You can see in my last picture above (the WC trade with Germany) that I was 23 points behind anarres, here I am 24 points behind. I think this is basically due to losing a population point and a worker to the barbs. When I last wrote I had contacted the Germans, well the warrior who made contact was killed by barbs a couple turns later and so didn’t get to explore much.
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My barb problems continue as I can’t quite get my MP to Susa before it gets raided (just founded it the turn before). I knew this was a possibility when I sent the settler unescorted. So I do this little trade with the Germans.
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Thus I only have 9 in the bank and only get raided for 4 gold.
Some time passes and I have founded my fourth city and am completing another settler, I have also built enough (regular) spearmen to have sent another warrior out towards the hut I found much earlier in the game. From there he will restart my exploring endeavor.
If you hadn’t noticed it I am building a ring at 4.5 distance from Persepolis, I finished my settler and was one turn from founding the location 3 squares east of Persepolis when a German border appeared 4 squares (a distance of 6) to the east of Persepolis. Crapola, I turn him around to get another 4.5 spot.
My warrior reaches the hut and I get another tech!:
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At first I don’t see any horses around but then I notice that Arbela is actually founded on top of one, cool! The warrior that popped the hut is in the bottom right of this shot:
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And in the IT, a barb horse comes out of the fog and kills him. In addition the horse over by Arbela attacks my fortified spearman MP and wins… I’m raided for another 8 gold. I have yet to win a battle against a barbarian. They have killed me on mountains, across rivers, in cities – neither warrior nor spearman can stand against them. I must be forgetting my ablutions, or perhaps ritual sacrifice could help?
Finally my wandering settler founds Antioch. Meanwhile the Germans have encroached with two more cities on my borders. Don’t they have any land to their South? I also win a battle against a barbarian as a horse attacks a fortified spearman in Pasargadae, instead of a fortified spearman across a river in the forest protecting my workers. He promoted and I am sending him to protect my worker trying to connect my first luxury.
The chop of the game forest completes and Pasargadae will finish it’s granary soon and become a nice worker/setller farm, though I may need a border expansion to take full advantage.
Here’s a last screen shot. I swapped Persepolis to a worker to help Arbela, I was going to build one out of Arbela but now that I will have two worker/settler locations I want some barracks! I need to start stockpiling warriors asap, I also desparately need to explore more. At least my expansion is going OK, I am now only 16 points behind anarres.
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