semirami
The Wolf
Well, my shadow gme was very similar.
After scout move, settling in place was obvious.
I decided to postpone AH and research BW for ultra early Impi rush. This could be a major mistake in this game, but my luck with the huts was incredible. At turn 3 I popped AH!!! Tech path changed immediately to The Wheel of course. I popped 5 another huts for about 100 gold total and 3 another techs, Myst, Archery and Writing. Of course I met Napoleon and Toku. Ultra early chariot rush against Nappy, took Paris and razed Orlean to rebuild it later. I settled Umunduvo.....(or whatever the name is) in the floodplains south of Ulundi and Nomamba claiming the stone. Having Archery I went after Horseback riding, build 7 Horse Archers and razed all Japanese cities, except Kyoto. All Horse archers survive! and Toku is nomroe. It is about 1100 BC and the continent is mine. 750BC, Paris has Stonehendge and The Mids, Ulundi has The Great Wall . I have CoL, but lost Confucianism in 2 turns. I have a setller ready to claim the Marble.
Well, I need a religion and only 2 left, so Philosophy is very high priority. Christianity was founded from Oracle somewhere. The problem is that I will need calendar soon and I dont have even fishing yet. Obviously I need Aestgetics and Music early too, so I will not miss the most important wonder in this game. I also am short in cash and this game I founded the raze barbarian cities economy. Being unable to attack me they settled like crazy and my Horse Archer stack was employed to bring money to Zulu empire.
I founded Taoism and build about all wonders:
I was first to music and the free artist. I settled 15 cities fast. I have Parthenon, SoZ, SC, Nothre Dam, Great Library (but in Umuv...) Angkor Wat, Taj, Mausoleum, UoS. I was first to Liberalism of course(took Nationalism). Used a great spy for golden age and saved a great engineer for creative constructions. The rest is boring. Met another civilizations. They was no an issue. Non stop wars between Oranje/ Gilga and Monty/Joao, so I just neglected them. I realized that I will not need corporations at all, so I burned the engineer for SoL. At the end Willem adopt Emancipation, so I used the culture slider to deal with unhappiness. Ulundi was a pure great artist farm and only Stonehendge abused the GP pool, but I produced only 1 prophet and 16 artist+1 from Music and 1 Scientist from Umuv to build the Academy there. I won at 1839AD.
After scout move, settling in place was obvious.
I decided to postpone AH and research BW for ultra early Impi rush. This could be a major mistake in this game, but my luck with the huts was incredible. At turn 3 I popped AH!!! Tech path changed immediately to The Wheel of course. I popped 5 another huts for about 100 gold total and 3 another techs, Myst, Archery and Writing. Of course I met Napoleon and Toku. Ultra early chariot rush against Nappy, took Paris and razed Orlean to rebuild it later. I settled Umunduvo.....(or whatever the name is) in the floodplains south of Ulundi and Nomamba claiming the stone. Having Archery I went after Horseback riding, build 7 Horse Archers and razed all Japanese cities, except Kyoto. All Horse archers survive! and Toku is nomroe. It is about 1100 BC and the continent is mine. 750BC, Paris has Stonehendge and The Mids, Ulundi has The Great Wall . I have CoL, but lost Confucianism in 2 turns. I have a setller ready to claim the Marble.
Well, I need a religion and only 2 left, so Philosophy is very high priority. Christianity was founded from Oracle somewhere. The problem is that I will need calendar soon and I dont have even fishing yet. Obviously I need Aestgetics and Music early too, so I will not miss the most important wonder in this game. I also am short in cash and this game I founded the raze barbarian cities economy. Being unable to attack me they settled like crazy and my Horse Archer stack was employed to bring money to Zulu empire.
I founded Taoism and build about all wonders:
I was first to music and the free artist. I settled 15 cities fast. I have Parthenon, SoZ, SC, Nothre Dam, Great Library (but in Umuv...) Angkor Wat, Taj, Mausoleum, UoS. I was first to Liberalism of course(took Nationalism). Used a great spy for golden age and saved a great engineer for creative constructions. The rest is boring. Met another civilizations. They was no an issue. Non stop wars between Oranje/ Gilga and Monty/Joao, so I just neglected them. I realized that I will not need corporations at all, so I burned the engineer for SoL. At the end Willem adopt Emancipation, so I used the culture slider to deal with unhappiness. Ulundi was a pure great artist farm and only Stonehendge abused the GP pool, but I produced only 1 prophet and 16 artist+1 from Music and 1 Scientist from Umuv to build the Academy there. I won at 1839AD.
I've learned a lot from following your games. It's helped me move up from Prince to monarch quite fast. My shadow games was a bit different from yours and Semirani's, which razed a lot of Toku's cities (to keep the maintenance down, I guess). In my game, I took out Nappy with an early axe/impi rush (mostly axes), and then took some time to get my empire in order, filling out a lot of the empty space on the island and hooking up resources. I kept 2-3 stacks outside Toku's borders near the iron (I could see he had no iron or copper anywhere). Every time he settled a city near by to claim them I DOWed him and razed the city, then got peace (he was always happy to comply, never asking for anything from me - it seemed uncommonly civilized of him 
). In the 800's AD I sent in stacks of maces and took over all of his lovely mature cities with farms, mines, towns, and plantations. They paid for themselves immediately. All I did was build Forbidden Palace in Kyoto. I thinkI only razed one poorly paced city of his and replaced it with one of mine.
). In any case, I had almost triple the score of the leader on the other continent. After avoiding a diplo loss by 1 vote the first time and 3 the second, I sent 3 galleons filled with infantry (c3 cr3 upgraded units - formerly axemen!) accompanied by 6 frigates to his AP city (which was coastal - that made it easy 
). By the time they got there I had teched combustion and built destroyers, which got there shortly afterward (Monty had a bunch of galleons and few frigate, all holded up in his capital next door - also coastal). Defenders were rifles and longbows, so I attacked from the ship after suiciding a couple of cannons, didn't lose anyone and got them all amphib promotions, razed the city, then moved to his capital and razed it the same way, killing his entire navy in one fell swoop. 
End of threat.
