You speak in whispers of the devils I have slain, Brian, Sareln & Ichabod of Elohim

[Brian Shanahan]

Ok I've the save played.

Nicker produced a warrior, and is now building a worker. To expedite this I moved the second citizen onto a forested plains hill, loosing a gold per turn, but speeding the worker by one turn.

Agriculture is in in one turn, when I'll switch to mysticism

My scout moved South West onto the Seven Pines and saw a river corn in the Grigori territory (and I thought from geography they were getting the food from flood plains, didn't think the starts would be so similar).

My warrior moved South East and saw nothing of note.

My second warrior moved South West from Nicker and will spend 4-5 turns wandering close to home.

I don't have time now to decipher anything in the demographics but I show it anyway:

I do think though that there's some interesting reading in the three indicators from Population down. It seems only Acalostas and I went for a growth first start. This is due to me being two turns behind (move and revolt) and yet still being one of only two civs on a two pop capital. Make of that what you will.

And finally some diplo between me and Acalostas. It also seems that Mackoti is the main turn player there at the moment (due to work on Acaolostas' part):

[COLOR="SandyBrown"]Greetings Brian Shanahan

Warmest greetings from the Grigori.

Please feel free to look around the area. As you can see, we have many sights to see, such as the legendary “Seven Pines”. If you see some bright flashing from that general area, don’t be alarmed, it is probably just our mentor Iliossiel, who is Like The Sun, Only Brighter. He likes to reminisce about the old days there.

We have heard much of one of your ancestors from Iliossiel, apparently he left the service of the gods to tend to the downtrodden, sick and ill people. If you continue this legacy, you will always be welcome in our lands

To the south of your scout is a colony of walking skeletons followed by some goblins, so be weary.

Acalostas[/COLOR]

And my reply:

Acalostas. Sorry for the lateness in replying.

I sent a second message to Mackoti (as he advised his email was the most stable) last night, with a bit of role-playing in it. The meat of the message was over a possible city site I wish to settle (around 20 turns) roughly 5 tiles NE of your borders, mainly for strategic reasons.

However I didn't think I'd get such an informative reply from yourself so I didn't include any information in my reply. So here goes. We're North West of yourselves (there's a line of mountains between the caps), and my scout headed straight East, then swang back around to the South West to your borders. On the way he encountered no beasties, nor barbarians, so there should be only wandering singleton units in the area. It is very dry and mountainous, unfortunately, but the site I want is probably the perfect defensive position from anyone coming from the East.

Now my scout is wandering off towards the area of the Seven Pines of which I knew already (gotta love that trait on the Elohim), and towards the East and South-East in a (probably vain) attempt to find other signs of civilisation. So I could report any interesting findings in that area if you wish, provided reciprocation were made.

Yours with a love for peace,

Brian

P.S. I'll probably role play most of my diplo to some extent, I seem to be chanelling Fr. Jack every time I talki in the voice of Einion, but this one was off the cuff and a direct and (almost) immediate response to your missive.

As I got a bit of info from Acalostas I sent back some, basically detailing further the crappy land I'm looking to settle (no mention of resources), and how I met no barbs, unlike them (they met a Skelly barrow to the south). So fair trade there I think. I also forwarded both messages to Mackoti.

Oh, and I noticed a factual error in my second message, the one begging for the site, where I said it was in the North West. It is actually North East of Grigori. So I also corrected my error in messages to the two.

You see people that is why I want others to comment on my messages. I need help to stop me from making myself look stupid.

[Brian Shanahan]

Before I play a little diplo from my site fishing trip:

[COLOR="SandyBrown"]Dear Dearg Doom

I am glad to hear that the Elohim have such a dedicated individual to root out the heretic fools who follow the Gods, this bodes well for our relationship. I am afraid we cannot view your no doubt enlightening video, as it is not available in our region. We appreciate the thought though.

Dear Einion “Jack” Hackett

Glad tidings to you as well, noble Jack (May I call you that?). We are considering your offer now, but we require more time and information before we decide. We are sending an expeditionary force to assess the situation, do not be alarmed, they may have a few…

…mutations. Originally my counterpart, the warlike Mackoti, was going to offer to send you a message to the effect of; “5 tiles ne? What are you smoking boy?”

And our General Bendas offered to put your head on a silver plate, and serve it to us.

Fortunately, I managed to convince them of the benefits of diplomacy and calm thought. Our lack of tools to make silver plates may have played a part in their decisions. It appears that Benedict and I are the only bastions of peace sometimes.

We will take your offers under careful consideration, and I will reply when I know more.


-Acalostas

P.S. Mackoti is not Macedonian, but he’s from Macedon

(actually he isn’t but oh well.)[/COLOR]

Now I'm not sure how to look at this one, maybe it is just Mackoti being his usual abrasive self, or a ploy to put me on the defensive, or a declaration of intent.

That site is most important to me for two reasons, 1) strategic defensive point (which is the most important), control of it will allow me a strong defence against anything attacking from my East, while giving me good visibility on any Grigori avenue of attack, while also allowing me to set up a secondary defensive site in the other indicate location by the corn and silk.
2) Dragon Bones, a good but not premier level unique feature. Gives a source of happy but not much else.

