In 1070AD, I had finally reached the Modern Age. This meant that I could finally see what modern techs the other civs had researched whereas before I was only able to see industrial era techs. To my shock, I found that they had researched nothing beyond Rocketry, the tech that scientific civs usually get for free when entering the modern age. It appeared as though the war I triggered, combined with the more expensive nature of modern era techs, had truly shut down their research. This was amazingly good news; with all civs (except Russia) gracious with me I had only to wait until Fission was researched and build the UN to earn a victory.
By this time I had also been able to turn my earlier defensive panic into a limited offensive. Since I had no oil and no money to buy it from other civs, my best attacking unit was therefore the marine. Yes, I got Amphibious Warfare by trading Flight to Egypt, who had been behind on tech. No one should ignore the valuable assets that marines can offer: the ability to assault from sea allows them to ignore city defensive bonuses, which makes taking cities of size 12+ immensely easier. Marines are almost as good as tanks in this regard. Therefore, I planned a daring assault on Novgorod, Russia's coastal city that had stolen the horses from me so long ago, using marines to attack from the sea. Since I had no oil, my best transport unit was the galleon, which I'm ashamed to admit I used to carry out this project.
After bombarding Novgorod heavily with artillery, I assaulted it with my marines. The first one died, but the last three won against weakened infantry and allowed me to take the city. Here was my first captured city, in 1090AD! And, more importantly, I finally had horses under my control, which = Mounted Warriors. I suppose I could have traded for horses earlier, but I honestly did not have the money to spare for them. I rushed two Mounted Warriors on that turn, and sent them into battle against a weakened target the next turn. One died, but the second, against a 1hp infantry, produced this message: "Our great civilization has entered into a Golden Age!" Sweet! My income and production went through the roof, sending me from 50gpt income to 287gpt! Salamanca went to 120 shields of production too! This was the map in 1100AD, the year that the tide finally turned:
At this point in time I was building scientific improvements like libraries and universities in my cities because Fission STILL hadn't been discovered and I was getting ready to research it. Of course the Japanese discovered it on the very next turn. You can see in the south that Norwich has finally flipped to me, unfortunately after it would have really helped me. I also razed Vladivostok and thus finally had a continuous route through my territory to Akwesasne, which had been completely vulnerable the whole time but was never attacked by Russia (?) The formerly German, now Russian, city of Bonn would be razed a few turns later as well, giving me control over the whole bay to my west. It had finally become an Iroquois lake.
With my civ in a golden age and Salamanca pumping 120 shields per turn, I had no fear of losing the UN. It was on pace to take 8 turns to build, but I was able to shorten that to 6 by mining several irrigated tiles and starving the city. Unfortunately I lost one turn when the Russians landed a tank onto one of the city's mined hills, which kicked my worker off the tile. I should have set up a worker blockade of the shoreline. It hardly mattered though. In 1190AD, the UN was finished on schedule as expected. None of the other cities were even close to it, as I found by diplomatic investigation.
Only one obstacle remained to be overcome: the vote. Would someone else steal victory out from under me? Not likely with all other civs gracious with me, but I gave out a good 500g present to everyone else the turn before anyway just to be safe. This was the result...
