I decided to wander the settler 3 tiles NW after scouting a bit with the worker to find the plains cow and sugar. As luck would have it, this also pulled in the grassland cow for a settler factory. If I had not stumbled on this location, I think this game would have been rather ugly. However, the side effect of this was I ended up seeing the red borders of Babylon rather soon.
My research goal was to slingshot Republic, but someone on the other continent beat me to it so I had a slow and laborious research instead. I managed to carve out a reasonable empire, but I ended up with Babylon just to the west of my capital...thus they were the obvious target. I began a large build up of 3-man chariots to coincide with my emergence as a Republic.
The build up went well until Egypt decided to attack from the south. I ended up with two cities razed. I got the Russians to join against Egypt for a tech they lacked and overall I held out long enough to survive for peace which cost me a good chunk of my money. I managed to rebuild one of the city sites as well before Egypt moved in.
I did manage to avoid using my 3-mans during that war, so once I got to Republic I decided to unleash on Babylon. In short, I captured three cities bordering my capital and they turned into productive sites once I starved off their native citizens. My golden age allowed me to research the rest of the Ancient Age and also build libraries and markets in all the core cities. As I moved into the MA, the goal was to get to Chivalry, upgrade the chariots, and finish Babylon. From there the plan will be to beeline to Military Tradition and hopefully take control of the continent before rifles appear.
Overall, the tech pace and difficulty of this have felt pretty close to a Deity game. Enjoyable!
