In the last couple pictures, I showed how I was running a windmill economy in several of my poorer cities, and leaning heavily on a maritime economy in some of the others. As far as events were going, I was just cruising through the tech tree hoping that I wouldn't be attacked by anyone. I get a Great Merchant in 1834 and send him off to London again to pay for infantry upgrades and more deficit research. The total amount ended up being 1900g this time, not bad at all. Then I generate another Great Merchant in 1850, who I hold onto in the hopes of triggering a later golden age. Things are very quiet.
Too quiet...
Salading declares war! 
This could be trouble. I know he's coming for Coal Town, there's really nowhere else he could strike. Well, Saladin can also reach Calix in the north, but that's definitely a secondary target. Let's take a look at the area that's going to serve as the front in this upcoming war:
The only thing that I see on the first turn is a solitary catapult, so nothing scary - yet. Coal Town is built directly on the coal, so the only thing I have to worry about is holding onto the city itself. I've got several infantry heading south from Etruscan into the area to pile into the city and deal with whatever Saladin scrounges up. Notice also the health bar on the Guerilla II infantry standing on the forested hill tile - wow! Combat strength of almost 50, if I've done the math right. He will guard that mountain pass and ensure that the Arab units must pass by Coal Town before advancing any further.
Why is Coal Town so important? Well, aside from the obvious fact that it controls my supply of coal, that little isthmus there on which it sits is the only path between the east and west parts of the map. Yes, due to the weird geography of this Highlands map, this little stretch of land is the only route between Mao's lands and Saladin/Alex's territories. As such, I can expect to see the full force of the enemy attacks here. Great.
All of the other civs wanted too much to declare war on Saladin, so I decided I would try to ride out the war solo for now. Let's see what Saladin has incoming on the next turn in 1858AD:
OK, this is more like what I expected. Four cavs, a cannon, and some older junk accompanying the others. At the same time, a minor stack of two cavs appear in the north outside Calix. I shuffle units and end up with 5 infantry in Coal Town, 3 infantry in Calix. Both should be able to handle the first wave, but I may be in trouble after that. Hopefully Saladin will simply throw his stack at Coal Town and impale his units on its defenses.
I advance to the next turn... Saladin does not attack, instead stops to bombard the defenses with his cat/cannon combo while bringing up more forces from the rear. That's not good; Soren's AI has gotten a lot smarter than it was back in the day. I'm not sure I can handle this myself, so I see what my allies are thinking. Mao won't enter the fighting (drat!) but Caesar will for a tech. Trade him Medicine for a war declaration, and pick up Military Tradition on the cheap in the exchange:
OK, got one ally now. 
Caesar has a city in Saladin's back lines (a captured barb town), so I hope that the two of them will duke it out over that and leave me alone. Things are definitely starting to heat up now over at Coal Town.
Between turns diasaster strikes - Alex declares war on me too! The Jewish coalition is out to destroy me! This is NOT good. Coal Town gets hammered too on the interturn:
Seven units attack between turns and are all killed with no losses. My Guerilla II infantry on the hill survived at least three or four attacks and promoted! You can see him highlighted in the shot above; he's got Combat I and II (and a useless City Garrison promotion) in addition to the extra hill defense. My infantry then sallies out of Coal Town to kill some of the cavs in the stack to the northeast. Still no losses yet, but I have a lot of hurt units. The minor assault at Calix is also beaten off this turn.
The BAD news: note also the Greek units in the above shot. I'm pretty confident that I can stop the attack from Saladin, although it will be a near-run thing. Can I stop Alex's armies too? That's a lot less certain. Saladin's still moving up more cavs and cannon, and due to the geography, Alex HAS to head this way with his main army. There's simply no other route they can take, so Coal Town is going to get hit, and hit hard, at some point. I'm in trouble.
