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Welcome back. Last time, we left off with our merry fleet sailing across the sea to Greece (because we still don't have Open Borders with England), after Bismarck brought us into war against them and then the Apostolic Palace got him out. Now, Alex is no match for us, but there is a wrinkle to consider first:
Catherine is already Friendly with him since he converted. As we discussed in the Mongolian War, this opens up the option for Alexander to peace-vassal to her, turning this "pick on the weak" attack of Bismarck's into a world war between Rome and Mongolia versus Russia / England / Greece. And unlike last time... I'm not going to head that off. We'll check in with Alex every time we take one of his cities. If he surrenders, we'll take it. If he peace-vassals to Catherine... it's on. 
I also see that Bismarck is researching Biology, so I switch to Electricity. I'm expecting a trade slot to open up soon, and if one doesn't, I can always steal it from him, I have 1500 EP accrued already and it's growing every turn.
Here's a good example of how the AIs don't actually know about unrevealed resources. Now that Cathy has Physics and can see Uranium, she suddenly drops a new city down to claim it. Even though she's Creative, this city may well end up flipped, and naturally if she does declare on me this will be one of the first to go.
It's nice that she cares, but I vote no. I expect that to be enough for the measure to fail (Kublai and Alex should vote no as well), but if it goes through that may be for the best, I can regroup and go after America directly or something.
I think there's a rule where my first battle of any war is a loss. 
91% if you were wondering.
Kublai, you little punk! 
Look at how many votes he has, and the margin it "succeeded" by. It's really annoying that they didn't bother programming in the idea you might want a war!
So now I have a choice. I can wait the 10 turns, ships at the ready, and declare on Alex again. The only problem is, I'd get a -1 with everybody else in Judaism (even Bismarck!). I can wait for Boudica to finally go after America... but who knows how long that'll take? Or I could go after Russia and England. I don't normally attack civs if we mutually like each other for roleplay reasons, but fortunately I can attack Victoria, and it just so happens that Catherine will get brought in.... So I'll bring the ships back and split my forces between Mediolanum and Mongolia.
Since I have some turns of peace inflicted on us, I'm going to go ahead and get another Great Prophet, and make the Church of the Nativity in Neapolis (I've already started training missionaries since I'm on Organized Religion), and have it start on Wall Street. A shrine and Wall Street is a big investment, but I don't really have much better to do with those cities, and all my remaining GP will probably come from Antium (1 more Scientist) and Arretium (once the National Park is available and built).
Hmm, I guess maybe Cathy wanted Alex to herself? I can relate to that. 
America, Celtia, and Germany are all valid targets for her as well, and she's been building up forces. Interesting....
Well, that probably narrows it down! "Probably" because a Worst Enemy doesn't actually have any impact itself besides trade modifiers, but AIs are more likely to attack people they hate (as you might expect, heh). I see that Victoria just got Steam Power, so instead of finishing Electricity, I put one turn into Communism and see if that will let me make the trade to Catherine with those techs.
Yep, worked like a charm. And yeah, she was going for Electricity too, and immediately starting on Broadway. That's fine, I'm getting that tech as well next turn and moving on to Radio, and have a Great Engineer to secure Cristo Redentor if she goes Radio as well. I want to put one of the Culture "Hit" wonders in Mediolanum to secure its borders against Russia, but if I have to choose, I want the one that turns me into a Spiritual civ.
Behold, the Roman Worker's Paradise! I actually revolt straight from the box, I already know I can't swap 2 civics because of our challenge, I don't want Free Speech and don't need Nationhood, and I definitely don't want to leave Organized Religion if there's a wonder race on.
If we're not killing him, I at least want his 5 trade routes. An AI has to "cool down" after a war before it Opens Borders again, but this gets him to Cautious, so he'll be willing to do it as soon as that time elapses.
