[SPOILER] Willem II of England

[Nakor]

PINK!!!

Kill GE!!!

Sorry, at work...

[Gaspar]

As far as the political situation goes, not a lot has happened. For the lurkers (though we have not nearly as many as Whosit, so I assume he's posted in his thread) here's what he's had to say to us since I last posted diplo:

Co-trainers Nakor and Gaspar,

If I have not mentioned it already, it should be clear that I took the Cease-Fire offered by GingerEagle. Fortunately, he believes that this means that I have agreed to his draconian NAP. I want to make it clear that this is not the case--he simply made that assumption. This is of course confidential. If he learns of his error too soon, it would be troublesome. I believe that we both have an interest in seeing this stain removed from our mutual doorsteps. I do have a request: In the event that I have not met Kyan or Tredje by the time I attack GE, would you be so kind as to inform them of the truth of the matter? I am sure that GE will be crying foul once Karma bites him in the rear.

The Karma is me.

I will inform Malakai myself at the appropriate time.

Also, if you do not mind, would you be willing to share some graphs for a few more turns? Knowing GE's power and GNP would be useful. As you probably know, I already have vision on your graphs, so I don't think I'll see anything of yours I don't already.

Thanks.

Sincerely,

-Whosit

Then this:

GE has two Axemen en route. 1st can reach DropShortALiter in 7 turns, 2nd in 8 (unless it goes to the other city site).

-Whosit

And finally this:

Co-Trainers Nakor and Gaspar,

It appears that GingerEagle's power went up by 4000 points last turn. That can mean only one thing: A Spearman. By my rough estimates, based on the pace of the Axemen, the Spearman can get to the lake city just ahead of the earliest possible attack date (Turn 57). Since my forces will be primarily Chariots, this poses a grave danger. I have favorable odds for retaking the city on my own, based on projected estimates of GE's defenders, but a single Spearman could doom the campaign. While I could eventually field Axemen of my own (and plans are in the works), it will be many turns more before they will be ready, and GE will have had that much more time to fortify his position. Again, since I am under the impression that we both want to kick him off our doorsteps, I think that our best option is to launch a combined attack before such an operation becomes prohibitively costly. It would also probably be better if an attack could be made before the traveling Axemen get there, but that may not be logistically possible for either of us.

I hope that you will give this due consideration.

-Whosit

P.S. Do you still have a Warrior on the far banks of the lake?

I sent him an email with GE's Power and GNP graphs, as well as this response:

Sorry I've been unable to keep up this turn - rough day at the office and Nakor has gone dark for the moment, computer problems at home. Anyway, just wanted to let you know we're still paying attention. As far as a Spear is concerned, I wouldn't lose sleep until we see it. We're late enough in the game that power increases could be a combination of things rather than just one thing. Does he have eyes on your horses to see they're connected? Because unless he does, I can't see how a Spear fits into his current setup. Regardless, lets see where its headed before we worry too much. I still have a warrior on the lake, where he tells us he is about to settle his second city. I'm hoping this causes him just enough consternation to wait a turn or two before making any decisions.

As far as sending military - we're still nowhere closer to making a decision since we really haven't talked today. Regardless, we will definitely continue to monitor the situation. There is no situation in which we believe it to be in our best interests to have two Shakirite cities on our borders, so we will have to take some sort of action. What that is, I can't say, since I don't know.

Anyway, that's all I know at the moment. If I see any changes in troop positions or if we learn anything from the situation, we'll let you know.

Gaspar

Basically I'm continuing good cop routine, being friendly and 100% honest, but promising nothing. I really do want him to take his city back, as well as take out GE's southern lake city. I just don't really want to commit any troops to it. I think Whosit's done for this game, to be honest. He's committing to full military in the 40s as far as turns go. There's no way to come back from that. So if he wins his war with GE eventually, we get a weaker neighbor who's somewhat indebted to us for some espionage/diplomatic assistance, without us commiting troops. I'd be willing to deploy an axe or two to this situation if we can do it without diverting from our main goals, like I said to Whosit, but ideally, we can get what we want without having to do that.

GE absolutely needs to get a message from us today, so if you can't get to it, I guess I'll have to try, Nakor.

