Game status: Domination Victory
Game date: 425AD
Turns played: 132
Base score: 818
Final score: 3019
Time played: Don't know how to find this. Was probably 4 hoursish.
Pretty straightforward game. Opened with scout, monument, granary in cap, squeezed out a second scout, then pumped archers for awhile. Researched Pottery then Animal Husbandry hoping for a nice horse tile to work, denied on that front. Archery third so I could begin unit production. Went Liberty for policy, free settler first, then golden age, then finisher. Trapping after Archery hoping I could improve a truffles in time to drop my second city. Decided God-King was the best pantheon after briefly considering Sun God. I think it was the right choice for domination.
I had my warrior up by Rome waiting for a good moment to steal the worker improving their wine and citrus, didn't feel safe doing it until the worker was on the citrus (they had warriors and archers lurking for awhile). By the time I stole it I had a pair of archers up there with him. I sent the second scout west to grab a worker from that CS, took them forever to poop one out. Was unhappy for awhile after dropping expand because it took me so long to steal workers. Planted 2 tiles SW of marble on the way to Rome, wanted to grab that deer tile to the east eventually. I built monument + granny before transitioning to CB spam. This took probably 25 turns or more, maybe should have cut out granny or both. Scouting was also very lackluster because I had the second scout tied up for so long.
Took Rome with 6 archers and a warrior, then started moving NW as I had met China and Assyria from that direction. Meanwhile my first scout found Sweden and Assyria to the NE. Researched Bronze Working and spit out 3 Pictish guys from cap while waiting on Construction. First went NW with my initial army, other two went NE to harass Sweden, ended up denying an expand and stealing a settler that was moving towards Rome. From there it was CB time. Left one @ cap to guard my luxes b/c raging barbs. There was a camp to the south near the coast but it must've been shooting its barbs towards the CS' because I didn't get much action from it.
Decided I should grab NC after Construction so I went Writing, Mathematics (for Courthouse), Philosophy, and built Libraries in my two cities + Rome. Annexed Rome b/c I had tons of gold all game from CS tributes, bought that Courthouse with cash money while Library was going up. Spammed CBs after Library was done. Finished Philosophy several turns before Liberty finisher so I could rush it with a GE. Afterwards I teched straight to Machinery for Xbows.
Meanwhile, I found Venice walking a Great Merchant towards a city state with my army to the NW, so I killed that, then beelined to Venice. It was easy to take and I upgraded all 6 of my Archers there to CB before moving SW to China. Left my warrior behind to protect against pillaging barbs. China was a bit of a pain b/c of all the jungle, but I grabbed the cap with no units lost. I started to wonder at this point if there was some kind of trick to this map, because I still hadn't met the last two civs, and thought about researching Optics in case they were on islands or something. I fanned my CBs out to the west/NW and met an Ethiopian scout, then saw that little one tile choke point leading to them + the Iroquois.
After my Libraries were done I started taking Sweden's cap with 2 Pictish + 3 CBs. Had 2 more CBs show up to the party by the time I took the cap. Started moving this army west to Assyria, there were probably 10 CBs in the mix by the time I got there. Again a fairly easy conquest. I had to kill a few more Assyrian units and begin pushing one of their remaining cities before they would accept peace. Once they did, I put one CB each in Assyria + Sweden cap and deleted the rest of the units from my second army.
The Iroquois was somewhat of a slow push, and I lost my first unit of the game here (a CB). I had traded embassies with Ethiopia upon meeting them, and their cap was really strong relative to the other civs (27 strength vs 12-17 on all the others I had taken). Fortunately I finished up Machinery as I took the Iroquois cap, so I upgraded my remaining 5 CBs to Xbows here, and for good measure annexed so I could purchase additional XBows and a backup Pictish for capturing. Since my cities + Rome were so far away from the final conquests, I built markets while I was taking Assyria and switched production to wealth. I had a good ~30 gpt for a while, and I also never stopped tributing CS' (perhaps I could have walked around tributing more instead of deleting that second army, but I think I got more gold out of deleting it).
I had to take one extra Iroquois city because it was blocking my path to Ethiopia and they wouldn't give it up for peace. The rest of the game was pretty quick and kosher with Xbows, and I even got one upgraded to logistics the turn before I finished up. Oh, I eventually got first religion at some point, took 2 gold per city and production increase with that. On my second Prophet I should've spread it but I hit enhance instead and you apparently can't take that back, so I got pagodas and built exactly one before the game ended. I don't think my religion ever spread to a second city, so all I got from it all game was 2gpt and a pagoda eventually.
