Next up was Alex, my best buddy so far (the only civ pleased with me!).
*sigh* The fun factor really began to plummet now. I had infantry, he only cavalry, so I thought this wouldn't be much of a problem and more a lesson in tedium. Well, I was correct about the tedium, but not about the danger - what he lacked in quality, he made up with quantity. While my infantry had no big problems killing is cavalry, I did lose some units from time to time, and they also needed to heal between fights - and so I was unable to kill all stacks he sent at me.
This was insane - I can't remember when I last had a game where an enemy stack managed to come through to my capital! The city was in no real danger of course, and the stack was killed during the next turns, but still...I was shocked. And I had lost more improvements, of course. All this constant warring prevented me from building up a real army, not speak of building culture...
And not long after I had destroyed the Greek menace at Washington, but while still being at war with Alex, Genghis came calling - and declared war on me, too. Again.
This was mind-numbing. This was insane! I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. I shut down research completely, and upgraded and rush-bought lots of units, to survive this now two-front war. As you can see in the screenshot, I lost a lot of improvements again... 
Alex was willing to make peace in 1853AD, but Genghis fought on. And in the meantime, I spotted this:
I think you can guess what happened. Did he declare war on me? Yep, sure he did. But not him alone!
Yay, never had this before - two war declarations against me on the same turn! Now I was fighting three wars at once: In the north, in the east, and in the south.
I survived. I annihilated Saladin's monster stack, saving New York, one of my legendary cities. I let Monty's inferior troops suicide against my garrisons in the north, and didn't care about being pillaged there. And Genghis made peace with me some turns later, too. I no longer cared. I just moved lots of units, won battles, lost some, replaced pillaged improvement, all without feeling anything anymore...
Peace was established again in 1880AD. Peace! With all my opponents! I was no longer fighting anyone! I had completely forgotten how that felt!
I did have peace for one full turn. 
It didn't matter much though, as I finally generated my 8th great artist in 1885AD and won a cultural victory one turn later, in 1886AD.
Wow, that had been one wild ride! The game had been a lot of fun up until 1502AD, after which I made way too many weedy moves and then got attacked a bit too often. That had been mostly my fault though, as I failed to build up a large enough army to scare away all the warmonger AIs. I clearly wasn't used to face aggressive AIs!
I made way too many mistakes after 1502AD, and so my final score won't be a top score in the end. I mean, a cultural victory in 1886AD is not very good! My key mistakes were:
I did not build any of the late-game wonders, and never had a navy seal reach elite status (couldn't stand the tedium...), so my final score looks like this:
25 Victory
28 7 rival civs alive at game's end
13 built the great lighthouse
7 built the Parthenon
3 built Hagia Sophia
2 built Chichen Itza
5 had 5 libraries at 260AD
7 had 7 temples at 260AD
7 had 7 universities at 1502AD
10 had 5 cathedrals at 1502AD
Total: 107 points
Anyway, thanks to Sulla for sponsoring this - I liked playing a scored event again, and the tedium that nearly let me quit the game had nothing to do with him, and was mostly my fault.
See you next game, and thanks for reading!
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