.
  • You can have 0% science after Superconductors while waiting for Internet to complete.
• As soon as the Internet completes, you'll get a few techs like Rocketry and can build Apollo Project.
• I'm not sure whether teching Composites or Fusion is better here.
• Regardless, you should be in good shape as Apollo Project completes unless someone strong attacks you (or culture win is too hard to stop).

It basically results in constantly growing production.

After a few tries, I did get space on this map. A couple graphs in spoiler.

Spoiler :

Deity 1882 AD space, but I was slowed down because I got attacked by a couple AIs in the last 20 turns. Here are the production and power graphs.

Production



Power



I got very lucky that there was not a clear number one AI. I think I would lose most Deity maps. My technique is very limited, but I understand this Willem strategy at least I think.

 

[sampsa]

I feel like dikes work well for a beginner play style.

I don't disagree with what you say really, and perhaps your statement above is very true.

It's good to start winning on deity, but from there you should try to start winning with random leaders and so on.

 

[Izuul]

@notslin
Communism (State Property) workshops and watermills work very well with what you outlined above, and i would think they are quite simple as well.

 

[soundjata]

T135

Spoiler :

This turn we complete engineering, raze one of the last japanese cities and sign peace with Tokugawax for his gold city and alphabet.

It was an intense buddha love fest during the war (Alex and Gandhi friendly)
Then Gandhi switched to free religion with schwigidi-pigidi and got promptly dowed by Alex

Careful bro! You are attacking against maces

We benefited quite a lot from Toku's "courage" (suicidal tendencies) in the early stages of the war and then lost far too many units due to a simple "tunnel vision" issue: we built plenty of axes and catapults but zero spear while his army had many chariots

Now we have a tool (trebuchets) to take care of Hatty who is the logical target I suppose. (board leader, no big army)
Penetrating her culture will be such a pain!
I Could use a spy revolt maybe? How much would it cost?

Now I realize it will be much more simple to give back Kyoto and Tokyo to Toku and then I'll have a much better front.

View of the north where we settled the peninsula when war was getting relaxed.

Overall view

Techno

Not too much trading going on. I think I got Monarchy and Calendar from Gandhi ; Currency from Alex and Alpha from Toku. Also traded for IW with someone. Now I have my eyes on CS, mostly for irrigation.

I don't foresee any civic switch until I can combine it with a golden age, which is quite far down the road...

 

[notslin]

Communism (State Property) workshops and watermills work very well with what you outlined above, and i would think they are quite simple as well.

It would be nice for me to learn how to use State Property, but I'm still working out the math. Maybe financial makes cottage economy too easy.

Just thinking out loud....

Consider the highest production city:

• The production will be a bunch of towns and a couple mines.
• With dike, emancipation, and free speech: financial riverside grassland town = 2F, 2H, 9C. Grassland hill mine = 1F, 4H (with railroad).
• With forge (-1 health), factory (-5 health with coal and oil), coal plant (-4 health), ironworks (-2 health), you'll have +200% production (25+75+100) and -12 health.
• Resources (say +15 health if you have 8 out of 11 food resources, and all 7 resources for granary and grocer), fresh water (+2 health), aqueduct (+2 health), base health (+2 health) = +21 health.
• Net health: +9. So growing to your 20 tiles does become an issue. (This is +12 with all 11 food resources and can go up in the I think unlikely case you get Medicine or Refrigeration before Plastics).
• So I add some Biology farms (4F) to avoid shrinking
• +3 health if you're coastal, but that often isn't your ironworks city. Although I guess with Moai Statues and Dike, financial coast = 2F 2H 3C, and that's not a bad base yield. You can grow into that with seafood. I guess it's rare to have an awesome riverside coastal city, though, that's developed enough before Plastics.

Does state property get you the two wonders faster?

