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Welcome back. We're rallying freshly created veteran (...wait) units to Damascus, where in a few turns they'll start heading northwest through Incan territory toward Rome. The plan is to take Ravenna and Rome itself, then see if we can take Angkor Wat back with a swarm of camel archers quickly and Liberate that back to Sury for a nice diplo bonus. I'd like to have someone legitimately vote for us for a religious victory, instead of relying on vassals and stuff.
Arabia's core. It's the most heavily-developed, with some trees left behind to try to get some regrowth for chops. I've had mixed luck with regrowth in my borders (I think 4 or 5? I know one was while I was making Angkor Wat, which was nice) and don't plan to get Scientific Method for Preserves before the game is over, so normally I probably wouldn't have bothered. I guess the health bonus is nice? I mentioned Libbing Nationalism last time too, but since we actually have Divine Right, an alternate prereq, the cost would be lower for us, so it makes more sense to research that directly and Lib, say, Chemistry. If this is a race you'd want to finish it ASAP, but if you know no one else has Education (or Philosophy if they have that), it's worth leaving Liberalism with 1 turn left and see if you can "slingshot" a better tech. In this case I'm leaning toward Chemistry (Gunpowder should also come in quickly since we have both prereqs for it), since we have a fair few production-poor cities that are relying on workshops.
Spliced-together visual of the techs in question, especially if you haven't played the game or don't recall how this stuff connects. 
Next turn, a bunch of units complete and I swap civics back to Bureaucracy and Organized Religion. It's tempting to swap to Caste System, but with this challenge all it's giving me is the workshop bonus, and I don't have very many. It's probably more important to be able to whip into buildings and get the +25% bonus.
I spot the Capac Stack approaching Korea, but he doesn't seem to be plotting. Curious and curiouser. If Wang was stronger this would be a great time to backstab the Inca and trap his stack between both our forces, but elephants beat camels and Kon doesn't have Engineering yet for pikes. I let him go and start advancing on Roman territory.
OK, gotta love the Circus Maximus going on here. And Caesar, I love 2-hammer city tiles as much as anyone, but settling on Ivory just to do it...? I trade Wang Paper for Compass and start him on Optics (once I trade for that, I'll put him in Bureaucracy if he hasn't switched by then as part of the deal, and then put him on Printing Press), then sell Paper to Boudica for her gold. Capac finished Sistine but Caesar didn't have any failgold; guess he was too busy with the endless war to start it. Capac also starts on Nationalism, which means I'll switch to it too and try to beat him to it. I should be able to beat him in a wonder race for Taj, since I have marble and he's "just" Industrious; but only if I'm not too late behind him in getting the tech.
Man, the smushed-together textures of a big Civ4 army. 
Tiwanaku is 3 tiles away from Rome, so this is the turn we pull the trigger.
Ravenna falls without issue. The RNGod giveth and taketh away: the first treb was the throwaway City Raider 1 with 3 XP from the Korean war, who won and withdrew at ~50% odds, and the swordsman died at 92%. 
I move in a well-rounded bunch of reinforcements, put a treb in the queue in Damascus after the grocer finishes next turn, and put everyone else to heal up.
Meanwhile, I queued up Theaters to all finish on the previous turn, so I can overflow from the one I whipped in Basra straight into the Globe Theater. It's a bit micro-intensive, but my plan is to do that, whip 1 missionary as well (before I finish the Islamic buildings and the +2 hammers keeps me from 2-pop whipping them), and then get the AP-boosted buildings done and just work through the rest of the building.
I start thinking about whether to conquer Rome completely, which would definitely make controlling their tiles more easily (and would let me Liberate Angkor Wat (the city, not the wonder 
)), and Huayna reminds me that thinking is a little premature!
Well, now things got interesting! He wasn't plotting and the only tech Jules had he could've used to bribe Capac in on me was Optics, which I didn't think was enough, so I wasn't worried. Well, I was wrong and now I am. Fortunately, my earlier assumption was right: the Roman armies are fighting the Khmer, so I shouldn't be at risk of being flanked by Rome if I have to turn around and deal with the Inca.
