It's my first game of CivII. The Chinese, under my benevolent rule is spreading throughout the continent. The world is 5 billion years old, wet, and customized to be as large as possible. There's no other civilizations on my continent! Cool 'nuff. So I'm building up my cities, breeding like bunny rabbits, when the Babylonians land with some forces. Screw that, I'm still irrigating. I repel them from my borders, and the Carthaginians land. And the Russians land. And later, the Mongols. I repel them all, and keep up my city improvements. Finally the enemy civilizations are threatening to overwhelm my not so built up armed forces. Of course I don't want to sacrifice my science, so I make peace with the Cathaginians, who've settled the strip of the continent I haven't gotten yet. Those bastards! I manage to stay out of war, except the fact that the Spanish are still attacking me. Luckily the Carthaginians come to my aid (and why not? Their continent's basically between mine and the Spanish's). Alas, my tech superiority is not so high, and Carthage becomes a fundamentalist government, overwhelming my continent with "peaceful" units. Fine, I can live with that. But then, Carthage steals some of my tech. Well fine, I pick up the same government and prepare for war. Right now I've taken maybe 20% of the Carthaginian empire, several intact through spies. Unfortunately the rest of the cities are expensive to buy, so it's time to sail a transport way over to the capital (wouldn't you know it? It's on the far side of the continent). I just retired to see how I'm doing, and the Mongols are off the powerscale. Uh oh. The Germans are developing the Manhattan project too, which is unfortunate. Anyone for a little global warming?