Here's the save. I've played 7 turns. Sorry to have taken so long, and to have accomplished relatively little--though this was definitely a "get things reorganized a bit" set and not a "take out a bunch of enemies" set. We do have invasion forces which have just landed in the far north lands, and on the small island. It took a little while to get things organized, and we're still not 100% there, but this is a start and gives the troops something to do for a bit.
Pregame:
Switch science to 0%. I leave our scientists as they are though: this gives Electricity in 9 at +277 gpt. My thinking here is that we MAY yet want Repalceable Parts (for Artillery) for the end game. Other than that, I don't change anything except swap Rock Am Ring from a library to a frigate, and I swap our one citizen in Wealth-producing towns to a tax man.
Our armies seem really disjointed, so I'll try to work to fix that. I doubt I'll do much in the way of heavy bashing.
Landings of our forces near the Babylonian town of Zariqum (in the far north, on a mountain) and on the small island (under cover of a 3-cav army) have the Next Better Player set up to do some serious beatings of local populaces. There are also a couple of settlers with the northern contingent, and one on the small island, which can be used if needed. We also have a frigate/privateer combo off the Aztec coast looking for new recruits, though this should come back to heal up at this point (if the privateer lives through the turn). We have a stray cannon that is on the ships up north that can load into town once we capture it.
Note, there are also two armies with the island group -- they were on a boat, heading that way; in retrospect I really ought to have turned them around. My advice there would be to secure the island, send the ships north to the Dutch area of our continent, get some cavalry reinforcements, and then take those armies and the existing army and a few cavs over to wreak havoc on Russia or Aztecs.
Rail wise, we have Old Greece connected to our core by rail. We have one group working down our west coast, and another working through Greece toward Persia. New workers are joining, so things are a little disjointed at the moment. It's 6 workers to build a section of rail; some groups are set up this way, others are not yet. It will be easier to reorganize as needed once we have a basic rail system. I have been continuing to make workers (probably 20ish in my 7 turns); more are always welcome.
For maximum speed to finish, I think we should concentrate more on MILITARY -- the settlers seem to be taking decent care of themselves, and these can be rushed near the very end to fill in blanks. That's also better done (e.g. getting to that southwestern tundra) once we have rails in place.
On research, I elected to turn research to 0% but leave scientists in place. If desired, we can finish electricity in 2 turns at 50% (or 5 turns at 0% with existing scientists); it's probably doable to get electricity in 1 turn if we turn the various tax people I have around into scientists. I didn't have the energy. I really think Replaceable Parts would be a helpful thing to finish things off, and it's worth doing at least that research -- but I leave it to others to decide. Either way, specialists ought to be changed.
The Aztecs and Russians are landing, very predictably, down south near Perseopolis (their likely target). We have about 20 trebuchets there, a cav army, and a few random elite units leader fishing. Aztecs have a few nuisance frigates bombing out of the way places, but nothing serious.
I've probably got a few cannon (headed for our core to reinforce up north) and possibly a couple settlers on automove for a couple of turns. Military units shouldn't be any much of that AFAIK.
We could probably use some useful MMing in a bunch of places. Sorry.
Settlers are marching south; we picked up about 90 domination tiles in my turns, and can probably keep up that pace for a bit as we expand farther southwest. It is, however, infinitely more fun to get the last tiles by crushing our enemies before us and hearing the lamentations of their women.
(Sorry, if you got another impression from my comments! The team never really discussed, whether we want to continue research, so your decision to keep investing into research instead of settlers can't be blamed.)
I find this amusing.
