RBP7 - SPOILERS - Genghis Khan of Egypt

[sunrise089]

Ok, I post baited enough. You guys are good players, so I must not have defined "useful" well enough.

Monarchy is definitely useful, if nothing else I'd potentially save an anarchy when I revolt to slavery anyways. Likewise Mysticism will be needed rather soon for border pops as I'm not creative.

I actually popped Masonry

[sunrise089]

Borders ho!



I'll be doing a nice step-in-step-out with the tile NW next turn, very neighborly and all...

[sunrise089]

Turn 11:

I think I'll just do the giant combined image every five turns now, so here's a closeup of what I explored or am about to.



As I planned last turn I followed the blue path in the north, and will move light blue next turn, so hopefully that will slow down how long it takes to nail down my location. I'm not exactly close to Mali, but I really don't want to be out of the game because a few Skirmishers wander into my land either. I posted a RP-flavored greeting for Dave in the public thread.

[sunrise089]

Sent this to Dave in the public thread:

@DaveV,

It seems we actually both found each other at the same time

In the interest of avoiding misunderstandings, I hope we can both agree that scouting each other's lands inside cultural borders has the potential to cause misunderstandings, can affect unit movement (this is always war after all), etc, and so should be avoided. You'll notice my scout has not entered your lands, and in fact plans to head away from your civ next turn. It would have moved away this turn, but it was chased by a lion. In the spirit of friendship I'm happy to tell you the lion is 2S1E of my scout's current position, so be careful

Basically I don't want to surprise-attack his scout and have him retaliate with Skirms, but I also don't want him finding out how good my land is while he has the best choking unit in the game. Dave is already in a tricky position. He has a better longterm leader and civ than I do, so that suggests he should be peaceful, but we both have very powerful and very early UUs. Of course his are resourceless which means if he attacks me he gets full value out of his units and I probably can't hook mine up, whereas if I attack him at my leisure he risks not being able to defend even with Skirms due to my movement advantage. Of course as others have said in this thread usually spending a lot of hammers on military early is a red herring in this sort of game, but seeing my amazing land may shift the balance back towards attacking/choking, hence my message.

And in case you're wondering, depending on how he moves his unit, my threat does have teeth...

[sunrise089]

Dave posted this in the public thread:

Sunrise,

We will definitely not move through your territory. Our scout felt compelled to take a look at the much-praised Egyptian capital before leaving the area, but will now be moving on. A more accurate graphic for that scout would be a chubby balding guy in bermuda shorts and a Disney World T-shirt, carrying a fancy camera on a strap around his neck.

We haven't seen any animals, so we can't reciprocate on your warning. We appreciate your frank and open communication, and hope it will lead to a peaceful long term relationship.

Here's where his unit landed:



My understanding is that he can only see the tiles I've marked with an "x." There was one tile I'm uncertain about, so that got a question mark.

Overall this isn't terrible. He knows my land is good but not amazing yet, he knows I have a strong but more defensible 2hammer cap, and that I've kept my warrior at home. Hopefully he moves on and we can delay any conflict that might result.

I said earlier in the thread that I assumed I was to the south of empty jungle area on this map. Judging from Dave's start, either that's wrong, or we don't have the same sort of empty jungle/clear north+south civ split on this map. Even with 18 civs Dave and I are too close, I think, to be in average positions if the civs are evenly separated.

My main hope right now is that Dave has met or will soon meet other civs. If you're going to spend hammers on units to send out you want to make sure you don't leave your home front totally exposed, so hopefully Dave will be at least given some pause on that margin.

[spacemanmf]

Nice strategic thinking.

My vote is no, he can't see the tile marked '?'. (For the avoidance of doubt, I haven't read DaveV's thread.)

[T-hawk]

I'm also pretty sure the scout can't see the ? tile. He could if the scout moved to the corn then to its current location, though.

I am wondering why he described it as the "much-praised Egyptian capital", since all he could have seen is the corn. Maybe it was just flowery writing. OTOH, by seeing all the X tiles, he can see from fog bleed that the cow and other corn squares are unforested in the midst of a heavily forested capital, which usually means resources.

[kjn]

I'm also pretty sure the scout can't see the ? tile. He could if the scout moved to the corn then to its current location, though.

I am wondering why he described it as the "much-praised Egyptian capital", since all he could have seen is the corn. Maybe it was just flowery writing. OTOH, by seeing all the X tiles, he can see from fog bleed that the cow and other corn squares are unforested in the midst of a heavily forested capital, which usually means resources.

Well, he can get quite a lot of info from what he does see. A plains hill, for starters. Then that the corn by thelma lake isn't worked, and there must be a reason for that. Since he can surmise a worker start, the most likely reason is a 3-foodhammer tile with an extra commerce.

Or it's flowery writing. Or flattery.

[fluffyflyingpig]

Nice strategic thinking.

My vote is no, he can't see the tile marked '?'. (For the avoidance of doubt, I haven't read DaveV's thread.)

If i remember correctly, he could see over the forest only if he were standing on a peak right now. Peaks see over hills and forests, hills see over flat land.


It has been ages since I actually played or tested this, so i may be wrong though :neenernee

[Nicolae Carpathia]

You can't stand on peaks.

Unless you're playing FFH or something