Warlords 2.08/2.13, huge random continents map, epic speed Ok now, so this will be the second game I’m going to describe here in stories and tales. Unlike the first one (which I already had played up to 1000 AD before deciding to write about), I haven’t started this game, so the outcome of this one will be very interesting, thanks to difficulty level. .I think we have a wide variety of possibilities left open (ranging from getting massacred around 1000 BC by one of our neighbours up to loosing via space race around 1750 AD…) and I think one way or the other, it will provide an interesting tale of how to get defeated…

As you can see from the title, I have really decided to give it a shot at deity level. Having said this, only open question that remains before letting loose Don Deity is, which civilization and leader we might use for this task. No matter which civilization it will be in the end, I have a feeling that they will have lots of fun with Don Deity (which might involve his golden whip and the fact, that he really will care a LOT for his fellow citizens…) Concerning overall strategy, I tend to give future hermit’s transition economy (first mainly farms, later cottages) a shot.
…

The civilizations and leaders I think would be suited best for this task (being whipped for about 5000 years or so):

Germans with Frederick:

Organized and philosophical are maybe the strongest combination available in warlords.

Philosophical greatly helps in competing in the lib race via bulbing and beefs up early research thanks to a very early academy you can build. Organized reduces upkeep, which is a killer on deity. But maybe even more important is the fact that you can whip/chop out courthouses at half price, which reduces upkeep even more. Their unique building (assembly plant), which replaces the factory, is also very good, cheap to build and gives an amazing bonus to productivity.

I have quite good experience with Frederick on standard sized maps, so Freddy is always a good option (but I would prefer to play a leader I haven’t played before).

…

Carthage with Hannibal:

Charismatic and financial are a strong combo for early game.

Charismatic allows your initial cities to grow two more population (when you build a monument) and financial helps in early game fund raising very much if you build 3-5 cottages at start locations.

Their unique building is maybe the best in the game (Cothon, replaces harbour and gives one extra trade route) but requires to have costal cities. I have played some archipelago games (isolationist games) with Hannibal and think he also might be able to compete on a continent map when you start costal and have the possibility to build at lest 4-5 costal cities (which might be a gamble…)

…

England with Elisabeth:

Financial and philosophical is a solid combination, but their unique building is kind of useless for me, since I normally run a very high science rate ant the gold bonus only applies on gold income.

A mayor thing in their favour might be their special unit, but warlords redcoats are only slightly better then riflemen. But the fact that they can be drafted still might make them quite interesting (and I have never played as English so far)

…

Russia with Catherin:

Creative and financial are also a solid combo for early game, since Creative gives you a fair chance to block of more land from the AI´s thanks to the fast cultural expansion. Sadly, their unique building comes to late to be of any use…

But their special unit, the Cossack, which replaces Cavalry, is brutal. And since my normal strategy involves a Cavalry rush anyways, playing Russia would be maybe the strongest choice (but then again, I haven’t played them before, because I think the Cossack is overpowered)
The Beginning
A bar…somewhere strange…somewhere VERY strange…

“Hey, Don Deity what are you doing here?”

“Well, having a drink, don’t you see?”

“Yes, of course I see, but you seem to be completely lost in thoughts…”

“Well...yes...actually you are right ...have you ever had strange thoughts and urges?

“If you mean those two ladies over there, I can understand…”

“NO, not these thoughts… more like umh, how to say this… more like founding a civilization-thoughts…”

“WHAT??? Are you crazy? Why do you think you should actually found a civilization???”

“Well, you know, we are deities anyway… so I think I basically COULD do it… but then again, I would miss several decades of work I think… I even have considered to be a “part-time civilization founder” you know…”

“I think you are crazy…”

…

Two days later, same bar:

...

“Hey Don Deity, I have to make a confession to you… there was a time, when I also had the urge to found a civilization…”

“And what did you do about it? What did you do about it and how long did it take, until you felt better? You know, I’m feeling very lousy right now with this pressing urge…”

“Well, actually I FOUNDED a civilization…”

“Holy sh**!!! You founded a civilization!!! Why haven’t you told anybody about it?”

“Umh, I sort of felt ashamed… it isn’t very common these days for us deities to actually found a civilization.”

“But you would give me some tips, if I go on and found my own civilization, would you?”

“Of course I would… I even have written down the story of my civilization… you can find it here:

____________________

And so it began...

After Don Deity had made some arrangements with his boss, he was finally allowed to found his own civilization during 18:30-20:30 from Monday to Friday, except on Wednesday, if it was the first Wednesday of a month and on bank holidays. The weekends of course had to be spared completely, because of family issues (Don Deity later would pretend to his worshipers, that Gods don’t work the weekends… that was by the way the reason, how weekends where invented in the beginning…).

...

After looking around for a while, Don Deity finally found a planet that he liked. It was inhabited by 11 minor tribes and one of them was quite what he imagined his civilization to be. They called themselves “English”. Communication with them was quite difficult in the beginning, because they didn’t understand his fixed schedule and had no idea of bank holidays (and calendars btw), but after he had turned most of those who dared to ask or to complain into stone (and had the rest of them decorate his new palace with the nice statues) what remained of his tribe was quite eager to do as he told. One of the downsides of this development was, that the most educated people all ended up as statues, and so the knowledge of his little tribe was reduced to only two technologies: mining and fishing …

Don Deity now had maybe one of the nicest looking palaces (he even had his worshipers built a second floor to get in all the statues), but thanks to his more or less uncontrolled “do as I tell you NOW or I turn you into stone attitude” (maybe he simply liked statues very much) his little tribe had fallen way behind in size, power, population and technology, right in the beginning, compared to all the other tribes. So the English only had enough people left to settle one city and to send out one group of warriors, while all other tribes had enough people to support two settlers, two groups of workers, 4 archers and two scouts. Additionally, all the others had these technologies right from the start:

Mysticism
The Wheel
Agriculture
Hunting
Mining
Archery
Fishing

…

When Don Deity wanted to have a closer look at the world his new civilization was living upon, he suddenly had to find out, that he only could see clearly the region inhabited or scouted by his worshipers, the rest of the planet faded out to grey in his mind, so he made a mental checklist of all that he remembered and thought to be important:

Huge planet with continents
Normal see level & climate
His tribe: English
Special abilities of his tribe: financial and philosophical (Elisabeth)
Special building of his tribe: stock exchange (replaces bank, + 15% gold)
Special unit of his tribe: redcoat (riflemen, +25% against gunpowder units, can be drafted… which is great)
Starting technologies of his tribe: mining & fishing
The rest he didn’t remember, so we just refer to it as “RANDOM”

…

The Start:

Don Deity was quite pleased with what he saw. Although the English seemed to be a tribe living quite far down south in this world (indicated by the snow covered forests, the presence of a whale and the ice that could be seen across the ocean) he deemed it to be a fairly good place to settle down. Nearby in the oceans were two crabs, two fish and a whale (for later use). The landscape contained lots of forests to be chopped down to beef up early production. They even would be able to settle on a plain hill, if they would decide to settle in place, which would help greatly in defense and production (one additional hammer and +25% defense). One forest would be lost when settling in place, but Don Deity didn’t care much about that… who wanted to chop down forests, when whipping worshipers had about the same effect…

But back to our observation business:

Three more hills nearby would make any city founded on this spot not only very rich in food, but also decent in production (not great, but at least decent). The nearby river delta would provide any city founded near with sweat water (additional health) and, once the river benches would be cleared of the forests, nice cottages could be build there (each having an income of 3 gold peaces right from the start… and decorated with some nice statues they even would look good).

And, last but not least, the initial spot would be costal, which would be quite good for early trade once a harbour would be built (and, decorated with nice statues all over, the place could even attract some tourists).

...

On the other hand, moving inland would provide cheaper upkeep for later cities thanks to lower distance, very likely result in a bigger empire because of the better chances to block off more territory from the other civilizations and would greatly help in early scouting (and perhaps it would even reveal some more nice places that could be decorated with statues…)

No matter where he would have his people settle in the end, there was still this thing with the small tribe settling nearby. This might be a good sign. First thing to do would be to send the warriors there to make contact. Perhaps they would help his people to catch up again by teaching them a new technology or gifting them some money (or simply kill the warriors first, then the rest of the tribe named English)...

____________________

A bar… somewhere strange… somewhere VERY strange…

...

“One beer please… ah, hey Don Deity, how are you doing?”

“Oh, much better today… and I have also very good news: (whispers) I have finally founded my own civilization”

“You really have? That’s great… what’s your civilization like?”

“Mainly small and unimportant… they call themselves English… I would have preferred a more realistic name… like people of Snaatburg perhaps, or even better, Snaatburgers… and I think I have to get my temper under control… I have found out that killing my worshipers somehow slows overall development…”

“You really should do that… your worshipers, or better, call them citizens, they will like that, are your only source of power on this world. I think you already have found out that your all seeing deity eye quite fails there, haven’t you?”

“Yea, I have, why is this so?”

“Well, since you would use your deity power to provide your citizen with huge advantages over all the other civilizations, one of the unwritten rules of universe is that once a deity adopts a civilization, he can only act and see through them on their world.”

“But how comes, that I can turn them to stone?”

“You shouldn’t do that”

“Yea, I know, but the question is, HOW can I turn them to stone if my powers don’t work on their world now?”

“I have now idea… another beer?”

“Yes please… ah, and before I forget (and/or am to drunk), I have a question: When you look at the starting location of my worship… umh, I mean citizens, would you settle in place or would you try to find a settling location more inland?”

“I always would move inland. A great capital is nice, but more important is grabbing enough land, even more when all the other civilization have that much advantages over yours in this early stage of your world. When you move inland, you can normally block of enough land to expand peacefully in the beginning. Always remember you need to have at least 8 or 9 cities on such a huge world (better build 9, to be sure) to build certain buildings (like Globe Theatre for example)…”

“But I don’t want to expand peacefully… I want to burn, pillage and plunder all the other civilizations right from the start.”

