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Welcome back. Last time we left off with Cappin' Celtia, and Boudica's surrender has basically secured us the game. Once you get to a winning position in a 4X (whether that's points, population/votes like in MOO, military strength, etc.), you should take stock and decide "What do I need to do to put this game away?" and "What could happen to make me lose?" In Civ4, the answer to the latter question can only be: an enemy wins culture, an enemy blasts off to Alpha Centauri, or an enemy beats you. Well, like we saw last time, only Lincoln seems to be going culture (and half-heartedly at that, nothing to even 10k yet), and nobody has the Apollo Program. So we only need to be worried militarily, and now that we have a buffer against England, and a vassal in the East, the only risk is Cathy to our south. So we'll secure Mediolanum, and move all our offensive forces to get ready to deal with America.
First, let's invest in true evil: music copyright law! Yes, we're going to sell our Hit Singles for GPT. So far only our vassals have the cash for it, but once the deals from last session expire I'll probably cancel some things to free up their gold and trade Singles to other civs as well. You only need 1 copy for yourself, after all. And we have plenty of happiness in any case, Health is a much bigger issue.
Here's another little trick you might not know about. If units on a ship are on a tile with a valid place to move to (like a city or fort, or in this case, another transport ship), they'll have a Load/Unload command. This means you can daisy-chain ships together to transport a large group of units in the same turn. Stuff like this is a pretty silly way of abusing the abstract nature of a turn-based system, so I don't use it for military or anything crucial like that, but for shaving a few turns off missionary work, why not? Especially since the game caps you at only 3 out at a time anyway for some reason.
I think you have this backwards, you're my vassal, I get techs from you! I actually agree, it would've been part of an unfair trade anyway and I do want to get her to Friendly. The extra commerce should help her tech faster, too.
Viroconium comes out of revolt, and... man, I have the Cristo Redentor, it'd be great to go into Slavery for a turn and whip out that starvation! But thanks to Sistine those specialists will get me a border pop next turn, and that'll add enough food. The only annoying thing is having to rebuild all that infrastructure, I'm going to want a Factory + Power too to help get the Ironworks done faster. Or actually....
Antium was going to produce my next Great Person (another Scientist), but I take 2 off there and add 2 Engineers here to get this one first. Then I'll Airlift him to Viroconium and rush-build Ironworks. Time is more important than Great People to me right now!
I re-based a bunch of airships to scan all of America in one turn. Here's Lincoln's stack, and a list of everything he's got. Paratroopers are going to be complete overkill. 
Oh, have I got a deal for you, my friend.... Needless to say I disagree!
Cathy, what are you doing?! 
What a jerk move to your own vassal like that! I don't think I can get points on this vote, so I go ahead and vote yes, making Victoria weaker is all to the good, and losing this land might tempt her to break away from Russia.
Successful steal on the first try, always nice! If that 65% seems lower than usual, it's because now that everybody has Democracy, they have Security Centers in every city, which counts as having a defensive spy (reduces odds to succeed and raises EP required to even try). Cathy finished the Eiffel Tower, which gives a free Broadcast Tower in every city. That's immense culture pressure, so I'm probably going to spread all the religions I have access to in Mediolanum and build all the cathedrals there. That still may not be enough due to her having multiple cities nearby, but only one is close, so we'll see.
I'm really surprised Victoria didn't Defy that, surely the happiness hit from a minority religion wouldn't have been worse than losing an entire city? But then it had to have at least 50% Greek culture, so it might've not been working many tiles to begin with. AIs do defy resolutions, usually against stuff like moving them out of their favorite civics in the UN.
You can only Airlift from a city once per turn, and to a city once (unless the target city also has an Airport). You can't target neutral civs' cities, but vassals are fair game, so I just drop paratroopers one each into her towns, and have them regroup near the American border. My plan is simple: once I get Artillery from Kublai, spend 1 turn building wealth, upgrade all my cannons next turn, then roll in the turn after that (and in the meantime I'll upgrade my galleons to transports and hit America from the north at the same time). Lincoln is backwards enough I shouldn't have any problems, but I want to minimize the chances he can complicate anything by putting him away as quickly as possible.
I also switch EP to Catherine. She's the only threat left, and having a city so close gives me an idea: I can spread Christianity to it and then make it my target city to swap her out of Free Speech (and steal techs once I bank enough EP, which'll take a long time). Using spies to induce a civics change doesn't cause anarchy, but if the AI wants to change back, then that does.
