 So, Scott was pushing into this pretty hard, because he wanted to protect the caravan that I ended up plundering anyway. And he stationed his units thinking it'd have a pretty good fight. What he didn't anticipate was that I had been very close to being allies with Lhasa. And they had a quest to destroy barbarians that were coming into their territory from this encampment over here. I'm not going to destroy that encampment, I'm going to wait until they target it as a quest. But anyway, there was a barbarian swordsman over here. And I sent my companion cavalry around and hit it and killed it. And popped these guys over the edge, they became allies, immediately declared war on Scott and charged in. And everything's coming up in the millhouse. So, I'm going to let this guy retreat, heal. This guy is pretty much just keeping an eye out. I'm keeping barbarians out of this area, because I want to get my settlement. Oh, my settler's done! Let's move him to the city. Oh, it really wants me to settle over here. It really wants me to settle here, which I am going to settle. I wasn't planning to settle there immediately. Oh, there's pearls off that coast. Yeah, that'll be a good one, but I don't have any ships yet. So, I'm still going to go all the way around here and settle over here. Because I want to get these, where is it? There's some truffles hiding in there. And I believe, yeah, Lhasa wants truffles. That'll lock them in as my ally for a long time to come. So, I got my settler around. Otherwise, these guys are just continuing to build up my economic policy. Stay safe. Now, next round, you'll be able to join the escort. Ah, what to do with this great general? I think I'm going to keep him back home for the time being. I'd like this guy to heal up before I go after this encampment. I'd also like this encampment to be a quest of Prague, which I don't really want to go after yet. So, I'll leave this guy to heal. And I'm just going to stand there. What to do with these guys? I don't want to lose a guy yet. I've got a vague plan of, I'm going to start building, at some point in the near future, an increasingly large army that I wouldn't be able to afford normally. And I'm going to start pumping that army up this way. I'll have settled here by then. And when they get to Lhasa, I'll either cycle into her escort, or, more importantly, I'll start gifting them to Lhasa. So then Lhasa will maintain the war, so I'll have this hostile power near Scott's borders with a ton of military units just being menacing. And it'll be sort of like a free buffer military, while I can keep my real military engaged down on this side. I don't know if Scott has the ability to anticipate that. I'd like to cause trouble for him now, so I don't want this guy to be able to retreat. So I'm going to do something like this. Start surrounding his guys. I'll even take a swat. And this guy, I'm actually going to let heal. Maybe I'll move down one more. Nah, I'd like him to stay here. Eh. I'll let him just heal, so he heals more. So that seems to be the bulk of Scott's military. He can't have that much military. He's got more victory points, but that's because of wonders. I'm not worried about that. That's all looking good. So the only options I really have. I could adopt this, but it actually would be pretty good, because then the city states would stay my allies even more powerfully. But I think I might be better off going here to get more money and happiness right now so I can settle more quickly and then backfill into these. I might even ignore both of these right away. So I'll take this, then I might go discipline military case, because that'll get me even more happiness and culture. This stuff, see, that adopting it will get me something good. But then, that's not that useful. There's only four. That's moderately useful, but I'm keeping them allies mostly by doing quests. That'll be useful. This stuff will be kind of good down the road. Actually, that'll be really useful. Filling this out will generally be a good idea, but I'd like to fill this one out, too. So I'll start here. More culture. Well, more happiness. More culture is coming. Where did I get incense from? That's actually... My city is going to grow... With all that population, my city is going to grow like Crete. LASA had incense! Didn't even think of that. Silk, sugar, incense, copper and citrus. And soon I'll have truffles. Then I can get marble up here, too. Alright, so they're already relived the king for a while. So what should Athens build? Now might be the time to start blitzing through these wonders. None of these are immediate. I'll get those for free when I finish the tradition tree. I got plenty of happiness. I can build another military... Oh, yeah, there's barbarians. I should build a military unit just to rush up and deal with that. That might actually get in and plunder. I can finish the hoplite in two turns. Or the companion cavalry in three. Hoplite in two might be better, because it can take that thing out pretty well. So I'm going to build a hoplite. Getting near the end of the era of the hoplite, but hoplites still serve the purpose for the time being. The Sea of Barbarians is never ending. And it's starting to become a problem, so I'll have to build