I have a confession to make.
I've played enough of this game to have a good feel for the AI personalities. Knowing these civs as I do, I was wholly convinced that at some point Temujin and Monty would do exactly what happened here, go crazy with demands and declare war. In fact, that's been my plan all along: wait for them to declare war, then attack and annex their lands. I was even deliberately running lower defenses than I ordinarily would just to make my civ look like a tempting target for Monty. In other words, this was not unexpected. This was entirely part of my plan; my civ is economically ready to suppot the aquisition of more cities. Now all that remains is for me to pull off the execution of the plan through the course of what was sure to be a long and grueling war.
Monty's first move in 1535AD is to send a galley out after my island colonies:
I have my own galley in the area, however, ready to ship out a second longbow to whatever city is threatened, and therefore I was not overly worried by this action. The fact that Monty was still sending horse archers - the same units he used to take down Temujin - said volumes about his relative technological backwardness.
Turfan and Karakorum were the focal points of Aztec aggression, so my initial action in this war was simply defending against incoming Aztec horse archers outside those locations. With pikes on hand, those units simply were not much of a threat:
Here you see a pike carving up a horse archer in one such battle, taking him out before the horse can pillage the copper outside Turfan. Monty had a lot of units, but they were definitely outdated and relatively easy to take out. I noted in 1545AD that I had already killed off the second Aztec stack, still with no losses yet. Angkor Wat completed in Lyons the same turn; not that I had much of a Priest economy, but it was better than not having it.
Luck swung around against me in 1555AD as a Combat II/Formation horse archer lost to an Aztec horse archer, then one of my spears (not enough money to upgrade!) died to a horse archer too. As a result, the wheat tile outside Paris was temporarily pillaged. Blah. I took out the offending horse the following turn, but it was a symbolic insult.
Its pillaging notwithstanding, Paris was working on the Taj Mahal to trigger me a golden age. Before starting work on it, I had also managed to trade for marble with Washington by sending him stone and horses; this is somewhat of a loophole in the AI, in that you can trade for a wonder resource and then start building a wonder immediately afterwards so it won't be redded out, but I was taking advantage of it here. With marble and being an Industrious civ, there was an excellent chance I would get the wonder.
Then Paris generated a Great Merchant in 1590AD:
Along with the Great Artist that Lyons generated in 1460AD, that gives me 2 Great People. Enough for a golden age! With that boost to production, I will surely get Taj Mahal, giving me TWENTY straight turns of golden age production and commerce. Yeah, that sounds like a good deal to me. I use the Great People and trigger my golden age. Washington, your days of tech leadership are numbered. 
The effects of the golden age were immediately obvious, boosting my income drastically and ratcheting up the production in every city. It was probably my slow-developing fishing cities that saw the most benefit from it, truthfully, as their production was almost doubled throughout the course of the golden age. And the extra shields certainly didn't hurt as I continued to build up my army to fight the war either!
Gandhi came offering to trade me Gunpowder for Constitution in 1600AD, another total ripoff deal. But... since I'm still climbing out of my tech hole, and Gunpowder gets me access to my unique unit Musketeers, I go ahead and agree to it anyway. Then Monty comes begging for peace in 1610AD. Translation: he's gassed and wants to agree to peace (you've got to hand it to this AI!) Nope. Sorry. You have chosen unwisely, remember? This is going to be one long war, and it's just getting started.
I finish the Taj Mahal in 1620AD:
Thanks for the marble, Washington! 
There are few things better in this game than seeing that you have 15 turns of golden age production left. I just had to arrow that because it's such a rarity. Gandhi narrowly beat me to Versailles on the same turn (I needed 4 more turns to finish it in Kushans), but the missed wonder did put about 1000 gold into my treasury, which allowed me to upgrade about half a dozen troops, so it worked out decently anyway.
Monty's losses by 1625AD had been apalling; I had killed about two dozen of his units and lost less than five of mine. If the AI didn't get those enormous reductions on war weariness... well, obviously they wouldn't be able to compete, but it still seems unfair sometimes. Now that I had the makings of an army at hand, I could begin a cautious offensive for the first time and start pushing into Aztec territory. The only danger at the moment was that Monty must have finally reached Guilds and started sending knights at me. This put renewed incentive on pushing forward to try and cut off his iron (I could see both sources, and they were reachable).
