The French War
After the Aztec War, the Blessed William looked around his empire, content[1].  Mostly, at any rate.  There was the slight problem of the continued stain of France on a continent that should rightfully be English, but that could be dealt with.  The English army, after all, outnumbered the French by a significant amount, and was more advanced, too[2].  After a refit, it was decided, the English would invade France.
 
These plans were changed in 1776 after Napoleon developed the technology for motorized transportation and upgraded 123 regiments of infantry to motorized infantry.  Once England had a technological advantage, it was decided, the invasion would commence.  In the meantime, the United Nations was founded in London as a facade to hide England's expansionist policies.  That half the nations in the world were currently part of England was summarily ignored.
 
Plans have a way of being rendered obsolete, however, and the plans for a French war were abandoned in 1784 when Babylon allied with Persia and attempted a sneak attack with amphibious cavalry near Lutetia[3], which failed rather miserably, since men on horses with repeating rifles are notoriously ineffective against machine guns in fortified bunkers.  The Blessed William and his advisors spent a considerably amount of time being very perplexed by the attack, since Babylon was, to put it charitably, weak.  Weaker than the Aztecs.  Weaker than even the Iroquois[4].  Their ally Persia was stronger, but still not strong enough.  The only thing preventing their instant obliteration by the newly rested, soon to be refitted English army was the large ocean between England and themselves, and the rather small English navy.  Further complicating the problem was the complete lack of a suitable port on the English east coast close to the other continent.  Nevertheless, west coast ports were ordered to produce destroyers in order to gain a foothold for England on the seas.
 
The plan changed once again with the 1794 French embargo on English goods.  The arrogant French, thundered the Blessed William, would need to be taught a lesson.  So the 141 armored divisions of the English army, equipped with the latest modern armor and backed up by mechanized infantry in brand new APCs crossed the French border[5], taking Beaujolais, Nantes, Avignon, Poitiers, Perigueux, and Yokohama, as well as catching what appeared to be the entire French cavalry force outside Izumo.  Massive running battles between cavalry and armored regiments resulted in the French loss of over 20 cavalry regiments to 2 of armor.  Advancing along the excellent French rail net, English forces continued the first wave of advancement by taking Le Havre, Versailles, Chartres, Rheims, and Tours.  To further demonstrate English superiority, the Blessed William ordered high profile tests of atomic weaponry in the testing ranges near London.

Progress of the French War:

Despite minor counterattacks and bombing raids that were little more than an annoyance, English forces pressed ahead during 1796, taking Varennes, Strasbourg, Orleons, Bayonne, and Cherbourg[6]. At the Battle of Cromwell's Crossing near Kagoshima, English armored forces decimated a gigantic deep thrust by the bulk of the French cavalry forces.  Over 20 regiments were destroyed at the loss of no English forces.  Near Echizen, another French motorized infantry counterattack was obliterated.
 
More French counterattacks all across the line by marines[7] succeeded in retaking Le Havre and Versailles momentarily, but were pushed back.  At the Second Battle of Cromwell's Crossing, General Cromwell and the 5th Armored Regiment completely obliterated the attackers.  Other English advances took Bescanon, Toulouse, Lyon, Rouen, and after fierce fighting[9] took Paris.  As English armor commanders set up their headquarters in JS Bach's Cathedral, Napoleon fled to Grenoble.
 
Minor French counterattacks retook Tours, and a highly suicidal group of marines assaulted First Tank Army in Kyoto, and were slaughtered.  English forces immediately retook Tours, then took Brest, Montemercy, and Ganogeh, ending the French presence on the southern penninsula.  In Japan, Shikouza fell, and armor under General Marlborough took Suo and Sado, and Shimonoseki[10].  In central France, Marsielle and Rennes fell, cutting off the last of the French rubber sources.
 
French counterattacks in 1800 succeeded in retaking Chartres and Rennes, but both fell again in 1802.  That year also saw the fall of the Dijon pocket and an armored force under General Wellington taking the second French capitol at Grenoble.  Napoleon fled to Nice.  French counterattacks during 1803 were almost nonexistent, with the French being reduced to conscripts as young as 12 and as old as the late 60s.  Nevertheless, the Blessed William decided to end the war quickly, and OKed the Manhattan Project - massive atomic carpet bombing of France.  Thus it was that Carcassone died in an atomic fireball on June 7th, 1804.  Matsuyama, Ise, Toulon, Bizen, Montpellier, Lourdes, Amiens, Bordeaux, and Nice soon followed.  Kozuke was the only city that year to fall to conventional assault.

