Settled on the spices and prayed for hammers as Tabarnak suggested
. I tried this start for the third time(the others ended in under 70 turns i think). Plan was to go for a diplomatic vc since i wasn't going get any early production to get my economy and cities to the state which would have supplemented most of the other vc's.
Aztecs were extremely close and took the tradition honour path, nothing too suprising there(every civ in the game took at least a few policies from the tradition tree 1st, most went full i think, it seems even the AI's seem to love tradition in G&K
) I had to take Monty out at some point, but by tempting him to attack me which he foolishly did. The 1st 100 turns were a bit of a drag though, especially for the capital, luckily my second city had decent production so i could build my self the army that i needed. Completed the NC in the cap @ turn 91 i think, which still had pretty lackluster hammer yields around it, i also bought alot of workers for my cap city(jungle tiles at the river just needed to be removed for extra food).
Took the culture bonus(?!) for the jungle tiles, but never founded a religion since i had more important priorities to build in favor of shrines, since the hammer yields were what they were. Egypt was my friend for most of the game, but he was pretty annoyed with me in the beginning, so i had to pay attention to the south-eastern side of my borders(i delayed my last city b4 the NC would get done, because i didn't have any gold to buy a new library and Egypt was sneaky while i was preparing to deal with the capital of Monty. Egypt had an enormous production potential in the capital with marble and 5-7 hills, pretty scary for som1 like me who needs the scientific wonders, but once i outteched him i could get my PT and Pisa up and running, b4 his monster capital could get these hills working on these crucial scientific wonders.
After the succesful decimation of Monty the game took a much more peaceful nature for me, though I did some foolish things which cost me a much earlier finish, i denounced Askia in favor of a CS, because at that moment he had no friends, soon Japan became friends with him and got angry with me and it didn't take long until he DOWe'd on me. I razed one of his crappy cities and puppeted the one with wine, i stopped expanding further, because i didn't want anymore diplomatic repercussions due to razing/puppeting cities and happiness at that moment wasn't so good either.
The last 130 runs were a scientific build up, with very little action actually. The only 2 friends i had were Isabella and Ramses others were mostly mad for various reasons(i asked Cathy to stop spying on me and after that she hated me the entire game) or didn't wan't to sign the DOF pact(Iroqouis) even though we were friendly - too many wars on the west i guess and me being friends with the wrong ppl(Isabella). There was one war in the end with Ramses after i built UN, and several coups, but luckily i had prepared the cash for these circumstances and thrived.
Turn 259 diplomatic victory, no too bad i guess, but could've been way better. All in all Mandela sums this game and start - in a screenshot below - up pretty well
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