New Lands

As you saw, I was only 2 turns from Paper in 1000AD, but I held onto that one for a while.  I did trade maps, and no one from my continent had any contacts with another continent yet.  In 1130AD Roosevelt was the last AI to Alphabet, and I was able to trade him Civil Service and Theology for Machinery and HBR.  With Machinery, I decided to take a quick detour from my pursuit of Liberalism and grab Optics, so I could go exploring.  But before I had the chance, Frederick found me, in 1190AD.  He was ahead of me by Philosophy (I was 1 turn away) and Engineering, but lacked Paper.  But he apparently traded Engineering to Qin (who also had units near the coast), as I was able to trade him Paper and Philo for Engineering a few turns later, and then the same combo to Kublai for Guilds + 140g.  My first caravel finally reached the other continent to the East in 1230AD, and met Asoka, who lacked Paper and Guilds.  Asoka had founded Judaism, and it had spread to Frederick.  I sent several missionaries over on caravels, but never succeeded in converting Frederick.   

I mentioned earlier that I was sending forces to Burgundian, Kublai had been nice enough to send a cat down to wear down the defenses before I arrived, so my job was easier. This would turn out to be a good city site, with cows, wheat, and silver in range.

From here on, it was building infrastructure and fishing villages, my notes are more scattered because there just wasn't a whole lot exciting happening.  Burgundian was the last battle I ever fought.  Our common Confucian bonds and steady resource trading were sufficient to maintain peace on my continent, and I did my best to stay at arm's length from the turmoil on the other continent.  (Izzy was the aggressor over there, I'll get to that later).   

I was first to Liberalism in 1260AD, and got Astronomy as my free tech.  I then went up the Democracy path to boost research, by now I had tons of Villages and Towns and the income was very noticeable.  I traded Astronomy to Kublai for Divine Right and Banking, and that was about the last of the major tech trades.  I was first to Free Market, using the Great Merchant with the Artist who was hanging around for my first Golden Age.  Even with the GA, though, I was beaten to the Minaret in 1430AD, but the 355g helped fuel more research.  (I was also beaten to Taj Mahal a little later).   

Here's my map in 1500AD, you can see I finally built some of those fishing villages, I would later build another just east of Thebes, and one NW of Alexandria to claim the coal when I discovered it in 1550.  I completed the Statue of Liberty in 1625, a quiet time when all the excitement was coming from across the sea.

Izzy was misbehaving, declaring on Asoka around 1600.  As obvious as it was, Asoka never saw it coming.  Izzy had swapped to Theocracy/Vassalage a century before, declared, took 2 cities and started a Golden Age, and only after all that did Asoka finally swap to Theocracy.  She ended up taking a good chunk out of him, before settling for peace.  She then turned on Frederick toward the end (1800s), and dragged Kublai in on her side, but I still stayed out of it.

The Final Countdown

Things started coming together around 1800.  I completed the Pentagon in 1795 (as much for denial as anything else, although I was steadily adding Muskets to my axe and chariot garrisons).  In 1800 I discovered Computers, and started building labs, Broadway completed in 1806, and 3 Gorges in 1810 in Heliopolis (which was also my Ironworks city).  I already had factories all around, so production was booming, but I was running out of things to build!  Since I couldn't 'build' Research, I was swapping a lot of cities to wealth, to enable me to maintain 100% research. 

Here you can see that I've already started on Space parts (Apollo completed in 1832), but any cities not directly involved in the space program were running Wealth, or Supermarkets for those with health issues (especially after building labs).  Thebes was building the Elevator, I had a G.Engineer which provided 940 hammers toward it, which was a big boost.  You can see how Thebes was cranking the research (350+ beakers with Oxford), and that's without Bureaucracy.   Here was a final irony, as I generated another Great Scientist, the game ran out of names for him, and was also out of things for him to do (look at what he can research for me!)

I wasn't paying too much attention to the other AIs at this point, I had a big tech lead, and finally noticed that Qin built the Apollo project in 1882, the turn before I completed my last parts. 

Here's the graph at the end, you can see the last two parts completed.  Notice I was no longer Confucian, I had swapped to Free Religion (as did Kublai) earlier, but it didn't seem to bother my neighbors much, we had so many centuries of good trading by then we were established friends.  You can also see Alphabet remains a research choice at the top, not often I get to choose between Alphabet and Future Tech!  Launch in 1884AD, final score 28,778.

Definitely an interesting game in the beginning, I was glad that my religion strategy paid off, as it was tough not being able to trade for techs I had to pass up along the way.  I could have had some problems if the religious bonds were not enough to hold my neighbors back, I was consistently the weakest in strength.  I did have a few MGs and Infantry in my border cities toward the end, but most of my interior cities were still garrisioned with Chariots. (I also built a Tank, a Mech Inf, a Bomber, a Fighter, a Battleship, a Gunship, basically one of each as they became available, just because ).  But once the continent was set, it was a pretty straight-forward run for space, and with a good solid land grab, I had enough resources to go right through.  The only one I had to reach for was Coal, which appeared in unclaimed land SE of Chengdu, everything else popped up in my territory.  Thanks to Arathorn for an interesting concept!