What I need is my big brother Mao to jump into the fight and rough up Alex for me. He absolutely refuses to take part in any fighting though. I ask him why, and the answer is "we are already in a war" or something like that. That's right, Mao is still at war with Mansa Musa! (Mansa Musa only has one city left, entirely surrounded by Vicky's culture, and Mao doesn't have Open Borders with Vicky so he can't reach it!) Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I PAY Mao 1140g to make peace with Mansa Musa (!) which allows me to make this move:
Now that Mao is "at peace", he's willing to join in my military struggle. Mao is #1 in power by a large margin too, by the way. Aw yeah, Alex and Saladin are about to get some now! 
In the meantime, I have to hold out until I get Chinese assistance. (Once again, aren't you glad I got Mao and Caesar on my side!)
Here's a shot of the current alliances:
My Buddhist bloc is in green, the opposing Jewish bloc is in red. The big change since the last picture I posted is that Victoria has moved into my alliance, and Mansa Musa is now out there by himself with his shattered remnant of a civ. He's doing some OCC (one city challenge) action, in case I didn't mention that already. Pretty easy to see the sides now - all green on the left side of the screen, all red on the right! These groups would last until the end of the game.
Saladin continues to probe my defenses at Coal Town over the next few turns. If Alex and Saladin ever bothered to coordinate their attacks, I could have been in serious trouble. As it was, I lost a unit in Coal Town to an Arabian attack in 1864, and had many other hurt units. Here's what the situation looked like at that date:
Still a couple of units in the area; Saladin's attack is petering out but I'm starting to run out of units too. On the following interturn, two more infantry get killed in Coal Town, and I'm down to four hurt defenders. The good news is that I have almost entirely killed off the Arabian advance. Rocketry discovered, enter Modern Age, start research into Industrialism. Rome razes an Arabian city in their back lines too, excellent! However... the bad news?
The bad news...
There's no way I can stop that. Coal Town is doomed. DOOMED. I been spanked and spanked good. Alex has made me his biotch. The hammer was just applied to my noggin. Etc, etc. This is me getting beat by the AI.
The sad thing is that I knew how many forces I needed to stop an attack by an AI civ - I knew just how much! - and I was right. I was right, dammit. My defenses wore out just as I exhausted Saladin's stacks. But I wasn't expecting to be attacked by two civs at once. Whoops. 
Hey, I make mistakes and I get beat too sometimes. The mark of a good player, however, isn't how well you can cruise to the finish line. It's how well you respond in a crisis. Time to go into damage control mode.
First step: evaluate the situation. Coal Town can't be saved, as it's much too exposed, so I need to pull back and salvage what's truly important: Etruscan and beyond that, my capital of Tlatelolco. All but one sacrificial infantry are moved back to Etruscan to save my more important core cities. Brave guy staying behind there, I didn't envy him one bit. Secondly, I need soldiers, and I need them NOW. My production stinks, so I need to have an army materialize out of thin air. Fortunately, there's a weay to do that in Civ4:
I revolt to Nationhood and start drafting. My cities can't exactly afford the pop hit - but they could afford to be captured and burned down even less. I skim out a round of conscripts from every city before going back to Bureaucracy; that gives me about 8 more infantry to stop the incoming tide of Greek cavs. And speaking of the Greeks, here they come:
Coal Town falls to the enemy in 1872. Instead of razing it though, Alex chooses to capture the city. I vow that I will take it back no matter the cost! Still a huge stack guarding the coal however, so, umm, it may take a little while. Now there are huge Roman stacks moving through the area, but of course Caesar is only at war with Saladin, not Alex, so no help there. On the other hand, I haven't seen a single unit from Saladin since Caesar's armies entered his territory, so maybe I'm getting more assistance than I realize there! The amount of units moving around near Coal Town was pretty crazy, but remember, it's the only land passage between east and west on the whole map! If I had known that at the time, I might have thought twice about settling it, heh.
