Epic 6: Iron Working Would've Been Better …
In the opening stages of the game I hadn't thought through the implications of Always War thoroughly enough. It took me till 1720BC to realise that there's no such thing as closed borders if you're at war with everyone. So my initial city placement thoughts and my build order were based on sealing up the peninsula that I was on - which clearly I couldn't do 
. It even took me several turns to realise that I probably wanted my own religion as no-one would be sending missionaries out to me.
I started off by dithering about where to settle - 1S of the start would be easier to defend (on a hill) but lost out on one of the food resources. As one of the things I'm currently working on is working out when & how to whip effectively 
I decided to go with the 2 food resource start and settle in place:
I did, I think, choose my initial research goal wisely. Bronze Working both for slavery and to find a metal source. However its discovery clearly coincided with a dose of the good crack 
… I didn't follow up with Iron Working, or even consider picking it up in the first few techs. That was going to have somewhat severe consequences later on as far as pre-requistes for units went, and everyone who played this game (or has just read a few reports) is probably wincing right now given where the nearest Iron source was …
However, Copper was nearby, so off I went with some city planning, and started to research the worker techs with a small detour to pick up Mysticism for Obelisks and pre-Library border pops. Obviously my second city was planned to go right next to the Copper 
and after that I was planning on a fishing village to the NE of Berlin and a city to the south of City 2 to pick up the corn and spices:
Well, I was planning the corn/spice city to be city 3 because I was still thinking I could seal off my peninsula … over the next several turns I met my first three opponents. 
I actually met Tokugawa first, though I found Ghandi's borders first & Ghandi second. 
And then Alexander - no need to worry about him backstabbing me in this game 
. Just for fun I killed his scout when I met him 
Saladin was next to join the party, 
shortly before I founded Hamburg in 2440BC:
Clearly along with the other inadquacies of this game I also can't count as I thought Isabella 
& Peter 
showing up in 2200BC and 2140BC meant I'd met all of my playmates. I didn't get the Copper hooked up till 1390BC, at which point I set Hamburg to build an Axeman without realising it didn't have a barracks yet So after that was finished I whipped in a Barracks and started to build Axeman after Axeman. I've still not got Iron Working, my research goals are to get a religion thus I'm aiming for Code of Laws. After Priesthood is discovered I realised that the Oracle was still available, so I started to build it in Berlin and researched some other techs like Fishing and Sailing which I needed for the NE city I was thinking of settling. Thankfully my gamble paid off:
I'd founded Munich in 865BC, and I sent the freebie missionary there because it need the culture most. It wasn't that long after when I had my first scare, Isabella nearly sacked Munich 
:
Thankfully she failed:
Unfortunately, that was rather a taste of things to come. But at this stage in the game things were still going reasonably well - at least on the surface. I rather suspect it was lost by this stage, I hadn't concentrated enough on military and actually dealing with my opponents. But I'd not realised that when I was actually playing. The next few hundred years passed rather serenely. Berlin and Hamburg were pumping out Axemen ready to go and stomp on the Indians, I met Roosevelt and realised I couldn't count, 
I realised that instead of building the Oracle I really should've got Masonry and built the Pyramids. Unfortunately, I realised this because Peter built it and switched into Police State. It's a bit of a shame when the AI shows you what you should've done . My current research goal was Construction, for the catapults - though in the end I didn't really use any. Iron Working would've been better … I'd meant to take screenies for an overview at 1AD, but that slipped by before I noticed, so these were taken at 65AD:
As you can see I still don't know much about the world - but I do know who I'm attacking first … Ghandi's put Madras in a really inconvenient place, so it just has to go. Alexander is actually being more annoying, though - he keeps sending troops to hang around pillaging:
Next event of note was generating a Great Prophet in Berlin - who then built the Kong Miao in Hamburg in 185AD. Then over the three or four hundred years there's some city razing! First to go is Madras in 275AD (I suspect this is more than a little late for the Honourable Mentions 
:
Next, rather irritatingly is Munich
:
In 410AD the road between Hamburg and Berlin is severed and I realised I hadn't even got Archery yet, so that was the end of the 'posh' unit building in Berlin unless I researched it pronto! Which I promptly did. Iron Working would've been better though … I do keep on with the war on India:
Along the way I've been intimidated so often in Hamburg that I've managed to it into being happy-capped at size 3, which is not a happy state of affairs:
Lahore falls to the marauding German Axes in 635AD, and that's pretty much it for my aggression this game:
Around about 800AD I realised I'd somewhere, somehow lost the initiative. I'm surrounded by enemy units, I can't get a worker out of my cities for any length of time, I can't even build decent units in many cities. And anyway, I've only got 3 cities.
I decide to play on, though, as I think it's possible to pull out of this now I've identified it's a problem. However I'm not sure it's possible for me to do so … and in 950AD my Copper mine is pillaged leaving me with archers as my only unit of use. I'm researching Machinery now, hoping to be able to build Crossbows. Iron Working would've been better … Hamburg finally falls in 1124AD, though not without putting up a fight. Tokugawa now has my holy city :
Machinery is discovered in 1220AD, and the other shoe drops … I need Iron to build Crossbows. Finally, finally, I set research to Iron Working. And when that's discovered I find that I really should've done that sooner. There's a source right there next to Berlin. I do try & get it hooked up, but it never lasts for very long. I aim for Feudalism next - it'd be nice to have Longbowmen (and I check there's not other requirements first, this time ), and Vassalage for the extra 2XP.
As you can see I'm sitting there holed up in my 2 cities, and there's lots and lots of enemy units around. I think if the AI wasn't so dumb I'd've been dead several times over by now. But they keep attacking across the river at Berlin, which helps me out a lots, and as the different AIs don't co-ordinate their attacks I'm surviving more fights than I expected. I'm pretty astonished at how backward all this war is making the AI, too:
And even those that are more advanced than me aren't that good - I think the most advanced unit I saw all game was Macemen, and (for instance) the Parthenon didn't fall until 1520AD.
I've got reasonably extensive notes of the next 300 years, but it's kinda dull, really. I did get Longbows, and I got some uber-units with more XP than I've seen on a unit in one of my games:
Finally in 1778AD Berlin is overcome by sheer weight of numbers:
And after that, it's pretty much over … the sun finally sets on the German Empire in 1800AD:
All in all, rather appalling. I did kill a lot of enemy units though:
Pretty much immediately after I was done I started the game up again from the start. And again when I screwed up that one too. I think I did better on the third time round though again I started to lose the initiative. Obviously some of that was knowing the map - I beelined for Iron Working. Some of it was better tactics, though. I didn't worry so much about city founding, I founded Berlin and Hamburg and then just switched over to unit production. That let me wipe out the Indians before they knew what had hit them. If I get time I think I'm going to play a few Always War games, and try and sort out what I should've been doing …