This is a pot luck, to which I’m bringing all the wonders of the world.

I drew Roosevelt on the dice roll. I’ve never been a big fan of the industrious trait, for a sort of silly reason. When playing an industrious leader, I always feel like I need to try and build every wonder. This is a constant distraction, so I rarely play industrious civs. But for this game I decided to make it my operating principle. I would totally give in to the industrious urge and attempt to build all the wonders in the game. The Americans would be a people obsessed with building wonders, and jealous of all other nations that build them. I would need to make a valid attempt to build every wonder there is, religious shrines included. 

Obviously there’s no way I can build every wonder in the game, but I do have to own them all by the end. So if I miss building a wonder, I’ll need to acquire it from whoever built it. And I’ll have to acquire the holy cities for all the world’s seven religions and ensure that they have shrines. I’m going to make an effort to resist going to war for any reason other than acquiring wonders. I can punish civs that declare war on me, but any aggressive war has to fit somehow with my wonder acquisition strategy. I can’t just try to grab territory for the sake of territory. Also, I can't declare war on an opponent just to distract them from building a wonder.

Here’s the American start position.

Thanks for the extra warrior, Sirian!  I wasn’t really thrilled by the default start location, so I moved my western warrior to the northwest and my eastern warrior to the northeast, and they revealed wheat and silk. I definitely wanted that wheat in the capital’s borders, so I moved my settler northward.

On the next turn I decided to settle where I’d be able to access the wheat and the cows, plus all that silk.

Washington got to work right away on a worker. With two warriors I was in no need of more scouting units, and certainly had time before the capital needed to be defended. And since Roosevelt starts with farming, I’d be able to access that wheat right off the bat.

I began work on Mining while my warriors went off to scout. My eastern warrior popped a hut with 2 hostile warriors, and managed to defeat both! My western warrior got a largely useless map from some other villagers. Not long after, my eastern warrior came across the incredibly well defended barb city of Navajo.

Despite my warrior's mad luck with the angry villagers, I decided to postpone this fight.

In 2980 BC, I ran into who I assumed was my closest neighbor, Caesar.

Hmmm . . . I may have to break my no territory acquisition wars rule. I don’t relish having a strong Caesar next door. One thing I had already learned by this point in the game – America has a HUGE amount of territory in which to peacefully expand, provided I can cut off Rome. Basically, it’s possible to peacefully lock down pretty much the entire north of this continent. Later I’d discover that all of the other start positions were cramped. The Americans really lucked out with this map, and I’m betting Roosevelt will be one of the top AIs in lots of other games.

After Animal Husbandry I started on Mysticism. I definitely wanted to get the game on the right foot by building Stonehenge. At size 3, Washington switched production to a settler to claim a nice city location to the east, which had stone, gold, and plenty of flood plains.

In 2170, Bronze Working finishes and I revolt to slavery. I envisioned this as the moment when America was about to embark on its obsessive quest to build or acquire every wonder. Accordingly, Washington got renamed Wonder City, and New York got renamed Stonetown. I changed my name from RBCivEpic8 to Wonderbuilder. Later I decided that Wonderbuilder was pretentious and bland, and changed my name to Wonderhog, which was actually far more descriptive of the spirit of my game.

In 1900, I completed Stonehenge in Wonder City. After Bronze Working, it was on to the Wheel, then Pottery. In 1450, I founded Ocean City – my first coastal town, and intended location of the Great Lighthouse and Colossus.

At some point very early on (I think after Animal Husbandry) I had researched Masonry. So after the founding of Ocean City, Washington got to work on the pyramids, which would be helped along by the quarried stone in Stonetown. In 745 the pyramids were finished.

In 625 BC, having built a lighthouse, Ocean City was now working on a much bigger version.

You can see that I’m also teching up towards Priesthood, which enables the Oracle. I knew my chances of building it were virtually nil, but I had my rules and as long as it wasn’t built I was going to give it a shot.

Then, in 550 BC, I got my first great person.

I was fully expecting this to be a prophet, as Stonehenge had been around a lot longer than the Pyramids. In this game, prophets were nearly as good as engineers, because I needed to either acquire or build several shrines and the more religions I could found the better. So a prophet would have been welcome, but I couldn’t believe my luck in getting Imhotep. As soon as I finished Priesthood, I would rush the oracle, assuming it hadn’t been built yet.

Meanwhile, Wonder City and Stonetown have been busy churning out axemen. Here’s why.

Against all expectations, Caesar had founded both Hinduism and Judaism – goody huts, maybe? I wasn’t complaining. My nearest neighbor had two shrine-ready cities worthy of conquest. I determined to strike as soon as I could. Any more time, and Rome might have praetorians.

In 475 BC, as soon as I finished researching Priesthood, I rushed the oracle in Wonder City with my engineer and chose Metal Casting as my free tech. This was really late for the oracle. I totally lucked out.

Meanwhile, a steady stream of archers had been pouring out of Navajo and wandering down into Roman territory.

I couldn’t decide whether this was a good thing. On the one hand, they weren’t attacking me and might be preventing Caesar from developing. On the other hand, Caesar’s units might have lots of promotions.

In 340 BC, I completed my fourth wonder – the Great Lighthouse in Ocean City.

In 310 BC, I decided that the moment to strike at Caesar had arrived. My force of 9 axemen erupted into Roman territory, making for the Jewish holy city of Antium. They captured it in 280 BC, at great cost. Half my axemen were killed taking that city on a hill.

My few remaining axemen marched on Rome to harass that city until reinforcements could arrive. My two original warriors even had a part to play in the battle for Rome. They had gone out to explore the rest of the continent, but upon their return had been cut off by Roman borders from making their way home. They now served as bait for the archers in Rome. Antium had horses, so I was now able to build chariots, which joined the siege.

Rome was well defended. Those barb archers had promoted one of its defenders up to city garrison III! In 85 BC, as I continue to amass forces before Rome and dangle my warriors before Caesar, one of the Roman archers takes the bait, leaving the city to kill a warrior. I now had enough force to move in for the kill and take the Hindu holy city.

I made peace with Caesar shortly afterwards, and in 25 BC, I finish the Colossus in Ocean City.

After the war with Rome, the Wonderhogs were about to enter AD time and things were looking good. Having built 5 of the 6 ancient wonders, crippled a potentially troublesome neighbor, and acquired two holy cities, it was time to start peacefully expanding and to make an attempt at getting the last ancient wonder - the Parthenon.

I had spent a lot of shields on wonders and military, but now it was time to start spending them on peaceful development.