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Welcome back. Last time, we made Huayna regret joining Caesar in our war, since Rome got away losing only one city, and the Inca became our vassals. Now, normally you would ride this wave and train even more knights camels, muskets, and trebs and conquer someone else (and really, keep going until somebody gets a tech that can trump you like Rifling or Military Tradition/Science), but this is a religious run; we're going to be abusing the Apostolic Palace mechanics to get everyone to vote for Islam. Or rather, they're not going to, but it won't matter. 
Arabia and its recent conquests. You can see we don't have any culture in the former Incan lands, so all our camels are getting split up and heading there for revolt suppression duty. Thanks to Madrassas' +2 culture over normal Libraries and our emphasis on religious buildings, it's not hard to push out enough culture to reduce that risk (Marrakech is now <1% odds, and should be zeroed soon; it's only that much because it's next to the Korean capital and its culture), but it is an issue right now.
Nothing else going on besides assigning our new cities to work the best tiles in range. Once a civ vassals to you you automatically control any tiles that your cities and theirs overlap. This can actually be a problem if you're going for a cultural victory: you can push back so much of their land it triggers that "You can't protect us" revolt factor!
A good example of how AIs still follow the rules in some ways, even if they get unfair bonuses and such. Capac is out some Happiness resources (gems and sugar at least, not sure if he had anything else) and is offering us a good we already have to try to get some back. I renegotiate and trade the gems for incense (which I don't have), and then give him some Fur to help build the "You supplied us with resources" bonus faster. When possible, make each transaction separate so you can cancel them individually, instead of an entire trade network collapsing because, say, the barbarians pillaged your clams. Sury also showed up and asked to trade world maps; we're still Pleased so I say yes and hope it'll give him an idea about going after someone else.
1350AD and Chemistry comes in. I tech toward Steel while the minions grab economic techs: Economics and Printing Press. I don't plan on actually trading for the former anytime soon, I'm going to swap to Mercantilism to help build stuff next turn (with the priests giving +2 hammers thanks to Angkor Wat, it's like running a bad production tile, but for free) and it'd obsolete my castles, and their bonus trade route only gets made up if you actually switch to the Free Market civic. Among other things I need to build is Versailles somewhere in Incan territory, maintenance is hitting double-digits on my furthest cities! Fortunately Divine Right is a tech that's only valued because it grants a freebie (Islam in this case) and it no longer does thanks to me, so none of the AIs seem to be going for it, so I have time to build it.
Steel is an expensive tech, and due to the aforementioned maintenance woes my GPT isn't quite what I'd like (a market completes in Mecca in 1360; dropping to 0% research makes my income +153 gold, less than the ~250 my empire costs per turn at 100% science). I mention that to point out that originally in Civ4, you built gold/research/culture at a loss, so you were encouraged to put the relevant multiplier buildings in your cities and manage your sliders more. In BtS, they don't, so "optimal" play is to build things like markets and universities only in your high-commerce cities, and simply build wealth to pay for your slider otherwise. After all, like we discussed in the thread, you need a 30 commerce city to get 7 gold out of a market, and that only applies when you're not running your research slider; if you build wealth with 2 grass mines that's +7 gold too, and you can spend those 150 hammers on something else. I absolutely loathe doing this and don't often do it (and it's not like there's no benefit; if you don't build banks you can't build Wall Street, for example), but I still want to point that out.
Finally, while I'm checking stuff, I can see that Pericles is building a wonder (most buildings have a sabotage cost in the low- to mid-hundreds). He has Nationalism, so this screams Taj to me. Just to be safe, I have Baghdad whip it (it can barely do so, it has almost 9 population and requires 4 to rush). Normally I wouldn't care (and I don't really, I mean, it's not like I'm going to lose the game ), but the Taj Mahal only rewards you for building it in the first place; you don't get a golden age for capturing it. It's worth losing the population and rebuilding to get an empire-wide bonus, and without having to use Great People to do it. Cementing the decision is the fact that Pericles is in Slavery too, and the AIs can and will whip wonders!
Golden Age! 
They're pretty nice, giving a +50% bonus (and rounded up for once!) to all your commerce and production tiles, doubling Great Person points and negating anarchy from civic/religion changes. That last bit doesn't matter for Spiritual leaders, of course, but it's still nice. Golden Ages are strong enough that it's worth going for Calendar, a tech the AIs usually do too, just to get the Mausoleum and try to extend those Golden Ages, then use the extended period of getting more GPP to get more Golden Ages. I usually have something else to prioritize in the early game and rarely get that wonder, but it's definitely worth considering.
