With the conquest of the southern continent accomplished, I was now faced with a strategic impasse. Although I was at war with the eastern bloc civs, I had to decide whether to make this a phony war of defense or an aggressive war of conquest. This is the sort of thing that goes beyond mere tactical considerations and enters into the realm of genuine strategy. So let's think about this for a minute. Can I win a space race against these AIs, given our current resources and position on the tech tree? Maybe. Frankly, I'm not sure. My spies are running around in their territory, monitoring their progress through the tech tree, and although I have a bit of a head start in tech, by all indications the eastern AIs are actually researching faster than I am. The AI is notably incompetent at getting the space race done in timely manner, and I can use my spies to muck things up too, but suing for peace and trying to out-race the AIs to space seems a dicey prospect at best.
If I don't want to go that route, what are my other options? Conquest is out because I can't kill Alex (by rule!) Cultural seems extremely unlikely. That means pursuing either Domination or a backdoor version of it through the UN. I pause for a moment to think this over. Let me put it this way - what's the best way to stop a runaway AI civ who is heading for space, and teching faster than you can at your best rate? Is it to engage in a buildfest and try to out-tech them to space?
No, it's not! 
The best way to stop a runaway AI is to declare war, burn down his cities, pillage his cottages, and generally cause as much havoc as possible. It might seem counter-intuitive, but the SAFEST thing for me to do is go on the offensive against the AIs here. If I can burn down enough of their cities, I can at the very least slow them down long enough for me to win the space race, and possibly even win by a different victory condition. I probably won't have a particularly fast finish, but damn it - I'm going to make sure I WIN this game first, and worry about scoring later!
And so the war will go on, because it will hurt the AIs more than it will hurt me. Or at least that's the logic. 
The peace treaty with Mansa Musa allowed me to drop the luxury rate to 0%, and from this point forward I would rely on Police State + Rushmore + jails to control war weariness, never touching the culture slider again after a brief period in Universal Suffrage. (I was actually able to manage a decent research rate with this combo, once jails had been constructed in every major city.) Further good news came with the clearing of the last Indian units from Cathy's southeast island in 1822:
Amazingly, none of Cathy's cities on this island fell to the invaders, despite Gandhi's landing of nine units. All they had to do was attack a city together and it was sure to fall! But the AI chose to pillage with its cavs, and attack with SOME units while others bombarded the city. One by one, they either suicided or were picked off in foolish attacks. Thus Gandhi achieved NOTHING beyond pillaging, and I quickly landed three of my own workers to reconnect the gems/rice. It was a classic case of total AI weed of the worst sort. 
I was deprived of some much-needed resources for about a half-dozen turns, but that was a much better outcome than I expected to see.
The AIs grabbed Combustion on the following turn and suddenly their antique navies were refitted to include transports and destroyers. Insta-upgrades... 
Meanwhile, my spies in enemy territory rejoiced to see that the first stirrings of war weariness were breaking out on the other continent:
OK, so it's only 1 unhappy face, and my cities without jails are getting 2 of them even with -75% war weariness, but at least it IS showing up! As far as the research goes, they're beelining through Artillery to Rocketry to get started on the Apollo Program (actually a fairly clever move, considering how slow the AI is to build it). The AIs knocked out Artillery in just 3 turns. Since Flight was taking me about 8 turns to research, and at a comparable part of the tree, you can see how I was in some trouble here. (Yeah, Artillery is cheaper than Flight, but not THAT much cheaper!)
Bis sailed out another major fleet a couple turns later:
Note that he's already sporting some of those new artillery pieces, as well as some older cannon. In any case, my own navy was congregated in the area to protect my invasion transports, and they blew the German stack out of the water! 
That was certainly a lot of fun. Anyone who doesn't think naval warfare is important in Civ4 needs to play fewer Pangaea maps!
I was researching Flight above to get airports into play; this kind of intercontinental warfare will be almost impossible without having the ability to fly in additional units every turn. After discovering the tech (and going on to Electricity en route to Industrialism and tanks), I even popped back into Organized Religion for a few turns to help speed along construction of air facilities. I love being Spiritual in this game! 
The first Arabian soldiers landed on the eastern continent in 1836. After a difficult battle, they managed to raze the city of Stuttgart:
Why raze instead of capture? And why THIS particular part of the eastern continent? For the first question, I didn't have the time to sit around waiting for the German city to come out of resistance; I needed to raze and replace with my own city right away. That allowed me to pop into Universal Suffrage for five turns and rush an airport:
The city of Eastern Airbase has one function in this world: to serve as a landing pad for hundreds of Arabian soldiers of all types. I'm actually on the clock to pull this move off; war weariness will quickly spike to insane levels, forcing me to run Police State and disabling this very move (which of course needs Universal Suffrage). So I had to get my airbase up and running NOW, while war weariness was merely "bad". And note the tech; takes nine turns to research Industrialism. That will actually drop when adopting Police State thanks to the war weariness removal (who said dictatorships weren't effective at science?) but you'd better believe that the AI team can get the tech faster than that. Rocketry is half again as expensive as Industrialism (4500 vs. 3000) and they were researching that in just 6-7 turns. Eep! 
