 Uh-oh. Dogs found religion. Call the police. I wasn't really gonna push religion, but I guess I'm alone down here, so I can nurture one in isolation. I think maybe I should let her make a religion a little stronger part of what I normally do, because usually in this game I kind of ignore religion. Or I put a token religion up just to sort of slightly resist someone else who's doing religion. But in this case, I wonder if I should use religion. Meaning, but the thing is to really effectively use religion, you either need to be lucky and no one else is using it, at least especially not near you, or you want to push a faith bonus early rather than a practical bonus, and then later the fact that you have all that extra faith will help you push the religion better. You could get a longer term benefit out of it, it'll be more powerful with the spread of the religion, but you won't get as much of an immediate bonus to your normal cities. Oh, I do have a bunch of plantations. Let's see, some plantations. All these citruses. Plantations might be my best bet actually, because of all those up there. Bananas. I thought I was gonna go culture out. Let's go culture. Yeah, look at that. And let's... Since the city's gone, I can't even liberate it. Retreat back to some relative safety to heal. You get in there, and let's see. I don't want to keep this guy up here, because I do want to settle over here and I'm not going to let anyone dissuade me. So this puts me in a surprisingly powerful tactical situation, so look at what we got going on in this map. So, I've got a whole bunch of hills and rivers and things, plus what's left of Egypt with thieves there, kind of in the way. And it'll be hard for troops to move in and come at me too powerfully. I have the citadel, so I can heal and defend pretty easily. But no one's going to get around the salient that I've got here, at least not until thieves falls. So I've got to be ready for this. I've got to see if I can keep thieves up. The longer I keep thieves alive, the better. And simultaneously, I got to get these builders in here and build roads on every one of these hexes. They'll look like redundant roads, but they're going to serve a really important purpose. This is going to be a war of attrition. I don't know what he's going to do. If he takes thieves, I'll be in a little bit of trouble, but it would take a long time for him to actually get troops over all these hills and forests to be able to attack and save my cities in the back. And I got that spare man coming up. But I don't want to lose any troops right now. If I lose any troops, I'll be in a little bit of trouble. So let's get these builders up here first. I got to finish all these roads going in all these different directions so I can have troops ready. And that spare man is going to be back there to harass and slow down anyone coming in around the left side while I build up the right side. So luckily I do have plenty of builders. So if I build a whole bunch of redundant roads, mostly crossing those rivers, it means that I'll be able to rotate troops in and out over these obstacles pretty quickly and easily to maintain that defensive line. And Poland will not be able to do the same. They'll actually have a difficult time moving their troops around. And that sort of battle of maneuver is going to be how I hold this long enough to get something done. Now much more importantly, I got to get around on the other side of this lake. This is a really good place to build a city. And I don't see any troops sort of in the way. That's why this horse man is up here scouting it out. If I get a city over here, especially right on that hill right there, then it can defend the entire area. I'll have complete control of the lake. I'll be able to defend that city and protect it from attack with even a single troop hanging out on that hill. And that'll turn this into not just a salient, but an actual long-term defensive position. That would basically be my lime. Alright, so let's see the situation here. So I do not have the most soldiers, and I don't know who has the most soldiers, but otherwise I've pretty much got control of this game right now. So I just need to hold off Poland and defend Egypt to let my industrial base and everything in my domestic policies build up. Alright, so let's consolidate these troops. Poland's on their back foot right now. They took Thebes, but they don't really have an army to press the assault. So my debate is whether or not I actually try to take Thebes back and liberate it right now. Or if I just surround and contain... The problem with that is that then he'll start sending troops in to fortify Thebes from the north. I assume he's got some troops up there. So I need to... I'm not sure how aggressive I should be right now, because I really don't want to lose any troops. Attacking Thebes would be risky, so... Let's get these roads built here, especially the road from the citadel. And meanwhile, let's just start moving all these troops up. And I'll have to make my final decisions based on what Poland actually does and how many troops they actually got coming up my way. I hope they don't have a navy, because I'm not really prepared for that. I have no defenses in Timoic. Alright, this guy... I gotta get up here to that good city spot. I gotta get this up onto that hill there. One of those two hills. If I get a city up there, it's game over. I will win this war. It's kinda risky. If I lose the settler, I'll be in trouble. There's a lot... Yeah, I'll make sure I have a deal with Egypt. Egypt's not gonna settle here while I'm busy fighting this war. So I gotta sneak this settler up and into the top of that lake. That city is going to be my redoubt in this war. Especially if things go bad. If he starts making inroads or I start having serious trouble, I could probably defend a city on the other side of that lake indefinitely, even if I lost Parsegarde? Pasargade? Definitely have to liberate Thebes. If I took it, not that I would, because we have an alliance, that would destroy the happiness of my empire. So here's another decision. So because I have a warfare going on, should I really double down and actually open up the honor tree, which I almost never do? Or should I double down on culture? I mean, I already did some culture stuff with the religion. So I think this is the way to go. This is the long-term strategy. Once I get to the industrial age, I don't think anyone else. I think Poland is focused on this military conquest. I don't know what the rest of the world is doing, but tourism is probably my long-term strategy here. If nothing else, it's a pretty good investment for the future.