[Spoilers] A more civilized age - Arendel of the Ljosalfar (Uberfish)

[uberfish]

Hopefully Bob can pick up the turn for Amelia and we can get moving again. He's likely to have at least limited email communication with Amelia and as dedicated lurker may have actively participated in strategy discussion. Most likely, being a replacement, he'll continue with previously established plans which I suspect don't include investing production into a stop the leader dogpile.

From following PBEM1 (where Bob got quite a lot of flak from the lurkers for not making more of a very good starting position) he appears to be a competent SP player who had difficulty adjusting to the changed PBEM game dynamic.

[uberfish]

Aha, diplomatic efforts just bore some fruit. Darrell just sent this to Balseraphs, Lanun and myself:

[COLOR="Red"]
Each member of this distribution list has promised confidentiality. Uberfish, could you please get the same pledge from Mist before forwarding to him?

As everyone knows by now, Malakim has become the proverbial tall poppy. They have sizeable leads in GNP, crop yield and production over their nearest competition, and will soon have the Luchuirp as a virtual vassal. If we are going to prevent a runaway scenario we must work together. To minimize miscommunication, we decided to draft a formal agreement for the consideration of all parties. Firstly, a general outline of the map:



Strategically, we propose that Lanun, Calabim and Balseraph join forces and attack the Malakim from the southeast. We further propose that Ljosalfar join the Doviello push against the Luchuirp and continue into Malakim lands from the west.

Material commitment: Each side commits 200H worth of units, at least 150H of which enter Malakim lands by turn 97 with the remainder entering no later than turn 102. The composition of the force should be coordinated with the civs in your theater of operations. This might sound exaggerated, but the reality is we have to leverage our one advantage which is combined production. The Calabim are scrapping our expansion plan to deal with this immediate threat, and we expect and hope other civilizations will not allow this burden to fall solely on our shoulders.

All teams involved will be under a NAP. At the conclusion of hostilities with the Malakim, a cooldown period is in effect for 15t so that armies can return to their respective borders.

Darrell[/COLOR]

The catch is apparently that Lanun still don't want to get involved, which isn't really acceptable as if there was a dogpile which didn't include them, everyone else would be investing production in units while they expanded. So Darrell is trying to stir them up with this. I expect this whole thing will end up getting leaked to Ilios at some point by someone other than me.

Hawk spotted the city of imbalance:



The less said about this travesty the better.

Good news is I have copper at the 4th city site.



This solidifies the decision to settle 1SE of the copper and claim all non-water resources with one city.

Tech plan is festivals, bronze working, (cartography), philosophy, (warfare if Form of the Titan makes sense), priesthood

[uberfish]

[COLOR="RoyalBlue"]Hey all,


Just a note that while I'm nominally in charge of the Lanun until Amelia gets internet access back, she didn't give me any directives regarding diplomacy, so I won't make any decisions without her consent, regardless of how I personally feel about them. Building up for a war with the Malakim wasn't in her instructions, so I'm going to focus on other stuff right now. Do keep forwarding emails on to me / her, though- I won't share them with anyone else, and I presume she'll have something to say once she can get her hands back on the game. It also gives me some idea of what the heck is going on in the world outside Lanun borders (today is the first time I heard about any coalition) :P


-Bobchillingworth [/COLOR]

Entirely reasonable attitude from Bob to be honest. Hopefully Amelia will be able to contact by email/forum while waiting for a computer fix though.

[uberfish]

Founded Bruti on the hill:



This increased maintenance costs by 3, but with the just-in-time reagent plantation and trade route, the city makes 6. This is why commerce specials are such a big deal in the early game. The overlap with Evermore makes pre-working a couple of river cottages a possibility - although the gain is probably quite small since Evermore has a large food surplus and vertical growth room.

Since my hunter has to heal for a couple of turns (another 2* bear to the east, dangerous opponent as we know) I decided to reveal a few tiles on the lake.



I'll be ignoring this crab, city positioning for it is even worse than the fishing village seafood spot to the SW. There's another source of copper in the eastern desert.

interesting chat snippet from Ilios:[COLOR="Yellow"]

Ilios: so
calabim claim copper with their second city
which apparently was close to Balseraphs
so Serdoa founds a city
builds a freak show
and has now reclaimed the copper tile
(inner tile for calabim)
vamps must've been pretty pissed
me: hmm lol
Ilios: serdoa founded his fifth city bts
btw
in an "unfortunate" location
me: meaning next to you?
Ilios: yup
my defense secretary is screaming bloody murder[/COLOR]

Passed it to Serdoa since obviously I don't want Ilios gaining cities from him and I want to find out about possible Calabim tensions.

Oh, we had an argument about who had more luck in the early game, but let's see...

Sage (me): +1h +6b
Prophet (Mist): +2h +5g
River Incense+gold at second city (Ilios): +1h +16c counting the food to work the tiles

No contest here really.

Lanun spawned a great sage in Radiata last turn, but looking around their capital I couldn't spot an academy (and yes I know they're small and hard to spot - it took me a few seconds to find my own academy in Evermore.) Not sure why they wouldn't have built it yet unless they're planning to bulb something... ? Hmm. Maybe this is part of Amelia's plan to race Empyrean. Radiata has a fair amount of sea commerce coming in from pearls, whale and 2 ports, and not building the academy is certainly quite a sacrifice.

