A peaceful conclusion?

[Foo]

My current game is the first I've tried on Warlord. My first couple of CivIII games were on Chieftan, just to get the hang of things, but I never finished them as it was too easy (boring).

So I started as the Germans, and it is now late 19th C, I'm about 2/3 of the way thru the industrial age. I have a tech lead over all other Civs (except the Romans are close), and have built all of the wonders except for a few early ones. I had a war with the Egyptians, who were my closest neighboor, wiped them out, and kept their larger cities, that were closest to our previous border. The only other major presence on my continent is the Iroqouis, now my neighbor. The English have a large island to themselves, and the Romans are about to eliminate the French on their own large continent.

At this point, everyone likes me, is Polite in negotiations, and I am able to sell them tech/luxuries for reasonable $$.

If this was CivII, I would crushing the Iroquois, to get the entire continent to myself, and then train my sights on the English and then Romans(my closest current rival). However, in CivIII, it seems that this might not be the best way to go.

Because I have so many wonders, my culture is huge, so I suppose I could wait it out for a culture win.

Or, I could wait until I can build the UN (have a GL saved just for this), and because everyone likes me, I believe I should win the election.

Or, I could maintain my tech lead and go for the spaceship.

However, this seems like too much waiting around for something to happen.

Has anyone been in a similar circumstance? Should I give peace a chance? Or, should I prepare for possible future aggression from the Roman (who had no trouble cleaning up Joan...)?

 

[Shaitan]

If you haven't had a spaceship victory yet then go for that one. There's a neat movie of the launch.

If you want to speed the game up, ally with everybody except Iroquois and Romans against those two. The other civs will keep the Romans off your back while you wipe the Iroquois. Then grab a small chunk of Rome for your beachhead on your next war (which will be you and the world against your victim). Continue like this until it's just gigantic you and one opponent left then whack him.

Conquest goes much faster when you've got the rest of the world doing the bulk of your dirty work for you.

 

[Magnus]

I find that if I am getting bored and the turns are getting long, I just research Fission as soon as I get Modern, build the U.N. and then win diplomatically, I generally keep my nose clean so I have never lost an election.

I once won an election 10-3 despite the fact that I declared war (thru MPP) on a civ I had a ROP with - that civ was eventually destroyed but nobodywould let me forget what I had done, yet they still voted for me over the French.

 

[Greadius]

Variety is the spice of ....err... Civ3.

Its easy to conduct an aggressive and bloody war while being diplomatically popular IF you buy everyone as allies and wipe them out. I've done diplomatic, space race, and cultural wins... I think a lot of it has to depend on map size. I would have lost patience on a larger map going for those type of victories.