Yes, now you're on the right track! I hope you understand why I was insistent that you see it with your own eyes. For me, if someone tried to write a long post explaining it, it wouldn't have nearly the same impact and effect as looking at that map and seeing all those workshops and working out for myself what was going on and how there were so many tanks so early. I wouldn't have understood in the same, visceral way, exactly how to execute the strategy. I quite possibly would have done it half-hearted, failed, and given up on it.
My own modern game is done. I've won, but it got wild at the end. There were six spaceships launched total, one approximately (going by memory) in 2012, 2026, and then a series in 2038, 2039, 2044, and 2048 (which I just let go). That wasn't even the wild part. The wild part was that in stopping the 2038 ship, I started a war with Elizabeth and she just wouldn't accept peace no matter how decimated she was. I was going after her, trying to force a cease fire, my vassals were carving her up too. In the end, when she did accept peace (and I re-gifted her most of the cities I took) she immediately peace vassaled to Isabella who launched the 2044 spaceship. So when I went to war against Isabella, the same process repeated, she wouldn't accept peace after I destroyed the spaceship, and in the meantime my vassals were carving not just her up, but they were going after Elizabeth all over again. I was giving cities away, trying desperately to stay under the domination cap, but slowly my territory was expanding. In the end, the only thing that actually saved me is that all the new cities my vassals took were still in revolt by the time 2050 finally arrived, if the game had continued and the cities had converted and begun border pops, I would have either lost (by winning) or had to start giving away core, large pop cities I really wanted to keep.
I'm going to hold off on submitting the game until the April update is done. My score rather comfortably exceeds the current HoF score, and I don't want people to be able to find it in the HoF and know exactly what score they need to aim for to win the Gauntlet. Meanwhile, with the "quick" Modern game finished, I've begun a Classic start game, I know I left a lot of points on the table by, just as one example, vassaling a number of AI rather than just taking their territory for myself.