Another of the Adventure series sponsored by Sirian (thx) at Realms Beyond Civilisation. Full details about this game can be found here at Realsm Beyond but I've included a quick review below.
Difficulty: Prince
Civilization: Spain
Leader: Isabella
Map Size: Standard
Map Script: Fractal
Rules: Standard
Victory: Any
Variant Rules: you may only train workers at cities that are size 6 or more. You must retain control of your starting cities.
Scenario: You inherit a struggling Spanish Empire, starting in 1AD. You control seven cities. Spain rules over more territory than any other nation. However, none of your cities has yet reached the critical Size 6 (SIX) threshold. This means your empire begins with zero workers and no improved plots! The Spanish have as yet built relatively few city improvements. However, you do control an army of twenty units, so your borders should be secure. The worst news of all may be that your economy has become mired in stagnation. The entirety of your budget is being consumed by various maintenance costs. Income is stagnant while costs are growing. Research has ground to a screeching halt. Good luck, and may whatever deities you believe in have mercy on your soul.
I had played a number of games which were all about killing, maiming and conquest (Epic 4 - Barbarians, Epic 5 - Crazed Monty) and so I decided that this game would be a nice peaceful Diplomatic victory. To win diplomatically, the UN wonder has to be completed and you need to be elected World Leader. The current Secretary General and the civ with the largest population (or second largest if largest is also the Sec-Gen) are the two that stand for election.In this game, I would probably not be the civilization with the largest population as I have to mark time while I (re)build my economy. This means that I must also build the UN to be eligable for the Sec-Gen election. The UN is enabled by the Tech Mass Media. From this game's starting position, I can bee-line to Mass Media from my current tech position - that is only 19 techs away.The other part of winning a diplomatic victory is that you have to get people to actually vote for you. This means that they must like you more than they like the other guy. Thus I would have to watch my relationships between the civs closely, and more importantly, I would have to carefully monitor the inter-civ relationships.An initial investigation showed that either Hatty or Saladin would be my opponent - these are the civilizations that are likely to have the most population. Luckily, Hatty is Buddhist and Saladin is Jewish so it was fairly likely that they would not vote for each other. Things would have been harder if they shared a religion.