The food situation is bad, and I've already got sheep, and I'm not factoring in any bonus from the marble as I want to plan without the boni from the Wonders. If I get them they'll help but if I don't it won't hurt my plans (anyway the two I'd really like the Tower of Eyes and Guild of Hammers are IIRC not Marble dependant).

So what I'm really wondering is a) should I be cautious, or b) should I just lay my cards on the table, that i) they effectively cannot hurt me due to sanctuary, ii) I'm not afraid of going to war and iii) the concession offer was more in the interests of good neighbour relations than me reaching and covering my bare behind.

[Brian Shanahan]

Ok I've the game played, and allied to the diplomacy above I have an interesting choice to make.

First my explorations:
North:

West:

Grigori:

The title Poppy, Poppy? says it all. I'm very tempted to just pop the site hope for a big bad then sit back and laugh. Maybe I could use it as a sword of Damocles.

Next tech:

Agri is in, and as some of my other shots show I went with Myst as expected.
It's a 191 beaker tech due in 16 turn, so I'm getting a 20% discount from the prereq (which I can't think of right now) only.

Demographics (with special guests graphs):

I'm in no mood to be explaining tonight and the soldier count is still pretty baffling. The graphs are pretty much explanatory. Acalostas has gone food and commerce heavy in the last turn or two and thus I'm producing more hammers than he is, but I'm getting a worker out and trying to expedite it.

[Brian Shanahan]

Decided to send an acknowledgement to Acalostas, telling him a proper reply will follow

Dear Acalostas,

Please allow me and my dedicated lurkers some time (probably tomorrow) to formulate a reply.

Unfortunately Fr. Jack was not too pleased about some of the words contained in your reply. Fortuntately we have a spare bottle of Castrol GT for ermergencies. After drinking that Fr. Jack was like a baby.

Will endeavour to reply fully to all points expeditiously.

Yours Sincerly,

Dearg Doom PP
Parochial House
Nicker.

P.S. where abouts do you hail from IRL? Some of your phrasings seem quite familiar.

Last bit is just curiosity and answers if they come will not be revealed (as him yereselves).

[Ichabod]

Hey Brian,

Sorry for the lack of comments in the last days, but I got pretty hooked up in the WW game.

I'll have to read the thread again to get fully caught up. But I'll leave one thing for discussion here: if it's better to tech Calendar or Mysticism first? If you were spiritual, I'd say calendar wins, but assuming you are going to wait for both God King and Agrarianism to revolt, I'm not sure.

[Brian Shanahan]

Well I'm philo, so the reasoning behind Myst is to get the Sage points flowing quickly for the first GP. After that I was planning on running to BW and then go for calendar>CoL for Agri>Aristo.

Now it is a bit jumbled. But with a potentially psycho neighbour BW is a good early insert and Agristofarian farms afterwards will speed my way to what I want. Order, Empy and Priesthood in the mid game will be a strong combination for me to go and do a few nasty things if I set my empire up right.

What I'm most concerned about though is the veiled threat by Acalostas/Mackoti in the latest diplo. I'd rather have either a yes or a no answer this early, but it might be more profitable to bull my way through them.

[Ichabod]

Well I'm philo, so the reasoning behind Myst is to get the Sage points flowing quickly for the first GP. After that I was planning on running to BW and then go for calendar>CoL for Agri>Aristo.

Now it is a bit jumbled. But with a potentially psycho neighbour BW is a good early insert and Agristofarian farms afterwards will speed my way to what I want. Order, Empy and Priesthood in the mid game will be a strong combination for me to go and do a few nasty things if I set my empire up right.

What I'm most concerned about though is the veiled threat by Acalostas/Mackoti in the latest diplo. I'd rather have either a yes or a no answer this early, but it might be more profitable to bull my way through them.

Forgot about philo... Argh! Myst first is a good idea!

But I'd tech calendar right after Myst and delay the revolt to GK to time it together with Agrarianism. Calendar is a cheap tech and one of the easier commerce sources in FfH. Education takes a while to tech, different from BTS pottery. And agrarianism will help building settlers.

[Brian Shanahan]

Forgot about philo... Argh! Myst first is a good idea!

But I'd tech calendar right after Myst and delay the revolt to GK to time it together with Agrarianism. Calendar is a cheap tech and one of the easier commerce sources in FfH. Education takes a while to tech, different from BTS pottery. And agrarianism will help building settlers.

Yeah I see your point about Agri.

So revised tech path will be Myst>Calendar>Crafting>Mining>BW and then after the religious goodies.

[Ichabod]

And I think mackoti is a big bluffer, so you don't need to take the threat seriously. But we need to try and settle that spot quickly, because once settle, it'll be very difficult to take down (since warriors are very powerful in defense).

[Brian Shanahan]

And I think mackoti is a big bluffer, so you don't need to take the threat seriously. But we need to try and settle that spot quickly, because once settle, it'll be very difficult to take down (since warriors are very powerful in defense).

Definitely. I think worker>Warrior>Settler>Elder Council>Warrior is the new build order.

And if they don't like my placement I'll tell them "póg mo thóin", and set a sober Father Jack on them (sorry for the full episode, C4 are pulling clips off Youtube, and Youtube are spineless).