Have to say I like the Maya over the Iroquois. Faster worker speed can really help things for this sort of game. Strange that you couldn't trade for a bit Marsden. Concerning research and the two demi-god pangea (standard size maps) games I've gone through for a bit where I've forgone libraries/universities for the most part, I want to guess that if you play a low level tech cost comes as so low that you can just use a few specialists and use shields usually often used for libraries/universities otherwise, if you play at a high level, you can do the same with some specialists as desired and buy/trade for some of the other techs (Moonsinger's 88k game seems an example... although maybe she had some really good fortune in that one) and forget libraries/universities except as culture as needed. After all, you'll have plenty of corrupt areas and you'll have to water them eventually and the luxury slider only can go so far in corrupt areas such that scientist farms make more sense since scientists score as content citizens and unhappy citizens do nothing for your score... at least until you get to Replacable Parts and Sanitiation also. After that, only Ecoloy and Recycling seem of some use.. but not a whole lot with industrious workers and a decent rail newtwork (well, on pangea at least). I feel surprised that it seems like a lot of players have wanted Cure for Cancer so badly, since it only produces content citizens. Although, maybe I've guessed wrong here about what people do. Well... I guess that's all given that you have an O.K. military situation... i.e. use arties effectively or get things under control before then.