Victoria pops up, and before I ignore her again, I take a look at why she's still Annoyed. She hasn't forgotten a single negative point the entire game.* Like I said before: good luck in war, bad luck in diplomacy! I mean, I'll take it, don't get me wrong, but still!
* Actually, she has gone from -4 to -2 on "traded with worst enemies."
It's 1725, and we're mobilizing to deal with America as rapidly as possible. As soon as we finish the Supermarkets and Airports, we cancel the Oil deal to Bismarck, upgrade our ships (and make a few new ones, like 2 aircraft carriers in Rome) and train some fighters and bombers everywhere, and base them all in Celtia or Greece on the border.
The plan is to use the carriers and a transport or 2 with marines to take Houston, the main stack taking Atlanta, paratroopers taking San Francisco, and Boudica ordered to target Chicago. Since we're bringing artillery along and relying on 1-movers anyway, we'll leave all the cavalry on riot suppression duty. Mounted units are better than infantry anyway at that, and they won't be any use in Mediolanum to protect against Russia because of her cossacks. Lastly, you can see I'm researching Mass Media. I want to control the UN and build Broadcast Towers anywhere I'm actually challenged by culture, and that's worth obsoleting Jewish Temples' +2 hammers.
This pic is actually from about 20 turns later, by the way, and you can see I still have a significant revolt risk.
All that effort to get Kublai to retake his tiles so he can work that commerce again... and he has his workers tear it down to build a workshop. 
This is one of the most infamous problems with automated workers: they take their cues from the city governor if they're in a city's cross, and the AI is hamstrung by its bad habits. For example, I'm pretty sure Kublai is building Research here, which makes the city prioritize production, so his workers are obliging. Then if he wants growth, they'll switch it to a farm (as you can see just north, where he's plowed over watermills and farmed them instead). And sometimes it seems they just change tiles for the sake of changing things!
Cathy just got Mass Media (she doesn't say "We have our reasons," but then she probably won't since she's only effectively Pleased with me and thus not trading monopoly techs), and is plotting. Lincoln is her worst enemy, but I'm her neighbor, and she plotted on Rome before. I'll fly our airships back and see if I can find her stack in a few turns.
Oh yeah, it could be Germany! Once Bismarck went secular, Cathy's resentment over his clumsy espionage efforts really took over. She hates Abe a bit more thanks to peace weight, but Bismarck is her neighbor too and she's Annoyed with both. If she declares on Germany before I move on America, I'll have a decision to make: double-team him or backstab Cathy, because she'll probably win that war if I don't do anything.
Imhotep is born and we fly him over to Viroconium, he'll insta-build the Ironworks there next turn. And when I hit "next turn"....
Interesting! Defensive pacts do what they suggest: if a rival civ declares war on one of you, he declares on both. Your military power together isn't exactly combined, at least as I understand it; but the fact you have someone watching your back is factored in. Here's a wrinkle, though: nothing keeps you from backstabbing your "ally" in the pact! It doesn't even set up a 10-turn treaty between the two of you like you might think. Regardless, we're both plotting war, so this agreement is meaningless (it expires if either of you declare on someone else), but it gives free diplomacy points, and I think it might apply to my vassals, too, so I agree.
It doesn't, so it doesn't really change the diplo situation anyway; I'll never get Cathy back to Friendly thanks to my vassals. She's been adding to her stack in Canterbury, and it's not moving, so my first thought is she's going to attack me through Mongolia. But it's also possible she's just grouping there because that city is "the front," and she'll move out later. In any case, 30 cossacks is serious business! Good news, though: 1300 bucks a turn is pretty good, and I should only need to run cash for 2* turns to upgrade everything (including some grenadiers to infantry and such).
* It ends up being 3 turns, I forgot how much it costs to upgrade cannons to artillery, when trebs to cannons are much cheaper.
At last Arretium has achieved its final form. There are definitely better Heroic Epic cities, but if you want Engineers, it's hard to beat Factory + (Industrial) Park + (National) Park. Tons of pollution, but you wipe out everything from population, so it's no risk anyway. You can even get power to one of these cities with hydro/nuclear later, but nuclear plants are awful so I'd recommend doing this on a river site, or else making 3 Gorges Dam nearby.
