As mentioned before, the peace with Babylon was fragile and difficult to predict how long it would last. If Hammurabi tried to pull something on me again, I would be ready for it. This is the map from 150BC:
A word on the picture quality: the larger the image, the less clear it comes out on this website. Geocities doesn't do very well with full screen images, apparently. It shouldn't be too hard to make things out though. At this point I had reached the natural limits of my expansion. I figured that I would stay at essentially this size for the rest of the game. But sometimes the game has a way of forcing your hand in ways you don't expect.
When the wines in the southwest tundra were hooked up by road, I would have 6 luxuries, which is nothing short of amazing for this small an amount of territory on a world map. I built almost no cathedrals, because marketplaces provided enough happiness all on their own. I was in first place on the histograph at this point, and tops in all imprtant categories on the F11 comparisons. Everything was going fine for me to win a peaceful game. Then "it" happened:
I was furious at this. The whole purpose of the Second Babylonian War was to gain control of that incense, and now my own city is flipping to the hated enemy? NOT realistic. WAY out of proportion to reality. I have no problem with most culture flips but this was absurd. It was MY city, closer to MY capitol, under 3rd ring culture pressure, and our civs had equal overall culture. This has got to be one of those 1/3 of 1 percent odds that went against me. At this point, I had had it. If Hammurabi crossed me again, he was going to be destroyed. There could clearly be no lasting peace between France and Babylon at this point. This was a turning point literally for my entire game; as Hamlet said, "O from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!" (Act 4, Scene 4)
Despite my anger, I did not declare war on Babylon, though I was very close to doing so. If the goal of this game had not been to play honorably, I would have been all over Babylon in a second, and I would have RAZED those traitors in Amiens to the ground as the first act of war. But naturally I couldn't do that here. So instead I continued peacefully building up my cities, and waited for Hammurabi to do something foolish like threatening me. With an aggression level of 4, it was only a matter of time. Finally, in 280AD Hammurabi presented me with a new ultimatum:
What's that laughter you hear? That's me in the background, laughing hysterically at Hammurabi. He had overstepped his boundaries and gone too far. Babylon had CHOSEN UNWISELY, and now they were going to pay.
