SIP - duh.
Scouted around and ran into Julius early on, and figured he was coming in from the north west, so I made sure to pay him a visit ASAP.
My initial build? Worker-Warrior-Warrior-Warrior-Warrior-Worker-Settler-Stonehenge
Can you guess what I was aiming for?
That's right, I bum rushed Julius and polished him off pretty darn early... 3000BC-ish.
Hey, it's noble! And I was fortunate in that Julius's roaming warriors and scouts were getting eaten by bears which just happened to be one tile away from me. Easy early experience gave me two CRII warriors, more than a match for his lowly Combat I warrior. Still, I took peace after my one and only worker steal (I figured he'd be going for workboats, given his start, and worker stealing would be long and boring).
My initial tech path was Mining-BW-AH-Writing-Myst-Alpha-Poly-PH
Having bee-lined Alpha after writing, I was able to get a few techs in return for peace (fishing and sailing).
A fun little opener, but after that I sort of got bored of all this wonder whoring and slow expansion, so I built more settlers. A blow by blow would be pointless since I was isolated and thus spent most of my time building, teching and slowly expanding.
By 1AD I had 7 well established cities with most of the basic infrastructure, including cheap Forges.
After just missing out on Judaism by way of Mono, I figured I'd better start collecting those religions! With the Oracle and Stonehenge in Paris, I was producing Great Prophets and figured I might as well make use of them by building shrines!
With the science meter being around the 100 mark for an obscene amount of time (given that I was alone, units were not a top priority, except a brief sword rush for a nice barbarian city near the flood plains north of the jungle patch), I teched at a fairly brisk pace. Again, isolation meant libraries were placed in each city and scientists run as often as possible.
Settled scientists and built an academy in Rome, my official science city, while Lyons (next to Paris, near the western river and Pig/Gold) had cottages thus making it my commerce city. Rome would also end up producing tons of GP along with Paris (seriously, Paris and Rome are just disgustingly good spots).
My wonder whoring gave me quite an edge. Early Rep by virtue of the Mids, along with minor boosts from religious buildings thanks to the religious wonders (AP, SM, US etc.) helped me chug along while I figured what to do with myself.
I went down the Aesthetics line, thinking I'd go for a cultural win. But then techs just kept coming in and soon enough I was building caravels for the heck of it instead of going gung-ho for culture.
Saw that my rivals were on the other side of the ocean and locked in a boring status quo. The Dutch were the tech leaders, but a long way from Lib and gunpowder, while Shaka was holding more territory than the others. Fred had barely discovered CS and Bureaucracy when I first step foot in German territory (although his "pals" all had macemen and LB by now - what happened to the guy? Who did he piss off to be left out of the great AI tech trading circle jerk??).
Not feeling threatened in the least, I continued to populate the western islands, even though I realized that with Communism fast approaching, my island cities would be losing the Colossus. Dumb move, I think, I dunno, by then I was getting a little lost.
It's 1400AD, I can tech almost anything in 4 turns. I've proven the world is round, I'm under communist rule (with workshops being built everywhere there's a grassland in a BFC), I have gunpowder (but see no need for musketeers), and have to decide whether to go for more civil or more military techs. Hell, I need to decide how to win!
Fast forward to transports and launch a maritime assault with infantry? Nukes? Culture? Paris could get legendary soonish, Rome could go cultural with artists specialists, and I'm sure another city could use the GA I have in reserve to get a boost, along with the Cathedrals and other 50% culture buildings. Space is without a doubt more than possible too.
Were I to play again, I'd get better times. But isolation and dominance gets to me...
And lastly, the only wonders I missed were the Hanging Gardens, Sistine Chapel, and uh another minor one. GL, GLH, and the important ones were all built in due time.
Seriously, I should have tried my first monarch game here. The start, along with Rome as early spoils of war make this far too easy for Noble.