I like playing prince again. It's fascinating how strategies that are important at Monarch completely rock at Prince.
For example, the whole idea of leaving giant sections of the tech tree untouched while I focused on a few key things let me end up with Astronomy centuries before the rest of them.
So, between 900 AD and 1345 AD, I made a couple tech trades, the most interesting were Philosophy for Feudalism with Wang. At this point, the only tech anybody has on me is Theology, and I have no interest in that one.
I moved along, explored the entire world map, and found very little land that wasn't settled or owned by barbs. There was one Island up in the northern sea that had a barb city with access to Crabs and Stone (and the other side of the island has sheep and fish) and it is currently guarded by three warriors. I made a mental note to capture it. I have neither of those two resources, and the stone could still come in handy later. The crab will just free me up to not have to trade for it later.
Tech path was to pick up Astronomy from Liberalism. Why? Well, with the Great Lighthouse, I have four trade routes in all of my coastal cities. It would have been absolutely no problem to research gunpowder/chemistry and use Liberalism to bulb steel, and then go back and research astronomy while I build cannons. However, that is dozens of turns without using all of those extra rich intercontinental trade routes, and that didn't make any sense.
I continued to pump out great people from the two capital cities. Wonder driven from the Khmer capital and NE/wonder/specialist driven in Paris. I used scientists to bulb most of education, and then when another one was born while I worked on Liberalism, I burned him on most of Printing Press (which I then completed before going back to Liberalism.)
Once I took astronomy, commerce jumped by 70 or 80 per turn. I was also able to trade off some resources to up the happy and health caps a few levels.
I loaded three macemen onto a galleon and set off for the two still-standing barb cities. The GLH trade routes will help pay the maintenance until I can slap up a courthouse in each of them.
While my galleon was sailing, Wang came calling and asked if I could join him in wiping out Joao. It was a little ahead of schedule (I had just started building maces, and set the research path to be engineering-gunpowder-nationalism-military tradition, with the thought that trebs/musketeers/cuirassiers would be a terrific way to start quickly wiping out the Portugal/Korea continent largely protected by longbows, axes and horsemen.
So, while I work on doing exactly that, I start loading up CR Macemen and some catapults and capture the two closest Portuguese cities on the coast. As I quit for the day, trebs and muskets are dashing across France to load up and join the push towards the Portuguese capital. Joao is actually coming at the first city I captured with a stack of about 10 units, more than half horsemen. He would be better served to attack my city raiders moving towards his cities, but that's not gonna happen, now is it?
Actually, it makes a little sense, since I did leave that city only protected by a C1 Mace and a C1 spear. When I load back up, however, that spear with turn into a pike, and a galleon is going to drop a couple musketeers in that city. His stack will be annihilated if he attempts to retake that city. The pike alone will kill all six horsemen.
I'm only a couple turns from Military Tradition now, and I'm building a couple stables to get ready for the event. We'll probably go all out war for a little while (although I think I need one more university to build Oxford, and the old Khmer capital is just such a powerhouse that I can't see not getting Oxford up and running there ASAP.)
Tech path after Military Tradition. Hmm... I think I can't leave Chemistry until later. Frigates would be most excellent to blow away some defenses, and a few privateers would be fun to abuse my Islamic buddies for a while while I concentrate on the other guys.
Then, of all things, I think I might shoot for Democracy. I'm a trade route/cottage based economy that will soon be expanding to another continent. Plus, the other guys will eventually go into mercantilism, so I'm gonna want my cottages to pick up the slack.
If I do that, then depending on how the war is going, it will probably be either steel or rifles. At some point, I'll probably trade for Guilds/Banking since they aren't really key to what I'm doing right now. I'm going to completely avoid scientific method, since I'm really rather enjoying the benefits of the wonders it obsoletes.