Oh, and I forgot this:



We grew a forest near Bergkamp! Yay for free hammers! Oh, yeah, and Tredje landed Stonehenge. He's running a much harder farmer's gambit than we are, I'd wager. Be interesting to see how well it pays off. No skin off my nose, clearly. We're creative, so no reason to even consider Stonehenge. Odd it fell so late on this sort of a map. If he had stone hooked, it probably didn't cost him anything. Obviously I no longer think Whosit will land HG, instead I'll gamble on Malakai for that.

Anything I'm forgetting?

[Gaspar]

PINK!!!

Kill GE!!!

Sorry, at work...

Had no idea you had it in you, Nakor.

I'll have to noodle a bit on the best micro to get a settler from Overmars to that site. We'll need to end the game of chicken with GE soon, solely so we can get that warrior south to defog the rest of the BFC. I suppose we could just leave it there and let it get bounced when GE settles his city there. Perhaps we should "negotiate" to let him know we're going to settle south of the lake. I really don't care what we tell him, so long as we don't sign a NAP.

I also didn't mention, but we're still a ways away from Calendar after all the whipping. Had to drop the slider to 70%. I suspect the 2 city foundings will land that at more like 50%. I really don't care if we fall a couple techs behind right now though. More productive cities faster means more in the long run. Really do need to get a few cottages built, however.

[Gaspar]

Last but not least, I sent this off to TTSNBN. It really says nothing. The only decision I made was that I would sign this with my name only. I kind of like the idea of one of us playing good cop, one playing bad cop, and given that our diplo with TTSNBN will be crucial in this game, I figured I should get that ball rolling. Mainly at this point I just don't want them to have any reason to think we're plotting against them, so that if they do decide to chop out an army, they decide to send it towards someone else:

Hey Kyan,

Sorry to hear about your loss, hope all is well. No big deal on the radio silence, very little than we can all do for each other at this point. I think Ruff took our "breathing room" suggestion to the extreme.

We're just moving our warrior around the trees at the moment. Oddly enough our initial warrior has seen fewer barbs than any of our other units. The trees will certainly give the barbs more cover to spawn, at least till we've all chopped them all down. No sweat re: trades, etc right now as well, that was more a suggestion for the future. As you said, we all have to deal with the home front first, getting anything of significance anywhere is quite the undertaking right now.

As far as the other teams, everyone has been relatively friendly to us thus far, though it seems as if Whovus haven't been so lucky. Again its far too early to tell much about world politics - but we agree, its tough to play these games without at least one ally. Hopefully neither of us will be left wanting for friends. Seems to be a unique mix of personalities in this game - should make the mid-game fun for the lurkers.

Enjoy the shade while it lasts,
Gaspar, Co-Trainer, Totaal Voetbal

[Nakor]

Good to see we keep thinking along the same lines, Gaspar.

Let's try to negotiate a deal with GE that keeps him from settling any other cities West of his "cube" into our lands. I think that should do the trick for now, and then Whosit can finish the job.

I think I'll have time to send a message later today/tonight.

Teching will get better soon, don't worry.

Building wonders/miltary is just crazy in this game now, from my POV...
What's the gain if you can't eliminate someone?

[Nakor]

Here is my proposed message to GE:

Goeiedag Ambassador GingerEagle,

If you have problem sending messages to your Settler, we can send our warrior that's been looking at the fighting towards him to tell him of your change of heart.
If that is not what you desire, we want to have your word on it that you will not settle any sites west of the lakes eastern border between our two civilizations.
We will also want to settle a site near your designated spot that won't overlap nor interfere with your plans.
We hope his Illustrious Majesty will accept this deal.

We would like to thank his Illustrious Majesty for the poster. We have posted a lot of these around our cities and rumour has it that an huge increase in population is expected.

On the subject of NAP's, we are glad to hear that you have made good deals with your neighbours.
However, untill our negotiations are over, we won't be interested in signing a similar NAP. Maybe that can be arranged later.

Kind regards,
Co-trainers Gaspar and Nakor, Totaal Voetbal

[Gaspar]

I made a couple of edits, mostly just to let him know we are not afraid, and to ask for a little bit more out of the settling agreement.

