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Welcome back. Last time we accepted the surrender of Mongolia and returned (and rebuilt!) some of their cities. Kublai's almost done with Astronomy, so I'm going to wait until it's done and trade him for it, and probably use that to trade for Constitution. It's 1250AD, and right now we're building up our cities in preparation for the next war, probably against England.
OK, well, Catherine also has ideas about "war" and "England"! It's always funny when two weaker AIs battle uselessly for ages and then one of the giants in the playground shows up. Victoria is no pushover as peaceful AIs go, though, and she can probably buy herself out with Replaceable Parts (or more likely make peace with Alex to focus on her).
Quick micro note on our new city. We whipped the Monastery, but that just means we lost the population and put the granted production the queue, we still have to finish it. However, the last turn's production got turned into overflow, and I'm ready to chop that plains forest in the top-right square. So let's take advantage of Organized and get this Courthouse immediately, saving us about 7GPT, then worry about the +2 hammers from the religious buildings.
I'm not sure what England had defending Canterbury, but this seems like a pretty respectable garrison! Hopefully my spies won't get instantly discovered this time.... I figured I'd get Steam Power a turn earlier and put Antium on building wealth to cover it. Definitely want Levees ASAP in my river cities!
And discovering Steam advances us to the Industrial Age, where we discover... our spies were sexy ladies the entire time! 
Yeah, catsuits and sunglasses in the 13th century, why not? It's interesting to see all the little groups of Russian units wandering around, that usually means you're dealing with an aggressive leader who's a lot more willing to risk losses to attack instead of basically only using the SoD or defending.
Before I forget, now that my borders have popped, here's the territory I left Mongolia. Except for New Samarqand sticking out there and probably eventually going to be culture-crushed by me (and hey, if I flip it after I finally get Biology and can do something useful with it, why not? 
), they actually look OK. There's a lot of debate over whether to let your vassals maintain some semblance of an empire or leave them basically a 1 or 2-city rump state that does nothing for you besides tribute resources, and I tend to go for the former (especially for a more "roleplay"-based game like this). Needless to say, if your vassal is someone notorious for going for culture victories, maybe don't let them keep their cities that have wonders in them!
Trading for Astronomy. We can broker it next turn, which I plan on doing with Cathy since she still has most of that gold we saw earlier (I guess since she's ahead she can't use it to help trade for anything). Bismarck is getting Education next turn as well, so we're getting close to cashing in Liberalism as well as being able to trade it around... the only problem being that he's the only one with anything else we want! I start Arpinum on a Privateer to whip into Moai, and after Corfinium finishes its Levee, it'll build one too. This is the perfect time for piracy: the AIs don't have frigates yet, and we're Imperialistic to rack up more GG points.
Ning-hsia has come out of revolt, so I rename it and queue it up to 2-pop whip a monastery. I only have 2/6 Theaters before I can put the Globe Theater here, so I'll have the former Mongol cities build them, plus wherever I can turn them out quickly, and put all the overflow from Castrumnovum into it once I can. The neat thing about building the Globe somewhere is that it zeroes out Unhappiness, so you can whip into it as much as you want, and the city will be perfectly fine once it's done.
One last thing before we end the turn: Steam Power reveals all sources of coal. And naturally we have some nearby... but they're all in Russian territory! 
I'll see how well Mediolanum peels back that Commie red once the synagogue is in place, and if it's not enough I'll put the Hermitage there too.
OK. Bismarck is going for Liberalism, so it's time to trade for Constitution and queue up Lib so I get it next turn. I have several AIs on the cusp of their trade limit, since Boudica was WFYABTA last turn after I traded Astronomy with Kublai, but she's back to wanting to trade again this turn. That's a good place to be, since in the lategame you don't trade as often, but when you want to those deals are pretty important. In any case I trade Astronomy and Education to Cathy for it (since she's Friendly with Otto he can trade her Education anyway) and all that cash, then sell Banking to Alex and Boudica. More AIs with it will help Kublai tech it faster, and he needs it before I can trade him Replaceable Parts. Once I do that I'll put him on Rifling.
