[SPOILER] Willem II of England

[Gaspar]

Ok, played. Two pieces of news, both involving military. First off, we have our first barbarian invader:



To deal with it, because Bergkamp only has a warrior and I don't want to let it pillage the corn, I've moved Van Persie's MP axe towards Bergkamp, it should be able to hit it the turn it lands on the corn. VP will have to replace the axe, but I want the whip overflow into the forge, so it'll have to wait until next turn. GE has also moved a couple of his quechua's towards our territory. Its still 6T from Van Persie's city center, but if he crosses them onto our side of the lake, I'll consider that aggressive.



Still, ultimately if he uses the Quechua pair to explore rather than fortify his new site, that will aid Whovus, so be interesting to see where he goes. He has not yet replied to our message, but he moved his settler onto the spot where our warrior was. I decided to move it along anyway, since I'm more interested in scouting the southern lake area than playing chicken with GE.

Otherwise, everything is pretty well according to plan. Settlers are both en route, 3T from 2 new cities. Normally I'd do a T50 state of the empire update for the lurkers, but since we'll have 2 more cities on T52, I'll wait til then to do it.

[Nakor]

Looking good.
With all the barbs arriving, we need a few more military units after expansion to 6 cities, don't you think? Maybe get some chariots to move fast between our cities.

[Gaspar]

The following arrived from the Shakirites:

Sanibona Nakor & Gaspar

There is no need for Feyenoord 3 to bother himself with speaking to
our Settler, the tribal grape-vine has finally reached him.

His Illustrious Majesty is always willing to discuss the peaceful
settlement of Lake Shakira. However, He does not like being told what
to do by so-called “friends” regarding where He puts cities within His
natural borders.

The proposed site is 8 tiles diagonally north-west from WakaWakaShaka
- the same distance that our culture spreads east beyond SheWolf. The
lake tiles were not visible on the original area revealed by Ruff-Hi,
however, their shape indicates that they were supposed to be the NW
extremity of our area, this has been confirmed by discovery of a
similar looking lake at the same distance to our south-east, albeit
reversed. The fact that they do not extend a further 2 squares to the
west, making the shape of a cross, would indicate that there may be
some off-set in our positions. Therefore, did Whosit’s city not leak
culture into your sovereign zone? You were happy to let us deal with
it, as we saw fit, but now want to stop us settling in a similar
position!

But His Illustrious Majesty is an honourable man, and does not wish a
dispute on His western border as well as His north & south. In order
to secure a NAP with yourselves, He is prepared to settle the city 1
tile to the south-east [below the Sheep] which would mean that the
Fish are in the BFC. However, this would require your guarantee not to
settle in such a way that you over-lap the Fish tile with your first
ring – after all, the Fish tile is within our large square, is it not?
And settling as such could be deemed aggressive, no?

Now the question of Whosit’s old city; we took it as he basically told
us to go elsewhere, and then his culture leaked into our sovereign
territory, as well as yours. Once the Work-Boat is completed in
UnPocoLocoDAmor, in order to improve the Fish tile, His Illustrious
majesty may be inclined to benevolently give it back to Whosit, so
long as he fully respects the NAP he signed by accepting the
cease-fire. We would be grateful if you could pass this on, as he does
not respond to, or indeed acknowledge, any message we send him. We
suspect he’s still licking his wounds.

Regarding further cities; our plan is to “back-fill” to link
CazadorDeAmor to our capital with culture, by planting 2 further
cities. Neither of these should affect you. Once these are in place,
we will be expanding east; where we hope to bump into Malakai, again,
or, indeed Kyan.

Sobonana,

Ambassador GingerEagle
on behalf of His Illustrious Majesty,
Shaka Rex of The Shakirite Empire
[may His hips never lie, may His breasts remain small and humble]

Well... I think we got our point across. He's not really conceding anything to us in here, but its clear from the tone that he wants an exit strategy from this situation between the three Civs. I suppose the real issue is what do we want from this. I mean ultimately, that fish tile I suppose. But conceding that, I want enough room to get a city on the southern lake. So I'll need to whip out the maps and see exactly where that's going to need to be.

Also caught a chat with Whosit. I let him know about GE's offer, which he doesn't trust anymore than I do. I'll have a bit more to say later, but I wanted to get this out there.

[Gaspar]

Turn came around. Here's the Cliff's Notes version of the turn:

Scouting warrior @ lake moved SE to scout a bit of the immediate area. We'll lose some of the opportunities when GE settles, so wanted to see what the what was now. Original scouting warrior is now moving towards "Circumnavigation" more with the intent of getting eyes on our western border.

Barb warrior inside Bergkamps culture this turn. Axe will be there shortly. VP onto an axe to replace that axe. I micro'd VP for max hammers so the axe will show up before city growth. We can move back to max food next turn. Next 2 turns will see 2 new cities. Overmars completed granary, onto Axe. Overmars probably needs to dedicate to military for a bit after its current micro plan for the next settler is done, as you indicated in your last post, Nakor. Also need to work out getting several more workers up. At least 3 more very soon.

GE did move his settler/Quechua pair to his proposed new site off the lake. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Tredje is up to 5 cities, so we won't be first there.

So there's at least 1 pretty picture here, here's the T50 demos. Our numbers look a lot worse because we are clearly whipping much more heavily than our rivals. Time will tell if that's the right play or not, I can definitely see the temptation not to on a map like this.

[Nakor]

I saw the message from GE and read your chat with Whosit.

Seems like we can get a deal with GE.
What do we loose if he moves his city 1SE? And what do we want in the deal specifically? I think I was pretty clear on the terms.
Still have to avoid a NAP or sign one that isn't overly long. Not that we'll be ready to fight him before t130 or so...