France Post-Manhattan Project:

Everyone in the world gaped in awe at the English, then declared war, but the Blessed William just shrugged.  What did the English care for the opinion of barbarians?  Were the English not the most civilized, advanced, enlightened nation in the world?  Did everyone not look up to their culture as the epitome of the Way Things Should Be[11]?  They would come around to the English way, or they would die.  It was that simple.
 
By 1812 the war was over for France, which lay in ruins, a nuclear wasteland garrisoned by English troops.  Far to the north, in the former Azteca, Persian troops had gained a foothold, but were soon driven back into the sea[12].  England herself lay in anarchy, wracked by war protests and riots against the fascist regime of the military.
 
The focus of the war changed to the air and sea.  The fledgling English navy was obliterated by the Persian juggernaught, which then proceeded to bombard the hell out of the coastline of occupied Japan, along with air raids.  In response, the Blessed William ordered a crash air force development program using captured French designs.  By 1820 fighters, bombers, and cruise missiles were rolling off the production lines, and a new battleship navy was being constructed.  1822 saw the death of around half of the Persian navy to massive cruise missile attacks.  Further bombing campaigns caused further attrition, and the Persian air force was neutralized by repeated nuclear raids on the base at Haora.
 
Throughout England, preparations began for Operation Sealion[13], the invasion of Persia.  Battleships and transports were constructed and sent to Brighton, where the invasion fleet sat building up.  Scores of armored regiments flocked to the towns outside Brighton, waiting for the fleet.  The now-sizable English air force spent time in western Japan, bombing the very eastern fringe of Persia, as well as whatever elements of the Persian navy chose to present themselves.

Operation Sealion Bases Around Brighton[14][15]:

Just as Operation Sealion was preparing to depart Brighton in 1838, both Xerxes and Hammurabbi capitulated, surrendering unconditionally to England.  Operation Sealion thus turned into an occupation force, and centuries of warfare came to an end with the English flag flying over the entire world[16].
[1] - Though the advisors were not.


[2] - To be specific... England: 2 cavalry, 113 armor, 153 motorized infantry, 34 tanks, 6 self propelled guns, 82 engineers, 36 slave engineers, a transport, and Magellan's privateer :).  France: 79 cavalry, 171 infantry, 1 tank, 29 artillery, a zeppelin, 14 engineers, 20 workers, 12 slave workers, 5 frigates, 2 galleons, 3 ironclads, 2 transports, 3 destroyers, 4 dreadnoughts, and 3 rather extraneous settlers.
[3] - What is it with compy and that town?  It's a POS town in the middle of nowhere.
[4] - Like, ph34r my r0x0rzing riflemen.
[5] - I'm such a warmonger.
[6] - We note the massive slowdowns caused by having to garrison each and every city with like 10 guys to prevent revolts.  It's ugly.  Let alone how I'm paying for every inch in French blood, since they've got 6 or 7 guys per city.  Much less the 30 or 40 tanks I have chasing down his Japan army.
[7] - Leathernecks, the predecessor to Marines, actually.  He's cranking em like mad for some reason, now.
[9] - Estimated 5+ dead modern armor on my side, 12-15 motorized infantry on theirs.  Yeowch.
[10] - It's the Year of the S!
[11] - Currently over the 100k limit for a culture win, being blocked only by France's continued existence.
[12] - Though his naval bombardment is really killing me.
[13] - ;)
[14] - Those modern armor are in stacks of 8 except one with 3.  5 of them are going on the initial transports, most of the rest to follow by airlift.  Mech Infantry will follow, once I finish re-garrisoning the mass number of places still garrisoned by armor of various sorts.
[15] - For the observant who noticed the jpg name, my situation is something closer to that of Operation Olympic, the proposed invasion of Japan.  But the Sealion amusement was just too great to pass up.  I'm too lazy to rename the jpg though. ;)
[16] - And my first domination victory, too.

Aftermath
And that, as they say, is that.  End score 5416, almost twice my previous high score.  I'm known to all eternity as William the Magnificent, which is one below the max.  This was my first and will probably be my last domination game, for reasons I'll elaborate on later.  First, some screenshots.

