In a drama-less conclusion, I voted myself the Diplomatic victor on the following turn in 1838:
This was highly reminicent of my Domination victory in Civ3's Epic One; although this may have technically been a Diplomatic victory, it was backdoor domination at its finest. You just can't get your allies to declare war on you in Civ4 the same way that they would in Civ3 when you asked them to leave your lands!
Yeah, that's what it looked like back in the day. Two wins for the Honorable French, both in which my civ was the overwhelmingly dominant force on the planet. Call one Domination, call the other Diplomatic, but it was basically the same thing. 
As far as this game went, Hsung-Nu would have fallen on this turn, and Alex's final city no more than 2 or 3 turns after that. He wouldn't have survived to see the next vote. In a non-variant game, I could have won a Domination victory by attacking Gandhi next, as his lands would have been just enough to get me over the top on that victory condition. Attacking Washington would have been much more difficult, but still quite doable. The AI couldn't possibly stand up to my production base by this point; Washington kept up in tech with me almost to the end, but at the cost of very low production. Once his first wave of units were wiped out, it would have been just a mop-up operation.
I would have thoroughly enjoyed smashing Gandhi if that had been possible. What a traitor. 
Before going any further, here are some pictures from the replay:
These are the starting positions for the game. Temujin, Monty, and I are all quite close in the west, Alex and Gandhi are squeezed together in the south, and Washington is by himself in the extreme east. I expect that he'll be in a strong position in most games, given all the room he had to expand. The only way I don't see that happening is if Monty goes ballistic on him and slows him down early, but that certainly didn't happen here. Also interesting to see how the religions fall differently in each game; in this one, Gandhi took all three of the early ones. I certainly expect that Monty or the player will get an early religion in most of the games! Obviously that would then affect diplomacy substantially.
Here's how the borders shaped up before the first major war that destroyed the Mongols. Temujin pushed out further to the east and the north than I had remembered, but apparently that managed to irritate the Aztecs and Indians and helped contribute to his early exit. Will Temujin expand more to the west in other games where the player doesn't crowd him out right from the very start? Interesting. I also saw that Alex managed to take a city away from Gandhi early on in the game, weakening the Indians. That means that India will likely be stronger in most games, which would actually be a GOOD thing as Washington would be less of a tech hegemon. Or maybe Greece will do even more damage to India in other games (?) There's bound to be conflict between those two due to the geography of their starting positions. And what about Washington? He never fought a war in this whole game, but it's entirely possible that he and Monty could get into it in some cases. Obviously that too would be to the player's benefit.
One thing that I hadn't been able to see when I was playing was just how much Monty really helped me in my war against Temujin. Monty actually took 3 Mongol cities in the course of that war! The Mongol lands actually ended up being split three ways between myself, Monty, and Gandhi. The following picture from right before the Aztec war should demonstrate that:
Gandhi thus got some land to the west that he wouldn't ordinarily have taken - but Alex bizarrely ended up with these two cities to the south of India as a result of his early aggression against Gandhi. I don't expect that to happen very much. From this point in time, the only civ that made any gains was my France, devouring the entire Aztec territory and then proceeding to gobble up the core Greek lands as the game was about to end. Here's the final picture:
Those American and Indian island colonies in the extreme north were blights on my map that I could never remove. Blah. I did clock in at under 20 hours though, which was a bit of surprise for me. I'm not the fastest player, you see. My final in-game score was 6020, Hall of Fame score was 38,658. I have no idea what that means, but the rank was Augustus Caesar, which I think is the best you can get in the final release version.
The final demographics:
I think that #1 in every category about sums it up. 
My advantage in population and production compared to the AI civs is just ghastly.
Now, as far as regarding the competition itself, I think this will probably be a good result, but given my unfamiliarity with the dates on Epic speed, I'm honestly not entirely sure. There were certainly opportunities to do better than I did, such as by building the Pyramids and getting early access to some of those civics, or by building the Great Library, or through an earlier conquest of some of the neighboring civs, etc. I should have won my Diplomatic victory in 1830; hopefully the 4 extra turns it took thanks to Gandhi won't prove to cost me a fastest finish win. Still, I think I played a pretty good game overall, and the finish date should be at least competitive. By now, I wouldn't be surprised at all if some members of the community managed to outplay me though.
Most of the victories are going to be Space ones, I expect. Diplomatic should also be fairly common though, especially if players were able to get some of the other civs to vote for them (as I was unable to do). In fact, there's a good chance that some players with much less territory and population managed to win by true diplomacy earlier than I did here by picking up some votes from other civs. (I wonder if we should have a separate category for Diplomatic where you vote yourself the winner, hmmm...) I'm sure at least one person went for Culture, which would have produced a very different gameplan, naturally. Domination would be possible, but very tough, since you'd need to get almost everyone to declare war on you at some point, and Washington and Gandhi don't have the AI personalities that lend themselves to that. Still, it's within the realm of possibility. Conquest is even less likely, but hey, I've seen our community pull off some amazing stuff before, so I wouldn't be too shocked to see it. Probably 3/4 of the victories will be space ones though.
I'm most interested in comparing the differences between the games, however. What will happen in the games where the settler wasn't moved on the first turn? Will running more expensive civics that provide benefits prove to be stronger than the choices I made? Will Washington turn into the research monster in other games that he did here? How will the extremely unpredictable Temujin and Monty act in each game? (WILD fluctuations possible in the results simply based on how the two of them act!) It should be a fun report day. I'll see you on Monday, December 19th. Special congratulations to any of our newcomers who stuck it out and player this one through to the end, regardless of results. It wasn't by any means an easy scenario!