“How do you want to do that in this early stage of your quest? Do you want to conquer the world with one warrior? You have to make friends first, to grow and prosper. Killing should come later. And here are two more things to remember:

You should research towards pottery immediately, to be able to build some cottages. Without early cottages you will never be able to keep up in early-game research with the other civilizations. Next should be bronze working to reveal bronze and to chop down some forests for additional production. If you have bronze nearby, head directly for writing and alphabet (squeeze in Mysticism in time to help your new cities to get culture via Monuments), if not take a detour and go for Animal Husbandry to check for horses. If you have neither bronze nor horses go for archery before you go for writing. You will need better units then warriors to defend yourself against the barbarians inhabiting your world…

The first thing to produce in your capital should be a worker. Next a warrior (grow capital to 2 or 3, the bigger the better), then one more worker, and finally an axe, chariot or archer (whatever you can build, but build at least 2 decent defenders while growing to happy cap). Once you have done that, you can go settler spamming until all important resources are captured and enough land is blocked off. But try not to build more then 4-5 cities in the beginning or you will run broke. Of course this build order is optimized for moving inland, so IF you REALLY want to settle in place, which would mean starting costal, squeeze in some workboats…”
____________________ This episode was contributed by Lilnev:

A bar… somewhere strange… somewhere VERY strange…

"Hello there, Don Deity. Mind if I join you for a beer?"

"Why it's friend lilnev! By all means, please sit. I'm surprised to see you here."

"Well, it's true that I am only an immortal and have not yet ascended to godhood. But I told the bouncer I was meeting a friend, and he let me in.

I couldn't help but to overhear your previous conversation, and I thought I might offer my thoughts. You see, I too have dabbled in the management of primitive civilizations. In fact I'd call it a bit of a hobby."

"Of course, of course, what are your thoughts about my poor English?"

"Their first need is for food; without an abundance, they will not multiply to fill the land. There are but four types: the food that swims beneath the waves, that which grows from the earth, that which walks on four legs, and the fertile plains where great rivers have overflown their banks. Now your English are quite adept at catching the swimming food, and there is truly an abundance where they now stand. If they were to quest inland, they would need to locate another type of food. They are not skilled in the cultivation of crops, but it is not difficult in concept -- I expect they could learn that task by the time the hardy workers were ready to begin labor. But the husbandry of beasts is a harder task, and I'm afraid your English are not well prepared. They must first learn to either grow grain or to track and catch wild game. I fear that if they settled in a place where the principle food was of the four-legged type, your empire would grow slowly indeed. As for the fertile banks of great rivers, they would truly be an exceptional find. However, such locations seem to rarely occur in close proximity to the sea ice visible yonder. Thus, if they are to quest inland, their search for abundant food must be of greatest importance, and the satisfaction of that quest is not assured. If they build at their present locale, there is no such concern.

Further, consider that your English are Financially minded. Long days on the crab boats will give them ample time to dream up new inventions. Why, I bet if they cultivated all of that swimming food, your English would dream up new inventions in less than half the time it would take them with more terrestrial nourishment. Perhaps some good uses for that reddish-brown metal that might hopefully be nearby? And even if it isn't, the knowledge would allow you to turn the less fortunate among them into useful things, like additional workboats or settlers. Instead of, um, statues. They are very fine looking statues, I don't doubt, but I would humbly suggest that there are more productive uses for your "excess population".

A city on the coast is also easier to defend against those tribeless barbarians who may assault you, and a fishing fleet cannot be burned in the way that fields and pastures can."

"Indeed, friend lilnev, the things you say are true, and I have no doubt that the English capital could thrive and grow quite quickly on this southern shore. But I am concerned about the future. I wish to reserve for my tribe sufficient lands for their continued expansion, and to do so I must guard against encroachment by the other peoples of this world."

"That is a valid point, Don Deity, and one that you must consider carefully. Do keep in mind that you have chosen a huge planet, and in such cases there is usually enough land to secure several cities for yourself before you must resort to force. But as you say, an inland capital may permit you to live in harmony with the other tribes for a longer time, if that is your intent.

If the English were my civilization, I know that I would tell them to build where they are, to grow numerous and inventive on the riches of the sea, and to study the chopping of trees, the construction of axes, and the forced conscription of labor. But they are not my civilization, so you must make the choice, Don Deity. And I am but an immortal; my attempts to bring forth civilations on such a savage planet as you have chosen have all ended in utter failure. Perhaps you possess a greater or subtler wisdom than mine. Whichever course you choose for your English, I wish you luck, and I am eager to hear the tale."
Thanks a lot for your contribution, hope to see you or anybody else in the bar again pretty soon
____________________

After carefully considering his friends advice, Don Deity decided to ignore it completely... …and had the first city of the English founded right on the spot. He knew that he shouldn’t have listened to the immortal, who called himself Lilnev, popping up at the bar, but what should he do, what immortal Lil said made all sense to him…

Not much later, it turned out, that Don Deity hadn’t given the English any direct orders concerning the city name… which resulted in more statues and a city with the strange name of “London”.

Had Don Deity already known at that stage of his civilization founding process that there was a paradise like city location with 2 goldmines, silk, several floodplains and some sheep only a short journey away, direction inlands, he would probably have given his left arm (OK, very likely the left arms of some of his worsh… umh, citizens) to have a chance to start over, this time moving inlands, but that’s the way live goes, even for deities…

But nevertheless, as immortal Lil had pointed out, with the financial trait of the English, the sea resource near London would give them at least 3 gold peaces every turn. This can’t be compared to a gold mine of course, left alone two, but with 4 sea resources, this could at lest sum up to a total of 12 gold peaces per turn, once London would have grown.

This is what London, the capital of the English, looked like in 2620 BC:

As you can see in the picture above, a source of bronze was discovered near London. This might be the brown stuff immortal Lil was talking about… so even if he would never ever admit it in public, Don Deity was quite happy for immortal Lil´s council. Maybe he will show up some more times at the bar to share his wisdom?

Since this was quite obviously very good news, Don Deity made some extra beautiful statues to celebrate it and, as soon as the next Workboat in London would be finished, Don Deity would be able to build axes to raise an army.

Seeing this, Don Deity even hoped for other civilizations to settle close to his first city… let them come… he would teach his citizen the art of war and burn, pillage and plunder every nation who dared to come close (at least this was his plan at that early stage of his civilization… and BEFORE he met any neighbours an therefore had no power graph to measure his strength). But on the other side, if he was really honest to himself, he also had to admit, that his friend might be right about his temper. Maybe he really should try to keep his temper better under control.

...

What reminds us of the small tribe that had been settling nearby London:

Before settling London, Don Deity had sent out his small band of warriors as intended, to visit them, with the high hope that they would gift something very useful (like bronze working or 1.000 gold peaces). After the small tribe had presented the more or less useless technology of sailing to Don Deity, guess what… yes, he had them all added to his palace decorations and had their small village destroyed by a lightning (which, when I remember the conversation with Don Deity and his friend more or less right, physically shouldn’t have been possible at all… so maybe it was just a funny coincidence, involving a BIG natural thunderstorm, after all… but, nevertheless, Don Deity surely will go on pretending that it was HIS doing forever, because destroying a minor (and by the way very friendly) tribe settling nearby with a lightning is something quite cool, isn’t it?)

…

And it really turned out, that the news of Don Deity running around and lightning down whole villages or more or less everything he came across, must have spread to the other neutral villages nearby… so the next village Don Deity’s warriors came across was eager to present Don Deity all their gold (56 gold peaces) and the third village even provided the essential technology of bronze working. You can imagine that Don Deity was very pleased with this development.

…

A downside of settling in place Don Deity came across was the fact that he had to come up with a building order of his own. So this is what the production of London turned out to be in the end:

1. Worker
2. Workboat
3. Workboat
4. Worker
5. Warrior
6. Workboat

Thanks to the nice neutral villages, Don Deity’s early research was:

Sailing (hut)
The Wheel
Bronze working (hut)
Pottery
Writing

While London was more or less prospering and mainly busy with building workboats, the small band of warriors the English referred to as ”army” was very busy with scouting the nearest surroundings of London. While doing so, 3 other civilizations were encountered, which called themselves (in order of appearance):

Celts, with Brennus as leader (Bren)
Greece, with Alexander as leader (Alex)
India, with Asoka (Ash)

…

Since they were all running around with lots of scouts and archers (and NOW he had a power graph to compare…), Don Deity decided that his initial plan of burn, pillage and plunder really was… well… not so good... So he decided to go turtle mode ASAP and to use his small band of warriors as first fogbusting squad. If he remembered right, his friend and immortal Lil had both warned him about a heavy barbarian onslaught that could start any minute now.

As you can see in the next pictures, the nearest surroundings of London looked fairly promising, with some food resources spread all around and a decent share of rivers and some grassland tiles. Two big mountain ranges and a desert in the north were a little bit of a setback, but two gold resources and some floodplains more then made up for it (this region was referred to as “super city site” earlier).

Northeast regions (with the “super city site” marked in red):

Southwest regions (with absolutely nothing marked…):

The southwest and southeast seemed to be a little barren, with mainly tundra and ice, but two silver resources in the southwest were also something.

Although Don Deity still felt a little sad about missing the “super city site” for his capital, he was sort of pessimistically optimistic (or the other way around, I don’t remember exactly…) when looking at his tiny empire… but still there were so some open questions, that went spinning around in his head… like where he should build his second city… or how many axes he would need to put up some minimum defenses…
A bar... somewhere strange... somewhere VERY strange…

“Why are you looking so sad Don Deity?”

“I don’t like my civilization any more. It is WAY weaker then the other civilizations I have met so far and I seem to be unable to get enough troops build in time. And I don’t like sitting around and waiting for anything to happen, I want to go out and slay…”

“Don’t be so sad Don Deity, in my opinion you have had big luck with your start. You got two technologies for free from minor tribes and some gold... … and bronze working is great as you may have found out yourself I think... but sailing can be also very useful for you.”