Taking a look at the Inca stack again, it's pretty strong against the camels: lots of pikes and elephants (both effectively strength 12 vs. mounted thanks to their multipliers; camel archers are Strength 10). Of the forces I have, they seem weakest against crossbows: lots of melee, not much archer cover, and catapults, which are stronger than trebuchets in the open but still a bit weaker. And of course, my crossbows are stronger than usual thanks to Protective. If I'd gone with my initial tech choice of Gunpowder (to open Chemistry as a Liberalism option) I'd have muskets, which would be even better here; but so it goes.
I have 2 choices here: start whipping crossbows and swap to an XP civic (probably Theocracy; if I'm back to making units I wouldn't be using Organized Religion's bonus), or finish Nationalism and draft maces. Here's where logistics comes into the equation: if I draft, I draft at the city site and the unit can immediately act. But if I whip reinforcements, they appear next turn, and then have to walk to the city under threat. You are capped at 3 draftees per turn at this speed/map size, and it's a sizable amount of unhappiness, so keep that in mind. I really want that head start on Taj, so I take the chance and only whip a few defenders (and walls in Marrakech) and keep building to try to finish the tech ASAP. I'll have to stock gold 1 turn unless I get to plunder a city, though.
I decide to turn back and go after the Incan cities. It should lure his stack back north, for one thing; and he's far more of an immediate threat than Rome. If I can bloody Capac enough, I should be able to arrange ceasefire, giving me enough time to deal with Caesar and then come back for him. (Ceasefires don't invoke 10-turn peace treaties.) So first, dealing with stragglers, which is something cavalry is great for. I use a flanking-promoted camel here, his high withdraw chance of 45% being a good way to deal with heavily fortified enemies. You can see that the listed retreat odds are less than that: that's because you don't need to withdraw if you actually win the battle.
Of course that would happen.
My Heroic Epic axeman eats him and I'm left with a choice: which city to go after first? Huamanga has less culture defense and thus would fall more quickly in a siege, but ultimately it's geography that decides: there's a road on the farm SE of Ravenna, and not on the one SW. So if I want to move any units garrisoned there as far forward as the ones outside the city, they have to head toward Tiwanaku. Since every turn counts right now, that's what I do.
Here's what I decide to do: set up to whip 2 camels, a longbow, and walls, since cavalry are the fastest reinforcements. I'll need to build gold one turn before Nationalism (and I lost a ton of commerce due to my trade routes getting shut off thanks to Rome and Inca completely interrupting land trade with the other AIs; makes me wish I'd gone Banking earlier!); hopefully Tiwanaku will fall quickly enough I'll get the gold for the remaining turn. Else, there's always building wealth in my cities for a turn or two.
Capac moves in, going after Wonsan first. I haven't had this happen yet, but this is the main way a vassal breaks free: if they lose enough land or population because you're unable (or unwilling ) to protect them, they revolt, which I believe puts them at war with you. Korea is the weakest of the remaining civs, and they definitely won't ally with Huayna unless they turn around and vassal to him, but it would definitely make things worse. If he didn't have so many pikes I'd run some camel archers down here and tear up his catapults (successful withdraws damage siege of the cavalry's era or older), but they'd just get wiped out.
The Battle of Tiwanaku is a prime example taking advantage of your unit types. It has 2 infamous Hill Longbows, fortunately only 1 of whom is a city defender. Most of the time when you're waging "traditional" war (with mixed units and siege instead of trying to overrun with mass cavalry or using spyfare to remove culture defense), it's worth it to wait outside the walls at least one turn, letting your units wounded from the previous battle heal up as you bombard down the walls. But thanks to my trebuchets' boosted XP, enough have the Accuracy promo to do it immediately. So I attack the same turn, despite having some wounded units, because I need the gold to finish Nationalism and draft my defensive army.
The result. By attacking in the right order and risking withdraw-promoted cavalry-- who need no XP, since Barracks + Stables alone gives the 5XP to get Flanking 2-- instead of using the City Raider 3 mace immediately, all the units survived to fight another day. The only luck I really had was the first camel actually winning, but he still had almost a 50% chance of walking away, albeit only 13% of winning outright. If you were curious, the pikeman at the end was making sure he'd be stationed in the city in case those elephants attacked, but he took a ton of damage so I had to apply one of my 11XP camel's promotions now (instead of waiting until after a battle and using them to heal) to get him to Formation to protect against an elephant; the other pike is staying to guard the wounded units outside.
