[SPOILERS] Catherine of China

[plako]

Minor diplo update. Over the previous days I've had some chats with Lord parkin and Nakor. I tried to get us gems at reasonable price, but failed. So we'll do without them.

Yet again we discussed with Lord Parkin about attacking Rego together ~T170, but so far LP has been just all talk no actions and I don't belive this will lead to anything concrete either. I won't commit myself before I see some actvity from LP.

Nako seemed friendly, but yet again I didn't get anything concrete out of the discussion. He promised to think about gems deal I suggested, but no response and now it is too late. I'm not intrested anymore.

I need new diplo direction. Nakor has had his chances to prove himself and has failed. LP has lied me too many times to feel comfortable. Rego is as sneaky as it gets. No good friend candidates in my neighborhood indeed. At least I've deals in place NAP with LP lasts until T200 and with Nakor until T165. So short term we're pretty safe. However there is big danger that when T200 arrives we'll have 3 hostile neighbors. Something really needs to be done before that.

So what are my short term options:
* NAP extension with Nakor
* NAP with Rego
* Discussion with LP about NAP extension to even longer time

I hate this. I would prefer not to deal with any of these people . LP is a runaway so longer NAP would only benefit him. I probably just had to force myself to ask NAP extension from Nakor and/or Rego.

I probably need to be more active with Luddite and Moogle, but it is quite hard when they're not that much around. Maybe trying to convince Locke would be good idea assuming he is willing to depart the "stop plako" mentality. I sent him a message couple of days ago, but I didn't get response though.

[antisocialmunky]

I think we should just try to get NAPs with everyone but LP and Rego and see how it develops:

-I think it may be a good idea to let LP do what he's going to do. He has yet to really go full bore with his civ so its one of those things where the best move is to basically sit around and do nothing for a while and concentrate on microing the crap out of our civ.
-Let Luddite recover and work with him when we can.
-Hope that Locke doesn't act like an idiot.
-Well I don't think we can really rely on anything from Nakor other than his continued existence.
-Rego I think can be relied on to try and win so we can just wait for him to deal with LP first.

Not sure if we should NAP with Rego or not. His options for expansion is basically to attack us with LP or go east and attacking us would probably lose both us and Rego the game since LP would just half-ass his front. So NAP is kinda redundant since Rego while greedy isn't an idiot. We can probably talk to him if we really want to, not really to convince him to attack LP but rather just let to let them know we exist on the diplo scene.

In the mean time we could try the world-map project. Basically make a big bitmap of the world out of everyone's screenshots. Atleast compare notes on LP with luddite since his scouting data seems more up to date.

PS. I think that if the world map doesn't work... and I don't think it would work, it would be useful to take our and luddite's intel, combine it into a package and just send that to everyone.

[plako]

I'll open up NAP discussion with Nakor. Locke will have Paper next turn so I think there is not much need for a combined map. Sooner or later there will come map trade that revals most of the map.

[antisocialmunky]

Have you thought of our goals long term? I don't think this game is going to end via Rifle-Draft stomp like PB2. The tech and production gaps are too close with the size of this map. I'm thinking about long term trying to land SoL + Rep for a super scientist in every city and then going for spaceship with our good hammer land. I'm thinking if we don't try for some sort of gambit during the early Industrial, Parkinstan will just snowball like crazy if we get into Late Industrial/Modern... you know if we don't quit before then.

What do you think about that for a general game-plan?

This would probably require getting a GE though with all the IND civs out there. I also would like to try for Notre Dame maybe since we lack those gems.

[antisocialmunky]

Also, does anyone know how good pavilions are for border wars? We could probably muscle our way into both the Rego and LP borders.

[plako]

I've thought about SoL, but I think it is unrealistic for us. Our tech rate is very bad at the moment. We probably want Calendar next after that it might be towards Constitution or maybe Banking.

Drama is pretty low priority tech and at this point we do alright in culture wars just being creative.

T146

Final battle against WK is approaching. 2 cities are unhappy at the moment.

This time just a screenshot from Nakor land. I don't know how can they afford to ignore Fish. I guess they just wanted the city towards our border so badly.

[antisocialmunky]

Yeah but we captured a large amount of cities. Its the good version of having a bad-tech rate since we should be back on our feet relatively soon.

I agree with calendar and then maybe get Guilds and Banking. I still want to shoot for SoL though long term. It is a shame that Locke is already on education. :\

[plako]

We'll recover definately. We did trade maps with Locke. There is still some unsettled land in the jungle south from Moogle and Mackoti.

[Krill]

If you want to comment on the map now I'd be fairly interested. And definitely don't hold back...

[plako]

If you want to comment on the map now I'd be fairly interested. And definitely don't hold back...

First of all I don't think map needs to be overly balanced. Game is more intresting with uneven starts. Diplomacy can be used to even up things or RNG can screw up even great start. So I think the map is balanced enough.

I haven't taken too close look yet. However I've gut feeling our start was one of the weakest: Very crowded area, lots of water, little flat green tiles and happiness resources.