[SPOILERS] Bismarck of Mali (NobleHelium and Lewwyn)

[NobleHelium]

As an addendum, we also found Jkioan's borders this turn.



In about two turns I will ask for Open Borders. Need to defog more coast first I think.

Also, a GS was born. Most likely Kuro building an academy next turn.

Reminders for next turn...

1) Unload settler and worker in Carbon, move settler along road. Worker helps mine near Carbon.
2) Start skirmisher in Boron.
3) Start another worker in Lithium. Lithium needs to take the gold tile back.
4) Move leading warrior in the southwest Boron area to the SW. Probably other one SW also.

[Lewwyn]

Mmnnn I do like stealing their wonder...

Yes plant NE of the stone. If that settler is the stone settler we should beat them plus we'll have warrior/skirmisher there to fight em off. I like it.

With MC we can get Triremes... I really want to screw with them with triremes, pillage some fishing boats.

God I still can't believe they got a second gold resource. WTF

[NobleHelium]

We have a general agreement. We will give them the stone immediately after it's hooked up for 10t. NAP is until the end of turn 111. There isn't a point in a cooldown since they can just initiate it right as the minimum length is about to be up. Let's hold the turn until a formal agreement is reached, and it's really too late for me to play it. I'm going to ask you not to play the turn until the agreement is finalized just to be sure. And he still needs approval from his teammates apparently.

[NobleHelium]

Okay I'm going to post the big news here. Basically we re-negotiated the deal and I agreed not to settle next to the Stone. Now before you yell at me, the terms of the agreement are basically this...

1) Nobody is allowed to settle on or next to the center meridian except for one exception, which is their city between the corn and the horse on the inner sea.
2) We basically own the Stone for as long as we're not at war, and if they want to use it they have to negotiate with us.
3) The NAP is through the end of turn 118.
4) They will not rush to block us out of the center island. The concrete terms are that they'd plant a city on the western half of the island before any on the eastern. We can probably settle on the inner coast with our next city. Also, they'll tell us what resources they find on the eastern half of the island.
5) I've agreed to let them build Moai Statues right after the Stone is hooked up. Ellimist said it'd be hooked up around T92. That's very slow, yes, but we also have a general agreement that it'd only take them a couple of turns to build Moai using whip overflow and a chop plus an actual whip. So we'd be getting the Stone sooner or around the same time as my previous agreement, when we'd give it to them for 10 turns right after hooking it up. You could say that was too generous but whatever :neenernee.
6) Basically the general idea is to establish an even stable border down the middle of the Donut, with no cities close by. We might not be able to hold the center meridian from them, but I don't think there's much we can do about that. And it's not really worse than only having the inner ring for protection on the spot next to the Stone.
7) It's possible that they'll declare war on us after the NAP is over. But I think our relationship is not that terrible despite the massive attack, choke and counter-choke threats these last two days, so assuming there's still stuff to be done in the game besides attack each other, I don't think it's that likely.
8) It's also possible that if we successfully steal the Colossus from them that they'll be sufficiently pissed off to break the NAP. But I've reiterated the sanctity of the NAP several times and Ellimist said repeatedly that he's happy with it. I also told them that we haven't researched MC yet (true), and that we haven't researched Mathematics yet. He basically asked me to trade our tech list with theirs and I said no. He pretty much knows our tech list anyways, he just thinks he's missing a tech because he hasn't realized that MC takes a long assed time to research. Plus our recently completed Archery hides that fairly well. Anyway, I believe they are quite aware of the possibility of the Colossus being stolen. They're likely working on it now, and Ellimist has definitely tried to probe me on it, which I haven't really fallen for. If we beat them, I think they'll admit they were beaten and not break the NAP. It might make them more likely to attack after the NAP is over, but I've already said that I'm blaming you for that kind of outcome.

TLDR: If you play the turn, DO NOT PLANT NEXT TO THE STONE. We should be planting directly south of the Rice, unless you have a much better idea. I definitely think that's the best spot because we need control over those peak tiles for visibility. Also, I moved our western warrior to the northwest. Ellimist said he wouldn't view this as aggressive. DO NOT ATTACK OR SHADOW THEIR SETTLER IF YOU SEE IT. We should probably move northeast next with it just to defog stuff.

Also notes for next turn...

