Been playing Civ4 based on hearing the opening theme the other day and getting super nostalgic. This game is still peak Civ (although I haven't tried 7 yet).

Playing as Egypt and got war declared on me by France who wasn't even on the same continent. I killed their only scout and warrior I could get to and ignored them as they fell into irrelevance.

I tend to neglect my military as much as I can so eventually a barbarian settlement appeared with two archers and I literally lost every single warrior I had (which was two per city) trying to take it. I replaced them with cutting edge Swordsmen and archers of my own and eventually took the city though.

Later got war declared on me by Mali. They had a tech advantage to start so I had to hold up in my cities with my swordsmen while they plundered my country-side until I could invent knights. Then since I had three "maxxed out" cities pumping a knight each every 3-5 turns I rolled Mansa Musa over and emerged from the war on top of every single leaderboard.

Just got oceanfaring vessels and I've captured the entire coast of the "new world" before anyone else could get a single expedition together. Boutta drop this playthrough and restart on a higher difficulty, I'm at the part where nobody stands a chance of catching up to me.