1640AD: France's population hits 20 million. AI average is 5.8 million.
By 1645AD I was outside the city of Xochicalco:
Notice how my caravel is blocking the way out so his galley can't emerge, heh. That picture has had some cutting and pasting so that you can see the forces assembled on both sides. The following turn in 1650AD saw the Battle of Xochicalco take place: City Raider III mace kills longbow. City Raider I mace dies to a longbow. Combat II mace gets LUCKY and kills a knight (odds were not in favor of that one). Cover mace gets UNLUCKY and dies to an injured longbow (there it goes, balancing out). Mace kills horse archer. Cat attacks, deals ZERO damage to pike and dies (come on!) Pike kills that same pike. Cat kills crippled longbow and takes city!
The first Aztec city had fallen, which I hoped would be the first of many. However, first things first: if you look at the tech I was researching above, you can see that I had reached Democracy on the tech tree. That's where I wanted to go, as it opened up both the Statue of Liberty and Emancipation civic. By rule I had to go to Emancipation, but heck, I wanted to be in that civic! No upkeep cost, and double-speed growth for cottages? That's just what I need to help develop my jungle cities in the interior! And while I was swapping civics, I might as well go to Representation too, which I had just picked up with the discovery of Constitution.
The only downside? Two turns of anarchy?! Argh!
Therefore I lost not one, but TWO turns of Golden Age production and commerce from being in anarchy. 
That was not cool, but by rule I had to swap to Emancipation, and if I was going to revolt, there was no sense in not going to Representation too, especially with Paris now going to work on the Statue of Liberty as well. I was Industrious, had copper, and was in a golden age - yeah, I should probably be able to land that wonder. At this point I now have 4 of my 5 desired civics, lacking only the one I want in the Economy column. Can you guess which one that might be? It's probably not the one that you expect!
Back to the war report. After finishing research on Democracy, I grabbed Replaceable Parts and headed for Rifling. Those Aztec longbows hold up decently against maces and other medieval units, but let's see how well they do against rifles! While my main attack force was healing up in Xochicalco, a small detachment headed north and took out the lightly defended city of Tlacopan in order to prevent any more naval attacks on my island colonies:
Interestingly, there was a Greek caravel in that city when I captured it; I wondered if it would be destroyed as well, but it survived the city capture untouched. Heh.
My golden age finally ran out in 1668AD, but I had made enormous progress in that span technologically; Washington was now only a tech or two ahead, and I was about to get access to rifles to power my armies to further conquests. I snapped a shot of the Aztec front on the following turn in 1670AD, to show the situation that my units were facing:
Notice how my culture completely dominates the border between our civs; again, Creative is by no means a throwaway trait! I have stacks closing in on Beshbalik and Atzca... yeah, let's just call the city Atzca, shall we? You can also see a musketeer highlighted in that picture; I didn't get a whole lot of use from musketeers in this game, to be honest, because I reached Rifling so soon after Gunpowder, but a couple of those guys did give me good service before I upgraded them into rifles. For example, a musketeer was the unit that took out the last defender in Atzca:
Well that was easy; Atzca had only recently been founded by the Aztecs and didn't have any cultural defenses to speak of. Monty's in trouble now - and the most disturbing thing is that I can research Chemistry in just 4 turns, when I'm NOT in a golden age! I spent a turn or two using my treasury to upgrade lots and lots of units to rifles. Lots of them. That leads to this picture outside Beshbalik:
All of those units are upgraded maces, pikes, or even swords (like the Combat IV rifle). Just look at the combat bars and you'll see how much trouble the defenders at Beshbalik are actually in! I didn't even bother to take a picture of this city when it fell in 1676AD with no losses; I think that picture above says it all with the 5 rifles outside the city. And let's face it - nothing can stand up to a City Raider III rifle at this point in time in the game!
I discover Chemistry in 1680AD and trade it to Gandhi for Economics (that was a 2000-cost tech for a 1000-cost one!), begin researching The Corporation. My score hits 3000 this turn, for what that's worth. Meanwhile, Monty is trying something sneaky in the north:
Great, I take Tlacopan so that Monty can't make naval landings on my island colonies, and so instead he starts making naval landings on that little lake! I turn down research a little bit further and upgrade the defenders inside Tlacopan, so this attack comes to nothing. But I was glad that I had left two units instead of one in Tlacopan "just to be safe."