“Why can something like sailing be useful to me? My poor little civilization hasn’t even invented something like catapults, so I can’t even throw triremes at any approaching enemies…”

“You could for example build a lighthouse ASAP which…”

“Ah, you mean so that my people can throw down triremes from the lighthouse at any approaching…”

“NO, I don’t mean THIS. What I meant is more like that a lighthouse would give you one more food from all your sea resources. This would make 4 more food every turns when working all 4 sea resources. You even should consider squeezing in a lighthouse before building any more workers or settlers. By the way, why haven’t you moved your initial settler inlands, like I have supposed? I have heard rumors, that there is a “super city site” not far inlands…”

“Would you do me a favor?”

“Yes, of course Don Deity. What is it?”

“Never ever mention this again.”

…

5 beers later

…

“…but I don’t want to be weak. And I don’t want my civilization to fear barbarians. I want everybody to fear my civilization.”

“Listen to me Don Deity. You have had great luck in discovering a source of bronze that close to your capital. You even can work it right away and build a basic defensive army consisting of warriors and axes. If you place some warriors on strategic hills around your capital and use your axes as defensive strike force, you will be able to spot and fend of any barbarians approaching you without too much effort.”

“OK, then we don’t have to fear the barbarians, but the other civilizations, they could destroy us any time they want to... look, I even can project you the power chart from our continent for better visualization…

…we are sooooo weak…”

“Well, the only advice I can give you concerning the other civilizations, is to ignore them right now and to stay low (very low) and be as friendly with them as you can be (which actually could be a BIG problem…). Basically, simply don’t make them angry…”

“So there is nothing I can do right now to make them love me?”

“Not really... you could convert to their religion to make them your friends, but therefore you need to wait until a religion actually spreads in one of your cities (which you not have). Once you have researched alphabet things will get easier, because then you can gift them technologies to raise their mood towards you, but this is still a long way to go.”

“But how do I proceed now?”

"Give me a second, have to go to the toilet..."

...

5 minutes later...

“To compete with the other civilizations, you need to expand very fast now. The most effective way in doing so, is to raise the happy cap of your capital via luxury resources and to spam settlers and workers at maximal city size. Since you seem to have a quite large area to expand into, I would advise you therefore to settle near the luxurious resources you can work right now (gold and silver) first and to work them ASAP. This will allow your capital to grow and then you can build additional workers and settlers faster. Next step is to grab and block of as much land as possible. And don’t forget to build a worker for every settler you build because you have to work your new cities... ...oh, and by the way, I just have met immortal Lil on the toilet... ...he agrees in most of the points with me on this issue, so you really should listen to me this time."

“But my capital is not good... and sooooo tiny…”

“Quit whining around Don Deity. Your capital will grow with time and there will be a time, when it WILL be important (unless you are eliminated by one of your neighbors BEFORE that time of course). By the way, I like the name of your capital... it sounds a little strange in the beginning, but once you get used to it, it’s a nice name…”

“I think I need another beer
____________________
 
The roots of a new empire, Part 1
Despite Don Deity’s whining, the English people really seemed to continue to prosper and grow. And they even seemed to be hard workers... in addition to the copper-mine, the other two hills near London had also been mined (some statues had to be moved a little to gain better access to the main entrance of a major mine, but since the people of London (of which Don Deity nowadays referred to as “Londonians”) had been very careful, Don Deity didn’t seem to reckon it... which, of course, greatly helped in keeping London’s overall output of statues in this period on a quite reasonable level…) and a basic road network was forming around London. For the mines and the roads, some forests had to be removed (altogether 4 of them) but this only increased London’s production even more.

Thanks to so many mines London had a quite big production capacity and therefore was able to produce all troops needed for initial defense very fast. And, after the initial urge to ignore his friends advise again, passed away, Don Deity even had a lighthouse build in London, right after two axmen and some additional warriors had been built/chopped. This allowed London to gather 17 food per turn so far and would sum up to 22 food per turn once all 4 sea resources would be worked... which again would allow an impressive output of settlers and workers.

But so far, only one settler and two workers had been produced in London. Right now, the people of London were busy working on another workboat, so that the city could grow…

London, which is growing to size 5, thanks to silver, in 1900 BC:

…

At the majors house in London:

“What does that mean, we can do nothing with the whales???”

“Umh, I don’t know Don Deity, what do you suppose we should do with those whales?”

“Well, for a start, you could get some glass bottom boats ready and offer some whale watching trips for tourists. This at least would help us in raising some more funds…”

…

About 10 days later, same place, the major and some of his consultants:

“Like I said before dear major, we still have no idea what this “glass” thing is... but since it is supposed to be transparent, we have some experiments running with simply leaving off some wooden planks in the middle of our fishing boats…”

“And... how are the results so far?”

“The positive side of it mainly is that we seem to have much more fishes and crabs around London now…”

“How can this be?”

“Umh... well... our results with the new boat model are extremely impressive concerning the transparency of the hole... but there are some minor downsides we still have to overcome ... none of our new fishing boats has been able to leave the harbor so far... they basically sink right from the start... but IF we finally have solved this minor sinking issue and our boats are able to reach the whale site, the big hole will allow a beautiful sight into the water (pouring in).”

“Just carry on with your research... oh, by the way, has anybody found out already, what a “tourist” is?”

…

Although less seafood had been produced since some time now, the still massive amount of food in London had allowed producing the first settler very quick and the city of York had already been founded 2080 BC southwest of London, near the silver resources:

Southwest regions in 1900 BC:

Since some fishes were discovered near the silver, Don Deity spontaneously had decided to expand in this direction first, because unlike the gold, the silver could be worked right from the start, without any border expansions needed (see "super city site"). All workers had been busy with building a road towards the location York would be already before the settler to become York had been finished and immediately after York was found, one of the silver hills had been mined, so London had access to silver more or less immediately.

In York, the following production order was planned:
Monument (to be chopped)
Workboat (to be timed with border expansion, so the nearby fish could be worked immediately)
Library (to grow the city)

...

Some barbarian archers and warriors had been approaching here and there near York, but thanks to Don Deity following his friend’s advice, all territory southwest of London was covered by fogbusters and one of the defending axes had always been able to fend of any approaching barbarians. Altogether, there had been 6 groups of archers and a raiding party of warriors that had been killed mainly in the south-western regions of the newborn English empire so far.

...
The roots of a new empire, Part 2
Although Don Deity knew that he had more important things to do, he opened his (at this stage of the world quite short) history book again and turned to page 7:

North-western fogbusting squad, 1392 BC, 12. March, 11:32:

“Suddenly, we spotted two groups of archers and one band of settlers, wearing the flags of Brennus, approaching our lookout post on the riverside hill from northwest. But they passed our small fortifications, without even bothering to stop for a chat and camped a little further in the wood, down the river…

Some days later, they packed all their goods again and moved on. We wondered a little about that, because the riverside camp they had built would have made a quite good location for a city, with fresh water, grain, deer and cows nearby, but plain obviously, they were heading somewhere else and they disappeared out of sight, heading towards the gold mountains.”

Don Deity turned to page 9:

Northern fogbusting squad, 1412 BC, 17. November, 18:12:

“At around noon, we spotted a quite big group of settlers and archers heading towards our direction from the mountain range at our west. It took them 3 full days, until they arrived at our camp on the hill southwest of the little lake. We invited them for a cup of coffee, but they didn’t want to stop and pressed on, following the river up towards the desert into the north. We wondered a little about that, because our camp would have made a great location for a permanent settlement, with two gold, some floodplains and all the sheep nearby, but they seemed to travel somewhere else…”

After another 5 days, they disappeared out of sight into the desert.”

Don Deity skipped some more pages:

Northern fogbusting squad, 1565 BC, 12. February, 8:12:

“We already had forgotten about the settlers and archers passing us by, when we suddenly spotted them again in the north, this time going south, down the river, heading for our camp again.

They already seemed a little worn out, because the trip along the river took them this time more then 9 days, until they finally arrived at our camp. They stopped and asked for a coffee, but unhappily, we had run out of coffee 3 days ago, so we offered them some tea.

Most of them seemed to be quite unhappy with their wondering business, because they said something about a “stinking pig named Brennus”, but still they decided to leave our camp again only 3 days later and headed towards the mountain range at our west. We lost sight of them 5 days later”

Don Deity smiled a little and turned to page 15:

North-western fogbusting squad, 1617 BC, 28. March, 13:21:

“We still haven’t found out anything about the band of settlers and archers camping now with us for more then two weeks. A quick spreading rumour is that they are those mysterious “tourists” the mayor of London is waiting for, but we have found no evidence so far, proving this. But the captain has sent out this morning one of the warriors towards London, to inform the major there. But we start to get annoyed more and more of the attitude of these peoples looking at everything and complaining all day long…”

Some visualisation of Bren´s wandering tour:

…

Except of Bren wandering around with his settlers, not very much was happening these days, so one of the most important events was the discovering of the first cultural border of one of our neighbours…

Northeast regions in 1330 BC (Ash’s border indicated by red arrow):

After Bren had passed the “super city site” twice now with his settlers, Don Deity was very quick in settling there on his own (you NEVER now…). But unlike York, the city of Nottingham, build in 1600 BC was not build directly near the luxurious resource, but one tile further distant, on the “super-city site”. This would make Nottingham one of the strongest cities in the growing English empire in the future, but right now, the downside of this was that the gold would only be in reach after the first expansion of the cultural borders of Nottingham. But since a Monument had already been chopped in Nottingham and the production of a library had already been started, this shouldn’t take too long.

…

And Don Deity made another important strategic decision, as you can see in the screenshot above:

The only English early cottages would be build near Nottingham, along the river running up north, into the desert, profiting greatly from the floodplains on its path… the first one had already been finished, the second one was in production. Once Nottingham would have grown, maybe one or two cottages more would follow a little more up the floodplain river, but right now, two cottages seemed to be all the English empire needed (and could build/support/work btw).

…

At the majors house in London:

“And you really think that these people are “tourists”?”

“Well… yes… when we informed them about the whale watching trips we plan to offer in London, once we have solved the last problems with the boats, they were quite eager to hear more about that. Some even decided to quit service for Brennus and are heading now towards London… they really seem to hate Brennus, maybe it has something to do with him having them running around senselessly for several hundred years…”

“Good then, give word to the north-western fogbusting squad, that they are to head up towards the regions where we suspect more of Brennus people to live and have them put up signs and advertisements all along the way for our upcoming whale watching business.

