I was playing a game on Emporer with raging on some unknown world. I was the Babylonians and had built a huge empire of over fifty cities. There were four other civilizations. All were weaker and less advanced. The Persians had seven cities that were size twelve and smaller and hadn't even discovered Automobile. The Viking's were only a little better. The Celts only had two cities. The Egyptians were the only ones who were had sapceflight but were to weak to do any serious building. I had an alliance with all of them. The game was pretty boring so I decided to change civilizations and see how well I could do. I switched over to the Egyptians. They had about ten cities that were somewhat developed. The biggest was about size twenty. That turn I talked to the Babylonians. They were naturallyvery high and mighty so they canceled our alliance. That made me so angry so I set out to destroy the Babylonians who were twenty times as powerful as me and if I were ruling them could kill the Egyptians in a matter of minutes. So I built a couple of nuclears and some cruise missles and paradroppers and so on. The next turn I attacked splitting their empire in two. They then recaptured the fallen capital but I attacked again and split them. This struggle remained for a couple turns before I finally launched a barrage of cruise missles against their last remaining city. I landed some paradroppers and the Babylonian empire was mine. In about five turns I had completely destroyed a civilization twenty times more powerful then me. The computer could have never done that. It was like another game on deity when I only had two cities and the Greeks had total of about fourty maxed out cities. Well one by one, capital by capital I destroyed the Greeks and had risen from two to about fifteen cities. I then took out the rest of the civilizations. There are two morals to these stories: 1, no game is hopeless as long as you can split their empire. 2, MicroProse can never create an AI that is smarter than the player.

Visit my Civ2 website at
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Lair/4991/index.html
I have scenarios where you play a small civilization fighting for freedom versus a huge empire. It also has guides to beating deity and guides to wonders and units.

E-mail me at petefitz@seacoast.com