T215 diplo victory. For the second evening of playing, my head was back in the game, and I made far fewer mistakes. I went Astronomy before Printing Press to meet the city states, although perhaps that was not ambitious enough. In the end I had a couple of turns to spare before hitting the Information Era, so before the second vote of the World Congress. It would not surprise me to see significantly faster finish times, not only by people having a quicker early game, but also perhaps one or two players might pull off an atomic era victory after killing some of the AI (I forgot how many you need to kill to trigger the vote in the Atomic era).
I went for Industrialization before public schools, perhaps lulled into a false sense of security that in most GotM games, coal would be nearby. There is a coal node in Jakarta, and there is a node a little bit further on the coast to the east. That area is pretty bleak unless you get Petra there - which might be a valid play since there is also a marble there. Some city states had coal too, but mostly not easy to obtain (i.e., the coal node is on an already improved hill, and then you have to wait for the AI to reach Industrialization, which was never going to happen).
I did make the decision to capture Jakarta for the coal (we were anyway already at war over annoying prophets). I built a knight, a gatling gun, a trebuchet, and I upgraded a bowman to a gatling, which along with my starting warrior, upgraded to longsword was enough for Indonesia, and also to continue to Braga, which had built Petra and same-turned me on Machu Picchu. Actually, I got Braga in a peace deal. It was too late in the game for any other meaningful war, so I played peacefully after that. Actually, most AI were surprisingly friendly with me, with was useful for occasional gold trades and luxury deals, especially with the Dutch. It's often useful to have them in the game, so you can trade for his last luxury for a luxury of your own plus 5gpt (as he retains half happiness when he trades away a luxury).
Some struggles I had in this game were gold and happiness. I built Forbidden Palace a bit late, not in time for the first vote, and I not only did not get my religion passed, but also had to allow the AI to ban marble. That meant I never achieved a natural golden age. I was only a few points off, but when I got Braga (9 pop, no unique luxury), it dropped me very low again. As I reached the Information Era, I had finally managed to buy and ally all CS, and then I had 10 turns to wait. I decided to build some wonders in my 'spare time' (Himeji, Red Fort, Taj, CN Tower (extra pop!), but lost Globe), as score is a tie breaker.
One final interesting thing in this game: after making peace with Portugal they were 'Afraid' of me for some turns. I have not seen that often outside of having nukes, and I did not even had a lot of army (I think I was only third in army).
On the final vote I had 47 votes with 40 required (all CS, World Ideology (Freedom), and 5 diplomats with Globalization. Votes to spare, then, but it did make me think that it might be difficult to get all required votes if you do manage to trigger in Atomic, as my gold got going quite late.
