 Oh dear, where has that scout gone? So the scout that was hoping probably to steal a worker or pillage or do something and force me the super piece or at least back off on my war ran past the Banzakongo and didn't realize that I actually have a Pathfinder up here. I'm sure he's gonna be pretty salty about that. I'm sorry that you started this game next to me. Alright, so this guy's pretty much done. Swing this guy back around, sweep here, make sure there's no barbarians, and then maybe head over here and deal with those barbarians. Want your domestic chores? Alright. Yeah, I can take Suze this turn. So I wanted to leave him in the game because if he quit and became an AI I could at least trade with it and that would be good to have a nice buffer between me and Poland up here. The other serious contender for the early game. But Egypt, which has a pretty incompetent player at Siv here and from what I can gather, would be a very good buffer state because it would actually defend itself and I have no quarrel with Egypt. I don't plan to actually, I don't plan to conquer really any further because I don't want to expand my empire too big this early. That actually might cause me some problems. So the question is, do I want to raise Suze or not? I'm pretty sure I want to raise it because I really want to build my city here and leave this area sort of empty because this, look at this, 1, 2, 3, it just doesn't have access to all this good biz. Now if I found it here, my border would probably butt all the way up over there just because I'm the Shone. I'll let that citrus go though and I'll found it here. I think that is my best bet, which means I have to do the thing I rarely do which is raise a city. Oh yeah, this is going down, no matter, this is definitely going, oh ho! Let's get you up to where the action will be. Alright, let's see what's in here. Okay, there's nothing in this city. One citizen, yeah, Annex it, six unhappiness and it counts like founding in sub-Othymal city. Puffeting it, it doesn't give me much now and it kind of sucks. So I'll have six turns of unhappiness. Burning it down, burning it down. So maybe I should just wipe you out of the game because this ain't actually a bad city. If I raise Sousa and then settle here, I could take this city and get access to that silk. Actually that silk will make it worth it to actually take your remaining capital and unfortunately knock you out of the game. Considering the pressure here and it looks like Egypt, because neither of these is the case, so Egypt's capital must actually be right in here. Wow, did you guys really start that close to each other? Where else could Egypt's capital have been? If you started here this close to me, I can see why you might have wanted to settle here to get access to those luxury goods. You might have been here, Egypt's capital I assume is right there, yeah you are under, there is a big pressure here. It worked out to my advantage that there's so much pressure to settle even though Egypt's in a good spot because I think Warsaw might have expanded too quickly and I don't know C-1234, I don't know if they'll be ready to get a settler over here into this prime location. I'll bet Egypt is gonna have a settler over here and Craig M. Oliver, the mighty ruler of Persia, who had built the Great Library and constructed two great cities and one city that I unfortunately had to burn to the ground because he built it in a slightly suboptimal place, has retired from the game honorably after doing his best to defend against the somewhat ridiculous onslaught of the chachonne. So to the rest of you who still remain in this game, may the odds be ever in your favor. Real question is, now that there's an AI here, there's nothing I want out of them. I could get all their gold and that citrus probably but that wouldn't really be that worth it to me. I could just take the city but I'm already not super happy and I don't know if I really want a bunch of puppet states right now messing with all the other business I got going on because I still want to settle over here and I still need to settle my replacement for Susie here. So that's negative eight happiness from settling already and I'll get a bunch more unhappiness for taking that city but at the same time that city, oh no I oh actually I just realized that now that this is an inner sea. So this city, Gaidaka, is sharing this inner sea with all these other cities here that'll be interesting later unless I conquer the city state then I would be able to bring my navy in here but no one else could. That could actually be pretty crucial for a potential eventual war with Egypt even though I do want to keep Egypt as sort of a buffer state between me and Rare because right now Poland is actually the most significant threat to my hegemony. First things first let's get rid of this mop of these units here. I should probably send at least one, I got this horseman back here so I'm actually pretty safe from any incursions. Go down this way. See because I can't go over the ocean yet it's actually difficult to go deal with this barbarian encampment. I think I'll scatter these guys just to prevent barbarians from spawning anywhere near me. This is the question, do I take this city or not? Well until the era of more naval power and actually I can probably defend this area because I'm butted at the end of this continent probably. I'm pretty sure it's just under an arctic down here so I'll eventually make Kizzle my full ally. There's really no military threats to me because I'm not even on the coast so take a combined fleet and amphibious army to really attack me. I would just have to make sure that I heavily fortify Timoic and because Timoic is in this sort of like bay here I can actually do that pretty well like I can really defend this harbor and that's my main vulnerability especially now that I know this appears to be in an inner sea. Suza will be on the sea as well so Suza will have to be well defended but again I'll be in this sort of bay and I'm gonna build it right there. So what to do? What to do? Can do over that barbarian if it's even still there. I could just crank out Stonehenge. There's no way someone else isn't already building it though. Crank out a shrine that'll get me a religion soon enough. What do I need? 25? Might be useful to have a pantheon. Oh there's a straight-up religion up here that's gonna be trouble. I guess I'm gonna do all that settling I could buff out my happiness because that would just be two extra happiness which would be pretty useful in the long run especially if conflicts start escalating. Do I shoo religion entirely? I think the answer is yes. I think I just issued the religion and let that other one roll over me. I'll get a pantheon in 25 minus 7 turns anyway. Yeah and even if I buff this military out and go on a rampage and start immediately attacking my nominal ally Egypt here the difficulty is that I won't have enough luxury resources and happiness to keep that chain going at least not immediately. Let's build the circus first. That'll just be some extra happiness that'll be useful because I do want to expand so a baseline of having circuses and coliseums and all these places will do very well for me in terms of being able to actually expand in the next round of warfare. Still decided I might still take this I'm actually going to especially because right now the only danger to me for the foreseeable future is along this landmass here so I am going to move my forces toward the city to be ready to take it out. Alright I got my great general I guess I should keep the great general with the military. Oh there's silk there yeah I think I will take the city because that silk will counterbalance. I don't have any other way to get silk right now. Yep that silk. Citrus isn't that important I guess I can trade it I'll get citrus elsewhere. I think I'll take the city and I'll deal with the unhappiness and that'll delay me settling Suza but that's fine because if I don't settle a new city right away I'll take less of a culture hit so I can push my culture out further because I'm actually going to as a shift for the Shoshone while I want to be pretty aggressive with military expansion. I also do want to push my culture heavily because I think that'll give me a much stronger long play than in that other long game I'm playing with everybody where the entire world declared war on me.