Ah, and by the way, if they come across a good location to found another permanent settlement while putting up signs and advertisements, they should give word immediately to Don Deity, because we now have another band of settlers ready in London.”

____________________

A bar… somewhere strange… somewhere VERY strange…

“Hey Don Deity, back again? Feeling a little bit more confident now concerning your ongoing little civilization project?”

“Well… not really. We haven’t achieved anything of importance so far and I have a feeling that all other nations are working on some big and important projects. And we basically can’t do anything about it because we are too backwards to compete with them…”

“Don’t worry too much about that Don Deity. Most of the so called “World Wonders” aren’t worth being built. There are only two that I would advise you to try for. The first one is called “Great Library” and the second one “Statue of Liberty”. But right now, just forget about them, because it will take some years until you can build them… another beer?”

“Yes please… umh, I have faced something very funny last time I have visited my civilization… perhaps you know something about it:

That Brennus guy was running with a settler through my whole empire west to east, only to come back again the opposite way and to disappear again in his own territory…”

“You are a gambler, aren’t you? It was VERY risky NOT to settle on the “super city site” immediately. If Bren or anybody of the others would have settled there, you would really be in trouble now… but anyways, they haven’t, so back to your question:

The average leader of a foreign nation (=AI) acts quite dumb here and there… sometimes they go for a very special city site near the north pole… then this special city site is taken by a rival just before the own settler arrives… now they estimate a city site near the south pole to be the best available and order the same settler to go there… even when it takes some hundred years, leads through hostile territory and has a chance of about 100% of NOT making it there… lets have a closer look:

… look there, this looks like the cultural border of a barbarian settlement (indicated by the read arrows, because it’s really hard to see), so maybe Bren was even beaten by barbarians in this special settlers race. You should send a scout up there soon, to find out if it’s worth to conquer this barbarian city.

By the way, why haven’t you opened borders with Ash?”

“I had open borders with Ash some while ago, but since Bren and Alex seem to be best buddies and they both don’t like Ash too much, I thought that it would be best only to side with them and closed borders with Ash again.”

“A wise decision… something else, why are your Londonians sinking all their fishing boats and are drowning themselves in the process in big groups?”

“They are building glass bottom boats… without glass… watching this is even funnier then turning them to stone.”

“Ah… don’t you think that this may be for example a reason why you aren’t able to keep up with the other nations?”

“Why?”

“Well… as you have found out already earlier, killing your citizen slows you down. So do you think there is a BIG difference between killing them and watching them kill themselves???”

“Hm, now that you mention it… two more beers please.”

…

“Thanks for all the beers Don Deity. But I really have to leave now. But before I leave I have one last advice for you:

When you finally have researched alphabet, try to trade it for math and ironworking. All other technologies aren’t that important. And remember to do the math trade first, because the other nations won’t give you math for alphabet, once several nations know alphabet. And mind the moods of your trading partners, so you don’t get a penalty for trading with “worst enemy” with a nation you plan to do a trade later…”

“Why math and ironworking?”

“Math you need to increase your chopping revenue and it is also a valuable technology that opens up some very interesting research options, like calendar, construction and currency. And you will need it on your way to philosophy and civil service.

And ironworking enables your workers to chop down jungles and reveals iron. Additionally, you need it to advance to compass, which would allow your civilization to build harbors. And early harbors can do miracles sometimes…
Grabbing what we can, Part 1
And it turned out, that there really was a fairly good spot to settle in the northwest, towards Bren’s land. It was at the bench of the same river then York, so the English people started immediately to establish a river based trade rout there. They called the city Hastings and it was found in 1210 BC. Next to Hastings were growing some strange spices, so once the English would have learned the skills to work them (=Calendar), Hastings would be able to support the whole English empire with spices. One of the axes had been sent to Hastings, to provide a decent defense, while the initial scouting warrior had been retreated towards Nottingham, to do some scouting there.

In addition, two workers were immediately ordered to Hastings to chop down the forests nearby to speed up the production of a monument. Then Don Deity planned to use Hastings to produce/chop some additional settlers, since there wasn’t much else the city could to right now… on a second thought, Hastings seemed even to be of quite little use now, and, to make things worse, the city was severely dragging down the English economy due to palace-distance.

Still, Don Deity hoped that Hastings would prove worth the investment rather sooner then later… once the cultural borders would expand, Bren would have to make a quite big detour to reach the lands between Hastings and London thanks to the mountains north of Hastings. So if Bren really would try to settle our backlands now, we would have quite some time to react and to send a settler on our own…

Hastings and surrounding areas (with the mountain passage soon to be blocked, marked):

A small farm, near Hastings:

“Dad, what are all those signs around our house with the strange looking fish for?”

“They are a warnings, son. Don Deity himself had them had put up. But they are not only near our house, they are ALL over the world (nobody in or anywhere near hastings could read... and apparently this poor boy’s dad hadn’t been around very far in addition…)”

“What warnings are they?”

“They are the reason we never swim in the river nearby, or in any river.”

“Are they monsters?”

“Yes son, remember those other signs… those with the boats with the torn of planks in the middle… they show us that those mean and dangerous monsters even can chew big parts out off the middle of any boat.”

“Is this why we build all our boats with double floors?”

“Yes son, it reduces the transport capability of our boats almost to zero, a great part of our boats even sink without being loaded because they are simply to heavy (and lots of people drown because nobody can swim of course… they don’t really have lots of chances to learn it… mainly because they don’t enter any running water... except when drowning of course…), but we have to protect ourselves… that’s why Don Deity had had those signs put up in the beginning of the world the oldest one of Hastings says… he really cares four his people and wants us all to be as save as possible…”

…

They REALLY REALLY REALLY should invent a public school system in Hastings… or any school system… or, if all else fails at least kill the oldest one there…

…

Since the advice of Don Deity’s drinking fiend had proven to be good in the past Don Deity decided to stick to it again. So the warriors from Hastings simply passed by Nottingham and went further up north to do some basic scouting near the barbarian settlement there. And it turned out, that they really revealed some quite interesting things…

The barbarian city, the city of Chinook, was situated on a desert hill, surrounded by two gold resources. There even was a sweet water lake and two rivers nearby. In the west of Chinook, we could see now a part of Bren’s territory (not very good I have to admit, but you can believe me: it’s there…), while in the east Ash’s territory seemed to stretch up along the river. Bad news was, that the city of Chinook was on a hill and guarded by 4 archers… so our chances of conquering it with our own army of 3 axes were quite small…

Still Don Deity ordered one troop of his Axes up there, to give word immediately if some other nation was trying to capture Chinook… perhaps they even had a chance to capture Chinook, once some defenders were killed…

…

Another more or less important milestone for the growing English empire happened to be in the year 1090 BC, when Canterbury was founded to finally secure once and forever the marble east of London… the founding of Canterbury wasn’t planned that early, but as you can see in the picture above, the brave English settlers were obviously forced to do so, because Ash was approaching with two archers and a settler… and loosing the marble site to Ash would have caused a severe blow to the English nation at this stage of the game…

But since the city of Canterbury was up and running now, a workboat was immediately ordered to be built there, to harvest on the nearby fishing grounds. To speed things up a little, some workers were chopping down the forests nearby. Later, some more workers were planned to be equipped in Canterbury, then a monument would be build there… (or the other way around, we will see).
...

At the majors house in London:

“I think we are running into problems, lord major…”

“What sort of problems do you mean?”

“Look at our empty treasure chests… and still we are running a deficit of 2 gold pieces per turn at only 60% research… I still think it was a mistake to found the city of Canterbury right now.”

“But we had to.... if not Ash would have taken the marble site and I don’t think that you would have been man enough to tell that to Don Deity.”

“Well, OK then, I can understand why we had to found the city of Canterbury, but why the city of Hastings???”

“I also don’t understand it… it’s too far away, earns no money at all and therefore really drags down our economy… it would have been way better to just fortify the settler on this spot, to secure it for later use (like when we would have been able to make some real use of “spices”)… but what’s done is done, we cant change that now… and NEVER EVER tell Don Deity anything of this conversation, understand?”

...
 
Grabbing what we can, Part 2
With the founding of Canterbury, Ash’s access to our part of the world from the east was finally blocked completely. And Nottingham blocked the desert and river delta between the two mountain ranges up to the north... only Hastings was doing a very poor blocking job, even after their borders had expanded, because Bren spread out like a plaque and seemed to be able to settle around it without too much difficulty. His cultural borders now even reached almost as far east as the barbarian city of Chinook…

Seeing this, Don Deity ordered the people of Hastings, to speed up their work on the next settler. Another wood there was allowed to be chopped down by them and Don Deity’s hopes of covering a more or less decent shaped empire were based now mainly in Bren’s eagerness to sent out settlers all over the world before occupying the neighborhood. But in the end, this only meant, that another city would have to be founded very soon by the English, which could pretty well ruin Don Deity`s economy completely…

And, even worse, only one or two more or less mediocre cities could be squeezed in between Hastings and London. What Don Deity needed right now was a plan to recover the English economy... and it better be a good one…

…

On the market square in London (which is packed with English soldiers):

“Why are all your men here?”

We always meet all here, Don Deity...”

“Hm... ok then... you go with your men northward, and fortify on the hill near the city of Chinook.”

“How many men should I take with me Don Deity?”

“I don’t know, maybe 50? How many men do you normally take with you?”

“It may vary… we usually throw the dice and everybody with a number smaller then 3 is allowed to stay home…”

“I think we need to change that…”

A shout from the background:

“Why is HE leading us? He ALREADY was leading us when we were stationed near Hastings!!!”

“Umh... well... maybe because he is the commander of your troop?”

“No, he isn’t! We are all EQUAL in rank…”

“HSMF??? And how did you decide up to now who is in charge then???”

