We're getting close to the end here. Now I could win by Domination or outright Conquest pretty quickly, but I'm going to have to stop and wait at least until I finish the tech tree before winning the game so that I can score some points from late-game stuff. Obviously, researching 5 Future Techs was going to mandate sitting around at the end of the game for a little while. I hoped that this wouldn't turn into an outright Game of the Month endgame milkfest, but it seemed possible that I would conquer the world faster than I could conquer the tech tree. Not something I really intended when I started on the path to world domination - but it very well could happen. We'll see.
After securing Eiffel in Delhi (I already had Broadway), I noted that the AI civs were running around with destroyers. What? I thought I had made sure that Cyrus didn't have any oil! Cathy did have some oil, but she was much weaker than Cyurs. What gives?
Cathy is sending oil to Cyrus for WINES?! Argh! 
Does anyone wish the AI civs wouldn't share resources like this? *Sigh* I shouldn't complain though; the AIs need some advantages like this to prop them up, since they are very weak at amassing resources in this game. Plus, the problem was a million times worse in Civ3 (where they would gift each other all eight luxuries for absolute pennies). Also note that the two have a Defensive Pact going, so if I'm going to fight one of them, I'm going to have to fight 'em both. This could get interesting!
The conquest of Rome gave me control of the final gold source in the world, so here's my proof that I had all six of them hooked up:
1845AD, certainly not all that fast. The golds were pretty scattered around the world, but I'll be very surprised if someone else doesn't get to them all before I did. I wasn't really pushing for that goal too hard, since it was only three points and I thought for sure someone else would be able to beat me to it. I guess it's possible that I had the fastest time... if a lot of people went the peaceful route. Hey, I can dream, can't I?
Also notice that the city of Rome is listed as 100% Indian. That's an interesting side effect of taking out another civ, in that their people magically get converted into your own for purposes of war weariness - and drafting. Ordinarily you need to have at least 10% of your nationality to draft (and yes, I actually did run up against that limit in this game), but with Caesar eliminated I can now draft his cities to my heart's content. This is somewhat of a loophole that probably shouldn't exist, but you may as well make use of it. I certainly did in this game.
I load up my transports with one last batch of conscripts, rebase my planes to their staging areas, and declare war:
I declared on Cathy, but of course that brought Cyrus into the war as well. Technically he declared war on me, due to the defensive pact, but I don't think that had any real effect on the war weariness (unlike Civ3, where it mattered a great deal who formally declared war on whom).
Once again, I had multiple armies moving around on the seas at once - a main force for the AI cores, and some small fleets of conscripts for the outlying colonies. I could rebase my bombers as needed, making it easy to attack when and where I wanted. Cyrus did have a couple of destroyers sailing around, making the first couple of turns of the war entertaining. I used my planes to damage his navy, then moved in for the kill with my own ships. This was as close to the Sirian Doctrine as I got in this game; my own naval task force stayed together, whereas Cyrus ran his ships individually all over the map, making it easy to pick them off one at a time. I lost some nets, but suffered no actual damage at all. Cathy had two destroyers, I think, and they were both sunk on the first turn of the war. I took out her oil on turn 2, and that was it as far as her ships were concerned. Until the AI learns how to construct a proper naval task force, it's always going to be pretty easy to take them down in a struggle for naval dominance. And once I killed off the AI navies in the first 5 or so turns of the war, I was free to attack on ground of my choosing, plucking one colony after another across the length and breadth of the world.
I also got the last silver hooked up a couple turns into the war:
1849AD on the silvers. That's also readily beatable, although several of the silvers were way out there in the ice at the top and bottom of the map. I would have had them all sooner, but Caesar had a silver in his territory, and I had to wait for that one. Rangoon collects two silvers all by itself - the wealthiest ice city you'll ever see! (Off-topic: Rangoon is of course the capital of Burma and not part of India at all, but Burma WAS part of British India until 1937 when it became a separate colony in its own right. I only mention this because I am a historian of the British Empire, and this is my area of specialty. 
)
OK, back to the war. Here are my soldiers capturing the eighth and final gems source in the world:
That one wasn't there at the start of the game, but Cathy popped it sometime in the middle of the Renaissance era. Since I ended up with two more gems than usual in this game, I was indeed one lucky bastid here.
Cathy's capital was close by...
...so we popped into the neighborhood and said hello. Heh. And by 1855, the war with Cathy was all over, with her being reduced to a single island city:
That didn't take long, did it? I easily could have killed Cathy, but she had been my Jewish ally throughout the game, and I didn't have the heart to do it. I was also hoping that there would be an outside chance of her getting together enough income for me to send her gems, but it never happened. She couldn't even manage 1 gold per turn. Ah well.
The fighting with Cyrus dragged on a little bit longer. I was planning on stopping the war as soon as he talked to me, because I already had enough land and didn't want to claim any more for fear of triggering Domination, but he stubbornly refused to talk to me. I guess it's because I left his core alone and ripped his colonies apart; maybe he somehow felt that I wasn't doing enough damage to him (?) Anyway, after razing almost a half-dozen Persian cities, Cyrus did finally consent to peace in 1864. Here's his remaining domains:
He also had one more tundra city at the north of the map that I just didn't have forces in place to go after. Oh well. The Persian Empire was certainly finished.
