As I continue exploring, I discover that I have a City-State to the South. That’s going to put a damper on my expansion south unless I destroy them. Also, if they end up best buds with someone else that’s an enemy on my doorstep. They may be the first casualty of living near the Great Chinese Empire! I’m now beating Dave by one point! Yes! Even when I play on my own, I tend to use the last turn to queue up all my production so I don’t have to remember what my plans were. That’s extra important when I’m playing 1-2 turns per day. So I finally got around to that in this game.

Dan finally joined up in the game that involves the three of us. I give this one even less of a chance of finishing because adding just one person seems to exponentially increase the likelihood of not finishing, but we’ll see. I really got the short end of the stick in this game. I appear to be in the North (tundra above me) with a desert all around me, but no hills close enough to use for production. Depending on what I have to the South East, I may end up having to over-extend my empire to get a good site. I fully expect Dan to take advantage of that situation if he’s close enough to me for that to matter. Hopefully I get something good from those ruins to make up for the fact – some tech or a settler. Interestingly, I chose a different starting point on the tech tree in this game than the other one. It’ll be interesting to see if that ends up making too much of a difference.

I’m excited that these are my second and third games with the first expansion pack so I don’t have a usual strategy for the religion. Stay tuned every Saturday for more about the Amazing Empire of the Chinese in these two alternate dimensions.