“This is VERY easy…

We have invented a democratic voting system all by ourselves... it works like that:

Every one of us has 17 votes. He can either vote for himself, anyone of the others and, if he wants to, he also can split his votes. Those who haven’t been with us during the last mission get a minus of 5 votes. John, who invented the system, gets an additional vote. Billy, who joined the troop just recently only has 13 votes, and Bob, who is always drunk gets only…”

“Ok, ok, ok… cut it short… who NORMALLY leads your troop?”

“Well, it’s John. He seems to be very lucky and always wins with one vote more then most of the others, except of Billy and Bob, who normally have bad luck end up last and of course…”

“Quit the details... may it be that most of you tend to vote for themselves quite often, don’t they?”

“Yes, of course, why should I vote for somebody else???”

“ARGH... we need to change that also…”

…

In the mayor’s house, ten minutes later:

“…is ALWAYS in command. And every basic unit should contain 50 people. Did you write down everything?”

“Yes Don Deity every single bit.”

“So go now and tell all our troops of the new structure. And IF anybody of them EVER dares to mention to me again this idiotic voting system or the stupid dice throwing…”

…

Don Deity was starting to feel a little desperate. Not only was his small empire on the verge of running broke... even worse was the fact, that he felt surrounded by fools only. He even had to avoid completely thinking about the English army after the disastrous meeting in London, because the thought alone brought back the aching head, he suffered quite often these days. He needed some good news and he needed them right now…

…

And there really was at least some good news not much later. In 1030 BC, some English scientists suddenly approached Don Deity and even before he could turn them to stone just to prevent any senseless discussion (he still had enough from the discussion with the military guys…), they managed to explained to him, that they finally managed to invent an alphabet of their own. And this alphabet would enable the English nation to start selling and trading their technologies with all the other nations on the continent.

And Don Deity REALLY needed some techtrading now, or at least some backfilling of older technologies, because the English were still lacking some essential basic technologies like agriculture, masonry, animal husbandry…

So Don Deity invited the leaders of all the nations met so far (Bren, Alex and Ash) to London to check on their technologies and his trading possibilities. It turned out that the English really had a monopoly on Alphabet so far and Don Deity therefore was able to get the most important deals done without any problems:

Alphabet – Math (Ash)
Alphabet - Iron (Alex)

Since Bren not even had writing, Don Deity gave it to him for masonry so he could trade alphabet for polytheism and animal husbandry not much later with Bren. These were quite important trades also, because now horses on the map were revealed (and off course it turned out that the English had none so far... but once the borders of Canterbury would expand some more, the English empire would eventually gain access to horses... which might be quite important by the way, to keep open all options for our future peaceful plans…) and all prerequisites for Literature were met. Still Don Deity would have to do some more backfilling on his own, but he decided to address this problem later, after Literature would finally be researched (it would be quite nice to have agriculture for example, for obvious reasons…)

Not much later it turned out, that Don Deity had made another wise decision some while ago, when he had sent the 50 axes towards the barbarian city of Chinook. In 835 BC, Bren really was going for the barbarian city with quite some troops. Still, Don Deity deemed Bren’s chances in taking the city only about 50%, because of the 4 archers garrisoned there on the hill... with a little luck (what we can’t influence) and Bren acting dumb (what we expect) we really could have a chance to snag it after Bren has killed most of his troops there…

Except the soon to come heavy barbarian fighting around Chinook (which hopefully would involve the English axes in the end), not much happened in the early English empire and so Don Deity´s scientists were working heavy on Literature, and the English people concentrated in equipping mainly workers. The English working power so far already contained 6 groups of workers, but two more were planned (one already in production).

…

Some approaching barbarians were killed here and there, and even some barbarian axes appeared, but thanks to the restructurations Don Deity had forced into the English military system the English axe regiments (which already had some shock promos and were fortified on strategic locations) there were not much English losses to moan for so far.

This is what London looked in 835 BC, with both, gold and silver, hooked up:

As you can see, a library had recently been build and two scientists had been set to work immediately. The first Great Scientists is supposed to appear in 11 turns and London now has a huge trade revenue thanks to a foreign trade route with one of Alex’s cities of two gold pieces per turn (hurray, hurray).

…

The small English empire in 835 AD (with the newly discovered horses nearby marked by the read arrow… and lots of other, partly completely useless, stuff marked with lots of different and very bright colors):

Seeing the overall map of early England didn’t really help to bring up Don Deity’s self confidence very much …although he liked the bright colors somehow... but all in all, Hastings was still not connected to main England (and basically shouldn’t exist at all on a second thought), which only meant, that at least one city between Hastings and London would have to be build soon. The English needed to get their territories united to one empire. So Hastings was still chopping out settlers at full speed although any new city would only drain more money Don Deity didn’t have... he needed a plan to save or gain some money and he needed it right now... proceeding like this, things really could become ruff pretty soon, and there could be dark times ahead for the English empire, even without being invaded…
____________________
 
 
A bar… …somewhere strange… …somewhere VERY strange…

...

“Common Don Deity… …cheer up a little… …things aren’t THAT bad.”

“But I don’t want to cheer up… …I just want to sit here and drown myself in beer and self-pity…”

“I think the ONLY thing you REALLY need is a little bit more of a positive attitude towards your little civilization.”

“But that is exactly the problem… …my LITTLE civilization… …even you refer to it as “little”.

“Well… …yes… …but little doesn’t mean dead you know? So things could have gone much worse so far… …by the way, how was your tech trading going along? Did you get all the deals fixed that I proposed you?”

“Yes, everything went fine. We even traded for some more technologies.”

“You must be careful when tech trading Don Deity. Don’t trade for cheap techs when you don’t need them absolutely. Better self research them because the other nations only will do a certain amount of tech trades with you… …then they simply stop. Only thing you can do then to make them trade with you a little longer is to raise their mood towards you up to friendly, then they will do some more tech trades… …how is your tech-situation compared to the others by the way?”

“Well, it can be described quite easy… …NOT good… …We are VERY backwards and we are still lacking some basic technologies like agriculture, priesthood…”

“Don’t worry too much about that… …and DON’T trade for them… …since you will have finished literature pretty soon, just research them by yourself after that is done. I even have an idea how you can raise your funds quite easy:

Save literature until at least two of the other nations have researched currency (which should happen pretty soon on deity…) and sell literature for money.”

“Why not take some technologies for it also?”

“Like I said before, you better save the few remaining tech trades for something more useful. And after Literature, you should head directly for Civil Service. This enables you to run the Bureaucracy civic and will do wonders for your funding and research thanks to your strong capital… …oh and by the way, there is another way of saving money:

Produce settlers now and have them wait on the final locations… …only settle down, when one of your rivals arrives near with a settler of his own. This will help to keep your expansion costs a little bit better under control until you have been able to trade in some money.”

…

Some beers later…

“…when I only think of my army.”

“It’s good then that you have invented some structures… …just because I’m curious, could you explain to me once again the voting system?”

“Ok… …Every soldier has 17 votes. With these votes, he can more or less do whatever he wants to. Those who had thrown a one or a two and therefore hadn’t been along during the last mission get a minus of some votes. John, who invented the system, gets an additional vote. Billy, who joined the troop just recently, only has…”

“Stop laughing… …ok, ok, I get it, you’re fooling me again… …I said stop laughing!!!”

…

Some more beers later:

“…and we are the white line down there at the bottom…”

“This isn’t looking good at all… …basically everybody could invade you without too much problems, don’t you think?”

“Well… …maybe… …(sight) ok, they could… …but they are starting to like us, look:

Only Ash is still cautious, but with him I still preferred do keep borders closed… …Bren and Alex are still annoyed with him and I don’t think somebody like Ash will start an invasion on us, when he has two other neighbors openly disliking him… …and I still don’t want to take the risk of a negative modifier with Alex or Bren by dealing with Ash…”

“Sounds logic… …and one more thing before I leave. You really should scout some more near the horses at your eastern border and immediately fortify a settler there… …securing theses horses might be crucial to your future plans (IF you happen to survive the next decades), don’t you think?

Oh, and by the way, it was a good move to have a library build in London that early and setting two scientists to work immediately. This helps speeding your research, you will need the library for building the Great Library anyways and the scientists will help you attracting some Great Scientists, which again will help you by constructing an academy and lightbulbing philosophy.”

“Why do I need an academy and philosophy?”

“An academy greatly increases the science output of your capital and philosophy enables you to run Pacifism, which will attract even more Great Peoples… …and you can’t have enough of those…”
____________________
Years of growth, Part 1
Since lots of barbarians kept coming from the west, Don Deity ordered the fogbusting activities to be concentrated there. Two out of his three axmen divisions were ordered there and fortified on some hills, overlooking a fairly big region of tundra and ice now, but the English maps of this part of the world were still quite incomplete... and Don Deity didn’t feel a really pushing need so far to send somebody there…

…

Hill fortifications near Chinook, third axmen division:

“This Brennus is sort of a weird guy, having all those archers attack the hill city of Chinook…”

“Hm, perhaps he doesn’t need them any more? He seems to have quite a lot of them... for every group of archers killed, he sends in two new ones…”

“Well... yea... but the barbarians really seem to have dug in up there at the hill... they are now sort of experts in defending against Celtic archers I think…”

“Maybe, but since Brennus is still the top dog concerning the power graph, he will eventually reduce their numbers, even if this involves tons of his troops dying running uphill towards Chinook.”

…

In the outskirts of Chinook, some Celtic regiments:

“…but I don’t want to advance on Chinook…”

“If our majesty orders to advance on Chinook, you will do as you are told.”

“But we will all die, like all the others before…”

“I know…”

“But I don’t want to die with those English picnicking on the nearby hill and watching…”

“Yeah, I also wonder what they are doing there... but they appear to have LOTS of fun... yesterday, when our regiments 21 to 23 were slain, they even where throwing down empty beer bottles at our commando tent... but now move, we have to weaken the last defender of Chinook down to something like 0.5 strength before our regiment 24 is finally slain completely, and we can end the attacks for today…”

…

In the English hill fortifications again:

“They stopped advancing…”

“Why the hell did they stop advancing, now that the city of Chinook is more or less undefended???”

“I have no idea, it seems that the axmen they have brought with them only defends their commando ten... should we throw down some more empty beer bottles?”

