[SPOILERS] Caesar Amelia of Rome

[Ilios]

What's the reasoning behind not founding the Pigs/Corn/Banana site before the sugar site?

[Bobchillingworth]

Reasoning was two-fold:

One, I was worried that a city there (in the north) would be more difficult to defend if, say, a pair of scouting war chariots arrived on horizon. Nova Prospekt also secures a small band of defensive land around my capital, in case of an early rush (I seem safe for now, but at the time...)


Two, the mega-food site is obviously a far better city, but it won't take off until I get some culture in there, and a monument will take a long time to build for quick speed. The solution is to get a Hindu missionary in the city when or soon after I found it, but haven't been able to produce them until now.

[Bobchillingworth]

I assume Sandover has been posting our diplomatic dealings from the last few days- if he hasn't, or anyone has any questions, just post here and give me a reason to update this thing



To briefly sum up my feelings on our prophet trade deal- it works out quite well for me.


I get to:

* bulb a fairly expensive tech
* hopefully get a second religion out of it
* ideally secure the AP
* as I get to keep my first two great people, I essentially have a head-start on everyone else for early great person generation, as without the deal I might blow one of my first two great people on the theo bulb. Now it's as if I get two great people at 67 (or so) great person points.
* flood Sandover's cities with missionaries that will form the basis of my economy, which will be heavily based on "alternative" sources of income. I'll mostly be avoiding the typical cottage spam, as I lack enough flat grassland tiles to really make it worthwhile.


Additionally, our deal has the welcome side-effects of:

* Granting me contact with Moogle and TT, as per the game contact rules articulated in the first post of the tech thread. Sandover stated in his emails to me that he had contact with both of them, which should be sufficient grounds for me to chat them up.
* We have an informal NAP which is biased in my favor... Sandover has good reason now to not start any aggression against me until I pop a great person after the second which he finds worthwhile. I get my prize out of our deal early on, and will reap the benefit for most of the game... he gets to wait for a couple dozen turns until I get around to generating something he likes. I also owe him a settler, but that only takes me a few turns to build. Of course, I'm not going to attack him while I still owe him a great person... that would be in really bad faith. But I can slack off on war-chariot defense now in a way that I wouldn't have before, and invest those hammers in the economy instead.


Hmm, I wonder if I'll eventually be eating those last few words...

[Bobchillingworth]

Two screencaps of interest this turn.




First, an ocean tile right next to the shore:






I think I can say with near certainty that I'm playing on a Highlands map edited to function like an Inland sea. Probably pretty similar to what PBEM1 was played on. It will likely behoove me to get a galley exploring that area soon, but while I'll settle in the direction of the ocean there are several more cities I'll need to place going that way first.



More curiously I also uncovered this:






Elephants? In my PBEM3?!


It's more likely than I would have thought. Oh and look, they're far closer to Sandover than I. So while at least half my future city sites lack any sort of visible resource, Sandover gets to rock the most unbalanced resource / unit in the game to go along with his war-chariots.

In addition to my crushing dismay, I'm pretty confused too- didn't we vote to have elephants removed from this map?

[Rowain]

I'm sure that one of the famous pink elephants you often see in the highlands (after visiting the nearest destillery )

[Bobchillingworth]

Very interesting diplo stuff going on now that Sandover has granted me contact with both Moogle and Twinkletoes. It seems that TT is really worried that Sandover is going to attack him- he was pretty insistent in trying to convince me to declare on Egypt with him. I have no intention of doing so at this time however, for a few reasons:


* TT badly underestimates how difficult it will be to really do damage vs. Sandover. He seemed convinced that "a lot of spears" would be enough, but Sandover has metal and would be fighting on his home turf. Furthermore, combined forces of axes and war-chariots would not only be able to prevent us from taking any core cities without substantial hammer losses on our parts, but could defeat anything TT has as well as praets in the field, considering the much cheaper Egyptian troops costs.

* I don't want to jeopardize my relationship with Sandover, who I think is a stronger player than TT but not unstoppably good. More importantly, I don't want to ruin my deal for his prophet or besmirch my trading reputation.

* I have far better things to build right now. I need to be working on missionaries, settlers, workers, and praets to defend them. Between those I want to spam forges and temples. With only two production cities at the moment and no real whipping capability (and I don't even have Hunting!), wasting production on a praetorian army would be utter foolishness.



Still, it would be great if TT declared on Sandover as some sort of preemptive thing, and they bashed heads for a while. I don't want either of them growing too strong or weak, but I'm not willing to intervene at present. I suggested to TT that Moogle might be persuaded to contribute a few Gaellic warriors vs. Sandover. TT couldn't think of anything that Moogle would want, but actually if TT gifted him his Oracle prophet to build a shrine, that might resolve some competition I'll have for the AP. I didn't suggest that, though, because we weren't talking under confidentiality and I don't want TT leaking any smoking guns with me scheming to other players. It's pretty unlikely that Moogle will bother throwing hammers at a civ a world away anyways.

[Bobchillingworth]

Blast, I am told that Moogle got theology. Actually not a bad play at all. I suppose that since the prophet is less attractive now I'd be justified in ditching Sandover and joining TT in some war against him, as I'd be without obligations. But I'm still not going to do it, because I think that TT is still a lousy warmonger, and I would rather found my own cities than blow a ton of hammers trying to take Sandover's. So the trade is still on, I'll just use the prophet to build my shrine & try to generate an engineer as my first guy... maybe run a scientist too, to try for a philo bulb. I'm not too worried about it.

[Bobchillingworth]

Oh hey I finally have something to update this thread with.







This took frigging forever, and I was getting pretty tense in RL over this toward the end, despite having long ago secured everyone's promise that nobody else would challenge my claim to the wonder. I bent my entire civ to securing it, and have crippled my expansion, military, and economic development as a consequence. I'm an imperial civ with 5 cities when Timmy, Scooter, and Sandover have between 7-9 each.


But I got the goddamned pyramids, and that's really all I ever needed, in conjunction with the shrine I'll be building in a few turns. My economy is complete. I'm now really, really going to crank up the expansion, seize as much of my shitty land as I can, and run rep specialists and spam missionaries to make up for it all, because I just have no ability to run any sort of traditional cottage economy with the crap terrain I have.


I'm sure this was a terrible play, and that anyone with a modicum of skill who sees an overview of my land (I have one posted way earlier in this thread somewhere) will think of a dozen better ways that I could have recovered my position in the game, but I'm not a great civ player and I absolutely refuse to create detailed micromanagement plans for every stupid unit dozens of turns in advance.




ALSO- Wheee Pyramids! :2dance:

[Bobchillingworth]

I haven't really been updating this thing because no one has asked about anything & I don't feel that I have any great insights into civ to share. I've noticed that this game has become rather popular lately in the lurker thread and Moogle's. I assume that Moogle is writing about the AP and/or his diplo drama with Sandover and TT, but I'm rather surprised that the game itself is garnering much interest, what with the lack of war, novelty, or well-known participants.

If anyone has any questions about my own sad civ feel free to ask, although you're probably out of luck if you want the goods on my building plans or city logistics, since I hardly have any

[pocketbeetle]

Word on the grapevine is that you had a chat with Scooter recently.
Your interpretation and commitment to that conversation would be interesting.


And as for the lurker thread: It's all me, I'm busy insulting you!