As far as the reason why I'm attacking here and not somewhere else... Well, for starters, this part of the coast was close to my Incan holdings in the eastern islands, so it was a easy hop onto the mainland coast. But there was more than that too; taking and holding this location was an integral part of my plan. To demonstrate, let me show you the map:
There's the bare map of the eastern continent, Fortress Industria, home to the evil AI team. Big, isn't it? My airbase is located on the small green dot in the lower left corner. From here, I get a canal city with access to the inner sea in the south, a sort of Mediterranean which will figure heavily into the story from this point forward. In order to reduce my frontage, the plan is to attack to the south along the green arrows while holding steady in the north, sweeping through Germany until I reach the narrow terrain to the east. That will secure the whole southern part of the continent, after which I will begin an advance into the heartland of the AIs (along the red arrows). With the fronts being so large, it's unlikely I'll be able to hold all the ground I take, so I expect the battle lines to be relatively fluid.
With a continent THAT large (the biggest I've ever tried to invade before), facing FOUR Monarch AIs who are my technological contemporaries, this looks like it's going to be a long struggle. Pull up a chair and get settled in, because these AIs aren't going to fold the way the Financial team did.
As if to prove that dictum, Roosevelt managed to sneak an invasion fleet past my navy and land at Fustat on the home continent:
Despite all my carefulness, this particular group snuck by my ships out on patrol. It's tough to cover the whole ocean on a Large map like this one... Anyway, Fustat was defended by... a single archer. Fortunately, thanks to the magic of upgrades + railroads + the draft (I am in Nationhood civic, remember!) I manage to assemble four infantry and a machine gun in the city before the turn ends. FDR suicides with half of the units, then pillages with the rest. More Arabian units converge on the city and the threat is quickly ended. Good thing I know what I'm doing, or that could have been ugly. Maybe I should get more than just an archer in my coastal cities now... 
On the other continent, my carrier-based airforce saw action for the first time at Magyar:
Fighters aren't nearly as good as bombers for this, but every little bit helps. I might as well get as much use as possible from these units before the AIs researched Flight and began throwing their own fighters into the mix.
I was finally able to swap back to Police State/Theocracy (from Universal Suffrage/Organized Religion) in 1854, which markedly improved my happiness situation, and thus my research rate as well. From Magyar, I had my soldiers board ships and head for Madras, where Gandhi was storing his Mediterranean fleet:
Despite a frightening amount of naval power at his disposal, Gandhi had the ships sit there while I killed the three LAND defenders and took the city. Six destroyers and four transports went down to swim with the fishies. 
I would later be enormously glad that I had kept Madras; as a tiny island in the middle of this sea, it offered me a secure "Malta"-like base from which to operate. Planes routed to Madras could hit virtually any target around this inland sea, and with my naval presence it was totally secure from attack. What a fantastic help it was to have another safe base on hand!
I soon found myself running into a snag against Bismarck's German cities; they were SO heavily defended that I wasn't making much progress against them. Rather than fight an uphill battle, I decided to change tacks while waiting for the arrival of tanks on the battlefield. Instead of slogging on foot through the German defenses, I would take to the seas and capture Gandhi's lightly-held Indian possessions on the coasts. Here was the situation:
Bengal, Kolhapur, Bangalore, and yes, even Delhi, are all relatively weakly held and vulnerable to an assault by sea. Munich (to the south, under the interface) is a bonified fortress, and I planned to come back to it later. Let's see how well this new change in strategy goes, shall we?
Much to my annoyance, the AIs researched Industrialism a turn before I did. Since they had also grabbed Rocketry in that time span, while I had been on a straight beeline to the same tech, this was distinctly Not a Good Sign (TM). My spy in Munich was alerted to this fact by seeing a PANZER under production in the city (!) That is distinctly not good! But Germany only had one source of oil, so I begin scanning the map to see if I could cut it off and deny them access to their panzers. Fortunately, the single German well was within range of my fighters at Madras!
Woohoo! Just like that, no more panzers. Let's hear it for air power! 
Unfortunately, the other civs did have oil at their disposal; FDR had a native source, and Napoleon had two, with the extra one going to Gandhi. As if I needed further confirmation, Gandhi immediately began sending tanks after my forward positions. Since both sides discovered Industrialism at almost exactly the same time, a rapid tank buildup immediately ensued on each side of the ocean. Even with virtually every city in my civ working on tanks, it would still take several turns before I could get a decent number of them over to the other continent. In the meantime... my infantry would just have to make do:
Here at Bengal, backed by sea and air power, they had no trouble destroying the tank and taking the city. But infantry against tank is a losing argument, so I knew I needed to get some of that armor over here on the double!
While this was going on, I had Baghdad (my Ironworks city) complete Broadway for some additional happiness. Eiffel Tower would be next there, once I finished researching Radio. In the meantime, I was once again able to use my navy to take Kolhapur and its 100 beakers/turn away from Gandhi. This is working great - Gandhi's GNP has actually slipped below mine! Their research rate as a full team was still above mine, but not by as large of a margin. (And this is with them building units non-stop in every city; just think how bad it would be if the AIs were at peace!)
A big German fleet moved out in 1864, and I moved my own ships to intercept. I ended up having enough forces on hand to sink the destroyer escorts, but not the transports. So, rather than let the transports sail on and unload their cargo, I boxed them in!
The transports are programmed not to attack when carrying a full assortment of units, so I was able to trap them here for a turn and send all of the units to the bottom next turn with my destroyers. Ha! 
Oh, and look which city is building the Apollo Program for the AI team. (Delhi) I think I may be able to do something to disrupt that! 
So I'm cruising along thinking this game is practically over already. I'll ease my way to a Domination win without breaking a sweat. Ha! Little did I know the war was only just beginning...