Goeiedag Ambassador GingerEagle,

If you have problem sending messages to your Settler, we can send our unit in the area over to tell him of your change of heart.
If that is not what you desire, we want to have your word on it that you will not settle any sites west of the lakes eastern border between our two civilizations and that any other sites that you intend to settle in that general vicinity are discussed prior to training a settler/escort pair and moving them most of the way there. After all, we're friends, right? To that end, we wish to inform you that we intend to settle a site in the area with the next 10 turns, as it is the most organic evolution of our borders. We hope His Illustrious Majesty will understand that we believe the value of good friends in this harsh world is sometimes superior to a couple acres of forest.

We would like to thank his Illustrious Majesty for the poster. We have posted a lot of these around our cities and rumour has it that an huge increase in population is expected. Better than any Hanging Gardens, for sure.

On the subject of NAP's, we are glad to hear that you have made good deals with your neighbours. Hopefully we can have similar fortune.
However, until we our satisfied with the positive conclusion of these negotiations, we won't be interested in signing a similar NAP. That can be a discussion for later. Assuredly, given our history of cooperation, it shouldn't be necessary, right?

Kind regards,
Co-trainers Gaspar and Nakor, Totaal Voetbal

[Gaspar]

I was thinking a bit about all the conflict over the lake site. You know what's the cause of all of it? Poor scouting due to the forests. Basically, there are 3 lakes on each Civ's border (we haven't actually seen the lakes to our west, though Malakai assures us they are there. Those sites look very sexy - food resource in a freshwater lake, and all the sites I've seen have additional food sources nearby. Given that most our home territory leads towards production, they are attractive as a potential heavy commerce site. However, there's an obvious and easy way for all 3 Civs involved in the border conflict here to get what they want.

Whovus settles the north-most lake (from our POV), we settle the middle lake, GE settles the south-most lake. However, both Whovus and GE only scouted the middle lake, in Whovus's SW corner and GE's NE corner. So Whovus planted his city there, GE saw it first, and bam, war. Why are we still involved then, you might ask, imaginary lurker, if we know we have 2 alternate sites we can settle for the same purpose? Because the middle lake is closest to our capital. If we wanted to change our gameplan, we could easily get more military and more military faster to the site, take it, and reinforce it. Given the futility of 2-movers and the lack of roads of any of our rivals to the site, it'd be ages before they could build a sustainable part of their empire at that location. Unfortunately, they considered none of this when settling. This is what they considered:

Whovus: UNH, lake shiny. Build Settler.
GE: UNH, lake shiny. Kill Whovus.
Us: Ugh, why couldn't we have expanded towards our more reasonable rivals.

Bottom line, we will settle at least one of those lakes, because its an obvious sustainable border, because the high-food sites are attractive, because lake tiles are solid for financial, and food lake sites are outstanding for financial. But we're not going to make pink-dot leaps on a map where it takes 8 turns to get anywhere. Solid, organic growth out from your core is infinitely smarter. Now, do I think that we're going to end up at war with GE at some point? Yes, he's crazy. Do I think that Malakai, Tredje and TTSNBN will be in better shape than us for having nothing to do with this conflict in the long run? Sure. But we have to play the cards were dealt. Just saying that at the end of the game, when Whovus and GE finish respectively in 5th and 6th place and they're reading our thread, know the reason that you lost was that you scouted poorly and made bad decisions based on that.

I should also add, to Ruff. I've cursed your name more than a few times this game, but this is a good and interesting map. If TTSNBN wasn't one of the Civ's playing, it would be balanced for everybody, and the nature of it leads to a weird hybrid of a peaceful builder game with quite a few obvious flashpoints for conflict. I'd like to see something like this played with the restricted Civ list or with the RB mod someday.

[Nakor]

Good job in editing the message.
I agree with you on the "bad scouting" issue... guess it means we need to start scouting west as well.
I totally agree to a natural expansion is far better then a huge leap on this map.

Now we wait and see what else happens.

Civ IV reinstalled on the new computer, so I can play again!

[Gaspar]

While I'm at it Nakor, in case you grab the turn today (I won't be able to get it for another 9 hours now, on my way into work) I forgot to move EPs off GE this turn. So next turn they should move to Tredje or TTSNBN. I'm thinking Tredje actually is the better choice, its sort of organic in the order we've met, so unless you have a compelling other reason, let's move our EPs towards him.

If you're busy/asleep/otherwise, I'll be able to grab it when I get home.