[SPOILER-PBEM14] Bismarck of Maya

[Gaspar]

Also - you have ~2 hrs Roland, or I'm going to have to fuck the diplo up all by lonesome... surely if you look hard enough, you can see a werewolf in there to jump at shadows about.

[Roland]

You couldn't make this any more difficult, could you Gaspar? :P

Hmmm... let's see.

Christ I'm not good at this from scratch. I have no idea what you want to say!

[Roland]

How's this for pulling it out of my ass in the final minutes? :neenernee

Sandover,

Yes, it is good to have friends, and especially friendly neighbors. It seems I may have more than one, so things are looking up in that department. I'm still hoping to work with you towards a common goal at some point, but for now I'm content with our current relations, and hope they continue as they have.

Regarding scooter, I think we both held a bit of mutual frustration regarding dealing with one another. It seems he would like to work through our initial offerings towards more clarity. I'm obliged to grant him that much - after all, I can't completely take all options off the table, no matter what my preferences may be. I've no doubt he's already been at your ear, and suspect he may have tried to plant the seeds of dissension between us. Not that I'm concerned about such things, mind you - we're both too smart to be played by the likes of him. It's just a question of whether or not one can trust him enough to ally with him for the short term. I've no doubt that, if given long enough, he'll take the opportunity to backstab - especially by proxy. My overall preference would be to work more closely with you at some point down the road once things have progressed further along for both of us, but I'm not looking to make an enemy out of anyone just yet.

In other news, I've met everyone on the map. Serdoa and I have yet to make much headway in terms of communication, but Lewwyn seems to be panning out much better. I don't expect too much from either at this point, but as I said - gotta keep my options open.

So how have your dealings with scooter, Lewwyn, and Serdoa been going? I'm curious as to your thoughts on them, and of course what they've been discussing with you - scooter in particular. I've not fully made up my mind about him especially, so a little insight would be appreciated.

As always, I look forward to your exchanges, as I hope you do the same.

[novice]

You guys put way more effort into your diplomacy than we do in PBEM13

[Gaspar]

You guys put way more effort into your diplomacy than we do in PBEM13

Well - I'd probably spend less time in diplo if we were playing as well as you were. Also, the cast of characters in this game sort of demands you pay it a bit more mind. Mostly its just a way to have a little fun with the mundane early turns - I can tell you how this game is going to play out right now, and the likelihood of any email from me changing that is slim.

Re: the Sandover message - I made a few minor alterations to make it sound more like me and sent it off. Thanks, Roland.

[Gaspar]

Sent this off to Lewwyn:

Lewwyn,

Mostly I'm just fucking with you, to be honest. You should be used to that from me by now. Obviously I doubt the PBEM6 diplo will apply directly - if nothing else, I suspect this game will be a little bit more competitive, but one can always infer things from people's behaviors. Take that to mean what you will.

Sandover and I have chatted quite a bit, simply based on me meeting him at least 10 turns before anyone else - might have been more than that even. I really didn't do much scouting early game except around my capital. Just not entirely sure there's been a whole lot productive in those chats. He's a bit of cipher.

I actually think I have the map 90% figured out. Stonehenge centering the map helps quite a bit, even if my scouting has been a bit lax. I'm not going to divulge anything quite that significant since it were my hammers that built that stone circle, and I'm still waiting to see if you want to play in my sandbox, or if you've already made too many friends for little old me. I will tell you that you are indeed not in the center of the map, though. Serdoa and I are cardinal opposites though, that much you have precisely correct. I'd guess you know more than you're telling me as well, however.

My relations with Sandover are definitely going to be important to my game. We'll either have to work together or I'll have to take him out. Given our positions, I'm more of a threat to him than an opportunity - it makes a whole lot more sense for him to move east than south. He's not going to hit domination with just my land, but only I can create a second front for him. Should make me more of an asset to you and/or scooter, actually. You both should be courting me harder. I want flowers and chocolates.

I only have one dedlurker, as Bruindane vanished - I just talk too much. You're playing in more games than me now as well, so I have plenty of time to blah-blah-blah, especially since Nakor does the driving in PB4. No idea whats going on in scooter and Sandovers threads, but they're both more famous around here than us, so I imagine they have plenty more lurkers than we do. Bastards.

Anything else interesting going on? Have you gotten anything interesting out of Serdoa? We shared a very short conversation and that's been about it. Perhaps he's playing too many games now, but he hasn't seemed this quiet from lurking other games. Not to mention his lurker thread has exactly one post. Odd.

Gaspar

[Gaspar]

Got this back from Sandover. Not exactly exciting.

Prophet Gaspar,

Funny how you decide to underline that's you're so content with our current relations. That's usually code for "I got a better offer elsewhere, so I'm not interested anymore". Just saying.

