Game 1: Napoleon Emperor Continents Plus

The Settings: Emperor, Continents Plus, Standard Size

The Strategy: So I was looking at the bonuses for Hotels and Airports and realized that most of it came from World Wonders and terrain.  I thought that anyone who can generate culture from terrain stands a good chance of winning a cultural victory because of this tourism conversion, and the Chateau is so excellent for culture generation that France is a good choice.  I thought the civ ability was kind of week (double theme bonus in capital) but the chateau more than made up for it.

The Victory:  This was a cultural victory achieved in 1930.

Here is the victory screen, cultural win achieved in 1930--1032 culture per turn and 526 tourism.

What I really liked about this game was the relatively low tech--no airports, no internet.  Most of it done without even hotels.  France is powerful!

The City: The winning city this game was Paris itself without a doubt--it generated the majority of my tourism and a tremendous amount of culture as well.  With the various chateaus it generated good money as well.  The trick with this city was how to get the wonders built in it--and for that I used mostly engineers purchased via faith.  The tourism with Aesthetics and the French civ ability also unlocked an achievement to earn the full +16 theming bonus from the Louvre.

The City of Paris on the winning turn.  Faith to engineers to wonders really did well this game.

Comments: Learned a few things this game.  First of all, that faith is still very good.  I have ignored it in many of my games recently and this game brought it back in a big way.  When I got the formation belief for sacred sites (+2 toursim per faith-produced building) my tourism jumped from +14 to +42 very early in the game.  This means I whittled down their resistance early and was able to crush them when things got rolling with Aesthetics and Archaeology.  Used faith for pagodas and cathedrals as well as Messiah.  Founding belief was Pilgrimage to get +2 faith per foreign city following it.  I strongly recommend Pilgrimage if you're interested in spreading your religion--especially early on it's very strong.

Game Narrative:  Early on I just tried to expand and keep my neighbor to the North (Shoshone) happy.  Our empires were separated by mountains with just a few mountain passes and I was able to use an archer (hut-upgraded from a scout) to block his settlers coming my way until I was happy with the land I had.  Crucially, the Shoshone did not found a religion so they adopted Catholicism which enhanced our relationship and generated a lot of faith for me from Pilgrimage.

In the South you had Shaka, Ahmad al-Mansur, and Washington.  I managed to spread Catholicism to Shaka and Washington--but then Ahmad founded Islam and Washington founded Buddhism and for the most part I could not get through that.  I started using my faith instead for prophets, reasoning that if you're going to finish the Piety tree (which I was determined to do--and later was glad I did), you'd better have a lot of holy sites.  I did not really spread my religion much after that.

I found this game that the AI is more than happy to stay friends with you as long as there is someone in the game they can all gang up on.  In this game that was Shaka--but despite angering the whole continent and numerous wars, Shaka came out on top and completely crushed Ahmad--this was a good thing as Ahmad was my #1 competitor for points. At this point I got into a war with my allies Shoshone and America to fight Shaka that lasted on and off until the end of the game.  I took Marakech and used an Inquisitor to remove his holy city and gradually took some of Shaka's land and pushed my religion further.  Amazingly, Shaka had enough Impi do kill many of my musketeers and very nearly retook Marakech after I overreached.

Towards the end of the game I used faith (with tradition and aesthetics) to get engineers and the right kind of culture great people to both build and theme the great wonders.  I only missed the Globe Theatre I think, but I still managed to found the world congress and eventually get Catholicism promoted to the world religion, which was hugely beneficial for Paris.  The Shoshone got the forbidden palace which made it extra good to be his ally--when I did not have enough votes to be host a second time I made sure he was host and he actually proposed the world religion and voted it through.