I started over again from the previous round due to some criticism of my city placement. I settled 1E for my capital to be next to a river, and then totally ignored the stone and the marble. I settled my next few cities in closer vicinity. The 2nd city ended up being my capital due to having multiple riverside grassland tiles as well as some hills, the northeastern corn from Cahokia, and the riverside dyes.
I hadn't planned on actually building this thing: I was just going for the fail gold, but luck just happened to be on my side I suppose:
And soon, my 1st Great Person happened to be:
I thought about just settling him, but then I was going hard for Code of Laws, and realized that I had a chance at founding a religion. Since none of my neighbors on my continent: Pericles and Pacal founded a religion yet, I thought I had a chance at perhaps building myself a shrine, so I saved him.
And at exactly 1 AD, it happened exactly that way:
Being Philosophical really helps. I think I popped a few Great Scientists along the way. I settled a couple in Cahokia and Poverty Point (2nd city), and then moved the capital to Poverty Point after Bureaucracy. Poverty Point was also ended up being my holy city for Taoism as you saw in the screen shot, so I planned on making this city Wall Street/Oxford city, while working Cahokia as a GP farm.
And of course, getting Philosophy first through bulbing got me another religion in Islam:
Cahokia, even giving up one of the corns to the new capital still made a good GP farm and I wanted the Great Library built there. And I think I got lucky with a rather late Great Library at that:
Meanwhile, I was beelining straight to Liberalism at this point, and an event that changed the outcome of the game happened:
It just happens to be that the Apostolic Palace was built for my religion, since both Pericles and Pacal were running Taoism. I usually almost never get put into this situation. It's always another religion from another AI that becomes the AP religion in almost all of my games. So this was actually a pleasant event.
At any rate, I delayed Liberalism for a while so that I can take Astronomy from it:
And you know what? I got lucky with something else. This should help stop any AI from pursuing Culture Victory on me:
I was going for fail gold there too, but luck just happened to be on my side I guess. I wasn't even the 1st one to Music either. I was surprised that Gandhi didn't beat me to it.
This was the tech situation shortly after taking Astronomy from Liberalism:
And since I got the head start on Optics and Astronomy, I thought I might as well make full use of it. And my galleons and my 1st caravel that helped me meet other neighbors on different continents ensured that I got this:
Meanwhile, I self teched Nationalism en route to Military Tradition. I already teched Gunpowder at that point, so I wanted to get out a lot of cuirassiers ASAP and then upgrade them to cavalries as necessary. I was planning to run a lot of merchants to pop some Great Merchants too. Anyways, this was the first step to doing all that:
Taj Mahal is becoming one of my favorite wonders. It really is a beautiful thing.
After I finished Military Tradition, I started building lots of cuirassiers. I then went down the bottom half of the tech tree, with some tech trades and such, and ended up being 1st to Economics and the free Great Merchant:
This happened a turn into the Golden Age from Taj Mahal, so I switched civics and started amassing GP points towards Great Merchants. I found the Russian city of Novgorod, which happened to be a coastal city with Temple of Artemis, so I planned on sending them for trade missions which net me 1900 to 2100 gold per mission!
GP Farm right at the 1st civics change. I was only 1 turn away from popping a Great Scientist here:
On the next turn after I got a Great Scientist, the city only needed 5 more turns for another Great Merchant:
And at the end of the Golden Age, I switched civics, only changing from Pacifism to Theocracy for the xp bonus on my troops:
I think all that amassing troops scared Pacal somewhat, because he offered:
I refused. I planned on taking over the entire continent. No vassal here. I was, at this point, thinking that space might be the way to go, so I wanted a strong core of cities on my continent all to myself.
And the 1st victim happened to be Pericles:
All of my cuirassiers have been upgraded to cavalries already at this point, thanks to the trade missions. The trade missions also helped me run deficit research at 100% for a very long time, which helped my march towards Communism, a free Great Spy, and access to State Property.
After I captured Athens, the Apostolic Palace city, and won the residency, the first proposal came up. And I thought, why not try for victory right now? ^_^
Of course, it failed miserably, but oh well. ^_^ It didn't matter anyways. And soon, Pericles was wiped off completely:
And finally, Communism!
After changing to State Property and healing my cavalries, my next victim was chosen:
And it ended up being rather a very quick war due to Pacal having only 4 cities:
GAH! I forgot to take screen shots for my war against Kublai Khan! But basically, Pacal bribed Kublai into the war when I declared on Pacal. I had my coastal cities build me a fleet of galleons and frigates in preparation for the intercontinental war. The troops healed rather quickly, so I shipped over my troops to his continent, and captured 4 of his cities, including his capital, while razing one of those 4. He capitulated quickly without much of a fight. He was the most backward civ on the world, so he made an easy target.
Also, I made a small expedition to the medium-sized island west of my landmass where a couple of barbarian settlements and a few roaming barbarians were existing rather peacefully. I captured the 2 cities and made a colony out of it, which happened to be Washington. I spread Taoism to both of the cities before granting them independence and left it at that for amusement at that point.
Well, it was here that I happened to check out this:
Oh my god! I can actually win through Apostolic Palace if I wanted to! Do you all see where this is going now? ^_^ I've spread some missionaries around to Cathy, Joao, and Gandhi, just to boost my Taoist holy city a bit. None of them were running Theocracy, and with the shrine randomly spreading Taoism, everyone ended up having some decent amount of votes.
I saw that Gandhi and Cathy were closing in on Rifling, and with a huge bulk of my troops being cavalries, the game was going to be dragging way too long for my taste. They both had Military Tradition already by this point. I just wanted to finish it. And I know how deadly Cathy's cossacks are going to be against my normal cavalries. They are going to be eaten alive!
Anyways, right before the next Apostolic Palace proposal, I finished:
A couple of happiness resources, but I built it just for fun, since I already had Electricity, which I made it a priority to boost my watermills and windmills.
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) which is not a necessary tech to build the spaceship. It also "costs" 2,000 
(1,000 with aluminum) which could otherwise be used for spaceship parts. I used to build it regularly, but more recently I've stopped because I wonder whether the time to research and build it costs more than the time it saves. 
). Good game BTW. 
