Okay, as I was saying, the first 3-4 turns took 2 hours to play, and the remaining turns went blazingly fast by comparison such that I played a total of 15.
Our stack that was returning home was wiped out, leaving Reading dangerously close to the German stacks, and it had a whopping garrison of ONE brave defender -- longbow. A few whips and the situation improved, one thing was because Bismarck seemed lethargic in his war efforts. He was sending lone units in ... perhaps he wanted peace.
And this might helped him a bit ...
Oooo .... [pray]
Meanwhile, I gun-downed an airship.
Leaving an air unit unescorted in a fort? Improved AI? My foot!
The votes are in .... very interesting. No doubt history and politics students should be able to write volumes of thesis out of it.
The votes actually surpass the requisite number for success, but it actually registered as failed.

More interestingly, the Master wanted peace, but his two dogs are going to defy it??? Hmm ... shouldn't the vassals listen to the master in matters of foreign affairs? So the result should be that peace is returned, but since the vassals defied the masters, they should be at war. The correct outcome should be we and bismarck are now at war with QSH and Sally! This game is obviously BUGGY and FLAWED!!!! WE NEED THE FUTURE OF TOMORROW EXPANSION!!!!
Anyway, this might be one reason why QSH defied:
So we are facing an enemy where his two lapdogs all boasted artilleries and cavs while we still have pikes and longbows. Boy, we are backward.
Fortunately, there is another way to force peace where QSH and Sally can't defy.
Yeah, it is costly. That city has lots of towns, but chances are we are going to lose it (and a few others along with it) anyway should the war be prolonged by a couple of turns more.
Thereafter is a series of build ups. Two events of notice:
Yeah, right, hammer a man when he is down! What a character you have, Spirits of Random Events!!!

Grrrr...
This one was interesting. One of the more creative random events, I would say. Might be useful in a cultural win gambit.
Anyway, here we are:
How to win this? I don't know, we are very backwards.
We should be able to out tech Ramses, Sally and QSH given time with our sheer numbers, but Bismarck?
Another alternative is to go the zerg approach and keep pumping troops. What we lack in quality we make up for it in quantity.
Tech wise, we got philosophy (which puzzled me. Why Philosophy????). I go for Biology, as that is a tech Ramses, who is the only one willing to trade with us, still doesn't have.