[SPOILERS] Team EggHeads: DMOC and TeddyKGB (Now Lurker-Friendly!)

[DMOC]

Turn 134 - 475 AD

We made peace with Rome/Barteq. So did Yossarian (who also finally adopted Hereditary Rule -- that'll allow his cities to grow to double digits). Here's the full message I sent, followed by his:

Barteq,

Would it be possible to follow this plan?

1. You sign peace with us starting next turn. (EggHeads have offered peace already.)
2. We both offer an NAP with you to turn 190, effectively until the end of the game.
3. You have carte blanche with England
4. We both sign open borders with you and keep them until the NAP (helps your economy)
5. Once Antium's silver comes into EggHeads' culture control, we will gift you the silver.

This way, we move on from the war and can try to catch up to suttree/Oxyphenbutazone. =)

One more thing ... EggHeads badly need a Heroic Epic unit for our future wars against India and other nations (not you guys, of course). We see that you have a Great General warrior in Antium. May you gift us that Great General warrior on turn 137 so we can unlock Heroic Epic? We will immediately gift the warrior back to you on the same turn or the turn after. We can offer 30 gold as payment.

Regards,
DMOC of the EggHeads team
Yossarian of the Blame Caledorn Team

I agree to your prospal.

1. 10 turns peace signed with both teams.
2. I agree to signed NAP to turn 190. If everything will works fine, I don't see any reason to not prolong it for a much longer time, maybe even to until the end of the game, as you mention.
3. Great .
4. I agree. It won't help now, cause of 2 main reasons - I haven't got to many cities and as I remember from other game, you need many turns of peace, to regain full trade percent bonus (I think, that at least 20-30 turns will be needed, to get 2 gold per city back). But, of course, in future it will be very profitable deal for me .
5. Thanks. When I only will finish new road to my new city, than I will rebuild it for now. Maybe, if I will win my war I will gain access to new one, but this is too questionable now.
6. General - let me think about it for. I leave him close to EggHeads team's border. I don't need him badly on second front, cause I got another one over there, but I have some doubts thanks to our national game. So many players like to put there knives into others back, that I'm always suspicious (I heard, that one player destroy another one with his own army, send as a gift :D - I don't play in this game - later this option was banned from a game by blocking it in new mod).

PS I must think about my economy already, cause it looks disastrous for a moment . I have still time to act, but it will be, very, very hard (I have one idea, but I won't be easy to set it in motion). Unfortunatly, my clock is ticking and deadline is when rifling will be discover. Until than my 'pretopults' (pretorians + catapults) should destroy everything what comes into my borders .


Regards
Barteq

Too bad he's not too willing to gift us the general. I sent him a reply:

Barteq,

We understand if you are nervous about gifting us a Great General. We just need any unit with 10 experience or more in our possession for a single turn. You can trust that we will keep our word and return the unit to you as soon as possible. We are also offering payment to indicate that we are serious. We honor our deals in this game. That is why we declared war on you even though we did not want a war. We honored our Defensive Pact.

Please let us know if you are still interested in gifting us a 10 experience (or more) unit in exchange for payment.

-DMOC of EggHeads

Again, we can always ask classical_hero.

With the end of the war, we're going to have to figure out where we want to allocate our axemen and catapults. I'll save the catapults and put them together in a stack and we can either gift to Arki later or use them against India. But our main army will be cataphracts, so catapults probably won't see too much action. For now, I put a few axes on the way to cities that'll need Hereditary Rule happiness, but honestly, we're in really good shape in terms of happiness. Many cities have lots of surplus happiness, so we're not growing enough.

We should also consider deleting warriors that are acting as city garrisons. Here's our cost screen. Will deleting units help? It says we have "free support for 34 units."

EDIT: Yes, deleting units should help.

I went ahead and looked at this CivFanatics artice: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=141475

So according to our finances screen, we are paying for 22 units, while having free support for 34, so we've got 56 of them. Thus, it makes sense for us to delete warriors (and possibly our 0 experience spears and axes) to save on costs.

Unfortunately, not all the news is good. SutOxy got yet another Great Person ... and they also bulbed Machinery this turn to unlock Engineering.

Check out this city that SutOxy have. That's a pretty great Heroic Epic city, in my opinion, and I wish we had something like that.

Fortunately for our prospects this game, Cat/bandit finally responded to my message! Here's what they sent:

Hi,

Thank you for the information. We are also hoping for a longer NAP with Yuufo, if he is indeed negotiating with us in a good will, our western border should be indeed secure for some time. Thanks for TGL I hope that I didn't steal it from you I have no idea why Asterix was completely ignoring it for so long time...

I know about SutOxy run away but I can not help you in that matter (it doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to). My hands are just tied. Nevertheless I hope that I will be able to help you in that matter in the future.

Asterix left the empire very underdeveloped. Most of the cities missing crucial buildings like granary. Only Two or three cities (including the capital) where somehow developed but still in worse condition then for example Yuufo's 5th or 6th city... Many cities were even working non improved tiles (Way too few workers) a lot of unchopped forests along border with Yuufo! There were forests one tile from our cities and one tile from his border... Happy defending in case of war when attacking Yuufo would get bigger defense bonus on those forests tiles...

But I hope we are back on track. Chopping forests helped to improve infrastructure and now our economy looks a lot better.

We haven't yet decided on our tech path

Thanks and sorry for the delay!
B4ndit

Cat/Bandit are trading with SutOxy, so hopefully we can tell them to stop (unless they're bound to it by some deal Asterix signed, which I wouldn't be surprised, due to Asterik's bizarre inability to understand the diplomatic picture this game ).

As an aside, all this unused land near DT and classical_hero is making me sad. And in this case, their silver is in a much better spot than ours.

Meanwhile, here's what we've got going on in our cities. I didn't whip anything this turn. Next turn, I plan on whipping both UT Austin and UC Berkeley for courthouses, which will give us 7 total for the game. Once we get Metal Casting, a lot of our cities will stop building wealth in favor of forges.

Here is UC Berkeley, which will generate our next Great Person next turn. It will also be whipping its courthouse once we've got the Great Person.

Here is our capital, which is on pace to be the first size-14 city in this game, or at least will tie for it. This city will definitely produce our third Great Person. The question is when, and what do we want it to be. Remember, it can still 1-turn a colloseum if needed so happiness is not an issue now.

Here's Princeton, a city that, along with its close cousin Michigan, will need to use chain irrigation and share the corn in order to reach maximum potential. It's slow-building a courthouse as eventually costs will rise to roughly 10 gold a turn, despite it being close to the capital.

Finally, the demographics.

Team Notes:

1. There's a worker near UC San Diego who's on a forest. I think that was my mistake -- i'd rather he be farming with two other workers in the area rather than chopping. Fortunately, due to the road, he doesn't really waste any worker turns.

2. I'll send a reply to Catwalk/Bandit soon.

3. Next turn, 0% research, and possibly the turn after that. Ideally, we get Metal Casting in three turns if we're not revolting to Bureaucracy.

Questions:

1. Where do we put our espionage points on? I just sent Yossarian a message asking if we can invest some points on them. We really have no more use for investing points on Rome.

2. What do you think of this 17th city? We'll need to find a city to produce the settler. This is low-priority.

3. And now the important one ... do we switch to Bureaucracy next turn? Will need to think about this, especially if we get a Great Scientist and can start a Golden Age. We may want to delay it a few turns to get some growth going first, and our capital isn't a great Bureaucracy city anyway. It seems like plako deliberately designed the map to weaken the Bureaucracy civic, which I actually like since it makes the civic options more interesting.