Civilization IV Coincidence

Yesterday, as I was playing Civilization IV, I instructed my capital city to start construction of the Eiffel Tower, one of the game's World Wonders. Just a couple of turns later, a Great Engineer appeared in my capital. That in itself isn't unusual, but the engineer turned out to be
Eiffel himself! Never before have I used a Great Engineer to actually build the work he's known for; only rarely do my Great People appear anywhere close to their historical time periods, let alone in the nick of time to actually work on their own projects.

Naturally, I forgot to take a screenshot. :-(

Victory is Mine!

Recently I finally managed to win a couple of games of Civilization IV: a domination victory and a space race victory. Both times, victory came by surprise - in each case, I was just micromanaging my settlers and then boom, the endgame animation starts up. Winning is fun, but with a game like Civilization it's sometimes a little anticlimactic; you're setting up your empire, gathering your cultural or military forces to utterly dominate rivals that have vexed you for thousands of years, then bang, your scientists launch a rocket to Alpha Centauri or your territory expands to a given percentage of Earth's surface and boom, you're done. Of course you can continue playing, but it seems kind of pointless...

I wonder if you could make an entertaining civilization style game without war - a utopian alternate history in which people cooperate much more often than they fight. Challenges could include natural disasters, global famines, social challenges like poverty and human rights. Maybe an asteroid impact or global warming scenario for the endgame, a final challenge to be overcome by all players, human and AI.

Huh. That might be worth playing.