[SPOILERS] The Peaceful Centaur: a Study in Possibility

[Mardoc]

So, any thoughts on the Jkaen situation? Personally, I think he's got a Mistform around, eating his warriors and being invisible, and thought that there was a bug deleting his units. DaveV pointed him to the combat log where he saw that this is within the game and therefore merely infuriating and not actually broken. Well, broken in the programming sense, not the game balance sense. But seeing as we know there's a named giant and at least one Mistform spawned, maybe we now know the location of Mistform #2.

It suggests we ought not to get too close with our scout, but expanding eastward might be easier than otherwise expected.

Or, of course, I could be totally misinterpreting the situation and we'll find out in a year when the game ends. But if he's got no defenses due to Mistform eating them, I can understand perfectly well why he wouldn't want to share that with the world.

[Mardoc]

We find another! named unit, this time it's a Giant Spider. I'm thinking people are popping dungeons left and right. Therefore we should pop ours, too, before someone does it for us. We can afford the warrior spam we need in a bad result. I've moved the new city stack onto the dungeon; if you agree we can pop it next turn.



It's also probably time to start thinking about switching to a settler rather than waiting the additional 5 turns to grow to size 8. Especially now that Podagros has outgrown the ability of the Worker to keep it supplied with improved tiles, I'd be happy to knock out an Expansive Settler now and get going on our city #2. I'm debating where makes sense for city 3, but so far I'm guessing east toward Jkaen is our best spot.

Finally, for Rawkking:

[Irgy]

So, any thoughts on the Jkaen situation? Personally, I think he's got a Mistform around, eating his warriors and being invisible, and thought that there was a bug deleting his units. DaveV pointed him to the combat log where he saw that this is within the game and therefore merely infuriating and not actually broken. Well, broken in the programming sense, not the game balance sense. But seeing as we know there's a named giant and at least one Mistform spawned, maybe we now know the location of Mistform #2.

It suggests we ought not to get too close with our scout, but expanding eastward might be easier than otherwise expected.

Or, of course, I could be totally misinterpreting the situation and we'll find out in a year when the game ends. But if he's got no defenses due to Mistform eating them, I can understand perfectly well why he wouldn't want to share that with the world.

Well, we can always check his graphs and/or ask him, now that we've made contact. We should send a greeting too...

[Irgy]

It's also probably time to start thinking about switching to a settler rather than waiting the additional 5 turns to grow to size 8.

I'd want another worker before a settler. We'll have Education soon, and can get Exploration well before two (or probably even three) workers are going to get bored. The second city isn't such a hurry as far as I'm concerned. I almost wonder whether we should actually settle it as a settlement and not upgrade it until we've settled a third city - so that we can pop the worldspell on both. The second city site isn't much chop until we've popped the worldspell anyway.

[Mardoc]

I did send him a PM asking him what was up, and got a response basically of 'I don't want to say'

You're right, we need a greeting. Feel free to modify this one:

Glad to finally meet, Jkaen! We come in peace.

We're your neighbors directly to your west, past the scorpions and Giants and other assorted nasties. So far we've met Ichabod and Dantski; Ichabod to our west, and Dantski to our southwest.

Once circumstances permit, we'll be interested in deals of mutual benefit, such as open borders and perhaps mana exchanges.

Anyway, take care, and keep in touch.

I suppose you're right, there isn't a huge urgency to claim our desert with a settler, so long as it's claimed with treaties. That site does need AH and Mining and likely KoTE before it's good.

[Mardoc]

Well, sounds like Sciz has had quite the unenjoyable time! Hope his wrists heal. So, of course this turn we get contact with him.

Played turn 35. First things first, pop the dungeon on our borders in self-defense - and a treasure map comes out! We now have an invisible scout on Sciz's southern border. And yep, he's far, far away



Do we want to keep it? It's costing us 1 gold/turn in upkeep. On the other hand, I would think once we make it to Centaurs, they wouldn't have too much trouble salvaging our treasure for us.

Move the scout, and he ends up next to a Scorpion. Rather than let the Scorpion kill it, I delete it to save on unit costs.


And, in the absence of a better idea, I start building a Pagan Temple in Podagros. I don't want to build units when they're costing us upkeep, I do want to grow to size 8, so workers/settlers are out, and maybe we'll want to reconsider the Prophet plan? If I'm being silly here, let me know, and we'll have only wasted one turn of production.

Finally, some confirmation that Jkaen has a Mistform problem:


I almost wonder if it would be worth our while to build a stack of Scouts to charge in and attempt to take his capital; the Mistform couldn't kill them all before we got inside, I think. I bet it'd be a nice site, eventually. On the other hand, then the Mistform would be our problem.

[COLOR="Magenta"]Sciz,

Just thought we'd let you know we made contact this turn. You appear to be all the way around the world from us; it's looking like the world is something like this:

Ichabod Us Jkaen
Dantski Selrahc You

We don't have any particular deals or requests at this time, except that we'd prefer not to have to kill Hippus horsemen. Fortunately for us, it looks like you'll have better targets from a geographic perspective. We think it might be worth mentioning that Selrahc's Lanun are the civ that will be least affected by the lack of food on the map, since they can get all their food from the sea. And despite starting several turns after the rest of us, Selrahc's already up to #1 in GNP without even trying hard. Of course, he'll also be low on hammers and hence military. . Anyway, it's obviously your decision, and you'll go where you feel like.

We'll understand if you're slow in diplomacy, too, with the wrist thing. No need to respond to this message, for instance, unless you have something more than 'hi' to say.

- Mardoc (and Irgy)[/COLOR]

[NobleHelium]

What are you going to say if Sciz asks how you made contact?

[Mardoc]

What are you going to say if Sciz asks how you made contact?

I guess that's the silver lining to us for the broken wrists - I don't expect him to ask!

Probably it would be something general like 'we found your borders and our scout kept moving' which is technically true...

[Irgy]

Good turn, and great message Mardoc, thanks. Good idea deleting the doomed scout.

We'll have a great sage before we could work a priest anyway. Whether to work a priest for the next one I'm not sure, but I'm guessing by then we're better off working two cottages than a priest and a farm. I'd highly recommend switching production to a worker soon, because we definately want to have two of them building cottages. Even if it does delay growth to pop 8. We want to be at pop 8 working basically as many cottages as we can get away with.

The idea of our third city being JKaen's capital is certainly tempting, but personally I'd wait until centaurs before trying anything. He's crippled now but he's only going to remain crippled in the future too. It's a possible reason not to delay horseback riding despite being a long way from Sciz. Although we don't have to fight him, we might be competing with him in cleaning up the vulnerable players fast...

[Brian Shanahan]

Probably it would be something general like 'we found your borders and our scout kept moving' which is technically true...

Tell them you promoted your scout to glory. Should be cryptic enough.

Also this is my Terry Pratchett reference for the day.