 As expected, my workers finished and barbarians are menacing me again, so I'll have to slowly finish them off. Now luckily that barbarian will be slowed down by this river, so I should be able to sneak my guy around and I'll bet I can safely work this plantation. Meanwhile, this guy is coming in to get rid of these barbarian camps. I decided not to harass Scott too much. I could have sent that composite bowman in and really menaced him, but instead I am going to fall back, build a city, almost immediately, and bust out. I'll decide if I'm actually going to build a city right now if I build one more unit first. Let's see, visibility would be useful, and healing would also be very useful, especially because I am fighting barbarians right now. I'm going to take that though, and I'm just going to camp here. Let's see, could I do better? So, grainery would actually let me grow a little quicker, and would only take 8 turns, that's a little while. It wouldn't take me that much longer to actually build a settler. Now, if I build a settler, remember the city is not going to grow anymore. That's actually the one main problem. If I'm building something else, it will take 11 turns for the city to grow. Not great. I can speed that up a little bit by working on stuff, but I'm limited in what I can work on until that barbarian is gone. And since I don't have any military units here, I think my best bet is actually to go for that settler and try to get the city early. So, where will I put it? Because my military units up here, this way is probably the safest and best way. And actually, to hem Scott off, it might be worthwhile to go somewhere here. Probably on this hill. Because I will eventually get that copper. Oh, there's whales there too. Yeah, it's a pretty good spot. Just as good to be on this grassland. Now, if I go on this hill, I'll still get the copper. I'll still get those cows. I'll still get that hill. Closer to those whales. And I can work Mount Sinai. That'll also menace Scott heavily. He's gonna gray general in though. It'll be a problem later, but I can handle that better in this game since I won't underestimate him. I think I might blitz ahead, build a city up here, then I can come back and build a city elsewhere later. The barbarian moved correctly. So the question is, it'll take me six turns to finish a farm, but then that will not significantly impact anything. So I might as well take this stuff, because I'll need that happiness for my new city. This guy should hunker down one more turn, get a little bit more health just in case. I don't want to risk him. This guy's real important to my later game. I retreated my composite bowman, as promised, all the way back across this expanse, killing barbarians along the way, which got me plenty of culture. I'm retreating this guy back to search around here just to see if there is anything over there, because I ignored that before in my rush for Scott. And we'll see what I do with him. Mostly I got him here to be ready to immediately build a third city once I get my second one. You can see I'm almost done with the settler, and I'm gonna send this settler. This guy came back also partly because he's gonna escort this settler all the way across, skipping this good spot for a city. And I think I can beat Scott to it. I'm gonna build a city right here. This is a better spot if you just look at the area around it. Starting at a hill is also usually a better idea. Not always, but sometimes. But here is a real interesting spot, because one is a grassland hill here and here, mountains blocking this approach. The edge of the map is up here somewhere, so I think there's a way around here. But even then, that would be a tortuous process around. So if I build the city here, then I've got two hills. I can basically stick a unit here and here. And then I've ranged units here, or ranged unit here, in the city. And I can have one here in case anyone's in this forest trying to bombard the city. And then it's gotta have one hell of a time coming across to attack this guy. Especially because I'll get double territory right away due to being the Shoshone. It's like spanned all the way out to here. Maybe I'll even build a gray wall just to make it impossible for him. I don't think he's gonna navy too well, so I'm not too worried about a naval assault. I'm actually gonna push navy pretty hard pretty early. Not super early. I'm not pushing it now, but I will be pushing it. The other thing I'll probably do is I have the city here. I might put a citadel right there on that hill. Or maybe, maybe, I don't know if I'd bother, but I might even put it here as a forward base just to sort of control this zone and make it just a really tough path to get across to attack that city. So I'm gonna build this city first. This is a real important city. If I get this, Scott doesn't have a big chance. Secondly, this guy's gonna kind of move around. I'm gonna explore it a little bit. But I kind of want a menace over here, because I don't want him to... If he builds a city, I actually want him to build it stupid and inland. So he won't have any other coastal