I've just scored my first ever real civilization win 
I got the game two weeks ago (as a birthday present with the BtS expansion as well), having never played a single civilization game before in my life (needless to say I'm completely addicted now).
Technically it's my second win, I got a space race victory with Ottomans first but since I wasn't attacked in that game at all and everyone was on separate islands that hardly counts (and the score was pathetic). Anyway was played on a normal pangaea map. The difficulty was Noble as I dislike having advantages over the computer in any game. The game ended up being totally crazy:
Anyway, I tried out Shaka for this game (I wanted to try an offensive approach this time because the previous 4 games I started great only to find out halfway through that I'd been neglecting my military and was mercilessly destroyed, besides I'm not a good warlord and need the practice).
Everything started as planned, I build a warrior, then a settler and halfway through that I see Pericles very close to me so I build up my forces and attack him as soon as possible. I capture Athens and Sparta (turns out later he still had a third city but it was completely locked up in the corner). That's one down.
By this time I discover Willem. Being Dutch myself I'm somewhat reluctant to attack him but as he had taken hugh leads in 2 earlier games I really don't have a choice. My Impi (don't you love these speedy buggers?) and Swordsman capture Willems 3 cities (which founded a total of no less than 3 religions
) easily and he is eradicated.
And now the problems start. By this time 3 other civs (Boudica, Wang Kon and Mansa Musa) have also been revealed. I am somewhat behind in tech but not dramatically so and I decide my next target is Wang Kon. Obviously he's considerably tougher because of his protective trait. I do manage to take Pyongyang but Seoul is too much and I am forced to retreat.
At this point my territory is far larger than anything I've ever had in previous games and managing it without going bankrupt is more difficult than I thought.
I'm forced to cut my research back to 20% and Mansa is now seriously outteching me. He's also captured a barbarian city in my territorial area that I had overlooked.
So I consolidate for a moment, start building stuff and get my economy up and running before being scared out of my wits as the last missing civ announces itself...
It's Sitting Bull and he's about 800 score points above me (I was the leader until then). Turns out that when I eliminated Willem, I pretty much handed the entire western part of the continent to Sitting Bull, who has greedily capitilized on this. On top of everything he has me considerably outteched.
The only good thing is he isn't hostile.
Also at around this time, Mansa, Wang Kon and Boudica form something of an alliance. They're all buddhists and even though I try to convert quickly, it's all to no avail. They're quite angry I attacked Willem (who founded buddhism) and Wang Kon declares war again. He's far behind and not much of a threat but Mansa occasionally joins in as well.
Fortunately Sitting Bull and Boudica don't get along at all (they were almost permanently at war throughout the game) which means I only have to worry about 2 most of the time.
This goes on until the modern era when I manage to cap 2 of Mansa's cities (including the barbarian one he captured earlier) and raze another. I also succeed in finally capturing Seoul which puts Wang Kon firmly out of the game (though he'd remain one of Mansa's vassal states).
My economy has also started running and I soon outtech Mansa (though Sitting Bull is still way ahead of me).
Idiot that I am, I then try to capitilize on the advantage (I had tanks and Mansa didn't) by attacking Mansa again (he was still furious at me and I was feeling threatened by his expanding cities)...having no experience with modern era warfare my tanks get decimated by Mansa's fighter raids and sam infantry though...fortunately he accepts the peace (though my defences were in order).
At around this time Sitting Bull has taken several of Boudicas key cities and put her out of winning chances as well so it's basically between me and Bull.
The craziest end race I have played (in any game whatsoever) has commenced.
St first Bull, like me seems to be going for a space race victory.
However, suddenly the amount of turns he needs to finish his tech (I think it was refridgeration) switches from 6 to 33 all of a sudden.
I'm completely puzzled by this until I get the following message 2 turns later:
"Cahokia has reached legendary culture"
I'll never ever forget to check the victory screen once every so often again...
