(0) Gandhi and Hatty want no less than CS for their map. Alex doesn't even offer it. We'll have to circumnavigate manually I'm afraid.
Everybody has Feudalism, so our axes won't help us much against Cyrus. Cossacks, however, would offer strength 18 vs around 12-14 for an average longbow - enough for an easy win I think. No need to wait for catapult bombarding.
Whip university (3 pop) in St. Peter. They grow pretty fast, and have very low production. Next will be a courthouse.
Some MM in Novgorod, they can't grow any further, so I send some farmers home to their cottages. One of them goes reading some books at the library (scientist).
Fire a scientist in Rostov, to work another forest. That city still has some growth potential.
Fire two scientists in Yaro - what are they doing?!? They can grow, and have unused cottages/sea tiles!
Yekaterinburg has no barracks, and would take 16 turns for its cossack. It's a pretty average city in everything, but a courthouse won't hurt, and enable the FP when completed.
I'm almost happy with Yakutsk. Almost means that I fire the two scientists to make use of the growth potential.
Pasargadae has an artist. Hm. Gets fired for a 1/3/1 mine. After all that city's building cossacks!
Exchange some grassland cottages for floodplain ones at Persepolis. I know that city is already unhappy, but we can always whip away any excess population! Whip market for 2 pop, next will be barracks. Then we can whip some cossacks there.
Susa's at the happiness limit, reconfigure for max. hammers and commerce.
Just before clicking that red button I find that there are several workers standing around sleeping! Well, last time I checked we had some jungle to clear...give the appropriate orders. Also, there are some workers chopping forests for cottages at Pasargadae, when they could chop jungles instead. It would get that cossack out a bit faster, but I'd rather keep at two of them for health.
Finally, send the catapults and all but one axer down towards Arbela. And then click the button.
I decided not to switch to Theocracy, since many cities are building buildings. It would be one turn of anarchy, and would only affect 4 or 5 cossacks compared to after the GA. I don't know if it's even worth switching at all, we have a big military advantage anyway.
(1) Compared to the inherited one, this one's really quiet.
(2) Taj Mahal has been built, for 10 turns of a GA. Novgorod now finally builds that Pagoda, to run more than one priest.
Suddenly, bags of money appear everywhere on the coast. What a sight!
(3) We meet Frederick! He's located below Hatty who in turn is below Alex. And - behold - he's pleased or friendly with EVERYONE! Also, he's the only one in the world who has Engineering, not available for trade though.
The only ones who really don't like each other are Alex and Gandhi. Hatty and Fred don't seem to care much.
Whip Pagoda in Novgorod for 4 pop. They have big food income, and then will finally be able to get us a priest.
(4) Printing Press comes in. Next will be Feudalism->Guilds->Banking, we'll need that for many things.
(5) Some cities finish things, but nothing exciting really.
(6) Feudalism->Guilds. We circumnavigated, I expect the message to come up next turn. Lots of workers chop jungle, there's nothing else to do for them.
Our first cossack arrives at the persian border, where our catapults are gathered. This means:
Horns sound, and our forces (3 cats, 3 axers, 1 cossack) cross the border.
Whip another cossack for 4 pop at Pasargadae, to get rid of unhappiness there. Persepolis will follow as soon as they can. Everywhere else, people are still happy.
(7) Someone founds a religion called Islam.
We get the circumnavigation as expected. Our first cossack gets in its first kill (an immortal out in the open).
Arbela is on a hill, and there's a CDII longbow in it. Strength 17.10, altogether. More than I expected, but still weaker than a cossack.
By the way, nobody, I mean nobody, has Guilds. Economics for the GM will be uncontested.
Down south, in one of Hatty's cities, we see an aztec Jaguar warrior. Monty gets along well with everyone except Gandhi. I'm not sure why, but he gives us a "traded with worst enemy" modifier. He's the only one to do that, though.
Rice for Spice from HC. I forgot about that earlier.
(8) Persepolis can finally poprush a cossack, to get rid of unhappiness.
(9) Hangzhou in the north flips and gets disbanded. We get a longbow for free.
Guilds->Banking.
After some more bombardment, our cossacks go take a look at Arbela. There's one longbow, 2 archers, and an immortal. In short: we kill them all, no losses (fortunate 30% axeman battle), and take Arbela.
Two more cossack reinforcements arrive (the enslaved ones from Pasargadae and Persepolis). That makes a total of four. Gordium has one longbow, two archers and a spear, it's not on a hill. Will be easy pickings.
(10) Gordium is ripe. 4 cossacks can attack next turn.
Remember to raze that city!!!
I set both our caravels on 'explore', I don't see anything left for them to do.
on my part. 
lol: the stoner crossbowman, we need a good name for him!) I think building a second caravel to cirumnavigate is worth the delay, though.
might be helpful.
is around to take the place of an axe.) Those, with a couple of Cossacks to do the heavy lifting, could probably take/garrison/raze Cyrus's cities (and that barb one?) while we build cossacks for Qin during our GA.
I don't know how razing works in the case of Bactra, since the barbs captured it. We need to decide if we want to capture+raze the barbarian town (Anazi- we have a Cossack ready to strike IBT, with an 88% chance of winning.) Personally, that's what I'd lean towards. Bactra can be a decent city if it works both of its deer+lots of tundra lumbermills eventually (and I think it's going to be ours whether we like it our now, though we can let the barbs have it a bit 
) so he's more likely to get Rifling and put up a real threat (muskets are actually safer than longbowmen, since they don't get a hill bonus 
)
