[SPOILERS] Isabella of Carthage, starring Ellimist, SleepingMoogle, and Nicolae

[Ellimist]

So... I went ahead and whipped Sirius to complete the Mausoleum. I'm pretty sure it was the only way to get it. I debated on whether or not to whip, but frankly I don't see much diplomatic reason not to. NH has seemed significantly more distant lately, and given that our two civs are the ones most likely to win the game, I don't expect him to continue to cooperate much with us. It is entirely possible he plans to attack us after our NAP expires on T138; we should do what we can to avoid being vulnerable.

If NH wasn't building it in Helium or planning to rush it with the engineer, it shouldn't bother him, but I'm pretty sure he was and whipping was the only way. I'll know when the next turn comes around and we see if NH got any fail gold as well as the Helium C&D. I expect he'll either save the engineer or research Aesthetics next.

As far as tech goes, we were able to complete Meditation at 20%, which I went ahead and did. We gained 79 gold instead of 147 at 0%, so it "cost" us 68 gold. Literature is next, to get the Great Library in Polaris(and probably the Nat Epic there as well) and will require one turn of 70% research. Kuro's scientist is on its way to us for an Academy, and it would make sense to turn off science until it arrives. After that, we'll probably want something militaristic, perhaps construction, machinery, or feudalism. I'm not sure when the best time to research Music is, I'll try to find out if Jkaen/Kuro are able to get it soon. I definitely want the great artist, and being able to skip using caste artists(by building culture) will be nice, but other techs may have a higher priority.

Over the next couple turns, we're going to be continuing to grow our cities while putting up Cothons and other infrastructure. Sirius will maintain a 12 food surplus, which should be sufficient to grow every other turn for awhile. More missionaries will be produced to assist the development of our newest cities. I'll also try to have more settlers ready before our existing workers run out of tasks to perform. Additional military, mostly archers, will be produced to keep the Elementals at bay.

[Ellimist]

The last few turns have been discouraging. Turn 124 was preceded by the following email exchange with Kuro:

Just started playing the save. NH has sparked a Golden Age, switched to Bearu + Representation and now has an absurd 489 GNP. You maaaaay need to lean on him some or war with him or something if this gets too ridiculous, if not just to slow him down economically. I dunno.

[COLOR="Darkorange"]Good thing I whipped 6 population in Sirius to finish the Mausoleum ahead of him. Unfortunately he hasn't been willing to talk to me at all since that.

I am NAPped with him until well after his golden age ends. The only things I can really do are close open borders or pressure him culturally(which I'm attempting already.) I've spent all my EPs on him for the past 15-20 turns, as well.

If you have any other ideas, let me know. Unfortunately, I don't think losing OB would even affect him much, he has plenty of large cities.

Ellimist[/COLOR]

No really specific ideas here. There's pretty much nothing I can do from across the world myself, unfortunately.

NH's 100% gold income is roughly double ours and their 100% science has been sufficient to discover several technologies in one turn lately. They have 24 more population than we do, but only one more city.

The entire world except us seems to be preparing for a war. Kuro's gathering Horse Archers on his Jkaen border. NH is teching military stuff and moving chariots around.

All of our cities are Hindu now except for Denebola, Rasalas, Bellatrix, and Alphecca. A missionary will arrive in Denebola next turn, with more on the way to the others soon. Kuro's Great Scientist and Buddhist missionary are on the way, currently expected at around T133. I was hoping to run 100% gold until the Academy was built, but I think we'll need to start building longbows earlier than that.

We have Literature already, but I'm delaying Music for the moment because I don't think we're at risk of losing the artist. I'd like to improve our security situation first; our NAP with NH ends after T136 and he's definitely building up troops. He'll probably use them vs Jkaen but he won't talk to me any longer so it's definitely a concern.
There's no great reason to get Music until we're ready to pop the golden age, and there are several things I'd like to do before that.

