The great war against Temujin had been won, but now there remained the task of fixing up my civ and building up a stronger economy to compete in the tech race. I gained three cities from the war, and pushed my borders a good distance further to the east. Combined with the cities I had conquered from the barbs at virtually the same time, I now had a fair number of cities that were just getting started on their infrastructure and would take a while to build up into fully productive locales. It was disappointing that I didn't get the Ning-Hsia location, but I would have been hard-pressed to defend it at this point, and to pay the maintenance costs associated with a city so far away from my palace. Thus, while it was a bit of a setback, I had enough cities on my hands that needed improving at the moment.
I discovered Feudalism in 1180AD and made my first civics swap of the game, to Serfdom. With all the jungle I had to cut down, faster workers was a definite need, and the Low cost civic wouldn't cost me any extra money. That was part of my strategy for this game: stick with inexpensive civics, keep overhead costs low, and therefore allow for more cities and a higher research rate. (This is my usual gameplay for higher difficulty levels too, by the way.) Because what did I really need, in terms of civics? Vassalage and Theocracy are out by the rules of this game. Organized Religion is unnecessary, as I can spread the faith easily enough with missionaries and build cheap forges for each city. Serfdom is perferable to Slavery, at least for me. What's left - Hereditary Rule? I have plenty of happiness. Bureaucracy? My shrine's not in my capital, and with all these cities the bonus would be minimal at best. Caste System? Not all that useful in this case, without a Philosophical civ and with Creative to auto-generate culture anyway. So for now I was sticking with the default civics and running my civ on the cheap. I'll be interested to see what gameplans some of our other players follow, and see if they prove to be more or less effective. 
I noted in 1210AD that I was back to a sustainable 60% research level (up from 50%). Shortly thereafter Gandhi demanded Theology from me - gah. Well, I give it to him, but ONLY because I'm trying to cultivate him as an ally. I acceded to every request Gandhi would make in this game (remember this for later on). That was a 1000-beaker tech he just got for free there, so he BETTER help me out later on if I need it!
I did get a stroke of good luck in 1225AD: Popped another one!
A silver resource popped up in one of my mines. Woohoo! That's another +2 happy faces in every one of my cities, along with forges. Since I'm already getting gems and wines in trades with Gandhi and Washington, and I have no fewer than 4 native Calendar resources (dyes, silks, spices, and sugar), I am officially set on happiness for the next thousand years. Now it's just a matter of growing my population as fast as possible.
Here was the big picture from 1250AD:
Now this is starting to look better. My subcontinent has now been almost completely settled, with only one more spot to go (in the jungle between Tours and Marseilles) and I've already reached out to the northern islands to begin settling them as well with the founding of Chartres. Those fishing villages would quickly pay for themselves with my Colossus-boosted water tiles on hand. Most of my cities are on infrastructure, but I'm squeezing out an odd longbow from time to time (as you can see in Paris) to upgrade my defenses on the borders and keep them secure. Monty continues to make demands, so that's clearly a time bomb just waiting to go off there on my eastern border. As markets and courthouses completed around my civ, my finances began to improve once again, as they always do at this point in the game. (Seriously, markets and courthouses are THE buildings to work on when your economy begins to flounder.) With all this land and resources, I was also slowly beginning to open up a population lead on the AI civs as well, which was reflected in my score. And as more and more of the jungle was cut down and replaced with cottages, my commerce would continue to improve as well, as that was the one stat where I remained behind most of the AI civs. Everything is starting to look up now. Just wait till you see how much of that jungle I get cut down by the time I post my next large map!
