So many turns spent developing my civ, so many turns spent just playing defense... Ah, but now for the fun part. 
You see, I have cavalry. And they do not. Cavs aren't quite as dominant in this game as they were in Civ3, but when you're running around with strength 15 units, and the other guy doesn't have any unit beyond strength 6 swords... it gets a bit one sided. Just a bit.
Let me put it this way: it's no longer a question of "if" I'll conquer the world, but "when." Can I finish before the 1502AD date? We'll see.
My troops celebrated the arrival of cavs by sending Toku packing:
This particular conquest was done with knights and maces, but the first cavs were already rolling off the assembly lines, and (helped along by a golden age at 0% science) more and more knights were getting outfitted with rifles all the time. Kind of strange to take a civ's capital LAST, but all of Toku's cities ended up going to the east of his start. Even better, I cut off his supply of ivory. Spain had another source up in Izzy's territory, but I saw only a handful of elephants throughout the game. That was a relief. (If the AIs had been trading techs, I expect that things would have been much different. Toku never made it to Construction.)
South of Tokyo, a small contingent of knights were razing junk cities in the tundra, such as Argos (1352) and Santiago (1358). Berlin finished yet another wonder, this time the Sistine Chapel (for free border expansions with Mercantilism civic), and after I popped yet ANOTHER Great Engineer, I then rushed West Point in the city as well. With so many Great Engineers in this game, I felt like I was imitating Sirian's Epic One report, heh. (Another advantage of early Metal Casting from Oracle: running lots of engineer specialists leads to lots of Great Engineers!)
On the same turn that my last remaining un-upgraded knights took Delphi in the extreme south, my first strike force of cavs crushed the Arabian city of Medina:
As the printout above shows, it was cavs versus archers. Umm... I think this smiley probably represents that best. 
With my golden age now over, I pulled the trigger on the triple revolt mentioned earlier to Police State/Vassalage/Mercantilism. Let's see how well the AIs stand up to +25% unit production and a free (engineer) specialist in every city!
Izzy presented a semi-credible stack in 1388 but my maces ruthlessly cut it down. Even now with the age of cavalry in full swing, my maces continued to remain useful in cleaning up the feeble AI counters, or garrisoning cities that I had chosen to capture. I could even send the maces out into unexplored regions as scouts, sticking to the defensive terrain where the AI wouldn't attack (let's face it, a mace on a forested hill is pretty much invincible against ancient age units). As I pushed further and further westward, the maces continued to roll along with the rest of the front. The half dozen longbows I pumped out of Frankfurt similarly were a godsend, as I took Medic promotions with almost all of them in order to keep the cav armies rolling. The cavs may have been the main focus of the offensive, but the other units continued to provide logistical support.
Damascus featured Combat II spearmen on a hill behind cultural defenses, but they still couldn't get better than 3.7% odds:
That's an upgraded Combat IV knight. In other words, I won't be getting to Combat V anytime soon (which will require another 16 experience) but we're talking about a base 21 strength unit. Fighting mostly archers. Yikes. 
While my maces continued to hold the center of the map (where the AIs continued to dribble in reinforcements), my cavs galloped around the edges burning everything in sight. The useless ice city of Philadelphia went toasty in 1394. 
Striking north from there, my cavs plunged a dagger into the soft underbelly of Greece with the capture of Sparta a few turns later:
Up on the northern front, Mecca survived with one defender left on this turn despite a major assault. D'oh! 
Of course, that just meant that it fell a turn later:
One more Arabian city to go on their starting peninsula, then it's off to do some island hopping exercises further west (yes, I have galleys ready and waiting to go).
Eleven turns after discovering Military Tradition, and ten turns after producing my first cavs, I paused to take a look at the progress made so far:
I've mapped out the routes taken by my forces thus far, striking in two major columns through the north and south. The circles represent the locations of razed cities (although I actually missed one, in the desert east of Osaka where a Japanese city used to stand). The southern group has covered more ground, but the cities down there were mostly useless tundra junk, poorly defended by the AIs. Most of my forces have actually been heading up to the north, where Arabia is now almost finished. Even as a small group of cavs take to the sea up north, I'll be opening up a third front in the west against Russia imminently. The number of fronts I can operate at once is only limited to the number of cavs I have on hand, and that number continues to climb since very few cavs are actually dying.