The start of the 17th century, so here's a status report. My 2 armies are in place, with my production centers cranking out infantry (not much point in cavalry since Cathy's cossacks counter them). Boudica is still just plotting! I'll have to go back and see how many turns it's been, but I've never seen AIs dither as long as they have in this game. Most of my reinforcements now are heading to Corfinium, since I'm "declaring" on England, and just defending my sovereign borders against Russia. 
Kublai's stack, on the border with England. I'm gifting him these catapults because they're 170 bucks apiece to upgrade, and I'm hoping that since they already have Accuracy, he'll be smart enough to use them to bombard. Either way, he'll get more use out of 'em than I will. Keep in mind that AIs pay at least half the cost to upgrade as you do, so if he still has these once he gets Steel (probably the next thing I'll trade him), he can turn them into cannons.
...she gave up. 
Well, I guess that explains things! She's still Boudhist, so it's safe to declare on her, and she's a bit closer than Lincoln is. And if you think about it, if I'm going to go after America eventually, her territory is just as close as Alex's would've been. So yeah, let's move both our stacks toward Germany and get ready to invade Celtia. Thanks to State Property any cities we hold aren't going to cost that much, so the fact she's halfway across the map doesn't really mean anything!
Interesting! I think this was intended to get Alex to open up to me (similar to the Kublai trick before), but since Victoria now has Judaism in some of her cities, it should work on her, too. That'll be a nice boost to our commerce, we should be able to get all-foreign trade routes now.
Oh, I'll cancel our deals, all right.... (I renegotiate for now and she just wanted to drop the gold per turn part.)
Fittingly enough, the junior members (civs with the AP religion, but not their state religion) vote no, but since nobody defies, none of us really care what they think. 
Thanks for the money, suckers! I mean, brothers!
So since none of the other AIs have Railroad, it's faster to travel by ship. My plan now is to have the cavalry ride to the German-Celtic border while my land units (all the City Raiders and cannons with machine gunners for stack defense) hop on the galleons. Verlamion is the only coastal beige city, so I plan to have ships bombard the defense and the cavalry take it, while the galleons will drop off next to Tolosa near the American border, and then both can head south until Boudica surrenders. The entire time my reinforcements will be walking to Germany the long way to keep the pressure on.
The good news is Cathy left me free to pursue Radio on my own. The bad news is she's got the bomb! 
...actually a lot of the time AIs don't actually build The Manhattan Project and just use Fission to access Uranium (as it's a high-value strategic resource), but, uh, I'm definitely not going to count on that!
Interesting choice for her favorite civic! And come to think about it, I didn't realize how much of a problem "have to be in X civic" could be as a challenge because you can't get easy brownie points with other civs by agreeing. In any case, because we're stuck in Rep and, well, planning on attacking her; we say no.
Some AI civic swaps, and another missionary success (only 1 failure so far), putting Christianity at 7% global presence. Bismarck going into Free Religion means 2 things: one, I need to gift him a missionary or two in the expectation that he'll spread it on his own just like Pericles did last game, and two, he's suddenly on Cathy's hit list for dropping the shared religion bonus. Instead of going after America, I might see if we can sandwich Germany between Celtic Rome (after the war with Boudica) and Russia.
And it's worse than I thought, he's going to be her worst enemy next turn! 
-4 on spies getting caught, amazing. This game isn't as bad as Master of Orion in that AIs will hate you if you get busted spying on them, but like all demerits they take a long time to go away, and they add up.
Modern era! First time any of our posted games have gotten here, right? My plan after Radio is to save cash for a turn or 2, then go Combustion -> Flight. I do want Refrigeration-- Supermarkets will solve my health needs, and are more cost-effective than Hospitals-- and the naval speed bonus is nice, but those two techs are game-changers. Destroyers? Fighters and Bombers? Paratroopers, since I already have Fascism? You can win the game with that stuff even if the enemy has Infantry.