“Yea, have the men do that... ah, and by the way, in case they really keep their position, order our men to advance on Chinook…”

…

In the year 790 BC, the glorious English army, containing of only one division of axmen, conquered the city of Chinook... without much fighting by the way... and the victorious axmen moved into the former barbarian fortifications (still throwing down empty beer bottles at the Celt commando tent... its hard to break a habit…), finding almost 100 gold pieces there…

After the English soldiers eventually got bored throwing down empty beer bottles at the abandoned Celt commando tent about 30 years later, they decided to do some more scouting up north, and towards the city of Hastings. This revealed three things:

The Celtic city of Durnovaria, on a nearby hill to Chinook, a much better impression on Bren’s huge and stretched borderline and, even better, one more place where the English could squeeze in a city of their own (not a very good place, but we need some more cities, remember?).

...

So an English settler was moved in place and fortified, since the founding of this city had to be delayed, due to money issues, as had been mentioned before (it seemed that the settlers got bored doing nothing after some decades, because they started painting a white circle around their location)... …Only if Bren or somebody else should approach with a settler of their own, the English would finally settle down there, to block their path.

Since the full English work force of 8 workers was online now, the lands all over the English empire got worked bit by bit. Near Hastings, the first source of iron was brought online within this process, but since there were two more inside the English territory, Don Deity very likely won’t run out of iron...

Don Deity’s only two early cottages near Nottingham had meanwhile grown and now gave 4 gold each, but although lots of English workers are roaming the lands these days, Don Deity didn’t consider it important enough to build more cottages. Maybe this was thanks to the very successful selling of literature to his neighbors... of which Don Deity really felt proud... this trade combined with the 100 gold pieces from capturing Chinook may have saved the English economy... and had allowed the English to run a deficit of 26 gold pieces per turn since some time now, because the overall income had been slightly more then 500 gold pieces...

Another milestone in English history occurred to be in 685 BC, when the first Great Scientist, Euclid, appeared in London and helped in founding a science academy (but immediately thereafter he disappeared mysteriously...) AND the Great Library was finished the same year... although Don Deity received news, that this was also the year the English were beaten in founding Taoism (which was found in a distant land), he considered this only a minor setback...

It was also around this time, that all neighbors seemed to have discovered or traded the technologies of calendar and monarchy, and were heavily improving their lands with these brand new technologies. So a period of eager resource trading started on our continent, in which Don Deity participated of course:

Silver was traded for wine with Alex as very first fist trade. Not much later came fish for silk with Ash.

This would allow London to grow to size 8, what greatly would increase the English production power, since most goods were still produced in the English capital around this time. Some more luxurious resources could have been traded in from Ash, but before that, the English would have to build more gold mines, to have something to trade with.

Since Bren and Alex both seemed to have gold on their own, or were having their own private little trade network and the English silver was already sold out, the English would be reduced to only one more trade with Ash now, since all other resources seem to be well spread over the continent and therefore couldn’t be traded... what basically meant that foreign trade would be reduced to technologies for the English from now on for quite some time (except the last resource trade with Ash of course, as soon as more English gold mines would have been finished).

But this was only another reason why the English would have to continue with their highly specialized research to get some precious trading technologies quite early... and so they focused all their research towards Civil Service after Literature (after a little detour for agriculture…), and accidentally discovered Codes of Law in 580 BC on their way towards Civil Service. This was quite good, because Codes of Law could be traded for Monarchy and 90 gold pieces with Bren and could now be sold to Alex to raise some more funds. Unhappily, Ash seemed also to push for Civil Service... and off course was stronger in research and therefore got Codes of Law before the English. So no trades with Ash were possible.

…

Around the same time, after some more scouting had been done eastwards from Canterbury, direction horses, another settler had been sent out and had been ordered to fortify there (these settlers seemed to prefer blue, because after 30 years of waiting, a blue circle magically appeared around them... perhaps they were inspired by the natural blue circle (at a totally crappy position btw) nearby). Although quite heavy on tundra, with iron and sheep nearby this even was a more or less decent location for a city. One of the English axmen regiments was fortified in a tundra hill a little up north from the settlers, to provide some protection from barbarians (and after another 30 years of waiting, the settlers spontaneously decided to also paint a blue arrow pointing towards the axes…).

Like supposed by Don Deity’s friend earlier, this city would finally provide full protection for the horses, once it was build (because of the 3 tiles distance rule Ash wouldn’t be able then to build any other city in this region). Additionally, this scouting mission also helped to fully reveal the first two cities from Ash... and one of them was BIG...

So with five cities built, one barbarian city taken, two settlers fortified and one more location for a city completely blocked, it really seemed that Don Deity was hitting exactly the minimum amount of cities, that his friend had deemed necessary for this world, and, even better, without running broke…
 
Years of growth, Part 2
Since good news usually come in large numbers (or do only bad news usually work that way???), not much after Don Deity had built an academy and the Great Library in London, more good news poured in:

Hinduism, the only religion spread so far on our continent, has spread to Canterbury in the year 550 BC, so the English were happily invited to join Alex and Ash in the Hinduism club. There even was a big banquet, where Don Deity received his golden member card… Don Deity really deemed it a very good omen, not only because he really was proud of his shiny member card, but also because of the fact that still no other religion was starting to spread on our apparently quite small continent.

…

After the people in London now seemed to have some experience gathered in building monumental buildings, it wasn’t long and they had also finished the National Epic in 535 BC. Although a quite ugly monument, it still would help, to attract even more Great People. Don Deity basically didn’t like them, but well, they seemed to be quite useful for the English nation.

In parallel, Hastings had finished equipping the last settler they were ordered to produce. Since the last unoccupied spot within the English empire in-between Hastings and London was quite strong in production and Don Deity had gathered up to now more the 1.000 gold pieces thanks to tech-trading (in fact, he could now really be considered as the main tech dealer on this continent… …Mansa himself would be proud of him…), the city of Coventry was founded right when the settler arrived on the final spot. Another reason for this was that it would be one of very few cities with high production in the English empire and Don Deity wanted to grow it immediately.

As you can also see, the western border hasn’t changed much since some centuries… …Whyshouldwegother-Land was still without any permanent settlements. Not even Bren or the barbarians themselves wanted to live permanently there… …that’s why the citizens of York and Hastings nowadays refer to the small tribes coming from there (or better, running out of Whyshouldwegother-Land) from time to time as Whyshouldwestaythereians…

Then, in 520 BC, the second Great Scientist, named Socrates, arrived in London. He was immediately ordered by Don Deity to find out something about a strange concept named Philosophy but he came back after two days only and babbled something about “Meditation”. It took Don Deity scientists about 15 years to find out what he meant, and finally, in 505 BC, Socrates started to work on Philosophy… …and came again back after two days:

“Umh… …like I said before, Don Deity… …there isn’t much to say about Philosophy… …you basically sit around a chat about this and that and that’s it…”

“So we are doing Philosophy right now?”

“Not exactly… …we need to shift our thoughts to a more essential and more scientific sphere of being and we need a scientific theory we could base our palaver upon…”

“You have a funny way of talking… …so you mean something like “why we are here and what are we supposed to do here?”… this kind of talk?”

“Yes, exactly, so why ARE we here?”

“Well, I know why I’m here and I don’t care why you are here…”

“But it doesn’t work that way, we must start a long discussion now about that and we also should invite some other people to discuss with…”

…

Some minutes later:

“Where do you want me to put Socrates statue, Don Deity?”

“I don’t want him either, just throw him in the harbour basin tonight like you have done with this Euclid idiot before.”

…

After philosophy was finally discovered by Socrates (who seemed to have mysteriously disappeared directly thereafter), the people all over England praised his good work and prepared for a revolution to pacifism. And Don Deity really liked the concept of pacifism… …combined with a tiny little bit of burn, pillage, plunder here and there, the vision of all the nations living peacefully together really was something to long for… …so Don Deity decided to bring pacifism to the known world… Only thing delaying the revolution of the English was the stupid fact, that London, which seemingly has turned into a very attractive city for Great Persons (very likely they would stay away from London, if they would know, where they were supposed to end up) still had no religion. And pacifism apparently seemed to work best when combined with a religion. So Canterbury, the only English city that had adopted the Hinduism so far was ordered to build a monastery immediately, to educate some missionaries who then should teach Hinduism in London.

Not much later some more money had to be spent on a new housing project, which resulted in the city of Warwick. After having forced the settlers to camp on the final spot for more then 250 years, Don Deity supposed that they were quite happy, when Ash arrived in 430 BC with a settler of his own and they were finally allowed to build a permanent settlement…

As you can also see in this picture, the horses near Canterbury had finally been connected to the English empire and Warwick… …well, Warwick was mainly there (Don Deity didn’t deem it important enough to spare any workers for Warwick)

…

The English research was really gathering speed around that time and in 430 BC, the new technology of Compass was added to the English tech-list. This quite obviously seemed a detour towards Civil Service, but Don Deity reminded himself, that after having built a harbor in London and York, the trade benefit those nice harbours would supply surely would make up for the turns lost in a reasonable amount of time. And, furthermore, another very good reason for this little detour was the fact that none of their neighbors had researched compass so far and Don Deity estimated the trade value of this technology therefore quite high. Not much after those two harbors had been finished, most of the bigger English cities were set to build barracks, to be able to spread the concept of pacifism to their neighbors a little MORE efficient…

…

Only some years later, it turned out, that Compass really was good for some decent trades, because Don Deity managed to trade it for Currency and 160 gold pieces with Alex. The only downside of this trade was that the Greek insisted that the English invested at least on turn of research in Currency, before letting go of this technology. But after this minor setback, Compass was successfully traded for Calendar and 90 gold pieces with Bren and last but not least, sold for 560 gold pieces to Ash. Something very positive that evolved out of the many tech-trades and tech-sales the English were doing these days, was the fact that most of their trading partners, which basically meant ALL their neighbors, really started to like the English. Backed by the fact, that the English also were in the Hinduism club since some time now, it wasn’t long, before their Hinduism buddies Ash and Alex adopted a quite friendly mood. Don Deity supposed, that they even would be friendlier, would they knew about his secret little plans to bring pacifism to ALL of them soon…

…

Since Ash already had researched Civil Service around the time the English could start with it, Don Deity decided to take another detour and researched Metal Casting, so he would have enough trading technologies to buy it from Ash (Philosophy and Metal Casting), only to find out, that stupid Ash had chosen the same research path AGAIN and had discovered Metal Casting the same year then the English… …so the English had to invest another 3 turns of research of their own into Civil Service, before Ash was willing to trade them Civil Service for Philosophy alone.

