In the wake of the English defeat, I had eliminated what was probably my most powerful and persistent opponent. Now I could move further to the west into Roman domains, where Augustus had built a host of juicy wonders I hoped to capture. By now, the drill for taking cities had become familiar. While my city attackers took a couple of turns to heal up with the Medic III chariot, my siege units proceeded under guard to the next target, where they could bombard the defenses while waiting for the other units to catch up.
Cumae was another city with a castle inside, so you know what that meant:
By now, I had indeed put together a huge stack of siege units. Even so, it took more than three turns of firing with all guns to knock the defenses down to nil. (It was at this point that I thanked myself my putting the game on a Small map and not a Standard one!) Cumae was an important city to control because of the wonders it had inside. In a stroke of luck for me, Cumae had become the Islamic holy city and thus lacked Hinduism, allowing me to capture it intact. Here's what I found inside:
Four wonders AND the Islamic shrine! I love to see that. 
The Great Library wasn't going to do much, but Notre Dame's happiness and the health from the Hanging Gardens were nice boosts. Even though war weariness was largely under control, since I was fighting only one opponent at a time, every little bit of happy faces helped.
The next target was Rome itself, at the extreme northern coast of the donut. Rome contained another critical wonder that I wanted to control: it was the location of the Apostolic Palace. Yes, the wonder was actually built in its real-life counterpart! With Rome in my hands, I could actually stop razing AI cities with Hinduism and just capture them all (my preferred method when going for Conquest/Domination). It was surprisingly weak on defense, and fell in 1615AD:
In the picture, you see some cuirassiers getting in on the action for the first time. I used the pillage money from taking cities to fund upgrades from knights, and even occasionally used the unorthodox elephant -> cuirassier path. Whatever works!
One strange thing in Civ4 is that you occasionally see cultural borders remaining in places they shouldn't be after city captures. The three tiles I circled in purple are not in the cultural radius of any Roman cities, and should have reverted to neutral status. What I did to get around this was move a settler of mine in Cumae to the red dot, and found a city there. This brought those tiles in dispute under my control, allowing me to reinforce Rome by road. Hooray for combat settlers!
South of Rome, the next target was Neapolis, with another wonderful prize inside:
Pyramids, yay. As it turns out, I would never need to change civics to Police State, but it was nice to know that I could if I needed to.
While my melee and siege units pushed on to the west against Ravenna, I took my growing cuirassier force and sent it along the "outer" edge of the donut, up along the coast. Antium would be a testing ground, whether I could take out one of these cities with mounted units alone:
Antium was a particularly good location for this because it had castle walls. Against melee and siege units, that would have meant a 100% defensive bonus. But since cuirassiers are classified as gunpowder units with regards to city walls, they could ignore the castle and face only a 60% defensive bonus (still significant, obviously). I pulled my horsemen together and ended up with a total of 14 attackers. Versus only 5 defenders, the outcome was never in doubt. I lost some cuirassiers, but Antium was captured.
That left only a single Roman city. Even though I had to attack across a river, the outcome was a foregone conclusion:
And that was it for Augustus. 
Whether it was due to my own growing strength or a glut of Roman wonder-building, I found that they had been much weaker than the English. My cuirassiers were slicing through city defenders like a knife through butter, and they were only just getting started. As the slow-moving melee/siege units moved forward in the south, the cuirassiers were already charging into Korean territory in the north:
This was at Nampo, which only had four defenders. It fell very easily to my blitzing attack. Now notice the Korean research above: Rifling. It looks like I *JUST* managed to hit them before they could reach that tech. Whew! Cuirassiers would have been all but useless against rifle defenders.
My two-front push was now advancing rapidly everywhere. I captured both Pyongyang and Wonsan on the same turn:
Wang's true nature was thus revealed: he was a paper tiger. Extremely strong financially, but almost non-existent in production. As soon as I began pushing against his cities, he collapsed in a matter of turns, like France in 1940. The campaign began in 1660AD, and it was already nearing its end by 1685AD:
That was the capital, by the way. Leaving the siege units behind now for good, my cuirassiers pushed forward in the south towards Pusan. It was also weakly held, and fell on the next turn, eliminating Korea:
The whole campaign took a total of six turns. 
Unbelievable. Wang had been giving me so much grief the entire game, and as soon as I reached his actual territory, he just... died. I definitely hadn't been expecting that!
Now it was time to put this puppy to bed, and finish off the final opponent. Here was the map I drew up for the Khmer campaign:
Using money plundered from city captures and turning off research, I've upgraded all of my "defensive units" at Gergovia, who will now open up a new front on the south side of the Khmer. A half dozen war elephants turned into cuirassiers gave that group significant punch. Along with more attackers coming down from the north, I expected to steamroll Suryavarman. I would not be wrong.
This picture shows a cuirassier attacking an enemy pikeman, in a city behind full cultural defenses. I was trying to demonstrate here how I was perfectly willing to sacrifice units in exchange for territory; I think this individual battle had something like 10% odds to win. Always think about the larger strategic situation, not the individual one-on-one unit matchups!
Anyway, there's no point in mincing words and trying to make things sound more dramatic than they were. Suryavarman had been the most backwards AI in technology, and it showed. I captured four cities in three turns, leading to this point:
I have plenty of units in position to capture the final two cities on the following turn. My one fear, however, is that the two Khmer knights in the circled city will attack me at Yasodharapura (circled in gold), where I only have two injured cuirassiers for defense. Although unlikely, they could conceivably kill both defenders and retake the city, which would be bad. My response was therefore to surround the city with captured workers, sacrificing them to bait the AI knights. That may have been a little cheesy, but it definitely worked. Which meant...
...my cuirassiers shot up the Khmer defenders, while the rest of my overkill force looked on and cheered. It came down to one final battle:
Better than 99.9% odds? Yeah, I think I'll take those. 
Game, set, and match. 
And here's a shot of all my cuirassiers at the end of the game. If war elephants performed magnificently as my defensive MVP, then their upgraded horseman form was clearly the one that got it done on offense. Even as a poor man's cavalry unit, once I built cuirassiers in large enough numbers, the AI simply could not respond. The higher strength doesn't seem that significant, but their ability to ignore castles and only deal with cultural defenses proved to be a major difference. Picture knights (strength 10) against longbows behind castles (strength 6 + 100% = 12), versus cuirassiers (strength 12) against longbows with cultural defenses (strength 6 + 60% = 9.6). Although obviously that's an extremely simplified comparison, I think it illustrates the difference between the two well.
Go to the next page for some replay shots and final thoughts. 
