[SPOILER] Willem II of England

[Nakor]

Feels like a good message and a good turn.

We need to get some cottages down and start working those, but I guess with all the forest and other resources it's just not that big of a priority. Nonetheless I feel that we should try to get a few running now to profit more in the long run.

With the Granary done, we can whip Bergkamp at size 4, but I'm ok with waiting untill size 5. Starting the forge is important as well. Can we send the settler from VP to site 4 and the one from Bergkamp to site 5 or are those roads miles apart?

really need to take a look at a new save one of these days...

[Gaspar]

Hope the message to Tredje works out!

I'd definitely like to see some cottages soonish. Of course with all the whipping we're doing, we wouldn't be working them for a bit anyway. I definitely think after this next set of whips we need to let Bergkamp and VP in particular grow a bit, so they can work all the improved tiles plus a cottage or two. Once we get to 5-6 cities we can use chops to build the next round of settlers and whip in the new towns while we get them up and running.

As far as Bergkamp whipping at 4 or 5, here's the conundrum: We're 5 turns from having a road up to the city site 4 (just moved on to the forest at edge of Bergkamp's borders this turn, 2T for the road, 1T to move to the next tile, 2T for the road. So the optimum situation would be to complete the settler in 4T, which would get the new city founded in 7T (1T to walk 4 tiles, 1T to walk onto the forested new city center, 1T to found.) Anything that gets the settler done sooner than that would be a waste anyway, since we wouldn't found any sooner without the road done. So by that logic, we should finish the granary, put the necessary hammers in to allow the 2 pop whip, and then whip at size 4 rather than 5. VP should probably put a turn into a forge while waiting to hit the next size, then move to a settler and whip at size 5. It will grow back very quickly with all the food surplus.

That's a lot of nonsense confused micro to say this: In approximately 8T, we'll have 2 new cities. After that, the 2 new cities plus Bergkamp and VP should chop workers, and then Bergkamp/VP should build Infrastructure/Military until they're at or close to their happy cap. With a forge and connecting the gold and Ivory, Bergkamp will be able to grow to size 10 and Van Persie 9. Not entirely sure we'll be able to get that many improved tiles that quick on this forested map, so perhaps we'll decide when to whip when growth exceeds our ability to get tiles improved. In addition to that, we have another 4 very accessible happy (Sugar, Spices, Dyes, Furs) all at one of our first 5 city sites. So this a very long way of saying Monarchy is not a priority at all, since before turn 100 rolls around, we're looking at a happy cap somewhere in the vicinity of 14. Bottom line, the only thing that will slow our vertical growth is how fast we can get workers out.

I think I covered this earlier, but with the way the roads are running, moving VPs settler to site 4 rather 5 probably doesn't make any impact on what turn the cities get founded, since at the current rate, they'll probably get set-up within a turn or 2 of each other anyway. Whoever gets the next save, we can calculate exactly what turn everything will happen so we can be detailed. Regardless, we should be looking at 5 cities around T51-ish, and 6 cities around T55. That's not bad! As long as we can avoid someone calling us on our farmer's gambit, we should start to see the fruits of all this horizontal expansion soon.

As far as the save goes, I do try to leave it for you every couple of days. It just usually seems to come in around when you're usually asleep (if my GMT time conversions are accurate) so I usually just play it because I don't like to hold up the game too long. Anytime you'd like me to leave it for you on a specific day though, just let me know. Its obviously easier to talk about our plans if we're both taking turns.

[Gaspar]

This arrived in our inbox today:

Sanibona Naokor & Gaspar

Last night, I, as Shakirite Ambassador sent the Crazy Empire a note
stating that, unless I hear from them by the time the year 1360BC
reaches our lands, that they were prepared to cede their lake-side
city to us and accept a binding NAP, a state of war would exist
between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been
received, and that consequently, The Shakirite Empire is at war with
the Crazy Empire.

Sobonana,

Ambassador GingerEagle
on behalf of His Illustrious Majesty,
Shaka Rex of The Shakirite Empire
[may His hips never lie, may His breasts remain small and humble]

Good to know. Ultimately, I don't know that this really impacts us too much, other than that we can consequently feel safe on our Eastern border for the immediate future, and that its probably a good idea to make sure that we respond quickly to GE when he writes us. I can't imagine that GE declared unless he has a good chance of taking Whovus' lake city, so I suspect that to fall relatively quickly. Given the location of it, that probably won't cost Whovus too much in the short term other than hammers and time wasted. More importantly, it will lead to a blood feud over there. We'll have to see how long we can play both sides of the fence.

I suppose we should also send something over to Whovus to try and see what he's expecting to happen. And lastly, we should make sure we get a city up east of Van Persie, since VP will be a core city for us, and I don't like core cities on frontline borders with crazy neighbors.