• You'll need Communism before Plastics, which can slow your Plastics date a turn or two. (Unless you're able to do another trade.)
• A minor point is you may need to time your State Property switch, given your golden ages.
• Grassland riverside workshop: 2F, 3H, 1C. An additional +1 H from Caste, but I think I prefer Emancipation.
• I think that's a pretty good yield if you're health constrained, but the commerce from towns seems important to tech Plastics and Computers and a few spaceship techs. I'm often building wealth to tech faster at this stage, and 3H workshop does not come close to 1H, 8C from towns in that case.
• You might lose a bit of research from giving up e.g. Free Market, although you'll pay less maintenance.

You probably don't want to replace towns, because tech rate matters and your production rate is already decent. You could replace undeveloped towns and farms with workshops, which does pay off in a health-constrained setup, but then I need to make sure I have enough workers in the right places and am able to micro them quickly enough during the state property switch.

It just seems like a lot of work to figure out where to build workshops in the right places and the benefits don't seem overwhelming vs. spamming farms, mines, and cottages when you're financial.

When is the best case scenario for using State Property workshops? No time to develop cottages and lots of land, especially in multiple continents?

[Edit] You also can't do Mining Inc. for extra production at the end if you're lucky enough to be able to build that.

 

[Izuul]

• Grassland riverside workshop: 2F, 3H, 1C. An additional +1 H from Caste, but I think I prefer Emancipation.

Grassland watermill is 3F, 2H, 3C and 3F, 3H, 4C with FIN and a levee/dike. You can't put them on all river tiles, but you can get more of them on bendy rivers.

State Property provides a lot of food and hammers and will often dramatically decrease city maintenance as well. Like BIC said though, the best use case is typically large empires that were conquered later in the game and aren't already full of developed cottages.

 

[a pen-dragon]

In the late game, a town offers 6 for financial leaders, or 8 with free speech.If you are going for space your good cities will want libraries and observatories, with only a few building universities. Labs do not count as they come too late to pay back on research, they are only built for the production modifier. This results in a 50% modifier for science, or a town being 9
Your capital (oxford) will want to stay with towns in any case.

OTOH production will have a 110% modifier, due to 10% from state property. A workshop with caste makes 4 , resulting in 8.4 . This means that for non-financial leaders workshops are strictly better than towns (edit: while running SP+Catse and neither of US/free speech), while they are worse for financial ones looking at raw yields, production is more flexible. For instance, you can put the same amount into wealth, meaning gold, which you can not with commerce, due to missing buildings.

Now let me explain on the civic choices. This starts with the observation that cities will and should have overlap. On average a city can maybe work 15 tiles. This means that cities do not need to exceed 15 population on average to work all good tiles. In turn that means that if you have managed your diplomacy you will not get into happiness trouble from a typical +6 unhappiness from emancipation, meaning it adds very little, while preventing being in the great caste system. Thus I stay in caste, unless forced by the UN.

Then there is the question of bureau vs. free speech. Free speech will make add 3 from towns, which is significant. OTOH bureau adds +50% commerce in the capital or 3 from towns + additional commerce from other sources. At that point you want your capital to have oxford, meaning it is much better than other cities at converting to , and thus will greatly benefit from bureau. What it comes down to is how many matured towns you have. The more you have the better free speech becomes. There will be situations when running free speech and keeping towns will be the better move, but for that you need a lot of grown cottages. For a space-race, keeping the towns has the disadvantage of lowering production, which you will need for ship parts, meaning that they will have to be replaced at some point, but by that point you typically can build a huge worker force in a few turns, so that comes relatively late.

towns vs. workshops is sufficiently covered above. It basically is the same decision as free speech vs. bureau.

US adds 1 to towns, which is nice if your are planning to keep them, but again, long term you will want to switch to shops for higher production. The problem for US is that it needs democracy (4732 ) or the mids. The next best choice is rep, which helps keeping the most important cities happy, and adds a bit to research, due to the few specialists you will be running.

SP vs. free speech basically boils down to wanting to go with corps (especially mining inc.) or not. I greatly prefer the +10% and reduced city maintenance from SP to the additional trade route from free market.

The problem with mining inc is that it needs and engineer, which is hard to get for certain. It is also a significant investment, and needs a lot of resources to beat SP+shops on peak production. I basically never use it.