• We need to be working more tiles, especially cottages, by increasing our population. I'll try to define a target size for each city.
  
• Grow Sirius to size 17-18 to work all water tiles and the two mines.
  
• Settle the planned city sites.
  
• Improve infrastructure, mostly with forges, libraries and markets.
  
• Finish the Great Library in Polaris. We aren't far off of it, but I did decide to use less forests and more whip overflow. This delays the wonder a bit but will preserve more forests for Betelgeuse, possibly for another wonder.

I've been whipping the heck out of our younger cities, most of them lack other sources of production. I'll stop doing this soon and let them grow.

[Ellimist]

Btw... Cothons rock.

Based on the way trade route mechanics work, the benefits of the building will just get better and better as cities get larger worldwide.

[Ellimist]

Our NAP with the Elementals is ending soon, and I'm pretty sure they're going to attack us afterward thanks to a recent email exchange. Unfortunately, I've put off building military and now Polaris and Arcturus are unprepared. I'm going to postpone settling Betelgeuse until we can defend it properly.

I started teching Feudalism for vassalage and longbows. It will take two turns(one more) at 80% research, leaving us with about 800 gold. Unfortunately, I'm in kind of a "ground rush" situation with regard to the NAP, and I doubt we'll be able to muster enough strength to save both cities if they're smart about it. I'm going to delay the Great Library at Polaris, after all there's no sense in building it if we don't get to keep it.

I'm going to sentry the plains hill north of the stone in order to have visibility on their front line cities, as well as putting some boats near their center island cities. They've been moving some troops around near Vega that could indicate our island cities are in danger.

I'll post the emails when I get home, it's tough to format them for the forum using my phone. Lewwyn and NobleHelium both are not very good at concealing things. Lewwyn especially tends to be pretty obvious.

[Ellimist]

Our Confucian missionary will arrive next turn(T129). I guess you guys will keep the Hindu one as well, I hope the delay wasn't inconvenient.

(There was some confusion about which missionary I was going to send them.)

[COLOR="Wheat"]It would have been nice to use the GA hammers on missionaries and religion, but it won't set us back in that pursuit too much. Gave us time to build more infrastructure anyway.

BTW I am taking over diplo for the team. SO if you're interested in any deals then I would appreciate you letting me know. The NAP is ending T136 or T130? I thought it was 136 but Noble told me it was 130 so its closer than I thought.

Lew[/COLOR]

Okay, that's odd that Lewwyn is responding to me. I don't believe he's initiated any diplo at all up to this point in the game.

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]I'd say you're doing pretty well on infrastructure.

Are you looking for a deal of some sort? I'm open to negotiation but don't really know what you want.

Ellimist[/COLOR]

I deliberately don't answer the NAP question here. Lewwyn has a copy of the emails we exchanged before but for some reason he's asking anyway.

Can you confirm when our NAP ends. Noble just recorrected me and told me its 136.

Yeah he definitely wants me to clarify this. Why does it matter so much to him? He has visibility into our entire front line including both Polaris and Arcturus, and our power graph has been relatively dormant for the past 30 turns.

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Begin forwarded message:

Okay so here are the terms of the deal. This is a little vague because I am rushing so I'd like to leave some leeway. I would still like to discuss with Lewwyn but we will want to not change the terms of the deal significantly.

1) EMC and NL will settle cities on the sites according to the map. Brown squares will be NL cities, and orange squares will be EMC cities.
2) EMC will settle the two southern NL city locations and then gift them to NL. NL will decide when these cities will be settled. In exchange, NL will gift a settler for each city settled. NL will be able to get the settlers to EMC in 5-8 turns.
3) Term 2 of this deal will be confidential and is not to be disclosed to other players.
4) NL will trade a worker for a galley from EMC. NL will gift the worker next turn, EMC will move their galley SE of Arcturus towards Neon and gift it as soon as possible.
5) If either team obtains two or more copies of a resource that is present on the center island and at least one copy is from the center island, then they will gift it to the other party upon request.
6) NL and EMC's NAP will be extended through the end of turn 136.
[/COLOR]

I guess I'll just send him the text of the deal? Even though he already has it?