Yup, he was going for it. 
It's 700 hammers so he was at least half done with it (an AI won't ever trade all their gold, to keep you from constantly draining their coffers and force them to turn the slider down). He's 1 turn away from Liberalism, so I just sell him the rest of the tech (which he offers 210 for) and let him keep the change. I don't plan on whipping anything during the Golden Age, so I swap civics to Caste, Mercantilism (note that vassals still provide trade routes!), and Pacifism. Since I still have the Parthenon, that's a huge bonus to my Prophet acquisition rate!
Like so. I then spend a few minutes swapping all the pre-assigned spy and engineer specialists to priests (or just citizens if they can't run any; they're still good for +3 science thanks to Representation), always fun.
Next turn, and Cuzco (now Kairouan) comes out of revolt. You don't get Culture from capture buildings, but fortunately it has Christianity (my religion for now; I'll be switching to Islam at the end of the Golden Age) and a settled Artist, which'll cause the border pop without me having to do anything. I always like looking at the AIs' starts in these games, ever since Master of Orion and the fact that your enemies always start with a strong homeworld made you realize that, when in doubt, you could always go and take one down and be guaranteed a nice Terran planet to add to your empire. In this case, Capac got 2 doses of the dreaded plains cow, but also sugar and a forking river to make up for it. I think I'd keep Mecca and its corn and floodplains if I had to choose, but this isn't bad. Production tiles along a river are a nice way to get commerce while you build, very important in the early game.
Guess he heard me talking about his capitol and got the urge to build something else. No, I don't need you swiping Versailles! This dumps him back to Annoyed, but who cares, right? I also get the stone I demanded from that border pop, so yeah, don't do what I did. 
Wang gets the circumnavigation bonus, and presumably rushes to the presses to tell the world about it. I trade him Guilds and Nationalism for it: fewer AIs have Education and they're equally expensive, so there's a bit less risk of him trading it around. If possible, you want to direct your vassals' teching and trade them things you have for what they get; if they trade it first, they might trade for your techs, leaving you out in the cold! Of course, you can always spy on your vassals and steal their techs that way, that's how I won the one and only "no tech trading" game I tried.
1410AD, and JC pops up wanting to normalize relations. This is because even though Caesar hates me, and now Wang thanks to him joining the war on my side; he still likes Capac, so his opinion averages out to around +0. I go ahead and basically give him Liberalism (for his 100 gold; he'll trade Gunpowder to Pericles for it if I don't, since they're about the same RP value) and get the full +4 "fair trade" boost. He converted back to Buddhism, so I wanted a diplomacy bonus on the board somewhere, heh.
Steel completes and we get the always-amusing image of Industrial Revolution dudes in their caps and overalls working while knights and archers look on. I probably won't be getting Scientific Method in this run-- it's almost over anyway, with 2 of the 3 missionaries completing last turn fanning out to start converting AI cities, but I want to keep monasteries and the Great Library in play-- so I'll be hitting the top and bottom tech lines instead. My plan is to convert the single biggest city in each civ that has at most 2 religions (when you have to march missionaries across a pangaea, and can only have 3 at a time, you don't want them to fail!), since I have over 75% of the votes myself, I can't call for a diplomatic win.
Well, what have we here? Turns out there is an island off the pangaea after all! (There isn't always, but I approve when there is; it gives Astronomy a reason to be in the tree.) I put Capac to researching it. I won't trade for Economics just yet, but I do want that; the only that it obsoletes that I care about is the Colossus, and if I can set up cities here, the overseas trade route bonus will definitely beat the +1 commerce on a handful of ocean tiles.
1450AD, and my Taj-granted Golden Age ends. I'll use up a Prophet that was born in Mecca during the last Age to immediately start a new one, since I don't have a shrine to make and he can't bulb anything. There's actually nothing a Prophet can bulb after Liberalism besides Future Tech! I always thought they should at least get Radio and Mass Media, y'know, for televangelists and stuff. Similarly, that's why I'm holding on to that Scientist I got; I don't want Scientific Method, so if I need a third Golden Age, I can use that Scientist plus a Prophet I'll be getting to do that. Anyway, the screenshot is to note that Pericles-- and I'm not sure if this was intentional or not-- is making the most of his Free Religion with at least 4 religions in every city. This'll make it quite unlikely that Islam will spread, so I gift the missionary and wait to see what happens. This also lets me immediately train a 3rd missionary, even though that one still exists.