Oh yeah, go Prosperity Gospel! In Civ 4 not only should you combine Church and State, you should also mix religion and business! If we haven't gone over it yet, the reason being is that Wall Street (like Banks and Markets) doubles gold, not commerce (though if your slider isn't on anything else, it produces gold then). Well, holy shrines produce gold, just like corporation headquarters. So putting Wall Street in a city with passive gold generation means it's always helping, instead of only when your slider is down (which is the normal problem with Banks et al). This is also why I wish I'd been able to get Spiral Minaret, a Temple + Cathedral + Shrine is another 6 gold to multiply (though the Shrine wouldn't apply unless we changed our state religion).
I'm not actually going to go for the Eiffel Tower... as nice as it would be, it'll just culture crush Kublai too much to make him useful. I start on Rock N' Roll in Mediolanum, and Cristo Redentor here. I mentioned I would previously, and here's why: I'm pretty much going to run all Engineers here, because they're the most useful Great Person in the lategame (Scientists don't bulb enough at this point, Artists can't dent developed civ culture, Prophets have nothing else to do, etc.) besides arguably Merchants. They're great to settle, and can rush contested wonders or just save you time on stuff like the Ironworks. So I want the Engineer Great Person points here, and it and 3 Gorges Dam are the remaining wonders that grant those. Besides, Archimedes here can rush it for 700 hammers worth, so I only need to put about 6 turns in.
I rebase some airships zeppelins in Cologne to get an aerial view on Celtia. It looks like she only has the one stack she gave up on attacking America with, all the other cities only have 2-4 riflemen and the like. Unfortunately that stack in Tolosa is probably enough to do some serious damage to my landing group, so I think I'm going to declare once I'm in range, take Verlamion first and wait for that stack to move out to recapture it, and then drop behind their lines. I really want to hit that stack first with my cavalry so I can wipe out that siege before she can hit me first.
Alright, let's do this! There's no way her main stack can hit my cavalry this turn, so I'll move them next door, shell the city's defenses with my warships, then attack both cities next turn (well, directly attack with the horsies; my main army will just get dropped off and attack the turn after that).
We could have, if you hadn't wussed out on those American barbarians next door. 
So before we get to the first battle, take a look at our city now that we just got Oil connected. That -2 Health really sucks, and we don't really need Oil right now. In fact, you don't need Oil to sustain units that "require" it, just to build them in the first place. So what we're going to do is spend 2 turns to build 3 submarines (Rome 1-turns them, it'll take 2 here), then sell/trade it until we can get some more health (probably Refrigeration after Flight).
The Battle of Verlamion. I had a couple lucky rolls; a Cavalry withdraw is only ~50% (30% base plus the chance of winning). But having a City Raider Infantry to take out a Garrison rifle (after the cavalry withdraw on a machine gunner to reduce his strength below the rifleman's) definitely helped. It would've been a bloodbath without the airship support, or if I hadn't been able to save promos for Pinch (every single cavalryman was either Combat 3 at least or got Pinch this turn). I then moved 2 machineguns of my own off my galleons to reinforce, plus an Infantry with 7XP I upgraded to Garrison 2.
Had to rearrange some tiles to get that sub built without starving down. 
Bizarrely, Boudica leaves her stack where it is. Maybe she judged she couldn't do enough damage to either of my squads to justify her losses? In that case I think I'll try leaving at least 1 soldier in Tolosa and see if she moves her stack in to reinforce it, at which point my cannons can beat it down. Or wait, there's only 4 guys in that city! Might as well take it now, right?
Battle of Tolosa (from 1 turn later, after I moved everyone in since her SoD still didn't act). Machineguns are a real problem if you don't have Marines or Artillery; in theory Cavalry with Charge (the anti-siege promotion) are perfect, but how often do you fight stacks with machine gunners, but not riflemen (or infantry for that matter)? I also renamed my Great Generals to be appropriately Roman. 