The citizens in Marrakech, meanwhile, panicked and dropped the defense on the walls I just built. What had happened was I moved the spearman out to guard the worker since I saw a horse archer in Huayna's stack (and sure enough he went for the worker and got skewered, putting my spear to 5XP and convincing me to spring for the cash to upgrade him if it looks like the Inca will dawdle enough for my defense to come back), and that raised the revolt risk substantially (by which I mean going from 3 to 5% ), so sure enough it happened at the worst possible time. Before I end turn I play a little Lord of War and sell Boudica some iron for 6GPT, canceling the deal for the cows. She has Guilds now, and knights might tip the balance against Pericles a bit. I'll cancel the deal and arrange something else once the time limit's up, this is just to give her a shot in the arm.
...dude, really? Anyway, Nationalism comes in, but I decide that with Gunpowder being a relatively cheap tech, and muskets being a lot more useful than maces for dealing with stacks (not cities, though-- the lack of City Raider promos hurts there), I'll wait just a bit longer. Depending on whether or not Marrakech's defenses come back up at the end of the turn or the start of the next (and thus Capac will have to bombard the walls rather than collateral damage my units) the Korean front is a lost cause anyway. I used the overflow on the longbow in Khurasan to get a galley, and am ferrying it and a camel to the city to reinforce it without risking getting attack overland through Alemanni, but... well, we'll see. I cash in my promotions on the longbow and crossbow there for all Drill to resist the collateral damage a bit.
In a Hail Mary move to buy time, I also send a worker out to see if Capac will capture him. He'd have to use one of the attackers to do it thanks to the Korean culture slowing movement. Fingers crossed!
Well, that's good. They didn't kill the worker, either, that's discipline! I'm whipping a castle if it holds out 1 more turn, that should be enough extra defense it'll hold out for reinforcements. I'm bringing the trireme that was exploring the bay in the middle of the map back to deal with Caesar's trireme (and once I trade for Optics after Wang gets it, can whip a caravel to deal with it instead), but until it gets there, only the one galley is making the trip; can't risk 2 units getting sunk along with it. That was also a really short war between Pericles and Boudica, I was hoping by giving her iron she'd be able to pressure him more, but nothing doing. She did end up with one of his cities. Also, to keep the pressure on the Inca, I start moving all my healthy siege and 1-move units (plus 1 camel for stack defense) toward the next target, Cuzco. When you know a city will take at least a turn or 2 of bombardment (and this one might be 3, it has a castle), and you're pretty sure your stack is big enough they can't easily hit it in the field, it's OK to split it up a bit to save time. Just make sure the healthy units are escorted so they don't get picked off. Mixing them in with your reinforcements from home is a good idea.
The castle comes in with 20% defense, and Capac decides to go for it. We hang on the skin of our teeth: the only unit left is the crossbow at 1.9/6. But his stack is routed and the galley drops off a fresh longbow on our turn. It was lucky we won, because Wang actually tried to reinforce (he sent 1 horse archer into the city, but better than nothing... and better than I did for him so far 
), but his turn is after the Inca's, so the horseman rode in after all the carnage was over!
The next turn is mostly moving my stack toward Cuzco and microing production. I got 2 more missionaries out (1 whipped into the Globe Theater in Basra as usual) and put them in Fustat (to help it get some production on its limited tiles) and Baghdad. As soon as those buildings are done Baghdad is starting on the Taj. Capac just got Nationalism this turn, but again, I have marble and am winning the war against him, so I should be fine there. While I'm moving my camels, I spot this, 2 lone axes guarding the city on my border! I assume he saw my stack move toward Cuzco and pulled longbows there to reinforce it. If this remains the same next turn, I think I'm just going to check the odds on rushing Flanking camels in there and see if I can take the city outright!
Couldn't be that easy, could it? Well, I lost a Flanking camel but heavily damaged the pikeman (dropping him to 2.4/6), then lost a Combat 2/Shock camel at like 80% on the axeman, but that's how it goes; you win some at low odds and you lose some at high odds (unless you're playing New XCOM ).
With that loss, Capac will give up his gains and take peace, but I have to take Cuzco first and get rid of the culture that's overwhelming my new cities. Ollantaytambo is right on my border and still is completely covered in mango! In any case, it's pretty clear the camel clutch has humbled my biggest rival, so the plan now is to make peace after I take his capitol, and then get started on setting up the AP vote to win the game.
