Too, in 1863 Refrigeration comes in, and we take a detour to Flight, for what I hope are the obvious reasons.

By 1867, I'm ready to go on the offensive. I move a stack of tanks up to Tlatelolco. Despite Monty having a huge stack in Tenochtitlan, plus a bunch of catapults, no counterattack is forthcoming.

I'd love to go in with some arty support, but that's at least 5 turns plus build time away for bombers. So we'll do this anyway.

Blitz/Raider I/Barrage I Tank vs Combat I/City Def II Rifle - Tank loses with lots of collateral damage.

Combat II/Pinch/Blitz Tank vs Combat I/City Def I Rifle - Tank wins

Combat I/Raider I/Blitz Tank vs Combat I/City Def I Rifle - Tank wins

Combat I/Raider I/Blitz Tank vs Combat I Rifle - Tank wins

Combat I/Raider I/Blitz Tank vs Combat I/Medic I Gren - Tank wins

Combat I/Pinch/Blitz Tank vs Combat I/City Def II Rifle - Tank wins

And Tlateloco falls. It is, unfortunately, behind a big wall of Aztec culture, but such things can be fixed. But not yet. There are at least 16 combat units in Tenochtitlan, and even I can't take that down. Yet.

In 1868, I do an Assembly Line/World Map for Communism/World Map deal with Gandhi, just so I can see what's going on. Monty, it turns out, has 5 cities besides the one I just took, one of which is on the other side of Khan, one of which is cut off between me and the city I just took, and the others are kind of just hanging out.

In 1868, Paris hits legendary culture, and...wait a sec. Legendary is SEVENTY-FIVE thousand on Epic speed? Ok, that sucks. Let's work that out real quick. Without slamming culture to full, it's looking like:

Paris: 50,158 culture, +350/turn = 71 turns

Orleans: 35,862 culture, +332/turn = 118 turns (running culture)

Tours: 33,125 culture, +203/turn = 207 turns

Well, that's an issue, because there's only 180 odd turns left. Putting Tours to do culture puts it at 162 turns. Pushing it, but manageable. Another 10% culture rate is worth another 6 turns or so. We'll go with that and hope real hard.

Excel for the win.

There's not much to say about the taking of Calixtlahuaca in 1871, except that in a burst of Civ3esque RNG luck, I lose a bunch of 4 promo, full health tanks against odds like 31 to 18 in my favor before rallying and taking the city, thus opening the entire north to me.

8 turns of disorder when taking cities seems slightly excessive to me. Oh well.

In 1873, Flight comes in, and we start in on Rocketry. If it can build a bomber, it is doing so, save for Tours and Orleans. I am stuck in this limbo where I need actual bombardment capability to take Tenochtitlan, and haven't got a bit of it.

For the 17/17 xp Our People Want to Construct West Point win, Monty cruises up a couple of catapults obligingly, and I kill them.

Humor is building a machine gun, and getting the "Congratulations, you have trained your first siege unit!" message.

In 1878, after I start carpet bombing Tenochtitlan, Monty comes to me, begging for peace, and offering his 460 gold treasury for it. You know what? No. I'm tired of your crap, Monty. Maybe after I take Tenochtitlan away from you, we'll talk.

Wherein, when you start driving around with bombers that blow up their entire city defense, and then start doing collateral to 5 units a hit, well, there's not much the other guy can do with that when he's still missing, you know, Liberalism.

You might, perhaps, say that Monty has Chosen Unwisely.

In 1880, after pre-bombardment by my 6 bomber air force, the tanks begin rolling in. Best odds for him were on order of 11.8 to 30.2 or so, and my Civ 3 RNG luck having been exhausted, well. That having been said, after my 13 tanks attacked, he STILL had one last catapult defending. That died the next turn, and the time came for peace. Not in the least because I'm now losing 45 gpt. It ends up costing Monty 150 gold and 2 gpt, not to mention whatever I looted from Tenochtitlan, which is on order of 250 gold or so.

In 1884, Narak is born in Tours. Who the...? Unfortunately, he's a Great Prophet. So I'll put him to work, because +2 culture is +2 culture.

In 1885, Monty comes begging for Open Borders. Ha. I take it. Rocketry also comes in, and we start on Satellites.

In 1890, Alex comes demanding Biology. I snicker for a moment before declining. "You're really not a very giving person," he says with some amount of truth.

As of 1890, when Tenochtitlan ends resistance to the New World Order, France looks thusly:

I wish there was an easy way to see borders on the globe view.

For the culturally inclined, it is now 115 turns until Tours becomes the last of my cities to hit Legendary culture. I wonder. Where IS Washington on the tree, anyway? Down Medicine, Flight, Radio, and Refrigeration? Gandhi's down Medicine and Flight? Yeah, ok.

Satellites comes in 3 turns later, and I change from 60/40 science/culture to 90/10 culture/science. Tours is down to 96 turns. I'd sell my soul for a Great Artist.

