Another war broke out I couldn't do much about: Genghis declared on Hatty in 995AD, quickly capturing two cities from her. Even I would have had the units to send over to declare on Genghis and protect her, they wouldn't have arrived in time - assuming I would have had open borders with the civs inbetween, which I hadn't. Hatty later got destroyed completely in another equally fast war. Ah well. At least I can't make my usual complaint about the AIs being too peaceful, or that they don't manage to take over enemy civs.
Since many AIs were running around with war elephants now, my next research project was engineering for pikes. In the meantime, my army had healed, was reinforced, and had moved to its next target. Remember - I still need more cities and religions...
Russia was just too juicy a target to pass up: It had two religions, Judaism and Taoism, both present in Yekaterinburg and Yaroslavl, two border cities. Capturing those wouldn't hurt Peter so much that he would be endangered to be killed later on. And in fact, he would survive until the end of the game!
I quickly captured Yekaterinburg, defended by a longbow, two archers, a horse archer and a swordman. (No spearman? Strange!) After healing, Yaroslavl fell next, and I made peace again. Peter paid 200 gold and 4gpt. I now had my 9 cities, and intended to leave it at that!
What followed was a series of 
moves. I forgot about Sistine's Chapel, started it way too late, and lost it to Peter. I made complete chaos trying to spread all the religions I had to all cities, building too many missionaries from one religion and forgetting about another. Especially, I completely forgot to spread Judaism to one of my three legendary cities for a very, very long time; I only noticed that in 1697AD, costing me lots of culture because of the missing cathedral. I don't know what was wrong with me during that session...
Anyway, at least I didn't forget to build the Hagia Sophia, which I completed in 1412AD for another 3 scenario points. I also discovered Liberalism in 1316AD, taking Nationalism as my free tech, to build Hermitage in the city with the highest culture output. And while I was busy building and whipping (and forgetting about) universities and cathedrals for the 1502AD scoring deadline, Monty suddenly adopts Theocracy and Vassalage. I call him, and see my suspicions confirmed:
Hm, I wonder who he might be planning to attack? Might it be his southern neighbour, preoccupied with building cathedrals instead of military? I rush my stack to my northern cities, and see this:
Gee, I guess they are not on a sightseeing tour to see all my impressive cathedrals...
*sigh* Aggressive AIs indeed. 
I had to suicide some catapults on that stack to soften it up a bit, as I had not that many units to attack with, but managed to kill that stack, albeit unable to prevent Monty from pillaging a bit.
In the meantime, a great merchant appeared in Washington. Er...huh? A great merchant? The odds for that had been what, 2%? 
I already had generated another great prophet, which I used for a shrine, but what I wanted were great artists of course! Ah well, I could use some money to fuel my research I guess, so I sent him away.
I fended off some mini-stacks on pillaging missions from Monty, then the 1502AD scoring deadline was there. Here are my lands from that time (unfortunately I accidently cropped away Yaroslavl in the south):
Score tally for 1502AD: I had built 7 universities and 5 cathedrals, for 17 additional points, plus Hagia Sophia for 3 and Chichen Itza for 2 points. I was quite happy with my results so far, in spite of the many moves I had made between 260AD and 1502AD! It's hard to say at this point, but I feel that this score is quite competetive. Unfortunately, the rest of the game went not so well...
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