[SPOILERS-PBEM14] Sandover(phi/spi) of Egypt

[Sandover]

Turn 37



Yup, Lewwyn's second city is defended by a settler. Makes GES looks like Superman in comparison.

He can slave a warrior from scratch but I'm going in anyway. It's a lowland city without a border pop so the only defensive boost he can get is the innate 25% city defense warriors got. Those odds are certainly good enough for me!

And there's more. I explained to Rowain that I'm always on the lookout for more slaves and he quickly decided to get moving again. I've enhanced what he found:



Byzantine borders. That city can't be the hindu holy city because then the borders would've expanded already. It's likely scooter's newly founded third city since hinduism should by all likelyhood have been founded in Dominion (his second city).

I have his power graph. He's only very slightly above me, and the fact he's now at three cities is quite the give-away he's running a farmer's gambit.

But I can't build war chariots yet.

What? Did somebody say "warrior rush"?



Hell yeah I did!

Working the cattle, ivory and city centre Satet's output is 6 hammers/turn. That's 3 warriors in 5 turns. Adding GES I'm up to 4. Using a road I can have those warriors standing outside that city in 8 turns.

If scooter isn't a complete idiot he's getting a strategic resource hooked up any time now. However, he will need to grow that city to size 4 to insta-whip anything decent unless he has already started to train something by the time I arrive. I don't think he's likely to do that, especially if I go to war with Lewwyn next turn, so this just might work.

There are two other things that could ruin this for me. A border pop and scooter sending an explorer in my direction. I don't expect a border pop unless he's lucky enough to get a hindu spread. The explorer thing could happen, but if I withdraw Rowain before scooter spots him then he doesn't know I know he's been expanding in that direction. He could still send one, but I'm willing to take that risk.

One issue here is obviously that I'm about to head into war on two fronts before having a strategic resource (and you thought rego's team played a crazy opening in Pitboss 2). I'm gonna have to solve that, so I'll be getting a settler out of Sandoria before too long. I'd like to grow the city all the way to size 6 and 3-pop slave one from there, but I haven't really decided yet.

Interesting times ahead, don't you think?

[zakalwe]

Looks like sheer lunacy.

I like it.

[Sandover]

Also got a message from Gaspar this morning:

Your Dark Lordship, Pharaoh 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 the current state of Egypt-Maya relations, and hope they continue positively.

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. Ironic as I may find that, 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 work 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.


On that proxy note - care to make a 50 gold bet that Lewwyn ends up in scooter's backpocket at some point? I've no intel to that effect, just a gut feeling from knowing the two of them.

In other news, now that 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 a bit better. Mostly I just think Lewwyn likes bantering with me, so it may not actually have any long term bearing on anything. 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 if you've managed to find any more substance to your conversations with them than I have.


Prophet Gaspar

Whoops. Reading between the lines here it looks like I was wrong not to worry. 'Boy that was fast! Scooter must be having some seriously amazing pick-up lines.

Meh, whatever. Gaspar is still at one city doing his silly wonder roundabout so it's not like I've been having doubts about working with him. Lets see how he respond to this:

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

[Sandover]

I got Gaspar's attention at least. Fastest response so far!

Your Dark Lordship Pharaoh Sandover,


(Lightning quick response time, as I'm likely to be out of commission for a wee bit. Don't let it ruin my reputation.)


Actually, its more a case of my correspondence with virtually everyone else has irritated me significantly. scooter wants to lawyer everything, Serdoa, as you said is useless. Lewwyn's kind of fun to trash-talk with, but I'm 95% sure he's lied to me already. You might be the scariest one in the bunch, but at least you're honest. I'll just have to remember to ask you every few turns if there's a SoD waiting in the fog for me.


I'm a pragmatist, so I'll work with someone even if I don't like them if I have no real options, but I'm still fully behind the idea of the jihad as my preferred game resolution. Just seems like it'd be silly for me to tell them that just yet, particularly as you've been known to change your mind from time to time.


