changing civilization play mid-game

I vaguely remember being able to do this with Civ II, but is there some way in Civ IV to: play a game, build up your empire, and then switch to a competing empire to destroy that which you've built? Or heck, if the AI builds something much better than you, to take it over and see what the AI has been up to?

If there is some way to do this, I'd appreciate pointers. I looked at the FAQ which is very helpful, but missed any references to this.

Thanks!

--John

If you have BtS, play RFC. That lets you switch control from an old empire to a new one rising up.

Welcome to Civfanatics

you can - sort of. There is no game option to do so in the core game - but you can do the following:

at a time where you want to switch Civilizations open the Worldbuilder from within the game you want to change. Within the Worldbuilder click on save and give it whatever name you want. Exit worldbuilder, exit the game to main menu and click on load scenario - the save you just made will be listed as a scenario - start that and it will give you a list of all included leaders to chose from...

Ori and Justinian, thanks so much for the help. The worldbuilder works great to create scenarios-- I didn't realize you could do that.

I also just ordered Beyond the Sword, looks neat too.

Appreciate the help!

For Vanilla and Warlords you could also use this savegame editor.
But it does not work with BtS savegames as far as I know.
The advantage is that all the diplo modifiers will not be lost.
In addition there are several other settings that can be changed.