Sadly, after many years of doing this, I find I can no longer muster the gumption to play and post the ALCs.I've simply run into the law of diminishing returns. I started these threads to improve my own game, which they obviously did, since I started on Prince and worked my way up to Immortal (and, off-line, I'm going to attempt deity soon). But I find I simply wasn't getting much out of the threads anymore (even though I know many of you were, which is why I kept them going). These sorts of threads require their fair share of time, dedication, and effort, and I have a limited supply of those (my altruistic streak also has its limits, sadly). Many of you have noted how the delay between posts was becoming longer and longer in the last few games; now you know why.I may not have accomplished all I originally set out to do in the ALCs (play a game as every leaderreach Deity level), but I've had a good run. In fact, if I count the "take 2s" as separate games--which they were--I played and posted 26 ALC matches. That's exactly the number that would have been required to play a game with each leader in the original Civ IV release, a.k.a. "vanilla". I know, it's not quite "mission accomplished", but like any opportunistic leader, I'm more than happy to peremptorily hang that on a banner behind me, give a rousing farewell speech to the troops, and head home to hang out on my ranch. If only I had a ranch...At any rate, I'm quite proud of the games, and the threads live on as my legacy. I hope they will prove as enlightening to future generations as they have to...(Okay, I'm getting pretty pretentious, aren't I?)Anyway. I had to pull down some of the old saved game files to make room for new ones. This has prompted several of you to ask me to e-mail you the missing games, which I will continue to do. But to make things a little easier, since I no longer need the file space, I've posted the starts of all the ALCs here in this post. Sadly, I lost the first six startsand no one else seems to have them either, but all the others are in the ZIP file that's attached, along with the earliest saves from the early games.If you check the most recent posts in the thread as of today's date, several other players have indicated an interest in carrying on the ALCs. I will include links to those threads above. The torch has been passed, and...Whoops, there goes my pretention alert again.