The bad guys
We started with the obligatory whining as is the birth right of all Greeks and Palmyrians in random civ games. There was no tool warfare, thank goodness, but soon Baal was reporting that Assy CA s were tormenting him. I bronzed and went with Cavs and began spreading down the east side of the map forward building near Rounin and Hugo. I found Hugo in the pocket first and sent my cavs in killing many villagers. He eventually stopped my raids as I moved a group of villagers down to take some gold near Rounin. He was already there so I attacked his miners with cav and dropped a TC near a forest while I made a siege workshop.
Rounin had walled off nicely stopping me from any villager killing raids into his home base. So I had to wait for STs while reinforcing my cavs with some hoppers and a few more cavs. Baal was taking the brunt of the Assy/Greek mismatch with Hugo's Egyptians dog-piling him. RCB attacked Hugo as well but we were unable to coordinate a lethal joint attack to unseat him or significantly slow his team's progress. I was in process of ironing when I heard Baal report the presence of Egyptian scythes. I was trying to building up a heavy force of Cats, Ballistas, and Phalanx to hopefully take out Rounin who was pretty much pinned in I thought. Baal declared that we were beat as scythes started filling up his side of the map hitting RCB as well. We were all thinking wonder and had a discussion of who should build it. I was picked although in retrospect I was probably in the best position to supply military to defend the wonder if RCB had built it. Our friends on the other team had denied Baal the chance to go iron. I pulled back, out of Rounin's area and began walling behind me. I started pumping out more villagers and researched architecture, started mining stone like a man possessed and gratifully accepted tribute from my allies who were building up in my area to help with wonder defense. I hit the pop limit with over 60 real villagers ready to work, temples for those fearsome Greek priests The wonder was completed fairly quickly and it didn't take long for us to attract unwanted attention. I can't bring myself to describe the fall of our proud wonder ...sniff, sniff.... I'll leave that to those enemies of the arts and all things divine; those gluttonous philistines who would trample underfoot a great treasure to satisfy their blood lust, those barbarians incapable of producing their own masterpieces or appreciating the cultural gems of the magnificent Greeks and their allies the Palmyrians. Allow me to retire now and weep in solitude. Seriously, I was smiling, talking, laughing a little, on the edge of my seat, and thoroughly enjoying the last 20 minutes even as our wonder went down. Thanks for the game. Stooge_Jehu