This map made for quite a challenge!
By following the "obvious" move of sending our Settler 1E to settle on a G Riv Sugar, at least as per the Pre-Game Discussion thread's general consensus, we missed out on getting Copper in our capital's big fat cross.
So, I felt forced to settle a poor City with just dry Rice and Copper to the north east.
Meanwhile, the Barbs were brutal, appearing in pairs of Barb Warriors that swarmed my Warriors. A few times I had to defend against the Barbs in my capital.
I then decided to take the time to research Archery and with Protective Archers, the Barbs became a non-threat.
But, the damage had been done and Monte had enough time to settle where I'd planned to put my third City to the north-west, near a Cow, a Wheat, an Ivory, and a few Jungled Dye Resources (we started with Calendar but not with Iron Working, so Calendar wasn't a particularly strong early-game benefit due to all of the nearby Jungles).
So, I settled a closer City to share some of the capital's Food and started spamming Spearmen, Axemen, and Archers. I captured that City from Monte but then I couldn't find where his other Cities were located... I ended up exploring with my army, vainly searching the darkness, only to discover where Kublai was located and where he had ample room to expand--he would have to be dealt with before he had the chance to become a monster.
Someone had taken out a Barb City to the south-west of our capital area and Monte resettled it, so I turned my army south-west, finding more of his Cities. I just kept spamming Military Units like no tomorrow and took down another City of Monte's, only to accidentally end up splitting up my Axemen (who had been healing) from my stack of Spearmen and Archers, with Monte having a stack of Archers and Chariots in between.
Then, the Barbs landed a Warrior on my captured Jungled Ivory, so I took the risk of having my Archer attack that Barb Warrior, but I lost the fight and the Barbs raised Monte's ex-City. With Monte forcing my Axemen to retreat from his Chariots, I had to pull out a Cease Fire.
I then found Monte's capital and collected enough forces near to it inside of Kublai's Cultural Borders, waiting for Monte to send out a Settler party.
Ironically, had I kept Monte's ex-City, he would have been able to recapture it while I was busy taking down his capital, but instead Kublai resettled the area and Monte had nothing to do with his army except for settle an emergency City. After taking Monte's capital, I made Peace and then decided that Kublai had to go.
I sent a stack of Chariots, a Horse Archer, and an Axeman to Kublai's Copper and placed the rest of my army next to his Horse Resource. Before I had my forces in position, Creative Kublai's Cultural Borders had expanded, making it a lot harder to reach his Copper quickly, but I declared war anyway. I only had to fight a couple of Keshiks, but Kublai pulled out Feudalism and Longbowmen before I could capture even a second City. So, I recaptured the City that he'd resettled in a better location in the ex-Monte location and threw everything that I had at his Horse City, using about 18 units to take down 7 defenders, and yet still taking 2 turns to capture the City.
Meanwhile, Kublai had bribed Shaka on me, and Shaka still didn't have Longbowmen, so I stayed at war with Kublai so that I could keep Pillaging Kublai's Resources (it had turned out that I'd missed seeing his second Copper and his Iron until later, but had gotten his Ivory, so I only saw 2 War Elephants out of Kublai) while playing defensively against Kublai--it was War Elephants, Macemen, Cats, and Longbowmen on Kublai's side against my Archers, Axemen, and Spearmen, but I managed to defend successfully.
After I took one of Shaka's Cities, he learned Feudalism, probably in trade from another warmongering AI, and the war stalled. I took out a nearby Barb City and was forced to Cease Fire with Shaka due to lacking the forces to take his heavily-defended capital and with his Food-heavy capital, Shaka spammed several new Cities in the area.
Meanwhile, I teched up to War Elephants and Cats and sent all of my troops at Kublai, after having failed to take a City by losing a good 15 troops, then with the help of Cats arriving, slowly but surely taking Kublai down.
Eventually, I was able to own our home continent which had generously been large, while each of the other AIs in the game had smaller continents. Unfortunately, due to WFYABTA constraints, the remaining AIs didn't really want to trade with me. I'd been able to trade with Bismarck temporarily by getting him up to Friendly status, but then he settled a City on my continent in a cap left by Kublai's disappearing Culture and got down to Pleased status, due to Close Border Tensions.
Lacking real-lift time to launch an inter-continental invasion with Galleys, and having 5 of the world's Religions on-continent, I settled in for a Cultural Victory, doing whatever I could to keep the remaining 3 AIs pleased with me while continuing to tech up the tech tree. Once I had Rifling and Mass Media, I felt safe enough to turn on the Cultural Slider. With Shaka's awesome capital and its 20+ surplus of Food, I was able to start building Buildings there as late as 1240 AD and still make it one of my Legendary Cities.
I hardly had any Wonders--no Pyramids, no Great Lighthouse, an obsolete Great Library, no Sistine Chapel, but once Alex made a Demand of me that I gave into and he declared war on Bismarck, I knew that it was only a matter of racing through the turns to reach the real-life submission deadline without fear of losing to the AIs.
I had to refuse joining in on the war and to stop trading with both of Alex and Bismarck, further souring my relationship with both of them, but they stayed in their petty war until the end of the game, meaning that their newfound dislike of me wouldn't amount to any further warring.
I'd even converted all of Bismarck's and all of Brennus' Cities to my State Religion, but they adamantly stayed in Religions matching their respective Holy Cities, so I really didn't get much help from the AIs' advanced techs, other than the percentage discount for piggyback research on techs known by other Civs.
It was quite a fun map, and very challenging with all of the warmongers and their mutual liking of each other, and fairly balanced without there being a single other continent on which one super power AI could have emerged--AIs are not very good at vassalling other AIs on other continents. Kublai was definitely the biggest threat, as long as one didn't care that the off-continent AIs grabbed almost all of the World's Wonders, and once Kublai had been neutralized, the game was tense, but winnable. Thanks for the fun game!
Thanks for the game, DS, and sorry I can't even submit an incomplete. Maybe I can finish it later.
