I find it really odd that everyone on the show talks about Civ in the context of winning a game. Its not how I ever saw or played the game.
Recently I just finished (in fact brutally beaten by the Japanese) a game of Civ 4 on the 18 civ earth scenario. I played a game as Montezuma and my early game worked out pretty well. The Incas were stuck in South America due to the Andes and I had fought and won a minor war with Washington. Securing much of the Western United States. However when other civilizations finally made contact with our continent things started going south. In an attempt to create an American alliance I started to develop a healthier relationship with Washington, however due to a difference in religion and anger over the war this never happened and instead he declared war on me.
I was hard pressed to make any advance into his territory but finally managed to capture some of his bigger cities around the Gulf. Unfortunately the war bled Washington out and the Arabs were able to capture a city on the eastern seaboard. With this foothold they started to push farther inland. I quickly made a peace agreement with Washington and started donating units to the war effort.
With my factories supporting Washington it looked as if the tide had turned, but then the Japanese (the most powerful civ in the game, and ahead of me by over 1,000 points) pushed down through Alaska. About this time Washington became the puppet of the Arabs and they declared war on me.
Owing to the distances involved in reaching North America from Asia and the Middle East I managed to hold out for nearly 200 years. Unfortunately because all of my production was going into military units my research was unable to keep up and my WW1 era infantry found themselves facing stacks of tanks and eventually helicopters.
This was a really enjoyable game for me, but I never once expected to win. In fact if I was trying to win I would have probably quit around the medieval era as other civilizations started to contact me. Even then it was quite obvious that I was far behind the technological curve in the Old World. I just find it incredibly odd that people play to win civ. It seems, well it just seems wrong (not to malign people for playing the game how they want, I just have a hard time imagining playing a game of civ with that mindset).
