910 AD (1) - No time like the present. I make a demand of Persia, they refuse, then I demand they withdraw their troops and I declare. We have no defensive units, so bombarding is out of the question for the time. We get a lot of retreats, so we only lose three cavalry in killing the three rifles in Susa.
We lose another cav and an elite MW killing the stack of six units that was outside of Susa. Pop a leader killing a longbowman with another elite MW, and even though armies are pitiful I decide to make one. We should be able to get another leader before ToE. The army takes out the first defender in Ghulaman, we then lose only one cav before killing off the second rifle and taking the city.
With no defensive units to speak of, the IT will be a bit hairy, but if we make it through we should be in good shape. And just to help things out, make the alliance with Egypt for 7gpt, and just for fun, ally with Japan for 20gpt. The Persians and Japanese border each other in a few places, so maybe the Persians can take out a city or something.
IT - Things go pretty well. Cavalry attacking cavalry fortified in cities on hill can't retreat, as the Persians learn. We only lose a couple of MW that I expected to lose and a cav.
920 AD (2) - Do some limited clean up, but mostly healing.
IT - Pretty terrible luck here, but nothing disastrous happened.
930 AD (3) - Take out tons of units, and all four losses came to the same rifleman, who seemed to somehow keep cavalry from retreating or causing damage.
IT -
940 AD (4) - Buy England in against Rome for 7gpt.
IT -
950 AD (5) - Have to abandon a town by Rome.
960 AD (6) - Have to abandon another town by Rome.
970 AD (7) - Cannons at Persepolis perform spectacularly poorly. Hold off on attack until next turn.
980 AD (8) - Capture Persepolis with only a few losses. Next IT could see a few, though.
IT - Wow. Nothing. I think the Persians are in not so good shape.
990 AD (9) - Have to rush a Galleon up in the old core to to get some cavs over to our cities by Rome.
1000 AD (10) - Force is outside of Pasargadae. Settlers are on the way to replace Persepolis and get us wines (setter is under the cav in the picture NE of ruins)
We are probably going to lose New Cattaragus to the Romans next turn, but we may be able to get it right back, depending on our luck. We need a few more cavalray over there to have a shot, and maybe we need to rush some stuff over there. I was mostly focusing on the Persian campaign, and trying not to spend too much. I think I spent about 300g on rushing in the whole set.
Culture is up, but not notably. We will really have to get it going soon to get a date anywhere near decent. I think it will suffer a bit because we aren't really taking much advantage of the rank exploit. What is the date we are shooting for? I have already forgotten.
Oh, almost forgot. I got sick of waiting for Medicine so that we could trade for Steam Power, so I just went ahead and with a safe steal got it from Japan for 2300ish gold. So we can go ahead and start railroading. And Electricity is known by all of them.
Also, we got lots of elite wins without a leader, so are due another one in the next ten. Had to up lux to 10% because of WW on my last turn.
And just in case you're interested, a view of the world.