I am thinking I should have played Monarch--Liberalism was a breeze to get, so I took Astronomy then teched toward Riflling while whipping trebs, then drafted up a Rifle army while teching toward communism for SP. Took out France and Egypt with little trouble, just a long war with the French since they had so many cities. Trebs + castles =
.
Right now I have two huge stacks headed for Inca, but it should go faster since my trebs are now upgraded to cannons; I don't see much resistance there. I am thinking of conquering most of Inca for the juicy flood plain towns, then seeing if I can quickly chain vassalize the rest of the civs on the continent, then capitulate the Chinese for a conquest victory.
Of course this all assumes I will even finish the game. This is the point where I often quit games...getting bogged down by the slow pace of war and the micro management, steamrolling every city with little of a fight other than the initial outdated SoD.
Our meager production home islands
Current empire
Capital
Civics
Plunder from the war with Egypt. Notice the double holy shrines.
Future plunder. Cuzco is the Buddhist holy city which is well spread. With SP I am already running the slider at 80%; this city should allow me to keep the slider high while supporting even more military.
One of our multiple SoDs. Almost all from drafting and whipping my closely-placed home cities.
Power graph. No surprise here.
HE city. In highsight I should have built this on the main continent for better production, but especially so I don't have to ship unites via boat.
Current techs. I did not trade very much once I was getting close to Liberalism. IMO all it would have done is increase the global tech rate which is to my disadvantage since I can currently steamroll with rifles. Keeping in mind this is only prince, and I usually play Monarch.
Btw, this was my first game making extensive use of drafting and I must say I am pleased with the speed in which I could raise an army. Keeping my cities small I was able to stack 2-3 drafts per city without too much happy trouble. Even after the initial buildup I was able to continually send in reinforcements with drafting, and some whipping as well. One thing I found effective was when my cities got up to around size 8 I could 3 pop whip a treb which actually lowered my overall
and then could draft again in a few turns when the city regrew to size 6.
and after me capturing one rome folded:
