 Barbarians continue to threaten, but the city can take him off the time being. That's the edge of the map. Oh, another barbarian. Scott's gotta be up here somewhere. Where the hell is he? Either there's some land I don't know about in here. Ooh, I did not know that I got a culture for killing barbarians with cities. That's interesting. He's gotta be, like, right in here. We're hidden up here somewhere. I'm gonna need a troop back here to deal with this. These barbarians are starting to be a problem because this worker's gonna have to thread a fine line of working on stuff. Eh, but I want to build a settler. I might, as much as I want to harass Scott, I might send this guy back around. We'll see. I don't have money to buy soon. Yeah, there'll only be 220 to build another one of these guys, and that's enough to hold off barbarians for a while. So I feel like, yeah, let my city make gold again instead of what it was doing before. It's now very important. What do I do here? It's a small game. Now I want a min-max. Now it's too early to go after these. I'm actually way ahead on culture than I would normally possibly be able to be. So in a small game like this, I actually kind of want to go for patronage to get all the city-states on my side and leverage the hell out of them. Commerce will not be that useful. I couldn't fill it out in time, unless this game goes way long somehow. Honor will be useful if I go after a war, so pretty much it's these three are the ones I'm going to go for. Patronage, honor, or tradition. I think I actually want to max out tradition first. There's no danger of a war anytime soon. Scott's too far away. So I'm not going to build a wanderer out of the way, so I can hold off on that. And while this is not that useful immediately, it'll allow me to fight off barbarians more readily and protect my guys here. More importantly, I can quickly get here from my culture buildings to keep this culture blitz going. And then I can immediately go here, or here, as I see fit. So I'm going to rush this tradition tree. Well, this day has come. Bumped into his borders here. He's right in there. Let's just hang out and harass. Oh, a spear man, nice. Should I? I think I can send this scout back around to be ready to protect my worker. Because look, it'll take him like nine turns to get all the way back across. Well, let's hang out here and see what Scott does. He'll see this. Well, I think he can see this guy now. We'll see how he reacts. The question is, do I antagonize Scott now? Thus throwing him into a death spiral? Or do I retreat these guys back around clearing up these barbarian encampments along the way and consolidate my base knowing that he won't be able to assault me for the foreseeable future? Let's look a little more at his territory. Oh, hey, all right. I don't think he has much else going on. Dare I risk it? I think he'll be too afraid to risk attacking me, and he may retreat and possibly be butter about it. How do I get this guy around? If he retreats into the city, that's fine. Because then I can come back around with him sufficiently antagonized. There's a tiny chance he has a military unit over here, but I doubt it. He won't be able to take me out in one turn. Let's do it. Let's see what he does. I'll offer him a peace treaty for 30 gold. This is going to be a straight-up advanced wars fight here. I'm not going to actually try to take him out or anything. I just want to antagonize him a little bit. I wish he'd sent a guy north. But if I keep these guys here, I could keep these guys here and thus basically prevent him from having a worker or a settler. But then my worker is going to be vulnerable until I build yet another military unit over here. And I wish I could just build a settler right away. But it's going to take so long for these guys to move all the way back over. If I send this guy all the way back across, look. Eight-ish, eight-nine turns. But then five turns to build that. Let's see. Can I show the queue? I then build a settler next. That's 12, 17 turns before I have a settler. I'll have an unprotected worker in the inner rim. But this guy can get all the way back over here in about nine turns. Conversely, this guy can get back over here in about eight turns. So I could just do a full retreat, have guys here, and expand. But I think instead I am going to keep at least this guy here because that'll prevent Scott from moving north. And I will then be able to settle in this relatively good area early, or this area. Let's see how it goes. All right, don't let anyone say that I don't do things that I'm asked to do just because. So rim and I guess other people want to make a video of the sieve game that rim and I are playing against each other. It's a two-player sieve game. This is our third one. The first one we played on a bus. I didn't know what it was doing. The second one, rim already posted videos of me ruining him with my giant army. So here's the third one. I guess rim isn't going to underestimate me this time, maybe? But I know how to play. But knowing how to play is not doing well for me this time. So I chose Babylon because I knew it was going to be extra tiny map. And I figured I could just turtle and science my way to win. And instead of having to do military nonsense, the map we chose was this weird one where there's like a lake in the middle. And it puts you right on the lake. So the map is actually, I didn't realize. So you can see there's the corner. I found a city state, by the way. 30 gold. Yeah. You can't go around the map. It's not it's a flat world. You can't go this way. And this is the bottom. And I assume the rim is over here or down down in here. Right? He's somewhere in this cloudy area. He's probably not in this cloudy area, right? This is turn 20. And I'm not doing too well. So I started the game of my warrior. And I explored, obviously, this whole area here. I found the city state. Buenos Aires, they're cultured. If I befriend them, they'll provide me gifts of culture, which I would like. But it's hard for me to befriend them before they have any quests. So just to wait on them. Here's a barbario. Here's a barbario. Here's a copper. I'd like to get that. There's a cattle. OK, I already have a cattle in my zone here. There's