Hmm, in my game all the good techs were south ... where I went

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I haven't read the whole thread yet to see how I stack up, but it was an interesting first 4000 years (I stopped in the early middle ages when my eyes started to glaze over). Very very different from my usual type of game.
Anyway, I had seen a lot of people in the pregame thread discussing conquest/domination type victories with this nice Pangaea map. Me being the contrarian I am, decided to go for spaceship. So basically everything I've done so far has been to further that goal.
But .. it ain't easy! No rivers near the start (I explored due north *last*). No bonus food for fast growth (one fish tile barely even rates in despotism). No luxes nearby! (see again about my direction of exploration). One thing the starting area *did* have was shields. No less than five bonus grassland tiles in range of the capital (I didn't move my settler), plus two forests - just about as good as you can get. Sooo, after my two intial warriors (one south and a little east initially, the other more or less due west), I built a granary (completed 2850 bc) and *one* settler. Alesia was founded three tiles west of Entremont on the north shore of the lake, so it could get the fish and share the mined bonus grassland for a while. Alesia produced my next two settlers for me (14 turns each by working the fish tile first at size one - blistering pace, I tell ya) while Entremont built workers and warriors. In 2030 bc, though, it switched to .. Pyramids! I can't even remember the last time I tried to build it, but with the usual rapid expansion so very very difficult on this map and such a high-shield capital I decided to go for it.
Meanwhile, Lugdunum was founded on the river to the north, one tile from the coast where it could pull in both cows after it built its temple. The next settler out of Alesia went to the hill two tiles west of Lugdunum, and the first settler out of Lugdunum went to the hill just south of the eastern horses. That's it, that's all the cities I had at the end of the QSC period, although I had a settler on the way for the sixth.
My research path was similar to some I saw on the first page - pottery first at max, followed by mysticism at max. While still researching mysticism (barely started even), my two scouting warriors found the Iroquois and Carthage on subsequent turns. And the Iroquois already had mysticism!

Well, anyway, I was able to get masonry and bronze working off carthage for my two starting techs, so not all lost. Carthage also had alphabet. A few turns after that my warrior near Carthage ran into a pictish warrior and came out the loser, so that was it for western exploration for a while.
The southern warrior did much better, meeting Greece next, in 2590 BC. I couldn't trade with them - they had alphabet, lacked pottery, but happily, in 2430 a Roman warrior came by Entremont to say 'hi' and I was able to buy alphabet for CB/pottery. I gave him masonry, too - I hadn't yet decided on my plans for that civ ....
In 2270 I met the Chinese, who had the wheel, but still lacked mysticism. Too bad they had it by the time I *got* mysticism, 2 turns later ....
Things started looking up after that, though. I went to min research on polytheism, and looked for opportunities to broker. Alexander, who'd lacked mysticism all along but hadn't had anything to trade me for it, showed up with ironworking, and I got that and the wheel on trades for about break-even gold. Around this time I started to give away techs widely to Greece, Iroquois and China, withholding them from my two nearest neighbors, though.
In 1575, still researching polytheism, a replacement western warrior met France. Amazingly she and Hannibal hadn't met yet. Contact with her plus about 120 gold got me writing and horseback-riding, plus contacts with all the rest of the civs but Egypt. And then I made the gold back selling contacts.

England and Japan got gifted all the techs, too. (Aztecs didn't, but caught up again shortly.)
Next round of trading was in 1250 BC, for Philosophy and Literature. Once again, both techs went to everybody but Carthage and Rome. Decided to freeze growth on Entremont at size 7 to get the Pyramids a little faster.
My 40 turns on polytheism finally ended in 1025 BC. The last few turns going in, I was overjoyed

to see that all of the more advanced civs had obtained mapmaking, code of laws and mathematics, as well as contact with Egypt. I traded for all of the above, plus nearly-complete world maps, with polytheism, as before, actually giving it away to the last few civs. (Excepting England this time in addition to Carthage/Rome, since they weren't holding up their end of the 'do Renata's research for her' bargain ....)
Anyway, by the end of the QSC, I had gone to pure cash, with six AI civs ready to research the last four ancient age techs, and me just hoping I could afford to pay cash for them when the time came. With settlers and workers and libraries and horsemen (because Rome had to go) to build, oh my! Fun, fun fun ....
Am too tired to go dig up my post-QSC notes (because, you know, that would require a whole half-dozen or so mouse clicks), but will type that up in a couple of days. The pictures from that period are more interesting, anyway.
Here's my 1000bc minimap, showing all five of my glorious cities.

The red and blue lines are my first two warriors (with the blue one dying to a Pict. The pink and green lines were my next two warriors; the short orange line is a conscript I got from the hut near Lugdunum.
Renata
PS. Oh yeah ... And in 1000 BC exactly ---- Entremont built the Pyramids!
