Civilization (without Zombies)

[mqstout]

Civilization: The Board Game.
Andy - The Chinese.
Joey - The Egyptians.
Me - The Russians.

We, of course early on, explored different paths early on. I was set back immediately losing a battle expanding to some natives, and was really set back a long time from building my 3rd city because of lack of trade. I did manage to build Stonehenge and the Hanging Gardens though, due to ample hammers.

Meanwhile, Joey quickly expanded, had tons of trade (due to his racial ability to get a free building per turn), and teched up nicely, plus building The Oracle and The Colossus. Andy managed to stay far enough from both of us that he focused on culture, and was shooting through the culture track, while also getting a good bit of coins. He got some great people.

Hanging Gardens helped me out to utilize my racial power, and I kept sending units into my opponents' cities to learn technology they already had for free, while focusing my tech on military -- first horseback riding to move my armies faster (to steal tech faster), and then, once Joey started having enough armies to defend, I researched Railroads to get strong tier-three (skipping over 2!) cavalry.

Joey and I went back and forth in detente. He finally managed to get his 3rd city late (due to pesky barbarians and my scout harassing), when I started to change focus on Andy, who was shooting toward a cultural victory. I built Barracks and Military Academies in all of my cities so I'd have enough power to overcome Andy's city walls -- even though he had no army, he was fortified and had a military great person.

In the end, I managed to sack two Chinese cities. He still produced enough culture in his capital to win the last turn... except, my little bit of culture I produced gave me a card that let me produce last-minute Espionage that I used to activate Writing's special power to cancel his city's turn... Which he used a culture card to cancel my cancel. I had a cancel-cancel-cancel... Except nuances didn't let it work on that one.

Andy won during the city phase.
During the next phase on that turn, I would have sacked his capital to win military victory.
And Joey was just a couple turns from learning Spaceflight to get a technology victory.