The rules do say "immediately." At least we're at the point where this isn't a wasted turn: 2 civic swaps cost 2 turns, and while 3 would also be 2 turns... we don't have 2 more swaps to make!
Argh, probably should've thrown in peace with England when I traded with Cathy, but I didn't expect the cap after only one city! And if you don't either, given how hard I had to fight to get Kublai to surrender, here's what's going on: the AI doesn't technically cheat, but they effectively do (de jure versus de facto if you will). Because the AI can afford to grow its cities huge and have a lot of them without being crushed by maintenance, Cathy has a much higher perceived power rating than I did. She probably also inflicted a lot of damage on Victoria's army by catching it in the open and she did take one city. And once those borders popped, they shared a border; that makes capitulation even more likely. So it's "fair" but not really fair, you know?
I don't even want to try figuring out how Cathy really feels about us thanks to taking Vicky as a vassal. She's Furious with me (but effectively Cautious because I'm Friendly with her master) and Cautious toward my vassal (who's also Friendly with her master). So... yeah.
And Bismarck is plotting too now! Well, after a long game of stultifying peace with only me causing trouble, it looks like things are finally starting to heat up. He's only Cautious toward Alex and Lincoln. Boudica is still preparing too, so if they both go after America....
Thanks to my espionage on Germany I have sight on his cities, and I can see he's stacking near the Russian border. That means he's probably going after Cathy or me instead. I move a spare warrior over to keep an eye on him; if he moves into Russia and doesn't declare, that's my cue to move my army to Mediolanum and get ready. He might be cutting through both of us to get to Greece, but he has Open Borders with America so that would be faster if he was doing that. Looks like I might be getting back into war sooner than planned!
Liberalism! 
I decide on Steel: most expensive tier of available options, and quite possibly essential if a powerhouse like Germany ends up declaring on me. Still essential if I have to go after Russia + England, too, for that matter! Bismarck drops his research there like a bad habit and switches to Economics, I always love it when you get to do that to them. 
I sell him the rest of the tech for his 440G anyway, and put my overflow into Corporation for the extra trade routes. With Catherine dropping to Mercantilism, it's tempting for me to do the same (all those new routes will be internal unless I Open Borders with America, which isn't going to happen), but I don't want to deal with the anarchy right now.
Do I want 1400AD Assembly Line? I mean, when people talk about the tech pace of Civ4 getting out of control, they probably mean stuff like this, going from one war with maces and knights to the next war with infantry. I'll be doing this to get ahold of Factories to max out production, we'll see about jumping that far militarily. It just feels wrong to skip eras of military like that. 
I think my plan will be to whip Factories once I can, and then get Democracy and switch to Emancipation, I probably won't need to whip anymore after that.
The next AP Resident election is up, and I vote for Cathy this time. Remember what we discussed at the end of the last update, about vassal relations? Turns out I was right, it just averages the "attitude" overall, not the "points" the AI uses to determine said attitude. So it'll be a long time before Kublai forgives Bismarck for declaring war on him, and Bismarck in turn isn't too fond of him (nothing giving him points besides shared religion, though if Kublai takes on Nationhood, Otto's favorite civic, that might do it). And speaking of civics, I'm no longer in Hereditary Rule, meaning a major source of positive diplo with Cathy is gone. So this +2 will help keep her as a trading partner. And finally, I don't want to give Bismarck the option to get himself into a war, and then vote himself out of it.