Uh oh. So yeah, I trade Kublai Physics + Steel for his Biology and cash so I can get him started on Artillery, and figured I'd trade it to Cathy for Fission. And... yeah. So yeah, let's get started on Mass Media after Flight and build the UN and try to get nukes banned, I don't much fancy a Cold War with my fellow Communist superpower.
Next turn the next AP Resident election is up, and it's between me and Cathy now that Bismarck has gone secular. I vote for her; she'd probably win anyway and the +2 to keep her Friendly is essential. She also got Radio that turn, fortunately I'm far enough ahead on the wonders I want there's not much risk of her sniping them.
Hands-down my favorite wonder, just a shame it's so late in the game! Arretium needed a little help from a Great Engineer to get it done, but here we are. Next up is the National Park, and then after Industrialism I can put an Industrial Park here, and run as many Engineers as I can get away with.
Huh, looks like I would've won. Well, that's good to know, now that I'm sure this will be the last AP election since Cathy is due to get Mass Media soon. Bodes well for the UN, at least!
Seems like Boudica's finally made her move. The cavalry in her stack split off to attack me, and the rest seem to be heading to reinforce Vienne. I'll move my reinforcement stack SE so she'll have to attack across the river if she wants to intercept me, and if she doesn't, I'll take that hill the turn after and attack from there the turn after that.
I catch some Celtic Cavs on a presumed pillaging run, and it's a good time to point out that Cavalry-- the ultimate Mounted unit-- aren't immune to first strikes, the way all the rest except War Elephants are. So Drill isn't a bad way of dealing with them.
Another tip: old units can be upgraded to things that can't normally get the promotions they're inheriting. In this case, it's a great way to make machine gunners resistant to cavalry... just in case a certain lady with her army of Cossacks wants to throw down.
We wrap up the turn by using the power of Jesus to swap to Free Speech, and asking Kublai to revolt to it as a favor. And let's be serious, he needs to do it for his own good, it's the only way he's going to hold his borders! He actually accepts, so that's convenient. Next turn I'll swap to Nationhood for a round of drafting, then... well, my expenses actually went down when I switched, so I may be at the point where I've outgrown Bureaucracy. But I can't stay in Free Speech, either, because that'll just leave Mongolia and Rome exactly where we started vis a vis the borders, just x2 on both sides. So I may just bounce between Nationhood + Theocracy and Bureaucracy + Organized Religion, depending on how badly I need units.
Caravels can sail through closed borders, but unfortunately you can't drop off a missionary or dock (I assume a Great Merchant would work, if America had the Temple of Artemis, say). What I'm going to do is sign Open Borders with Lincoln since he's just Cautious with both my vassal and I right now, and then cancel in 10 turns so Cathy can't ask me to sever the tie (which will probably make him not talk the entire rest of the game!). Since he's in Free Religion, I expect him to start spreading Christianity around on his own, but just in case he doesn't, I'm training a few more to drop off while the borders are open.
And get 220 gold in the meantime?! Sign me up!
So it looks like Boudica had the same idea I did vis a vis that hill. This is a tough one. If I move my main army in to attack next turn, and move the reinforcements in as well, the latter group is vulnerable (and it has the wounded General and cavalry from 2 turns ago). If I group them together for safety, I slow the attack by two turns, which is immense in a war like this, against an Aggressive unit-spammer with big cities (and in the back, railroads going up). So what I do is have my cavalry pillage the town all the way down to the road, use their 2nd move to join the rest of the stack SE (an infantry killing that grenadier), then move the backup group SE as well to get cover from the river bend, and with the road gone, there's no way for Boudica to hit them without crossing it. It looks like this at the end:
Look at the cash I got from that town! Makes me really tempted to pillage more! 
I draft 2 more Infantry and then switch back, and take a look at the Eastern front. Uh... Boudica, where are you going? I guess she somehow knows (espionage, maybe?) my cities are minimally defended and my armies are tough, but defending the homefront really should come first.