a stone. I'd like to get some of that. Here's some more copper. Get some sheep. I get some sheep and here's another barbario. So I found three huts in this area that I explored. One of the huts upgraded my warrior to spearman, which allowed me to kill some barbarios, which is why I'm getting a social policy this turn. Because I got honor already. I've realized you should pretty much always get honor immediately, no matter what sieve you choose. Because you're going to be fighting barbarians. And look, adopting honor gives combat bonus for the barbarians. And you get notifications about new barbarians. And you get culture from every barbarian you kill. So I mean, if you buy this with your very first culture thing, because I mean, the first thing you build in your city is the monument to culture return. You pretty much, with the barbarians that you just have to kill during the game, just because you have to. First of all, it'll be easier to do. And second of all, you're going to just get another culture bonus with the culture you get from killing the barbarians. So now, at a critical juncture here, I have to choose my next thing. And am I going to go tradition? Am I going to go libertah? So it's not a big map. I'm feeling tradition pretty strong here. But when you choose libertah, you can get a free worker or a free settler, which is actually a significant boost in the early game, even if you're not going to expand a lot. Because then you can spend the turns you would have spent making a worker or a settler building something else instead. But as you can see, I'm trying to build a worker. And it's not going well, because food, food, food, food, food, food, food. Now I could move some of these guys over to here. Stupid. This marble only gives you money. I could move this guy here too, but then starvation. Don't want to do that. So I'm actually going to just stick with the default focus, which is food, food, food. And hopefully I'll grow enough that I can get a guy working here and here without starving. And maybe if I finish this worker in seven turns, I'll actually have a new guy in six turns. So maybe I'll finish the worker in six turns. But six or seven turns, I'll be able to then work here, work here. So marble really changes your whole game plan. Because marble, if you check the help, marble, plus 15% production when building ancient and classical era wonders in the city where it has worked. So once I get this marble, it's like if you have this, this changes your whole early game. Because now you can build wonders really easily. So I'm researching animal husbandry, so that when my worker is done. This will take five turns. So after the worker is done in seven turns, I'll be able to work here. If I open my tech tree, see I've already got mining, which means I can chop down a forest. And I've already got masonry. I prepared myself for the marble. I'm going to have to get archery. I'm basically trying to get archery and writing. If I get archery, I can build my special bowman. If I get writing, I could try to rush the great library by chopping down these forests with the worker. And I'll obviously work the marble first to get the 15% bonus. Then chop down the forests. And also, I'll get this, plus 15% production when building wonders, one happy. So if I get this, and the forest, and the marble, I should be able to build the great library before RIM. So tradition, yes. RIM is offering me a deal. Yeah, OK, we just met on the previous turn. His special Shoshone scout and my spearman. Spearman's weak because he just killed two barbarian warriors all on his own. He's kind of badass. Peace if I give him 30 gold. How about we modify this deal? Oh, see, RIM's only making three gold to turn on making four. That's important news here. How about this? How about, let's see, he doesn't have any anything yet. Oh, but look, he has more gold in his coffer than I do. He must have gotten that from meeting more city-states. He probably met with that scout. He's probably met all three. I want to build a scout, but I can't. I need the worker sooner that I need the scout. And hopefully the spearman can hold me up, right? Yeah, he must have met three. This thing is four city-states. He must have met all three of the other ones. So it could be like RIM, city-state, city-state, city-state, anyway. You know what? Let's just not propose a counter-deal. Let's just refuse. OK, RIM has declared war on me. Great, big deal. All right, let's move my spearman into the city, where he's nice and safe, and can't be attacked by the scout. And I don't think there's anything else to do on this particular turn. I'm going to have to kill these barbarians at some point. But right now, I just really need this worker. And I need RIM scout not to steal my worker. So after the worker. Oh, this is the special walls of Babylon. And all my advisors really want me to build the special walls of Babylon, but I can't build them right now. I'm going to have to build, like, I'm going to have to get the archery and build my special archer, special bowmans. They increase the d- yeah, OK, I'll get them later. I will definitely build the d- My production is just so weak, right? And all my special tiles are these whales here. And I'd love to work these whales, but I don't know how to make a workboat yet. So I think after I discover writing, I'm going to have to get sailing, because then I could build the fishing boat. It's going to be animal husbandry, archery, riding, sailing, something like that. Or animal husbandry, riding archery, sailing. I pretty much need this, this, and this. Those are the three things I need. Once I have those, I mean, I could just get wheel or whatever. But I'll be able to build that library. And once I get a library, I can get everything else pretty easily. I don't think Rim can beat me to it, because he is playing as a shone, not particularly great at building wonders. And I got marble and tradition. So it doesn't really get better than that. I guess the only thing I could do better is I got the faith. I think there's a production, there's a religion pantheon you can get that gives you bonuses for building wonders. But I can't deal with that right now. All right, and that is the end of this turn. Next turn.