cities, thus ensuring that I can take his capital and then the game will meet suddenly with a navy. So while there's no case spot down here for a city, I'm not gonna try to rush to build another one right there, unless Scott is really slow in getting his cities going. So I'll probably build my second city. I'd like to build it here, but there's no luxury resources of note, or really any. There's truffles all the way down here on the edge of the map. So all these spots are kind of crappy. I guess I could build the city inland here a little bit, but it doesn't matter. My third city after this one is actually gonna be a support city right here, I think. Maybe here, even though the marsh is not great, I'd like to get access to that sugar right away. So policies. If you look at the tech tree, I didn't push into the classical era, so I can't get patronage, which I actually really want for this game. So while I would like to push this and be a threat to Scott early, and while I can even make a case for this, despite the tiny map, I'm not gonna bother. I'm gonna fill this out because filling this out earlier is way better than filling out later. And if I do this, that'll be good because I'm about to settle two cities in pretty rapid succession. And then I'll immediately be able to come down here to reduce my unhappiness, or I'll be able to go here and just force the capital to grow, or I'll be able to go here. And I want to finish this pretty quick because that'll just give me growth and aqueducts. Alright, I timed a whole bunch of things to happen simultaneously. And because of that, we got a lot going on this turn, pretty much everything. So the first thing that happened this turn is I have discovered the lively art of writing. And because I'm Babylon, Babylon, that gives me a great scientist. Hooray! Okay, what else happened this turn? Well, I finished building a bowman. Go bowman, go. We're gonna send this bowman in this direction because there is a city-state quest encampment of Barbarios over here. So, start going that way. Okay, another thing that happened this turn. Spearman. He can move into the city. I'll talk about that in a second because we've got a cultural social policy, and the next social policy is oligarchy. Garrison units cost no maintenance. So we choose this. Yes. Well, our city is stronger at bombarding any Barbarios and also money because we're not paying for the spearman. Okay, next thing that happened this turn, this worker finished marble the quarry. The quarry is complete. Because the quarry is complete, the worker can now go do something else like repair this pasture that got pillaged by Barbarios. Because that only takes like one turn to repair something, and then we're gonna chop forests. Speaking of chopping forests, that great scientist we got. We could discover a free science by pressing this button. Which could give us pretty much whatever science we choose. By the way, the science we're choosing is philosophy, which actually means calendar and then philosophy. And the reason is that way, national college. You can only build national college if you have a library in every city. Every library gives you a regular library. A regular library in my only city. I can then build national college. National college gives you plus 50% science in that city, also plus three. So really, plus four and a half, plus eight. So eight plus three is eleven, plus national... Well, okay, so hold on. We're gonna see... Okay, let's go back a second. So right now we have eight science already. We already have eight. Then, when you finish the great library, that's gonna give us a regular library. So it's three, plus three science, so it's eleven. Plus one for every two citizens. We're probably gonna have six citizens, so it's three more, so it's six. So six and eight is fourteen. Fourteen science. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen science. Seventeen, plus fifty percent. Plus eight, so like twenty-five or twenty-six science. So we're gonna build the great library, followed by the national college. We'll take us from eight to like twenty-six science in about, you know, whenever it's done. Oh yeah, by the way, yeah. Great library. Now, this great library, thirty-five turns, that's a lot of turns. I mean, we want to get that done a lot sooner. We want to get that done, you know, in time to build the national college. We also want to get the national college sooner. That looks like it's gonna take thirty-something turns. Good thing we got this great scientist. We're not gonna choose Discover Tech, we're gonna choose Build Academy. And where can we build the academy? Now, normally you'd build it on like a hill, because it's a crappy spot, there's nothing going on there. Even in this desert, that'd be a great spot to put in the desert, because you turn this pretty much useless tile into an amazing tile. However, we're gonna put it right here in this grassland. Some place you usually wouldn't build an academy, and the reason is, because this grassland has a forest on it. And see, now it takes me a few turns with this worker to chop down a forest to contribute