[SPOILERS] Bismarck of Mali (NobleHelium and Lewwyn)

[Lewwyn]

I founded Neon and then found out that EMC is apparently going to claim the entire middle island with many built up settlers. I am not sure what to say.

Aw, don't be modest. You had a lot to say. Things like I want to attack them and such. Even crazier things like, "lets tech HBR".

Also accordingly I played the turn. However my update might not be AS complete as yours usually are.

Let's start with this:



Here we have the news, the missionary in the galley I sent to boron and it failed to spread. Thanks RNG.

Also in oxygen I set the build to skirmisher for the moment. I think this might be one of the skirmishers we put in Neon. I'm also considering that we switch to a worker after Oxygen grows.

I set tech to HBR and set Tech to 0% as you mentioned on EVERY PEAK ON THE MAP!

Beyond that followed the micro.

Demos:



ALSO! There is an archer now in EMC's Arcturus across our border so we will need multiple HAs. The good news is that he doesn't have a spear.


Oh and for lurkers, We're talking to Kuro about a joint attack. Kuro will send a stack of chariots over mainland at EMC and also a galley with axes to the center island. We will tech HBR and get an HA stack and try to take his port city to the inner sea, Arcturus on the main land. We will also be building a galley with axes for the inner isle. Additionally we are building 2-3 triremes on the outer sea that we will be sending at his home island to cut fishing nets and cut off and galley transporting.

HURRAH! WAR SUCKERS!
:war4::war3::hwar1::war2::ranele::kiting:

I'm also pushing for Construction after HBR.
:catapult:

[mackoti]

Lewwyn you are awesome.

[NobleHelium]

The missionary in the gallery failed because he was supposed to go to Oxygen. >.>

What did you do with the other one?

[NobleHelium]

I plotted out some worker micro. If you have something better feel free to change it of course.



Note about the Neon workers - next turn the two on the flood plains need to finish the cottage, so they won't be able to move. The one above it can move, so it should move onto the forest outside the borders. The reason is that a straight chop will be too fast (even with the slower workers) and the borders won't expand soon enough, so it should road and then chop. That should be one turn slower than the other chops. The two chops that finish at the same time will complete the mint, then the following chop will complete the galley. Maybe we use the chop in Boron to 2-pop whip a settler again, depending on what EMC does with their settlers. (They apparently have at least seven of them on hand.)

Oh and for the Carbon worker, don't finish the road - get on the hill and do that stuff first, it can finish the road after that. That's probably obvious but I'd like to be sure.

Also we have a bit of a problem next turn. If the chop goes into the skirmisher at Nitrogen we're going to lose hammers to overflow. We just discussed this and we're going to chop that library after all. Probably should've done it now instead of the skirmisher but too late. It'll only be slower by a few turns.

[NobleHelium]

Okay I miscalculated the micro again (forgot that I was going with numbers before end of turn). So we can in fact move the plains worker SW onto the forest and chop immediately, then the worker pair can move onto the other two forests and also chop immediately. Borders will pop right before the double chops finish. That's slightly better since we'll pay one less gold in support for the out of borders worker.

And I'm sure this post of mine is going to generate some comment in the EMC thread.

[Lewwyn]

Oh man, Priceless!

It may be too late for our teams to salvage the relationship we had, but I have to at least make an attempt. Clearly, you feel that my settlement plans were unfair to your team, despite the fact that you waited nearly 20 turns longer than we did to found an inner-coastal city. Based on your apparent lack of interest in settling the center, I assumed that it was not a very high priority for you.

My intent was never to antagonize you; if it had been, I would have been far sneakier and less straightforward about it. I really can't even see how I could have been more fair to you, except perhaps reserving part of the land for you. It doesn't look like even that would be acceptable to you, as we haven't even planted the cities yet and you haven't even asked us not to.

I believe I've demonstrated a willingness to be reasonable with you in the past, yet you react as though I've committed some major betrayal or backstab. This apparent change in your attitude towards us indicates that you aren't even interested in resuming anything resembling amicable relations. Surely you are aware that an offensive war between us would be quite impossible after we spend 18 turns building up for it, so I can only conclude that you intend to attack us earlier than that.

