Thanks, good to hear that we interpreted the rules the right way.
We will enjoy our temporary first place
but be happy for 3rd. Let's see what the Suspects can do to take it away from us. I looked at the saves of the other teams and it seems like Home Slices and Phoenix are going for religious victories while Suspects are going for conquest (or cultural, but that seems unlikely).
I think we underestimated the power of the cultural espionage mission (To be honest, I was hoping not to have to deal with learning these mechanics. But as usual the SGOTM requires a lot of fancy strategies). We could also have optimized our game a bit by using city gifting and recapture to induce capitulations. We did things rather old school by simply eliminating all AI's except Roosevelt.
In general it seems that all teams have done more or less the same. Early aggression to capture nearby cities, early HA's taking the war to the AI capitals in the western part of the continent. I think we are the only team who had to fight a 20 unit stack like the one Bismarck built in Tsingtao. I know we are the only team that used the GProphet for an immediate Golden Age and I also don't see any other team building The Globe Theater like we did. All teams have built Kremlin fairly early but it seems that Suspects are not really taking advantage of this. Currently they are slow building Intelligence Agencies that could be whipped. I'm pretty sure that all teams are using fail gold to fuel research but we are probably going to be the only team that completed 3 tech eras.
Thanks to the map maker and organizers. I think the map was very creative with lots of good elements. The bomber introduced a new type of warfare and the early access to spy Wonders and spy technology allowed for exploration of this part of the game. It's a shame that there wasn't more support for play testing because the game could have been even better with some balancing. The AI's could have been given better land. They turned out to be extremely weak as soon as their "Chinese" cities were captured. In particular with the advantage of the bomber. Maybe the AIs should have been given Communism (State Property) as well so that they could better afford distant cities and become more valuable trading partners. And the Americans never managed to expand in our game because of the barb presence in North America. They did, however, move the palace which I find interesting. Haven't sen the AI do this before.
I like how you ended right at 1000 AD. 
be a team again! 