I don't think I've shown my trade screen yet, here's what's going on, with the new deal with Bismarck after I took my Oil back, and right before I cancel with Lincoln. I then check in on the tech situation and see that Catherine has some cash, so in honor of our new Defensive Pact I beg 100 to upgrade another cannon. Still plotting, so she's not going after me (this isn't guaranteed, AIs will wait out the 10-turn treaty if they hate you enough, but it's rare). This means Operation Shock & Awe is pretty much good-to-go, so I'll move out after I upgrade my ships next turn.
I decide to put the Three Gorges Dam* in Cumae: it's a river city with decent production, and it has the farmland to grow twice by the time the tech is in and we get our next Great Engineer in Arretium. The amount of production a GE rushes is based on the population of the city in question, so if you're planning something like this ahead of time, grow that city big first! That also means fighting unhealthiness, since that slows down growth, so it'll build Public Transportation next while we're researching Plastics.
* I end up putting 2 turns on it before dropping the idea. 1700 hammers or whatever isn't worth +2 Health in my cities (what it amounts to since most already have coal plants). I'll revisit the idea when I get another Great Engineer, it is still useful in saving you from building power plants in captured cities.
The fleet moves out. The marines will take Houston and the rest will be dropped off at Seattle. The carriers will follow, since fighters can be re-based onto them at any range. If you have a tech advantage like this at the Modern era, it pays to take multiple cities immediately and force a capitulation ASAP. Techs get more expensive and the AIs finally start to diverge their paths (they sync back up again at the end of the space race, but that takes a long time), so they can bribe in allies easily and buy units rapidly with Universal Suffrage. If anyone had been at war (or plotting) they'll probably have a large army lying around too, so Lincoln is a great choice because he'd never built up military and is too peaceful to stack large garrisons, so he doesn't have reserves, either.
I see that Alex has some cash, so when I go to sell him Divine Right, I see that he's plotting! And he gives me a "You must be joking" response to Catherine, which I've never seen before*, normally it's "We're afraid of their military might." In any case he's almost certainly plotting on Lincoln, so I might have a nice lil' war buddy for the ~3 turns this war lasts!
* It's because of our Defensive Pact, I'd be asking Alex to declare war on me! Didn't think about that until the editing pass!
Alright, it's time. Only some of our transports will be in range this turn, but that's fine, the rest will be dropping the troops off next turn anyway. Time for the multi-front attack to begin, let's see how quickly we can put America away!
Always love cross-era armies, just imagine Age of Sail frigates "escorting" modern transports behind a screen of U-boat style submarines. This drops all the cultural defense, so we send in some fighters to soften up the defenders, then the marines storm in. Result:
A loss at 98.2%. What did you expect? 
But another Great General is nice, have to think about where to put the next Military Academy....
Next, paradropping into the corner. Pillaging camps and forest preserves only gives chump change, so I'm dropping everybody onto the hill. If he'd had towns and windmills and stuff, I'd spread them out and pillage everything (paratroopers can't attack after dropping, but can move and pillage). If you do do that, don't forget gunpowder units can get Guerilla and Woodsman, and L2 paratroopers can drop behind a hill and trees and then cross them and still attack next turn. After that, my main stack moves toward Atlanta.
Well now, looks like America and Germany are uniting to take on Italy! "Optimal" play would've involved trying to beg a temporary treaty from Bismarck while he's still Pleased with me, but like I said before, we're going to let the chips fall where they may. What's interesting is that this will make Lincoln less likely to capitulate, because that'll mean going to war against Germany. So I'm going to start making more reinforcements because this campaign may take awhile!
So with a world war breaking out, how about that United Nations...? It's a good thing I built it, I imagine Catherine would be #2 in population.
At 6% odds, the National Epic's 1 Artist point inflicts Shakespeare on the war-torn land. There's really not much for a late-game Great Artist to do. We stole the Mausoleum for Boudica, so if I thought there was a reasonable chance of getting 2 more Great People before the game was over, I'd save him for that, but... there's not, unless I switch to Pacifism. I'll probably airlift him to some big American city and use it to get culture and suppress the revolt.
Another city, another loss (96%)! The awesome thing about Paratroopers is how quickly they can leapfrog from city-to-city, without having to 1-tile crawl through enemy culture. If you have the bombers to tear down city defense and soften up defenders, they can win all by themselves. Watch out for Protective civs, though: Infantry inflict a 25% debuff on your paratroopers and those free promotions can give them strong odds even at 50% health (the hardest a bomber can hurt a unit for).