So... Right now it looks like you're preparing to attack me, despite an agreement not to, because of an action I haven't even taken yet. This is, apparently, despite my efforts to be straightforward about it and to be fair to you in the process. It was never my intention to cause such a rift between us, and if there's something I can do to restore our previous level of cooperative friendship, I invite you to ask.

Ellimist

So butt-hurt and we haven't even declared war. And who says we won't wait 18 turns before attacking? It'll take that long to get cats.

And I really love this:

Based on your apparent lack of interest in settling the center, I assumed that it was not a very high priority for you.

Unbelievable. Obviously we didn't ZOOM at the center island. We're expanding in a more organic fashion than that. But to say there is no interest in the highly lush center island when we have less luxuries than you already is asinine to say the least. Obviously you knew it would be an issue when you built 8 SETTLERS AT ONCE to block everyone off the island. What the hell do you expect?

Noble just tell 'em, "Unfortunately, we don't want you to win."

Truthfully, he has a point about the problem with offensive war. But if all we are doing is taking out one city (arcturus) and possible island cities that we can cut off while pillaging him with support from Kuro on the backside, then I'm fairly confident we can achieve those modest goals and hurt him more than he can hurt us. We have 4 more cities than they do at present. We can build more troops and when he plants his cities he'll be more vulnerable. We either hit him now or we wait till he makes aggression impossible and bash our heads against a wall. In the end the real winner could be Jkaen... if I believed Jkioan could actually take advantage of the rest of us warring.

[Lewwyn]

So here's a few more thoughts from the peace loving side of Lewwyn. (Which is very small).

We could ask EMC for at least 1 city on the island (then sneak attack the center barb city too. I'd have to see it but I think we need a city on the inner moat for the fort canal to work since it would be in the barbs culture otherwise.)

If we ask EMC for a city we specify... he gives us the settler? I mean I'm really trying here. I'm trying to think like Seven. "WWSD" But really all I can think is that if they get all their allocated land plus the center island apart from our slice then we need to take a lot from Jkioan to even it out in terms of land growth and tech.

On the one hand if we build up a huge army it's going to be a drag on the economy. On the other hand their defensive army will also be a drag for them. And if we can hit them while all their soon to be planted cities are small and weak we will be able to hurt them badly.

And really Kuro will also be involved. He'll have an army sapping economy too. If I feared Jkioan in the slightest I'd say maybe not. But I don't. I just don't think they can beat us even if we drag the economy for a bit with war.

Just struggling to come up with a good argument for peace because I think we can win with Kuro on the backside... Even if we only use the war to plant cities over the meridian past the stone (Which EMC hasn't settled yet) I'd call it a win.

I'll keep struggling with it.

[NobleHelium]

Here's what I said.

Here's what you said.

ellimistbeyond: how about this
to help you prioritize whether to settle the coast next
1:09 AM we'll tell you about any resources on the island that are visible from a workboat if they are east of the meridian
and we won't settle east of the meridian at least until we've settled west of it
1:10 AM so if it's worthwhile to race to it, you'll know it as soon as we do, and you'll be likely to get there first
me: hmm
all right
that sounds reasonable

I'm sure the whole of two turns when we got any real information on the center island really helped us decide whether the center island is valuable or not. Oh! Did I mention that in those two turns, you already had a settler in position to block us off?

How you can say what you did was not sneaky considering you built eight settlers and stored them all up to plant a bunch of cities before anyone can react or even blink? What other purpose does that have other than to hide the fact that you're claiming the entire island? If you thought it wouldn't be a contentious issue then why would you do this?

I've said REPEATEDLY that "I hope you will not block us off" and every time you deflected the statement. If that indicates a lack of interest in the center to you, then what else can I say?

[Lewwyn]

Ellimist Response:

That does put things in a better perspective. If I'd paused for a reality check rather than getting caught up in planning a grand, ill-advised, settler push, it would have been obvious how you'd react. Clearly I remembered what I wanted to remember and believed what I wanted to believe. If you'd like to hear excuses and rationalizations(I doubt it), I have plenty.