hammers to make the great library go faster. And we might do that, perhaps on this forest, or this forest, or that forest maybe. Probably this forest. But, we use the great scientist to construct an academy on the forest. Look at that, look at that. The forest on this tile will be removed, providing twenty production to the nearest city, immediately. Boop! Clearing a forest has created twenty hammers. And now if we check Babylon, the production should have gone now. Oh right, it was the thirty-five, now it's the thirty-one. We just basically saved four turns of great library building, right? Now, more importantly, the academy. Right? Let's do our science math again. We now have sixteen science, thanks to that beautiful academy that we just made. Sixteen plus three is nineteen. Sixteen plus one for every two citizens is three more. Right? That's nineteen twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, plus fifty percent. We're going from thirty science. Forty science? Yeah. There's going to be a lot of science as soon as the National College... Great library is going to be huge science and the National College may be insane science. So once we have that much science, after we build the National College, we're going to be like Boop! All these things are going to take like one turn, one turn, one turn, one turn, one turn, one turn. We're going to just discover everything. But we're going to choose after that. After we get, you know, this. We're going straight here. Because our production is way low. And which means we need to build the workshop. It allows production to be moved right below. Production plus two, production plus ten percent. Right? Ironworks. Production plus eight. Right? That's what we need to get to. We need to start workshop and ironworks. Because our production is low in this place. We're going to chop all our forests to build the Great Library. We need to get ironworks built in Babylon. And then we can start building stuff instead of garbage. The Great Person was born. Bowman, the spearman, the worker who's going to fix that. Alright, scout. You haven't done anything. I guess we should scout. Oh! There's a bowman. So he's going to shoot two spaces. One, two, one, two. Let's go away from the bowman. If we can sneak up on him with the scout. It's actually advantageous that the scout attacks that bowman with melee. But let's not get shot at. Because then we're in trouble. We'll have to just run away and heal. And we can't scout around anymore. Alright. That looks like we're good here. Next turn. So as you can see the game has progressed while I was in Hong Kong and Australia. There wasn't enough bandwidth and I wasn't going to bring all the equipment. So I didn't really record updates while I was there. But you can see I'm following the plan just as I said, with a little detour to deal with a surprisingly aggressive barbarian incursion. I actually had quite a bit of gold and I had to buy a warrior to deal with this. Slight unhappiness due to the fact that they took out my one luxury resource. Because I don't actually have a plantation here yet. But I did rush ahead. I got my city situated here in a highly defensible position. I suspect I might actually build a citadel on this hill next to it. Or possibly in the plains here. But either way I'm going to make this a heavy choke point. So scout won't be able to come through here. He's going to get to settle here. I won't be able to fill in a settler here just yet. But I will settle here and I'll back settle here. So I'll have a pretty good set of cities. I've been taking out the barbarian camps now. Take care of those guys. But my plan is to finish a worker here. And hopefully get this worker really buffing out this city. And protect it with this guy. Who can also keep an eye on Scott. And finish the Great Library. So I suspect Scott wanted the Great Library. And he'll probably be pretty mad when he finds out that I built it. But the reason I built it. I actually was not going to go for the Great Library in this game. The reason I did was pretty simple. I have pretty good production here. Despite having not really buffed this all out. But if I look at the demographics. You can see in terms of manufactured goods. See how it shows that I'm at 13. And the worst is at 9. That number 13 is hammers. I'm making 11 hammers here. And two 2.5 hammers here. So that accounts for basically the 13 hammers. So I know that even without this city. I am making more production in my capital than Scott. More importantly, when I was going here. I noticed that for a long time. Scott could not make an embassy. Because he did not have writing. You need writing to make an embassy. So I pretty much kept an eye on him every round. Until I saw that he had just finished writing. And as soon as he did. Because I knew I had more production capacity than him. And because I knew he couldn't have been working on it until that point. The moment he finished it. I started to build or finished researching writing. I started building the Great Library. There's no way he'll get it before me. And now, nine turns here. But check this out. I'm