Now the paths above might look like drunken stumblings, but in actuality they follow the most efficient route through the maze of terrain, cultural borders, and available roads. I definitely remember the same thing being the case back in Civ3, although you could do even more crazy stuff by using combat settlers to remap the cultural borders. Those were the days. 
I made a note the next turn (1424) that my last chariot had been upgraded to a cav; that meant I could now turn science back on again, if only for the heck of it. With the upgrades done, I now had 25 cavs... More cities continued to fall, such as Yaroslavl (1424) and Kufah (1436). This city, however, was more notable:
The Iron Cross is hoisted over another AI capital. 
Baghdad was so weakly defended that there was no need to bring the horses off the ships:
Note the invisible unit attacking. This only seems to happen on amphibious assaults, but it always amuses me when I see it - or DON'T see it, that is!
You know... I wonder here whether anyone is going to be gunning for Conquest, and get caught up by these little islands. If you didn't scout out the map like I did, and had no idea that they were there... yes, I can definitely see that happening. I also think a number of people will end up going for Domination just because they won't have the forces in place to invade these little islands. I killed dozens of AI galleys, using my caravels in tandem (two caravels promoted up the Combat line, along with a Medic caravel, make a great team of three) so you're going to have to make a real naval effort, not just something half-assed. If someone is on the verge of bankruptcy, razing everything to the ground and trying for Conquest, it will be interesting to see how they handle any AI cities on these little islands! 
Back on the mainland, Thermo was in trouble:
Naturally it fell this turn. I made sure to attack with cavs that were right next to the city whenever possible, for maximum efficiency in warring. This is actually another advantage two-move units have over one-move ones in terms of speed; not only can they attack a target two tiles away, but if you attack a city that's only one tile away, the unit can attack and then occupy the city with its second move. A unit with only one move has to wait until the next turn to do that, so two-move units like cavs actually get a jump on healing after the battle is over too, if you use them right. Just something else to think about if you're wondering why attacking with cavs (or late-game tanks/armor) always proceeds so quickly.
Cities continued falling at an alarming rate, too many to snap pictures of them all. I'll just mention here that I continued to tear into the Greek (Corinth) and Russian (St. Petersburg) cores in 1448. Things were really starting to snowball now as more and more cavs advanced to the front. Just nine more turns until we hit 1502AD, and a lot of cities still out there, but I'm holding out hope that I can get the conquest done by that date.
1454AD was a unique turn. It was "the turn of war weariness"!
I say "the turn" because it was the only turn in the entire game that I had any unhappy citizens as a result of war weariness. Remember, my game was planned to minimize the accumulation of war weariness, and by adopting Police State civic once my cav upgrades were complete, even that was cut in half (for example, there would be 12 unhappiness from WW and 7 unhappy citizens without Police State here). I would be incredibly surprised if this was the case in all games. I'm expecting those who have not played Always War games before to run into significant problems here, which may be compounded by the lack of happiness resources near the start. We'll see what happens, but I do not expect my results in this area to be typical.
So why was it the "turn" of war weariness instead of the "turns" of WW? Well, the only way to remove the silly thing in an Always War context is to eliminate a civilization, and I was prepared to do just that against Arabia's last island city:
Rats! Sal still has another worthless city down in the southern tundra. 
...good thing I have units on the other side of the world to finish the job!
So that was the only turn in the entire game that I experienced any unhappiness as a result of war weariness, and the only turn I used the culture slider at all. If anything, I didn't WANT to use the culture slider, because I didn't want expanding borders to cost me a Conquest victory at the expense of Domination! Mercantilism + Sistine already had me on the clock, but I knew I could finish before that put me over the top. Anyway, Boston and Toledo fall in 1460; two cities per turn was now pretty average.
In the midst of this grueling war, there was a heroic tale to relate as well. A mace that I was using to scout moved on a hill next to the Russian city of Novgorod, and came under attack between turns. I don't know whether it was dumb luck or an incredible surge of Teutonic fighting spirit, but when the dust cleared my mace was still alive after killing SEVEN Russian attackers!
