One of my closer games of winning, this one started off pretty bumpy. This is what happened: There were seven players and two continents. Six of us were in one, and one had the other all to himself. Let me just rant about the two AIs I ran into:

Gandhi is a little world wonder hog. I think he grabbed like 4/5 of them. I only managed to grab Stonehenge and the Pyramids before he started grabbing all the rest. Then again, he never went to war so he was on the top of the tech tree. And Catherine, what a damn bully! I never gave into her demands but that might be why she declared war on me. =P

I had a pretty good start until I started going to war, which held me back for a bit. Very far back, actually; I was in third place when the wars started, and when it ended I was almost last. I was way behind on my tech tree. Gandhi was a few steps ahead and got Liberalism when I was still doing the Code of Laws or something like that. Once I caught up, I started doing the Representation/Mercantilism/Free Religion combo to help my research. I made all my cities build libraries, universities, observatories, laboratories, everything possible to speed up my research.

And the crazy thing is, it worked. I was catching up like crazy and before you know it, I was in second place. Fast forward to the modern era. Remember the guy that had his own continent? He declared war on me and he started swarming me with like 6 battleships, 10 tanks, 10 artillery, you get the idea. It was horrible.

I don't think it mattered though since Gandhi won with a Space Race victory. I knew Gandhi was way ahead but I couldn't bribe anybody to go to war with him.

Darn. But hey, if you can help me improve my game, I'd appreciate it.

Well, I would get sick and declare war on Ghandi. Maybe try to win domination or conquest instead.
BTW: Who was that "guy" on another island, and why do you think he declared war on you?

I am by no means a CIV expert (far from it in fact) but given that situation I would probably ensure that I shared the same religion as the IA on the other island.... Assuming of course that you weren't already making a killing by founding another more popular religion.

Could this have worked?

Once they start flooding troops over to (hopefully) attack one of your neighbors because you share the same religion and are therfore not thier main target be prepared to do the opposite and attack them at home. Would they actually move troops back to defend their own territory? I am not too sure but I doubt it... Now, however they are fighting a war on two fronts. As long as your neighbor who got attacked isn't going to ***** out you might have a chance to do some serious damage while a
avoiding thier first wave forces.

Either way, if India was busy building all those wonders they must have been neglecting their military to some extent. You probably should have b-lined it for their territory right from the get go.

Why does war slow down technology? As long as your major cities aren't getting burned, it should speed up technology.

^Maybe it's cause you get dissorders, and sometimes you loose a citizen in a city because of that.