SE1: first attempt is a failure!

Huh. You know how I said the timing of the Oracle in City 1 and the completion of the Forge in City 2 is crucial? Yeah, it's a pain in the keshik. Let's review the final steps in the gambit:

1. Acquire Priesthood
2. City 1 whips a building to completion that had been previously halted with 1 turn of construction remaining
3. City 1 begins building Oracle, benefiting from the overflow of step 2
4. City 1 whips/chops to finish Oracle quickly
5. Choose Metal Casting as the free tech
6. City 2 whips another building with 1 turn remaining
7. City 2 begins building Forge
8. City 2 whips/chops to finish Forge WITHIN 6 TURNS OF COMPLETING THE ORACLE (this is why pre-chopping the forests is so important)
9. City 2 tweaks its population so that it has an Engineer Specialist
10. City 2 will eventually spawn a Great Engineer
11. City 2 begins building Pyramids
12. 'Pop' the Great Engineer to build the Pyramids
13. Convert to Representation, Caste System, drop your Research Slider to 0%, maximize city populations (without starvation/unhappiness) and use tons of Scientist Specialists

Congratulations. If you did it right, you should know be cranking out tons of research, and making good money to boot. Great Scientists will be popping out like crazy. And you can do this all by 1000 BC!

Or you can be like me and pull it off by 325 BC... Not so good then. Even though I got Priesthood and access to the Oracle in 2000 BC, I could not get the Forge built in my second city for quite some time. I hadn't been growing the population fast enough in City 2 to allow for two whips in rapid succession and still have population left over for an Engineer Specialist. I also needed a mine in my second city - once those forests were chopped down, there weren't a whole lot of hammers around.

A little late?

The other issue I encountered is the population of my first city would occasionally increase while I was waiting for the Great Engineer to spawn. This new pop would invariably be a Scientist and if I didn't catch it right away, it would destroy the careful Great People Point (GPP) planning. I would end up with a Great Prophet spawned in my first city (from all the GPPs generated by the Oracle) rather than the Great Engineer. This is also the same reason why you must finish the Forge and assign an Engineer within 6 turns of completing the Oracle - if you take even one more turn, your first city will generate enough GPP to create a Great Prophet first.

So, I must have reloaded from 2080 BC and made tweaks 10 times. The best I could get is the Pyramid at 325 BC. I suppose I could have reloaded earlier to around 2700 BC and done a better job but I got rather frustrated and would rather start over.

This was a fun experiment, and is highly recommended. It was very cool to move the Research Slider to 0% and still crank out research points like crazy.