Turn 206: My second elephant is done in Pasargadae. I start on a caravan house next.
Turn 207: My hunters cabin finishes in Susa, giving me an extra point of food there. I will now be able to get the city working the silver, horse, and marble before it stagnates. It will have some tools to improve more once I get into the industrial era, but for now it’ll just be stagnated and keeping the horses as a strategic resource. I start my assault on Texcoco.
Turn 208 / 1420BC: Texcoco burnt to the ground. The two workers I have captured already start roading a path back to my territory.
Turn 209: My trade deal with the Inca cancelled. I can see blockade hexes near the Aztec territory, but it’s likely a barbarian galley causing trouble. I send my galley out to interdict. I have a heavily wounded chariot (10% health) that I pull back to Pasargadae to rest and then send off to scout the NE.
Turn 210: I lost a chariot attacking an archer out in the open. With the retreat odds it was a coinflip. I didn’t want him to retreat back to Tenoctitlan, though.
Turn 211: I spot Teotihuacan with 1 archer defending.
Turn 212: My galley barely survives against a barb galley. I move him back to heal as another barb shows up right next to it. I found Buddhism. I set up some more trade routes with the Inca and then convert. Stone for Gold, Rice for Ivory. I start research on Metal Casting again. I found Ecbatana to claim the copper. Building a monument first. My army pillages tiles outside of Tenochtitlan.
Turn 213 / 1370BC: I raze Tenochtitlan, losing no attackers. The elephants are overpowered. I was expecting to lose some units in this assault and then declare peace. I’m only down two chariots (one killed, one retreated), so I push onwards. War loot lets me turn my research back to 100%.
Turn 215: My galley is sunk by barbs. I connect the copper (I had 4 workers on it). Pasargadae finishes the caravan house, giving me another 2c trade route and another happy. I start on my bronze smith. The chariot is healed and heads off into the jungle to the NE.
A note about the industrial buildings: They do not “consume” the resource. You can have your cake and eat it too. For every copper resource you have hooked up, you can build one bronze smith to turn it into bronze. Similarly, for every coal resource you have, you can make a brickworks. It doesn’t destroy the coal – you can use the same coal to also make ironworks, for example, but your total number of any one building is limited by the total quantity.
Turn 216: Barb galleys eat my clam ships.
Turn 217: One of the barbs kill the trade routes again by blockading. No point building galleys when it’ll just be a coinflip if they will win. I just have to suck it up until I can divert my research to shipbuilding.
Turn 218: I start attacking Tlatelolco. Take no losses, but do take some damage.
Turn 219: I research Metal Casting and start on Alphabet next. I’m working my way to get the Helepolis. I take Tlatelolco, collect 154c and raze it.
Turn 221: I send my chariots out to explore a bit and move the rest of my army to take out the Aztec entirely. Wasn’t necessarily going for it, but might as well. The elephants are just that OP. I don’t need to keep two people who hate me on my borders.
Turn 222: I find a barbarian city at the base of the peninsula. He sends out a light horseman and kills my chariot the next turn.
Turn 223: I discover alphabet. Mathematics is next. Taoism is founded. I think the southern “ocean” is actually a huge lake.
A quick note on alphabet - I tend to delay this tech a lot more than I would the comparable BTS tech (writing for the libraries). I don't know if it's best to do so or not, but my gut tells me it is. Storytellers circles are really cheap, and provide easy culture and research. The school which is the SC's upgrade is much more expensive, and you need two other techs after alphabet before you can build it. Whether the access to libraries is better than access to SCs is up to the game's situations, but usually by this time, my happy cap and surplus food don't accommodate working scientists until I've developed the top trade line, city planning, or a religion.
Turn 224: I connect my marble. Still moving my army up.
Turn 225: Robert the Bruce converts to Taoism, but he didn’t found it – I check the research trade tab and find that it was Nelson Mandela who did, and he probably sent his missionary to Robert. No idea what the reason for that was, as Mandela is still Hindu. I am ready to attack Teotihuacan and remove the Aztec. I have a pandemic in Pasargadae.
Turn 226: The pandemic kills a point of population – any city bigger than 4 will lose pop to them. I need to prioritize iron working fairly soon as well to cut down the jungle. In the meantime, granaries, smokehouses, and wells all will improve my odds. If I had extra happy, I could build walls and a pandemic colony as well. My elephants have their worst odds against the fortified, heavily promoted, hill archer. 84%. He wins the fight, and the other defenders topple. I win 152c and 2 workers. I raze the city, wiping out the Aztec. I split my troops into two squads to hunt barb cities. I send one west to explore and the other east to take out the city on the other side of the lake.
Turn 229: My bronze smith completes and I start on a granary next.
Turn 232: A great artist is born. I think it’s in Rome from the Statue of Zeus.