Demographics
Score Histograph
Power Histograph
Culture Histograph
 
Now, for some game analysis.  Looking at the replay, I wasn't that far ahead in the expansion game, despite the 2 MP colonist advantage and my amazing starting location.  Part of it was, I couldn't expand EVERYWHERE at once, and so I didn't get as many cities as I might have.  Still, I made out pretty well.  I also got a lot of luck.  I got an entire AGE worth of techs from huts, the value of which was simply astounding.  There was a good length of time where my cities quite literally couldn't support researching any middle ages techs because they weren't big enough.  Amazing.  I also cut off Iroquois expansion harshly.  I took some great land near them, and I stole half their luxuries.  I also lucked out on enemy starts.  Rome was in a pathetic jungle wasteland, and killing them was actually a drain on my resources, which tied up innumerable workers until the very end of the game clearing jungle.  The Aztecs got stuck with a combination mountainous polar waste, and though they expanded well enough, most of their cities were really sad, and like Rome, taking them out was a drain on my resources.  On my continent, then, the only two contenders besides me were Japan and France, neither of which could compete with my gigantic tech advantage.  I was always at least one set of units ahead of the both of them - tanks and armor against Japanese cavalry and infantry, armor against Aztec cavalry and spears (!), modern armor against French cavalry and motorized infantry, and the entire ONE tank they managed to build.  Over on the other continent, Persia was it.  Babylon had polar wasteland, and although India did ok for a while, Babylon, Persia, and France ganged up on them and beat them down harshly, most of which I didn't talk about, but they died before France did.  
 
Despite the massive luck, I feel like I played a pretty good game.  I managed to snag zillions of wonders, which you'll notice in the demographics screen, and despite my goal of playing a militarist game, my core cities all had maxed out infrastructure.  The one thing I would have done differently is to stay the hell out of fascism, since war weariness was bending me over the proverbial barrel.  There were times at the height of the Iroquois and Aztec wars where I was running ~50% luxuries just to stay alive.  I got screwed on anarchy, too, 6 turns every time, which essentially paralyzed me, and sent a lot of my cities into disorder.  If I were to do it again, I would have gone immediately into Monarchy.  On the battlefield, a few things jumped out at me.  First is, leathernecks as I have them are munchkin units capable of taking on modern armor offensively or defensively and winning a good portion of the time.  Secondly, I forgot to make tanks upgrade to armor.  Oops.  Third and most importantly, I didn't have enough backup infantry to garrison cities behind me, especially in France, where I was getting hit by 80-90% resistance rates, forcing me to garrison anywhere from 5 to 10 units PER CITY.  Had I built up even 2 turns more, the war would have ended very rapidly - something like 4-5 more cities per turn more taken.  But what I had seemed pretty massive at the time, and I wasn't expecting the gigantic levels of resistance from France.  And lastly, the nuclear war was a definite mistake, and I knew going in that it would be, but by that time the game was already won, so I decided to play around a bit and test my new nuclear bomber unit, which worked very well, though nukes for some reason do not ALWAYS kill units in cities.  <shrug>
 
As to domination games in general, and this game in specific, well... Vast portions of this game bored the hell out of me, which I'm sure is fairly evident in the writing.  Part of it was the excruciating boredom of watching France move 70+ cavalry around Japan, much less my own moving 100-200 units a turn.  I cannot imagine trying to play this before the advent of the j key and stack movement.  Going along with that, non-industrious workers are simply ridiculous to work with.  I'd even go so far as to call it imbalanced.  With 80-90 of my workers at peak and up to 50 slave workers, with mostly pre-improved territory, it took FOREVER to get things done.  I was still clearing jungle at game end, and railroading the Iroquois lands lasted until the very last turns.  With industrious workers, I could have improved all of Azteca and Japan as well, both of which were wastelands.  And of course watching them move was boring as hell.  For quite a while, I was pulling a turn per half hour or hour, with animations disabled.  And that's what kills warfare for me.  I haven't got the patience to manage a gigantic empire, move a trillion guys around, and fight a war.  I can do so, and even do it well, but it doesn't much entertain me.  Peaceful building can be a lot less exciting, sure, but it plays faster and is a lot more entertaining to me. <shrug>
 
Still, though, this was an interesting game.  The novelty of driving mass armor formations around wears off fast, but it's fun for a while.  And the uniqueness of domination wins.  The only thing I haven't won by is conquest, now, and given my preferences, it will likely remain that way.  A few other uniquenesses about this game - It's the only game with England that I've played, out of games with Egypt, the Iroquois, a couple with Persia, and a couple with Rome.  Also the first game I've played with a Commercial civ since Rome way back in the tutorial, and the first game with an Expansionist civ since my Iroquois days way back when.  This game also has records for highest score ever, as well as my largest military, and the only game I've ever gotten an age of free techs in, much less the best start position I've ever had.  My first usage of nuclear weapons since the World War 1979 scenario in Civ2.  I'm sure I can think of some more, but you get the idea. <shrug>  I've also learned that I can sort of live without the religious trait, but the industrious trait is a must simply for the uber-workers.

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