Someone treat him to a beer! 
I promptly renamed the unit to Supermace, although "ubermace" might have been more appropriate considering our civ here. Anyway, the truly remarkable thing was that for whatever reason, Peter went after my mace with all three of the archers in Novgorod. That left a single chariot with 0.4 health on defense, so Supermace promoted to Combat III and captured the city for me!
This was really good news, because it would have taken two turns for my cavs to get this city. And with only six more turns to go before my self-imposed 1502AD deadline, anything that increased the speed of my conquest was welcome indeed. Not sure what weed Peter was smoking when he left only the one hurt chariot on defense though. 
The last Greek city fell up in the north:
That marked the third island city that my little task force of two galleys, four cavs, and four caravels had managed to take out. (The caravels were routinely sinking AI galleys with settlers on them that tried to sneak past to the east.) I allowed them a turn to heal, but after that it was time to set sail again in the hope of causing further damage.
And Moscow went down too on the same turn. It was pretty weakly defended for a AI capital, and rather unremarkable overall.
Washington, on the other hand, was much more heavily guarded:
I assembled a LOT of cavs in the area, but they couldn't kill the defenders fast enough. I did thin them out a bit - as you can see in the "before and after" shots above. Well, needless to say, my cavs may have been stopped by a wall of dead defenders the first turn, but once they were cleared out, the American capital was going down:
Another civ down, woot! The Americans were quite pathetic in this game and never amounted to much. When you overload the map with an extra civ, as Sirian did here, someone usually draws the short straw and gets screwed. Roosevelt might have been able to contribute on the AI tech front, except that tech trading was turned off for this game. Without the ability to kick in research for the other civs, he was just a sitting duck.
As far as Peter was concerned, Rostov fell in 1478, Yakutsk was razed in 1484 with some help from amphibious cav attacks, and that left just one city:
Another one bites the dust! Yes sir, they're dropping like flies now. 
With the fall of Barcelona on the same turn, I was down to just three remaining cities, all of them Spanish. While my troops moved into position to take them out, let me show you one of my best units from the game:
The only unit I managed to get to Combat V in the entire game is... a caravel! 
(I did have a couple of Combat IV/Melee maces though.) Upon reaching this distinct honor by sinking the final AI galley of the game, I gave the caravel a name befitting his status. This may only be a caravel, but versus galleys it's a veritable leviathan. I would have loved to upgrade this guy to a frigate or destroyer, but it was not to be. Maybe another game. Best naval unit I've ever had though!
Anyway, my soldiers were in place at the end of 1496 to capture all remaining cities on the next turn:
This was just a fun picture to take, showing all of my cavs coming together at the end of a long campaign. I especially like that you can't even read "Madrid" because there are too many cavs in the way of the name. Every unit with more than 50% of its hit points was sent forward, because this will be the final battle. (By the way, in case you haven't already guessed, the attack on Cordoba is coming from the sea.) Even though there are some tiles still unrevealed in the fog, I know that there aren't any more cities because each one of those tiles is ineligible for a city placement. (They are all within 2 tiles or less of one of the other cities - go ahead and count, I know I did!)
So here we go, first attacking amphibiously at Cordoba in true Viking fashion: 
Whew, glad to get that out of the way. I had to win a 90% battle at Cordoba in order for the conquest to complete this turn. Granted, that's not exactly longshot odds - but my cavs were routinely getting well over 99% in most of their battles. With Cordoba out of the way, this thing is a done deal.
First Seville, and now saving Madrid for last:
And that was that. Unfortunately, while I finished my conquest of the world in 1502AD, I won't actually win until the following turn. That means I'm going to miss my goal by a single turn. Ah well, it sure was fun trying for it!
But wait! I am now on pace to discover Liberalism on the same turn that I win the game! I have never had this happen before, nor seen it happen to anyone else. Of course the critical question: will I still get to pick the free tech?!?! 
You'd better go on to the final page to find out the answer to that burning question!!! 