I do wonder if Serdoa's particularly into this game. Between his non-diplomacy and essentially no lurker thread, maybe he's just looking for a quick exit. Sadly, he's the furthest away, so probably unlikely we'll get the opportunity to give it to him.


Prophet Gaspar

And maybe I'm not very good at reading between the lines? I like this message a lot better than his last one. Hm.

Well I'm not going to tell him about my attack plans either way because then they risk getting spilled. I'll declare on Lewwyn next turn provided he doesn't have a warrior pop up somewhere and check if Gaspar want to formalize something after that. If not, then I think I can safely assume I'll have to run the crusade all by myself.

Not sure if I'm gonna write a response before tomorrow. Need to think about that one.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

You remind me of this guy:

http://www.dontevenreply.com/view.php?post=102

Hilarious.

[Sandover]

Turn 38

Lewwyn had a warrior nearby:



No use going in now, since he can slave another one. Darrell would be a sitting duck. Good game Lewwyn.

This makes me rethink the warrior rush somewhat, as I was intending to use a war with Lewwyn as a smoke screen. Lets move Rowain:



Hill city that already has a warrior fortified in it. Not that hard to overcome, but accounting for other factors this isn't looking nearly as attractive anymore. Warrior rush called off.

Sorry guys, I'm gonna have to play nice for a while still. For those of you who don't know my style: you should be prepared to see this a lot. I tend to make crazy schemes up on a whim and call them off just as easily when they prove too troublesome. I tend to react to the environment a lot and change my short-time plans constantly. This was one of the more extreme cases so far and illustrates the point perfectly.

Back to looking at expansion. Here's the current plan:



I'm gonna keep working with the assumption that no one is gutsy enough to attack me early on and found my third city with horses in the second ring. I'll slave an obelisk at size 2 to establish the border with Lewwyn and enable war chariots. This is going to be my main GP-farm, and I'm contemplating whether I want the Pyramids in here for cultaral pressure and extra GP-points. It's quite defensible so long as I place a sentry NE of the rice somewhere.

[Sandover]

Sent two messages:

Prophet Gaspar,

That's more like it. Thanks for the clarification.

I spotted a settler inside Lewwyn's border last turn, so he will join scooter at three cities before too long. Scooter's third city is actually quite close to me, but not in a way that interfere with my settling, so I'll leave him at it so long as he isn't coming further south. I'm going to try to establish my border with Lewwyn with my next city but that is some time away still.

Where's your explorer heading? I sent Rowain to check up on what scooter is doing and Darrell just found a mountain ridge near Eureka (Lewwyn's second city) that's causing him to backtrack for a while.

Scooter,

Rowain just gained visibility on Constantinople. I don't think you're willing to settle aggressively on me, but for the sake of clarity I want to make sure you're not coming further south? I see our land border lining up perfectly right now, so we might actually be able to remain friends this game. Emphasis on 'might', of course.

Is that your capital or second city further west? It's impossible to make out, but I figure it's the hindu holy city?

Also, did I ever tell you about my change of plans? In case I didn't, I should let you know I won't have writing any time soon.

His Dark Lordship, Pharaoh Sandover

[Sandover]

Your Dark Lordship, Pharaoh Sandover,


Glad I can be of service.


Last things first, I've sent Mortician south of Lewwyn to see what if anything lies there, he made a wrong turn at a peak tile, but I should be able to see where that branch SE of the marble goes shortly. There's still an outside chance there's a second connection in the south, so the opportunity to flank him in possible future military action seemed worth exploring. Since I've already met everyone, I'm less concerned about getting eyes on exactly where they're located, I'm sure some HAs/Knights/Cuirs/Cavs/Tanks somewhere down the road can finish the exploration. On that note, perhaps we'll get the foundation for a map trade in the future this way, I can defog the south while you get some of the north. Food for thought, anyway.


