A short report for a quick game - not only was it designed to be a fast game, but I also hadn't the time for a longer one. The scoring rewards long games: You only get a fixed amount of points for potentially being fastest or potentially having killed the most units, but get uncapped points for generating great people and having a high-level unit. No thanks; I'd like to finish this game fast! But since I didn't want to ignore scoring completely, I decided to compete for fastest finish at least. Going for Domination or Conquest would take too much time, both number of turns and real life, so I decided to try out the Apostolic Palace, which I had never built until now.
I founded Rome on the starting spot on the plains stone hill. Three hammers? Atlas must have designed this for good early production, I like it! Research path was Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Bronze Working, and Rome built a work boat, then a warrior until it was size 2, then a worker. Scouting revealed a major problem with my Apostolic Palace plan: We had Tokugawa in the game, with which I wouldn't be able to sign open borders! So I needed a military campaign to get rid of him at least.
I founded two more cities, one at the wheat and the other at the dyes. Winning the AP vote meant I needed many votes and thus, big cities - too bad that food resources were so scarce. Ah well, I would have to irrigate grasslands then.
While my two new cities built granaries (for faster growth) and barracks (for the upcoming war), I built Stonehenge in Rome, then the Oracle.
I took Monarchy as my free tech so I could switch to Hereditary Rule for unlimited happiness and thus, votes. In 800BC, iron was connected and Praets were built while I went for Construction next. I generated a great prophet in 800BC, who later founded Christianity for me, my planned AP religion.
In 400BC, Ragnar declared war on Hatty, and in 350BC I declared on Toku. I didn't have that many praets on the front yet, but one of his workers was too tempting to pass up.
Poverty Point wasn't defended very well, and was razed in 250BC at the cost of one praet.
Note the Great Merchant behind the city? I had one praet left that hadn't moved yet, so I destroyed him too. I guess that one won't count for "most enemy units killed"...
Toku endowed both with an improved brain and, in this game, dog soldiers meant the siege on his capital was a bit more complicated. That had been the main reason that I had researched Construction even though I had aggressive praets at my disposal - praets suck at fighting dog soldiers.
Catas solved that problem though, and he had more swords than dogs in the city for some reason anyway (although he moved in some more dogs while I was bombarding the city). I took the city (and kept it this time, for votes) in 350AD, although I needed two turns of attacking as he had more defenders in it than I had attackers...
Now that Toku's capital was mine, the rest of the campaign was more an exercise in walking than in fighting. He had another small city on the coast, which was razed.
Another inland-city I kept again.
And after destroying yet another size-1 city in 680AD, Toku was no more. Here's my empire, small in size but large in population:
After building the AP, I had switched back to no state religion again so I wouldn't get into diplomatic troubles with my neighbours - I needed their open border agreements. I also had built three christian missionaries and sent them to my opponents. Now I used them to spread the faith to their smallest cities, converted back to Christianity and waited for the next AP elections. That happened in 740AD.
Yay, diplo victory in 740AD! I don't think I would have been able to conquer the world faster, even with aggressive praets.
So here's the full scoring data: Victory in 740AD. I had killed 13 swordmen, 8 dog soldiers, 12 spearmen and 19 archers for a total of 52 units - that won't win me any awards though, I guess. My highest-level unit was a level 7 praet (thanks to a great general) - again, a full military victory would have given me a much higher level. I had founded Christianity and Islam - what does that give me, 3 or 6 points? I'm not sure how to read the scoring on that one. And last but not least, I had generated 3 great people (2 priests and a general) - again, this could have been milked much more in a longer game. But then that longer game wouldn't have taken me only 1:30 hours to play like this one...
I had a lot of fun playing this one! Thanks for setting this one up, Atlas.