Firing off the Golden Age, and sure enough, Pericles comes through the following turn. There's a chance, of course, that the missionary would've worked fine with my trying it, but the odds are something like 25% more likely he would've succeeded, and it did let me train another missionary.
Another Prophet wonder joins the collection in Medina, and that green dot is yet another Great Prophet born that turn. The Spiral Minaret is the gold counterpart to Sankore's research and the AP's production; it gives +2 gold per building that corresponds to your state religion. Needless to say in a religion-heavy playthrough, this can be really useful! It also encourages the use of gold-boosting buildings like Banks if you get the wonder early enough. That's the catch, though: Divine Right isn't too far before Scientific Method arrives and switches off half your religious buildings!
In 1480, Sury rings and offers his 120 gold for Philosophy; he's so far behind it doesn't hurt to accept. The plan to convert all of Korea to Islam and use his votes (vassals have to vote for you for a diplomatic victory unless they're the only candidate) proceeds, but Capac shows why it's not always worth it to capitulate someone who hates you. This is his 2nd act of sabotage, the first one was poisoning the water of his former capitol. While I wait for the last University to finish so I can start on Oxford in Mecca, I train a few spies to send to the remaining Incan cities and run counter-espionage, which'll drive up the cost to pull this stuff on me, and thus keep him from doing it as often.
Well, at least the Khmer missionary made it. There's one heading toward Gergovia, the last Celtic city to only have Hinduism (Tolosa literally added Judaism the turn after I intially sent him there, heh), so fingers crossed that works too.
I see that Caesar has a fair bit of cash, but isn't willing to trade Economics, even though thanks to averaging he should just be Cautious and it's no longer a monopoly tech. Sure enough, this is our first "WFYABTA," the big reason I tend to self-tech more than the "pros" do. The longer you expect a game to go on, the sooner the AI civs' refusal to trade with you will start dragging you down. Every AI personality has a different limit on this, with some (like Mansa Musa) being very high. If a leader is Friendly or is your vassal, then they'll always trade with you (but those trades count toward the limit other AIs have). Anyway, the reason is I finally need to grab Economics and Corporation because the latter is required to get Assembly Line. Since Printing Press is starting to go, I sell that to JC, and use some of that gold and Chemistry to trade with Capac and get it the following turn, when my last castles and Steam Power finish. Everything goes according to plan and in 1500AD I swap to Slavery / Free Market / Organized Religion (since with far fewer specialists, there isn't as much reason for Pacifism).
The Celtic mission works on the first try, and interestingly Pericles is starting to spread Islam on his own. I didn't peg him for a religious type, I guess he's coded to try to make the most of Free Religion? Regardless, this is another potential hurdle with the Apostolic Palace: you want to make sure you have enough population to still be in the lead if an AI actually decides to, y'know, take your religion seriously and embrace it. In this case, I don't think the game will give us any valid resolutions because I was the only civ in the religion during the last election, it should work normally next time. Either way Rome is about to get converted next turn, and they're the last ones. Thanks to Caste System and my cities growing, quite a few are able to put up the 40+ hammers needed to 1-turn a missionary.
On the next turn, the game pops this up. Well, if you ever needed proof that I type as I go and don't know what I'm talking about sometimes, here you go. In this case, when the game decided it was time for a resolution, Rome is the only non-Muslim power, so this is the only option. (Nobody's at war to break one up, I don't have enough culture to demand a city change hands, etc.) We're not even going to bring it up, since there's no way to gain diplomacy points and we don't want to close borders before we can convert him.
Also, now that I no longer need to build any wonders or anything, I'm getting some forest regrowth. Oh well. You can always use them to chop high-end military units.
As 2 new missionaries cross the border, I spot JC's stack, and sure enough, he's plotting. Now, I haven't built up any military since the war with him and Huayna, so my Power rating isn't going to be as high as my tech lead would suggest, so it's definitely possible he's going after Arabia and its 2 vassals. But anyone's a valid target, and I'd be surprised if Pericles got left alone, since Boudica took one of his cities last time and he hasn't made any moves toward recapturing Mycenae. In any case, Casablanca has a castle and most of my army is close to it, so if he started bombarding it, I'd have more than enough time to get a counterattack ready.
Oh, and I cashed in my last 2 Great People for a 3rd Golden Age. 3-turning Oxford, gotta love it. 
