No one would have believed that in the last years of the 18th century that Persian affairs where being watched from the scheming realm of Egypt.
No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
Few men even considered the possibility of attack from Egypt and yet across the ruins of Sumeria minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Empire with envious eyes and slowly and surely they drew there plans against us.
At midnight on the beginning of 1740AD a loud blow from enormous horn sounded across the border and shook the Palace of Persepolis.
Across two-hundred- miles of wasteland deafeningly hurtling towards us came the first of the Cavalry that were to bring so much calamity to Persia.
As I watched there was another loud sound. It was the treachery of an Egyptian agent causing great turmoil and unrest Tarsus, allowing the horde of Cavalry easy victories.
And that how it was for the next 50 years, Mounted Devils galloping out from Egypt with bright yellow heralds holding a glimmering metallic weapons. A beautiful but somehow disturbing sight.
Catherine the Great assured me we were in no danger
She was convinced that we could hold together
against the might of Persia.
I didn't have much time this morning to play because last night I got hooked on a single player game as Mansa where I managed to peacefully settle a huge amount of land and had my best ever space race score 56000 pts for a 1910 landing, but I digress.
Here's a summary.
First turn found all the workers and woke them up

started to get some lumbermills going not that it's going to matter much anymore.
Stayed in the same civics for the IBT. Moved the stack out of Kish and into Uruk as that would be the most logical place for Cyrus to attack. Rearange specialist to become Spies where possible.
Next turn most builds became 1 move units along the front line and 2 move units (currassiers) deep in our core. Switched civics to Uni suff, Nationhood, rush units declare on Cyrus. Strike a small hiccup when it turns out he has a defensive pact with Catherine, oops.
Pretty much all our cities are suffering from war-weariness so the culture slider goes to 40% we'll get rifling next turn though even at 10% science.
When rifling comes in all currasiers get a ridiculously cheap upgrade to cavalry

I decide to leave all the cannons behind and just hit out with spies and cavalry, which mostly goes to plan except that we have very few EPs on Cyrus initially, only enough for 1 revolt on turn 4.
The rest of the turns basically went move cavs, move spies, attack cities, capture cities.
Catherine was eliminated about turn 7 I think.
Cyrus has 1 city left which has 0% cultural defence and about 15-20 cavs waiting to attack next turn.
Unfortunately I couldn't finish Cyrus in 10 turns, which I planned all along to let Metahu have the glory

We're only at 50% land, all newly captured cities are on build culture and or culture tax is quite high so it shouldn't take too long to reach dom requirements.