A few more thoughts:

You'll need Communism before Plastics, which can slow your Plastics date a turn or two. (Unless you're able to do another trade.)

IMHO you greatly overvalue the TGD. Two per city is nice, but really not that good, as there will generally be some available food and bad tiles, meaning your cities really do not have to be that big to work the good tiles. Also you seem to want to build it in your best production city (?), which is a big mistake, as that city should be kept clear to build the internet a few turns later. The internet really is the only big late-game thing for a space race, besides ship components. Also the AI loves to go after TGD, meaning you need a substantial advantage if you want to get it. They are generally less eager to go for the internet. TGD also comes at the cost of 1750 , which is about 1/2 to 2/3 of a turn.

All in all it is a nice wonder, but far, far worse than the internet.

Does state property get you the two wonders faster?

It does, due to significantly increased production.

It just seems like a lot of work to figure out where to build workshops in the right places and the benefits don't seem overwhelming vs. spamming farms, mines, and cottages when you're financial.

Especially if you are financial, but also in the general case, I prefer windmills to mines, due to 1 and 2(3) beating 2 . The food is the big thing here. Also when workshopping, the oxford city keeps its towns and all other flat land gets replaced with shops, and watermills along rivers, due to them being 1 , 3(4) -2 wrt. shops. Both mills can be replaced when building ship parts.

You might lose a bit of research from giving up e.g. Free Market, although you'll pay less maintenance.

Production is science. This late in the game I usually am running a few cities with wealth to get to 100% science and let the rest build science.

Resources (say +15 health if you have 8 out of 11 food resources, and all 7 resources for granary and grocer), fresh water (+2 health), aqueduct (+2 health), base health (+2 health) = +21 health.

+ 2 from public transportation.

You probably don't want to replace towns, because tech rate matters and your production rate is already decent.

As I mentioned several times, at some point you will want to, because the tech rate stops to matter and pure production starts.

 

[aitkensam]

Question to both players that played more than a few turns.

Spoiler :

Why did you research "code of laws" so early? What happens if the Japanese attack?

Spoiler :

For my part, I had copper early so had axes available. Then tech sped up quickly with financial so I went early alpha while keeping an eye for plotting. If plotting had appeared then I'd hope there would be time to whip some axes while quickly teching archery. Later I had enough tech lead to bribe Hatty on Toku.

Of course, I might have been wrong and I might have died!

 

[notslin]

IMHO you greatly overvalue the TGD. Two per city is nice, but really not that good, as there will generally be some available food and bad tiles, meaning your cities really do not have to be that big to work the good tiles. Also you seem to want to build it in your best production city (?), which is a big mistake, as that city should be kept clear to build the internet a few turns later.

Interesting and informative analysis here. On the TGD point, yes, my TGD (+ towns) approach may be a (very) mild case of newbie Stonehenge syndrome in terms of overvaluing nice-sounding long term benefits. Clean power everywhere sounds good, just like monuments everywhere sounds good. But ultimately the micro short term costs need to be considered, not just the pretty long term benefits, and the micro needs to justify the macro. (Beginner players often ignore macro, but it's also entirely possible to have the wrong macro!)

Also, sometimes I don't delay Internet that much building TGD in IW city. Because it can take more than just a couple turns to tech both Radio and Computers after Plastics, since I beeline Plastics. But hmm, it might be a big mistake in the close games where it matters...

Anyway, I think tech still matters after the Internet, so it seems like the towns can last a fair bit of time. I think I still need to beat AI to one or two techs because of their production bonuses -- one time I saw the AI complete SS Stasis Chamber the exact same turn they got Genetics (I don't know if I was misreading the UI, because that seems crazy) and then launch their ship. But I'll think more.

 

[aitkensam]

Immortal to the end.

Spoiler :

1250AD Domination. 436k score. Caesar reduced from 13 cities to 4 cities but still not willing to capitulate. Pretty odd.

Some key dates....

