 As planned, I have finished the Liberty Tree. I'm going to take this last one here, Meritocracy. Now, the happiness boost is not really that important. The main reason I'm doing this is to get that great scientist now. And I've got to decide which one I'll do next. I mean, maybe I'll do aesthetics. I'm still debating how I want to play the end game. But the most important thing is that even though I could take any great person, say, for example, a great general for the war up in the north, I'm much better off in the long game getting the scientist now and building an academy with it. Even if I get a war science early to use, I won't be able to necessarily build any troops with it. It won't really help me in the immediate war. And in the long run, I'm going to get more actual science out of having at least one academy. It's so early in the game that this will accelerate my advancement. So, I'm debating how to approach the end of the game. And I've mentioned this a few times along the way, but I'm still building the Parthenon here. And I'm debating if my next move will be to actually double down on aesthetics and play a really heavy culture tourism game. The Parthenon kind of sets the stage for that, but I don't have to commit. So in the short term, I'm going to finish all this warfare and nonsense, move all my troops north, be ready to defend Egypt or deal with whatever's going on in the north here with Poland. And I mean, basically, this is kind of the important thing to success in Siv. Take actions at parts of the game that will lead you to multiple roads and where you don't have to necessarily commit to one. So taking Prasargada, moving my troops north, I don't have to actually decide what I'm going to do until later, because no matter what I decide, I still have to move this army north. And until I actually have to pick my next cultural advancement, I'm not really locked into any particular strategy. Interesting. So my suspicions are confirmed. Poland has declared war on my buffer state Egypt. So I'm actually pretty glad I'm not next to Egypt. But that means I got to take Prasargada pretty quickly to be able to move up and deal with this situation. We'll see how this goes. There's two ways to handle it. Either I can offer some sort of treaty to Egypt and perhaps try to have a joint war against Poland and maybe even partition them. There's any historical precedent for that. Or more interestingly, what I might do, and we'll see. I haven't decided yet. I might just also declare war on Egypt and make a deal with Poland, and Poland and I could just partition Egypt. I really haven't decided what I want to do, but it doesn't matter. I don't actually have to make that decision now. The only thing I have to do now, the only thing that's important is actually taking Prasargada without losing any troops and having my military here ready for whatever it is I'm going to do. So I have to be very careful about how I position this to not lose even a single troop. And I've got to get all these workers behind me to come up and build a supply line to be able to funnel more troops north. Because frankly, it's too early for naval stuff to matter. The only thing that's going to matter on this continent right now is logistics and having an army on my northern border for whatever happens beyond Egypt. As for the scout, let me keep them over here because if I end up at war with Egypt or with Poland, I'm going to want that scout up there to be able to hold that little area and maybe sneak a settler up there later. We'll see how it plays out. Now, demographically, I'm doing pretty well and I have the largest army in the world now. So I'm actually, I am in a very powerful position more so than I expected. So maybe with Egypt, I should, I think it is wise to use them as a buffer state. I think making war with Poland will be more valuable in the long run. I would rather have a state that owes me something. Well, it'll be easier to deal with Egypt because if the negotiations go south, I could always just invade Egypt. So I'll try to use Egypt as the buffer state as I've talked about before. And this is the first step toward that. I think it's time. I think Persagade is going to fall right now. And more importantly, look at this deal from Egypt. We'll get to that later. I got to deal with the fun stuff first. This will eliminate Persia from the game. Pretty sure I can do it this turn. I am 100% sure I can do it this turn. So let's just move these things appropriately. Yes. Ah, sorry, Darius. He's mad. He's gone. So one civilization has been removed from the game. Oh, I can't, okay, let's see. I puppeted it not much here. It doesn't matter. It gives me control of this inner sea. There's only one more city up there. It looks like an Egyptian city, but otherwise it's mine. And puppeting this will be the best option. It'll give me production. It'll give me a base of operations. Remember the show name. I get a bonus to my military when they're in friendly territory. So once again, Prasagodae will now be the staging area for whatever I'm going to do up here. So he's offering me a treaty. And this is a pretty real treaty to declare war on Poland and defend Egypt. I think it's worth my while. I am going to try to... Oh, I can't make open borders agreements, can I? This will actually be difficult to pull off if I want to actually defend Egypt. I can't send troops up there. All right, I have to make my choice. Let's accept it. Egypt is now my ally. I will defend Egypt. In fact, if any Egyptian cities fall, I will liberate them rather than taking them. I really want a loyal state there because unless I can clear this continent, I don't want to be in a situation where later game I have to have significant warfare. So I will be Egypt's ally. And I'm going to see if that alone, this army, will be enough to intimidate Poland into backing off.