1525, and Wang finishes Military Tradition. I decide to wait one more turn for Huayna to finish Astronomy, and use Divine Right as part of the trade to both of them, since I'll be done with Versailles in Kairouan before the Golden Age is over anyway. I go to sell Boudica Philosophy, since she's beelining to Rifling and as a result is behind on other techs, and see that she's plotting too! I have a feeling she's going to try to finish off Pericles, and now that she has grenadiers, she might pull it off. Both Rome and Neapolis find the true faith, though, so as soon as another resolution comes up, I should be able to put this one away.
1550AD now, and nothing's happened: no resolutions in the AP, and no wars breaking out despite multiple AIs building up. I upgraded a few camels to cuirassier and loaded them up with a cannon and some backup to go take out the barbarian city on the NE island, and I'm building a settler and training some missionaries to set up another city there too. Why not, right?
Parthian Tabuk falls without incident... well, OK, one incident. It's kind of horribly placed, with only coal as a resource and a single floodplain farm as its only 4 food tile, but I'll take it. If I was planning to make a serious go at foreign trade routes, I probably would've razed it and placed it somewhere where it could get more food, since the population of a city gives a bonus multiplier. As it is, if I turn all that grassland into farms, it can work its production tiles and be a decent city. Just a shame I just obsoleted the Colossus!
I also run 100% culture for a turn to infuse my borders a little. Rome had a border expansion that rolled back Casablanca a ring (this is because the tiles near it are still Roman from when it was Ravenna), and if possible, you don't want an AI's borders to push right next to your city, because then they can move up immediately if they declare on you suddenly. Plus, y'know, not being able to work half your tiles sucks too.
1560AD is the date of the next resolution, but there's a problem: I don't know what I'm doing. Well, that's the overarching problem (did I mention I've never actually done an AP win before?), the more immediate problem is that it turns out that your competition for a religious victory is the second largest civ with that state religion, not the one with the highest converted populace (which would be Pericles, thanks to his unexpected mission spam). And as mentioned, a vassal will vote for himself over you, the only situation that can happen in a victory vote. So I tried a variety of shenanigans that would've been plausible if I'd known about this ahead of time and planned accordingly....
...like using spies to force Pericles into Islam (and Organized Religion, since Free Religion suppresses a spy-induced religion swap), which would make him the runner-up instead of Wang. But it just resulted in his doubled votes overwhelming Wang's and leaving me a few dozen short. I tried giving Capac more votes and then that plus making him Muslim too, but in both cases I was still a little short. Basically, having a competitor at all meant I'd be anywhere from 75 to 15 (!) short. So I ended up reloading a few turns and not making Korea convert as part of the trade for Military Tradition.
Much better. Isn't it great how the world wants me to rule them without even putting up a rival party? Clearly this is what they want.
Clearly!
Nobody asked you!
Done! I rushed through the replayed turns, only microing the cities enough to produce a few missionaries for Capac's cities and maxing out food to eke out a few more votes, so I didn't capture Parthian this time or produce the settler. Other than that it's the same (including Versailles and such). I did get an extra Great General due to actually finishing Fascism instead of being 1 turn short.
And then we get the exact same winning screen as the UN victory one. 
C'mon, at least change the logo on the background! All the civs remained through this one, though I did cap two and Pericles was on his way out, Sury absolutely rolled him with a stack of knights and trebs and I have a feeling Boudica was going to join in with her grenadiers. I do have to give Pericles his props, he had a mediocre start and ended up trailing the Inca until I beat them (and then took 2nd place himself), despite losing a city in a war and being pressured the entire game after that. You have to watch out for the peaceful teching types, if they don't get hammered like he did they can catch up with you once they get a lot of cities and their AI bonuses start really making an impact.
Demographics are about what you'd expect, but take a look at Imports - Exports on the bottom there. We are paying out way more in trade routes than we got. Now, that's because we have the most cities, so every AI can profit off a foreign city whereas we're going to run out eventually. This is the big argument for Mercantilism: yeah, it slows down your commerce, but it slows down the AIs, too. If you run big cities, definitely consider hanging out in Mercantilism until you have the techs and infrastructure in place to switch to a different civic, and/or if Roosevelt or Tokugawa are in the game. Especially the latter; if you meet him later in the game and are lacking options to get him to Pleased, selling him Banking and hanging out in Mercantilism together might do it.
Thanks for reading, it's been a blast. 