Just started playing tonight. I took the Nubian capital and several outposts in ancient era since they have no army. There is no more Nubian territory I could see, but the queen is still alive.

Is she returned to a nomadic tribe? How do I destroy her? I split scouts to 4 and searched all neighbors, but she's not anywhere.

All an empire needs is ONE unit of any kind to remain alive, and that empire will continue to exist.

Due to "fog of war", even if 100% of the map is revealed, an empire's lone unti could still be running around. You have to have one of your units get within "visual" range to see a unit.

BTW why so down on this queen? ;D I mean, if you took all her territory, she isn't any sort of threat. 

Eventually, either she will build an outpost again somewhere (if she can; maybe her lone surviving unit is an envoy, who knows) or else one of the other AI players will stumble across her lone unit(s) and destroy them. That's usually what happens when I'm in your situation. I can't find the enemy's surviving units, but another AI finds them and kills them and suddenly BAM they're removed from the game.

Because units can settle territory, there is potential for a comeback, they may also be settled on another continent.

This tends to get mitigated as they will die to the 'Trespassing' modifier in most cases that matter, but it can be strange to get used to!

She took one of my outpost, then I took it back, suddenly her empire died at that point even though I didn't find any unit.

scottfreitas wrote:

BTW why so down on this queen? ;D I mean, if you took all her territory, she isn't any sort of threat. 

Wouldn't she always hate me and wish me dead? I don't feel comfortable waging war on another neighbor while she's still breathing.

Don't worry about the neighbor you have attacked being a problem again - they won't be for quite a while assuming that they are now seriously weakened. They will be happy to sign non-aggression pacts. They want to survive and may well be afraid of you - the diplomacy screen will show that if it is true.

Gen Dad

So the fastest way to expand is to choose a military culture and capture cities and outposts from fearful neighbors right? It seems building a city myself costs too much, even if I choose an expansionist. Then I shall keep the Harappan queen alive so that she may build more cities for me XD