There's a lot of discussion on the Civ forums (and about strategy games in general, really) about specializing your cities versus making them well-rounded, and I definitely fall in the latter camp. We talked about infrastructure versus building wealth/research directly in the Saladin game, and Treveri is here to discuss what kind of buildup you do. In this case, it has a lot of river tiles, so I violate rule #1 ("Never whip away cottages!") with the logic that the extra production will get everything else in faster, and thus will be worth it. You can also see some watermills instead of cottages everywhere: that's because once I get State Property and Electricity, mills are solid tiles, and not so far behind on commerce compared to towns. Since I'll never get Universal Suffrage unless the UN votes it in, this is the best way to get production here, and the bonus food eventually will help the city work all its tiles. Lastly, see all those domestic trade routes? Yeah, I really wish I'd gone Mercantilism, only half my cities are getting decent trade! And actually lastly, see the mine? Yeah, this late in the game I actually like working mines, since the odds of them popping any special resource goes up depending on how many you have access to, and we just added Coal. It's still quite rare, but worth trying. That being said, if by the time I get Electricity it still hasn't popped anything, I'll probably windmill it for the bonus commerce in a science city.
Awesome, it worked! A few turns to get that Coal hooked up. I'll have to keep an eye on this and might need to get the Hermitage after all depending on if Cathy keeps up the pressure (AIs are smart enough to put their culture multipliers on contested borders), but it's definitely a good sign.
My Romans have a fever, and the only cure is more Emancipation. Yep, it's that time again. Normally I ignore it and focus on happiness resources (and in war, the culture slider after whipping Colosseums and stuff), but for this game we're going to bite the bullet and Emancipate, to meet our last requirement. I'm not actually trading for it just yet (there's no way to make a deal with Lincoln that won't make the ladies mad), I'm just bringing it up now, and also pointing out... well, see how Cathy and Vicky have the exact same techs wanted? AI masters love to give all their techs to their vassals (they'll trade for everything the vassal has too, but give away everything else). I'm sure it's random, but it seems like some AIs like Mansa Musa are smart enough to abuse it: peace-vassal to someone big and then break free after they've been handed a ton of research for free. That may well happen here, since Victoria is already above the land requirement since she only lost one city, and doesn't actually like her master.
We finish the Heroic Epic as planned in Brundisium. Another note here: it's possible to get failgold off National Wonders too. If I put 1 turn into the Epic in Rome, it would've made about 100 hammers into it, which would then be 100 gold when I finished it here. I personally think deliberately gunning for gold that way is an exploit and don't do it, but it's a great way to get cash if you don't care, since it's at least twice as effective as building wealth (and in that case, thanks to Bureaucracy, thrice as much).
Good news as we close out the 14th century: I break 1000 beakers per turn at full blast, and it's only -160 GPT, which isn't bad at all. Bad news: everybody is building the Statue of Liberty, meaning I can't trade for Democracy and I miss the wonder tailor-made for Representation. Well, like I said back in the first update vis a vis Calendar, you snooze you lose! We can wait, I want to stay in Slavery long enough to whip Factories.
...not that I'm going to need to whip them in most of these cities! I mentioned earlier in the thread to Berryjon that Industrious was worth it just for the half-price Forges, and here's the Organized version, Factories at a manageable investment. I started building Grocers in any city with reasonable commerce just to get Health for when we started building coal plants, and now here we are! Full disclosure, by the way: I'm not actually immediately building those everywhere (Arpinum just started on a privateer, for example, so now it'll be whipped next turn into the Factory), it's just showing you how quickly they can get online.
We're #1 in culture? How'd that happen?! I demand a recount! Also, Antium is 6 turns out from another Great Scientist, and I can hopefully shave 1 off once the Observatory finishes next turn (allowing me to assign another Scientist). Once that's done, I'll start a Golden Age with Rome's Prophet from the last one, and try to get some more Great People with Pacifism. I'll probably close out by switching to Nationhood and Mercantilism and bribing Kublai into the same as part of a tech deal, then using a spy to switch Bismarck's civic into it (it's his favorite, but he hasn't revolted to it yet). That should make us all Friendly with each other and let me trade with him to accelerate our progress in the post-Scientific Method part of the tree. Now, there are a lot of what-ifs in there (such as "What if Kublai won't leave Bureaucracy, his favorite civic?") but that's my overall plan right now. Then it's off to war with our Infantry against... Alex probably, using ships to get around England? Hmm.