My settler will be in position next turn, though its forested tile, so I'll have to wait 2T to actually settle city 2. T40 - I should probably just stop playing Civ forever. Anyway, my instincts tell me that an early forge in the capital should allow me to spit out workers and settlers at a pretty decent rate soon. So long as Lewwyn doesn't grab that lousy desert city we discussed, I feel pretty comfortable that land grab's not going to matter all that much for me anyway - we're all in pretty defined areas. 3 Cities is about where I'd normally like to be now, so good for scooter and Lewwyn. May they die a thousand capitalist deaths.


Because I'm a nice guy, even though you didn't ask, I thought I'd let you know Lewwyn sent me an email being alarmed about a power spike. Now I play right before him, and I didn't really notice anything, so either he's just spiked and he's trying to softpedal it, or he's unable to read demos. Most big spikes at these turns are just the military techs coming in - wheel, BW, AH, etc, but regardless, I thought you might want to know. He tried to imply it was you, of course, but fearmongering is what those capitalist running dogs do best. I'd prefer if you kept this between us, so that perhaps Lewwyn will be brave enough to give me more info in the future.


Come to think of it - are you up to anything militarily? [Consider this a recurring question that will be at the end of every 4th or 5th exchange we have.]


Prophet Gaspar

Responding later.

[Sandover]

Prophet Gaspar,

I like the map trade idea. I'm not a big fan of trading screen shots though (so much easier to have stuff visible in the actual game) and paper's quite a distance away. I'll be focusing exploration north however, so we definitly have reason to share our findings some way or another.

Expansion doesn't feel just as important as it normally is for me either, as it's pretty easy to see who's going to get what to my east. I think the situation might be different in the area between the financial civs, but that can only serve to our advantage. If everything goes as planned I'm going to place my third city at the lake north of the marble. Once that happens planting a city at the actual marble is going to look very unattractive to Lewwyn, so I don't expect to see him going for it any time soon if at all. He should be busy grabbing land to his north.

Lewwyn must be trying to fabricate something. I don't see what Serdoa would've done to spike (granted, I haven't actually been keeping an eye on him) and I know for a fact that the rest of us are running paper tin defenses right now. Gold Ergo Sum the warrior told me he's using his grr-face to scare potential enemies from invading Egypt, but I sincerely doubt that would've caused a power spike! Maybe Lewwyn is in "OMG war chariots lets panic"-mode?

I'm not sharing our discussions with Lewwyn, and I expect you to keep quiet as well (though that probably goes without saying). He's not very interogative or sharing so we should have no issues keeping him out of loop. In general it seems you're having somewhat better luck talking to him while the same goes for me regarding scooter. Pre-game interaction undoubtedly have a way of easing things up no matter whether said interaction was of the positive kind or not.

I'm not up to anything of the military kind today, no. I might change my mind tomorrow, obviously, but so it goes.

His Dark Lordship, Pharaoh Sandover

Good thing he didn't ask about military plans yesterday, because then I would look stupid today.

[Sandover]

Sandover,

I admit I was confused at first on what you meant by Rowain until I played the turn this morning and saw a scout.

No I don't have any plans to go further south - I wanted to plant that city for a number of reasons, but a big one is because it makes a very natural southeast border for me. So if it is agreeable to you, then yes, perhaps we'll be alright. Emphasis on 'perhaps', of course.

Seriously though, yeah, both my first two cities are further west. My second city (holy city) went SE of my capital and third went SE of of the holy city, so now my job is to fill in the rest of my dots and make sure the sneaky Egyptians and Ottomans don't try to steal my cities.

I don't suppose you are going to tell me what you are going for instead of writing are you? Making a run at Oracle maybe?

scooter

Good to know about how he's been settling. Looks like we're going to avoid border tensions.

Scooter,

I'm actually researching metal casting right now. Feel free to laugh at me later if it turns out it wasn't a good way to go.

His Dark Lordship, Pharaoh Sandover