Loving the expansion so far. Already made a few posts in the Funny Screenshots thread, but let me give a quick summary of my 'first' game, just like some others have done.
First of all, I have had to start over three times (all Netherlands), and in all four games I had early barbarian problems and then got declared a surprise war by another civ in ancient era. First two I quit because I was about to lose, third game I didn't even try to survive the war, fourth game I had finally adapted. Managed to hold back Kongo's army, found out I had iron pretty early because of early Bronze Working, immediately went for Iron Working and got a bunch of very early Swordsmen which just completely walked over Kongo and I conquered one of his cities. Made peace with him, meanwhile I'd noticed France had settled that great spot a bit to the west where I'd really wanted to settle. So I moved my Swordsmen over - France had no walls yet - and declared war the turn before entering medieval era. Easily conquered two of her cities, but she didn't want to give up a city she'd placed in between those cities and the coast in a peace deal, so I marched and took Paris about as easily as the others. She still didn't want to give up that other city, so I kept Paris.
Next, and this is where the game gets awesome, I get into a Golden Age, and so does (my friend/ally) Alexander at the other side of the three remaining French cities. Meanwhile France falls into a Dark Age. I move over Amani, give her the loyalty pressure promotion, get some bread and circuses going, and manage to flip all three French cities, eliminating her from the game without having to declare war again. Meanwhile, Kongo declares war on me (now in a Heroic Age; he fell into a Dark Age after losing the war to me) and actually manages to conquer back his city before I am ready to defend (right through a wall, for the record), but I manage to get it back and take another city that was in between my original and my French cities. I find out Kongo conquered Brussels on the east of his empire, so I declare war on him again and liberate it, weakening his total loyalty (at this point he has 4 total cities). There's some scuffling, several wars (even an emergency when he re-conquers Brussels; I actually liberated it again on the first turn of the emergency for 4k free gold), but he falls into a Dark Age while I get my second Golden Age in a row, and now I use bread and circuses, Amani, spies to pressure him with loyalty as much as possible. Meanwhile, while his cities near my border are barely holding out on loyalty, I conquer a city at the back of his empire, which flips his capital to a free city. I give back the city at the back (erasing warmonger penalties) and now I'm pressuring the size 15 city and in a few turns it's going to flip to me. As I know I will be getting into yet another Golden Age (already surpassed the threshold with the emergency completion and first fleet, corps, army, armada and plane in the world) AND the city has an Entertainment Complex, I think I will be able to pressure his other cities to join me as well, even if he gets out of his dark age. Which means that I'd own three quarters of my continent despite having 0 warmonger penalties with other leaders. Or, really, even playing that warlike. I conquered five cities total, and all in classical and medieval era (excluding of course the city I gave back).
Oh, one more thing though. Polders SUCK. Yes, their yields are very good, but in that huge empire I have there's like 5 spots for Polders, despite having three quarters of a standard map continent as coastline. They really need to soften the requirements somehow.