Spoiler :

Liberalism

Spoiler :

Built Mom and Taj and chained 37 turns of golden age during army build up and first wars

Toku war

Spoiler :

Pretty happy with 840AD cavalry.

Hatty war

Spoiler :

Alex war

Spoiler :

Gandhi war

Spoiler :

Stalin war was 1070AD to 1170AD as Astro was a bit slow. Julius 1170AD until the end. Stubborn guy.

Some ending screenshots

Spoiler :

Willem might not be the best leader but he sure is fun for a lazy game.

 

[jorissimo]

I remember being puzzled by the whole state property workshop thing, but that was because I looked at it in very black and white terms. Nowadays I practically always adopt SP and Caste so my non-riverside plains tiles suddenly become productive. I then also add some marginal filler cities that can actually become quite productive as well with just a few shops. I also replace immature cottages with shops. I only shop over the mature towns in the core when I go space and only when the tech is safe.

 

[Simple Machine]

Looks like fun I decided to try this on deity.

Spoiler Settling thoughts :

I couldn't come up with a strong enough reason to move. Settling 1E was a consideration, but looks like it has a net loss of 3 forests, loses a turn, and unclear that it really gains much if the river continues south.

Spoiler To turn 5 :

Sent the warrior up north to scout and was pleased with what I saw. Leave warrior up north to fogbust.

Spoiler Tech path :

Went for early cottages on the sugars: Wheel-Pottery-Mining-BW-AH-Writing-Alphabet.

Figured you can usually do fine with just warriors for early barb defense, and I have a chance to find copper on the suspicious plains hill in the capital. If its really needed, I will have the commerce later to go Hunting-Archery.

Spoiler to turn 69 :

T9 I meet Alexander - ok ... not the most pleasant neighbor you can have...
T20 meet Gandhi.
T22 meet Tokugawa. All three of them have come from the south, so it seems like we have the fairly large area north of us uncontested.
T23 meet Hatshepsut, coming from the east. Based on spy points, it looks like that may be everyone here.

I grew to size 4 while getting a warrior out, then got a 2nd worker before chopping out a settler.

Spoiler Copper? :

I finished BW on T35 and was lucky to pop copper on that unforested capital PH, and had already mined it. Immediately road it and then chop an axe out to guard my sugar cottages.

Settled 2nd city 3N of capital on T45.

Tokugawa settled pretty close to my borders, so I gifted him a city with liberation bonus on T62, right up against Hatty's borders. Same turn I settled my own 3rd city, 2N3E of capital to share the wet corn in the 2nd city.

T67 settled city #4 way up north to grab the fish.

T69 I was the first to alphabet.

Somehow no wonders on our continent...

There is plenty of land to develop peacefully, so I am thinking to try and befriend Tokugawa and then take out Gandhi/Alexander with cannons.

 

[Izuul]

I haven't played Civ 4 too much in quite a few years. I forgot how many darn ships the deity AI can spam out later in the game.

 

[Simple Machine]

Spoiler Deity turn 100 :

After getting early alphabet, I got a few trades in:

She is worst enemy of Alex, but this is a pretty fair trade and he didn't mind.

Then I gifted Writing to Alex - he was one turn from getting it anyways and it hopefully makes him like me a bit.

Gandhi already was in hereditary rule (!) so next I went Meditation-Priesthood so I could trade Alpha to him for Monarchy:

Next I picked up Math from Alexander:

Then Iron Working from Tokugawa:

T83 I gifted a second city with liberation, this time to Alex, who is also kind of scaring me.

T88 Gandhi had the utter audacity to plop down in my own backyard

I can probably just steal the city from Gandhi culturally, but I may also just whip up a few spears and axes to take it by force, especially if Alex goes for him too.

On the same turn, Alex started plotting. He just asked me for Priesthood at the same time, which of course I gave him. Now up to +7 relations with him. He's most likely going for Gandhi, but I have 10 turns of peace with him, and then after that I can maybe beg Hunting for another 10 turns if I need to.

