It was a narrows map. Things started off well with me getting Shang at 3 and Lucifer had Hittite at 1. Our opponents: Scarab had Macedonian and Belle had Babylon. I was drooling; as one who loves tool rushing, Shang is a perfect civ for me, and all the more so vs a couple of slow civs.
I got my economy started, and headed down toward 6. The shoreline was a bit funny, and caused me to head over closer to 9. I saw a yellow villager, and informed my partner "scarab at 9". I sent over another villie to keep the first one company, and they built a couple of raxes.
Some time before I got to tool, Lucifer informs me that in fact Belle is at 9. I was a bit confused, so I scouted a bit more. Whoa! Yellow woodchoppers to one side, orange ones the other, I had built my barracks smack dab in between my 2 enemies, who were very unfortunately placed very close together on the map.
I was drooling. I built a dozen or more clubbers (aka future axers), threw up a stable and got a couple of scouts, threw up a range and squeezed out some bowmen. It was a massacre, I reached tool at about 10 mins, about 3 minutes before scarab. I chased helpless little orange and yellow villies all over the map.
Lucifer jumped to bronze since I was doing so well, and then came in to help clean up. Unfortunately, it wasn't too long after he bronzed that he got dropped, and I had to finish the game.
Occasionally, through some kind of dumb luck, I manage such a game. I would like to thank the random civ gods and the random map gods for making it all possible. After getting trounced much of the week, I needed that.
aka APC_Kurtiebird, VVV_Kurtiebird