With the discovery of Civil Service, the first big revolution swept through the English nation, and they changed their civics from Barbarism and Paganism to Bureaucracy and Pacifism. In parallel, Canterbury had been working and chopping on a monastery, and in 295 BC, the first missionaries arrived in London, converting the whole city within a little less then 6 minute to Hinduism… And, not long after Pacifism was finally coming to full effect, the next Great Scientists, Enrico Fermi, happily joined the others in the harbor basin of London (after having explained the secrets of paper to Don Deity, off course…). Although this lightbulbing gained the English only 8 turns of research, Don Deity still deemed it worth, because pretty soon, every turn would count…

Horseback Riding was discovered not much later, and Don Deity was considering hard, if he should order his English to build stables all over England, so they would be able to send out horseback missionaries to better spread the word of pacifism all over the land… …but then, he decided to ask his friend about this and skipped the decision for the time being.

Some more tech-trades were done, Construction and 360 gold pieces were sold to Alex for Philosophy, and Civil Service together with Metal Casting were sold for Feudalism and 210 gold pieces to Bren. As you can see, Don Deity had started now to always ad up some gold for all his trades, because the peaceful spreading of pacifism could require some money here and there rather sooner then later. All cities that had finished their barracks would soon start working either on stables for horse missionaries, or directly on pedestrian missionaries.

When looking at his growing nation now, Don Deity was finally feeling more confident… …there was no danger of being invaded any more, his neighbours were all his friends (except the Whyshouldwestaythereians, but they seemed to be so desperate to leave Whyshouldwegothere Land, that they would attack most likely anybody and anything that opposed their way) and even better, the first missionaries would be equipped pretty soon. His English really seemed to have made it though the ancient age. Only thing he had to really remind himself was, to tell the settlers still camping in-between Hastings and Nottingham to stop painting those stupid white circles all over the place…

Ash and Alex considered him even as friend (which, when you consider this from a more neutral point of view, could be considered a little bit hasty…) and therefore they were willing to do some more friendship tech-deals. Only Bren was only pleased with him, maybe because he wasn’t allowed into Hinduism club so far…

…

In parallel, the English had cancelled some resource deals and had started to trade resources for money. Altogether about 25 gold pieces per turn were coming in that way and the money situation had stabilized even more. Don Deity had another short look at his little empire and smiled… …soon the hiding would be over, since his preparations on sending out some "peaceful missionaries" were running at full speed now.
____________________
A bar... somewhere strange... somewhere VERY strange…

“Hey Don Deity, you are really looking good today. Some good news concerning your civilization project?”

“Yes, lots of good news, we have caught up in technology for example. Look, now we are even equal with Ash and Alex (we have paper on both of them) and have a solid tech-lead on Bren.

“And look, England is a very rich nation now, we have gathered more then 1300 gold pieces by technology and resource trading.”

“This really sounds very good, but there is something you really should consider now. If you go on trading that much with your neighbors, you will only help them to advance faster then you might want. You should really stop trading everything and only trade now for things you really need.

Oh, and something else. I have met Don Giaur yesterday and he told me that he also had a closer look at your civilization. He mentioned to me that you really should check on your actual resource trades, because you don’t need them all, your people would be happy enough without most of them. Just like the tech-trades, the many resource trades you are doing only helps the other nations, if you don’t really need them”

“Hm... I have to think about that... after the next beer... you are invited, also want another one?”

“Of course, by the way, you should really do something about the harbor in London... after observing your world a little I have to say that it doesn’t seem save an more for any bigger ships to enter there. There seem to be lots of obstacles and riffs down there in the harbor basin that can damage their hulls…”

“Umh... I wouldn’t actually call them obstacles”

“DO YOU KNOW anything about it... or is this even YOUR work again!!! I thought I have been very clear about NOT killing, NOT encouraging to do suicide and NOT molesting your people.”

“Well, they aren’t exactly my people…”

“What, or better WHO, is down there?”

“Do you remember the so called “Great People” you mentioned to me some while ago? Oh, and did you also come across hordes of them while you were doing your own civilization project?

“Yes, off course, they are VERY famous and important people... and it’s always good to have them around... wait a minute, you don’t want to tell me, that you…”

“Umh... sort of... OK, yes, I have... hm, perhaps I can have some fishermen throw some boulders down on them to break off the sharp edges…”

“This is disgusting... I don’t want to hear any of this.”

…

Some more beers later:

“…and I still think we are way too week,”

“You are, but you are slowly growing in power, even without building any troops you see, because any military buildings (like barracks and stables) and the overall size of your civilization also contributes to that value.”

“But the others are about 5 times stronger then we are.”

“That doesn’t matter. To have a realistic comparison, you can more or less half their power rating.”

“That doesn’t make me feel much more comfortable... then we are still 2.5 times weaker then them…”

“Well, but that’s better than 5 times, isn’t it?”

“OK, if you say so…”

“And once you really start to produce some troops, it will change quite fast.”

“I have some questions concerning this matter. In what troops should I specialize. And how many of them do I need. And what do I need to pre-build so I can upgrade them later. And what do I have to research…”

“Quite a lot of questions indeed, but good ones. Let me answer them one by one:

What troops to use for first warfare, how many and what to pre-build:

There are three different combinations of troops that are very efficient and close together in the tech-tree:

Cavalry (pre-build is archers) and trebuchets: 20 cavalry and 6 trebuchets
Grenadiers (pre-build are all melees) and cannons (pre-build are trebuchet or catapult): 15 grenadiers, 10 cannons and a pike man here and there
Riflemen and more riflemen (no pre-build, you can draft them: basically lots of them... really lots... nothing else... some more... draft, draft, draft)

The best research path to build these troops really fast:

For cavalry (doesn’t work in BtS) and trebuchets, simply research Nationalism after you have researched (lightbulbed) paper. Beeline (lightbulb) towards Liberalism and finish Liberalism after you have finished Nationalism. Pick Military Tradition as freebee, but make sure you have all prerequisites (Music) before finishing Liberalism. Remember to delay Machinery, until you have bulbed Liberalism, because this would confuse your Great Scientist. After that, trade up to Engineering and whip the trebuchets, while you research Gunpowder. Remember to save money and to go for a Great Merchant to raise some funds for upgrading.

For grenadiers (doesn’t work in BtS) and cannons, simply beeline towards Liberalism, until you have finished the Liberalism lightbulb. Trade for Machinery and Guilds and then switch towards Gunpowder and pick Chemistry as freebee. Research Steel thereafter. This will take about 10 turns longer then the cavalry path, but cannons are WAY superior. Remember to save money and to go for a Great Merchant to raise some funds for upgrading.

For Riflemen, simply beeline towards Liberalism, but trade for Machinery BEFORE you lightbulb on Liberalism. So your Great Scientist will lightbulb on Printing Press, which you research then, and the next Great Scientist will lightbulb Liberalism. Pick Replaceable Parts (needs Banking) as freebee and research Rifling (needs Gunpowder). Try to trade for Nationalism. This will again take about 5 turns longer then the cannon path (it will take even longer, if you can’t trade for Nationalism), but you have an endless army thanks to drafting (don’t forget to build the Globe Theatre and to switch to Nationhood). You need more Great Scientists on that path, but you don’t need a Great Merchant because you don’t upgrade.

My tip would be to go for cavalry, because I have done this quite successfully in my little civilization project, (the part with the cavalry warfare can be found here) and because it is your last chance to try this strategy.”

“Why is this my last chance with this strategy?”

“The gods have changed the laws of the universe and it is simply no longer possible, once you have upgraded to BtS.”

“OK then, I will do this.”

“And once again I have some last tips for you before I leave:

You should grow your capital up to your happy cap now, and then you should revolt to Caste System, because this will allow you to run more scientists. More scientists generate Great Scientists faster and you will be able to lightbulb and therefore research faster towards Liberalism. Only finish research on archery, because you will need this to build horse archers, then go directly for Nationalism. You must be really fast there, because you cant dare to delay Liberalism... remember there are altogether 11 nations living on your world, and you have only 3 neighbors on your continent, so there could be another quite big continent out there... and more nations closer together quite normally results in more tech-trading and therefore an overall faster tech pace. If you really want to have a decent chance to compete in the race for Liberalism, you must get there BEFORE 300 AD to be sure... oh, and don’t forget, you need a Great Merchant after you have reached Liberalism to raise the funds to upgrade your troops.”
 
The lib race, Part 1

And so Don Deity decided to stick to his friend’s advice again and set his little empire to prepare for all the prerequisites he would need to build (or better upgrade) some horse archers to cavalry. After thinking about it for a bit, he even started to like this plan more and more, because he thought that riding units would fit perfectly in his concept of spreading pacifism to the other nations. Maybe it would be even faster, if he would use riding units for that task... the only thing that was missing right now before the English could start to produce their first horse missionaries was Archery, so Archery was set to be researched first.

Since Archery had been quickly researched, the English then had set research to Nationalism with only a short break to finish Education, after the Great Scientist Nicolas Copernicus has distributed a mayor part to it (his statue got buried in the woods behind London... Don Deity didn’t want to take the risk in blocking the harbour any more…). In the year 55 BC, only one turn of research was left to finish Education, and Nationalism was also down to 6 turns. Things were really looking good concerning the English research power. Maybe this had something to do with London running 9 scientists (including those of the Great Library)…

Thanks to this massive scientist power, London produced 120 Great Person Points per turn and the next Great Person was only 7 turns away. And with a likelihood of 90something % of being a Great Scientists, Don Deity was quite sure of really getting one more of these in the end. Again the advice of Don Deity’s friend had proven to be quite good, because all this became only possible after the second important revolution in the English empire, which took place in the year 220 BC and ended the time of slavery (but Don Deity didn’t worry too much about this, because he knew that this was only temporary... his golden whip would soon be taken out of the closet again…) and a Caste System was established in England. The best term to describe the English economy at that point would be "Food Economy" (=FE), because only thanks to the massive amount of food they were producing, they were able to run that many specialists in London and to grow the other cities that quick. And they still only had the two early game cottages near Nottingham they had needed earlier on to finance their first expansion...