T94, 550BC, sure enough Alex DOWs Gandhi.
This gave me the following very interesting opportunity:

My thinking is that Gandhi is a bit of a wimp, and might fold to Alex pretty quickly. Tokugawa vs. Alex should be fairly evenly matched, and this will make sure they hate each other for the rest of the game pretty much. Main downside is that Tokugawa will probably ask me to join against Alex later, giving -2 if I decline. Ultimately I go for it, and bribe Toku against Alex T94.

This was probably the right call - a few turns later, just as Alex captured his first city from Gandhi, Toku picked off the weakly defended Barbarian city that Alex had gotten earlier.

Picked up a much-needed trade for Calendar:

T100:

8 cities, 7 turns from civil service. I have 2 Axes on standby to take Calcutta at the opportune moment - not quite ready yet as Gandhi has 2 chariots there and I don't have Hunting yet for spears to make sure he doesn't grab either of my 2 cities up there. Although I don't want to wait too long - he may get Feudalism soon and stuff some longbows there.

Tech situation:

Tokugawa is teching pretty well. I have my first scientist coming out in 3 turns to bulb Philosophy, although I may consider getting an academy in the capital instead if I plan to go for cannons - we'll see.

Diplomacy:

I am the only tech trading partner for both Tokugawa and Alex.

Capital, size 11:

Getting another Axe out of there just for extra support to take Gandhi's city if needed.

 

[Izuul]

Deity

Spoiler :

1120AD after capitulating Ghandi



I never had any problems with Toku here. I built a few axes early so i would have some kind of defense already in place if he started plotting, but he got to pleased very quickly with the shared religion bonus, and i think he was even friendly for quite awhile. At any rate, he ended up in other wars for most of the game. One of my favorite things that happened in this game was after i got control of the AP i kept using the resolutions to force him to give Hatty's cities back. Pretty sure he captured at least 6 Egyptian cities over the course of the game, but he only had control of two of them at the end.

I got a pretty nice Lib MT date (4xx AD i think), but the rest of my prep was lacking, especially when the AP got built and i decided to whip 2H monasteries and temples everywhere and delay building units to upgrade. I ended up attacking with around 25 Cuirs, but it wasn't until close to 1000 AD. Generated 1 GM for upgrade gold. I think generally two is much more optimal, but at least we had monster raw commerce here to help with gold.

As you can see in the last picture there, the major players were all very close to Rifling at this point. Alex was weak and didn't have much of a stack due to a lot of earlier fighting so i just went immediately after him to so see how far i could get before he got Rifles in his cities. Cuirs vs LBs and stuff is a much better matchup than Cavs vs Rifles so i didn't see any reason to wait around and upgrade to Cavs. I ended up getting exactly 1 city before he got Rifles and took peace. Came back later with Cavs and Airships and rolled over him pretty quickly. It's pretty amazing how much the combat odds improve just by doing 10-20% damage to the top defenders with Airships.

Continued the fighting going after Toku with the same units, but the commerce was so strong here (and Ghandi's former double holy city was also generating 40 raw gold per turn) that i could continue to research while fighting without sacrificing much in either area. I ended up with tanks by the end of the war, and then defeated Hatty in 2T after Toku.

That was when things bogged down dramatically. I really don't enjoy the naval stuff most of the time. If Stalin and JC had been on the same continent the game probably would've ended in another 10T. Many turns later however...


Edit: Oh yeah.. i settled on one of the sugars and cottaged the other two. I don't know if that's the optimal play or not, but you would have a tough time convincing me it's bad.

 

[Simple Machine]

Spoiler Turn 164 :

A couple turns later I DOWed Gandhi to pick off the Iron city that he settled in my backyard. Alex got a couple cities off of Gandhi but then started to get his butt kicked as Toku's army hit him from the other side. Tokugawa managed to take Athens, after which I bribed him off with a couple of techs. Alex made peace with Gandhi a little while later.

Not too long after that, Toku got trigger-happy again and this time went after Egypt. He was going to absolutely destroy poor Hatty, so I had to bribe him off again with another couple of techs to avoid him vassaling her outright. Sometime in the midst of all of this, Gandhi randomly peace-vassaled to Tokugawa (?!).