Oooor she could be moving the army away because she's already given up. Holy cow, what happened this game? Boudica is normally a "worthy foe" type because she's good all-around and one of the few leaders who goes for military techs but isn't a nut about throwing them away in lopsided wars (see: Montezuma). If she'd actually gone after America, she could've been a monster. In fact:
Just two turns ago, when I signed Open Borders, Lincoln was still scared of her. That means his military was smaller than the stack she had on his border and bizarrely decided not to engage with.
Well, the rules say we have to "return" a civ's original capital to them, so I guess the war goes on one more turn so we can take it first. I probably would do the same anyway, it gives us more General XP and more favor points for liberating cities (you want to liberate at least 2, for some reason you get +1 for 1, +3 for 2, +4 for 3, and +6 for 4... or at least that's what Kublai gave us).
Ahh, now that's more like it! She decides to counterattack after all, gets lucky with the initial cannon attack on my machinegun, and wipes the backup stack out. Fortunately I factored in that could happen and moved my wounded City Raider general out. Needless to say she's not talking now. Let's see what happens after I move in on those cities!
By-the-numbers conclusion of the Battle of Vienne. Had to throw in the praetorian kill at the end. She's back to accepting capitulation again, but we're not quite through yet....
And the Battle of Bibracte for her capitol. CR3 is such a huge jump in effectiveness for siege, especially on cannons at this stage of the game. I was fortunate she never made it Assembly Line (remember when I traded her Steam Power last update?), Robert E. Lee could only promote up to a grenadier, so he was easy pickings for my CR3 grenadier in turn.
OK, so how to handle this? Vienne is the best of the cities, but it's her science city. Taking it will limit what research I put her on. And honestly, I have enough science output, production is what I care about now: cranking out paratroopers, aircraft, and artillery (once Kublai finishes it, anyway). And I want an Ironworks city on the east, and while Verlamion Viroconium has a few too many water tiles, it has 2 food sources, 3 hills and Levee access: definitely above-average, and the best of her city sites for it (Bibracte is 1 tile off-river ). So we'll keep the two northern Celtic cities and return the other two.
I try to get her weakest city in the deal to whip some population out and return it for the gratitude points, but she isn't going for it. Ah well. Cap-and-trade time it is! I end up giving her Communism to convert to Judaism, bringing her to Pleased with me and hopefully eventually Friendly with Catherine too. For her part Cathy is no longer plotting, guess she was planning on dogpiling Boudica after all!
And before we go, how about some music? It's that old time Rock 'N Roll, you know, circa 1700 AD? Really old-time! This will pretty much completely cement our southern border with Cathy without having to go into Free Speech ourselves. Now, eventually an AI can build all the culture stuff you can thanks to their production bonuses, and I've actually been in a "bidding war" once where I had a city on one side of an inner lake and Charlemagne was on the other side, and we kept building cathedrals in a passive-aggressive war over the lone food tile between the two (Fish), and in the end Free Speech meant he won so I had to nuke him.
Oh, and one other thing: if a unit hasn't moved in a turn where it's on a ship, make sure to Unload in port instead of walking off. That way the unit in question can take its turn too. In this case we're going to settle in at Stuttgart: it has the lowest EP costs for missions and a fairly small garrison, and we can see that Bismarck is going to get Refrigeration at the same time my 5-turn discount maxes out, which is perfect. It's cheaper than Medicine too, which I can probably trade for more easily.
This'll probably be the penultimate update, we've pulled ahead on score and tech enough that the game is in the bag, we just need to decide how to get there. My thought now is to start training paratroopers, trade or take back our Oil once we steal Refrigeration and build Supermarkets everywhere and use it to make fighters and bombers, and crush America and then Germany. Lincoln has so much land and seems to have prematurely started running culture he'll go a long way toward our Domination goal, and we already know last time he was scared of Boudica. How much more should he-- and the rest of the seas for that matter-- be terrified of Rome? Come back next time and let's find out!