If you think your best course of action is one of hostility, then so be it. If you indeed wait until T118, I have zero doubt that we would have enough forces to hold off you and Kuro both. If you attack sooner, I still don't think you could get very far, but it's harder to say for sure. So that option is available but we both know it's hard to attack against Cats and win.

If not, then I'm open to considering whatever proposal you think would be fair. If my intent had been to self-destruct diplomatically, I wouldn't be writing this.

Ellimist

Yeah.

Noble caught up with me on Gchat. And we discussed.

NobleHelium: yo
Lewwyn: yo
so**
what do you think
straight up whats your opinion one the emc situation
NobleHelium: my opinion is that they fucked themselves with their settler gambit
and we have a decent shot at an attack
plus assuming kuro does some whipping, it's going to be mostly a zero-sum game
so it's not very risky
Lewwyn: because all 3 major powers will be warring
NobleHelium: yes
Lewwyn: overall less will be lost
NobleHelium: the main thing is that i want to get a city on the center island uncontested
before we attack
Lewwyn: can we do that?
NobleHelium: i think we can as long as we don't make it obvious that we're still planning to attack
i'm not sure how to go about doing that though
Lewwyn: I don't think its possible lol
the power spike will be obvious
NobleHelium: right now i'm trying to delay as long as possible
before giving them any sort of real response
since they're not going to plant any cities nearby in the meantime
Lewwyn: well they're gonna gear for war no matter what
NobleHelium: that's fine
i don't care
as long as we can get a city in the center
Lewwyn: k
I dunno how many settlers they have on th eisland or not
NobleHelium: well they said 8 at least
Lewwyn: maybe we can rush one on
NobleHelium: i'm not sure where they are now
Lewwyn: I'm with you what ever you want to do
NobleHelium: well i have a firm idea of what we want to do
but not quite how to do it well
Lewwyn: I've been thinking about the alternative to war as a possibilty just because I feel I should
NobleHelium: if we can get a city on the center island
1E of the silk
it will be much easier to attack
because then we can hide ships in neon
and they won't know how many we have
Lewwyn: so Mint Galley in neon?
NobleHelium: yeah definitely mint galley
chops will complete both
i'm thinking we chop/whip a settler in boron
Lewwyn: neon needs that wheat and fish up and running so we can whip it a bunchhh
NobleHelium: well borders need to pop first
can't hurry that
Lewwyn: yeah I know
NobleHelium: but the workers will be able to farm the wheat quickly
after the chops
then we can do a wb after the galley
the inner coast city will need to use the fish though
basically we need to figure out
how to reply
that makes them least likely to plant a city on the center island in our quarter
Lewwyn: I was just looking through the turn and all the micro looks self explanatory
NobleHelium: i should've sent you the EOT save last night
but i didn't think of it
note their galley is SE of arcturus
and that the archer is gone
it's probably in the galley
what i'm wondering is whether they loaded up the settler there too
loaded up the settler in the galley i mean
to ship it somewhere else
they're probably shipping the archer over to vega
which is fine
Lewwyn: k
yeah
NobleHelium: so any ideas
Lewwyn: dunno what you want to send them
you could make some unresonable demands
NobleHelium: in terms of how to respond
that sounds silly
10:27 PM*
Lewwyn: like tell them they need to gift us a settler that we can use on the center island
make some ridiculous demands
10:28 PM*
maybe gift a settler and a spot on the island+ we get to settle a city over the meridian north of the stone
what do you think about that?
would just one city on the center be enough?
and then we could steal the center barb city too naturaly
NobleHelium: well what are you trying to accomplish
by giving these kinds of demands?
Lewwyn:: explain that by taking all the center pieces of Kuro and jkioan that we would lke more of their alotted land on the mainland in exchange for not having to build up a huge army and fight us
A) to see if they'll give in
NobleHelium: i really doubt it
Lewwyn: B) stall so you don't have give a straigh answer right now
NobleHelium: i really needa go take a poop
sorry lol
brb in a few
Lewwyn: lmao
tmi
man.. t m i

He hasn't returned... I think he fell in!

[NobleHelium]

So yeah basically we agreed to another deal. It's kind of complicated. Please do not play the next turn if it comes around (if it does...), we need to discuss this further before playing. I sent you the email.