Great story!
I like how you locked out the World Builder from use... it can be a bit too tempting in a game where you try to excel far beyond what a Civ is supposed to be normally capable of.
I also like the explanations, such as why you needed another tech from the same Era in order to grab a strong tech from The Oracle.
It's neat how you use experience and digging in the code/XML to take advantage of tricks that this Mod is meant to hold against you, such as ownership of Cities in China and India as Egypt (I imagine that in addition to the distance costs, you would have been penalized Stability-wise for keeping Cities outside of your Civ's normal area of influence), and not taking the Greeks as a Vassal to avoid their hard-coded later backstabbing. Thanks for explaining these facts.
As for rising tech costs... well... if techs get more expensive for the Civs that have lasted the longest in the game (i.e. Civs that have been in the game for a long time), it seems only fair... I mean, you get such a large advantage from starting so early, whereas most of your later competitors don't get to start in 3000 BC. It seems not much different from playing on a harder difficulty level such that your AI opponents get bonuses.
It does seem a bit abusive (compared to regular Civ 4) that you can settle a City on a Resource and get that Resource's improvement (assuming that, as you said, you have the relevant tech to improve the Resource at the time of settling the City), but that's the Mod's doing, not your doing, so all the power to you for taking advantage of this aspect of the Mod.
It is also neat how you made really good use out of a City like Shushan, even if it is a relatively poor City, then conveniently "allowed" it to get razed later.
The animated GIFs, while not new to the Internet, are a pretty fascinating addition to the story.
While looking for this Waldo character, I noticed that some of the pictures in your last update appear to be out of order. It's hard to tell since the Turn numbers and Year dates are not shown, but keeping an eye on your tech-progress bar can make the out-of-order appearance of screenshots a bit more obvious.
As for weird things in the latest update:
1. It seems interesting that you can use a Warrior in between some Peaks to turn away a 4-strength Medjay (Skirmisher-like Archery?) unit
2. It also seems weird that you seem to have temporarily lost contact with the Carthagian City-States until their War Elephant (or similar) type of unit walked up to your borders... but then ran away... I thought that you had Open Borders with them? Yes, you must have Open Borders with them as you take advantage of their Cultural area (that is relatively free of Barbs/Independent units) to safely transport your Workers
3. I do like the tooltips in DoC that seem to indicate which area is Historical versus Foreign... I don't recall seeing that in regular RFC
4. I guess for an Ancient Civ, you also get penalized by slower Great Person generation
5. I'm confused by this quote: "people of the land of Punt was divided in two distincts nations. The kingdom of Axum raised gloriously." Maybe that's what Waldo is all about. Perhaps Axum = Aksum = the Ethiopians. Are you saying that somehow you managed to have the Ethiopian units appear in two different positions? Did some of their units simply not spawn at all? It seems like they managed to found their City to the south-east of Yebu. Maybe they are normally supposed to use their Settler to get a second City to the north of where their capital went but the precense of Yebu's Culture messed them up from doing so?
6. I suppose that you got lucky that the Ethiopians didn't seem to "acquire" some of the Medjays in the area (I think that can happen in RFC, where a Civ spawning in an area can get control of Independent units)
7. It seems like a big jump to go from trading away 10 Gold to trading away Machinery for a City like Tarraco, but at the same time, you seem to have tricked the Romans into having a tougher time to expand, especially since the Celts (or are they Independents?) seem to have a City, that, combined with Tarraco, traps Julius in quite nicely on his peninsula, unless he expands into former Greek lands. I am a bit confused as to why the City of Tarraco started with an Obelisk... I don't recall you saying that you built Stonehenge, but I suppose that you must have... unless the Romans built the Monument for you and you got it for free as part of the City trade. It also seems that you're going to abuse Tarraco by chopping out a small army of Crossbowman, which might be used to quickly deny Julius from using his Iron... giving him Machinery can't hurt you if he has no access to Iron (and him not having Iron also means no Praetorians)
8. I suppose it is good that your Stability icon didn't seem to visibly drop when you took the City of Tarraco
Animated GIFs have one issue... it's sometimes hard to tell when one starts and when one ends. It can take a little bit more work, but as a suggestion, perhaps when you make new ones, you can put a little bit of red text that says "Début" in an obvious, but not too obtrusive location, in the first screenshot of a series of animated GIFs, then in the same position, on the last screenshot, put a little bit of red text that says "Fin." Either that, or if pauses are customizable, perhaps you can put in two longer pauses: one while the last screenshot is being shown and one when the first screenshot is being shown, to emphasize the ending result and to emphasize the starting point.
Here's hoping that one of my guesses found your Waldo, or at least came close enough for you to give us another hint. This story deserves another update!
(did i win?)