[Dantski]

Whats the resolution you're using for these screenshots? They're the perfect size for me and I'd like it if my screenshots in my pbem4 thread were as clear

[uberfish]

Whats the resolution you're using for these screenshots? They're the perfect size for me and I'd like it if my screenshots in my pbem4 thread were as clear

1024*768 window

[uberfish]

Calabim contacted me and said that Amelia had agreed to the anti-Malakim coalition. Incidentally pirates just built the academy and their GNP spiked up as a result (that capital's pulling about 36 raw commerce/turn.) Here's a shot of my capital to illustrate how tiny academies are



Elves definitely have some of the better looking buildings. I couldn't find the hunting lodge either though, so clearly I shouldn't rely on this method of intelligence gathering too much

so on to what I can actually contribute to a coalition.

I agreed to supply Mist with copper in return for a future loan of body mana. ETA on festivals is t77, bronze working t84. I'll then have to research cartography and fishing to get the trade route to Mist active (fishing is needed, annoyingly, as I don't want external roads for obvious reasons - world builder testing confirmed this), probably 3 turns each. I also need a few road tiles built as Cotton Valley will be connected through my network. I'll at least get some foreign trade route benefit out of this I suppose.

Also with cartography and my recon assets in the area, I can supply maps of Malakim land. My hunter's healed to 3.6/4 but 58.8% odds on the bear aren't acceptable, I might try to go around it or seek a defensive fight in the forest again depending on how it moves. I think it would be reasonable for me to point out that the scouting operation has certainly not been cheap or easy given the high animal count and distance involved.

Much to my annoyance, it is going to take 8 turns to construct the Ancient Forest mine at Evermore. I think ancient forest construction has a further penalty over standard forests, however the standard river cottages I'm building later at Evermore should be up faster.

anyway I need to substantially expand my worker count to get all this done, looks like I really want 2 workers or close to that per city to keep up with growth. If calabim use River of Blood in the near future this might change a bit. But Evermore is easily capable of running 12-13 food surplus for 2-3 turn growth. It would make little sense to train more settlers, anyway, until I get my worker count up.

Evermore: warrior -> warrior -> carnival -> worker -> (worker) -> (units?)
Hyll: finish settler (1) -> worker -> worker -> probably market

[uberfish]

So what do I get out of this coalition and what do I want to see happen?

Well for a start, the risk that Ilios will assimilate one of his neighbours if left alone and snowball out of control is quite high. Being the clear leader in all 3 economic aspects. The attack doesn't necessarily have to kill him, just get him back in line. In fact, I'd prefer if he was weakened but not eliminated outright, as an elimination would open up lots of space for Balseraph/Lanun to expand into.

On the other hand I don't particularly want to see Lanun ending up in possession of En-Kai (the gold/dye/incense/RoK holy city). If that happens we would just end up with a Lanun problem instead of a Malakim one; they've already taken the #2 spot on the demographic GNP chart with their academy. So IMO the goal should be to raze that city.



With Sciz' and Ilios' expansion potential reduced, I should also get the land I want in the east.

Also, in general, if everyone's development is slowed down by a war it helps me (because I have forests and cottages that need time to grow, and have a higher happiness cap than the other civs.)

[uberfish]

I brought the hawk back home for one turn to make sure I wasn't running into some horrible barbarian ambush with the warrior/settler pair heading for the city #4 site. In the meantime it minimizes the loss of resources if my hunter loses to the 2* bear. Anyhow, I successfully captured it and gained a level on the hunter. Maybe I could use captured animals in the east as part of the anti-Malakim task force? There was an elephant in the area and those are good stack defenders at 8str even if they can't attack. Ilios reported he had pushed a spider out of his borders, although my hawk hasn't spotted it.

So scouting in the southwest:



Ok, looks like we're in the clear and the barbarians founded the city of Crap Fishing Village aka Straatus. Probably a good thing I had a fog busting warrior on the hill near my planned city site to prevent barbs grabbing that instead. Hopefully I can take that over at a later stage (would have to negotiate this with Calabim; that site could also be potentially good for setting up a trade route with them.) I won't be able to culture-flip it in that spot because 5th ring takes too long. Actually maybe there's something decent west of Straatus, might be worth another hawk-turn while my hunter works his way east. If I'm lucky barbs might found some of the eastern city sites I want, not holding my breath on their city positioning skills though.

Evermore's growing into unhappiness (this is OK what with its +12 food surplus and gaining 4 happiness in 3 turns' time.) If I grow higher than I have improved tiles / forests, working temporary specialists would be acceptable.

My other subdue animal hunter is back to full health and going to collect the local bears around my area. A lone 2str goblin entered my lands to the east in the meantime but won't be able to do anything, the gorilla is able to provide extra support if needed.

[uberfish]

Also I have a potential trade connection with Ilios. Must be through the Ithralia river system. I guess cultural borders touching the river is enough.

I'll let him initiate on this. Looks like Ilios researched fishing to get the trade route to supply copper to Sciz, which also unlocked the connection with me. He'll probably also want trade connections with my cities, which are no doubt more valuable than Sciz's, to make his invested beakers back. I also don't want to be the one asking if I have to declare war later. I have a good excuse to accept the OB because declining would be suspicious. Then I can ask if it's ok if I go treasure hunting (there's a hut up near the treasure chest too, which he probably doesn't know about since the griffon has been eating his scouts.)