redemption438
Warlord
Cultural victory, 1778 AD, all-peace, contender.
I wanted to keep things simple, founding 3 religions and building 9 cities.
Founded Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism.
1 great scientist (lightbulbed philosophy-tao)
11 great artists
Oracle in Barcelona (CoL-Confucianism)
Parthenon, Nat'l Epic, Hermitage in Madrid
I figured the challenge would be to avoid war, so I started giving things away ASAP to boost early diplomacy, and gave in to most demands. I was most worried about Cathy, but having her favorite civic turned her into a real sweetheart.
I never had a state religion, except when some AI demanded that I switch to theirs, and after that I would switch back to no religion after 5 turns. The lucky part was that Saladin, Cathy, and Hannibal were all on good terms with each other, so I didn't have to choose sides. Washington was the odd one out, so I didn't trade with him much.In the last 20-30 turns I signed defensive pacts with Cathy and Saladin because I was getting worried with powerful Caesar in the mix and his galleons approaching. And me with my warriors and archers ! Never built any other military unit. I used warriors as a source of happiness in the early to mid-game, and didn't connect iron and copper until I needed copper for the cathedrals.
Madrid was the only city location with huge food abundance, so I made that my GA city. The second two cities were cottage culture, Barcelona founded on top of the stone, and Seville to the south of Madrid, next to cows.
I started building some stone wonders Pyramids, Hanging Gardens, Notre Dame but missed HG and ND by a few turns and Pyramids by a lot. Other than perhaps the Pyramids, I think it was better to get the cash than actually have the wonders this helped stay at 100% science for almost all of the research phase.
Ended research with Printing Press (after using Liberalism to get Nationalism), but I did trade for some later techs.
I'm sure I could have finished faster with better midgame play. I probably waited too late to found my extra cities this forced my culture cities to do too much hard labor in producing missionaries, etc., and cathedrals were late coming in.
In other news, Hannibal beat Washington into submission, and Julius made a vassal of Mansa - sounds like AI behavior was similar for other people.
Enjoyed the game!
