I've been very remiss with this spoiler... so I'll try to make up
After the short "iron war" against the Celts I bought some techs from anarres and built up a force of Knights - after 25 turns or so I was strong enough to go for the Celts properley. I had a couple of really bad rounds with the rng and then some good ones... of course the celts did everything wrong and slowly but steadily I pushed them off the map. I also declared on the English to take Norwich (founded on MY turf) and forced a tech from them in settlement.
During this time anarres wiped the french completely and took the GL pretty early (turn 120 IIRC). I have been constantly behind nearly everybody in tech, watching others start late MA wonders whilst I am still researching early MA techs...
And then in the last few turns I have managed to pull it back a bit. At turn 163 I finally triggered my GA with my single conquistidor by attacking the ottomans who have some annoying cities on my borders. Amazingly the same turn I get my first great leader!! about fucking time!! I decide against using it for Smiths and will keep it for a cav army.
With the boost in research from my GA I research Democracy pretty quick... anarres/china/turks/iroqouis are all industrial by now but have beelined so I monopoly trade Democracy with China for mil trad, magentism, and ToG to reach IA.
I kill a few turkish units then make peace (which they want)... in the peace deal I give them democracy + 260gpt in exchange for nationalism AND steam power!! (the going rate for just 1 of these is democracy + >800gpt !!) Cool... now I am ahead of anarres by nationalism and still in my GA. I also sign a MPP with china and get 10gpt from them, china have the biggest mil and could probably make life difficult for me or anarres right now.
Time to build/upgrade a shitload of cav and go-for/defend-against anarres I reckon... will rail as well obviously, it will be a couple of turns till i connect coal and I pay attention to some of my satellite towns to turn them into worker factories. No doubt anarres has a shitload of workers waiting (his style) and is busy industrialising his heartland, according to my advisors his military is small though so it'll be a short while at least until he's ready to attack me.
169 - I buy a wm from china, yep, anarres has RR connecting his main cities already
, I am just starting mine! He still dosen't have nationalism though and I have 20 cav, a cav army and a dozen rifles already waiting on my western border in case he shows up soon.
