This was a little unusual for me -
-- Did more than usual early chopping and REX - I think the map just lent itself to that, but also Organized (more workers, more city spam)
-- Did much less tech trading than usual. That worked pretty well.
-- It seemed like an easy map (unintentionally I'm sure). I didn't think I was wasn't playing very carefully or well, but I was always high-scoring, sometimes in first place.
-- Ended up building practically no longbows and very few macemen.
First
AH, Mining, Fishing (hut), BW, Mysticism, Pottery, Writing, Alpha, Masonry (trade for Writing), Sailing (trade for Writing), Poly, Lit, Math, Currency
Chopped my REX, late Stonehenge (afterthought), took one barb city.
Around 0 AD I started fighting HC; it took a few rounds to trim him way back.
Built GL, NE (with GL), HE (from HC wars). I was pretty happy with the side trip to Alpha and Lit. And there was Marble, after all. Stonehenge prophet built shrine in Inca-captured holy city
And then
Construction, IW (trade for Lit), CoL (not first), first GS Academy (Instanbul was good and had GL and I was close to CS and I didn't want to wait for Education)
I had been running 2 scientists in Crab+Fish town since pretty early, but with GL+NE it took a long time to ever catch up with Istanbul. And my first great person was a prophet from Stonehenge. So except for an Academy no GS contributed to gunpowder.
CS, Med, Paper, Education (researched before second GS), Philo (GS) (not first)
And then
1110: gunpowder
Put HE city in a Janissary loop
Finished off HC in south and started tedious elimination of China.
Liberalism (first), nationalism... adopted nationhood but didn't end up drafting that much. I did draft a few Janissaries to sprinkle across my northern border and felt a sense of security.
My Janissaries were up against Chinese Longbows/Choks/Macemen. They did fine, but that war was mostly me against tenacious city garrisons.
I was mostly attacking cities with Cats and Axes and later Macemen. Some Janissaries, though. They were good against Choks, for example.
I noticed that attacking a city Longbow, my CII Janissary at 59% was comparable to my CRII Mace at 55%.
I mostly gave them straight Combat - tried one with Cover and it was indeed a good attacker, but I didn't have that many Janissaries altogether, yet.
The Janissaries did allow me to move my troops around China with impunity.
Because of Expansive/Organized and good land I had a fairly solid economy, but Janissaries still had a lot of competition from other builds that I couldn't get to earlier, especially Forges, Universities for Oxford, and then Trebs. Also, wealth buildings in Istanbul and my holy city, and missionaries. Also, Taj Mahal. By the time I could build Trebs, I really needed them, because I was running through my supply of cats while building Janissaries and the other things above.
And then
Drama, Monarchy + Calendar (trade for Philo), MC (trade for Paper), Feudalism, Machinery, Compass, PP (w/ 1 lightbulb), Engineering, Constitution, Guilds + Optics (trade for Education), Chemistry, Sci Meth (2 lightbulbs), Banking + Theo (trade for Liberalism), Demo, Steel, Music, Astro + Econ (trade for Sci Meth), Replacable, Physics, Corporation (trade for Replacable + Music).
It took a while to mop up first China, and then a couple leftover Incan cities between me and Korea.
Stalin declared, I think due to China vassalizing. Distracted by mopping up HC, I didn't fortify my border city quite enough, and lost it. After finishing HC, I started to push Stalin back. Compared to the war against China this war did feature somewhat more fighting in the open. Partly I think this is because it was more of an even fight - Stalin had a lot of land and big stacks. Also, we were fighting over border cities. Also, I didn't have a chance to take many cities from him. I got back mine, got one more, and was pushed back trying to take the third. So I was either defending in a city or fighting him in the open.
At the beginning of my fight against Russia I did do a bit of Janissaries vs. Longbows/Pikes etc, but I didn't get my troops over from China and Inca in time for a lot of that. I could have done so sooner, but I was conservative and careless and sent more units than necessary to finish China and Inca. On the Russian border I was fighting a lot of Muskets and Knights; and by the time I got my city back we both a few Grenadiers. At that point I had many Janissaries and didn't build any more. But the Janissaries were noticably flexible and especially helpful against Knights.
So I didn't get them that early and didn't have a chance to own the world with them or anything. Tactically they were helpful, you might say, logistically, helping me move troops around and do things flexibly.