Battle of Cuzco begins. I'm not too worried about Capac going back for Guilds, it just reminds me I need to get more pikemen (a good idea anyway, since he was using elephants so much early on). 1 turn of Accuracy treb bombardment is good for 25% of its 125% castle walls, and that was with 1 trebuchet healing and 2 still rolling in. Conventional wisdom is to always pick City Raider on your trebs to try to crack longbows, but Flanking camels serve about the same role (sometimes better, since they're First Strike immune, and it was all those Drill promos that saved us in Marrakech), and taking down defenses is much faster. I don't take Drill on siege until cannons, and even then not often; and Barrage is a huge trap because of the way collateral damage works.
Lots of good choices here. Constitution unlocks Representation the non-Pyramids way, Astronomy would let us get to any land that might be out there, Chemistry improves workshops and opens the bottom of the tree with Steel, and Military Tradition leads us to the always-popular cuirassier. I pick Constitution: it's in the most expensive bracket, and adds a Civic that gives us more science, which'll help us get more techs. Now that I have Gunpowder, it's time to swap to Nationhood and start drafting muskets as reinforcements, and Rep will help keep our research going without Bureaucracy (I plan to run a ton of priests in Mecca, like when we were in Vassalage last time).
I guess Capac was in a hurry to reinforce and sent mostly cavalry, which don't get defensive bonuses. There are just a few too many anti-mounted units in here, so I spend one more turn bombarding the defense down to 0. Civ4 has some weird math in combat that revolves around the limited number of rounds (usually around 5, hits between equal strength units doing about 20 of 100 HP to each other), so getting a slight advantage can lead to a significant difference in results.
But during the interturn, he upgraded all those horse archers to knights! Interestingly, this may have backfired: knights have a higher base Strength than longbows, so they'll get drawn against my crossbows and other units with first strike. And due to the way promotions counteract each other before applying multipliers, my trebuchets draw knights as opposed to longbows, too. (City Raider ranks subtract their Garrison ranks.) Their odds are a little worse, yes, but the lack of first strikes seems to mean it's more likely the siege engine will damage them (sometimes a longbow gets away unscathed and you only get the collateral damage to the other defenders). Regardless, we take the city by the numbers with surprisingly little difficulty:
By the odds I should've taken ~2 more losses (most of them were around 70-80%), and in fact I was expecting that; the trebuchets you see in the middle are my CR1/Accuracy wall-busters I was trying to get XP before, instead of throwing them away trying to inflict collateral damage. Those Formation-promoted crossbows I used all the way back against Wang's chariots definitely helped out here! It's a real shame you can't promote units to musketmen, because those guys would be prime candidates.
Caesar moves some units back to threaten Ravenna Casablanca (I renamed it later in the session, all the cities at once). He won't return Angkor Wat for peace (probably because with Sury off his back, his relative position is stronger), so both of my goals for invading him (the other being getting stone ) are unmet. That being said, I'm going to wait one more turn and try to get some Great General XP off killing his units (like a trireme chasing my galley down south, I lured it to my returning trireme) before making peace. Yeah, I could pull my forces back and resume the attack on Rome, but the Inca have knights and I'm in their territory, their reinforcements are pretty strong now and will be hitting me quickly. I have to focus on them first, we're basically at tech parity now. Also, being at war is rough on your economy-- you might lose trade routes, like I did here; and you pay more maintenance on units outside your borders-- and my commanding tech lead is starting to slim. Check this out:
I'm pretty sure this is the first time an AI has gotten ahead of me anywhere on the tree (not counting Music, it's a dead-end tech if you're not getting Military Tradition, which is itself a dead-end, albeit really useful), and it's a nasty one. Boudica can easily trade Chemistry for Education once the other AIs get it. She shouldn't for a little while since very few AIs will trade monopoly techs, but it's a clear sign I need to start making peace soon. Also, in a higher-difficulty game, being at war and fighting over as extended a front as I am (5 cities are in play) is extremely difficult and can result in your military getting picked off while defending your gains. I already had to leave 4-5 units behind in each city for protection and riot suppression, and Cuzco Kairouan is about the farthest I can push for now anyway until the muskets make it in. In fact, I'll probably make peace with the Inca as soon as I take that easternmost city too.