I queue up a bunch of military to be done in 3 turns, and for the cities that work faster than that, they'll build something else this turn and then switch next turn (Rome will 2-turn a battleship, for example). On that 3rd turn, before they finish, I'll switch to Nationhood + Theocracy again for the XP and draft some infantry as well.
Look at Boudica, moving a respectable stack in exactly where I suggested! Brings a little tear to your eye when the AI actually does what they're "supposed" to.
Don't worry, I'll check the odds on losing a transport (Str 16) to a frigate (all his are C1, so 8.8). For now I just want to call your attention to a fancy, oil-burning chariot that's all the rage in Rome these days....
Wow, Cathy doesn't have the population I thought she did! In any case this is an easy win for Caesar. No need to ban nukes yet, we'll have to think about what resolutions to put forward. 1.3% odds, by the way.
My transports fan out and wipe out the sailing ships, getting the 3 at 4 XP to 5 and access to Navigation. When you have to cross the entire sea to move reinforcements, every speed point is appreciated. No time like the present, so I use my Ships of the Line to blast the rest of the culture down, weaken the defenders with the air support in Teurnia, and then move in after some artillery. The resulting picture didn't save properly, but no losses is the important thing. Using cannons or artillery against enemy catapults or trebs is a great way to try to get your siege to 10 XP. I move some machine gunners in to fortify the city, and promote the last infantry that moved in to Garrison 1.
Seattle likewise falls without incident. You gotta love "artillery withdrew from combat with a longbowman"! But before we check on how Lincoln feels about this war, we had an "enemy close" warning....
But I thought pikemen countered mounted units! 
I end up losing an infantry to take the trio out, and the pikeman does end up killing the cuirassier. 
Lincoln is willing to surrender, by the way, but we're going to at least want to take out Boston. The Statue of Liberty is one reason, but here's the other:
Abe is running culture, which is why his teching has slowed so much. Vassals can and do win non-military victories like culture and space (in fact, most peace-vassals are guys like Pacal and Mansa who get shafted on territory in the expansion phase or in war, vassal to someone big, then try to win culture), so check the possibility of that before you accept that civ as a vassal state. In this case, we want to take at least one of his 3 Legendary-bound cities, so we can see if those are the only ones he has or not. Now, we'll probably win Domination before that could be an issue in this game, but it's something to think about when you play.
Cathy is only Pleased with us and that'll never change for the rest of the game thanks to our vassals (well, it can go further down, I guess ), so I refuse. No sense getting her closer to tanks for absolutely no benefit to me!
She did it! 
Boudica taking American cities means I can't Liberate them, but that's fine, they'll both be my vassals soon enough and Lincoln won't contribute much research if he keeps going culture. I paradrop to Chicago as well, and we'll also move some aircraft in and try to drop into Boston next.
I didn't see any galleons, so Bismarck must've brought these guys from the East. Possibly from Stuttgart, remnants from the war with Greece? My marine takes one easily and I'll draft there when I switch civics at the end of the turn to secure the city.
Wow, I was sure Cathy was going to beat me to this one. Guess Immortal AI bonuses aren't quite enough to overcome powered Factories if you have them and they don't! I would've rather had the gold, honestly, but with Bismarck cutting off some happiness resources, Hit Movies are welcome. It also helps keep my culture strong in a city pressed on multiple sides by Mongol cities running Free Speech.
Looks like Bismarck had had his stack on the Russian border, and is bringing it back now. I'm going to order Boudica to attack Munich (his city on her southern border)-- not because I plan on her taking it, but to move her army back to protect her cities against it. AIs aren't smart enough to react to troop movements at a distance like this, even if she had scouted it out, so that's the only move I can think of to get her to help herself instead of slogging through American culture. And since I still have some city sight on Bismarck thanks to espionage, I see Stuttgart only has a single cavalry defending it... and they don't get defense bonuses! So I load up some marines and head that way.
Another reason to send Boudica back: I don't quite have the paratroopers to take Boston in one turn, so I don't want her sniping it. I also tested 2 things: one, increasing a bomber's Combat does seem to increase its collateral damage, and 2, testing pillaging. Kind of interesting that both Towns gave full value (and more than what the Celtic towns gave me), but pillaging further was just the minimum amount. The 2nd Town was near Washington, since I have to give it back anyway, why not get a little gold first?
