Time to post a final spoiler in the Game Over thread. I know Alan usually does this but I will feel bad if he comes home form a wonderful vacation and has to face this first thing!
I have put together the following post as a proposal. If you wish anything added or changed, please post and I will do my best. Thanks.
Post follows:
Team X - Final Spoiler - Playing the Variant
After posting our first spoiler, we all went immediately to Team Smackster's first spoiler and were in awe of their result thus far. We decided that we would have to continue and do the best that we could to get ourselves in a position ot eliminate our foes on our continent. we continued with our active defense and chewed up many AI units in what we called "The Valley of Death". The AI continued to attack into the desert area to the west of our core.
Contacts
Klarius managed to get a suicide galley across the oceans in 250 BC to make contact with the Aztecs. We learned that they were no further along in research than we were and that they had not made contact with the other AI on our continent. This put us in the position of being able to purchase techs as they came available from civs that did not know of our poor reputation of making GPT deals and then declaring war. We had a long discussion on whether to trade contacts or not and decided not to trade them immediately. In 440 AD, we traded contacts with Germany, France and England to the Aztecs for Chivalry, World Map, 7 GPT and 70 Gold. The Aztecs went from annoyed to furious as word of Roman harshness and cruelty spread throughout the world. However, from this point onward, we researched at 10% and were able to purchase the necessary techs, including Military Tradition.
Great Leaders
As seems to be the standard operating procedure of the X-Men our first GL arrived after The Great Library and The Pyramids were completed. Our first was 8 turns after entering the Middle Ages. In the next turn set of 10 turns we harvested 3 Great Leaders. These four were used for Hanging Gardens, built an Army, Heroic Epic and Sun Tzu's. We eventually made up our early leader shortage as the game progressed. We were fortunate to get Leonardo's Workshop with one of our GLs.
Military
Early in the Middle Ages we took inventory of the 58 Legions the Military Advisor said we had. Two-thirds of them were conducting MP duty in our cities. We decided that they should be out fighting. We began to build settlers and workers and free up our units to fight.
Greece. We decided to clean out northern Greece and seize the lux's there to allow our cities to grow and remain productive. We then kept Greece weak until we had the units to finally finish them.
France. Being a fairly close "neighbor", we weakened France by taking her cities directly. She fell in 1050 AD.
Babylon. They never were much of a factor in our game. They were always behind in tech and never produced many units. They fell in 1040 AD.
England. England was a powerhouse against us. We sent a Legion Army with a Horseman unit deep into English territory and pillaged everything we could find, especially resources and lux's. By the time we attacked her, England was at our mercy and fell in 1030 AD.
Rusia. The Russians were a minor power in our game. They sent quite a few units against us early but they never expanded as much as wexpected they would. They were also pilaged and harrassed and capitulated in 1265 AD.
Americans. The Americans were a minor power in our game. They never seriously challenged us. We dealt with them late but kept them weak through pillaging and taking a city or two per player cycle. Our focus during this time was the other continent. They were finished off in 1255 AD.
Germany. The Germans were a formidible force against us. We used the same technique with them as we did on America. We took a few cities at a time and kept pillaging them to weaken their defenses. They succumbed near the very end, in the last set of turns.
The other continent. Adrian landed in 1100 AD founding the city of Lauriacum as our outpost of refuge an immediately rushed a Baracks. Our strategy on this continent was to drive up the east side all the way to the north to give ourselves an area in which we could move freely, the Cavs could move their full 9 squares on roads. After hurting the Aztecs and Iroquois, we drove straight into India and japan and took their largest cities, gutting their productive capacity.
Aztecs. The Aztecs were the powerhoues of the other continent. They had large, well developed cities and quite a few resources. We landed in the south and worked our way north along the east side per our strategy. The Aztecs put up quite a fight but were no match for our Cavs, numbering 75 to start and growing to over 150.
Iroquois. The Iroquois were also a tough fight. They were well developed and had a large military. We worked up the east coast and then, able to move up the open "corridor", took out their two cities with horses and saltpeter, denying them resources. They also were eliminated during the final turns.
India. The Indians were not very tough. early on in our invasion, they sent a fair number of Cav units our way and they did a lot of damage in counterattacks. Once we invaded their territory, they fell fairly quickly, but not easily.
Japan. The Japanese had a fairly large army and also hurt us through counterattacks. The fell in the last turn set as well.
Empire Management.
Klarius and Alan were teaching me all about Micromanaging for most of the game. We tried very hard to get the most out of what we had.
We had a fairly long discussion about jumping the palace and that jump's effect with the rank corruption bug. The palace was jumped from the starting location to a city that was north of Athen's location in the former Greek territory. This allowed a second core and maintained a productive core around the Forbidden Place.
We also had a discussion concerning resource disconnection. While I had never used it before, it proved to be a powerful tool in defeating our enemies. Instead of using only shields to produce units, we used a combination of shields and gold to porduce units. This is done by disconnecting saltpeter and producing Horsemen and then reconnecting the saltpeter and upgrading the Horsemen to Cavalry. By doing this, we produced an average of 10 Cavalry units per turn once it was set up. We also turned research off, while keeping a single scientist, to provide an adequate supply of Gold.
I liked Mauer's map complilation and put one together for our team.
(Not that head scratching is a bad thing)
) All I am trying to say is that we can be more effective as a team and play an even better game if we can coordinate and communicate better. Think about all of us working in concert, we might someday equal the Jason best date in a game, good luck and the RNG being with us. 
, they can read our thread or ask, so I don't think we need to go into more detail.
Hope you had a nice time and good luck with the COTM04 stuff. What a thing to return to.. 
