I took the settler for a walk East, settling within 2 tiles of Mt. Sinai. Warrior also went East and came home with a couple of workers (thanks Indonesia and barbs) and a couple of CS allies (Valleta would be allied for the entire game). Scout went West and scooped up a ton of goodie huts before becoming an archer.
1st expo went East to the river as I wanted a guild city. 2nd expo went West, next to the mountain, to provide a defensive buffer against the inevitable invasion from the city-spamming Rome. As their only neighbor, it was inevitable that they'd come knocking and i wasn't in the mood for bribing the purple bastard. An added bonus was a goodie hut that gave me Sailing, so I was able to get a trireme out exploring very early. Sadly, I was ice blocked so I only got to explore half of the map and I lost the trireme when Indonesia launched a weak invasion early game.
I got 2nd pantheon (had to wait for computer to buy a desert tile so I could buy the Sinai tile) and took Sacred Path (+1 culture from jungle). I figured I had plenty of faith and wanted to bump up the culture.....and yes, the Brazilwoody thingies looked very sexy kicking out 3 culture. The holy order of Shark Diving was the 2nd religion founded, and I took Tithe, Pagodas, then enhanced with +5 tourism from Hermitage and Religious Texts. I was thinking I'd be able to spread my religion pretty easily, but Indo and the Celts were missionary spamming early and often and it was all I could do just to get Pagodas built in my own 4 cities. Those two played religious ping pong with Sao Paulo the entire game, flipping the city something like 20 times each. I ended up using a late GP to flip 4 cities late to get the 3rd most popular religion for a cheezy 1 point.
Opened Tradition, then full Libery. I used the free GE for Chichen Itza, so the 3 points for 100+ turns of Carnival was pretty easy. I had 110 turns of Carnival plus another 19 banked when the game ended. I hard built Oracle (to help finish Liberty) and Petra (because I'm a Petra-whore and it was just sitting there) in Rio. 4 city NC was t90 and Education was t104. I completed Tradition next, with a small detour to open Rationalism so I could build PT (which I built instead of Globe as I had RA's galore in this very friendly game).
Indo DoW'd me once, but with all of the units that Valetta was gifting me (all of which got altitude training from nearby Mt. Kilimanjaro) and Valetta's own units, the field was soon littered with the corpses of Kris swordsmen, and Indo soon offered peace and DoF shortly thereafter. Portugal and the Celts were friendly from Day 1, and it seems they had mutually agreed that Isabella was the mother of Satan and they spent most of the game taking turns asking me to DoW Spain (Spain was finally wiped out around t250).
In the meantime, Rome tried one invasion around t115 but sued for peace by t110 and never again showed any aggression other than stealing 2 tiles with a GG around t280. Caesar was a total schizoid this game, as he'd bark at me often, never invade, traded fairly, and ended up asking me for DoF and then denouncing me the following turn. Although he spammed a ton of cities, he never really mounted any invasions anywhere. Useless purple pansy.
I built Sistine Chapel and Louvre for those 2 points. I probably could have had the other targeted Wonders, but the game was still in doubt mid-game so I focused more on winning than mongering. Other Wonders built were SoL, PT, SOH, Eiffel, and CN Tower in Rio and I built Neuschwhwodisghenstein in Sao Paulo.
As mentioned, this game was very peaceful. I Oxforded to Radio and got 1st ideology and took Freedom. Everyone else followed with Order (Rome went Autocracy but flipped to Order very quickly and Spain was wiped out before making an ideological choice). I was sitting there with 6 Order civs agains me alone in Freedom, but my culture was so strong this game that there was zero unhappiness for me. All of the Order civs remained friendly all the way until the end and the game ended with 6 DoF's. I never even needed to use the Foreign Legion tenant as I had so many gifted units from militaristic CS's that I wouldn't have had room for them.
I proposed WF on the 1st go-round and surprisingly didn't win (I took 2nd and that's 3 straight games and 4 of 5 where I've lost WF.....this is not normal). Fortunately, someone else proposed IG the 2nd go-round and I was able to barely win a very close contest. The timing was great on this as I was just starting to build up my tourism and it spiked to 100+ pretty quickly and never looked back. I spend the final 75+ turns in Carnival.
I had 7 GA's, 6 GW's, and 6 GM's for that 5 point bonus. The 6th GM was faith bought and I tried to send him to Portugal to speed up the end game, but everyone's land was so packed with units it took freakin forever for him to travel that short distance and he didn't arrive in Portugal until the final turn where Portugal got flipped naturally. I did a terrible job of theming, but it's hard to do when Carnival is so much of a better use of a GA, especially when you have Chichen and Freedom.
I completed 4 full Social Policies, 6 in Freedom, and had a couple in Exploration as well. This might be a personal record for social policies.
There's not much more to say as this was a pretty peaceful turtle game with diplomacy representing the most excitement. I was prepared for war, but didn't have an easy target unless I wanted to stir up the hornet's nest of Rome (I didn't).
