[Spoilers] Victoria of Korea - Mardoc and SevenSpirits

[Mardoc]

Luckily, I disagree and think the deer/wheat city should be SW of the deer not NW.

It's closer, it grabs the silver, it doesn't need a border pop, and while it doesn't get the corn I don't think it needs it.

I'm sorry I'm a bit busy these few days; I'm going to avoid playing the save unless I really need to. But to recap, plan is to NOT revolt to slavery, research wheel, move worker to mine gems, and grow while building a warrior.

My biggest objection to south is that grabs three peaks instead of none. But on the other hand, particularly for our second city, we're not talking size 17 vs 20 anyway, anytime soon, and that does solve the question of how to grab the silver when there doesn't seem to be much food in that direction.

I'll admit, three food resources did seem like overkill, so south may make sense. I'll have to look at the info tonight though to convince myself (or come up with more arguments).

No problem with you being busy, it just means that the game will go a tad slower unless Tatan starts playing earlier. I'll plan to follow the micro plan through turn 22 for now, and start considering what makes sense after that.

[Mardoc]

Not much this turn, just setting up for officially meeting our last two, and finding more resources - turns out my guess was wrong, and there's wines as one of the railroad resources





Also sent these pictures, redacted of tech info, to GES; hopefully we'll have yet more detailed info for dotmapping with shortly

[SevenSpirits]

Demo update, changes in bold

T13:

GES of Zulu (Hunt/Agri)
Mining, BW

Luddite of Aztec (Hunt/Myst)
Agri, start Mining, Meditation (t14) (doh), Mining (t15)

Amelia of Sumeria (Agri/Wheel)
Mining, Myst, unknown (perhaps pottery)

Adlain of England (Fish/Mine)
Agri, BW

plako of Egypt (Agri/Wheel)
2t of Mining, Myst, Medi, finished Mining t14

Tatan France (Agri/Wheel)
Mining, BW

Us of Korea (Myst/Mine)
Agri, BW

2) Luddite and us finished our farms and grew to size 2. 2-3 others finished their farms but are building workers. The other 2-3 are still producing 4-5 food total. They are probably making a mine first.
Everyone now has a farm. (?)
plako and adlain grew t14. tatan grew t15. I won't bother trying to figure out how or why they didn't grow sooner.

Also I put together an updated world map aligned the same way as the in-game one, and with the railroad luxuries marked. I'm sending this to GES too.

I had some time today to make the new world diagram. I don't think
we'll find a good reason to share it with anyone else.

I've realigned the thing so that it matches up with where the actual
edges of the map technically are. (e.g. our capital is right on the
E-W fault line.) It doesn't matter much because it's toroidal but
might as well match up as well as possible.

I've also noted the locations of the different luxury resources on the rails.
- They are always paired with a wheat.
- Each resource lays claim to one (really long) horizonal stretch of
railroad, appearing at each intersection on that horizontal stretch,
which comes to six times. (Fancy that.)

Seven

[novice]

Among those 7 resources, plains incense is a pretty good catch.

[Mardoc]

Well, the only real excitement from last turn is that both SevenSpirits and I grabbed the save and played in parallel, so it's possible we know a tad more than we should (unlikely since we had the same plan in mind)

For future, to avoid that? I made a 'playing now' label in the gmail account; I figure when either of us downloads with intent to play, set that label on the save you download. When you're just checking for diplo from Tatan, or to look around without intent to play, continue to use the stars as previously.

Does that sound like it'll work, or would that be too much trouble?

In other news, a pair of screenies from last turn (Seven, you can tell me if I wasted movement - I couldn't figure out how to get the scout to the hill in one move, but it seemed like it should be possible).


And, for discussion - do we want to try to get a monopoly on our plains incense, or try to plant cities all around our square for a little of everything, or what? A monopoly on incense would give us a much better trading position, which ought to in turn help with diplo. On the other hand, cities all around us would be useful for defense, and it would be nice to have the ability to go to war without losing lots of happiness.

Of course, the best option would be to grab both, which being Imperialistic might help with, but I figure for the time being we ought to stick with cities nearer to the capital and more fertile lands, so this is a long term question. I'm inclined, however, to lean toward incense-monopoly.

Also, we're potentially getting close to our next city, assuming no more three days/turn nonsense . I think I agree with your spot (SW of the deer) on further thought, mostly because this is our second city, and hence it being small for a while is inevitable. Hooking up the silver early would also really help Alert, as well.

In terms of other plans - I figure whether we go for Hinduism depends on what the tech situation is looking like after wheel/pottery; it might make sense to pick up hunting for that deer, however. (and ability to spear some War Chariots). After we finish the settler, I think we'll need another worker from Alert; probably immediately makes sense.

[SevenSpirits]

I'm not sure if a "now label" will help by itself (If we both grab it at the same time, it probably won't update in time.) I guess what we should do is both use it and be sure to wait a bit before grabbing the save after seeing it, and check at the bottom of the page (recent account activity) if the other of us is logged in. That should work.

Yes, you wasted a bit of movement. (But no worries.) The problem is that 5 railroad moves uses up one of the 2 movement points, so you only want to do 4... and that was just barely not far enough. But the trick is that we actually didn't have to reach the hill; the grassland to the left of it would have been fine too because the edge of the city culture is on a hill anyway.

For the incense, I don't think we can grab all of it. It's too much in a line. It seems like what's going to happen is three people get every resource. We are getting multiple incense, one dye, and one sugar for sure, and after that we'll see.

