Snatching Utopian Victory from the Jaws of Nuclear Armageddon
Aztec history in territorial expansion. And contraction
I founded Tenoch 2E of the start, built a couple more jags to go explore, and earn cash, culture and promotions. They notably failed to find the South American wonder on my doorstep, meh. I delayed the production of my only settler until after Ironwork, so I would know where to go to get decent access to iron; Teotihuacan was founded on top of the 6-iron SW of Tenoch.
China was as slow to expand as I, and the victim of my first campaign, lasting all the way from 400bc to 580ad. This earned me only two cities, which I puppeted. As ever, my military performance was woeful, and my dreams of a solid force of heavily-promoted jaguar-upgrades ended with plenty of two-hit kills by Chinese cities and their defending units. I still can't figure out how to entice the AI units away from the safety of their territory so I can fight them on my terms...
So my native cities spent a lot of time replacing lost units, and after the Chinese campaign the army was still pretty green. Accordingly, their attack on Russia in 740ad wasn't a great success either. I eventually took two southeast Russian cities, and found myself confronted with an army far better than mine in size and tech; fighting rifles and artillery with longswords and trebuchets is a losing game. Cath wouldn't give me peace until after she had retaken one of the towns (1370ad). I regrouped and tried again in a join venture with the French in 1545ad; France was gobbling up civs and city-states at a frightening rate, and annexed some northern Russian cities without much trouble. Despite my army still being archaic, I managed to grab two more southern cities before we all fell to peace again in 1670ad. My third and final Russian war was to be riding the tailcoats of a Japanese attack, but Cath decided to dow me first; suited me fine. Japan took one or two cities in the west, while I grabbed the remaining three, including Moscow itself. Cath was finally eliminated in 1892ad.
This left me with the problem of a significant land border with France. Luckily Bony had a solution to this problem: my annihilation! He went from friendly to hostile almost the moment our border through Russia was decided, and his legionaires and artillery started lining up. I nervously readied my weary troops for the inevitable dow. It came in 1911ad, and it wasn't pretty. Tanks were rolling, jets were strafing, and his artillery were rapidly upgrading into a swarm of rocket trucks that flattened any units I might leave stranded outside cities. It quickly became clear that the Russian front line was a liability, not least because those cities were all very close together, so I sold Moscow and Rostov to neutral Japan, to act as a buffer zone, and hoped France would cool off.
No such luck; France simply dowed Japan and rolled right through the area anyway. I still had about 20 turns of culture accumulation to go when Bony offered peace for all my assets. I couldn't do it, and was wondering whether I could last long enough to even start Utopia, when Enola Gay lazily drifted across the Novgorod skies. Little Boy went down, and I almost quit the game. But I figured why not play it out? After all, that city was pretty unimportant. The Aztec people agreed, and immediately went into a golden age
. Bony had other ideas, and a couple of turns later, Fat Man hit Tenochtitlan. Okay, that seemed bad at first, but after recovering from the shock I realised Teotihuacan wasn't too shabby either, and the French had actually stopped mounting a credible push through my Russian province, perhaps amusing themselves with their Japanese campaign. So I hung in there, taking a third nuclear strike to my uranium town in good humour. Bony offered peace on fairly reasonable terms (>200gpt and resources, but no cities) in 1927ad. I happily accepted, finished up my policies in 1929ad, and before he really had time to think about restarting the war, Teo put together Utopia for a
1939ad win.
Aztec history in techs
My first goal was Writing (3200bc) for library, then Wheel (2640bc) for gardens - an incomparably good building for its cost/era, except possibly for the National College. Calendar (2160bc) was next, to get the silk and wine hooked, but I was beaten to Stonehenge. At least I could put the fail gold to good use, as I was spending my cash on territorial expansion. I went classical with Philosophy (1520bc) and manage to snag the Oracle. Ironwork (1040bc) showed where to put Teo, and thereafter I focused on the lower branch of the tech tree as far as Steel (275bc), Physics (50ad) and Machinery (475ad), hoping to get a decent army rolling.
I hit the Renaissance with Acoustics (1040ad), and used a g.eng to rush Sistine Chapel in Teo (so both cities would get double culture), and then finally filled in the naval branch from Sailing (1050ad) to Navigation (1220ad). I built Oxford uni to get Archaeology (1390ad), while filling in other missed techs, and went industrial with Steam (1665ad). A g.sci got me Telegraph (1760ad) and Tenoch built Redentor. I deviated a little before getting the last important tech, Radio (1838ad), as by now my main focus was on improving my military enough that I could go toe-to-toe with the AI, who were all looking pretty dangerous. Rifling (1854ad) and Dynamite (1874ad) brought my units up to the level of my arch-enemy Russia, but France was still an era ahead. In the end I got as far as Electronics (1808ad) for mech inf, Combustion (1896ad) for tanks, and Fission (1905ad with a g.sci) and Ecology (1933ad) for their power plants.
Aztec history in social policy
I started with
Tradition (3960bc); now an incredible growth boost for the capital, then took Aristocracy (2960bc) for wonder building. I was classical by the time the third policy was out, and went
Piety (1160bc), and stuck with this tree all the way to Free Religion (1180ad), taking
Freedom and Constitution (double culture for wonder cities) as my bonus policies. Free Speech (1280ad) was next obviously, for reduced policy cost. As I never got a really solid income going,
Patronage was looking useful as a cost-saving measure, and I follwed this tree up to Educated Elite (1730ad) for free g.people. After this, policy choices were less important, but I still picked them as I earned them, except for delaying a couple of turns on the policy that came just before Redentor. For my fifth branch, I chose
Order, not least because it's a branch I've never completed before. Communism (1874ad) would be a help with Utopia, of course. I hit a level of getting the last dozen or so policies at about 8 turns each, finishing the mopping-up with the thirtieth policy in 1928ad.
Utopia was built in ten turns in a constant golden age, starting with the end of my fifth(!) smile-induced GA. I had more than enough great people available to keep the GA going, despite losing at least one in the nuclear attack on Tenoch.