I took no prisoners. I razed, pillaged and burned like a true viking!
...
Actually, that's a big sack of lies. I won culture victory without fighting a single war and never leaving my home island.
Kultur? Vad helveten?
When I found out that most of the other civs were nice, I figured I'd play nice as well. Besides, I liked the idea of pursuing a pacifist victory with a bloodthirsty leader. That was wasting the aggressive trait, yes, but financial was a big thing.
I did build the GLH even though I never had more than six cities (all coastal, of course). I didn't bother with the Colossus, but it might have been worth it as well. Diplo was easy; everyone except Mehmed was pleased with me despite the fact that I ran a heathen religion (confu which I founded) from discovering philosophy 'till the end of the game. Mehmet wasn't really a threat, either. Before I shut down the slider, he was ass-backwards in tech and afterwards I signed DPs with Frederick, Roosevelt and Cyrus. Good luck invading my island, turban-head.
Didn't build any other World Wonders. I decided that even Sistine wasn't worth the effort because it's considerably weaker than in BtS and the required tech was relatively low interest for me (Do you guys ever build it when going for culture in Warlords/Vanilla?). Another reason not to build it was that my GP farm was not one of my legendaries. In fact, it was a pretty crappy city, but I managed to get it up to 57 GPP/turn. I ran the culture slider at 100% almost all the time and funded it mostly by trading my luxury resources for gold (with a couple of cities building wealth, if necessary).
Finished turn 309 (1878AD) with a score of 8400, so probably not very competitive, but it sure was a fun little experiment. One thing I'm satisfied with, is the timing; the other two cities hit legendary just one turn after the first one. Of course, there were a couple of stupid mistakes I made:
1. Started building universities for Oxford when education rolled around. I almost facepalmed when I realized that I'll be shutting my slider down after a couple more techs. Luckily, it was just a few turns of production wasted.
2. Starved my GP farm trying (and failing) to get one last GA at the very end. Probably hurt my score somewhat.
Another fun fact: The UN and Apollo programs of two rivals were finished on my victory turn. Nice try, guys, but too little, too late.
. My stats at 1AD were similar to z3. 7 cities, 35 pop 69 bpt and 52 hpt. I had circumnavigated and met all the AI. Built the GLH and missed the Oracle (Built in Berlin 1000 BC). Considering the level the AIs were researching and developing fast. Researched Construction early and had 3 WEs, 4 galleys and 1 cat by 1 AD.