[Gaspar]

Ok, I was poking around in my head (always a dangerous idea) and thought to myself: What's the point of having a 202 post thread for 40-ish turns if you don't over analyze every event in the game? So, given that our neighbors are at war, and assuming nobody pulls the classic RB capitulation (I really hate that) what are our options to react? Well, here's what I see:

1. Stay neutral, continue to play both sides in diplomacy, continue building settlers and workers, watch football.

2. Build a few military units in between all our expanding, keep a chariot/axe or two in the area, strike if the opportunity presents itself, at either target.

3. Build several military units, steamroll in, take out GE while he's diverting all of his military resources towards Whovus' territory.

4. Build several military units, steamroll in, take out Whovus while GE has him occupied elsewhere.

Clearly, we are currently on plan 1 (unless you count our 0.5 health scouting warrior that I've been moving in that direction) and we should stay on plan 1, as its the safest and smartest for the long term health of our civ. Each of the other plans has appeal, however. Plan 2, I can easily see how an opportunistic strike on the lake area can keep it from both competitors over there, give us a little raze cash. However, alienating both teams over there is a bad, bad idea. Plan 3, I think makes a lot of sense. We could easily take out GE if he's spent the last 10 turns churning out a Quechua army which he's sending around the world to get annihilated. It would take us not too long to put together a chariot rush which we could wait til the opportune time to deploy. The primary consequence of this would be to make a friend for life of Whovus, while making some arrangement with him to split GE's territory. Plan 4 is especially stupid, since I don't have any reason to believe that GE would be a loyal friend.

Of course, we'll do nothing, but I thought it might be interesting to lay our options out. I feel very comfortable in saying that we could pull off plan 3, its just really a question of at what cost to our economic development. It would be pretty funny though, I'm sure nobody expects Willem of England to declare on turn 50.

[Gaspar]

As I do my best regoarrarr impression, it occurs to me we should draft up a little something to both combatants as well as Malakai. Here's some thoughts:

Greetings,

It appears our original thought that a NAP to T50 wouldn't make much difference in this game have been born false. As I'm sure you've also been made aware, Whovus and GE are at war. Rather foolish, if you ask us. Still, any thoughts? We suppose ultimately that skirmishes between other Civilizations are better than skirmishes involving our own at this early date.

To that end, would you like to extend our current NAP? I don't really think it necessary in the sense that we most assuredly have no plans to attack our friends, and assume you feel the same way. It is odd that yours is the only civilization we currently have such an agreement with despite the fact that our relations have been very friendly. Still, the world political stage is still fleshing out, as several of the contesting civilizations have not yet met.

Don't really have much to say, just thought it a good idea to keep the dialog going in light of these interesting times.

Regards,
Nakor & Gaspar

Greetings Consulate,

It appears that your suspicions were correct and you now live in interesting times. I'm not quite sure why your neighbor thinks an offensive war at this early stage is a good idea, but destabilizing the world political scene is bad for all civilizations, in our humble opinion. As we are traders by nature, a peaceful world makes for more pleasant endeavors.

Nonetheless, just wanted to let you know that we are here if you need anything, and hopefully the peace can be upheld at the earliest convenience.

Regards,
Nakor & Gaspar, Totaal Voetbal

Might be too much RP in that one to Whovus, but not exactly sure what we should be trying to say. Feel free to amend/edit/delete, Nakor.

And to GE...

...good luck, Nakor.

[Nakor]

I'll take a look at a message for GE tomorrow morning. Indeed, I'm asleep when the safe comes around. Feel free to play it. If you can post a map of the region with the two new city sites and the positions of our cities/workers, I can take a look from outside the game.

Feel free to send the messages to Malakai and Whovus. You didn't mention TTSNBN, so I'm ok with them.

Bergkamp, grow to size 5, then whip it is. Getting 6 cities by t55 is a very good job!

Then there are your four options. I think we should play for the safe option, number 1. This really isn't the time to do warfare. We need to build and expand. Once we've got a nice tech lead we can start bashing some heads, but that might be around redcoats...
We are currently number 1 in soldiers, so we're not playing that much of a farmers gambit.

If you really want to pursue a rush, we should start roading towards our intended target. Speed is everything in these wars...

Time for bed again....

[Gaspar]

I did not send the messages off, and we received this from Whovus:

Co-Trainers Nakor and Gaspar,

As you are surely aware, the Shakirites have launched an unprovoked invasion of my lands. I assume that they have negotiated non-aggression pacts with you, so I will simply urge you to refrain from dealing with such treacherous barbarians in the future. You never know who they will come after next.