Thanks!

That's all he wanted to know? Why does it even matter when the NAP ends unless one of us is going to attack the other? I haven't really done anything lately that even suggests I'm preparing for a war, while his power has been rising.

Should I be worried?

Let's keep this conversation going...

Up to you. I was just trying to figure out if you and Kuro were planning to joint attack me. I'm less worried about that now that 136 is confirmed. If it was 130 then I would have been worried. I still think that Kuro is planning something, but I still have room to expand peacefully...

Ummm, right. Sure. He's worried enough about it to ask a few times even though he can see that Polaris is currently empty and Arcturus has 2 units. But if he has 6 additional turns, well, that's a whole different story. Yeah I totally believe that.

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]If you're concerned about our NAP ending soon, we could extend it a bit farther.

After all, T136 isn't very far away either. What about T147?[/COLOR]

Let's put his stated reasoning to the test...

LMAO whats with these random NAP numbers anyway?

[COLOR="Wheat"]To be honest I was only concerned if it was 130. But 136 is enough time for me to feel safe. Given that and the fact that I usually don't like signing NAPs in general, probably not interested in a NAP right now. At this point its basically a race.
I will consider it though if Kuro gets uppity.[/COLOR]

Yeah. Right. Sure. Work on being more credible.

It should be through the end of 136, yes.

Noble was being cc'd the whole time, but didn't join in early enough to hush up Lewwyn. I tried to engage him in chat.

Ellimist: So you'd like to extend our NAP a bit further? Lewwyn seems concerned about it.
NobleHelium: I'm not sure whether he's concerned about it or not.
Ellimist: "I was just trying to figure out if you and Kuro were planning to joint attack me. I'm less worried about that now that 136 is confirmed. If it was 130 then I would have been worried. I still think that Kuro is planning something, but I still have room to expand peacefully..."
NobleHelium: Yeah i see that now.
NobleHelium: Anyway like I said, I don't know.
Ellimist: K
Ellimist: Seems a little odd... Why would it even make much difference to Lewwyn whether it ends 130 or 136.
NobleHelium: Don't ask me, I don't know.
Ellimist: Everything alright?
NobleHelium: Sure everything's all right.
Ellimist: You've been different lately.
[no response]

The only thing that really makes sense is they're planning for war. T136 seemed pretty far away up til now, but in hindsight, I've been pretty stupid about not seeing this earlier. Their power has been rising significantly and they've been teching military stuff, but I assumed it was for a war with Jkaen. Obviously, we're a better target for it, and they started an early golden age to get far enough ahead of us in tech and build up for a war with us.

[Ellimist]

Hmmmmmmmmm...

So he's moving longbowmen in my direction and producing knights. Looks like we're in for a rough ride.

[Ellimist]

Okay, I'm sorry I haven't updated in forever. Here's the current situation.

I'm 90% certain that Lewwyn is going to attack me on T137. If he does, he's going to make significant gains before I'll be able to hold him back, and even after I do, he'll have such a big empire that I can't really see myself overcoming it. Actually... he already does have a ridiculous lead.

So, why am I so sure about it? There are a lot of factors that indicate this, both inside and outside the game.

• Lewwyn and NH popped a golden age and then proceeded to research a ton of military techs. They basically advanced an entire era ahead of me on military. (This is part of the reason I'm so unprepared.) They wouldn't have prioritized those so highly if they didn't plan to use them, and this started well before Kuro declared on Jkaen. I'm also pretty sure they deliberately managed things to prevent me from seeing what they were researching.
  