In the meantime, I had met Stalin and Julius, both pretty dangerous beasts in their own right. Julius has been plotting for a long time, looks like it could be anyone. I had been bee-lining Steel and popped out a merchant for 1700 gold to upgrade about 20 trebs to cannons, while also picking up Military Science for grenadiers.

Developed a monster bureau capital:

T160 I bite the bullet, DOW'ing Tokugawa and taking the border city of Alemanni.

Aiming to lure his main army in there to wipe it out. I have about 22 cannons ready, plus 14 grenadiers and 6 pikes when I declare.

For good measure, I got my buddy Alex in on the fun too:

He can hopefully distract Gandhi.

Toku did not disappoint with his army:

Almost 60 units in that stack. Lots of city raider Samurai, but they won't be too useful defending a city.

Things however did not quite go as planned, since he moved his stack right in to counter-attack Maastricht:

Slammed all of my cannons into that and killed about 13 units, losing only 4 cannons. Rest of his stack is badly wounded

Next turn, instead of retreating he just sat there, even bombarding a little

Next turn the stack was reduced to 28 badly wounded units, which then proceeded to suicide themselves on the hilled city. Not too shabby, wiping out his entire army and taking a city, only losing 4 cannons - goes to show how absurdly powerful this 12-strength siege unit is.

Meanwhile, Julius, who had been plotting for a long time, finally DOWed Hatshepsut.

Tokugawa is already willing to sue for peace, but he seems so weak now that I can even split my stack to take his core and his northern cities. I need to heal a bit though as my cannons are badly beat up. He only has 1 Axeman and 1 Longbow in Izumo

Probably just cap Toku, then turn and pick off Alex really quickly too, and Gandhi, then have a look around.

 

[ariosto]

Beeline Plastics using second golden age

I'll add my two cents here. You can bulb a lot on your way to Plastics - specifically SciMethod - Astro - Physics - Electricity are all bulbable by GSci, so you may try to grow a couple during your previous golden age. But I usually just build coal plants in all my production cities.

State Property is too good to pass up even if you don't go hard into workshops. If you empire is big enough no distance maintenance alone should suprass extra traderoute from free market.

There are also biology farms. I like to stay in Rep + Caste until the end of the game. This way you can build one farm and put one Scientist to get 6 right away, or 8.1 with library + free religion, which is almost as good as workshops with full infrastructure and don't require cottages to grow. You need more happiness and health, though. I like to do it in coastal or filler cities that don't have enough tiles to make forge + factory + coalplant pay for themselves.

 

[0urBall]

CV in 1945 on Monarch. meandered to a victory as there were so many options. Founded Confu and got Gandhi as a voluntary vassal to help with the victory. Which was nice

 

[Simple Machine]

Spoiler To the end :

Won diplo on deity T277, 1814AD.

In hindsight this was a very forgiving map, with a great leader, plenty of land. Neighbors Toku and Alex can be a bit tricky, but can be carefully managed.

Ended up conquering Toku with cannons and grenadiers, vassaling him at 1260AD. I had been Friendly with Alexander for a long time at that point and he only had 6 cities, so he peace-vassaled to me, which already launched me to the top of the scoreboard. I could have (maybe should have) just gotten Rifling and then moved on to take Egypt out next, but I was a little concerned about Stalin who was wonder-mongering and likely to go for culture. So after finishing up with Toku, I went for Steam power, built dikes, built Oxford, and went for Factories and tanks.

Just as I was about to DOW on Stalin, he happened to attack Egypt, who had defensive pact with India. The following turn, Julius backstabs and DOWs Stalin too. I joined in a few turns later, 1700AD. My wartime production was so overwhelming, and he was distracted on multiple fronts, that he folded quickly. Capped him 1770AD. From there I picked off Julius, capping him 1800AD, and then I started the war with Egypt+Gandhi but had already enough votes to win Diplo 1814AD.

Fun game, pretty slow tech pace - by 1000AD nobody even had Replaceable Parts.