I finished off Qin's last city in 1750AD, cementing my control over a massive empire that spanned the entire eastern half of the pangaea. Everything east of Saladin's territory was now under my control. It was now time to think about victory conditions, and which one I wanted to pursue. Conquest and Domination would both be easily possible, but they would require me to go after my good buddy Saladin, which was not something I wanted to do. Elizabeth had been less of a friend of late (ever since she swapped to Free Religion civic and dropped out of Judaism), but she had given me the critical cash gift in the early going. I wouldn't have felt right declaring on her either (even though she supplied ivory to both Hatty AND Qin for elephants! Some friend! 
) Without attacking either Arabia or England, I wouldn't have enough land for a Domination victory.
Let's see... a cultural victory would certainly be possible via the cheese tactic of running 100% culture tax, but that's such a silly game mechanic, I'd rather not win that way. (Cultural victory works perfectly if the player doesn't use the culture tax, as we showed in RB19 succession game, but in other cases it's pretty messed up!) This game is over for all intents and purposes, so I wasn't too keen on pursuing space. That left the Diplomatic victory, another troubled victory condition that I hadn't achieved since Epic One. But I figured, what the heck. With all this population I could probably vote myself the Diplomatic victor if all else failed. Let's go for that.
My research was therefore directed towards Mass Media, on a straight beeline that skipped even basic stuff like Steam Power and Railroad. With my discovery of Communism and a stone resource (which I was getting from Saladin in exchange for copper), I also built the Kremlin at about this time in 1740. Once the Chinese war was over, I swapped out of my Bureaucracy civic for good and adopted Free Speech, which sped research along further. Aside from that, the next ten turns were spent working on infrastructure and moving my soldiers back across my empire from the northeast corner in former China.
Here's what things looked like on the round date of 1800AD:
It's infrastructure heaven just about everywhere except the western corner of my territory, where Seville and super-military-pump Salamanca are still on troops. Mostly, my cities were all running max growth to get their populations up as quickly as possible, especially the recent conquests. Thebes is the Buddhist holy city, which I captured with shrine intact, so I am slowly spreading the religion around to increase finances. (As my only holy city worth mentioning, I had put Wall Street in Thebes already.) By the way, notice how I founded Murcia in the middle of a gap down in the southern jungles, and Zaragosa on the coast to grab an unused fish resource along with other coastal tiles. My land use was extremely efficient everywhere except in the north, where Saladin's city completely screwed things up (and I wanted to avoid border tension there to preserve relations). Sal you fool, don't you realize I could have fit three cities there if it wasn't for your intrusion? Argh!
Unfortunately, while my relations with Saladin remained extremely good, at about +15 for various things, relations hadn't been so good with Lizzie ever since she dropped out of Judaism. She got angry at me for declaring war on Qin, and then the ultimate bad news for my diplomatic prospects: Liz became Saladin's "worst enemy". ARGH! My two best friends hate each other! 
This was the ultimatum Liz offered me in 1790. I knew that when I refused this offer it would all but rule out any chance of Lizzie voting for me in the UN elections, but what I could I do? I was NOT about to throw away a game-long alliance with Saladin here. What a pickle. Now here's my complaint about the game's diplomatic system: Saladin and Lizzie were best of friends for ages and ages in this game, so I chose to side with them and was very careful about not signing Open Borders or trading with the civs that they didn't like (first Hatty, then Mansa Musa). Then towards the end of the game, Elizabeth swaps sides at the drop of a hat and becomes "Friendly" with Mansa Musa, and Saladin becomes her "worst enemy", putting me in an absolutely impossible position. What in the world is the player supposed to do here?! I was so, so careful in this game to play by the rules of the diplomatic game, and the AI civs totally ignored the alliances that had been built up over the whole preceding 2/3 of the game. Ridiculous. No wonder it's almost impossible to get anyone to vote for you in the UN!
Regardless of the betrayal by the white hand of Isengard England, the game still went on. Looking at the population numbers on F8, I was only at 45% of the total people, which wouldn't be enough to win without some support. Saladin would be my opponent, Liz was a doubtful vote, Mansa Musa would never vote for me, and Caesar was unlikely too. In short, I needed more votes for the UN, and that meant I needed to take over some more territory. It was time for the Spanish cavs to ride again:
Sorry Caesar, looks like you drew the short straw. Caesar wasn't really an enemy, but he had hardly been a friend either. Mostly he just sat there, pathetically backwards and irrelevant to the outcome of the game so far. I had no clue why Rome had struggled so much (although I would later find out on the replay). Anyway, I had cavs, and he had nothing better than medieval garbage. You should know what that means by now.
