[SPOILER] Willem II of England

[Gaspar]

Just a short update because I'm exhausted. Clearly I should have worked on some Maths in addition to researching it, because we still cannot whip the settler. We surely will be able to whip it next turn, though certainly not the advantage we'd like, I almost wonder if whipping it at 3T is really worth it, as opposed to letting the chop go in and then using overflow into a worker or an axe. Really have to get more tiles improved, so we have the ability to really max hammers for stuff like this. To that end, Jol started chopping for the next worker at Bergkamp. VP's worker is due in 2, Gullit is pasturing sheep, Hiddink is roading to city site 3 (Van Der Sar? Overmars? We should probably save Davids for when we go to build a city closer to GE. Also, I hate Edgar Davids, just saying.)

3 more turns of spending on Malakai til we have his graphs. I wonder if we should go GE or Tredje first. I sort of suspect Tredje will be a bigger threat in the game to win, but I also suspect GE is a bigger threat in the game to attack us. Hard to say.

In meaningless news, it appears that GE put his second city on the exact same tile we did. His box appears to be aligned the same way ours is. This means the next tiles we reveal will be "border" tiles, and we should get a bit of map intel about the edge of our own box as we head towards India.

Also, I sent the message to Whovus. It will tell us a lot about their play how they respond. I suspect that my India fear-mongering will not succeed and instead the reply will be mostly trying to buy their safety re: GE. Time will tell. I did not muster the strength to put together an information gathering message to GE, so if you are so inclined, that'd be great. Probably don't need to send anything to Malakai until we actually learn something, though a hey, how's it going message probably wouldn't hurt.

[Nakor]

We should whip. It's a city 2 turns earlier and we're working unimproved tiles.
I suggest we hook up the gems as well and build some cottages...

Let's go GE first with EP's.

Back to work...

[Gaspar]

Well, well, well...

Sanibona Nakor & Gaspar of the Totaal Voetbal Empire

His Illustrious Majesty [yada yada yada] would like to apologise for
the delay since our last missive. The Shakirite grape-vines have been
rife with unfounded rumours concerning the stability of His relations
with Number-One-Wife. These rumours have been crushed, as has the head
of the town-crier who started them!

His Illustrious Majesty [yada yada yada] is pleased by your plans for
a new settlement honouring the great player, Edgar, and wishes you
well in avoiding the local wildlife.

You asked about our Quechua noticing "the smoke of chopped forests",
His Illustrious Majesty [yada yada yada] wishes to know if that
includes those within our own lands?

On a side issue, His Illustrious Majesty [yada yada yada] wishes to
advise you that he grows ever annoyed at the existence of the Crazy
Empire's lake-side city, especially as they have not had the courtesy
to respond to our opening missive! The rate at which it is sprawling
out may require some direct action on our part to secure the Fish for
His Number-One-Wife! His Illustrious Majesty [yada yada yada] does not
take the matter of War lightly, but sees it as a necessity to advance
the well-being of His people, and, of course, to keep Number-One-Wife
happy!!

His Illustrious Majesty [yada yada yada] trusts in the discretion of
the people of Totaal Voetbal in this matter.

Apparently, that city of Whovus' isn't only a reach in terms of maintenance, its a reach in terms of inter-Civ relations. As I suspected from Ravus Sol's last message to us, it appears GE is gearing up for war. I sort of suspected that when we got our first message from Inca, the tone was just a wee bit aggressive. I suspect its his first RB game and he wants to show he's not just another "peaceful builder." There's a reason we all behave like that in the early game - ancient war is stupid. You don't have the kind of resources where you can afford to commit extra, and you can't really afford maintenance if you happen to take something. I fully support an opportunistic strike, but the idea of gearing up for war is just stupid.

Not to mention, he mentions his chopping, what's he going to do - chop out a half dozen Quecha's? Sure, they might take the city, but then you've got a bunch of worthless warriors. Quecha's work vs. the AI because the early AI defense is all archers. Human's defend with Warriors and then Axes & Spears, so you can only succeed if you catch someone underdefended and overwhelm them with shear numbers. Its just stupid. The bottom line is won't have a huge impact on the game, as Whosit's city is probably hurting more than its helping at the moment so I'm sure he'll recover, but it will impact diplomacy, as Whovus and GE will likely be at odds for the rest of the game. On the plus side, it secures our Eastern Flank. On the minus side, it secures India's Western Flank.

Oddly enough, probably the best play India has made this game thus far is to have done no scouting. By not meeting anyone, everyone has been able to develop their own concerns independent of what they are doing, and nobody has graph visibility to watch them surging ahead.

As far as replying to GE, my thought is we should stay very neutral in this arrangement, while remaining friendly to both sides. Ultimately, it benefits us in the race to 2nd place if nothing else, to watch our neighbors have disputes. Obviously, if we get the opportunity to do take advantage of foolishness on the part of our rivals, we should do so, but we're a minimum of 10 turns away from having any military to speak of, so we're not going to do anything yet. Still, I strongly support the idea of getting at least a Chariot in the area, simply to watch the carnage.

[Gaspar]

On an aside, it does seem that since everyone's instinct seems to be to explore towards us, the natural response has also been for them to expand towards us. To that end, while I normally don't approve of such things, we may want to feel out Malakai re: a settling agreement. Given our lunatic neighbors to the east, it seems our best chance to secure a safe lake site will be to the west.