Now that the game is well and truly over, I simply have to achieve the remaining scoring goals, take my Domination victory, and get on with things. Yeah, but unfortunately I still need to build a lot of nukes (10), research some Future Techs (5), and get my applicable cities up to size 25. This could take a little while... *sigh* 
I tripped a golden age once I finished research on Rocketry to help my civ tech faster and hopefully speed along some of those ICBMs. (Man, are those things expensive to build on Epic!) After rushing some needed infrastructure with Universal Suffrage in my size 25-to-be cities, I set most every city to Research and started clicking "Next Turn." I did get this fun message though:
100 million people! (100,000,000) Never had that many before in Civ4. Fun stuff. 
Delhi slips in SDI while I'm at it:
Everyone should get that one too, of course, unless they were going for very early Diplomatic or a Cultural win. At least we're getting into the Future Techs now.
I really hate this mop-up tedium, but I want to achieve the scoring goals. Argh, I hate feeling like a GOTM cow milker. How well and truly was this game over? Take a look at the victory conditions stats from 1900AD:
I have 94% of the world's population. I think the other guys are ready to throw in the towel.
Ultimately, it wasn't the five Future Techs that slowed me down here (though I did have to wait until after 1900AD for the last one to come in). It was the cities, the size 25+ cities. Now I had stopped whipping/drafting them around 1800 in order to let them grow towards that number, but the math threw me off at the end. All of these cities could get to at least a +10 food surplus, so they were growing like weeds for most of the game. Growth every 3-4 turns, even here on Epic speed. And I expected that to continue up to size 25, without really thinking about the math involved. Well, after the cities hit size 21, they stop grabbing additional tiles to work and begin growing at a slower rate: +8 food at size 21, +6 at 22, +4 at 23, and only +2 food at size 24 (they don't grow at all at size 25). What this means in practical terms is that the growth rate drastically slows down as the cities approach size 25, almost as though they were moving towards a limit (to use a mathematical term - and of course, they are approaching a limit of sorts). It only took 5 turns for my cities to go from size 20 to size 21, but it took them 13 turns to go from size 23 to size 24, and 26 turns (!) to go from size 24 to size 25!
I was not expecting my cities to take 40 turns to go from size 23 to size 25! 
I miscalculated on this one - badly. And I was left with two choices, neither one particuarly pleasant. I could end the game right now and FOREGO the scenario points for large cities - but that had been the entire point of my game, and I worked very hard to get those locations. I really didn't want to do that. But the only other option was to sit around for simply AGES with the game won, waiting for my cities to grow in size. A total milk-job, in other words. What did I choose?
Milk-fest. 
I wanted to win the competition, but it sure made me feel dirty. The sponsors will have to judge whether to throw this game into the shadow category; even though I didn't violate any rules, I sure felt like I broke the spirit of the game. It's unfortunate that the scenario scoring goals seemed to strongly promote delaying victory to chase after stuff like Future Techs.
Anyway, I had Domination any time I wanted it. Just look at all these settlers sitting around waiting to found cities and push me over the limit:
When I built these guys, I was only at 55% of the land area, and so I built a lot of settlers to ensure I would go over the line when I had them all found cities. With later cultural border expansions though, I was pushed up to 60% land, so some of these guys ended up being superfluous. Whoops. Better safe than sorry though. By the way, that's also my proof for having 10 ICBMs, in case you hadn't already guessed.
Chittagong hits size 25 in 1944AD, and I am finally ready to win:
There they are, all eight of them, and all founded before 1500AD. I'm still kicking myself over missing Dacca though, as I should have had a ninth city in this category. I'm sure that karma will come around and bite me in the ass on this one, causing me to lose this game by less than eight points. For the resources, let's look inside one of my cities:
Kolhapur is one of those size 25 cities; notice I have had to windmill a gold tile in order to get it there. This actually costs me 3 points (because I don't have the sixth gold resource hooked up), but since it scores me 8 additional points, it's a worthwhile exchange. I do have all six silvers connected, and am more than past the scoring limit on Future Techs (anyone want Future Tech 9?) As for the gems, there are seven controlled by my civ...
...and one going to Cyrus. Yes, I actually did get 5 points for having one "customer" of gems at game's end, believe it or not. Cathy was too poor to buy them, however. Overall, I had a total of eight gems for that scoring category.
Now as far as counting islands, I decided the best thing to do was to stick a signpost on each one in order to avoid repeat counts. Given all the land I had at the end of the game, that was a bit messy:
OK, more than a bit messy. 
However, it did get me the count I needed: 82 islands total under my complete cultural control. It would have been possible to get almost 100, I think, if a player had settled only the one- and two-tile islands. I wasn't prepared to go quite that far into micromanagement, however. Clearly, this was the biggest scoring element possible in the competition. It's entirely possible for someone to have a higher score than me here, but I don't think it could be all that much better without hitting the Domination limit. Naturally, I will destroy anyone who stayed peaceful in this game, even with them scoring the 10 points for never attacking anyone. I got that back just from captured gems alone!
Score tally on the next page.
