The game had been relatively peaceful between the AI civs up to this point. Aside from the pointless Roman-German War, there had been no fighting that I could see. This was bad, as I desperately wanted to see a bigtime war drag down their research and allow me to catch up. Well, I got my wish as war broke out around 200AD...
Russia declared war on Germany and proceeded to crush them in a matter of some 25 turns. England had begun a war with Rome a bit earlier, around the turn from BC to AD, and was slowly but inexorably crushing their cities one by one. This map from 260AD shows this event in mid-war:
The mini-map shows that Rome and Germany are getting trashed royally by their respective opponents. Meanwhile, I was quitely continuing to develop my cities peacefully and expanding into gaps left by the razing of cities. All of my cities except the one by the gems are now connected under one cultural border. Of course the AI civs ignore that border completely, and I am way too weak to kick them out, but it's the principle that counts. I have big culture pressure on Norwich and Jerusalem, but both continued to resist the appeal of Iroquois culture. At this point in time, I was just about to enter the industrial age; I actually managed it in 330AD. When my Forbidden Palace would complete in 20 some turns, I would have enough commerce to change into a Republic. I had two irons at this point, and both of them were going to England and Japan, leaving none for myself. I controlled 3 luxuries, but I was keeping only one for myself as I could get more money by trading them then it cost to increase the luxury tax. The fact that you can deprive yourself of resources played heavily into my strategy for this game.
This was what the world looked like after the Germans and Romans had been all but destroyed in 470AD:
My power rating remained decent in the histograph, so they may have kept the other civs from attacking. But the key thing here was that Russia became enormously big, and with Moscow in a perfect location in the heart of their civ. I had though that a war between Russia and Germany would be a good thing, but the exact opposite was the case. Now Russia could research techs much faster, and they began leaving everyone except fellow scientific civ Persia in the dust.
This was very bad for me, as I needed to be caught up on tech in order to build the UN and win a diplomatic victory. All I needed to do was stay caught up on tech to win, but that was a major chore with Russia popping out a new tech every 4 turns (or even faster at times, since the AI is not limited by that restriction). Since the industrial age techs were more expensive, I had to pay gold per turn as well as simply luxuries in order to get techs now. My climb up the tech tree was a nerve-racking affair, waiting for one burdensome gpt deal to wear off so I could immediately sign another one for another tech. Sometimes I was able to get a tech at 4th civ price and trade it to England for another tech at 5th civ price, which really helped out. Another thing that helped was when a coal resource moved into my territory around 500AD:
A quick scan of the world map revealed that it was Persia's only source of coal that had moved into my penninsula. This was a great stroke of luck, as I already had my own source of coal, so I could sell Persia back their coal at a very expensive price. I was able to get some more tech by trading this as well.
By this time, I was trading roughly 5 luxuries and 2 strategic resources away, which together were bringing in around 150gpt. That gold per turn was being used for tech deals, so I was constantly broke until I got Wall Street and began keeping my income above 1000g. By 530AD I had a mature and productive civilization, which was slowly becoming the equal of the AI civs through the introduction of steam power for railroads and electricity so I could finally irrigate my cities.