going to fill this tree in anyway. And while I would normally do this. To get the happiness boost. Because I am unhappy. That's going to be taken care of right now. When I finish repairing this. I guess he needs one more round of repairing. But next round that'll repair. But more importantly. That means I can do this. Plus 15% production for building wonders. Let's take care of these barbarians. Oof. There's a lot of barbarian going on here. Well he won't be able to move past. Because this guy is in the way. I want him to stay and heal. This guy is not a big threat yet. He's going to come in and pillage though. So I'm going to have to come back around and deal with him. You'll notice. That I do not have the Great Library. So Scott being clever. It looks like what he did. I'm assuming. Is he went down this track. Before I did. To get the plus 15% before I got it. Which is fine. I'll use this later. I got to fill this whole tradition track out anyway. But he also must have. Switch to heavy production. And cut down a bunch of forests. In short order. Which is fine. Because I remember I had that pile of money before. And then I didn't have that pile of money. Because I had to buy the stupid warrior. To deal with the barbarian invasion. Well. Now I've got the pile of money again. Which I'll either use to buy a work boat. Really quickly get these whales. Or I'll keep ready to build a military unit at the time comes. Or. More importantly. And more likely. I've noticed. Because these dual maps don't work like regular sieve. Like a lot of the strategies and rules. That you would expect from a normal game of sieve. Or even a small game of sieve. Don't apply at all in a two player game. And one of those things. Is that it's actually very hard to generate a steady income. I mean look at this map. The city states aren't even on the water. You gotta do land trade routes. There aren't good ways to generate cash. So that's moderate pile of cash will be useful. Because I can run a deficit. If I need to. For a significant span of time. So. I would have. Considered getting this guy. Because even though he's upgraded. He still has native tongue. I would have brought him all around here to get this. But the rules of these things. Are that you can't take the same upgrade that you've taken in the last. I believe two or three ruins. So if I go in here. Let's see what I can take. Population would be. Okay. Ah. I think I'll do this because I'm not generating faith. And that should give me enough to immediately make a pantheon. This will only give me an ancient era technology. So it'll give me like archery. That's literally useless. I'll get that in a few turns on my own. Don't care about that. It's not enough gold to matter. I think this is the best bet. Ooh. Let's keep upgrading these guys. And I might as well move closer first. That way next round I can just take this thing. This is getting a little bit dangerous. Not dangerous in terms of losing anything. Dangerous in terms of just being annoying. And in terms of I can't just rush this guy down and around. I want to protect the horses. But I also want to heal. You can't attack me in one round. So if I go here. I'm going to heal a little bit. I'm going to want to be friends with these guys down the road. I've got one more movement. I can bring this guy back around. The city is going to be able to defend itself against his relatively small army in the short term. So I might bring this guy around this way. Take that out. And then go back across. I will do that. This guy I want to... I don't want to risk him dying here. So I actually have to go up and back around that way. This guy is just going to fortify here. Because that's the only thing that's worth defending in the area that this guy can get to. And now I need to pick Pantheon. Now this is very interesting. In a duel I got to think very differently from how I would in an actual normal game of Civ. So... This might actually be the most useful one. Because it just makes my capital city better. But equally useful is this. Though as I realized in the second game we were playing there's kind of a side effect. In this sort of game there's not a lot of early game opportunities to get happiness. So you can actually very easily outstrip yourself happiness wise. Because you can't expand or trade to get luxury resources in any reasonable way. Don't really care about these minor culture boosts. I'll have two plantations here. But it's not enough. So actually what I think would be the most useful, especially because I have this choke point up here. Would either be this. Because plus 30 hit points healed per turn if adjacent to a friendly city. Meaning guys sitting here and here defending the city would just heal every turn. That would be nice. Or I could just make the cities plus 30% range combat strength. Which is not the worst idea. Because I'll also have this plus 50% range combat strength as long as there's a garrison. So that'll actually make my cities pretty powerful to shoot at guys who are held out here. So either one would be pretty much equally good. I'm gonna go with the faith healers.