And so peace once again settled on our land. I started to drift in my game plan again until I popped a Great Engineer (from very low odds) and thinking what to do with him sparked this idea ...
I've yet to win a religious diplomatic victory so I decided that this was the game. I popped over to CFC and read up some on winning via this means. From there I found that the AP religion had to be present with everyone and that I couldn't vote myself the winner - I needed at least one other person to push me over the threshold. Khan and Hannibal already had Hinduism and so did Monty so I didn't have to convert any of their cities ... that enabled me to push my war with them further ... yes, I declared on Khan and Monty, as is his want, declared on me.
In the mean time, I looked at the AIs that didn't have a Hindu city ... Mansa, Alex and Ceasar. Mansa would required Caravels, or either a long galley trip through enemy territory or a march through Ceasar's land and I couldn't get open borders with him ... gee he holds a grudge. Hence I traded for Optics and the Western side of my land started building ships and missionaries while the Eastern side was in war mode.
A Caraval could also supply a missionary to Alex's land, being able to travel freely through Ceasar's territory. I also had a Caraval running the long trip West across open water to convert Mansa.
The only one missing now was Caesar who still wouldn't open borders. I looked at slipping a Caravel with Missionary into his city and converting it from within the boat ...
... but that wasn't going to work. I could declare war on Ceasar, take one of his cities, convert it and then withdraw leaving him to retake it. Or I could declare war and let him capture one of my hindu cities. Neither of those would be so good because once Ceasar got the smell of blood, he just wouldn't leave it alone. Also, my standings with him would drop further. So the good people of Ning-hsia changed their city name to 'Gift to Rome' and suddently found themsevles Roman citizens in 1310AD (turn 282). Only to want to return to the mother land 4 turns later.
So, everyone has some Hindu in them. However, I have 160 votes and I only need 156 votes to win diplomatically. The new patch has ruled this sort of victory out so I need to decrease my vote percentage. Khan has 13 votes but if he is Hindu, that will become 26 ... so ...
I check on the AP status in 1365AD (turn 293) ... I have 164 votes and I need 180. Just a matter of waiting for the game to ask me if I want to stage a vote.
Waiting ...
Waiting ...
Waiting ...
Stupid game. Maybe it will not ask me when people are at war ... Alex is currently being dog piled. Thus I stop the wars ...
Waiting ...
Waiting ...
Meanwhile, Mansa is spreading Hindu around all of this cities. This is bad as I want him to vote for me and if he spreads it all over, he might convert to Hindu and become my opponent.
Waiting ...
It is never going to happen. Oh well, on with the war on Khan ... I start marshelling my troops ...
Just as I am 1 turn from a Taj Mahal fueled war push on Khan, Monty and maybe Ceasar, I finally get the diplo vote option and win in 1400AD ...
Looking back over the game, I see that Khan was really pushing the esponage slider up. I've just finished a HOF game where I was the GDP leader by a long way. However, Sitting Bull was really pushing esponage. I needed over 10k esponage points just to see what he was researching. I would discover a tech and he stole it from me before I even got the tech splash screen. He did that 3 times to me. I fixed him, turned up my cash, purchased a huge stack of tanks and just took his cities away from him.
One other funny thing in this game was that Mansa had traded fish to me for horses. About every 20 turns, he would turn up and cancel this deal saying it offered him no value. About 2 or 3 turns later, he was back offering his fish for my horses. He just couldn't seem to make up his mind.