+Stealing Gaspar's pick.
+Having a plan and keeping it running. Big improvement over my past self. Case in point: realizing that I should build a Warrior before Work Boat, which would have saved my bacon vs. Bob even if the peace offer didn't glitch.
*I should have checked whether Whip Worker Size 2 would be faster than slow-building it. I assumed that I wouldn't have enough time to pick up AH and BW before the Worker completed, and chose the 6-food Pigs over the 4-food Rice.
-Rushing my plans just before the deadline. Case in point: wasting beakers on Fishing causing me to delay The Wheel for a turn.
+I lucked out with the location of Gold.
Grassland, four tiles from the capital, in a place that claims Horses and shares Rice.
Everyone else's Gold was six tiles from the capital and plains. (Remember Mardoc moved his settler 1N)
-Not even considering that Bob would continue the attack. It didn't even cross my mind.
+Founding Hinduism and actively spreading it. The extra happiness and culture were frequently exploited. Getting lucky on spreads, too.
+Quick, compact third and fourth city. Settling city five on an island.
-Slowbuilding Granaries instead of whipping them - and completing them on the turn that my cities grow, to boot.
-Meiyuan.
I should have settled it it in a position to share Ximen's Gold so that Ximen could actually grow. The city was far away, requiring a lot of Worker labor just to road to. The city had a lot of food, meaning it needed a lot of Workers to plop down Cottages. The city did
nothing to get me closer to the Pyramids, and was so Worker-starved it had to build its own. An extremely bad sign.
Again, this is a consequence of my tendency to put of planning. The Pyramids were another big Worker sink, and I should've realized that I couldn't commit to both of them.
-Case in point of 'seat of my pants' planning: Ancheng and the Hanging Gardens.
+Realizing the need for a Heroic Epic unit, and going hunting for experience.
-Overprioritizing Forges and undervaluing Lighthouses and Courthouses. I probably should have taken Code of Laws before Metal Casting.
As for Lighthouses, take a look at Huishan.
This place really could have used more food pre-Civil Service. Yet I didn't build a Lighthouse until the endgame.
*Is it worthwhile to build Courthouses in first-ring cities, where the savings are only ~3.5 GPT? I used to think not, but now I'm not so sure. That's more money than I'd be able to get out of a Library, at least.
+Better use of mounted units. I'd always ignored them, most recently in the Demogame where I realized that I should have built Cavalry to flank the Trolls' Cannons.
*Sian not putting up a fight. Really lucked out there.
*Not pushing Sian harder. My justification was that there was still unclaimed land in the jungle, easier and cheaper to settle. Why not take it?
Mature cottages and not having to sink Worker turns into hacking down that Jungle, present self responds.
+Better use of National Wonders. Actually built and leveraged NE and HE.
-Building the Forbidden Palace two city lengths away from my capital might have been a waste of resources.
+Realizing that Ancheng should be a pure Engineer city.
-Losing Worker micro focus midgame. Losing the settler-spamming drive midgame.
*The Music run. Risky since Jowy had Literature for the past forever. My justification was that it was about time for Literature anyway, since I wanted to start the Epics.
-Not prioritizing Theology and the Apocalyptic Palace higher. I was banking on my tech visibility to tell me if someone researched Theology so I could delay researching it until that happened. However, even discounting Bob's Great Engineer, Bob would have beat me to the AP. AP has no doublers, so the +50% Industrious bonus is worth more, and I simply couldn't beat that.
*Monk economy. I wonder if I should have kept building Monk buildings after it became clear that the AP and Spiral weren't coming anytime soon. 2 BPT for 21.5 base hammers is a pretty nice deal, but was it worth the 148 hammers I sunk into Sankore?
+The Eternal Golden Age.
+Avoiding the farmer's gambitting temptation.
*I nearly never worked coasts, preferring to whip them off. I wonder if that's a good idea.
*Paranoia. I followed Bob to Engineering, which worked out since my big sprawling empire needed better infrastructure. I built a bunch of repeating Crossbows on the Bob border, which might not have been a good idea since Bob's power was pretty low.
*Researching Education/Liberalism instead of straight Nationalism after the Great Artist popped, meaning I couldn't bulb Education. Universities are waaay too expensive and inferior to Banks. Maybe if I had a plan and drive to quickly whip out Oxford... which I didn't.
-I built too many Settlers in the endgame expansion binge. I started outstripping my Worker pool.
+Mercantilism/Representation. Most of my international trade was +2c, and I could get that in all my cities next turn by settling Sian's island city. I'm pretty sure it would have paid for itself by the time I hit Communism.
*Future self: Do not romanticize multiplayer Civ games. You will get tired of sinking an hour each day into playing turns and writing reports, and the growing feeling of power you get from building mud houses can be better obtained elsewhere.
