Conquered Elizabeth very early with chariot archers, Turn 95. Chivalry came two turns later, so the great Keshik upgrade began. Next came Montezuma, who got the great wall in my game. Normally, I would consider leaving the Great Wall alone until much later, but Poland was a complete runaway, and Montezuma was between me and Poland, so he needed to go. His army was easily destroyed, so it was just a matter of avoiding deaths from the great wall. Tenochtitlan was captured T121. Then, I started building the long road west to Warsaw.
The terrain approaching Warsaw was pretty rough to get through, so I had to use great general bombs to secure the roads at key river crossings, and also had to decimate Maria along the way, as she was just in the way, and was clearly going to mount an attack on my army, which was actually just passing through the area for once. I destroyed her entire army and then left her with just her capital, planning to swing back around to pick that up on the way to Attila’s court. At this point, I was pressing pretty hard to get to Warsaw before his unique lancer unit showed up. Warsaw fell on T153, and lancers showed up not long after. Just in time.
Peace terms with Poland were pretty odd, it was either all his money or Attila’s Court. Why not both? I show have pushed for better terms, but time was marching on, and although I was not concerned about the Inca, Alex had been left untouched in the corner for quite some time, and he was clearly in the tech lead, so I knew I would be facing rifles. Getting Attila’s court made the Inca capital trivial, and I was thinking the game would be over somewhere around T185. Cusco and Lisbon were both down by T176.
I knew to keep some peacekeepers around with Deity, but I sort of underestimated, or should I say, did not fully anticipate what would come next. Something was telling me I should have secured another Polish city, and then basically all hell broke loose when I declared war on Greece, and the Polish peace treaty was up. Everyone decided that it was time to get their lands back, even Elizabeth attempted a pretty good push on London. Where in the heck did those units came from Elizabeth? I will never know. I sort of suspect that Alex bankrolled the whole thing. Poland clearly had lancers, and a lot of them, so my peacekeepers were pushed to the absolute limit. There were too many puzzles to work out each turn, and I did not notice one of the city states that Alex bribed was very close to Lisbon. I thought Lisbon was secure with a Cavalry unit, but it managed to capture Lisbon using a privateer that was in a foggy portion of the map, taking my Cavalry unit with it.
The city capture rate had clearly slowed down dramatically. I wanted to push hard on Athens, but rifles and lancers were out and about in the lands of Greece, so I started using my GS bulbs to get up to Artillery, just in case. I also had to start playing every turn VERY carefully, as my army of super-keshiks were at the end of their lifespan. In reality, I did not need artillery, but lancers and cavalry were absolutely required to push through the more advanced Greek army.
I think the key to this game was securing river crossings via citadels. But, there was definite room for improvement in my play. I should have constructed a second army to take on Greece/Inca while going after Poland. The limiting factor was horses, which I should have prioritized much higher in my planning. I sort of thought horses would just come naturally via conquest, from either the Aztecs or Portugal, but I think I was a bit too trigger-happy with razing cities to control happiness. Also, don't leave the runaway with too many cities, or there will be a counter-attack. I should have also gone full honor, but instead I went Liberty and left side of honor (more experience, more great generals).
. Quite a few of them were throwing themselves at Warsaw's walls/castle. For once, thank you puppet, for building that castle.
And the units aroudn Beshbalik were all donated by the military CS. There were 4 more infantries below the Screenshot 