Aztec knight charges out and kills a rifle in 1686AD - uh, ok, that shouldn't be happening. Then Monty hits my attacking stacks outside Teotihuacan in 1690AD with two cats, and they both succeed on their retreat rolls. Uh, the odds of that are 1 in 16, ok... Not getting some luck here. Still, once my cats brought down the defenses of the city, it was no contest. City Raider III rifle kills longbow. Combat IV rifle kills longbow. Combat II rifle kills longbow. Rifle kills pike, rifle kills cat - city is mine.
Size 16 city? No way I could possibly keep that from starving with all the war unhappiness factored in, but that's just par for the course. I did the best I could and didn't sweat it. Hey, it's not my fault that Monty irrigated like 10 floodplains around that city!
Then between turns an Aztec musket attacks and kills an undamaged rifle in Teotihuacan, recapturing the city - and all of the city defenses are instantly back, thanks to that bug. Argh. Then a Combat II rifle attacks and dies to a mace in the open field. Where is my luck? I was on a Civ3-like run of bad luck here. Never seen anything like this before in Civ4, with a long stretch of bad combat results. I guess I'll just chalk it up to coincidence, though it certainly was a pain at that time. And, to add insult to injury, the Aztec capturing of Teotihuacan had spiked up war weariness. Argh.
First things first: I recapture Teotihuacan without further losses. (No picture - I wasn't in the best of moods when this happened.) Then I trade for American ivory to offset war weariness, at least for the moment. Finish researching Steam Power the next turn (1696AD) and start on Assembly Line - if these rifles won't do the job, let's upgrade to infantry and see how Monty likes that! I will say that his units, though outdated, were all highly promoted; he was running Vassalage and was already Aggressive, so there were lots of Combat III units running around. That didn't make things easier, to say the least.
There was no coal anywhere near the starting position, except for one source in the islands to the north. Interesting. Those who failed to grab those spots will have to do some scrambling here if they want to get access to rails!
By the following turn in 1698AD, my forces were outside Tlaxcala and had bombed down its defenses. Rifles kill two longbows, then a pike to take the city!
Now to be fair, I did win all three battles here when I was only a marginal favorite in each one, so I guess it does balance out. Civ4 just so rarely throws out odd combat results that I was truly puzzled by what I saw earlier. Only time I've ever seen results that I'd call "strange", so I guess that's a good thing.
I'm convinced that Monty's not a smart guy. But he is one damned persistent fellow:
Yet another invasion by galley, heading after Tlacopan. You have to admit, this Civ4 AI does do its best to act unpredictably. With two rifles in Tlacopan, however, I wasn't exactly "worried" by this latest development. The combination of sheer persistence and outright stupidity is part of what makes Monty such a dangerous opponent. He just doesn't know when to say that enough is enough! (I played one game in testing where he sneak-attacked me five different times over the course of the game. And I beat him soundly every time. But that's our Monty! )
That brought me to 1700AD, which was a nice round date and a good time to take a large shot of the war's progress:
Clearly I've gained quite a bit of ground on the Aztecs. However, the one problem I had at this point is that the front I had to defend was simply enormous; Monty kept striking out with units wherever I was lightly defended, doing some pillage damage mostly but also tying down some forces that otherwise could have been attacking. Fortunately, as I pushed forward further, the length of the front would finally begin to shrink and I would be able to concentrate my forces more tightly. Also note that even though I've been at war since 1530AD, I'm still getting by with only 10% luxuries and researching at a good clip. For all that I'm ripping Monty a new one, there's still the tech race with Washington in the back of my mind to consider!
With that in mind, here are the demographics from 1700AD:
I'm first or second in every category except approval rate (happiness), which as you might imagine has dipped down due to the rampant war weariness across France. I still have a commanding lead in population and manufacturing, although interesting to note is that I'm only second in soldiers even with my armies on the march (Washington must be #1 there). But the real shocker is in the GDP (commerce) category: I have almost DOUBLE the commerce of the AI average and I'm STILL not #1 in that category! That's just insane. 
The graph on the left tells the same story. I'm making progress, but Washington is just SUCH a monster, I still haven't caught him yet.
In other words, this game is still far from won. I'm confident I can out-build him in a space race, but it's still not a foregone conclusion!
