Once you've emerged from the mid-game in Civilization, and this will almost always be the moment your nation enters the industrial age, there really aren't quite as many decisions that need to be made. Late game in Civilization is more management than decision making, because by now, you should have been pursuing your victory strategy for centuries, in game time that is.

If you chose a cultural victory, your culture city should be well on its way to building its second or third wonder. You should have established embassies at least with all of the other visible civilizations on the map and if everything has gone well, you should be operating in a world generally at peace. If, on the other hand, your culture city has been sacked by barbarians so many times that its citizens are flying a pirate flag at the library, hostile foreign navies are beaching legions of screaming elite military units next to your fishing fleets and your palace guards are browsing Orbitz looking for the next flight out of town, it is a safe guess that you probably didn't do such a good job with the cultural strategy outlined in part two of the strategy guide.

The diplomatic path is pretty much the same. If your League of Nations addresses are being interrupted by hecklers and flying produce, it's fairly unlikely that the world's great leaders are going to elect you Secretary General any time soon. If you have reached late game with either of these strategies in such a state, the only point to finishing the game is the entertainment value, because it's really not going to lead to a victory.

However, if your people are more conquest-minded, there may yet be a chance to overcome the odds and lead your proud nation to a military takeover of the entire planet. But there are some things to remember as you ride along in your armored truck waving at your ruthless subjects.

The first is the general economic output of your unit producing cities. As impressive as big units are, they are not economically efficient. The key to winning military manuevers in Civilization is to actually, well, manuever. In a competition of getting there first, you're going to need some advantages, and those advantages can be found in large numbers of smaller units as opposed to smaller numbers of larger units.

But first, you need railroads. This is no different than the cultural pursuit of the Great Library early. Get railroads at all costs, even if you have to sell the flatware out from under your next state dinner. Once you have railroads, select your five highest producing cities and connect them to your best-equipped coastal city with rail lines and follow up by setting that coastal city as a continental rally point. This will allow all units produced in those five cities to collect in your port. In that port city, build a factory and start making transports.

Your land units should center around the fastest moving lowest-cost unit you can build. For naval units, destroyers and submarines are the best combination. Destroyers are faster than most other naval units, and while submarines are considerably slower, they hit like a truck. Three subs are an invincible fleet in Civilization.

Once you have a rally point that is producing transports, you will be able to hit any point on the map faster and harder than anyone else. As the late game progresses, you can follow a similar strategy with air units. Don't waste time and money building big giant aircraft carriers and expensive stealth aircraft. Instead build massive numbers of fighters and simple bombers and make sure those units have maximum possible range.

The "hit anywhere quick" strategy makes it possible for your home continent to react instantly with overwhelming firepower to any threat the very moment it appears. Hostile transports that sink offshore will offer the computer opponent no opportunity to steal your cities, and even if a beachhead is established, wave after wave of bomber aircraft will make it very difficult for those units to establish any kind of momentum or permanent foothold.

Civilization is a game with so many options that attempting to write about them all would take pages and pages and there would still be volumes of information missed. Being prepared with the correct strategy at the right time will greatly increase the likelihood of that strategy's success. Generally speaking, twenty cities, selecting and preparing for a given victory strategy and then following the correct steps to implement that strategy without being distracted are the keys to winning a game of Civilization. Switching to a military strategy late in the event one of the other strategies looks likely to fail can also salvage a weak position.

For the military approach, just keep in mind that less is not more, and that expensive units mean expensive repairs and very expensive losses on the battlefield. Mutual support is the key for combat units, and the ability to retreat and repair is always less expensive than rebuilding.

But the ultimate key is practice. Happy Civilization building!