>>3152527And those revolts led to the creation of even more civs, so the entire world was nice and balkanized while I steadily became a rising power. Of the civs that had their shit together for the time being were most of the south-western edge civs (California, America, China, the Hittie Empire which was one of the top 3 in power) and North-Eastern edge (Pirate Union, German Empire, Portuguese Empire (also noted that Pirates and Germans discovered steampunk and thus had steam-powered tanks and primitive robot workers)), with the North-West corner being nothing but barbarians.
My early interactions with the world included a war in China which I won using great generals and clever tactics, leading to their vassalization, as well as the vassilization of Egypt, which was a minor civ trapped inside of the labyrinth dangerously close to Core. China turned out to be useful, but Egypt's main role was a look inside of the madness of the laybrinth, which was choke full of monsters and multiple Minotaur which had the nasty habit of sneaking up on units and killing them, thus necessitating sending over an entire army to explore it. Later on the inevitable happens and Core declares war on basically the world, raping Egypt (which I saved by gifting them a city near the entrance of the labyrinth turns prior) as well as another minor City State that nobody liked anyway. Though I had multiple great generals and lots of elite troops, Core was in the Modern era and had Modern Infantry (Str. 50) and Drache Helicopters (Str 42 I think) while other civs at best had Trench infantry (Str. 30), and my Swordsmen (Str .10) which made up the majority of my forces were downright inadequate, so once Core got serious my expeditionary force was dropping left and right.