Another city down, this one rolling back the blue wave so Boudica can get out sooner. And since that was one of Lincoln's top 3 cities, let's see how the victory conditions look....
Yep, that was it, he only had the 3 eggs in his basket. So once we take Washington we're safe to cap him, as long as we keep Boston. I kill about half Washington's many defenders this turn, and then assign those new specialists. It adds up to over 100 beakers, nice!
Argh, Bismarck got a rifle here after all! 
Not a big deal thanks to how powerful Marines are and the fact this guy hasn't had a chance to promote or fortify, but still annoying. The fighters bruise them enough I kill both with no problems, though.
We're prompted for the first resolution. This is why I rushed getting the UN to the point of putting it in Rome (where I had the +50% Bureaucracy bonus): to keep anyone from passing a "peacekeeping" resolution to shut our wars down, or mandating a civic that'd either break our challenge rules (like Universal Suffrage) or ruin our economy (Environmentalism). The Manhattan Project still isn't built, and banning nukes will keep anyone from building it, while Cathy might Defy once she has it. So I'll do that one first. Nukes are game-winners in the PC's hands, but I'd rather win conventionally.
On Lincoln's turn, he threw his entire stack in Washington at ours, actually inflicting a few losses and getting himself a General. This will slow our offense down another turn, which is OK; that'll give my northern stack (the one from the transports if you forgot) a chance to take New York, which I can return later for the diplo bonus. At least I didn't lose any of my Great Generals! This really shows how powerful an early tech to Steel can be: cannons are so strong that even as behind and outnumbered as Lincoln is, he can still inflict losses by throwing them at my stack. You really need machineguns and artillery to protect a stack from cannons, even though they're "weaker" than infantry or marines.
Heck of a USO tour, William Shakespeare performing for the Roman 1st Airborne. Boston is a great city to get out of revolt, and with all the land south cleared, I can actually work those tiles I just accessed. I can also get those captured workers (and the ones in Celtia currently just building railroads) here to change improvements to be better for State Property.
It's time to make another deal with our vassal. It's easy to control their civics (trades like this is the easy way, but since they can't kill your spies, you can force-swap them with espionage too), and Organized Religion would also put him back in Judaism. But we're no longer Friendly with Catherine, and that's the only reason to get him to switch back to a state religion. So I just take his cash. I'd consider State Property, but as long as he's paving over his Towns, he probably needs the commerce from trade to tech worth anything.
Go figure, America doesn't want to shut down the arms race. 
I can see Boudica and Alex, as war-mongers, going against it, but the only one with Fission is Catherine, who agreed. I have no idea.
The Battle of New York. Pretty uneventful, since artillery is so powerful. Abe put his cannons to good use in Washington, but he was just too far behind. It's a good example of how to deal with an AI across the map from you running culture: tech up to something they can't handle, and then smash them ASAP before they can put all that commerce to work teching up something to counter you.
And the Battle of Washington. The only loss was trying to get a wounded artillery some XP. 77%, hey, at least it didn't get me on one of the 99%s! So now we need to divide up America. Assuming Abe is willing to throw in a city, we'll liberate Washington and everything north of it, give San Francisco in the corner to Boudica, and keep Boston Gordion and Atlanta Agrippina. I want to keep Houston for the overseas trade bonus, but its Forge was destroyed, and without access to Slavery courtesy of our challenge, it'll take forever to do anything useful with it. So we'll give it back too.
Yep, Lincoln is willing to hand over Portland. ...you know what? We'll keep it and put some workshops there, and he bunched his cities so close we'll have most of Washington's tiles anyway! We'll rename San Francisco to-- heh, a lot of the Celtic names are Latin-sounding, fittingly enough-- Sinigaglia, and give it to Boudica, then give some of the American cities back. Here's how our land partitioning looks:
If you can manage to get that kind of a tech advantage over a foe, definitely consider putting most of your production into military and putting it to use taking them out. We were already most likely to win before the war, but now victory isn't in doubt.
With America lacking a 3rd culture city, and nobody else popping up on the list to replace him, there's no threat from culture. We're the tech leader, so no chance of somebody beating us to space. Taking Germany should be enough land to get us to Domination, so next time, let's do just that! We'll have a review of the game and a discuss about tech trading and the "breakpoints" in the game that I want to point out next time. Oh, and one last thing:
No more culture!