Turn 255 science victory (two-and and half years after the fact, but I was looking for some interesting science victory games
). It was a humbling experience playing Deity again after trying some other GotM challenges on (much) lower difficulties. I started out playing too complacent, and very nearly lost the game because of it. The early game was scout - stele, and from 4-pop into settlers for 5-city tradition. Four observatory cities, and a city for Lake Victoria.
My complacency was regarding Shaka: I thought he could never attack through that terrain but of course he could.
When he declared war, I thought I had time to buy a unit and block the choke point. However, I had forgotten about the Ikanda promotions, and he could claim two tiles next to my capital. His first two units were a warrior and a spearman, but soon an impi appeared. In a turn or two later, the catapult was in range, the impi was next to my city, which was in the red. My two brave warriors slammed the impi but both exploded; the game was over. But he accepted peace!
The game continued, but not without cost: because I spent time building the wall, I lost Oracle by a turn to Polynesia. I had only checked Egypt's capital, but honestly I should never have been attempting the 10+ turn build in the first place. It set back my NC timing by 10 turns, so I was surprised my timing was not terrible: workshops into universities for T134 Astronomy. However, the detour did mean I missed first entry into Printing Press, which is often manageable. This could give two advantages: trying the Leaning Tower, and chairing the World congress, proposing World's Fair which will make civs like me, and give me the opportunity to get some much-needed social policies. In this game, I could not propose anything until the third sitting and in the meanwhile the AI were proposing annoying luxury bans, as they do.
After the initial war, Polynesia also came calling, but I could bribe him to attack Ottomans when I spotted his units. I was able to refresh this war for most of the game, keeping me safe as Shaka did not try again either (and now I had fortified units in forts in the two choke points, roaded so I could swap units if needed, but I never did. However, the game did not get much easier after that. My cities were not great (the disadvantage of hugging a mountain range), my culture was poor, my gold was not good either, and once ideologies hit my Freedom choice was confronted with a revolutionary wave. I did consider changing then (I had just built Statue anyway), but I did not want to change to Autocracy, so I worked all specialists, and slowly started to work on digging myself out of my culture and happiness hole. Hermitage, broadcast tower in the cap, 5 archeologists (useful steal from Siam), faith-buying an engineer for Neuschwanstein, and an eventual World's Fair meant my happiness was restored, and all the necessary policies obtained - but it did not feel like a fast game anymore. Still, seeing the difficulties other players faced, I feel a better about the finish time.