How do you know when you're overdrafting? This:

http://home.comcast.net/~corbeaubm/TooMuchDrafting.jpg

This is a shot from my duel-size game with 5 AIs. It's been crazy almost from the start. I played Greece, wanting to give their UU a try. Heh. Be careful what you wish for, I guess. I went specialist & Great Person happy early on, getting a ton of culture and expanding borders like crazy. Things were looking up as I developed my empire.

Then the other civs noticed. I'd been paying no attention to diplomacy, and so had no actual friends. In retrospect, I really should have been expecting what came next considering that my neighbors were Cyrus (not too bad a guy, really), Tokugawa, Ghengis, and Montezuma (who took out Ceasar early on).

I don't remember who declared first. As soon as I would move my armies one way, the AI on the other side would notice my weaker borders and invade. I was at war with the entire world for a while, though I nabbed a city from Cyrus really early (good thing too, as it became my only source of metal!). Wars on a map this small usually come down to pillaging rather than cities actually changing hands (though some did). I got more than my fill of pillaging. It sucks not being able to connect 3/4 of the resources in your borders, and counting yourself lucky.

The Phalanx was wonderful. Almost nothing could get through my highly-promoted Phalanxes (even Axemen could be dealt with on occasion), but then tech advanced (very, very slowly). Meeting Macemen sucked. So I got my own. But then meeting Samurai also sucked (very). And Montezuma's War Elephants also sucked throughout the whole game.

The only reason I've held on to Sparta (the city in the screenshot) is due to drafting. Believe it or not, this city used to be over size ten multiple times (and used to have every single tile improved). Note that you can only draft one unit per turn on a duel map. Long-term desperation will do some nasty things to infrastructure.

The game's not over yet either. It's currently 1900 AD, and I'm researching Rifling. I have yet to research Education. The most advanced unit I've yet seen is the Grenadier (and I've not seen it actually used yet). I'm just going through a period of peace after war exausted all sides once again. It was the first war that Musketmen played a large part in (and they were, incidentally - they stomp almost anything medieval). I'm leading in score, but that's about it and that only because my repeated culture bombs netted me a lot of territory.

Conquest is impossible, as I have no tech lead and will be outproduced. SS is laughable at this point, as is diplomatic. Cultural is impossible, considering that I've spent most of the game on a war footing. Score is the only thing left, and I'm not sure how to win that considering that I'm going to only fall further into a tech hole and Monte has been steadily gaining on me score-wise.

But I'm still going to try. The citizens of Sparta know what I mean...

This is awesome! I guess the "our mutual military struggle blah blah" bonus has helped your enemies to bond with each other too, right? Very inspired.

Yeah, my enemies formed a fairly solid block. It didn't hurt that two of them were the same religion.

I did actually manage to win the game via time. I underestimated my ability to grow in score once I wasn't drafting every damn turn. Representation and Caste System can provide some nice research even without having a ton of commerce. I managed to get Biology and that bumped me up solidly in score. I'd been building almost exclusively military units, so none of the AIs found me a worthwhile target this time. The game was peaceful from the signing of peace in 1900 until the end of the game in 2050, with one small exception of a two-turn war.

Monte completed the Apollo program in the 2040s. Way too late to actually win via SS, but if the cap on the game wasn't there it would have been a heck of a tough game trying to take him out (he had a defensive pact with Khan, so it would have been a war on two fronts). I was more worried that he'd go for the Manhattan Project and Nukes (he had Fission, Rocketry, and Uranium, so it was a real possibility).

I also managed to finish off Toku, who had become a one-city-civ. He got Grenadiers before I got Gunpowder, but he was still defending with Grenadiers when I showed up on his doorstep with Artillery. That was another handy bump in score.

Almost anti-climatic considering the game up to 1900, but a heck of a game as a whole.