Pisae had 60% cultural defenses, on a hill. It didn't matter. My cavs gunned them down and went right on through to the next city. Arretium fell the same turn. One turn into the war, my cavs were already deep inside the Roman borders. Unfortunately, the Eternal City itself was rather well defended:
Hmmm, going to take a turn or two to get the cavs into position to take that. In the meantime, let me show you what I had done with Memphis, the Egyptian city that put up such a struggle in the early parts of the game:
With a wheat and banana resource on hand, plus a great deal of fertile riverside land, I opted to farm over everything and pump the Great People here. I did mine the hills though for decent production (this isn't Epic Three's biggest city ever challenge). And notice how enormously productive my specialists have become with the help of the proper wonders and civics! Each priest usually produces one shield and one gold, but I'm getting a second shield from Angkor Wat, three beakers from Representation, and two culture from Sistine Chapel. Now that's an all-purpose specialist! 
I discovered Mass Media in 1808 and turned science OFF completely (the reason will become clear in a minute, if you haven't already guessed). At the Battle of Rome the same date, I had truly horrendous luck, losing 75%, 75%, 75%, and 85% battles in succession. What is this, Civ3?! Nevertheless I had WAY more force than I expected to be necessary to take the city, which, as it turned out, was just enough:
But my poor cavs that went to the glue factory back there... *sob* They were good lads and I'll miss them. 
John Dalton's birth a few turns later was, shall we say, poorly timed. 
Mr. Dalton, you could have picked a better place to turn up! 
With the fall of Antium, my cavs galloped into the southern deserts to finish off the final remnants of the Roman civilization. It was a rather pitiful sight:
Rome was clearly finished, the final mopping-up being the only remaining chore left to do. What was more important was the construction of the United Nations, which I finished due to the greasing of a few palms along the way:
This is what I will always think of as the "Speaker UN rush", after he played it to such good effect in Epic One for the fastest finish. A lot has changed since the 1.09 patch (not least the increased cost of rushing things with cash), but using Universal Suffrage here for the wonder was still almost 20 turns faster than building it by hand would have been. And remember how I built the Kremlin a bit earlier? There was a reason for it after all! (Yes, I did plan this well ahead of time. So sue me for trying to make it sound a little more dramatic. 
)
I could now increase the culture rate to 30% to deal with war weariness; I had been running at 0% in order to max gold for the UN rush even though my cities desperately needed some additional happiness. Aside from the fighting with Rome, another struggle was going on across the seas on an offshore island - a cultural war with Mansa Musa!
I sailed two settlers over here in a pair of galleons as soon as I got Astronomy, but Mansa beat me to the spots I wanted by a mere three turns (the fortify bonus on his rifle was only 15% when I first arrived). Tekkeda was foolishly placed in such a way as to rule out any other city ever getting the crabs in their 21-tile radius, which had been my goal all along. Well I wasn't about to take this sitting down! I founded Valencia in the closest permissable location, three tiles away, then had my workers chop two forests to produce a theatre. Rather than letting Valencia grow, I then chose instead to run an Artist specialist at size 1. That might not sound like much culture, but keep in mind that I had a theatre (3 culture) along with an Artist specialist (4 culture) and Sistine Chapel (2 more culture), while running Free Speech civic (+100% culture). That adds up to 18 culture/turn! In less than 10 turns, I was already putting pressure on Tekkeda's central tile, and with only one rifle for garrison, I was sure it would flip. That'll teach you to take the location I want! 
Oh yeah, and my cavs were entertaining themselves with the dregs of the Roman army too:
You know, I actually enjoyed trying to flip Mansa Musa's tiny island city more than finishing off Rome.
With the UN completed, I was simply waiting on the formality of being named UN Secretary-General so that the real diplomatic victory vote could take place. With my war weariness gone, I turned research back on at 80%, but my heart wasn't really in it. This game's over. It's O-VER. Look at that map! Come on, let's just wrap this thing up and go home.