Jules bombs the rest of Casablanca's defense down, but only attacks with a catapult and crossbow, which are easily dispatched. Weird. He accepts the peace deal, and I throw in the conversion to build rapport with him faster, and take it away from his former allies. Note that I spring for the full peace treaty instead of a ceasefire: it's going to be about 10 turns before I'm in position to re-invade anyway. I want to get him back to being willing to negotiate Open Borders. If he's not, I can always "infect" the city with the AP religion and Liberate it back to him. 
Moving the draftees to Wonsan seems to have spooked the elephants, guess it's true what they say about gunpowder frightening the animals! ...seriously though, I have no idea why he basically abandoned the city when I moved these half-dozen units up. Normally the AI digs in since this isn't really an overwhelming force. Regardless, I send in a Flanking camel who withdraws and then pick off the half-dead longbow with a Cover-promoted musket. It won't let me Liberate Wonsan immediately, I suppose I have to wait for Korean culture to seep back into it? I don't think it's that it's in revolt, but it might be.
My gains thus far. This is my preferred strategy for dealing with an AI in the mid/late-game when culture is this much of a problem: drive a wedge into their core (especially for wonder-hounds like Capac, those are their best cities) and defend it, and then swing out to one side to at least get tiles to work on that side. Also, the culture on any individual tile is the sum of all the cities whose tiles overlap it, so it can be impossible for one city to produce enough culture to work its tiles if it's being flooded by multiple cities' influence. All rings except the furthest out get a bonus to help offset this, but later in the game cities are close enough together that they're within full range regardless. It's been 5 turns, so I draft 3 more muskets and then switch civics, back to Bureaucracy and Organized Religion. I'd like to go into Caste as well since I don't plan on whipping, but I might need emergency units like pikemen depending on what Capac does.
Here's something else good to know: when an enemy civ moves in reinforcements from its other cities, they don't come from nowhere. I picked off an elephant from this direction earlier, and all those mines seem to confirm this is his cavalry center (had a forge intact, and presumably Stables). Sure enough, there's a knight next turn and the population only went down 1, so he didn't whip it from scratch. (Also note: check Info in your Foreign Affairs screen to see what civics your rivals are in; if they're not in Slavery, emergency reinforcements are a lot less likely. Capac is in Slavery, of course.) I peek in on the city from a hill nearby with the musket drafted from Basra, see the tiny garrison, and immediately send all my camels in that can reach it in 2 turns. Longbows aren't as dangerous to Flanking camels as we discussed earlier, and +100% defense on an axe only takes him to an even fight (a mace would be a bit more dangerous, but at least one of my camels has Shock and several are un-promoted and can specialize). This is a perfect opportunity for a cavalry rush, the only risk is if he whips a pike, and even then I might still be able to pull it off, just with more losses.
Nope, it's a knight, and that seals the deal. Knights get no defensive bonuses, so the castle might as well be a White Castle for how badly he gets served. I rename the city, and now let's see what we can get for peace with Capac....
Well then! If you're throwing in the towel, it'd be rude not to take it! I assume my vassal, small as he is, is still a factor, and my drafted musket army looks pretty intimidating. Plus I have taken half his cities! With my biggest rival capped the game is over, so I'll just do a quick mini-update next time showing how to do the Apostolic Palace tricks we've discussed. You can do it at any time, really, it's just that vassaling civs makes it easier. I actually have to make sure to spread Islam to Capac last-- he's religious enough he might spread it on his own, and he's so much better-liked than me he might win the AP victory!
This is a stupid waste of my free demand, since I'm probably going to get it culturally soon enough anyway and I can just trade for it, but screw it, gimme that
Also, I think I mentioned in the thread that you can demand techs from your vassals? You can, but you don't get a "free demand and then future ones risk breaking the vassalage" like for resources. I'd never tested it until now.
Arabia in 1320AD. With that decisive win over the Inca we're well on track to win a domination victory, but of course that's not the goal here. We're about ready to switch to Islam, with our missionaries quietly spreading it to our cities in the background and me building temples and monasteries everywhere to boost production. With our trade routes coming back online and Mecca going back into Bureaucracy, commerce (and thus research) is booming once more. The only thing left to do is unite the world in the Apostolic Palace!