I'll start with the map of how things looked for my five cities at the 500AD mark:
This picture has been lost.Perhaps the first thing that should be pointed out is that my cities are all size 12 or on the doorstep of reaching that level; most of that was due to merging workers into them when their growth was otherwise stunted at size 7. Obviously the faster each city could max out in size, the better the player was likely to do and the stronger their civ overall would be. Naturally all of my cities were working on Ansars at this point for the great crusade, except for Cairo which is still prebuilding for Sistine's. I'll discover Theology with plenty of time to swap from the palace prebuild to the actual wonder. No other wonders were in play at this point because Egypt had gotten a leader while fighting Rome and rushed Sun Tzu's in Elephantine. Also notice that the Ottoman capital has been captured and they have been reduced to two small cities in the south. I'm sure that things played out differently in some of the other games, heh.
I was also gathering Ansars just outside the Egyptian cultural borders in the north for a decapitation strike on Thebes. On the turn of declaring war they could move three spaces onto a mountain tile, and then strike the capital itself on the second turn of the war. I just needed to make sure that I brought along enough units to do the job. I figured that I had enough in 530AD and declared WAR, doing so with no deals broken and no units in Egyptian territory (still a dastardly act, of course). Thebes represented a particularly interesting target because it had the Hanging Gardens and was the only non-Arab city on the F11 cities list. On the second turn of the war, 16 Ansars sallied forth against Thebes and after a bloddy battle burned the ancient city to the ground!
It was a great victory for me; Cairo jumped onto the last Top Five cities spot, and I would never relinquish any of the spots again. On the way home, my surviving Ansars razed Heliopolis. A few turns later, Byblos was razed to ensure the safety of my horses resource (in the third-ring cultral expansion around Baghdad). Pompeii (Egyptian city) and Giza were razed as well before war weariness forced me to make peace in 600AD. It had been an extremely successful war, except that I did not pop any leaders - which had been my top goal in the first place. At least I was doing better than the English though; a pop-up message in 590AD told me that they had been destroyed! What was happening over on the other continent?!
The peace was not to last long. On the very next turn, Osman tried to sneak-attack me with a piddly two archers. So be it; he had chosen unwisely. In the short war that followed, I milked the few Ottoman units for all that they were worth, trying to get a leader, but had no luck again. I razed Uskudar to the ground and left the Ottomans alive with one city left, in case I wanted to try and get their freebie scientific tech later in the game upon entering a new age.
I had discovered Education in 640AD, and my cities got to work right away on building universities. Most of the cities had them finished by 750AD, except of course for faithful Cairo and Baghdad, both of which were building for wonders (Sistine and Copernicus, respectively). I met France in 700AD, trading for Joanie's world map and nothing else. France was behind in tech, but it didn't take a genius to see that they would become my future rival, with their own island and the civs on mine smashed to pieces by warfare. I held off on trading Joan anything; the longer it took her to get started on wonders, the better. I discovered Astronomy in 740AD and swapped Baghdad over to Copernicus, timed to complete on the exact same turn as Sistine's in Cairo with a little management (no way is the cascade going to cost me a high-culture wonder!) Damascus went onto a palace prebuild for another wonder instantly. Mecca and Medina, still leading in culture, had no need to work on wonders and so busied themselves with units and city improvements.
Egypt finally killed off the Ottomans in 750AD; I wasn't exactly eager to step in and prevent the civ which had given me a black diplomatic reputation from extinction. On the same turn, I asked the Romans to leave my territory to stop an obvious sneak-attack and they declared war. Here we go again; time for more leader-fishing. The map in 750AD:
As you might be able to tell from the map, I was more than prepared for a conflict with Rome. On the first turn of the war I razed Hispalis and Neapolis, clearing up yet more space around my borders. Lugdunum was razed as well in 790AD; since I had no desire to attack Rome's core, I made peace then for nothing (Rome had nothing to give me). I continued to have no leader luck; another 5-10 elite victories had resulted in nothing. Well, I'm bound to get lucky sooner or later as long as I keep fighting... In 780AD Cairo became the last of my five cities to hit 1000 culture and expand out to level 4 cultural borders. For comparison purposes, Paris had 969 culture at the time - but Cairo was about to complete a six cuture/turn wonder. With my razing all of the cities on my borders, my own cultural boundaries had been pushed far out. In fact, I now owned 239 tiles with just five cities, an amazing average of 48 tiles for each one! A wee bit more than the usual 21 tiles each.
Invention unfortunately was discovered by France in 820AD. This was quite bad, because I was only 6 turns away from simultaneously building Sistine and Copernicus, which would have killed the cascade completely. Now if I just had had a leader here to rush Leo's... Instead, I swapped Damascus over to Leo's and began researching Music Theory. I would research the tech up until I had one turn remaining, then stop without discovering it. If no one else researched Music Theory, I would take Leo's in Damascus and kill the cascade. If they did discover it, I would swap over to Bach's and take the higher culture wonder instead. Got all that?
Things went as scheduled with the first two wonders that I had been prebuilding forever, getting them both in 880AD:
Cairo immediately rushed a university on the next turn with the income I had saved up, then went on a palace prebuild for yet another wonder. It needed it, since it was still the last place city on my F5 cultural list. The cascade for Sistine's and Copernicus went to Leo's as I had expected it would. Damascus had the wonder due in 14 turns, although I still held out hope that a leader might appear and get it for me sooner. I traded Astronomy to France in 900AD for Gunpowder and was pleased to notice that I had ample saltpeter supplies, though since I was #2 in land area behind only France, I had better not be having any resource issues!
The next century went by largely uneventufully. The other civs stayed out of my borders and didn't give me any real reason to declare war, so I stayed at peace with them. I inched ever closer to the next wonder turn by turn, hoping to snap the cascade. But it was not to be; France researched Music Theory in 970AD, thus prolonging the trickle of AI wonder shields. Well that settled it; the cascade was going to end sooner or later since the AI civs had been prebuilding since Sistine's first appeared. I would take Bach's in Damascus and let someone else get the low-culture Leo's and end the cascade, after which I would get all the other wonders. As expected, Bach's finished in Damascus in 1010AD; here was the situation at the time:
Cairo was back onto a prebuild, getting ready to swap to Magellan's once I discovered Navigation; that tech was another case where I would delay the tech if no other AI civs had researched it to kill the wonder cascade. Finally, Egypt built Leo's in 1050AD, ending the cascade (hooray!) But no, what's this? France starts work on Smith's in Paris? ARRGHH! They discovered Economics THIS TURN and swapped over to a new wonder! This is NOT fair at all. How monumentally unlucky is that, huh? I was extremely unhappy at the time, quitting out of the game in disgust (after saving, of course). You spend so much time trying to manage the cascade, only to have a single lousy turn wreck it all. Not fun.
But in reality things weren't that bad at all. On the very next turn in 1060AD, Paris completed Smith's and ended the wonder cascade for good. Wow, I was certainly surprised; who would have though that the Egypt and France were so close together on their incredibly long-running wonder builds? This was very good news for me; sure, I had missed out on another wonder, but Smith's was only 3 culture/turn anyway. The path was now clear for me to get every remaining wonder in the game as long as my execution was good and I didn't make any mistakes. Things were looking good, now if I could just land Shakespeare and Newton's in my low-culture cities, the game would be mine.
