And welcome back!
When we last left off, we had an overview of the current state of the world in response to Spain's arrival on the world scene. Today, we start time again to see what the future has in store.
We will start off on turn 164. The Spanish people of the Iberian Peninsula have settled their first major city, Madrid, right in the heart of the peninsula:
Also, I noticed something from Aksum, what was left of Ethiopia just two turns ago:
That is the result of a pair of Impis attacking it in the IBT. Look at the lone archer's strength. If he fell, the Impis probably would have destroyed Aksum. If they destroyed Aksum, there would be no way for Ethiopia to spawn later on unless someone else planted a city there. If any Ethiopians are to come back in the future, they just got very lucky.
Turn 165: Not too much occurred, here, but the Khmer did settle Phnom Penh, south of capital Angkor:
Turn 166: The Spanish continue to solidify their hold over Iberia, by forming the city of Barcelona in the northeastern part of their peninsula:
Turn 167: Guess who's here?
That's right! France. Having founded their capital of Paris in the ruins of the old Celtic city of Lutetia, the French are looking to unify Gaul for the first time since before the Romans. As for the Romans, they seem to have caught a break from those barbarians. That SOD that had destroyed two of their cities and was heading for Mediolanum? I don't know exactly what happened, but the barbs stopped their advance and decided to make camp in modern-day Croatia. Only one barb still tried to take Mediolanum, and he failed.
Another event that occurred was that the Arabs and Babylonians decided to make peace, since the Arabs figured it wasn't worth it to risk their entire army to take Babylon's well-defended capital.
On to turn 168. Fed up with the game constantly changing its recommendation on where I should settle Hokkaido

mad

, I decide to settle Sapporo on a whim:
Also, the French successfully flipped Lugdunum to them, with the city being renamed Lyon. Interestingly enough, the Romans decided to let the city go rather than risking war for it.
In addition, the Spanish continue to expand, settling the city of Cadiz:
But where there is construction, there has to be destruction as well, as the people of Per-Wadjet found out:
Those Egyptians never seem to get a break, do they? Now, Djanet is the only former Egyptian city to have never fallen to the barbs, though not for lack of trying. It's getting increasingly lonely in Africa...
Turn 169: Nothing really exciting happened, though we do see the French found the city of Bordeaux in the ruins of Burdigala:
One final note before I end it: the barb horde terrorizing Rome has now entered Greek territory, and their objective seems to be Byzantion (Constantinople/Istanbul), but the Greek army was more prepared than the Roman army, and the barbs have been cut to shreds, with only two units left.
All right, that will do for this update. In the next update(s), we'll see the rest of the European powers arrive, and we'll see if the Romans can survive the rise of their neighbors. Stay tuned!