Round 7: 170 BC to 160 AD (22 turns)
I started the round by adjusting my research again, setting off on Krikkitone's recommended tech path:
A few turns later I changed civics, switching into Slavery again to whip a few things to completion. I love the Spiritual trait, have I said that before?
Someone else built the Apostolic Palace:
As you'll see, my religious options in this game are starting to get limited. Ironically, unlike the previous attempt at a Saladin game, it would have been an extremely good idea to have founded a religion this time around!
That American city to the north of Mecca flipped.
I disbanded it. it didn't have much going for it, and I was going to expand into more worthwhile sites to the south this round. I got a free Archer, though, who I sent down to Najran to see if he can help prevent cultural rebellions there.
Zara kept offering to trade me Maths for HBR, but I kept turning him down. I'm having to duplicate research the AI has already done a lot in this game, something I'm normally loathe to do, but I don't really have much choice at the moment.
Zara is still wonder-happy, and he built a wonder that will probably give me a lot of trouble later on:
I hate it when someone next door to me builds that stupid thing. I may have to build an amphibious assault force to capture Zara's capital ASAP if and when we do go to war.
Also in this round, wonder-wise, Suryavarman built the Hanging Gardens, and Roosevelt built the Mausoleum of Maussollos. All the more reason to conquer the continent, don't you think?
I founded the fish/iron city:
That seemed like the best spot. 1 SW of there would have given me more tundra and ocean tiles rather than the additional usable land tiles this location gives me.
Sure enough, Najran experienced its first cultural revolt:
I hate being next door to a Creative civ. I prefer to axe-rush the buggers, frankly. They're annoying, kind of like cockroaches, and you need to treat them the same way: smoosh 'em into oblivion.
I had whipped some Horse Archers to completion, and was ready to assault the barb cities. Since many of you like to see the blow-by-blow accounts of some of these battles, I included this one. The barb city was not heavily defended, as you can see.
Apparently some previous assaults by Sury had probably killed one Archer (3 Archers is pretty much standard issue for any barb city) and one of them had survived a couple of fights and earned the CG promotion you see above.
I gave my HA both flanking promotions and checked the odds.
I've noticed, since I started using the flanking promotions more often, that the combat and retreat odds have something of an inverse relationship, the latter decreasing as the former increases and vice-versa. Does anyone know if that's valid?
In any case, I figured I had enough units there to polish off 2 Archers even if the first attackers didn't survive. But as luck would have it, they did survive, and won both fights:
So the first barb city was mine, and I got a hefty amount of gold for it to boot. On to the next one!
Once again, I benefited from other civ's failed attempts to assault the barb city. Etruscan had only one defender left, and a badly damaged one at that. Lest Sury's Chariot get lucky on the next turn, I attacked with the units I had closest to the city, which was Chariots.
I gave this one the Medic I promotion as well; with 6 XPs, an attached Great General can make it my MASH and West Point-enabling unit later on.
And yes, I captured yet another barb Worker, bringing my total to 5 thus far. Thanks, barbs!
This is why I never turn barbarians off. I see some players on the boards complaining about them, and yes, they are tiresome, kind of like the mosquitoes I grew up with on the prairies (Vancouver doesn't have any of the blood-sucking little buggers, praise the lord). However, barbarians give you a chance to have your units earn valuable XPs, they sometimes build cities for you, and you can capture Workers from them (I think I set a record for myself on that account in this game). You just have to make acquiring a strategic resource or two a high priority very early on, and build a few units to deal with them.
I decided to use all the gold I'd obtained from capturing barb cities to upgrade my Woodsman III Warrior to an Axeman.
In the early game, a Woodsman III Axe is a great stack protector and can be an unholy terror to the AI, zipping through jungle and forest to capture Workers and so on. I always try to get at least one early exploring Warrior up to WIII exactly for this reason.
I finished researching the next tech on Krikkitone's list:
Next up is Code of Laws.
Meanwhile, Roosevelt appears to be slowly but surely warming up to me:
And here endeth the round. Another short one, I know, but I think I'm feeling very cautious after the previous attempt at a Saladin game. To be honest, I've never had a good game as Saladin, neither in his vanilla nor his Warlords incarnations, not that I've used him often. Hence the tentative nature of my play in this ALC.
The game post is below; a state-of-the-world post will follow.
Presumably you've never followed an ALC before. 
