I'm very interested to see how things look *after* turn 40 in any of these games.
Last night I played as Machaka, and I was doing well (Desert Sun was really wreaking havoc on my closest opponents, namely Caelum and Vanaheim, and I had several very good assassinations followed by Black Lord/Black Hunters military victories) but I could sense that in a few turns I was going to get squeezed really badly since they were concentrating their troops.
One good thing about the 40-turn limit: you can almost always end on a decent note.