Bismarck's stack is finally on the move! He's heading east, so maybe... Boudica? Or loading up on galleons to go after Greece? I need to get a frigate or Ship of the Line and not just privateers so I can keep track of the AIs' navies without, y'know, flying the Jolly Roger and making them antsy.
Fascism comes in (doesn't do us any immediate good, I just wanted the free General for a Military Academy soon), and so does Cathy's first resolution. Definitely a different tack than Bismarck took. I'll vote no, but no use defying it over someone I can't trade with without getting negative opinion anyway.
Whoa, Catherine gets voted down! Like I said before, the AP and UN aren't implemented well in Civ4, but sometimes you see the AIs' scripts and attitudes work together and actually make sense.
I love it when a plan comes together. 
A Military Academy combined with a Drydock doubles ship production, something to keep in mind.
1460AD, and we get our Great Scientist. I want to make sure I can get Democracy by the time the Golden Age ends so I can swap civics freely, and it looks like Lincoln is just about done with Lady Liberty (I actually have no idea, but that's a lot of production to sabotage!). Once the wonder's gone Cathy at the very least will trade with me, so I should be good to go.
Golden Age! We're going to do the usual specialist focus, Caste + Mercantilism + Pacifism. This is the best time to do it, since if we ever get enough Great People for a 3rd GA, we won't have the Parthenon active anymore.
2 turns into the Golden Age, and on the last turn I sold Kublai the rest of Chemistry for some gold and a swap to Mercantilism. It hurts his commerce a bit, but the AI knows how to use specialists, and this helps me by denying the other AIs bonus money from his trade routes (while I still get them, since he's my vassal). And then... I guess he wants something else for that deal. Why not? I want to trade him Liberalism once he gets Military Science so he can use Free Speech to keep his tiles.
Railroad is finished, and with comes probably the biggest decision of the lategame: State Property, or Corporations (and thus Free Market)? We're in a very strong position because of our emphasis on research early on propelled us to a tech lead that led to beelining Assembly Line in 1400AD, but not every game goes according to plan, and sometimes you get to this point and have to weigh what's best. Usually that's SP, and that's what I'm going with here, but I do like corporations and have used those my last couple offline games that got to this point.
It's 1500AD now, and still the Statue of Liberty hasn't been built by anyone. With 4 turns left of the Golden Age, I have to start now on Democracy if I'm to swap to Emancipation on the last turn. It's not the end of the world if I didn't do this-- it's only 1 turn of anarchy-- but there's no reason to wait, either. Unlike most games, where your cottages have reached their final form long ago and any AI city you capture you pave over their suburbs to make industrial parks; about half my cottage tiles still aren't Towns. So Emancipation's doubled speed on those is actually useful, and since most of the civs already had it, we're looking at more Unhappiness (eventually) than is worth fighting. Plus, y'know, Man of the People and all that.
The National Epic finishes in Arretium. Why here, where I clearly don't have the food to run a ton of specialists? Because it has 3 forests, and has a blank tile where a 4th should grow quickly once I Preserve the 2 adjacent to it. That's sadly my best National Park site, and this city will actually be OK on food once I get Biology and State Property (and I can always steal that Corn from Neapolis).
Ah ha, thought so! Well, we were thinking about hitting Alex next anyway (though we'd have to sail around England to get to him, which would suck), he's too backward to really get anything useful from, and there's no way he can stand up to Bismarck's grenadiers. We'll join in, and I'll start making galleons in Rome, it should be able to 1-turn them. We take a -1 "war on our friend" from Cathy (dropping her to Pleased) and Kublai (taking him to... +19 ) and... that's it! Nobody liked the poor dude I guess!
I'd love if this was a troll move by the AI (if this measure passes, I'm stuck at war with Alex, and Bismarck gets a treaty... and Cathy just gave him Judaism a few turns ago), but it's just RNG picking a valid resolution. I'm also really annoyed I can't check anything before voting: if Bismarck took a city, I'd prefer to vote no and force him to commit his forces to Greece; if he didn't I'd vote yes and have that land all to myself. As it is I vote no to try to keep "mutual struggle" points, but I won't be upset if it passes.
