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I'll just assume everyone knows the basics about this game: an RB variant wherein we can't adopt any legal civic other than vassalage, must attack cities with forces consisting of at least half mounted or armored units, can only build wonders for which you control the doubling resource (e.g. stone for pyramids), and I forget what else.
After the last archipelago game, wherein T-Hawk asked me whether or not I ever got religion so as to run Theocracy, I decided to start by going for some religions. So, some 30 turns into the game, there's this big flash of light and...
...we are polytheistic hindus. (Well, we don't actually convert yet, but we could.)
After that, we had to figure out how to milk cows, because we'd have plenty of need for that. Plus, we needed to find out if we needed to go overseas to acquire horses. Since this was a barb-free world, and since I had little in the way of worker techs and was going for an early religion, I decided to go settler first. Both the starting warrior and the scout went looking for other civs on our island, but found nobody. The scout popped a map (useless) and 63 gold (not bad) from huts.
In retrospect, I probably should have waited a turn to see if horses would adjust my second city's placement, but at the time, this seemed like the best second-spot on the island regardless of where horses popped up (if anywhere).
In classic Compromise fashion, once I decide to try something, I tend to overdo it. After AH, I decided to see if I could land monotheism too. Not only would this snag another religion away from the AIs and bring stone under control, but I also thought I might be able to make good use of Organized Religion here in the very early game.
After monotheism, it was Mining/Bronze (sigh...no copper again), then agriculture. I was somewhat surprised that it didn't fall earlier, but with a couple chops, I was able to get:
...Stonehenge in Beshbalik and:
...the Pyramids in Karakorum. Actually, the pyramids were part of my plan, Stonehenge just kinda happened because it was still available when I'd built enough workers. Plus, with Beshbalik's stone, they were both allowed in this variant. With the pyramids, I switch to representation and stay there for the rest of the game.
With our stone-wonders accomplished and research for pottery well underway, it was time to start founding some more cities. I kept to the coast.
In 100BC, Tokugawa's borders expanded and I made contact (and declared war) on my first neighbor. At this point, I should point out that I was just boneheaded in the early game here. I really should have discovered fishing a lot earlier and sent a few workboats out to meet the neighbors and get the other-civs-know-it-already tech rate bonus. Pliny or somebody had already told me I was at the bottom of the world heap, so I should have known better.
But I didn't. I just plodded along letting the AIs come find me. The irony is that for a very long time, I thought I'd made exactly the right decision since no other AI boats came into view, and I thought Toku and I were isolated from the rest of the world until astronomy. Ah, assumptions. We know what those do to you.
Let's see. After pottery, it was writing and then ironworking. Yay, we have iron! By a nice coincidence, I'd already mined the grassland hills near the capital, so the iron there was in play as soon as I discovered ironworking. Here's an overview of our budding empire as we enter the common era:
Time passes. A couple Japanese galleys with a settler and an archer head past our northern shore. I dare them to land. They don't.
Stonehenge brings me my first great person: Moses. I plan to use him on Theology. But he wants to know meditation. I beaker-tech to meditation. Then he wants to do priesthood. I beaker-tech to priesthood. I am about to make a shrine with him, but he finally offers to discover theology and up he goes in a pillar of light.
So, Christianity is the last religion I found. I got Hinduism and Judaism too. Was this smart? I don't know. I doubt it. I'll be curious to see if anyone else went for any. Confucianism might have been a better one to shoot for.
I decide that it's too late for any kind of rush, so I'd better bring some siege equipment to the party with Toku. He has the nerve to sail through my western seas and plant a cr@p city off my southwestern coast.
And on the very turn that I discover Mathematics, I learn the error of my no-scouting ways as Peter's (it later turns out it's him, not Catherine) borders pop and I see Russian cultural borders. Ah well. Next time, I'll be early scouting for sure.
I decide that I'd better put up some courthouses before going on too much of a rampage. So, I research Code of Laws before going on to Construction. After that though, the buildup commences.
A hint of what the rest of the game is like can be seen in my collection point stack list in this screenshot. Five millenia of calm are about to end.
Even my slight hope of denying religions to the AIs has been in vain. I meet Qin via one of Toku's Confucian cities. And Gandhi's Buddhism has clearly infatuated Peter. Sigh.
Oh well, off to battle.
End of Part 1--A Lonely, Peaceful Start. Continue on to Part 2.