I knew by this point that Washington had opened up a bit of a tech lead over me, which wasn't surprising given that I had been warring a lot and he had no doubt been stuck in "The Eternal Infrastructure Christmas" (TM) since the start of the game, probably building cottages like crazy. But when I checked the tech screen again in 1280AD, I was floored by what I saw:
How did THAT happen? One of the AI civs has a SEVEN-tech lead on me? On PRINCE?! Wow. I went back and looked at Washington's land again, and was stunned by what I saw. Cottages on literally EVERY tile, commerce out the wazoo. Washington started in a very fertile region with lots of rivers and floodplains, allowing him to cottage them out like crazy and still grow at a resonable rate. He was the second-largest civ, had the Great Lighthouse for those bonus trade routes, and his GDP was literally just insane. Checking Washington's civ traits again - yeah, he's Financial/Organized. The best possible combo for late-game researching strength. I suddenly realize that I've got an uphill battle ahead of me, and I've got to snap out of cruise control mode to chase down this runaway AI civ.
Just to summarize: this game has a challenging jungle start, two totally psycho AI civs right on the borders, and a commerce monster tucked away by himself in a fertile start on the other side of the map. This may be a Prince game, but it's not nearly as easy as it sounds! Sirian didn't make this one easy for us. 
Well, time to get to work then. I've run down tech-whoring civs in Civ3 plenty of times before; it's a bit harder to do in Civ4, but this is only Prince, after all. (I'd be outright scared if this was Emperor.) Ordinarily, the best thing to do is declare war, rough up the tech leader, pillage his stuff, etc. Not going to happen in this game though. Therefore I'm just going to have to outbuild Washington, which I'm confident I can do over the long haul. I planned to prop up Gandhi with tech trades, using him to get some 2 for 1 tech deals and therefore race up the tech tree faster. I just have to be smart about it.
Therefore, when I get my next Great Person (a Merchant) in 1305AD, it's not a hard decision to know what to do with him:
Paper is one tech that Washington doesn't have, giving me a monopoly on it. Now I could trade it to Washington and get some techs from him - but that would only put Washington further ahead. No use trading with the tech hegemon. No, what I need is to trade Paper to Gandhi for something else, catching us both up the tree and gaining ground. G-Man didn't have anything on hand at the moment, so I held on to my Paper monopoly for the moment and bided my time waiting for a brokerage opportunity to open up.
Good news followed a couple turns later, as I built my Forbidden Palace in Karakorum:
As capital cities almost invariably are, Karakorum was a strong city site, so it was quite easy to build a courthouse there and then follow that up with the Forbidden Palace a little while later. Naturally that cut my maintenance costs by a good bit, and the location was well-placed for future expansion to the east... should the opportunity present itself, naturally.
This is a quiet period for my civilization, the turns passing quickly as I work on some peaceful infrastructure projects. I routinely check the diplomatic screen waiting for an opportunity to open up with Gandhi, and in 1355AD I finally spot one:
Paper to Gandhi for Optics and change. Yeah, it's not an even trade, he gets the best of it - but that's one fewer tech I have to research, and a little ground made up on Washington. I got Paper for free too, so that was almost like getting two techs for nothing. That would be the pattern for many, many turns to come: research newer techs and trade them with Gandhi for cheaper, older stuff. I was getting ripped off endlessly here, but it was the best way to catch up to Washington. The only other options were to deal with Alex (no) and Monty (NO!) so there wasn't a whole lot I could do. Hey, at least my relations with Gandhi kept improving.
Once I had Paper and finished researching Civil Service, I began pursuing Education in hopes of reaching Liberalism first. I knew that that was where Washington was heading, and hoped that I could get there so that he wouldn't be yet ANOTHER tech in front of me. While I was doing this, I was also settling the last few sites I wanted in the area. I grabbed that spot in the center of my territory, then headed up to take the last few locations on the islands in the north. I barely beat out an American settler to the spot I wanted:
The American boat is at the bottom of the picture, my own longbow/settler pair has landed on the spot where I will found a city. Unfortuntely, the American settler would found a city on a tiny 1-tile island further west, and that would be a blight on my lands for ages to come. Blah. I'm sure Sirian settled every island spot very early on in the game and didn't lose any of them, knowing how much he enjoys those island-hopping exercises.
