Now I am at turn 340, I just puppeted another City-State, and I have one more on the way. I have sent a large number of military units, both land and sea, to the City-States that are on Japan’s border. If he tries anything now he will likely regret it. Now I am starting to build things I had not bothered with before, like Granaries and Amphitheaters. I got a couple of Great Engineers, and used them to rush build Wonders. I am nearly finished puppeting all of the City-States, and my Happiness and Income are both quite healthy. I am in such good shape I started to build the World’s Fair, which I initally proposed then ignored.

At this point I only have one more City-State to puppet, then I will have puppeted every City-State in the game. So it is time to put my large income to use in other ways by giving gifts to the other players. I may want to get a few more votes on my side to get over the top in the World Leader vote when it happens. On turn 357 I completed the puppeting of all of the City-States in the game. Meanwhile, I am building up my Science and building Wonders as they become available. I didn’t build any in the early game because I had other priorities, but now I have a strong military, high income, and no other pressing needs. My score on the Leader Board is now double that of my nearest competitor which is still Japan. And their denunciation me of just expired with them taking no action.

I used a Great Engineer to rush build the Porcelain Tower, earning me another Great Scientist, which I then used to build another Academy. At this point it is mostly a slog to the finish. Since I was so dominant and so wealthy I could afford to pursue a couple of other options just in case. One was a Science victory, which looked like a possibility, though it would be close. I had to be very focused in my Science Research. The other option was a Culture victory, and I had dominated two other empires culturally without half trying, and I was generating Great Artists, Great Musicians, and Great Writers pretty rapidly. So I built Museums, then Archeologists, and grabbed every artifact I find to stuff into the Museums. But the final Victory came when I researched Globalization. This tech allows you to get an extra vote in a World Council for every Spy you send to another empire’s capital and designate as an Ambassador. I immediately sent my spies out (they had previously been in my cities doing counter-espionage since I had a tech lead). And a few turns later a vote for World Leader came up and I won.

This was my first time using Maria Theresa of Austria as my leader, and it was fun, but in the end puppeting all of the City-Staters actually made it harder to win a Diplomatic victory. In other games I have played, every City-State that was an ally was an extra vote in the World Council, and I assumed that making them puppets would mean I would get that many votes. But that didn’t happen. Of course, if I had read more carefully in the Civilization Wiki I would have realized this, because it says there very clearly that Austria is one of the worst Empires to pick if you are going for a Diplomatic victory. So the fact that I managed it anyway is nice. I think I actually could have done a Science victory as I had my Spaceship half-built when I won the Diplomatic Victory. But I hope this analysis of how I actually played this game will be helpful to someone else.