I am still quite unsure about where to settle. It's a good thing that land is still being revealed, and we don't have to decide yet!

[SevenSpirits]

T16. We met Adlain, and found Plako's land. I sent a greeting to Adlain:

Hi Adlain, pleasure to meet you! How goes?

Seven (and Mardoc)

First!

We have amelia's graphs (not that they are important at the moment) so I switched espionage to Adlain.

Next turn, we revolt to slavery while the gem mine nears completion.

[Mardoc]

Greetings Seven (and Mardoc),

Welcome to my humble Abode, I hope i find you both well
If you wish to Contact me for any rason, this Email address (AdlainRB@GMail.com) is used for both Gmail Chat and its Email Functions or if you use MSN, my Username on that is blackadder2809@hotmail.com (yes it is a very old account)
May i ask your thoughts on this map we inhabit??, it seems that Ruff has hand made it at the very least, and the Railroads are an intresting touch. Also have you met any other Civs along the way??
Anyways, Im Glad to have met you and i hope we will have a long and Freindly Relations in this game

Kind Regards

Adlain.

I see no reason not to respond truthfully, with all the info we've passed out so far - something like this, with the map that has land but just letters:

We use gmail exclusively, so this is the best spot. We're open to chatting, but it probably has to be scheduled, since as you might guess this is a secondary account for both of us.

We do think we've figured out the map, as you can see in the attached diagram (that is, Seven figured out the map, with some help from Gold Ergo Sum). At least, we haven't found anything to contradict it yet, and no one we've talked to has told us about any contradictions either. It's actually quite clever - due to the rails, everyone's essentially bordering everyone else, but Ruff still managed to make a symetrical, balanced map with 7 players.

You are actually the last player we've found; we've now met everyone (first to that, even if we didn't get circumnavigation). A lot of those contacts were between scouting units out on the rails or people who found our capital, however.

-Mardoc

[SevenSpirits]

Yeah, I reluctantly agree that we should be truthful and forthright. But I edited it somewhat, hopefully making our accomplishments a bit less intimidating.

We use gmail exclusively, so this is the best spot. We're open to
chatting, but it probably has to be scheduled, since as you might
guess this is a secondary account for both of us.

Funny you should ask about the map... we scouted around with both our
starting units and were able to figure out the overall layout pretty
quickly. Since you asked nicely I've attached a diagram below - hope
you find it useful! It's actually quite a clever setup - due to the
rails, everyone's essentially bordering everyone else, but Ruff still
managed to make a symmetrical, balanced map with 7 players.

As for contacts, we've actually just met everyone now... some have
been more friendly than others. We certainly hope to have good
relations with you!

-Mardoc/Seven

... sent that out. Also sent your draft to GES.

Just a heads up - we've met Adlain this turn, completing the set; we
now officially know everyone on the map, and they're all where we
deduced they must be a few turns ago. We're sending him the sanitized
version of the world map (the one with just letters on platforms).

- Mardoc

Also played the turn, revolted to slavery. C&D-wise, Luddite grew to size three on the same turn as us (last turn), and Adlain and Tatan grew this turn.

[Mardoc]

Sounds good. In retrospect, I agree with the less intimidating route - you can always brag about your map-divination skills after the game And remember, the true purpose of being truthful and forthright is so that you're believed when it's worth lying .

In other diplo news, we did get this replay from luddite

Yeah I'm a little annoyed by that. No one else starts with mysticism, right? So someone must have really beelined it. Anyway no, I'm not going to go for hinduism, I'll be fine without it.

Should we put Hinduism back on the agenda? With plako presumably sticking to one religion, luddite and GES told us they don't want it, and Amelia made a deal with us not to go for it, that only leaves Tatan and Adlain to compete for it.

I have come up with an actual Devil's Advocate second city location, but so far I've managed to talk myself out of it. That is, if anyone chooses to rush us, we're putting our second city away from copper (and away from horses, most likely, since I can't imagine Ruff making that spot that lush). If we were to go for the Stonehenge play, we'd not only get poor-man's Creative, we'd shortly afterward get copper in our borders for defense. City 2 wouldn't be that valuable in itself, but strategically, that's a good spot to be sooner rather than later.

The main reason I think we're ok with a non-metallic 2nd city is our diplo/C&D infomation - plako's gone for Buddhism instead of War Chariots, GES is both friendly and sharing reassuring information; admittedly we don't know much about Tatan, but he's got many other potential targets, and everyone else we pegged as non-rushers. I wouldn't be surprised if plako goes for Stonehenge with his second city, if he's not rushing someone, to get his Obilisks up everywhere.

That, plus Imperialistic ought to let us spread weedlike anyway. As long as we get to the copper before a rush, having two strong cities that can produce copper units is certainly better than only one.

In terms of what to do with our units - I think scout/warrior on the rails should stay there. There's no particular spot we need to uncover, but if Ruff happened to deliberately or not put anything interesting out on the rails, we ought to find out about it (more sea resources, or accidental omissions, or sea - based silkworms...). Plus, that's our trading card to GES for home screenies. Our new warriors; well, probably leave one home and explore our square with the other? For the convenience of planning without alt-tabbing, if nothing else Plus, well, if Ruff mixed in other resources or made a mistake in duplicating, we ought to try to know about it.

On a related note - how do I turn off the clouds when zoomed out?