Well, I've submitted my game, a Diplomatic Victory in 1770 AD. I decided to get the diplo victory after deciding I didn't have time to complete my 20K culture victory. Carthage has almost 15K culture, and is gaining about 122 cpt, so I estimate around 40 - 45 turns left. But my game is going very slowly, and even if I automate everything and just build wealth, I think it'd take about 3 hours (which I don't have.) With enough time I'd gotten the 20K culture somewhere in the 1850's.
Getting a diplomatic victory can be interesting. I'd taken Egypt and Greece out of the game; America had taken Germany out. Since Russia was down to 1 city, and they didn't like me, and they ATTACKED me (Archer against Mech Infantry
) it was pretty easy to finish them off, leaving 9 civs. MPPs and gold got the Aztecs and China Gracious with me. Persia also was ameniable in this way. (4 likely votes; 1 more to clinch.) England was a non-starter - couldn't get Elizabeth better than annoyed. Same for the Zulu. However, Rome and the Iroqouis were Polite, so I gifted them. America and I were at war.
Who was the other candidate going to be? I was the only one in the Modern Age, so I knew I'd finish the UN. By my eye it was a toss-up between the Zulu and Rome. (Is it considered unethical, or cheating, to use MapStat to see who has more land area for UN selection?) Well, the Zulu decided to attack the Iroqouis a couple of turns before the first UN vote, so I quickly signed an alliance with the Iroqouis and hoped the Zulu would be the 2nd candidate. Nope, it was Rome, but I still got 5 votes (Carthage, Persia, Aztecs, China and Iroqouis), to 2 (Rome, England) with 2 abstentions (Zulu and America). Turns out that the Zulu and America were at war with both of us; does the AI always abstain in this type of case?
I only sent out a few suicide galleys (maybe 5 in all) and 1 actually made it to Greece. I was already ahead in technology (I had monotheism) so I decided to just beeline to Navigation, and save my Galleys for safe Ocean transiting. This was in line with my slower growth pattern, and my desire to finish pacifying the Egyptian lands; by the time I had resources to try the suicide galley, it made more sense to wait.
I also didn't see much sense it bringing the AI up to technology parity with me. Only Persia of the Scientific civs was relatively unhampered by its neighbors. Babylon was taken out eventually by the Zulu; Russia was reduced by America and Germany, and then Germany was taken out by America. Greece had about a third of it's territory taken by Rome before I found them; I eventually took care of them. Persia and England had almost evenly split their island group, but this left Persia too small to really challenge or help Carthage in scientific research. I used Navigation to advance myself considerably while limiting the AI communications until the last possible minute. I did get about 5 ancient Era techs from Egypt, I traded for 5 Middle Age and 3 Industrial Age techs, and researched the rest. At the position I was, I might have sped the research path up by making more competition, or I might have slowed things down by trying to wait for them to research something I didn't have. I just plowed through, and left a few techs to trade for later. (Specifically, the lower techs in the Middle Age, and the Nationalism tree in the Industrial Age).
It was fun, but took longer than I'd have liked. PTW said my game was 47 hours long, which is a lot for me. (GOTM16 was about 35 hours by my estimate.) I hope next month doesn't have the pauses that this month had.
