As of 1600AD, I begin to gather my first attack force. The target, of course, is Hittite.

Gandhi has landed on my continent and planted a city. (That's not good, but it was inevitable.) Is this the first? (Turns out that it was, but I had no way of knowing for sure at the time.)

Anyway, remember those Archers who charged out of Hittite like yellow jackets? That left only one Archer behind, only one to be upgraded to a Longbow. I found only one Longbow in the city, along with a Maceman, Horse Archer and two Warriors. Resistance was lighter than expected. Here I've bombarded the city's defenses to nil, waited for the Horse to suicide itself, and taken down the Longbow (at some cost):

With Crossbow to tackle the Mace, that was all she wrote.

The city was in a most inconvenient location, so it had to burn. (Buh-byes.)

I have settlers in production to replace it with two cities in better locations to fit with my existing cities.

Uh oh. Emancipation Anger has already started.

As more AIs get the tech and make the switch, the pressure will quickly ramp up to max, with five or more anger in many of my cities. I will have to run some lux tax, as well as import any available happiness items Qin can offer to me. (At some point, I may even import from Gandhi!) Building Theaters will help get more out of the lux tax. (I already built Colesseums.)

The situation in the east eases as the barbarians over there are drawn to Gandhi's city. Things get rather quiet and secure, on the whole, though some units trickle in at intervals.

Note the unguarded goody hut that was just spotted by my expanding borders? ... Hmm.

Small pot of gold is better than a slap in the face. At least it was something.

My third scientist pops and I decide to save him:

The Replacement Cities(TM) are founded:

My empire is almost beginning to resemble something other than a hopeless backwater.

Ooh, look. Larger than the two locked-away AIs:

My new northern frontier city starts taking heat. (I need to get more units up there, enough to deal with pillagers before they strip the land bare.)

I intend to expand to one more city, my twelfth, before I have to turtle up again for another vertical expansion phase:

Founding my city pops that hut being guarded by those Warriors, and I get map info.

A city ruins is revealed (at pink circle). Is that a barbarian city razed by the AI? Probably not, since they'd capture most likely. So probably an AI city razed right after being founded. Chinese or Indian? I guess it doesn't matter.

Next up would have been another consolidation phase, but as it turns out, this is as far as I ended up playing. Why? Well, not for lack of time. Something else happened. I'll discuss it all in depth in my closing remarks. First, the map replay and final stats for Sirian's Rome.

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