I keep promising to take a look at the save. One of these days I really have to do that and post my thought.

What is Tredje doing different from us that gets him to 5 cities this fast?
Then again, we'll have 5 next turn, so I still think we're doing pretty good.

[Gaspar]

As far as what we want from GE goes, my only concern about the new city is that it inadvertently might steal more tiles from our proposed City south of this site. That's why I was a bit reluctant in the chat with Whosit to move our scouting Warrior the way we did, but he was right - if we're not going to do anything else, its pretty hard for me to say no to losing a couple turns on the scouting to help him out minimally. I suppose it doesn't really matter at this point. What we *want* out of GE? Well, what I really want is to be able to settle some sites on our Eastern border. Its got nothing to do with the lake and everything to do with there being some very strong city sites that way. I think mostly what we need now is to pacify him a bit, which a NAP is probably the ideal way to do that. I just feel a little bad doing that to Whosit, as the potential threat of our intervention is an asset to him in his war plans. I also like the flexibility of not having one. I suppose that we could try to talk him into taking Dropshortaliter back and just calming the whole situation down. Just not sure that's in our best interest either. Regardless, wherever GE puts that city, we can hit it very easily once we're done expanding. I just don't want to alienate Whosit in the process of negotiations.

I think Tredje just prioritized a little differently than us. 10 turns ago we were top in soldier points. Now were second last. I suspect he's dead last. Still, we settle city 5 in 2 turn, so he only beat us there by 3 turns. I think the biggest thing we're doing differently than the other civs is that we're whipping more. I also think we've prioritized getting improved tiles over just chopping for production. I think that's the right call, but we won't feel the impact until we can start to grow our cities more.

[Gaspar]

Turn here yet again, gotta love the weekend. Several pieces of news this turn. First, in honor of his impending retirement, former Ajax and Fulham star (he hasn't played anywhere else of note, has he? ) gets the privilege of adorning our newest settlement:



As you can see, went Worker first, with the Bergkamp worker team moving to pasture the cows and apply the chop to that worker. I will build the road first, in case a barb comes in from the unexplored territory to the north, its important the axe can immediately return to defend the city. I have to cover the workers on the Cow tile because its right next to the Barb city. Once Overmars has a settler, I think it will need to devote its next 10 turns or so to creating the mobile defense force it needs to deal with the Barbarians, never more obviously indicated than here:



Another warrior has popped up outside of Van Persie, and has sort of a ghetto-fork on our Worker and our Undefended city. The axe will complete next turn, and if the Barb moves NW, we can kill it next turn before returning to MP duty in Van Persie. If the Barb moves north, I have no recourse to kill it immediately, but the worker can continue completing the Ivory road unmolested. The upshot is its possible that Van Persie will have a non-working citizen for a turn, depending on the Barb's activity. This is why we need a mobile defense, so I don't have to keep moving units out of cities to deal with Barbs. On the plus side, Ajax 1 dispatched the Barb approaching the capital with nary a scratch.



In other news, Feyenoord 1 continued his mission to hit our Eastern border, and discovered the first of TTSNBN's borders. Brave, wounded, Feyenoord 3 moved SW rather than E as Whosit had wanted, because Whosit's warrior is still in the area. Hopefully he won't mind. We discovered this:



There's clearly room for 2 strong cities in that area, but we really have to defog down around there.

In other Civ news, checking the diplomacy screen tells me both TTSNBN and Tredje have Currency, as they both have gold to trade. So I suspect Confucianism is out. Probably Christianity is our best chance for Religion, as I doubt Theology will be a priority tech in this game. I'm not fussed either way, as we have plenty of happy naturally, we're Creative and don't need the culture. It just leaves a whole civic tree worthless to us at the moment, unfortunately. Also, check this out:



Gingereagle is over 100k soldier points. I don't see how Whosit has a chance at this point, and we probably need to look at a Diplomatic exit strategy to this game of chicken, because I have no desire to build that many units at this point. I think he needs an email before he sees the save, so we can spin this in our favor. I guess I'm up, sadly. In ten turns, he's gained over 40k soldier points. With 2 cities (the 3rd city can't have contributed yet, as its only been out of revolt for 2 turns.) He won't lose a war that way, but thats a lot of hammers wasted on ancient trash. Well, good luck to him.

[Gaspar]

Started to write a reply to GE, started to get a brain freeze, decided to wait until you were around. Just FYI.

[Nakor]

Interesting turns indeed!
I'll write to GE and get him to the table with a deal he can't refuse.

I think we should name the city towards GE Davids.

[Nakor]

Message send:

Goeiedag Ambasador GingerEagle,

Please inform HIM (His Illustrious Majesty [may his warriors be as brave as his women are beautifull]) that we didn't intend to tell him what to do with his settler. Who are we to tell HIM anything? We can merely ask, and that is what we did.
On another point, we didn't have any visibility on the city the Crazy empire build at that time. If we had we would have responded earlier to this intrusion of the land we believe to be rightfully ours.

We are very happy that HIM has agreed to make a deal with us.

Here is what we believe our deal to be:
1. You will settle 1SE from your intended tile
2. We won't settle a site with his Number-One-Wife's fish in our first and second ring.
3. We sign a NAP untill t100 which has the following clauses:
3a. No Right of Passage for units from civs that are warring with the other.
3b. No gifting of units to an enemy of our civ for an attack
4. Discussion of settling near our mutual "border" for future cities

Can HIM [may he be wise beyond his years] agree to this deal?

On a sidenote, we would like to ask you if you want us to talk to the Crazy Empire and help straightening out your deal.
If so, what do you want us to tell him?

We hope to hear your reply as soon as possible.

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