As expected, I won a "Diplomatic" Victory in 1840, casting all of the votes for myself:
I won by eight votes. The cities I captured from Mansa Musa had a population of exactly eight (size 7 and size 1). I could not have done it without them.
One again, a true backdoor domination with not a single vote from anyone else. I was hoping to beat my finishing date from Epic One (1838), but missed it by two years. Seeing as how that was on Epic speed, and on version 1.09 of Civ4, it probably wasn't all that comparable. Given the stagnation start in this game, I believe that 1840 was a pretty good finish date for the UN. I know there was no scoring for this game, but I would be very pleased if I ended up with the fastest Diplo win!
Here are the starting positions. Upon watching the replay, I finally was able to understand what had transpired in the turns leading up to 1AD. This map was unusual in that four of the starting locations were crammed into a relatively small part of the pangaea, with three more widely spaced out in the east. If this had been a "normal" start, it probably would have been very easy to run away with things, given Spain's central position. As it was, with Sirian's slow beginning, Saladin and Hatty expanded into territory that by all rights should have been the player's, becoming the dominant AI powers. Sirian DID get a second city out before any of the AI civs (settler before worker, it seems) but the following ones slowed down due to lack of tile improvements. Liz actually expanded SOUTH with her second settler, which gave Mansa Musa a little extra land and helped him stay competitive in this game. With those four civs in the west, someone was bound to get screwed, and it turned out to be Caesar in this game. He only got five core cities, and one of them flipped to Lizzie! Another city was uselessly squeezed by Arabian and English culture from each side, leaving him with only three effective cities. No wonder he ended up so far behind!
Saladin started with multiple stone resources, allowing him to land both Stonehenge AND the Pyramids by 700BC (he immediately adopted Representation, OUCH with all the specialists that the AIs like to run!) With his civ also being Philosophical, Sal then proceeded to clean up virtually all of the important early wonders, putting him way ahead of the other AI civs in power and score. He also built two early shrines (Judaism in 650BC, Confucian in 50BC) which no doubt helped a lot financially. Hatty did well by virtue of building the Great Lighthouse and simply having a lot of land to expand into (she also took two barb cities). All this happened prior to the player actually getting the start file, so it was quite interesting to see the world take shape.
Here's the world right when Sirian saved things and sent it off to everyone else. If you look in the west, the two eastern most Roman cities are the ones that Caesar would lose; the top one to Lizzie's culture, the bottom one never actually flipping but being squeezed badly. Liz herself was still small and weak at this point, no doubt remaining competitive only because of her Financial/Philosophical combo (actually, looking back at this time, Liz was the weakest AI if I remember correctly. Late in the game Liz was staying afloat by virtue of having Open Borders access to my trade routes. Mansa did not have OB with me, and it was obvious that was badly hurting his science.) A bit later on, Saladin would get a Great Engineer from the Pyramids and use that to rush the Great Library - while still running Representation as a Philosophical civ! Is it any wonder he was leading the pack in tech? 
Relatively little had changed by the 1000AD mark, beyond Caesar's ongoing implosion in the west. Saladin and Hatty both kept expanding while the other civs largely ran out of room to do so. I would declare war on Egypt shortly after this date and begin grinding Hatty into the ground through a series of conflicts. Up until that took place, there were no significant changes on the world map.
With Hatty destroyed, I now turned my eyes to Qin to complete my revenge:
And by 1840, it was all over via the UN, with Caesar disappearing from the map as well:
This game also had my most dominant GNP performance vis a vis the AI civs in some time:
We've come a long way from the stagnation start, haven't we? 
I expect to destroy the AI civs in production, food, and population, but that kind of GNP annihilation is pretty rare. What can I say, I guess it's been a while since I played on Prince. And although it wasn't surprising, it was nice to have seven times the population of the next closest civ. Yep, pretty much have to do that to win by the United Nations. That's another thing that should have been improved in Warlords but went unaddressed. (Can you tell I wasn't happy with the design decisions made for the expansion?)
This game was a lot of fun at the start, but unfortunately some of the more troubling aspects of Civ4 also reared their ugly heads in this game. The confusing alliance system, in which the AI civs can sometimes leap from one bloc to another - which the player utterly cannot do - significantly detracted from my enjoyment. Elizabeth should NOT go from having Saladin as her best friend and Mansa Musa her worst enemy, to Saladin being her worst enemy and Mansa Musa her best friend! Not without a declaration of war, or SOMETHING like that! It's absolutely impossible to plan a strategy for the future when the AI can do that kind of stuff. I was also unhappy to see zero wars not involving the player's civ yet again. I have not seen a genuine AI/AI war since my Cathy's Romp game, and that was in March! When 75+% of the war declarations involve the player in some way, things are not working as expected. Aren't these AIs ever going to fight? Are they going to sit back and tech their way into space peacefully in every single game? I'm tired of every sneak attack coming against the player! While I'm still enjoying Civ4, these kind of aspects of the game are growing a little stale. We'll see if the vassal states in Warlords will improve things, but I'm leery of that particular feature. Time will tell.
I'm looking forward to seeing how everyone deals with the stagnation start and finds a way out of it. For me, the starting situation wasn't all that tough to deal with. Maybe everyone else will similarly be out of the hole by roughly 1000AD - or maybe not. I guess we will find out just how well I understand the Civ4 economics compared to our other crack players. If someone can significantly out-play my start, I'll enjoy reading their report! 
On the bright side, in my last four games I have now won by diplomacy (Adventure Nine), culture (RB19 succession game), domination (Epic Five), and conquest (Epic Three). The one victory I have NOT won is space, which is usually by far the most common result! 
Variety is never a bad thing to have. Thanks for the scenario, Sirian - it was a good one.
