ThERat's Civ site -

well, looking at the situation presented, I decided to settle on the spot
Since this is AW on pangaea, I opted to play safe and went for archery before Bronze Working. In between I met my first foe, India.
I met 2 more foes by the time I had my first settler ready to go. Though not the best spot, I went to settle on the hill west to grab copper for axes/swords. (I assumed that I might get attacked and an added hill defense would just be useful then)

Here is the situation in 2200BC, just before my settler went into position. You can see a warrior from Saladin, but the first units are usually explorers that do not attack. You can also see that I met 3 foes, with India leading the pack (not for too long though)
Thus I let my worker happily road copper, while Berlin already churned out more archers for defense

I went to explore the area near the horse, as they seemed to be the next natural target to settle. This would be stretching us a little, but better to get all those resources up and running. Venturing west I discovered that Gandhi had settled the area already. Hmm, what to do? I checked and India had merely warriors for defense there (3 of them to be precise).

Well, the target looked really yummy as India founded Judaism there just before I was ready to attack. In the picture below you can still see only a warrior defending, not really adequate to counter our 2 axes and archer. The shot is taken after our axe defeated the 1st warrior.

Bombay had no chance and I conquered my first city in 1300BC. This would surely weaken India and give us a nice forward base to expand in the back. The added advantage being that Bombay was founded on a hill. And of course now we had a religion to give us added happiness and money from a shrine eventually.

I sent the axe north to explore the core of India. I found 2 more cities there, but opted to leave them alone for a quite a while (you will see what that means). Instead I explored southwest and discovered gold there. Our core was really deprived of any happy resources, at least until calendar would show up (what an evil setup).

In the meantime I founded Munich south of Berlin at the coast to grab horses and have a port. Iron was found fortunately within Berlin's workable tiles. This added to the rich food and hammer base of the city.

That made up my mind, I slowed down expansion and instead started to develop a real powerful capital and core. My experience from past AW games in CIV told me that would be the best strategy and also let me enjoy the game. An axe/sword rush wouldn't have been feasible I thought, due to the size and nature of the map. I would stretch myself too much and run out of steam eventually. A rush against bankrupcy isn't my cup of tea.

Thus, in order for border expansions (Munich needed one badly), I went for stonehenge in 760BC. I went to build the Oracle in 550BC which I used to aid our ailing economy with CoL (this gave us confucianism as well in Munich). I managed to grab the Pyramids in 130BC and finally had some added happiness with representation. Berlin turned out to be a real commerce and production powerhouse.

I thought I would be ready for expansion towards Japan and grabbed Satsuma near the gold hills. Unfortunately this was stretching myself too much, because this caused an onslaught of units from all enemies especially Tokugawa. Though I managed to defeat a lot of units at Bombay and Satsuma, I eventually lost Satsuma in 665AD. At the same time I used the library/scientist strategy in Bombay and generated my first Great Scientist in 485AD (I think that strategy is really powerful). I used him to lightbulb philosophy, and we got taoism in Bombay as well. Most probably, one of the reasons I lost Satsuma was, that Berlin was still producing wonders and added the Great Library in 605AD.

Around that time I also swapped to heriditary rule and at times had 5 archers in Berlin for more happiness. I used 2Great Prophets to add hammers in Berlin. I decided to wait for maces before expanding again.

First off, I started to go after the 2 remaining Indian cities and captured Madras just before discovering civil service (and maces).

In the picture above you can see that in 1250AD I defeated the Indians (first of the opponents taken out) after taking Delhi. Surely this date won't keep me in this special award competition, but I was ready now to go after the rest of the pack.