I get the pop-up message for having 10 million people in 1400AD (a nice round date), and that motivated me to snap a picture of the demographics from that date:
Not surprisingly, I was #1 in most of the categories, with the one notable exception being #2 in GDP (can you guess who's tops in that category?) As usual, killing the AI in the categories of population, production, and food - and the disparity is only likely to grow in all those categories as I continue to expand. Also note the graph on the left side of the screen; I selected the commerce one (GDP) so you can see just what I'm up against. I'm clearly making some progress, but ye gods Washington's commerce is just monstrous. I'd hate to see where he would be if this were Emperor!
Gandhi also finished Notre Dame in 1400AD (I wasn't trying for it, didn't even have the tech) and so now he was willing to trade Music to me. I sent him Civil Service for it in another unequal trade, but made up a little bit more ground in the race with Washington. One step at a time...
After discovering Education in 1430AD, I realized that I needed Philosophy before I could go on and work on Liberalism. Uh, whoops. No one was willing to trade it, so the odds of me getting there first just dropped catastrophically, to say the least. To make matters worse, Washington triggered a Golden Age in 1450AD, spiking his commerce catastrophically on the chart. Therefore it was no surprise to hear that he got there first in 1470AD, five turns before I would have reached Liberalism. Heh. I'm having a bit of a rough time here; not too often a Prince AI beats me to Liberalism when I'm racing for it. Gonna be interesting to see how everyone handled Washington, or if he turned into as big of a commerce-junkie in every game.
I trade Education to Gandhi in 1470AD for Divine Right; that's a 1400-cost tech for a 1000-cost one, if you're counting at home. Discover Liberalism in 1495AD, then trade that to Gandhi in another ludicrous deal for Engineering (1200 for 900). Yes siree, today only, everything must go! You too can get a great deal from these crazy Frenchmen! 
Gandhi was getting a total free ride, but it was working; even with his golden age and free tech, I'm slowly closing the gap on Washington. Just gotta keep this up!
Liberalism does more than just grant the first discoverer a free tech, of course; I also wanted to head there because of the civics. I made my second civics swap of the game in 1495AD, going from the default civics in the Religious and Legal categories to Free Religion and Free Speech. Thus my civic costs actually went DOWN, and I gained access to bonus research (Free Religion) and even MORE culture (Free Speech), not to mention the commerce boost in towns. Of course I didn't have a lot of towns yet, but that would improve too with time. These new civics were just what my civ needed!
The big map from 1500AD:
Things are really starting to look good in this picture. Obviously I'm in the middle of a round of university construction, which when completed will increase my beaker rate substantially. Lyons is working on yet another wonder, simply because I can build it and I'd rather grab Angkor Wat than let someone else take it. That city's got a ton of shields over there. Also note how the vast jungles are finally being tamed throughout my territory; about half of them have been hacked down by this point, mostly replaced by cottages. While Washington had been able to build cottages right from the start in his land, I had to clear out those jungles through painstaking worker labor across many, many centuries. But now we were even - things are only going to improve for me from here on.
I was also almost to a sustainable 80% research rate, which was pretty darn good for having this many cities. Take a closer look at my expenses on the F2 screen:
This is from the same date in 1500AD. I'm already over 300 beakers per turn, and that's before the completion of any universities. My costs are pretty low too, since I'm keeping my civ locked into cheap civics. City maintenance is a problem, as always, but I wasn't about to stop expansion for that. In truth, I'm about ready to push outward on another expansion phase here, though unfortunately there's no more room on the map to settle.
Of course, with neighbors like these, you know it's only a matter of time before a demand's going to come along that leads to war:
Haha! Time to lack some smack down on my hated neighbor! Hammurabi's gonna get some of the hammer! 
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What? That's not the right picture? But I was sure I did it right this time...
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Ah. Here we go:
Monty flies off the handle and declares war in 1530AD. Well you know what that means:
Montezuma has 
