Recording the Golden Age of the glorious Republic of England.
Golden Age! Now is the time to swap over to full research for good. My goal now is to speed to the Diplomatic Victory before anyone declares war on me. Is that possible?
The first few turns of the Golden Age result in library and university construction everywhere. The commerce boost speeds us through Physics, Metallurgy, Theory of Gravity, and Magnetism. Someone researched Economics, and I decided to trade for it and build Smith's in London. After that, I decided to have London take a chance on Newton's, although it looked unlikely - they cascaded from Smith's through Shakespeare to it.
With a few turns left in the middle ages, Canterbury swaps back to cranking a worker every turn in preparation for building rails and population inflation after the hospitals. The city shrinks back down to size 6.
As we enter the Industrial Age, we are met by a crackhead of a scholar:
Fifth most powerful? I'm three techs ahead of everybody else! (Yeah, I know that ranking is based on my six pikemen and one musketman. Bah, I say.)
I research Steam Power, get it first, trade it around for about 200/turn total plus Mil Trad, Democracy, and Free Artistry. Fortunately, we have coal.
London does score Newton's in fact. A powerhouse of a city, in Golden Age, can really outbuild Monarch AIs. :) The city has been so busy with wonders it hasn't even built a marketplace or a university yet! And even those will now wait until after its factory and hospital.
I keep 90% research - still need 10% luxuries - on Industrialization, Electricity, Medicine, Sanitation, Scientific Method. In 1300 AD, another lux surprisingly becomes available - Silks from Persia. I trade Electricity around for it, Nationalism, and more gpt. I build Suffrage, and prebuild Theory of Evolution as usual. We can't build the Hoover Dam, though, so ToE gives us Atomic Theory and Replaceable Parts. All these researches take 5-7 turns each. I research up through Radio, getting Corporation and Refining by trading, and usually trading away my techs for a few hundred gold per turn each, and gifting them to improve diplomatic relations whenever the other civ doesn't have much to offer.
Sometime around here, Persia and Germany declare war. This time, they aren't going to wipe each other out, so I really don't care as long as nobody declares on me.
In 1430, the Persians begin Hoover Dam. I'm five techs from the modern age, and therefore six from winning. I set myself a little challenge to pull it off before they build Hoover. :) But, Persia completes the dam in 1490. That was FAST! I investigate, and they were in Golden Age! They already had the Hanging Gardens (industrious), so that Golden Age must have been an Immortal in their war! (Xerxes never went to war until the industrial age? How often does THAT happen?)
I keep researching at max rate. Then, in 1500 AD, everybody suddenly declares war on each other - I didn't keep track of who as long as it wasn't against me. That also finally leaves plenty of lux available for me to trade for, and I can finally jump luxuries down to 0% and research up to 100% for 4-turn advances.
Combustion comes, and I get all the AIs up to date in techs in hopes one will research Flight while I finish Mass Production and Motorized Transport. I've also got over 20,000 gold by this point, all from tech sales, so start handing out gifts of 100, 200, 1000 gold to people. Everybody except Germany goes to Gracious even though I gave him the most techs (Bismarck stayed in Monarchy the whole time and fell pretty far behind.)
It's time to prebuild the United Nations. Unfortunately, the UN costs 1000 shields, and the Palace placeholder is only about 500 because we have few cities. So I want my highest shield city to do it, to complete the 500 between prebuild and UN the fastest after we discover Fission. But my highest shield city is London with 98, which can't use the Palace, and the next best is Oxford with only 54.
So what I do is build a REAL Palace in Oxford, just so that London can then use the Palace for a placeholder for the UN. I screwed that up, actually - should have had a city closer to London build the Palace. After the new Palace was built, London suffered from corruption and only had about 78 shields after waste. But 78 is better than 54 at any rate.
Fission takes nine turns to research, and I'm getting slightly nervous. I should be a lock for six out of the seven UN votes, as long as nobody declares war on me. But Babylon is wandering ships around my shores, and an Iroquois infantry is moving across my territory to the south. I hope it's just moving from the one Iroquois city down there to the other, and it looks like it.
I've never gotten through a whole game without a single war. Russia demands Radio - I must've forgotten to give it to them, which I do now. C'mon, UN, build faster! But there's nothing I can do to speed it up.
