1000 BC (0): Hmm. We seem to have contact with lots of folks, but no-one else does. Even the Zulus & Aztecs don't know about each other & they are practically on one another's doorstep. Lots of trading to get a better understanding of Sirian's surprise...
- Alphabet, Mysticism, and our Territory map to Zulus for Masonry & their World map.
- The Wheel to England for their World map.
- Territory map & gold to Aztecs & Iroquois for their World maps.
Using this map info we spot yellow & blue cultural borders in the south. Sirian's surprise is revealed! Each civ has their own little island to grow to maturity on -- in order to fight anyone we will have to land an invasion force. However, looks like everywhere is easily accessible by galley. Some important notes:
- The other civs will not be able to contact each other until they get mapmaking if we don't broker contact! This is huge as it slows down their tech advancement enormously. In order to get the most out of our UU we want to slow down the tech race as much as possible. We need to keep an eye on England as it's closest to mapmaking, and to Zulu/Aztec since they may be able to contact one another directly if their cultural borders expand enough. I tried not to swap Writing around so as to slow up the AIs in their quest for Mapmaking.
- The other civs are all rich from accumulated years of not being able to trade with anyone. We want to be sure to steal as much of their gold as possible before they make contact with other civs.
- We're the only ones with a sizeable world map -- everyone else is limited to their territory map and possibly ours. That's worth quite a bit of cash.
In other news in 1000 BC, I swap city production around a bit. We do not need spearmen right now except for military police, there's no way we can be attacked! What we need is to expand as fast as possible and get our infrastructure up so we're the dominant empire economically; once that's done we can put together an invasion force. Rome & Antium swap to settler, Neapolis & Cumae to worker, and Veii swaps from Granary to Pyramids. We should be able to get any wonder we want pretty easily, so let's get the best one available right now! We could eventually go for the Great Library so as to further slow down the tech race by making the AIs discover everything for us -- while we put everything into cash to support a big army.
Another suggestion: When we eventually go on the warpath, we don't want to be capturing cities, we want to be razing them! The reason being, (a) we don't want to exascerbate our corruption problems (this is a tiny map remember!), and (b) it will be hard for the AIs to resettle since they will have to send settlers over by ship.
975 BC (1): Our galley sinks a Barbarian galley, losing 2 hp but becoming Veteran. It spots a barb camp; we send an elite Warrior to investigate.
925 BC (3): Our elite warrior disperses the barb camp. Cumae builds worker & starts barracks.
900 BC (4): Neapolis builds worker & starts barracks. Rome builds settler & starts barracks.
875 BC (5): We make contact with Egypt. They have all our technologies already except Horseback Riding and Code of Laws, and that includes Mapmaking! Looks like they have contact with China already.
850 BC (6): We discover Literature and start on Philosophy.
825 BC (7): We make contact with China; they have obviously been trading tech with Egypt as they're all caught up as well other than Code of Laws. We trade both them and Egypt Horseback Riding and our Territory map for their World maps. China is close to the Aztecs and English, and Egypt is close to the Zulus; they could make contact if borders expand. Looks like there are is another set of cultural borders to the west of China and east of Egypt.
800 BC (8): Rome finishes barracks, starts Settler. Antium completes settler, starts Temple. Pisae founded on our FP spot, and starts temple. Looks like Egypt has discovered Code of Laws. I'd broker it to China but they're broke.
750 BC (10): Contact made with Babylon! We give them Alphabet and our Territory map for their World Map. They have Polytheism, which no-one else does! We don't need it yet though. That's it, we've now met everyone and got their maps.
Notes for the future:
- We have a settler on the way to found our Dye city, and after that we only have a couple more cities left to settle; one in the west on that little spit of land, and one in the north where it can get at that whale. We could potentially also squeeze one more in the south on that jungle peninsula. We also could definately use several more workers.
- Pisae is our FP city. We want to get started on that ASAP, but we need some irrigation down there to get our land capable of supporting more than a few people. For now we can borrow some of Neapolis's tiles. It should be possible to get irrigation through the hills on a corner, but if not we can take the long route around the hills down at Neapolis.
- Be very watchful on the Diplomatic front. Keep a close eye on what borders are expanding, and try to sell contact & tech parity before that happens. Also keep an eye on China and Egypt which have Mapmaking and could start exploring with Galleys anytime.
Pompeii 
I thought it might have something to do with not having played civ since the Cretan game, but it still crashed when I pulled the Bull Rider folder out onto my desktop.