more military units to deal with it here. Ah, couldn't die. Alright, next time. Another campman just appeared here. There's the one I know about up here. There's another one here, so I gotta deal with all that. Luckily, I have a pretty good surplus of money. That's partly because of a golden age, but I will have plenty of money from that golden age, even after the fact. So I'm going to start building a massive military. And if I build too many units, I am just going to start gifting them to Lhasa here. And I will do things to make sure Lhasa stays my friend. They'll be my friend for a while yet. There's at least several more turns, but I want to keep them in my pocket. So I'm going to try to maneuver around to get these guys up here, ready to defend them from the barbarians. He's going to keep attack in this hoplite, so rather than the hoplite heal, I don't really want it to die. I guess I could gift it, which isn't the worst idea. I forget if it disappears or not. I think it takes a few turns for it to actually arrive. I'll leave this guy here healing. This guy... I'm actually going to retreat him a step. Now this guy, I'm going to build more of these and just start sending them over to double harass Scott. This hoplite might be enough to deal with that for now. Let's see, this guy... I could continue to develop this out. It's a little dangerous because I don't have a military unit to take care of this immediately. So I think instead I'm going to come down here and start building the road to Jerusalem. He'll hang out there. The caravan is almost done. I'll send it like this way, and then I'll immediately build military. Now this guy... What's going on with Sparta? I think Sparta has... Yeah, it's pretty well under control. I guess I could do a farm or something there. What I'll do just to finish stuff quicker, is I'll get rid of one of these forests. I can turn that into a trading post later. I want to get my settler around because getting that city will just be good for my long-term game. I want to get the city here, get the truffles, which will ensure that Lassa stays allied with me for even longer. Now these guys... I'm just going to, once again, come in on Scott. Nice. Just slide this guy. Ooh, I'll menace his worker. I'll have to protect it or run the worker away. And I'll let those barbarians there. So if I then retreat, the barbarians will come up from here and continue to harass. Remember, if I lose this whole military, that's fine. The only goal is to bother and harass Scott, prevent him from doing any sort of domestic improvements, maybe pillage a few things, and just keep him wrapped up until I can get a city here and a city up here. Now these barbarians I have to deal with. So I would have built if the barbarians were coming. Another trigger immediately. But I feel like I need to really deal with this. I'm going to build another hoplite because it'll take two turns instead of three before I go on to build anything else. I wonder how my military size is going compared to his. Yeah, not looking great for Scott there. Some more crops. His population. Look, he's going to... We're tied population-wise. He's going to catch up because I haven't fully developed these cities. So I'm going to get these 3rd and 4th cities out and start really cranking. And I've got to make sure that I have enough culture so I can still finish this tree. Much is to be seen in the war here as I have started to really push into Scott's territory much to his frustration and vexation. I would pillage this iron, but he hasn't actually worked it. There's a camp here. So I can risk my unit though to take that out. These guys should mostly heal. Now Lassa is still I'll keep destroying these barbarians to keep them strong and liking me as I stay at war with Scott. Oh look, it's one of Scott's two pearls. I can take this one out this turn and then retreat so the city won't actually get me. Oh and we're getting close to settling. Next turn I can settle. I'll send this guy over with the next round of troops I think. Let's see. There's barbarians up here. There's barbarians right there. There's barbarians over here. I got to make another unit after this trirame. Maybe one more trirame than a unit or a unit than a trirame? He doesn't have any trirames. There as I can tell he does not have a navy at all. Which means after the second trirame I will move on to something else over here. So I'll send this guy I want to protect all this fertile land. I'm actually going to send this guy across to at least hold them in check and I'll send this guy over here to hold them in check. I only have to worry about these ones in the top. Alright now he's in range of that city. I think the city can see him. So I might as well put someone else in range of the city too. Oh but then he might arrow them. Check this is fine. Now that's not my healer. So I'll bring this guy in and just fortify. I'm just trying to harass everything else here is going strong. That guy's going to get his road to Jerusalem. As soon as this guy's done I'm going to send him back up here to repair. And then I'm going to bring him back down to start building out the rest of this. So these two cities continue to grow. Oh I can get that marble too. I'm going to get that marble.