[Spoiler] OW PBC1 Chaotic Neutral

[Bruindane]

Year 17: Stunning Gardens

   
Is built. In the woods to the east the battle continues.

   
We dispatch Kaiser's leader home, while dispatching his slinger. We burn a few orders to move units to shield the Egyptian mercenary from militia counterattack while stunning his warrior. Kaiser might be losing units, but Babylonia is successfully buying time to prevent us from settling.

Due to our military maneuvers, we didn't move our scouts and our other worker.

[Bruindane]

Year 18: What they can do I can do

Babylon's warrior is stunned again being sacrificed to pin our troops along with their militia. I'd be wary Ginger as CMF could attack with Kaiser's warrior but chose not to, as i did with yours. Meanwhile I start attacking Kaiser's scout, which can block me one more turn from settling.

   

As Kaiser's troops are busy...

[Bruindane]

Year 19: Let's strike back

Our skirmishes so far have seen us lose one upgraded barbarian vs 2 warriors, 2 militia, and 1 slinger. Our economy is set back, but perhaps we can return the favor a little.

   

Ran out of orders for my new warrior, but I think we want to move towards Kaiser and strike their workers.

[Bruindane]

Year 20: Not Striking Back

Kaiser retreated his worker out of sight, which I think is a loss of time and material spent on the improvement as it disappears when you move. We recruited more Scythians, which we will move to our territory to upgrade, but we have strength in number at least for a bit.

   

We have a new city as Ginger settled on his turn after Kaiser's blocking scout moved, but before CMF scout could move in to block for another turn. Thank you.

Domestically we continue to make a specialist for the pearls, which was a mistake to start but going to finish anyway -- I'm thinking we'll send the pearls to the Rider seat initially to speed its     by 2 a turn to be able to  build our unique Elephants sooner.

We enable Vassalage

-50% unit consumption
No extra unit consumption when outside borders
Riders opinion: +20

[Ginger*]

We need to come up with a plan for that new crop of mercenaries (also pull back from the statesmen seat). We should group them up, upgrade all to at least 4str and maybe a couple to 6str to be efficient hitters.
The question then becomes do we go after the Scythian camps first, to give you 3 more cities, or try to pressure Kaiser's forward settle? Right now, he's really weak, I think he only has one unit. He just assigned his leader to a warrior (which can't stealth up!). Usually, I wouldn't suggest early attacks but if we have this kind of disparity and 20 orders per turn for each of us, it might work. We can wait to decide in the couple turns it'll take to upgrade the mercenaries. 

Misc. Notes
Can you task that northwestern Merc to continue heading west and cover that city site so the settler coming from my capital doesn't get scout-blocked?
Please don't declare war on the Gauls, some time in the next several turns I plan to raise their opinion to "Pleased" and sign a peace treaty to complete an ambition (worth 10 legitimacy). 
If you have 100 spare stone, can you loan me? I'll send it back in 5 turns. If you're out of stone bc you're building garrisons then don't worry, I'll just buy some with money.

[Bruindane]

Let's attack to hamstring Kaiser's expansion. You can continue developing quicker than their team while I keep buying friendly Scythian mercenaries.

   

Will send stone and cover the city site.

[Bruindane]

Year 21, January: Influence leads to an alliance offer

I'm going to wait until my evening to play through. There are a lot of implications, both in terms of settling opportunities and in launching an attack.

If you have food to spare, I'll take it.

   

[Ginger*]

I’ll send all my spare food (~50 iirc)

What are the other event options?

Btw you can actually settle on the sites occupied by a tribal ally, it just costs gold, but you could probably afford to do so if you stopped purchasing mercs. It’s a tradeoff

[Bruindane]

Year 21: The Babylonian Queen will be displeased by our Alliance with her people

I was unsure about exerting influence on the Scythian leader a few years back, but obviously payed off in more than just friendly relations and its associated 25% cost reduction to hire mercenaries.

I don't need to buy their units as I can just move them directly, if they are outside their camps, but I am not sure you can Ginger. We have more units than I have orders to spend.

   

Neopolis will start a settler next turn using Egyptian food and I will want to start another in Carthago in few turns. We will settle on the Scythian city sites.

Sent the 100 stone, and will try flush out CMF's scout that is claiming your next city site.

[Ginger*]

Okay I advanced my warrior and attached a Tactician general to it so Kaiser suffers attrition if he attacks it.
One problem is our forces are all a little disjointed,
1st “wave”, consisting of my slinger and your warrior can strike next turn (but probably should hold and just promote spare training willing)
2nd wave, your two straggler warriors including your Zealot Queen are 2 turns out
3rd wave, Scythian cav units are 3-4 turns out because mercenaries have limited movement

I think it’s important to commit fully. All of our available orders should be priority tasked with moving and concentrating all available units. Even those that are far away. We saw earlier what half-heartened force concentration does to an army
What this means in practice is that we probably should delay the “1st wave” a turn for your two other warriors to get into position. This also gives them another turn to show their hand if they have potential reinforcements waiting in the wings. Additionally all the units, even those far away, should start converging (except obv the one dislodging the scout), even if they arrive late, we’ll be grateful if they end up being the last couple dmg points we need.