Guys, our biggest mistake by far was not pushing on with spies after our first one died. If there's one thing the Russians used to always repeat, ad infinitum, it was knowledge is power, meaning explore the map. If we had pushed spies out in both directions we would have found Lizzie much sooner and could have focused our energy in that direction.
I've compared our saves with the PDs and, contrary to what Duckweed is saying, we were far ahead in units, even on T127, plus we had more cities. Our biggest mistake was splitting our stacks into two directions, and that because we didn't know better, lacking map knowledge.
That said, the PDs strategy of getting OBs with the AIs was simplicity. I don't understand why we didn't see that in our beginning discussions. They had no problem getting OBs and from there, common war and all those goodies. They also blundered, though, for lack of map knowledge, as far as I can tell, because they decided to DoW Genghis. I'm not sure why, but I think because they also didn't have better map knowledge. The ideal solution would have been to befriend Hatty, which they did, and Genghis. DoW someone else, like Shaka or Cyrus. Then they'd have an open pathway to Lizzie. This way they had to fight their way through Genghis. So obviously they could have won this much sooner than they even did. Probably 160 or sooner. The PD strategy was definitely better than the Kaku strategy, in the final analysis, and more flexible too.
The only thing that could have gone wrong with their strategy would be if Mansa or Hyuana had built the AP. (Or different map set-ups of course, like Lizzie overseas, etc.) But even then, I'm not sure that would have mattered all that much because they were in good position to pop two more GSes if they needed them. They would have had to take out Genghis or Hatty also to build the galleons. I guess that would have put them past the Kakus if the Kakus had played optimally.
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