Nicolae Carpathia and Selrahc bring about World Peace, UHC, Apocalypse as Sheaim

[Nicolae Carpathia]

More horribly depressed and ashamed, than boring. I'm playing this from a position of weakness.



Here's the lucky barb city, it's already got 2 archers in it, and it's on a hill. How best to deal with that? The 2/4 archers are already on S8. I'm currently building a settler for a city 9 of the dungeon, it sets a nice border with Gaspar.



The copper city (an excellent production city). I'm going to push food until I get to size 4, and then stagnate and start pumping workers and settlers. I want to send that PZ against Domir, but I won't let it finish until I double revolt into Aristocracy/Apprenticeship. It's going to be a pain growing once I get the -1 food from Aristocracy.



Gaspar's city is a serious reach, it's 7 tiles west of his capital, I'm not even sure if their borders touch. I would take it but alas we have a NAP and I have no casus belli to break it.



Borders popped at EoT, shows we have very little land to work with.



Now this is the reason why I'm so depressed. Look at that freaking graph. Look at it. Kyan's already up to 5 cities. That GNP can't all be culture. According to 2nd hand information from Rawking --> Gaspar, Kyan has a ton of floodplains. He's currently running aristofarms. How is it even possible to win this game? I floated an idea of a dogpile to Gaspar a few weeks ago, he says it's going to need to hit before T120, but I think he'll be safe even then.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Played, CoL finally came in. I'm thinking we tech Sanitation, our weakness has always been food, and we're going to lose that once we switch to Aristofarms. What do you think Selrahc?

Also, I fucked up the turn somehow, for some reason I was DoWing everyone I left-clicked on, even though I wasn't touching the keyboard. That was really weird, I hope it was okay of me replaying the save.

[Selrahc]

Played, CoL finally came in. I'm thinking we tech Sanitation, our weakness has always been food, and we're going to lose that once we switch to Aristofarms. What do you think Selrahc?

Hum. I've got some conflicting opinions here.

Sanitation won't be too bad, but with the lack of water? It might be a good idea to grab construction first.

I'd also wonder about whether to grab festivals before hand. We want to be able to build markets.

And then there is the issue of KoTE. We want to grab that relatively early, so we can start training adepts. But there isn't much point in doing that until we have a site that can train adepts for us. Babylon might be a good location for that.

But then sanitation is useful... Public Baths and powered up farms everywhere. Um.

If you're thinking an injection of food will help us out the most, go for it.

Also, I fucked up the turn somehow, for some reason I was DoWing everyone I left-clicked on, even though I wasn't touching the keyboard. That was really weird, I hope it was okay of me replaying the save.

Most definitely fine.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

CoL just came in, switched to Aristocracy and Apprenticeship. Expenses dropped to -1g/turn, it might let us delay Festivals a bit. I'll finish the PZs next turn so no hammers go to waste. We are now unambiguously #6 in crop yield (I prefer PBEM18, where I have double the crop yield of the nearest competitor). Domir grew to size 2, how many troops should it take to kill the city?

I also spent the anarchy turn putting research into Mysticism, so we can get our Elder Councils up. I am so glad we lucked with a GSage, otherwise we'd be bottom of both GNP *and* food. Also, should we run a turn of 100% gold, just so we have enough gold for the GPriest event? We're on 50g right now. I'd also like to slot in Animal Husbandry somewhere, just so I can get the jungled pigs hooked up.

Also, Kyan hit me up on chat, he was willing to make a deal so that Rawking and I would take out our frustrations on Gaspar, and not him. What do you think? Should I let him know that I feel that I have casus belli to not consider the NAP standing? I'm alot more militarily secure with bronze, not much Kyan can really send at me. Maybe I can wrest a good deal out of it, after all, it's not like he was particularly faithful to earlier deals.

[Commodore]

I can't comment as to what the best course is for your empire, but in general, I'd understand if someone considered a NAP broken by ambiguous actions...but it'd be a lot worse if that someone didn't inform me that he considered the NAP null and void. Down that road lies mutual cries of "NAP-breaker!" and other potential for drama.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Fair enough, I've been thinking that for a while, I've just tried to not bring it up until I have pyre zombies out on the field.

[Selrahc]

Letting Kyan know that you consider the NAP null is certainly the nicer course. We were forced into the deal at gunpoint, so if you want to play it a bit underhandedly I think you're quite justified. But given that I'm not entirely sure Kyan actually did break the deal (was the lair explored before he agreed to anything? maybe), it might be a good idea to talk it out.

Going on a pyre zombie rampage to kill some elfses sounds fun enough. If you want to put aside the more difficult long term "Take down the Balz" mission for the moment and focus on elf slaying, I'll be happy enough helping you. Post T100 elf killing will still be quite tricky though... it almost certainly means facing Gilden and the March.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Gaspar sent a message:

Hey Nicolae,

I was reading a thread for one of the other PBEMs and saw the quote: "Close neighbors need to be either allies or dead ASAP" and immediately thought of you. I suppose we're getting to the point of the game where we either start building up to a war at our NAP expiration or find some common ground for cooperation.

I'll be honest, I've sort of assumed I'd see an invading PZ stack at T100 ever since I initiated contact with my threat - I don't blame you at all for holding that against me. I felt really had no option though, given our shocking proximity, if you had beelined BW you'd have a stack PZ's before I even had my worldspell, and there's nothing I was going to come up with that early that could defend.

Anyway, I'm sending you this mail to indicate that I really see no point in us fighting. As things stand, it looks like the best our civs can hope for is third place. Kyan and Rawkking have rocketed out to great starts, and we've clearly gotten short shrift in terms of land quality. Even though you might be better placed than me to improve all this jungle, the fact that we're surrounded by it had slowed us both down. Add to that your professed lack of food and my professed lack of commerce and you get what we have now.

I think our only chance in this game is to work together and make gains against the big dogs to our west. I have some ideas on how our partnership could work, so I'm hoping for some sort of commitment from you moving forward. Of course, I am open to any thoughts you may have on the subject.

Regards,
Gaspar, Ljosalfar High Council

It's not like he'll won't see a T100 attack coming. Drats, what do you think Selrahc?

Also, how many troops do you think I need to take out that barb city? Also, should I warn Gaspar that I'm going to be settling on that hill very soon?

[Selrahc]

7 or 8 copper warriors will do the job. Less is you can get Pyre Zombies.

If Gaspar has a proposal for you, I say hear him out. No harm in that at least.

[Thoth]

Ah.

Aaah.

Aaaarrrrggghh!!!!!

To quote a former employer of mine: "The word you are looking for is "MOTHERFUCKER!"

Damn, but that hurts.

If only you'd had an extra 26g for that event! A free settler!

If it costs 100g, it isn't free.