-Whosit
Crazy Crazy

The message was titled Murderous Shakirites

I'm not sure how much we should tell Whosit, as we have no NAP. Despite my idle speculation earlier in this thread, I don't actually have any desire to get involved in their hostilities. Still, long term, I expect Whosit to have more of an impact on the game than GE, so we should probably try and endear ourselves a bit. We also got a moderately snide response from Tredje, but we can address that later, as absolutely nothing was said.

On to the turn... there are some decisions to be made. First off, as I was getting ready to move the axe one turn away from the next city site, I discovered this (which made me take a slight detour with the axe):



As expected, all the forest means barb cities will pop up everywhere. Now the site itself isn't bad, on a hill, getting Cows, Wheat, Wines and Bananas. Problem is, it gets heavy overlap with our planned city 4. I also think 1 axe is probably not enough take it, as its on a hill. Though the barbs won't have Archery yet, as I doubt enough Civs have researched it. Here's a slightly more thourough picture of the area, including our proposed next city site.



I wonder if it isn't worth editing our dotmap to incorporate the site a bit. Now that city just popped this turn, as I could see the borders before I even moved our axe, so if we went over there now, it would autoraze. On the image above, Red Dot is the barb city, Blue Dot is our current planned next city site, and Green Dot is our current planned other new city site. Clearly, if we keep the Barbarian city, both of those need to be revised just a little bit.

I have a couple of things to do before I have the proper time to devote to this turn, so I'm gonna leave this here in case you get a chance to look at it before I finish playing, Nakor. I'll give you this teaser as well. This is how close we are to the hostilities between Whovus and GE:



The Maya colored dot is the suspected location of Dropshortaliter. I have to say, I think that city is closer to our capital than Whosit's, and so likely its also closer to GE's. I can't say I don't understand why that placement would anger them. I'd also like to say there's a really excellent city site there with Cows, Sheep and Fish. Probably planting a settler there would really antagonize GE, but it would be nice.

I'll say more when I finish the turn, though feel free to pipe up, Nakor.

[Nakor]

Let's raze the barb city once we have a few axes to do so.
It doesn't fit with our dotmap and the overlap is way to much I think.

And blue/green are superior sites.

Let's see if I have the time to send some messages...

[Gaspar]

Still going to hold the turn for another hour or so, while I'm not sure we have any huge decisions that have to be made before we play, its worth discussing, particularly since Whosit sent the turn along late...

...so here's a revised dotmap incorporating the barbarian city:



Now Orange Dot is the most "controversial" change here, as it moves the current next-to-be-settled site 1 SE, picking up some grassland, but primarily, reducing overlap with Black Dot, which is the current barbarian city. We should only make this move if we intend to capture and keep the barb city, as our current site is probably slightly stronger. This site does waste less tiles in between it and the capital, however. The rest of the new map features more overlap. Purple Dot is no change from the current city plan, but now overlaps more with Orange.

The two Pink Dots (no accident there) are proposed lake city sites. Both will solidify borders with whoever controls the lake site. Crucially, both are on OUR side of the lake, so diplomatically, they're defensible. The southern, darker Pink Dot site is a monster. Fish, Grassland cows and sheep, and 7 grassland tiles mean it could be either a superb GP farm or a commerce giant. It can also borrow the pigs from VP to foster faster growth.

The northern, lighter Pink Dot site will still have a southern border with the GE/Whosit lake city, but scores only Clams and Rice (at least from tiles we have defogged.) While the original location one NE from there picks up Cows and Whale, Whale is useless, I could easily see us never researching Optics in this game, and moving it to Whosit's side of the lake just to grab Cows is probably not worth it. The great question here: Can we diplomatically make those two sites work? Realistically, we won't be able to settle the western lake sites for a bit, as we haven't expanded our first ring in that direction yet. They're not crucial, but the southern site in particular is stellar, and I fail to see why we should cede a good site which is clearly on our side of any natural border just because GE is a nutcase. If I thought we could diplo our way out of it, I would settle that site over the site north of Van Persie.

So two decisions must be made in light of new information:

1. Do we keep the barb city and settle Orange Dot in the above picture, or do we raze and go with the original location?

2. Do we settle the lusher southern "Pink Dot" site with Van Persie's settler, or do we settle Purple Dot next as planned?

The reason this is relevant this turn is because Van Persie's workers are ready to start roading and we need to decide which direction. Also, if we decide to keep the Barb city, Bergkamp should build 2 axes before the settler, 1 to help take the Barb city, 1 to garrison our new city.

If you don't say anything, Nakor, I'll stick to the current plan, as I don't want to change things around without talking to you.

[Nakor]

I like your pink southern dot a lot. I think that should be city 6.
If we want a go at MoM, we need to get purple up first, though.

Still think razing the barb city is best.

Send 4 messages but gotta go to work, so I can't post them now.