[Spoilers] rho21 follows the works of Homer... D'OH!

[rho21]

Turn 15

Score tracking:
Aztec finished Code of Laws on schedule. Their eagles have more battle damage too.

Scouting:
The slinger was blocked from its intended route by Yerevan's warrior, so it stepped onto a hill to get a bit more of a view around.
The warrior found red on the settler view to the south of the lake, which I think means a little more detour to go and investigate.
I was also able to use the builder (with no risk) to reveal an extra tundra tile north of the capital. Woo.



Housekeeping:
Code of Laws done; the obvious government was enacted (everything except the scout XP boost).

[rho21]

Turn 16

Score tracking:
Kongo has completed Code of Laws on schedule. Egypt has completed a second tech.

Scouting:
Oh my goodness, it's a barbarian! To be more precise, it's a ~50% health barbarian scout that appeared near the slinger. Seems likely this one ran into Yerevan's warrior a little earlier (probably just long enough ago that the warrior had time to heal before I met it). I'll be sending a force this way before too long anyway to find and clear the camp, so it'll get further scouting soon in case there's a city state this way (or a land bridge to another civ).

This is a huge opportunity for a cheap slinger kill, so I step the slinger onto an adjacent hill. Wow, looking like a pretty stellar city site here down the road. Hills, river, no end of food resources. The marble to the north is on fresh water, incidentally.

There are squares the barb can move to that won't let me shoot it, but who knows what the AI will choose? I can only afford a short delay here before heading home to escort the settler.

Oh dear, is it happening again? In my SP games I keep letting my scouting units get distracted and end up out of position. I think both the current distractions are worth it though. They'll definitely head home soon™.

Handily, all these hills means the builder can be almost perfectly safe fogbusting most of the way to the city site. So I'll need the slinger back at the wheat (currently 3 turns' movement) by turn 24 at the very latest.

Housekeeping:
Pottery completed, next up is finishing off Mining which has 1 turn left.

[rho21]

Turn 17

Score tracking:
Not much of note, only a few minor strength fluctuations.

Scouting:
The warrior spies Kongolese borders in the fog. Not wrong when I thought this lovely double marble site wasn't my land: it's quite possibly Kongo's second city site. I can't think of a reason to avoid contact, so I'll advance another hex and say hi next turn.
The barbarian scout ran towards Yerevan. The slinger is following for now, hoping for an opportunity.

Housekeeping:
Mining completed, going to push Masonry to just shy of half way next.

[rho21]

Turn 18

Scouting needs to come first this turn:
The warrior steps forwards and meets Kongo. That gets me the boost for writing, and lots of extra score information. I'll take another step next turn for eyes on the capital, as that will provide lots of useful information in the future.

The slinger does get a shot at the barbarian scout, with pretty good odds:


Nope. Fairly good chance it will get away now.
17 strength difference causes between 44 and 74 damage, evenly distributed I believe. I rolled a 48.

Score tracking:
Kongo finished a second tech this turn, and looking at the trade screen has dyes connected, so that will be Pottery and Irrigation. The other news from the trade screen is 144 (40-odd more than me) at +5/turn (1 less than me). There's only one way that makes sense: clearing a barbarian camp. So no expenditure of gold earlier, just lots of combat against barbarians.
The other big bit of information is that Kongo has +1 per turn. So working the dyes for quite a while rather than finding an early religious city state. First choice of pantheon here we come!
Elsewhere, Aztec has finished a third Eagle Warrior, from the looks of things.

Housekeeping:
Nothing happened on the home front this turn.

It's probably about time to think about pantheons. The ones that look most interesting to me are:

• Harvesting and chopping produces as well
  This seems extremely good. I could build up a lovely cache of faith ready to spend at Theology on a surprise army, or with Valletta's suzerain power, or with various beliefs I might get if I end up going for a religion.
  
• 1 on all tiles at charming+ appeal
  With all the mountains around, this will add up pretty quickly. I suspect it's much weaker than the previous one though.
  
• +25% toward Ancient and Classical military units.
  Not bad, mostly because it allows for some 75% boosted chop overflows.
  
• +1 Great Person point for prophet, scientist and writer from appropriate districts.
  Nice general advantage, mostly for the scientist points.
  
• +25% toward districts in cities without a specialty district.
  This one looked good a while back, but I'm not convinced any more. So often the goal is to chop out much of the cost of a district using boosted overflow rather than build it through natural production.
  

[Garath]

So many turns - I can't keep up!

Always finding Just One More Thing for the scouts to do is my favourite single-player trap as well. You really do have to turn at least one of them around though! Just do it!

Contact is good, I imagine - makes dotmap planning and prioritization rather easier. They're at distance what, 16-17 from you, so about the same distance from the bottom of the map as you are from the top? A sensible distance for having one clean city in the direction of the other without any friction at all - and also a good distance for fighting hard over control of the city site that will still be left in between!