Mound City already has 44k culture and Poverty Point has about 36k.
I have barely finished the Apollo project at this point and have only just begone to make spaceship parts. To be honest I was about ready to bang my head against the table at this point because at this point I'm pretty certain I'm going to lose (Sitting Bull's military beat mine by FAR but we were on friendly terms the entire game).
Then the following message shows up:
"A Korean revolt has taken place at Seoul"
They'd been pestering me about returning to the Korean Empire several times before but I rejected each time (come to think of it I played like a complete jackass the entire game
).
Anyway, this puts Seoul down for a turn but also gives me an idea. It's rather desparate but as I'm about to lose anyway, I decide to try and create massive amounts of Spy units. I'd put all my espionage points on Sitting Bull a while back because I wanted to see if he was still ahead of me technologically and I've amassed about 20k espionage points against him by now. So I dispatch a few spies to Poverty Point (Mound City had reached legendary culture by this time and Poverty Point was at 42k) and have them poison the water supplies and lowering happiness.
This slows the culture rate down a bit but it's still not nearly enough. My attempts to incite a city revolt fail so I start churning out 5 to 6 spies a turn in a desparate attempt to stop the culture flow.
And to my amazement it works. I manage to incite 3 revolts in a row and by this time I realize I might still have a shot so the next few turns I send waves and waves of spies over (and also turned on the espionage bar to 80% after I researched all techs for my ship). In the subsequent 32!!! turns, Poverty Point does not generate A SINGLE culture point (I had 40 spies in there by then). Plus, somewhere around the 20th, Sitting Bull seemed to realize it wasn't going anywhere and started researching for the spaceship again.
By this time I am well ahead however and soon the first Zulu spaceship flies merrily upwards and to my great surprise I have won.
I won't exactly be getting the fair play cup having terrorized pretty much every other civ in the game one way or another but I do triple my previous high score
In conclusion: Civilization IV is one crazy game. It's also the most enjoyable game I've ever played.
I got the game two weeks ago (as a birthday present with the BtS expansion as well), having never played a single civilization game before in my life (needless to say I'm completely addicted now). Technically it's my second win, I got a space race victory with Ottomans first but since I wasn't attacked in that game at all and everyone was on separate islands that hardly counts (and the score was pathetic). Anyway was played on a normal pangaea map. The difficulty was Noble as I dislike having advantages over the computer in any game. The game ended up being totally crazy:
Anyway, I tried out Shaka for this game (I wanted to try an offensive approach this time because the previous 4 games I started great only to find out halfway through that I'd been neglecting my military and was mercilessly destroyed, besides I'm not a good warlord and need the practice).
Everything started as planned, I build a warrior, then a settler and halfway through that I see Pericles very close to me so I build up my forces and attack him as soon as possible. I capture Athens and Sparta (turns out later he still had a third city but it was completely locked up in the corner). That's one down.
By this time I discover Willem. Being Dutch myself I'm somewhat reluctant to attack him but as he had taken hugh leads in 2 earlier games I really don't have a choice. My Impi (don't you love these speedy buggers?) and Swordsman capture Willems 3 cities (which founded a total of no less than 3 religions
) easily and he is eradicated.And now the problems start. By this time 3 other civs (Boudica, Wang Kon and Mansa Musa) have also been revealed. I am somewhat behind in tech but not dramatically so and I decide my next target is Wang Kon. Obviously he's considerably tougher because of his protective trait. I do manage to take Pyongyang but Seoul is too much and I am forced to retreat.
At this point my territory is far larger than anything I've ever had in previous games and managing it without going bankrupt is more difficult than I thought.
I'm forced to cut my research back to 20% and Mansa is now seriously outteching me. He's also captured a barbarian city in my territorial area that I had overlooked.
So I consolidate for a moment, start building stuff and get my economy up and running before being scared out of my wits as the last missing civ announces itself...