Turn 236: I start on a settler for the wine site. Caravan houses are built in all of my cities. My finances are +31c at 0% and -30c at 100%. This is one one of the off turns when I have connection to the Inca lands through the barbarian galleys. I find Taoism’s home city and destroy the first barbarian city.
Turn 239: I research Mathematics. I divert my granary construction for the Helepolis. My next research target is Shipbuilding to take out the barb galleys and secure the coasts.
Turn 240: I finish mapping the Zulu lands. He’s tiny. 3 cities. He’s probably decided to go for a cultural victory already.
Turn 243: One of my immortals dies attacking a barb city. My elephant is critically wounded attacking the city, so I pull the remaining units back to heal. Rome converts to Taoism.
Turn 244: Lincoln was kind enough to build the Parthenon for me in New York. I build the Helepolis. Robert the Bruce extorts me for sheep – needing two resources for one. I do the trade, just to get the relations boost.
The Helepolis is a new type of unit for RI – the world unit. It’s basically a mobile world wonder. They are basically overpowered siege machines. Helepolis is strength 3, move 1. It does a max of 80% damage to enemies, does 25% collateral damage, has +100% vs cities, +50% vs. archers, and can bombard better than any unit until Trebuchets. It also causes fear which removes 1 first strike from adjacent units. The downside to it and other world units is that they cannot move into swamps, forests, or jungles. You are basically forced to bring along workers if you want to assault a city behind a forest with it. They can go on boats, however. I have used that to move them around jungle filled enemy territory in a previous game.
Turn 249: Shipbuilding is complete. I research priesthood next to get temples
Turn 251: Lincoln converts to Buddhism and I build the settler. Lincoln is also moving his army pretty threateningly. He will likely decide to “end” me. I am pretty undergarrisoned, however, so I start moving some archers around. I captured the barb city with the elephant and immortal. Although I’m pretty sure it was originally a barbarian city, I get the interface to return it to the Celts. I make a mistake and give it outright instead of trying to get some cash for it.
Turn 252: Lincoln declares war. I lose a worker or two that were roading up the wine and river. Wasn’t expecting him to attack this turn. Live and learn. His army consists of a whopping 5 archers and 4 militia. It must have been dragging down his economy or something. I get a second archer into Ecbatana – sweating a little. Half of my army is about 10-15 turns away and the other half is wounded about 10 turns out, but will need to pass near American lands. The Oracle is built somewhere.
Turn 253: For whatever reason, Lincoln didn’t attack Ecbatana. I think that he would have been able to take and raze it with the army he had next to it. Only one of my archers had any fortify bonus.
Turn 254 / 960BC: Robert demands 70g in tribute. I accept, but put a note in the back of my mind who will be the Medieval age victim. I just gifted the ungrateful git a city. I research Priesthood and start on City planning next. Robert has researched iron working. At this point I realized that I probably played enough for a turnset, and take a break. My settler is parked away from the front lines with the Helepolis. I switched all production from making Triremes into making Immortals, Elephants, and Archers.
My preliminary plan for the next round is the following:
- Destroy Lincoln. If the Parthenon survives my assault, I will keep New York. If not, I’ll raze it because I like 1NE better (with a city on the other side of the lake, will allow a sea bridge to the other side of the continent. Coastal will also let each of the lake tiles give an extra food and commerce with fishing docks and a lighthouse). If I don’t raze, I’ll need to put a fort canal instead.
- Get city planning and dynastism and revolt into: Monarchy/Civil Service/Civil Religion. I will go over the various classical age civics.
- Build a navy. Clear the traderoutes to the Incas of barbs.
- Use the navy to explore East and West
- Raze the barb city on the other side of the mountain range and build a commerce city there.
- Get iron working and chop down the jungle to the east.
- I will then work on economy techs. I will go over the various techs and buildings which help stabilize commerce in an expanding empire.
- Expand into a few more city sites.
- Smoothly move into the late classical / early medieval era.
Thanks for watching! Let me know what you think -
. Their special unit, buildable in cathedrals, is the only unit outside of unattached great generals which have the medic promotion before the late renaissance. This, due to all of the wars I’m going to be waging this game, and coupled with the +2 happy from gold is why I picked Buddhism as my religion of choice for the game.
. Their cathedrals provide +1 
every era you enter. The fish resources are the only resources which give health without needing a building to convert it. It is partially countered by the synagogues which provide an extra health from cows, wheat, and fish, but you still need to get a missionary into the city before you can build it. Every new city you build from the renaissance on is going to have health problems from pop 1 until you drop a lot of hammers into infrastructure. That’s it for the drawbacks, and they’re pretty brutal. What’s the upside? Their synagogues give a lot of health bonuses as I mentioned. They also provide +25% to the city’s trade routes. Their cathedrals (great synagogues) give an extra +1 
