First, I declare war on Egypt. This breaks a gold-per-turn for luxuries deal that we had going. Believe it or not, this is the first time EVER in Civ 3 that I've declared war in a way that hurt my reputation.
Second, I pull the standard Nationalism Slingshot: the Iroquois and Indians each pay me over 100 gold/turn for Nationalism.
Third, I sign every civ left in the world to an alliance against Egypt. America and France are still in the Middle Ages, and take Theory of Gravity for the alliances. The Iroquois and Indians take back a couple hundred of the fortunes they paid me. Greece takes 400 in cash.
Fourth, I flip the switch on War-Time Mobilization! Remember, that comes with Nationalism.
Fifth, I sign everyone to embargoes against Egypt, to inhibit my allies' ability to trade Nationalism to Egypt if they make peace. That option too comes with Nationalism.
Remember that Egypt entered the Industrial Age before any of these wars were declared; I'm hoping that they then set their research to something other than Nationalism. Here goes Operation Steamroll Egyptian Musketmen.
Sixth:
Well, one detail didn't get into place yet, but here goes: I slam research to 100% on Military Tradition. But in Golden Age, it'll come in 4 turns. I can build knights during that time, and then someone else researches it a turn early anyway.
Wait a minute - what the heck is going on here?
MINUS eight shields?! After further investigation, I discovered the infinite shields bug with War-Time Mobilization. I then had to go through the cities to make sure they're producing the number of shields they're supposed to, using the sequence for the exploit when needed to restore a city such as Persepolis to the production it's supposed to have.
But anyways, I start building cavalry extremely quickly. With War-Time and Golden Age stacked, any of the size-6 cities can get 20 shields/turn and some can get 25. In these cities, I rush a longbow or immortal respectively, and let the city finish the unit in two turns. Persepolis and Bactra both got up over 40 shields/turn, and built cavalry every other turn all by themselves.
With these cavalry, I sweep over about one Egyptian city per turn. That isn't unusual (see Epics Two, Five, Eighteen A). The unusual part is that all these cavalry were freshly built right now; it wasn't a mass upgrade. I upgraded no horsemen and about four knights.
Unfortunately, though, Cleopatra turns up with Nationalism and riflemen about ten turns into the war. That pretty much halts my advance, but I did grab six cities.
My gains are quite substantial: three Spices, an extra Iron, a conceded city on the northern coast with Silks, and quite a bit of coal-eligible land. (I'd been hoping one of my allies would research Steam Power during the war so I could zero in on the coal, but that didn't happen.) And most importantly, I grabbed land for a full two rings of cities around my Forbidden Palace.
In the low-food environment, I didn't want to produce any settlers, so I kept the Egyptian cities and did the usual starve-down deal. None of my cities will have any cultural pressure from Egyptian cities once they expand their own borders. Ghulaman was a replacement for one razed city in a bad location for cultural pressure.
Peace is struck in 740 AD. There are still ten turns left on the alliances, but I already sacrificed my own reputation in declaring war on Egypt anyway. Egypt concedes a city with silks and 40 gold. That ends my Mobilization, of course.
The plan was that if blitzing all over Egypt with cavalry became possible, to go for a domination victory. But not now; anyone who did execute a successful early Immortal war would get to domination or conquest faster than I could now. Diplo is unlikely, given that I just shot my own reputation - everybody's thoroughly furious. So space it is. I definitely think the added land and cities will propel me to a space win sooner than not doing that war (which lasted only 10 turns.)