• A bit back, he suddenly demanded a bit back that I delete a scout in his territory. This didn't bother them for the past several dozen turns, but all of a sudden they have something to hide and it couldn't wait a couple turns for the unit to move. Lewwyn claims it was due to his war with Kuro, but that excuse didn't hold up to my counter-offer. Their power rating also started rising considerably faster after the scout was deleted.
  
• Their power has been going up FAST. I've seen knights and other units, and they're always either newly built or headed in my direction.
  
• Lewwyn lied to Kuro and even encouraged him to attack Jkaen. As soon as Kuro did, Lewwyn extorted a city from Jkaen for assistance. As far as I can tell, the only assistance rendered so far has been the opportunistic razing of Karkat by galley. That alone would cause me to distrust NH/Lewwyn, but Lewwyn is also a very bad liar. He has a habit of saying things that aren't even remotely believable. I'd love to play poker with him.
  
• I think the Kuro/Elementals war is basically a diversion that they got paid for. My scout in the border region hasn't seen a single knight, and they've had plenty of time to get them down there. I'm pretty sure they scammed Jkaen out of his city and don't intend to do much at all to Kuro. After all, Kuro isn't really a contender to win the game.

Big power spike:

The main route from Lewwyn's core to Kuro. Very very few units have gone south, and zero knights that I've seen.

So... what am I doing to prepare? Well, I'm building a lot of longbowmen.

The problem is, I'm facing knights, so what I really need is pikemen, and engineering is expensive. Last turn, I had enough overflow to tech Music in 1 turn, so I did that and triggered a 12 turn GA this turn. I debated for awhile on whether to tech Music, but I ended up going for it because doesn't delay pikemen at all and those are the critical unit to get.

Before:

After:

Hopefully I'll be able to hold him off at Regulus/Denebola/Rasalas. All three of those cities have defensive advantages that the front two simply don't have, so I think I have to pull back the defenses to them. I haven't actually pulled the defenses back yet, I'm probably going to do it next turn, but for now I'd rather he didn't know I'm going to do it.

I expect that he's planning to hit Vega and Alphecca as well if he can. I'm hoping I can get visibility down at Vega to see whether the city can be saved.

Meanwhile, I have a little diversion set up near Alphecca. If he doesn't react to it, I might be able to raze one or two of his cities. If he does, it could take the pressure off somewhere else and the units can be redeployed.

They've pretty much won this game at this point, unless I can pull off a miracle somehow. Both of them are very formidable players and I've made plenty of mistakes for them to take advantage of.

[Ellimist]

T136 played yesterday, T137 is in and about to be played.

If he's not planning to attack me, I'm going to feel pretty silly about all this worrying.

I stole a peek at Neon. This sort of thing is basically the main reason I complied with Lewwyn's demand regarding the scout and haven't closed borders with him. There's a galley that could be problematic, but 4 land units should be able to kill 2 of Lewwyn's. Whether I'll declare war and chance an amphibious attack will depending on what he does here.

The retreat is under way, but I don't know how well I'll be able to hold out at this line of cities. With knights, he's likely to have superior mobility, especially because of my excessive road building.

Of course, it's not like it ultimately will matter. He's kicking my butt in the demographics. Check out the food comparison specifically, my prod/gnp are artificially boosted due to the golden age.

[Ellimist]

Soooo.... I wasn't just being paranoid.

Yikes? Seriously, this is gonna leave a bruise.

There's no chance I could have saved Arcturus or Polaris, and I'm not going to be able to take Sodium or Neon either.

Also, FYI, I never actually told Lewwyn I wouldn't send my units into his territory. He demanded it, and I deleted my scout. If it was so important to him, he should have closed OB unless I agreed not to.

[Ellimist]

In the face of the coming onslaught, I continued the retreat. We're most likely going to lose Polaris and Arcturus this turn, but shouldn't lose anything else unless I missed something.

Other assorted screenshots:

Domestic Advisor:

Military advisor(eot):

Finance advisor:

Foreign advisor:

This is going to hurt quite a bit...