OK, first and foremost, turn on your yields. You're not stuck on this island at all. On 2nd border pop, we have galley access to other islands. You can see this probably shortly after settling if you pay attention.
I fogbusted with 2 warriors. No barb trouble at least.
To illustrate:
Now, seeing this kind of opening, I went for the most overpowering wonder in the game for maps like this:
And just to spam a useful wonder on a hammer-poor map:
You will see numerous top players (although I myself do not purport to be one) say GLH > Mids on many maps, this is one of them for certain.
I then just take whatever meager sites I can from Mansa:
I had to close borders with him to prevent him settling the island to the west (again, you can see very quickly in this game that you can access this island...you don't even need culture to do so!). Island to the east (comically unlocked by the 1 tile island fishing village pop) has copper. I have good science and the capitol is OK in hammers so I decide to off MM.
The war prep takes forever, and is basically axes, spears, and catapults.
Still, I kept an eye on his tech rate and he wasn't doing anything threatening like getting longbows, I dow'd late:
Now we have some cities. Again GLH is spamming trade routes everywhere though for the time being they're just stock 1 commerce since this is vanilla.
Tech picture after meeting the other AIs:
Now, I had astro on the AIs for a long time, which meant trade routes for me and not them. On top of this, it let me settle some garbage islands. Most of them were unimportant, but note that we don't have iron anywhere on our or mansa's island. That doesn't mean we can't get any eventually:
I'd need this for frigates.
And a late lib win:
Nobody else was even near it because honestly, everyone's start was pretty rough, not just ours.
Now one thing I remember from my warlords days is an imbalance in the tech tree pre-BTS. Cuirassers are very good units in BTS and I use them a lot. In vanilla/warlords, you get CAVALRY at gunpowder/MT. Sick. On pangaea I could easily have blown the entire world to pieces with these, but hammers slowed my prep on this map (as did the need for a navy). Nevertheless, we'll be seeing some cavalry use:
Every city he has is coastal (I think every city in the world is coastal). This means frigates can take the defenses down. How do longbows do vs cav? Not well:
Germany teched rifles shortly before I hit him and the AI gets stupid upgrade discounts at ALL levels so basically he had spammed longbows and magicked them into rifles. No problem. Sal doesn't have even replaceable parts yet.
This war got hard because after I took mecca, sal somehow got rifles. I don't understand how this happened. No way in hell did he tech it while losing cities. He didn't even have replaceable parts! Oh well. At this point my naval logistics had granted me more cavs. I just overran him. Cavs aren't 100% gimped vs rifles if they have a combination of withdraws and pinch.
I could have just ended it by dowing people in succession with infantry, but I got lazy and decided to make a play for the UN. This turned out somewhat disastrous because the game interface lies. I'm not exaggerating. It lies.
I got to mass media first, but if I built it roosy would be my opponent and vote for himself. Instead, I gifted the tech to izzy. She built it, so it was me vs her. I had a defensive pact with roosy, shared resources, fair trade, years of peace...basically I had a net diplo of +10 visible. Izzy was +7 with him. No defensive pact, nothing but very basic modifiers.
Wait, what?
See, this happened to me once before so it wasn't utterly shocking this time. However, it's . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Flat out. Essentially he likes me considerably more than her if you look at the game interface, but he votes for her due to hidden modifiers. Hey fireaxis: it's one thing to hide game mechanics, it's another to allow deliberate interface lies! This isn't even the only situation it happens. And yes, it's even present in BTS 3.17. FIX THIS GARBAGE IN THE OFFICIAL PATCH, PLEASE.
So, since in vanilla the AI doesn't push for culture, I really had no threat. I did so much damage that nobody except me was in the tech position for space. I just started spamming ship parts. Of course, right as I'm about to finish the ship...
Izzy signs a defensive pact with bismark. Now roosy likes me slightly more.
4 turns from a space ship win:
By the way, bismark is also only +5 toward izzy. They have at least +4 in hidden modifiers also. Garbage.
However, despite the game's glaring shortcomings becomming apparent in this, I won, so I'm posting it.
The only real drama at that point was when Louis took my single, isolated iron town for a turn, but he must have been intimidated because after I got it back, and without having taken any of his cities, he offered me 280g for peace! Smooth sailing after that.