...

But back to the scientists in London...

...which, on the practical side, mainly meant that about 75% of London’s overall population was put into white suits and were assigned to the business of running around and pretending to do something of BIG importance. But apparently it worked... they managed somehow to attract lots of Great Scientists which happily joined them in the business of running around and being important (unless of course they had their final meeting with Don Deity) and even more surprising, it had also a quite positive effect of the English research in total. Don Deity shortly considered to increase the absurdity of this situation by a new law, which would oblige all scientists to were pink robes, but then he decided against it... you NEVER know what side effects it can have, when too many people (female AND male, by the way) are running around in pink dresses at the same time...

Beside this, not much else has happened all around England and all English cities were still busy with growing and building barracks, stables and horse archers (except of Warwick, which basically still was completely busy with being there). Their efforts were backed up by the English workers, which mainly were busy in chopping down the remaining forests all over England to increase productivity and doing some basic terrain improvements to bring in more food here and there.

England 55 BC:

 
The lib race, Part 2
“Send for Don Deity right now. He needs to be informed immediately about this development.”

…

15 minutes later:

“Our spies have informed us, that the Indian nation is bursting with prosperity, production and science all over. And our sources even think that this development will last quite a while. It might very well be that the Indian nation might have entered a Golden Age right now.”

“This is really bad news.”

They are already the strongest and largest nation Don Deity. How on earth can we compete with them now?”

“I don’t know mayor. Only thing we can do is to focus even more on our own goals now. Good news is, that we are processing very fast in our research towards Nationalism, so we might even be able to squeeze Drama in and still reach Nationalism in time before we finally must switch to Liberalism.”

“But why should we research Drama? You just said that we need to focus more on our primary goals?”

“We need Drama to build theatres in all our cities. This will make our people a little happier for the hard times ahead. And besides, we can build the Globe Theatre, once we have build enough theatres.”

“Umh... Don Deity... OK then, theatres are good, but I don’t understand why we need the Globe Theatre…”

“The Globe Theatre will make the city it is build in so happy, that there never will be any unhappy peoples in it. And once it is build, we can switch to Nationhood, and draft some peoples there to strengthen our army, without causing any unrest (best to build the Globe Theatre in a food-rich city, so the city can grow back the population point lost due to drafting as soon as possible).”

“Well, I think I understand it now…”

“Ok then, do as I said. Something else you want to tell me?”

“Yes, our scouts have brought in more news, but we don’t know if it actually is good or bad news... Bren has finally switched to Hinduism.”

“Hm, I also don’t know if I like this or not, but I think we will find out where this development will lead us pretty soon.”

…

Not much else happened then for some time, until the year 20 AD, which turned out to be again a pretty good year for the English. Not only was Nationalism discovered, but also did the next Great Scientist arrive in London. He did a very good job in speeding up the research on Liberalism, but nevertheless, not much later his permanent domicile should become the forests behind London. The moment his servants carried away the statue of Francis Bacon, Don Deity felt very relived... finally he wouldn’t have to deal any more with those stupid Great Scientists... although he had to admit, that he maybe even would miss the shouting at their statues for a minute or two before they got carried away...

At the mayors house in London, 10:15 on a Monday morning somewhere around 20 AD:

“I want all those scientists to disappear and I want it now.”

“But why Don Deity, you always have been so keen about having them around…?”

“I want them replaced by merchants... every single one of them... and some more, even if this means that we will use up most of our food supplies.”

“But how should we do this? We have no trained merchants in London or ANYWHERE in England and our people, including me, have no idea what a merchant does…”

“Basically, our people also had no idea what a scientist does, and still, the result has been quite impressive, hasn’t it?”

“Well... yes... you are right off course... so have you already designed a new dress-code for about 75% of our citizens in London to make them merchants?”

“Yes, I have indeed... I could imagine a white shirt and a red jacket. Oh, and they need a cap, a blue collared cap.”

“Um... ok, I will immediately tell all tailors in London and the surrounding regions to start working on these cloths... but a cap? Why a cap???”

“Well…. I don’t know... but I think it would look quite nice with a read jacked, don’t you agree?”

“Ahem... well... IF you insist…”

…

It took a little longer then two month until enough cloth and caps had been produced, and some month more until most of the scientists were found and their scientist cloth were burned on a big heap in front of the mayor’s house. But apparently some of the scientist were hiding and secretly continued to do scientific things in the underground now... but in the year 22 AD finally, most scientists all over London had been discovered and forced into new cloths (and caps) and given a new task... running around and doing highly important merchant stuff, and quickly, eight bigger groups of merchants formed (they seemed a little like sheep, feeling happier in a flock…). But not much later it turned out that the strict no scientist’s laws, then the scientist curfew and finally the death sentence for scientists hadn’t been fully successful... two larger groups of scientists still seemed to be at work somewhere in the underground (from the Great Library... at this point, the two free scientists really spoil the Great Persons pool…).

…

With Liberalism partly lightbulbed, Don Deity decided to resume the tech-trades again. 35 AD he received Machinery and 290 gold pieces from Bren for Paper and Philosophy. Paper was sold to Ash for 900 gold pieces and finally Don Deity received Optics, his maps and another 120 gold pieces for Drama and Music from Bren. Apparently Bren still hadn’t signed an open boarder agreement with Ash, although sharing his religion for some time now, because Bren’s maps of the Indian territory still looked quite incomplete and antique…

Nevertheless, Don Deity had another long look at the maps he had received from Bren, which only confirmed Don Deity’s estimation, that Alex, Ash, Bren and himself had a continent on their own. Left alone the fact that they seemed to be on a quite small continent for such a big world, he still didn’t like what the map revealed him too much... Bren’s land and cities were bigger then the English ones of course, but Alex’ territory was... umh… impressive. He had 9 cities and 7 of them had a population over 15... which summed up in total to an overall population of 136… compared to the English with an overall population of 50, this really made a big difference. And even worse, Ash’s territory was about the double size then Alex’. Basically Don Deity didn’t really want to know what was hiding behind the black spots there on the map…

Additionally, the English seemed to be more or less right in the middle of this continent, which didn’t make any plans of spreading pacifism to one of their neighbors very easy, because of the incredible length of the English borders in total and therefore their vulnerability of getting backstabbed or (counter) attacked while bringing their pacifism efforts to one of their neighbors. The fact that they all now were Hindus increased that danger even more, because they might accept a plea for help for the upcoming war on the wrong side...

But only some minutes later, Don Deity’s mind was locked again deep in the papers spread on the desk before him. This time, they contained mainly intelligence reports about their neighborhood nations from the year 1 AD and what interested him most at this stage was their overall development:

- Ash who was the leader among them with a score about 1150 points, the biggest nation by far, second in research, third in army strength and actually having a Golden Age
- Alex who came quite close with a score about 1000 points, average sized but the most advanced nation among their neighbors and second in army strength
- Bren with a score of about 780 points wasn’t doing much better then the English, but had the biggest military by far, average size but was quite backwards in technology

Don Deity compared everything carefully to the performance of his English, who had a score of only 625 points, but were ahead in technology compared to ALL their neighbors now, even the most advanced. But still, they were lacking very much in power... This wasn’t too bad after all, all he needed now was a solid plan, how to strengthen his military real fast while keeping the technological edge on his neighbors for a little longer...

Don Deity’s first step in doing so was to stop all tech-trades again. He had archived his goal in becoming the tech-leader on his continent and now he wouldn’t help the others in closing the gap again. He decided to try something else, stole one of the merchants his cap and went around begging for money... and, to Don Deity’s surprise, Ash, Alex and Bren all gave him 100 gold pieces to help him funding his army…

His next move was to send out a caravel to scout around the unexplored regions of the map. Perhaps he could contact some new nations to do some trading with them. Well, to be honest, the caravel wasn’t really BUILT if we look a little closer, it was more chopped into existence…

This is what London looked in 110 AD, with the first Great Merchant only 3 turns away. At least, Don Deity hoped that it would be a Great Merchant, because the likelihood was only 66% (oh how he hated those damn underground scientists... ...if he only could lay hand on the remaining two scientists flocks somewhere out there in London, he would have them burned together with their scientist cloth in front of the mayor’s house right away (of course, he would turn them to stone BEFORE doing so, because this procedure seemed a little inhuman, even to him))... …but, considering Don Deity’s timeline, he would have two more shots to get a Great Merchant anyway... and one or two Great Scientists more wouldn’t be THAT bad either...

Since only one turn was left for Liberalism at that stage, and none of his neighbors had mastered the secret of Education so far, it would be REALLY too much bad luck if somebody on the other continent would beat Don Deity now for one tiny turn. So Don Deity now was quite sure to make it first there. And with Nationalism already finished he would be able to pick Military Tradition as fee technology...

…

Although his plan of grabbing Liberalism seemed to have finally worked out, there was still some quite bad news:

It really seemed that Don Deity’s fears had come true, and Ash was developing into THE SUPERPOWER incredibly fast, fuelled by his Golden Age. At 110 AD, his overall power was already unrivalled:

And Ash’s overall power was rising greatly with every turn... he already had a decent lead on Bren and Alex in this matter and Don Deity expected him to soon overtake them also in army strength... he really seemed to be on a very good way to become THE continental power within the next turns. And with about 15 cities and all the cottages he very likely had, he soon would also have outpaced Alex (and Don Deity by the way) in the tech-race if he continued like that...

And thus approaches the first part of Don Deity’s quest for world domination, containing mainly 4110 years of peace, love and harmony the end…