The "Beep...beep...beep...beep" quote is easily the second best quote in this whole game, with the exception of that classic from Die Hard, "Ho Ho Ho, now I have a (unit)."

"But wait," I say. "Cimmerian and Marseilles only have Hinduism." An evil plot hatches in my mind. Some short time later, Tours is finishing a Hindu temple, on the way to the Hindu Mandir. That having come in in 1909, we are now 66 turns from the win.

So it turns out that with Red Cross and West Point in the same city, you can do things like make Combat I/Medic I/City Def I/Pinch Infantry.

"But wait," I say. "I can speed this up even more! Tlatelolco has Buddhism!" The observant reader will understand right where that went.

And you want to know what's really sad about this whole thing? This:

Of course, that annoys Khan enough to cancel our deals, all of them, and I expect to be attacked relatively soon, but hey. Thanks to the Buddhist Stupa, it will all be over in 49 turns anyway.

In 1922, Paris achieves legendary culture.

In 1931, a savior is born, as it were. The Great Artist Amir Khusro runs straight on over to Tours, throws down +6,000 culture, meaning I'm done in more like 26 turns.

Computers comes in in 1937, dropping my income from -6 gpt to -94 gpt from Spiral Minaret death and a bunch of Priest/Engineer switchovers. Yeowch.

Having gone to all the trouble of knocking Monty down, Gandhi and Washington then turn around and gang up on him.

Er...

It advances further next turn, despite Atlanta not having fallen to either the Indians or Americans. In subsequent turns, even more weirdness happens.

And because you know we just had to have that one last wonder...

In 1940, Atlanta falls to India, and the Aztecs are obliterated.

For that last Great Prophet, Tipu Sultan is born in Orleans in 1953, and immediately gets merged. This reminds me that Muhammed Shah is just sort of hanging out in Paris, and I think he'll just continue to hang out.

In 1956, I FINALLY sign Open Borders with Gandhi on a whim. Likely this will annoy Khan, but in 2 turns he's going to fall over in awe anyway.

In 1957, Orleans achieves legendary culture.

And in 1958, I get the victory, complete with spiffy movie.

And thus ends session #3 (12/10/05, 2:45am)

Total time spent was 13 hours, 4 minutes. Final score is 10,301. I rank as Constantine. This is the top score thus far in my SP hall of fame, and the only one that isn't a space race.

I'm first in every single demographic category except Imports/Exports, where I'm second. In the top cities list are Paris, Orleans, and Tours, followed by Delhi and Rheims.  The wonders I didn't get, for the record, were: Kremlin, all non-Jewish religious buildings, Hagia Sophia, Notre Dame, Hanging Gardens, Great Lighthouse, Oracle.  Colossus was in Tenochtitlan.

1. I'm not sure if I like Epic speed, which may just be me adjusting from Normal, but maybe not.

2. I do think 75k in three cities for a culture victory is rather gratuitous, though.  50k is more than ample, and there were about 80-100 turns where I was just sitting around clicking end turn a lot, waiting for 75k.  I also really miss the option to do OCC culture games.  If there's a step back from Civ 3, there it is.  We'll see what I think about that in a few games.

3. I have this tactic, where generally if you prioritize getting to Monotheism with your non-Spiritual civ, you'll probably get it, whereupon you can switch to Judaism and Organized Religion, and with a few missionaries to your immediate neighbors, you're good for a long long time.  I think that played out pretty well here, and I expect that people who didn't manage the religion game well got devoured by Monty and Khan.

4. Speaking of Khan, he sure did flop over and play dead in the face of my culture.  I mean, sure I made extra special effort to keep him my friend, but the only place he even sort of held his own was Samarqand.  Karakorum should have flipped to me, and really, had I been Khan, I would have either got my capitol the hell out of there, or declared on me and gone beelining for Tours, neither of which happened, though he was pretty unhappy with me there at the end.

5. And you know, the AI in Civ 4 sure is a lot more passive than in 3.  Maybe it's Noble, maybe it's the AI being less willing to get into random wars halfway across the planet, but I'm amazed that George Washington didn't declare on me after having been at -9 rep for hundreds of years.  Did he not because he couldn't get through Monty and Khan?  Dunno.  Also whatever was up with Khan.  If some guy was flipping all my towns, and I had a bunch of guys just sitting there, I think I'd be all over giving war a chance.

6. Too, for all the improved AI, and it's really good, not a whole lot of land changed hands in all those AI wars I had.  Maybe 2-3 cities, before everyone leapt like starving hyenas on Monty's barely-breathing corpse and devoured him.

7. I really do wish there was a way to dotmap in the game, outside of signs.  I'd use it pretty much all the time.  That and a way to see real borders on the globe view.  I'm sure there's also a camera angle suitable for high altitude empire shots that varies between "way too zoomed in" and "way too zoomed out" globe view.

8. In that "first Epic played for new game" sense, this may be sort of the anti-Epic 14, so to speak.