I've mostly been talking trash with scooter. We made an early agreement to not spend EP:s beyond graph level and that's pretty much it. We've shared some general information but I'm sure both of us were pretty selective about what we revealed.

Lewwyn is interesting. He's planning a killing spree (his own saying) and doesn't strike me as paying a whole lot of attention to diplomacy. I can certainly see scooter having a field day with him, so I won't take you up on that bet.

Serdoa is useless. Don't bother.

His Dark Lordship, Pharaoh Sandover

[Roland]

Sandover,

While I won't lie to you and say I have a "better" offer elsewhere (not that it would take much, given how informal our relations are at present), I will say there is potential for another ally - though even that might be overstating the situation. I'm in no hurry to turn my back on you and run off with the first person who bats their eyelashes at me and calls me handsome. I'm not that easy. However, I'm not so much a fool as to think it wise to alienate everyone I meet this early on, regardless of how I actually feel about them. There are many turns to play out, and I'd just as soon not make too many enemies until I'm ready to take them out.

As to the rest of your comment, I merely wanted to relax the pressure on you a bit, so as to not make you think I'm desperate for your attention. That recent exchange we had with regards to me meeting scooter left a bad taste in my mouth as to how I came across, and I didn't want that to spoil your views of me, nor whatever potential future we might have. Basically, I felt I came on too strong and decided it would be better to go with the flow a bit more. As you said, you're not ready for any permanent negotiations, and frankly I'm fine with that. I'm going to play things out as I see fit and go from there. There will be ample opportunities for us to expand our working relationship in the future.

[Insert quips about scooter, Lewwyn, and Serdoa as you see fit.]

As always, modify to your tastes (and don't expect me to keep this up too much ). Hopefully I'll get a chance to review it before it goes off.

[Gaspar]

All quiet on the diplo front at the moment. There is however, a turn to be played. I suppose I should stop pleading for game tips because 1. Its a bit unbecoming and 2. With all the personalities in this game, I'd be globally lurking too.



Anyway, not much to be said about it, Settler moving towards the new city site, will found in 2T. Capital is building Oracle, warrior is exploring. Now that my noob builder portion of the game is almost complete, we'll see how quickly we can take advantage of the opportunities that confers and get a flotilla of workers and settlers out. Once I feel fine regrows from the whip, it'll go Settler -> Worker -> Settler. My current workforce should be sufficient to support the next two cities, as once the sheep tile at the capital is improved, the capital has a decent selection of improved tiles to work until the happy cap increases. City 3 is going to go by the copper. City 3 is going to pop out 3 workboats (2 for crab and fish, 1 for local exploration) then slave a granary in and then churn out military for the short term. City 2 will build its own MP, then move to a granary followed by worker/settler production.

AH comes in EOT. Fishing next, followed by Hunting and Writing. Anything beyond that will depend on how long we get to be alone. As long as the bear up north is kept at bay, we'll focus on getting the economic techs. If I start to fear the reaper then I'll probably sneak Archery - HBR in there for options. Hopefully that's still a good ways away though, I'd really like to get cities 4,5 and 6 out, then we can start thinking about military action.

Anyway, that's about it. Not really sure how I managed to wait til T40 to get city 2 settled, but I certainly don't think its anything that can't be recovered from. Question of the game for me in the near term is whether or not to settle the more likely to be productive close to home cities or whether I need to Pink Dot towards that marble site. In many ways, that will be the edge of my peacefully settled empire, so I don't believe I want it that early, but Lewwyn could definitely grab it if he prioritized westward settling. Hopefully that jungle nearby plus how utterly crap the site is will deter him.

[Gaspar]

This came in from Lewwyn, I think he doth protest too much. Sandover's no idiot, he's not going to come try and take me out while I'm at 1 city. He's certainly wait for me to settle a few for him and preferably get a shrine up. So... if it *is* Sandover, I'd guess he or scooter is the target. Which makes me wonder... what's Sandover not telling me? Could just be random subterfuge, but I doubt that as well. I must confess not paying a lot of attention to the demos when I played.

Hey Gaspar,

I kinda figured you were, and I am used to it :P. I don't have much time I've got a lot of RL stuff and I'm busy today. But I wanted to say I've been watching the demos and there was a power spike. It wasn't me. It wasn't Serdoa who just researched Writing this turn as you can see by open borders option in diplo, unless Serdoa is building warriors... But it looks big (comparatively), and I don't think its Scooter either.

So if it wasn't you... Chop out some holkans ASAP. I don't want you dying on me.

I'll try to address some of your other questions, comments later. Didn't do it yesterday cause I felt diploed out, it was Easter, and I'd written a lot of turn reports for the day. Today I'm just busy, ^_^

Lewwyn