Additionally, we should probably decide who we want as an ally in this game. I think Malakai and Tredje are the only options as this point, as allying the western neighbors will only result in us getting tangled in their disputes. Malakai is the logical choice since we've already started buttering him up, but I suspect his personality is such that he will be that friendly to everyone. Also, I can tell much since I don't have graphs, but I don't get the feeling he's played a particularly strong opening. That probably doesn't bode well for later, not to mention that fact the either he or I is India's most likely expansion target once they've finished clear-cutting their initial square.

That's a lot of words without saying anything, just that we should probably make it a priority to talk a lot to our not-Crazy neighbors.

[novice]

Just wanted to say that your thread is an interesting read. And that GE's diplo messages are making my head hurt.

[Gaspar]

So... whipped the settler this turn, the worker will also complete in VP, so we can switch to Military there. Chopping towards a worker outside Bergkamp, afterwards it should also switch to some military til we have more than cardboard. Exploration revealed Cows in the border area, so the borderland does appear to be appropriately resource-full. India is up to 170 in score, I'm actually going to enjoy it when they completely smoke all of us and I get to say I told you so to our dumbass neighbors.

We got graph visibility on Malakai at EOT, we'll lose it next turn after he plays before getting it for good the turn after that. I thought I would dazzle the lurkers with some boring graphs:

Here's GNP, we're top as you'd exp the CRE/FIN civ to be:



And here's production, where we've done unexpectedly well compared to our neighbors:



We'll save diplo for the next post.

[Gaspar]

Goeidag, Emperor Malakai,

Haven't touched base with you in a few days. Just thought I'd see how things were getting on over in Korea.

Have you discovered anything interesting about the map? We haven't uncovered much, other than to say that it appears the Incan lands are identically laid out to our own, our intrepid exploring Goalkeeper has just hit the borders between Inca's box and India's, so I suspect we are 6-7 turns away from contact. We have not yet stumbled upon a lake on that border, though with the poor visibility, its tough to say how far away we may be from that

Has anyone else met you yet? Or have you stumbled upon Inca (I believe you were headed in that direction last we spoke?) Rumor has it that Crazy and Shakirite relations are rather icy, and may be headed worse. Foolish behavior, but none of my business. How are your relations with Crazy these days? I believe you indicated you were haggling over a NAP. Did you get one worked out?

I suppose we have sort of informally worked out a intelligence agreement, or rather, we've at least given you plenty of intelligence that we haven't shared with anyone else. Are you still interested in developing a formal intelligence agreement? I ask because I believe we've reached the time where diplomacy will start to heat up, so its probably a good time to start deciding who your friends are. This is particularly true as we all start to meet India. I believe due to locations that your Civ is the most likely to meet them first, if not our exploring warrior. We would strongly advise against making any agreements which make them feel safe, its in all our best interests if India is a little wary of the rest of us.

Anyway, just wanted to touch base with our Korean friends and let you know about goings on in the world. Good luck!

Regards,
Nakor & Gaspar

Basically since Malakai is so damned friendly I want to make sure he's not foolish enough to be a patsy to India. I suspect it will fail, as he's probably most interested in playing a peaceful builder game where he's everybodys friend and then sitting there and getting ROFLstomped by India. Harsh, but that's my early impression. I'd really like to convince him to be a little bit more wary of the rest of the world.

Now to GE (I can't believe I'm doing this)

Lord Protector,

We of Totaal Voetbal are astonished to hear anyone would participate in such rabble-rousing regarding His Illustrious Majesty [yada yada yada] and the Number-one wife. Truly, their relationship is a beacon of light in this dark, forested world. May their hips be united and honest forever!

With regards to the chopping, assuredly, we are clearcutting voraciously just as you assuredly are as well, but certainly India is putting us all to shame with their 3-move workers, as evidenced by their T31 Oracle. The less than thoughtful creator of this world basically assured an Indian victory with this map, I assumed all the players could see that as well as we can. May we all have fun vying for second place!

The Totaal Voetbal empire is extremely curious that you sound as though you are headed towards interesting times! What sort of objective does your glorious empire hope to pursue? Just removing the offending lake city, or something else? We must confess we concur with your assessment that the placement is rather aggressive! Best of luck in whatever His Illustrious Majesty [May his warriors have shinier staves than the rest of us] decides to do!

Regards,
Nakor & Gaspar, Totaal Voetbal

Mostly, I just want to in a veiled fashion call him stupid, as well as do what I can to incite him. I don't even actually know exactly where Whosit's second city is, so I have no idea if its actually aggressive to GE. Mostly I just think GE is crazy. Still, since I don't believe we have any hope of talking sense into either party, the better idea is to incite them into a long, drawn-out battle where I laugh at them a lot while expanding peacefully. Enjoy wasting those hammers on 34 quecha's! Enjoy wasting more hammers on Holkans to fight back! Enjoy watching the Indian spaceship!

I really am kind of a jerk.

Incidentally, I haven't sent either message, Nakor. Waiting for your thoughts, though I do think the message to Korea has priority and should be sent off ASAP.

[Nakor]

Nice messages, Gaspar, feel free to send them off.

Game is going according to plan, or so it seems, so that is nice. After worker - axe, we should build that Granary in Bergkamp before the next worker-settler pair...

I'm away every evening for work this week so I'll try to post every morning...

[Gaspar]

Messages sent.

No worries, Nakor. So long as you check in often enough that we're on the same page, I can handle the bulk of stuff at this very easy part of the game.

[Nakor]

I think that after this set of messages, we have to stop talking about our worries regarding India for the next two weeks or so. Let the others come to their conclusions first after our many pointers.

Otherwise we could end up in a bad position... that's just my feeling, of course...

Once we have 6-7 workers we need to get more settlers out. We need to send a settler to that lake to claim is, after we've talked to our neighbours, of course...