But before we could go full melting pot, I opened the map up and claimed our next tile: the hot springs.

Our sphere of influence was slowly but surely growing. More importantly, getting that tile gave us an extra point of science and happiness. That meant the rest of the starting technologies could be researched in a day each. It would also fix our happiness from losing that battle and would take us over a hundred happiness once the recent loss effect wore off.

Rather, the hot springs already took our happiness over a hundred. It was already boosting our income by nine percent, too, seeing as how food, labor, and science all went up more than they should have from claiming the hot spring tile. The Council Pavilion also finished its construction, so we got an extra point of influence from that.

With the hot springs claimed, that meant it was time to begin working toward the volcano tile. It would take seven tiles to get it without paying extra influence. That would take us up to nineteen tiles and take about six days to do with five influence a day.

We were still making good progress with everything. The only thing really screwing us was the lack of military and population source. We could make one hunter unit, but then we’d be down to only a single unit of population without any more coming in, and we had to keep at least one population unit.

I looked at Enna and asked, “If we find a minor faction, are they going to be peaceful or hostile?”

“That depends,” Enna answered. “Peaceful… I hope. But they may be hostile.”

“And if they are, they might wipe out our only remaining military unit.”

“That’s true… but I believe it’s a risk we have to take.”

“We don’t exactly have a choice. If that’s our only way to gain more population right now, we have to.”

“Oh! But, even if they are hostile, you could try to avoid their units and reach their camp anyways! Whether they’re hostile or not won’t change the fact that they will give you a quest we can complete to assimilate them. And if we do, we get all their units of population and whatever military units they have roaming around.”

“Then we really want to get them as soon as possible, if there’s even one around. That will give us a boost to our population and fix our lack of military problem.”

“Assimilating minor factions usually unlocks unique technology options, too!”

“Sounds like assimilating them is more or less an objectively good thing. Is there any downside?”

“Well, you can only assimilate one without researching technologies that give you the option to assimilate more. And until we unlock political policies and other government-related technologies, the more species we have in our faction, the lower the happiness will be.”

I understood why there would be something like decreased happiness for diverse races in a faction from a balance perspective, but it still rubbed me the wrong way. Regardless, I would welcome as many people with our ideals into our faction as I could, preferably all of them, no matter who or what they may be. Only the content of one's character is worth judging, as one of the greatest men to ever exist once said. “And hypothetically, what do you gain from wiping a minor faction out?”

“There’s not really much to gain from doing that in the early game aside from stopping them from spawning more military units that might attack yours… but, if it’s anything like previous games, empires that try to remain ‘pure’ will gain bonuses to their military units and happiness for the more minor factions they wipe out.”

“The genocide route. It’s not a proper 4X game unless it rewards genocide in one way or another, I guess. But at least it sounds like taking the peaceful route is just as rewarding.” I looked toward the tent’s entrance. “Let’s go outside. I could use some fresh air.”

Enna nodded and followed me out.

Our latest, finished building was immediately obvious as it was directly ahead of my tent. It was just a large, square pavilion tent with a pointed peak sticking up in the center. Underneath it was a wooden table surrounded by chairs. It looked like the kind of tent that important meetings would be had at, so I figured it was a good spot to sit down at for the next discussion.

“Enna,” I said. “Can you bring Thad and Sara here?”

“Right away!” Enna replied and left, though it didn’t take long for her to return.

It only took a couple of minutes for her to come back with Thad by her side. Sara was nowhere to be found, though.

“Sara… doesn’t want to talk to anybody,” Enna explained.

“Can’t blame her,” Thad said. “Her own father abandoned her. If she dies here, that’s it, and him revoking support for us shows that he doesn’t care if she dies. Even I feel a bit bad for her. Anyways, what do you need?”

I opened up the map and laid the window down on top of the table. “You two came up with this, so I want your input on where we should explore,” I said.

“They’re already in the plains, and that’s a double region. We can either have them explore to try and find a minor faction up there, or we can move them back toward our territory and explore at the same time since that’s a double region as well.”

Thad stroked his chin and Enna adjusted her glasses, both of them looking over the map carefully.

“Our territory should give us enough sight to see if there is anything to the direct north of it,” Enna said. “And we already explored it to the south and southeast. The western region near the volcano and below it—we haven’t gotten close to those yet. If there is a minor faction in our region, it has to be around there.”

Thad nodded and grunted. “I agree. We could move along the border between our region and the plains, going southeast. That should let us check out both regions at once. And on the off chance that there’s a hostile group somewhere in our region near the border… as long as we don’t cross the border, they won’t leave the region to attack us. And if we find enemies in the plains, we can cross right over to our region.”

“This is why I wanted you two here to help me with this,” I said. “So, minor faction units can’t leave their home regions?”

“Right,” Enna answered. “Sorry, I should have mentioned that.”

“You’re fine. It’s only natural for you to know a lot more about this than me since you’ve seen these ‘games’ before. There’s probably even more that you both consider common sense that I might not know yet.”

“Then did you know you can draw plans on the map?” Thad asked. “Press two fingers against the tile the unit is on, then drag it to where you want it to go. It won’t actually set the order, but it’ll show a path for planning.”

I did as he said. Surely enough, an arrow showed up with the path.

“Looks like the best route to me!” Thad said. “With that lava lake there, it’s not like you’ll be missing out on seeing any land tiles by not going farther south.”

“That’s a good point!” Enna added on. “Units can generally see within three tiles of themselves. Since the lava lake is there… we don’t need to get any closer than that to check all the land around the volcano.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” I said as I gave the official order to begin moving. Three of those four planned tiles would get explored before a new day arrived, so it was possible we could discover a minor faction before the day was over.

I just had to hope that they had no interest in killing us.