Having played a few CivIV AW games, maybe I should actually play this one ... 
But to add to the WW discussion: In most games you can get through the Middle Ages without having to bend your civ to compensate, at least partially because you can't generate the tech lead/unit gap to really go on an offensive. You can fight forever in your own territory without problems. When you do get to go on offense, very quickly you're running 30-40% lux and beelining for Police State and even then cities stagnate until you can start to eliminate other civs. I don't believe WW will decay unless you sign peace, which you obviously can't do in AW, so eliminating a civ seems to be the only way to reduce the WW.
Of course, the AI suffers WW just like you, albeit in lesser amounts. The difference being it has no idea how to combat it, so the effect is that the AI will eventually completely stagnate from the WW it generated by banging its head against your cities in the early part of the game and will ... just ... stop ... getting ... better ... units.
The stagnation can be particularly noticable because due to "common military struggle" diplo bonuses, it can feel more like one opponent/seven different color shirts rather than seven distinct opponents. But I understand why it was necessary to essentially force the AI to all be chummy in an AW. Otherwise all it would take is to have Toku in the game and all traffic through the Pangaea to reach the human would cease at his borders.
The best solution to AW in CivIV is to treat the Human as "Barbarians in different uniforms". The human suffers no WW at all, the AI suffers no WW by fighting the human, and the AI get no "common enemy" bonuses. That would fix the stagnation problem and give the feel of more, distinct opponents and allow for the possibility that the AIs might actually fight amongst themselves.
But to add to the WW discussion: In most games you can get through the Middle Ages without having to bend your civ to compensate, at least partially because you can't generate the tech lead/unit gap to really go on an offensive. You can fight forever in your own territory without problems. When you do get to go on offense, very quickly you're running 30-40% lux and beelining for Police State and even then cities stagnate until you can start to eliminate other civs. I don't believe WW will decay unless you sign peace, which you obviously can't do in AW, so eliminating a civ seems to be the only way to reduce the WW.
Of course, the AI suffers WW just like you, albeit in lesser amounts. The difference being it has no idea how to combat it, so the effect is that the AI will eventually completely stagnate from the WW it generated by banging its head against your cities in the early part of the game and will ... just ... stop ... getting ... better ... units.
The stagnation can be particularly noticable because due to "common military struggle" diplo bonuses, it can feel more like one opponent/seven different color shirts rather than seven distinct opponents. But I understand why it was necessary to essentially force the AI to all be chummy in an AW. Otherwise all it would take is to have Toku in the game and all traffic through the Pangaea to reach the human would cease at his borders.
The best solution to AW in CivIV is to treat the Human as "Barbarians in different uniforms". The human suffers no WW at all, the AI suffers no WW by fighting the human, and the AI get no "common enemy" bonuses. That would fix the stagnation problem and give the feel of more, distinct opponents and allow for the possibility that the AIs might actually fight amongst themselves.
waiting for the reporting time, but does anyone know how I get free webspace to set up my own Civ website? I am sure this was discussed but I missed that.