The civics I end up leaving the Golden Age in. I figure I'll keep Bureaucracy going for now, and once I get State Property, I'll weigh it against Nationhood (as mentioned above, to get points with Bismarck). With only 2 valid trading partners (Germany and Celtia) it's not worth switching out of Mercantilism. And despite my rant about failgold earlier, I cancel my copper trade to Boudica and start work on the Statue in Rome because there isn't enough money to justify selling tech to the AI.
Turns out I can make an even better deal selling her horses! This is why it pays to check in on your deals periodically. I'm sure she had them before, maybe she lost a border tile or something?
Man, even without the Golden Age benefit that's probably 11 turns to build it in Rome, and since the entire Golden Age came and went I could've done it. 
But I had no way to know; normally on Immortal wonders this late in the game go very quickly. And we checked America's progress on it; is Boston not one of his production cities...?
Hmm, I wonder what she's up to. It'd be hilarious if she's trying to get Bismarck off Alex so she can go get him. Also check out that mid-wink animation.
Pretty much unanimous, only Alex was really opposed (and that's a bug, the game is treating the resolution as though it's a favor to Bismarck, who Alex hates right now; it doesn't factor in that the weaker party might welcome the peacekeeping vote). My galleons are sailing over and I'm building cash for 2 turns to upgrade my army, so this is A-OK with me.
There's Boudica's stack, so confirmation she's going after America. Bismarck has a 10-turn treaty inflicted on him, so he's out. So the only wildcard now is Cathy. I'll send one of my untrained cuirassiers over to Russia and see if I can find where her army is. If it's gathering on the border with Mongolia, I can see it already.
Welp. I bagged 5 caravels, and tipped over to the edge to another Great General, I'd say it was worth it. I go ahead and delete the privateers so nobody gets XP for killing them.
Oooh, look at that! So I begged some gold from Cathy to keep her off my back as I sail into Greece, and she's no longer plotting. That means she was going after Rome! That's pretty wild, she started plotting war the very turn she dropped to Pleased.
Ha ha, the very next turn she pops up with this. Well... I don't like giving her a useful tech, and since Victoria just got Rifling, doing this means they both get Cavalry when they trade with each other (and for Catherine that means Cossacks). On the other hand, this will put her back to Friendly, and remove the threat of her backstabbing me. So I have to do it. The AI just jumped up militarily, though, so it's a good thing I can access infantry!
...you know, we all know Cathy is going to give Military Tradition to Victoria anyway. So I go ahead and sell it to her for that 100 gold pittance, getting the full +4 "fair trade" bonus. We're both in her favorite civic, too. So if all goes well I can get her to Open Borders so I can attack Alex on land with my main army, while a stack of cuirassier sneaks along in the galleons. I also sell Kublai Corporation for the chump change he has now, hoping the extra commerce will help him tech faster. I'd like to get Military Science before Rifling for one simple reason: grenadiers are a lot cheaper to upgrade to than infantry, so I'd like to make at least some praetorians that and save some cash. I'm able to put him in Rep, too, which'll synergize with Mercantilism and make Victoria like him more.
1540AD, and I think it's time to take the plunge into science! 
Boudica has a decent amount of cash and hasn't started on Steam Power, so it'll be a simple trade to get Scientific Method. I'm 1 turn away from Rifling and halfway done on Combustion, there's nothing else to get. A big chunk of my research base is Rome, a now-decent Bureaucracy capitol with a lot of monasteries, and it'll definitely drop. But now I can access Communism and Biology, and the latter will let me run more specialists and gradually make up for it. So for the short term this is going to sting, but now's the time. I'd love to make the deal with Lincoln, but just like before, there's no way to avoid getting penalized from the warmongers for doing it. 
I also trade Kublai Democracy for Military Science, he needs to get out of Emancipation anger.