I had lost my coal, however, and I really, really needed that to power my coal plants. Therefore I traded for Caesar's excess coal for the extremely pricey cost of 23gpt. I need to get my own coal back so I can stop bleeding out cash like that! Still no visible assistance from Mao as the next couple turns passed; I continued to pick off Greek units as they separated from the main stack, striking from the forested hill tile that my Guerilla II infantry continued to guard. Alex seemed a bit uncertain where to send his attackers next, because that huge stack mostly keeps chilling inside Coal Town. That's fine with me.
Of course, Mao was keeping busy, and just because I couldn't see anything up by Coal Town didn't mean his army wasn't kicking butt:
Mao took advantage of this war to capture all the Greek cities on the western side of the southern lake. Good job, but you're supposed to be helping me, not ripping apart Alex's southern colonies! Bah. In case you couldn't already tell, Mao is becoming a monster down there in the south, having already swallowed up all of Mali and now some of western Greece too. Still, he's on my side, so I'm not too worried...
Alex shifts gears the next turn and moves up a major stack near Calix:
Four cavs and an artillery piece. I have... one infantry defender, having pulled everything south to hold onto Etruscan. Oh this is not good! Fortunately, I have three galleons on the Mare Azteca, and my infantry units in the area do a crazy shuffling onto and off of ships in order to race to the rescue of Calix. I manage to get two more infantry and an artillery piece into Calix; the Greek units stop to pillage, giving me a brief respite there. Whew. Could have been REAL ugly if I didn't have units and ships on hand.
Meanwhile, I discover Industrialism and start on Radio. Thankfully, I do have aluminum on hand at Bantu. That's the one resource I absolutely have to have if I'm going to stand any chance of building the spaceship. Down at Coal Town, Alex foolishly splits off part of his stack onto flat ground outside of the city:
Those units now get no defensive bonus and could easily be taken out. Striking again from that forested hill tile, my infantry managed to wipe out about half of the stack. Chinese cavs in the area were starting to give me a little relief as well. By the end of the next turn, most of that little stack had been wiped out:
I suffered a few losses, but Alex lost quite a few more. By this point, about half of that initial monster stack had been destroyed, and I was no longer worried about losing Etruscan (which was not at all guaranteed a few turns ago). My infantry outside Coal Town now had to stop and heal up for a turn or two before being able to push on towards the city itself.
I now also had enough units in the north to repel the Greek thrust towards Calix:
Artillery hit the stack, then infantry cleaned up the hurt defenders. (I expected the artillery to die, but it actually won!) That removed the threat up at the top of the screen, which had been dicey as well for a couple of turns.
My Roman allies further helped reduce the pressure on me by capturing the Arabian city on my borders:
The fall of Khurasan opened up more tiles for Etruscan, and there was a good chance that the city would flip to me too. That never happened, because the Romans used a Great Artist for a culture bomb in a city captured to the east, which put enough culture in the city to avoid having it flip. That wasn't the best break, but MUCH better for Caesar to have control over that border city than Saladin!
Mao was putting real pressure on Coal Town now, and the defenders in the city had been reduced to a handful. After that initial monster stack, Alex failed to bring adequate reinforcements to support his advance, and Mao and I have slowly picked his forces apart through gradual attrition. I move my forces up next to the city and hit it hard in 1898, but end up short of having enough attackers to finish the job. Despite some crazy combat results (losing a 96.9% battle and 95.5% on back to back turns), I wipe out the last defender and reclaim control of Coal Town!
Who's your daddy now, Alex! It was nice to be the one delivering the hammer again instead of receiving it. With nothing more to gain from the fighting, I now made peace with Alex, continuing a phony war with Saladin to keep my allies happy. Despite things looking incredibly dire at that one point, when I was seriously worried that I might lose the entire SE Corner, together with my allies I manage to persevere and recapture the one city I lost. This whole experience was one giant "whew" moment though! I don't intend to dance with disaster again if I can help it.
There's a shot of the SE Corner after the crisis was averted. I survived a tough shot from the AI civs here, but it still remained to secure a win of some kind. The final chapter of the story lies ahead!
