After reading carefully the flood of feedback on my proposal, I adjusted accordingly and went ahead and played on. That's to say, I went ahead with my plan.
(mix of emotions here, also because of a CTD)
While Cathy moved her stackettes of HAs, WEs and wounded siege to the east, we moved our stack back towards Shimo, meanwhile diverting some troops to our NE, in case Cathy would make a move. However, she seemed more interested in the Barb city way east. Unfortunately she's moving her troops just across the border through Mongolia which makes it impossible to peel off units without DoWing the Khan. When our stack reaches Shimo, it encounters only futile resistance.
Meanwhile tweaked the cities a bit to speed up Guilds slightly, timing it to be in at the moment our next great person is born in Tokyo. When that happens (a GS), launch a GA with him, bulb banking with the GM we had hanging around forever and revolt to vassalage and mercantilism.
Contemplate here whether it is worth it to bulb philo with the GS we had hanging around and continue nationalism. Notice we can probably tweak more cities to have nationalism before the GA ends, so we could go for nationhood and have the draft available. While gunpowder is nice, muskets are not better than our samurai, so go for it and bulb philo and continue nationalism.
After capturing Shimo, Cathy will not talk peace yet on reasonable terms, as she wants Shimo back. We laugh at her face and hope she will make a move back in soon. Some turns later she actually does, moving her stackettes back and positioning it at the gates of Yokohama, where her units are duely slaughtered. That makes her see the wrongs of her ways and she pays 245 gold for peace. Take it as we have no more pressing business to do with her (screenshot lost).
Continue producing units and move them back towards Fukushima, where we see no signs of instability in reactors 1-4 by the way. Only encroaching Indian culture. Other than that been producing some infra in newer cities.
As I hand it off we have 6 turns left on the GA, while nationalism is due in 5, so we could still revolt. Do note I put 5 or 6 cities on wealth to keep our research rate up. Also, a great person will be born in Kyoto in 5 turns, with another one following in Tokyo shortly after (says 6 now, but that will obviously be some turns more). I thought it important to keep pushing a bit with great people as bulbing seems to get us forward still a bit, or alternatively, a subsequent GA with these 2 great people won't be entirely awful either.
Tech picture doesn't look all that awful, especially when we hit nationalism. The only AI that really worries me is Cyrus (with Saladin as a good 2nd), who has education already and who incidentally is Asoka's master. I think we'll just have to build up an enormous SoD, helped by the draft, and then try to romp through the subcontinent and start chewing off the Persians. A 2nd GA might help with the preparations. In any case probably gunpowder after nationalism so at the end we can add some muskets as stack defense. Some pikes may help too. More siege won't hurt either. I wouldn't bother with the Indian islands, I think if we want to have a chance to win the game we should start stomping the Persians rather soon, say within a turn or 20, 30 maybe.
Anyway, not all hope is lost!
to 0%
I tried it myself, crash...tried the last 4 autosaves and same result, finally found one that loaded. I'll replay those 4 turns and resave