Quick tip if you don't know: having a fort on a resource counts as hooking it up, and means that once I finish Combustion, we'll instantly get Oil access before needing to build a well. In fact, this tile is unfortunately out of everywhere's crosses, so we'll just leave the fort on it!
And finally, I lay down Military Academies in Rome, Corfinium (closest to the front, can also make boats), and Mediolanum (closest to Russia, good production, needs Culture anyway). And I find out that Military Science doesn't obsolete praetorians, so I could've done this long ago. Ah well, they'll definitely be obsolete next turn once Rifling comes in!
Speaking of Rifling... take a look at what Cathy doesn't have. I don't often pat myself on the back, but I think selling Vicky Military Tradition to prevent this trade worked like a charm. Now we can trade Catherine Rifling (which she'll get anyway as soon as a valid trade pops up) and Military Science (dead-end tech at this point) for Physics, which opens up the middle of the tree. I'm actually going to research Biology first and trade that for Communism (unless Steam Power ends up spreading, then I'll try that), but after that will be Electricity and Radio. I really want Cristo Redentor for drafting shenanigans, and I just got a Great Engineer....
"Unless Steam Power ends up spreading!" I said!
It's been awhile since we've seen a Wonder video! Here's the Pentagon, in case you've never seen this one. 1200 hammers is a lot, but the early Assembly Line was just begging for it. Brundisium already had the Great Wall for Great Spy points, and it's my strongest production site. The main use for it naturally is to get units to level 3 without having to use a civics slot.
Alright, time to ship out. Here's the stack I'm sending, and I'm running my cavalry (most of my cuirassiers, freshly upgraded) south to Boudica's territory since it's closer. Once my galleons drop off this group, they'll head south to pick up the cavalry. By that point I should have more reinforcements in Corfinium, and Alex should be toast.
And I think that's a good note to break on. Before we go, I don't think we've ever taken a close look at Greece, so here you go, courtesy of Bismarck's map. I'm amazed at how Alex seems to have deliberately avoided settling on a river, even though his territory is covered with them. It seems pretty mediocre across the board, really, just a lot of floodplains. He only has 5 cities so I may well end up wiping him out; if I keep enough to have a core position, what's left for him?
So how are we doing? Well, we're absolutely dominating in production, which is to be expected: we have powered factories and nobody else does. We finally slipped into #2 on research (and like I mentioned in the thread, this usually happens if you're not hyper-focused on research because the AI bonuses are so high in the later eras), but that's still great and we may well take back #1 once we get Biology and can run more specialists. Cottage Economy? Specialist Economy? Why not both? Lastly, take a look at the sorry state of trade in the Seas: so many people are at war (or hostile enough to close borders) and/or are in Mercantilism the best Free Market-running civ is barely breaking even.
My cities are still pretty small, thanks to the lack of food resources and unhealthiness caused by our industrial buildup (though between resource trades and Grocers + Aqueducts in almost all cities it's pretty much under control), but they're all contributing, even mediocre sites like Mediolanum. Treveri in particular is impressing, already at 100BPT with none of its cottages fully grown yet and without Electricity to boost its production tiles. It'll be double that once that stuff kicks in and the Observatory is finished. I decided to go West Point + Globe Theater, with the expectation I'll be able to get Cristo Redentor and periodically switch into Nationhood; every time I do I'll draft there. With Barracks + WP + Pentagon its infantry come in with 4XP (9 / 2), if I also switch to Theocracy then they come in at level 3, which is amazing for free units. As for Ironworks, once I saw Athens was a production capital, I decided to put it there if I end up wiping out Alex, or probably Thebes if I vassal him. I want a military center closer to the action and we already built the Heroic Epic.
OK, I think that's it! Looks like we're not going to keep our military edge for as long as I thought, so the game isn't over yet! If Boudica ever decides to finally invade America (how long has she been building up now?) and vassals him she'll be a monster since he has so much of the land Alex "should've" gotten. And then there's Cathy, waiting for the slightest lapse in diplomatic equilibrium to plot war on me.