The game concluded with a successful spaceship launch in 1979AD:
We'll never know who became the next UN Secretary-General, because I was already off in space. 
I thought it was fitting that I ended the game at war with both Alex and Saladin, my two foes throughout the course of this contest. Most of my cities were sitting on wealth for the last couple turns, as you can see above. I was almost 1000 points behind Vicky in score at the end, but I was the first one to cross the finish line, and that's what matters. I also watched the spaceship ending movie for the first time (we certainly didn't have those during testing!)
The replay revealed a number of interesting things. Those are the starting positions above; in retrospect, the starting position was even worse than I remembered compared to the situation that the other civs found themselves in. I mean seriously, just look at that map! With the peaks blocking off the route to the east, there really is nowhere to go. Everything to the west is junk land, and Rome is right over there too. I think that taking the to sea was the best strategy for this game, but I'll be interested to see how others play it. Will attacking Rome be the path that others choose? That's certainly a possibility, but Rome had both iron and horses right outside their capital, so players who went the military route may have had more trouble than expected! It wasn't a gamble I was willing to take.
All the AI civs had 3 cities to my 2 in the early going. Now I did compensate for that somewhat by grabbing both Stonehenge and Oracle, which helped me out immensely (especially the Great Prophet points I generated from them). Speaking of that, in terms of religions I founded Buddhism, Vicky took Hinduism, and Saladin took Judaism. That basically formed the three blocs that would dominate the game. The later religions almost all were founded by the same civs; Vicky took Confucianism, Saladin took Christianity, and I founded Islam. Mansa Musa was the one who took Daoism, but that was a big MISTAKE for him because it broke his alliance with Victoria and caused her to declare war on his civ. Thus the three early religions completely dominated the religious side of the game and largely determined the alliances that formed. I'll be interested to see how that side of things plays out in other games.
The situation in 500BC, the date I founded my third city of Tlatelolco. Looking back, I believe this was the move that won me the game. This city would of course eventually become my capital; it was critical to get SOMETHING down on the southern side of the lake, and it grabbed several important resources (sheep, whales, and gold). Furthermore, my control of Tlatelolco allowed me to capture the barb city of Etruscan, found my fishing village of Xochicalco, and eventually establish Coal Town. In short, this city won me the entire SE Corner, which was almost half my civ at the end of the game! Estruscan and Bantu built all my large spaceship parts, both of them former barb cities. Heh. They had better land than anything else in my civ though.
The critical issue with the Tlatelolco location was defending it. Obviously from the map you can see that it's way out there and virtually undefended. However, thanks to building my Buddhist shrine so early in the game, I got the religion to spread on its own to Mao, and then I backed that up with missionaries. Mao thus became my ally instead of my enemy, which I NEEDED to do to have any chance of winning. Caesar ALMOST took Tlatelolco in the early going, but after I got peace with him I converted him as well, at great effort, and was rewarded for it a thousandfold later on. I think it would have been much, much harder to win this game if the player had to fight Caesar and Mao.
This is in 1000AD, just after I captured the city of Bantu and culture-bombed it. Rome has already raced past me in the west and will secure that entire corner of the map. If some players can manage to get past Caesar there and secure the corner, they may do well. Now also notice the empty land to the east of me and in the south of the map. I circled in light red two bizarre geographical formations that limited access to those lands. Saladin is blocked from expanding to the north of his capital, and he had a barb city to go through too, so he was slow to grab the north. Frankly, I could have done better there but hadn't scouted enough in that region. In the south, Mansa Musa is blocked from moving east by another strange ridge of peaks. That has channeled his expansion to the north, bringing him into conflict with Mansa Musa and Vicky. This would have serious consequences for this game...
...leading Mao to declare war on Mansa Musa and (with help from Vicky and Caesar) effectively destroy Mali by 1750AD. Mao will go on to grab virtually the entire southern part of the map. Meanwhile, Vicky took several cities as well to fuel her expansion, and Caesar finished his conquest of the NW corner. Heck, he even grabbed a barb city in the northEAST corner of the map behind Saladin! Alex has expanded to the west of his lake, and Saladin has pushed out to the north, but they are doomed to be overshadowed by the larger civs in the west. Also notice my expansion into the center of the map; the SE Corner looks like a dagger driving a wedge into the space between China and Arabia.
By 1900AD, Mao has ripped away all of Alex's cities on the west of the lake and has almost finished his consolidation of the south. Mao is a monster, and only his constant warring has prevented him from taking over the points/tech lead from Victoria. He's #1 in power by a large margin and continues to carve up the two eastern civs. Caesar has done a number on Saladin as well, taking a city in the north and two in the center of the map (that's what that blotch of purple represents). Just look at all those razing announcements on the right side of the screen! I had modestly expanded to get Coal Town, but that was it. No more warring for me, I was getting ready to work on the spaceship.
As far as the tech race went in this game, I'm still surprised that I managed to do as well as I did. Part of that is due to the fact that there was so little water on this Highlands map; you might think that would speed up research, but exactly the opposite. Coastal cities are always high commerce ones, and the AI definitely researches at a slower rate when it has no cities on the water. Financial civs especially are super-strong on maps with a lot of water. My maritime city did better than I expected. Furthermore, the AI civs clearly had a lot of problems with the map script as well. Vicky was slow to get her cottages built; from scouting, I saw that she did not have the endless rows of cottages that Washington had produced in my Epic One game. Vicky was also slowed significantly by barbs; two barb cities had formed on her northern border early on, and she must have been in "war mode" for a while trying to capture them. Vicky also got involved in the war with Mansa Musa, and the game's two Financial civs were FIGHTING EACH OTHER (!) rather than researching. As for Mansa Musa, he was torn apart by the other civs. Caesar and Mao did way too much fighting to stand a chance of running away technologically. Saladin and Alex were also involved in heavy warring, and taking it on the chin. They were both a full era behind in tech at the end of the game. That left me, the plucky little civ on the water, to run through the tech tree and reap every "first to discover" benefit, as well as taking advantage of tech leader status to make tons of advantageous trades. I couldn't have drawn it up any better.
And the final map from 1979. I actually clocked in at less time than my Epic One game, interesting. No doubt due to the fact that my civ was much smaller. Mao is absolutely out of control in this last shot, and he's well on his way to destroying Alex. (Those red dots you see are actually Greek cities captured by China.) I also like the One City Challenge action Mansa Musa is running down in the south. No one ever bothered to put him out of his misery!
Note my non-dominance of the Demographics for the game. By the end, I had fallen to third in GNP (although still not far back of the leaders) and fourth in production. Given that my civ had all of four cottages, it's not surprising that I didn't do better in the GNP category. Production was a constant problem throughout this game (needing to build windmills instead of mines, so many cities working the sea, etc.) that everyone will have to overcome. Obviously I stunk militarily, but I was still strong enough to defend what I had - at least, against Saladin and Alex. Only fourth in population though, and Mao has over twice as many people as me. Yikes! That's something you won't see often outside of an Emperor/Immortal game or some other ridiculous scenario. The amazing thing is that I was actually dominating some of these categories earlier in the game! 
I was ranked "Charles de Gaulle", final in-game score of 3220, Hall of Fame score of 9165. Whatever, a win is a win. After the game ended, I checked the worldbuilder to see how close Vicky was to building her own spaceship. She had all but one part finished, so how close was she on the last part?
Ha! A comfy eight-turn victory! I'll be looking forward to seeing how many others managed to beat this map on report day. With our crew, I'm expecting at least a few more wins. I hope everyone who tried the map enjoyed what was a very unique experience.