It's Sitting Bull and he's about 800 score points above me (I was the leader until then). Turns out that when I eliminated Willem, I pretty much handed the entire western part of the continent to Sitting Bull, who has greedily capitilized on this. On top of everything he has me considerably outteched.
The only good thing is he isn't hostile.
Also at around this time, Mansa, Wang Kon and Boudica form something of an alliance. They're all buddhists and even though I try to convert quickly, it's all to no avail. They're quite angry I attacked Willem (who founded buddhism) and Wang Kon declares war again. He's far behind and not much of a threat but Mansa occasionally joins in as well.
Fortunately Sitting Bull and Boudica don't get along at all (they were almost permanently at war throughout the game) which means I only have to worry about 2 most of the time.
This goes on until the modern era when I manage to cap 2 of Mansa's cities (including the barbarian one he captured earlier) and raze another. I also succeed in finally capturing Seoul which puts Wang Kon firmly out of the game (though he'd remain one of Mansa's vassal states).
My economy has also started running and I soon outtech Mansa (though Sitting Bull is still way ahead of me).
Idiot that I am, I then try to capitilize on the advantage (I had tanks and Mansa didn't) by attacking Mansa again (he was still furious at me and I was feeling threatened by his expanding cities)...having no experience with modern era warfare my tanks get decimated by Mansa's fighter raids and sam infantry though...fortunately he accepts the peace (though my defences were in order).
At around this time Sitting Bull has taken several of Boudicas key cities and put her out of winning chances as well so it's basically between me and Bull.
The craziest end race I have played (in any game whatsoever) has commenced.
St first Bull, like me seems to be going for a space race victory.
However, suddenly the amount of turns he needs to finish his tech (I think it was refridgeration) switches from 6 to 33 all of a sudden.
I'm completely puzzled by this until I get the following message 2 turns later:
"Cahokia has reached legendary culture"
I'll never ever forget to check the victory screen once every so often again...
Mound City already has 44k culture and Poverty Point has about 36k.
I have barely finished the Apollo project at this point and have only just begone to make spaceship parts. To be honest I was about ready to bang my head against the table at this point because at this point I'm pretty certain I'm going to lose (Sitting Bull's military beat mine by FAR but we were on friendly terms the entire game).
Then the following message shows up:
"A Korean revolt has taken place at Seoul"
They'd been pestering me about returning to the Korean Empire several times before but I rejected each time (come to think of it I played like a complete jackass the entire game
).Anyway, this puts Seoul down for a turn but also gives me an idea. It's rather desparate but as I'm about to lose anyway, I decide to try and create massive amounts of Spy units. I'd put all my espionage points on Sitting Bull a while back because I wanted to see if he was still ahead of me technologically and I've amassed about 20k espionage points against him by now. So I dispatch a few spies to Poverty Point (Mound City had reached legendary culture by this time and Poverty Point was at 42k) and have them poison the water supplies and lowering happiness.
This slows the culture rate down a bit but it's still not nearly enough. My attempts to incite a city revolt fail so I start churning out 5 to 6 spies a turn in a desparate attempt to stop the culture flow.
And to my amazement it works. I manage to incite 3 revolts in a row and by this time I realize I might still have a shot so the next few turns I send waves and waves of spies over (and also turned on the espionage bar to 80% after I researched all techs for my ship). In the subsequent 32!!! turns, Poverty Point does not generate A SINGLE culture point (I had 40 spies in there by then). Plus, somewhere around the 20th, Sitting Bull seemed to realize it wasn't going anywhere and started researching for the spaceship again.
By this time I am well ahead however and soon the first Zulu spaceship flies merrily upwards and to my great surprise I have won.
I won't exactly be getting the fair play cup having terrorized pretty much every other civ in the game one way or another but I do triple my previous high score
In conclusion: Civilization IV is one crazy game. It's also the most enjoyable game I've ever played.
). Wouldn't have been nearly as funny if I had succeeded anyway 
and you get it after 2 weeks, good job 