I haven't done enough with faith in my solo games to have any real opinion on which faith-boosting pantheon is plausible. I'd probably incline against the production one that runs out at the end of Classical, unless you feel convinced that a game this small will be mostly decided by that point.

Settler in a couple of turns, right? I do have one worry about your proposed C2, which is that if the coast to the north of it turns out to be as straight as it currently looks in the screenshot without fog-gazing, you may regret not being able to put another city there since it's all at distance 3 from the city. On a map this small, that could be a lot of space that you aren't using to much advantage.

[rho21]

Yep, settler in 2. Don't worry about C2: the top line of visible tiles is not coastal so there's definitely a little more room.

Anyway, here's yet another turn, albeit a very quiet one:

Turn 19

Score tracking:
Nothing of interest.

Scouting:
Got a look at Mbanza Kongo, which is in fact settled on a dye resource. Explains the initial settler move. Time for the warrior to clear some fog on the way home.

Housekeeping:
Pythagoras grew to size 3.

[rho21]

Turn 20

Score tracking:
Egypt has produced a settler.

Scouting:
The barbarian scout has been sensible this time and moved two squares (to the tile NW of Yerevan). Sadly, I need to turn the slinger for home now. Maybe it will evade Yerevan's warrior and still be about later. Or even present itself to my slinger next turn... that would be too much of a temptation.

The warrior will be briefly delayed in the south after spotting a red tile on settler view. Worth going to say hi to the city state, as it will probably only take one extra turn.

[rho21]

Turn 21

Score tracking:
Aztec finished a second tech. Aztech.

Scouting:
No sign of the barbarian scout (Yerevan's warrior stupidly stayed on the same side of the river, so will have pushed it away from me).
The warrior spies an industrial city state in the fog, will meet next turn.

I feel my scouting has gone really well in terms of tiles seen and city states met, but quite poorly for boosts. Still looking for a new continent (may have to go SW for that), a natural wonder, a slinger kill, 3 dead barbarians and a barbarian camp clearance.

The second continent isn't urgent quite yet, though the civic would be really useful for a road through the hills between the two cities.

Housekeeping:
Forgot to mention last turn that the capital grabbed the dyes tile (revealing a couple more tundra tiles).
Settler complete, regrowth in 9 turns.
Switched tech to writing as I already have the boost for that so can't accidentally overspend.

Planning for the campus:
I can have all of Craftsmanship, Masonry and Writing complete by turn 29. If I make another builder in the capital immediately, that will be ready on turn 26 and in place to harvest on turn 30, by which time I can easily have a unit pre-built and waiting to provide overflow.

I expect the harvest to knock out about 54/90 toward the campus, leaving about 3 turns' worth of work for the city. So campus on approximately turn 33.

There's only one problem with this plan: the builder will be unguarded. Slotting in a slinger first adds a 3-turn delay. Running the existing slinger home is one turn quicker. Nevertheless, I'm going to build a slinger now in the capital. I want the current slinger to join up with the warrior and go looking for that barb camp and I feel a little vulnerable at the capital with Aztec presumably somewhere over that way.

So after all that, campus due on ~turn 36.

[rho21]

Turn 22

Score tracking:
Kongo's real military strength is all the way down at 19. Must be some pretty badly damaged units.
Aztec's CQUI-reported strength jumped 16 from last turn, which suggests a slinger finished. That makes 3 eagles (including the starting one) and a slinger now.

Scouting:
First my slinger moves towards the new city site, carefully taking a route that uncovers another tile... and that tile has a barbarian camp on it! (Marked with a red arrow in the screenshot.)
Then my warrior meets Hong Kong... and is first to do so! How is that possible? It's only 7 tiles from Kongo's capital! Anyway, the quest is to boost Military Tradition (clear that barbarian camp) and the suzerain bonus is +20% towards "city projects", whatever that means. I can't imagine this city state will last particularly long anyway. The +2 in the capital towards wonders, buildings and districts will come in handy though.

Housekeeping:
27.8 , no chance to choose a pantheon. Stupid bug, that one. Oh well, I can wait a turn.

[Garath]

Aztec military strength is starting to get pretty scary! Is that all he's been building, full stop? That scale of investment has to be with intent to actually capture, rather than merely raid, a city-state, surely?

Good job with the careful scouting - but happening to have found an unexpected first-time city state is still only a justification after the fact for over-scouting! I approve of the extra slinger at home before the Campus push as detailed, though let's be honest it still won't save you if somehow the Aztecs do appear out of the fog in the next dozen turns or so!

Fortunately, I agree that's fairly unlikely to actually happen.

Turn 22's image appears broken, by the way.