After some initial struggles, I was finally leading in land + pop, with a healthy Treasury (>3000g), but still slightly behind America and Korea tech-wise.
(Bloody William had dogpiled me early on, Allying with 3/4 of my neighbours — the Egyptians, the Arabs, and the Mayans — and forcing me into a Despotic GA when one of my Jags got attacked. This was somewhat annoying, but did allow me to finish learning Republic and building SoZ. I held off the invaders, allied with Greece against the Dutch, and then Carthage against the Mayans, and nursed my grudges for a thousand years: the neighbours are all now extinct!)
By about 1250 AD, I was into the Industrial and catching up at 4-5T per tech; Wang and Abe had both been Industrialized and building UniSuff for a while, but (as usual) wasted time on the Nationalism twig-techs, before doing the important ones (Steam, RepParts, etc.). I went low, just finished researching SciMeth, and converted an Army-prebuild in my FP-town to ToE, with ~10 turns still needed on the build (at ~20 SPT, because I haven't got a Factory there, and have only recently acquired Coal and started Slave-railing out from my capital). So my next research-project was Industrialization, with the intention of also doing RepParts before ToE completed.
Then Abe apparently learnt SciMethod and started (/switched to?) building ToE himself, in Boston, moving(?) his UniSuff-build to
Smolensk, of all places (a Pop6 fringe town with a lot of Jungle still in the BFC; formerly Russian, obviously, but Cathy was also dogpiled by the eastern Civs, and long since booted off the board). I investigated both towns, and found that Boston (a core-town with a Factory and lots of Hills, putting out 50 SPT), would (now?) complete ToE in 5T(!)
I still needed 7T, so after crying briefly, I resigned myself to losing ToE — but with >450 shields already in the box, switching that to an Army would be something of a waste. (I have quite a few ACav- and Cav-Armies already, and they're all way over on my eastern border, having exacted full and bloody revenge against the Dutch, and then cut Carthage down to size — before WW forced a premature halt, because I'd stupidly [mis]deployed my forces to go after Hanni's outlying Arab and Mayan conquests nearer my core first, but left the Dutch/Carthaginian border under-garrisoned). So I switched to a Palace-prebuild, in the hope of researching AtomTheory + Electronics the hard way, and at least snagging Hoovers.
Then a couple of turns later, Wang finished UniSuff — and