Cancel the skirmisher in Carbon (no hammers invested), put hammers into a barracks or library instead.
I changed the second skirmisher build in Boron to a worker, the chop will come in and it will complete very fast. We need more workers to hook up the sheep and whatnot.
I currently plan to build another two warriors in Lithium. Need at least one and we're hooking up Copper very soon so might as well build them while we still can. It'll cost maintenance though. No hammer loss from overflow cap.
Use the one worker near Carbon without current instructions to put a turn into the corn farm. Turn afterwards we only need two of those three workers to start mining the Copper, third one can continue farming.

[Lewwyn]

Don't like...

[NobleHelium]

That was a bit more terse than I thought it would be.

You don't like it because you don't think they'll keep to the deal, or what? Under the old deal, if they attacked us after the NAP was over, it would have been really hard to keep the Stone hooked up anyway.

[NobleHelium]

So, this picture pretty much says it all for turn 77:



Basically when I saw their warrior on the hill I decided to fortify on the forest. They thought we were sitting there since the turn before this, which I quickly disproved by pointing to the fortification amount and the fact that we know that there's corn and horses down there.

Anyway, we basically negotiated for like 3 hours on Thursday night, and we (Ellimist and I) came up with the agreement I mentioned earlier. Then last night Nicolae didn't really like the deal because the city next to the Stone basically forms a salient from where we can fork their cities on the border, and he said they'd be far more likely to launch a preemptive strike because of this (and because Lewwyn is on our team apparently ). It's a valid point.

We did some further negotiations and basically agreed to the new deal above. I've just realized that I kind of overlooked something, and we didn't really specify how long the settling agreement lasts for. So I am going to ask them to honor the settling agreement with regards to the center meridian even if the cities aren't founded before the NAP is over. I don't expect them to disagree with this, and I'm pretty certain that they already have the same subconscious expectation.



Really starting to lose track of the points. I think I'm done with specific C&D.

Okay, this turn (78) looks like a good time to do an extensive overview. First, I missed a few important events earlier.



The mysterious tech for EMC a few turns ago was CoL. There was a long gap many turns ago before they started heading for Mono for OR that I believe they used to put some turns into the tech. They said that Kuro was probing about Colossus and was worried that he might compete for it, so they swapped to an OR beeline instead. That makes sense. It also again points to them building the Colossus right now. And yeah, they cancelled OB to get my attention (as well as adopted CS to pop borders). I've reproposed OB and they said they'd accept it. We also got a forest spread next to Boron in that spot with a lot of forests around it (naturally ).



Not really interesting. This is at EOT, we haven't actually worked the mine yet this turn. Probably going to swap over to the dry cottage next turn, even though those suck.



Pretty interesting city. I will try to get some overflow manipulation going so that we can overflow into the forge and have it be right above the 2 pop whip threshold. Then the following turn we 2 pop whip and get a full pop whip overflow.



Just whipped. Will be taking the cottage back next turn. I like them bread loaf symbols.



Going to finish one of our last warriors then I'm not sure. Maybe a worker or maybe we grow some more.



This is a nice city. Sheep will be hooked up soon. The corn in the south will be used by Carbon so that isn't really relevant. We need more workers so it's building one now, using the whip overflow and the chop next turn.



I like this city too. We probably want to work the unimproved corn over the mine, even if it'll take a few turns to hook up (probably 3 real turns). Borders just popped so we haven't been able to make this decision yet. EOT next turn we get culture over the Copper.

[Lewwyn]

Dunno under the rice puts stone in 2nd ring. Plus that another tile East. We're giving up ground. They got the better end of the deal with the double corn horse spot. Plus their second gold. We've just given up too much and geographically we cannot catch up IMO without aggressively taking Jkaen's land now. We are in fact behind.

Plus south of the rice takes a rivergrass and adds a plains to the BFC that we could have gotten rid of with the city being settled on it. DAMN.

[NobleHelium]

Well yes, the Stone will be in second ring. That's the point. Yes, they got slightly more land, but we're definitely going to take a lot of the land between us and Jkaen. I don't see what the big deal is. We're expanding faster than them, the only issue is that they'll have access to the inner sea earlier.

Please help with the city build micro, that's my weakest point. I'm confident that we can outsettle EMC and end up with the best position in midgame with the best developed empire. Then we'll need to focus on defending ourselves.

[NobleHelium]

Okay, they built the Colossus this turn.