And Lizzie actually votes for me! 
Un-frickin-believable. I was expecting her to abstain from the vote. Well, so long as I can get that vote in four more turns for the diplomatic victory, this game will be over. Saladin would surely vote for me, but of course he is the opponent and cannot do so. I fortify my workers and put things on cruise control for the last four turns. It's been a fun game, and it was nice to see an AI finally behave decently when it came to the UN...
What do you mean I'm two votes short?! 
Once again the AI failed to deliver in the clutch when it came to the UN voting. I tell you, the whole thing is thoroughly messed up from top to bottom. I don't know what my solution would be, but the thing as-is just does not work as intended. It's really a shame that there was no way for Saladin and me to win an Alliance victory of some sort, which would have been the most appropriate ending (and I'm not talking about Permanent Alliances, which are a whole other can of worms). The really silly thing is that if Mansa Musa has 110 people and Saladin has 94, I win this game going away instead of getting stymied. Does that make any sense?
I have 99.6% of the votes needed to win, but once again as in Epic One, have come up just short. So much for Plan A, winning the vote with help from the AI. Time then to initiate Plan B: beat the crap out of Mansa Musa! 
I only need two more votes - that is, two more population points - in order to vote myself the backdoor domination winner. Tadmekka was size 7, so that would more than do it. I wasn't too keen on invading Mansa's core, naturally, although it certainly would have been doable in time. Now that I knew I was never going to be getting Elizabeth's vote, I swapped back to Judaism and Theocracy (after a brief stint of trying to get her to like me due to Free Religion favorite civic) and signed up Saladin to a full alliance:
One of the most effective things that you can do in Civ4 (or in Civ3, for that matter) is bribe the AIs to fight one another, thus slowing them down and getting them to waste their accumulated units. Even better, by warring against one another the civs accumulate additional minuses in their relations, making it will be more likely that they'll go to war again later on without prompting. One of the reasons I think my games have been more peaceful of late is because I haven't been stirring things up enough with regards to AI/AI fighting. Yes, I think I will definitely try to bribe some more AIs into wars in the future, even when it's not really necessary to do so. I've seen a lot of people do that to good effect in other games. Saladin was even willing to give me a tech (albeit a cheaper one) in paying him to join the war, as seen above. If it hadn't been for the gift England gave me in the early game, I would have started a war with Lizzie here too!
Despite sitting on 0% Malinese culture for several turns, there had still been no revolts as yet in Tekedda (it's clearly WAY too hard to flip cities in this game). With an upgrade and a Pinch promotion, my former musketman was ready to do things the hard way:
One way or another, I was taking that city!
At Tadmekka in the south of former Rome, Mansa Musa had a rifle and a SAM Infantry on defense - hardly ideal cav conditions. In a perfect world, I would have had frigates or destroyers to bomb down the defenses, but no such luck. Of course, when you have 11 cavs and the defender only has 2 units, it doesn't really matter if the combat odds are unfavorable. Raw numbers sufficed to crush superior technology:
I even got a cav up to 28XP and level 6 at the end, something you don't see too often in Civ4 (probably will happen a lot more often in Warlords, not that that's a bad thing). F8 now pegged me at 63% of the overall population, so the election became a foregone conclusion. I once again selected the Diplomatic victory vote in 1838AD, then made sure to cast the winning ballot for myself. While waiting the one turn for the election results to come back, I snapped a couple of quick ending pictures. First Murcia, the city that plugged a gap:
I dot-mapped the Egyptian territory after finishing that war earlier, and realized that there were 10 unused tiles in the heart of some very fertile territory. That was more than worth founding a half-city, and so Murcia was born. Now a fully mature city quite a bit later, Murcia is cranking out a non-trivial amount of commerce and shields. More importantly, it has managed to grow up to size 12. I could not have won the election without this city, at least not on this particular turn. Hooray for efficient land use!
Saladin evidently felt obliged to uphold his end of the war declaration:
Yikes! We'll never know what would have happened when those guys landed, but I think Mansa Musa might have taken a pounding in one of his coastal cities. Something tells me I should have signed Friend Saladin up to an alliance sooner! (I would have done so against Rome, but didn't want him taking the cities.) Glad he was on my side here!
Go on to the next page for the conclusion and summary.
