Well, interesting developments this turn. Decided to continue SW towards the centre of the map, and look who we found!
So, luddite (Bismarck of Sumeria) would appear to be our neighbour to the west. Very interesting stuff. I'll get to work on drafting a greeting, and will post it up here for review before I send it.
In less important news: renamed our Warrior just for fun. Also, we can obviously see a bit more of the shape of the land and sea near us now. Looks like we might be at the centre of a T, with paths leading to the west, south and east, and coast all around. Will have to wait and see though.
No more darned resources revealed either. Man, I hope other people aren't finding wealths of good resources near their lands. What we've seen so far... kind of sucks, really.
Right, so here's the proposed message in draft form. (This has NOT been sent to Sumeria yet.)
Yes, it's long (I'm not known for lack of verbosity!)... and yes, it reveals quite a lot to luddite. However, the goal of this is to come across as friendly and sincere, and (maybe) to coax him into revealing a little information back in return. It would also be great if we can secure the western border early on, since this would allow us to concentrate on defending elsewhere (or building wonders) in the early game. Hence the attempt to come across as open-handed as possible.
Any suggestions for alterations before it goes out? Perhaps it comes across as too eager? Too desperate? Feel free to critique if you wish, I welcome feedback! Ideally I'm looking to send this in the next few hours, so put in your suggestions before then if you want to have an impact.
Greetings Luddite/Atlas,
It's a pleasure to meet you and your fine pointy-hatted civilization!
It seems our two Warriors met just this turn and become acquainted out in the wilderness. You're the first civilized nation that we've encountered so far in the game, so it's great to finally have a chance for some conversation. (We'd be interested to know if you've met anyone else yet, although of course you're welcome to keep that information to yourself.)
If you wish to explore towards our territory, you can simply continue to head east and slightly north. You'll encounter our capital city fairly quickly that way, so feel free to come by. We presume your fine civilization is located somewhere towards the west? (Again, no worries if you'd rather not say.) Either way, the citizens of Parkin City would certainly be glad to host visitors if you happen to pass by.
Anyway, onto bigger matters. Would you be interested in talking about plans for cooperation in the future? Looking at the big picture, you'll no doubt agree it's an interesting situation we have here. Two industrious civilizations, both with strong offensive early unique units, as close neighbours in a highly competitive game. Many people might say that such a setup is a sure recipe for conflict down the line. However, I believe we're in a unique position to pool our collective advantages to each gain significantly.
What do I mean by that? Well first of all, as we represent between us half of the Industrious nations in the world, we stand a lot to gain from working together. By discussing with one another about which wonders we'd like to lay claim to and dividing them up fairly between ourselves, we can potentially save one another from wasting large amounts of hammers. Plus of course, we'll each know we have at least one secure border that no-one will pass through to steal the wonders we build. It seems like both of us can only gain from such an arrangement!
Out of goodwill, we're happy to start out on this front by letting you know that - as you may have guessed for Ind/Cha Egypt - we're intending on an early Stonehenge build. We're not sure if you're interested in this wonder yourself, but we'd be happy to start discussing the topic if you wish. Just as an example, one of us could agree not to provide competition against the other on the Oracle, in return for not having competition from the other on Stonehenge. This increased security in early wonder-building would surely benefit us both a lot.
I must admit that I'm also rather intrigued by the idea of a combined Vulture/War Chariot army a bit later on. Rather than wasting our superior unique units fighting against one another, we could combine them to form a very powerful force, which would surely be almost unstoppable early in the game. That certainly sounds very interesting and novel to me. I don't know about you, but I've never tried fighting with that combination of unique units before... it seems like it could be pretty powerful. Alternatively, we could always combine arms for defence instead, if one of us gets attacked. We'd certainly be happy to offer the services of our War Chariots to you in the event of an emergency if you'd be willing to offer likewise with your Vultures, for instance.
It's a shame we don't have the option to trade technologies directly in this game, but there are still certain possibilities for technological cooperation down the line. For instance, after researching Currency we would have the option to supply one another with gold at any time to enable research at 100% speed towards critical techs. Consequently, we'd both have the ability to reach critical techs earlier than we otherwise could.
Anyway, I'm probably getting a bit ahead of myself (not to mention overwhelming you with text!). Let us know what you think of all this. In a nutshell, we're suggesting the following:
* Non-aggression agreement, leaving us both safe to expand and build wonders early on (happy to take suggestions for a renegotiation point... 2000 BC, 1000 BC, 1 AD, later?).
* Sharing wonder plans, resulting in mutual gain and minimal waste.
* Potential agreement to help one another out if possible in an early emergency?
And if you're interested, we're open to options for more long-term cooperation too, such as:
* Negotiating a fair and reasonable settling border between us, after we've both revealed more of the map.
* Sharing gold after Currency, letting us both get to critical techs quicker.
* Defensive agreement to help one another out if either of us is attacked by a third party.
* Offensive agreement to utilise a future combined army of Vultures/War Chariots against a mutual rival (or potentially we could act as a mercenary against a rival of your choosing).
Those longer-term things don't have to be sorted out right now though. At the moment, we'd be interested to hear what you think of forming a non-aggression pact and sharing wonder plans, if nothing else. If you want to comment on anything else though, please feel free to go ahead.
Irgy Wrote:It's pretty full on for a first message, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Indeed, it's definitely full-on. However, I'm hoping it'll provoke a positive response.
Having the ability to produce War Chariots might actually be to my advantage, even without having built any yet. No-one particularly wants to be on the recieving end of a War Chariot rush, so that should hopefully encourage luddite to accept at least a non-aggression pact regardless.
Lord Parkin Wrote:Having the ability to produce War Chariots might actually be to my advantage, even without having built any yet. No-one particularly wants to be on the recieving end of a War Chariot rush, so that should hopefully encourage luddite to accept at least a non-aggression pact regardless.
Definately not when those war chariots are the paper to your rock UU.
Mind you a stack of 2/3 vultures and 1/3 spears will put up a good fight against a stack of war chariots, the vultures still have the edge when attacking.
Irgy Wrote:Definately not when those war chariots are the paper to your rock UU.
Mind you a stack of 2/3 vultures and 1/3 spears will put up a good fight against a stack of war chariots, the vultures still have the edge when attacking.
Still, I imagine luddite would rather use Vulture/Spear stacks to fight against regular Chariots rather than War Chariots. And technically if I was quick and vicious enough he might not be able to counter War Chariots anyway. Either way, I suspect it'd be a weight off his mind not to have to worry about my UU.
Okay, I've sent essentially the original message, with a couple of minor tweaks.
Greetings Luddite/Atlas,
It's a pleasure to meet you and your fine pointy-hatted civilization!
It seems our two Warriors met just this turn and become acquainted out in the wilderness. You're the first civilized nation that we've encountered so far in the game, so it's great to finally have a chance for some conversation. (We'd be interested to know if you've met anyone else yet, although of course you're welcome to keep that information to yourself.)
If you wish to explore towards our territory, you can simply continue to head east and slightly north. You'll encounter our capital city fairly quickly that way, so feel free to come by. We presume your fine civilization is located somewhere towards the west? (Again, no worries if you'd rather not say.) Either way, the citizens of Parkin City would certainly be glad to host visitors if you happen to pass by.
Anyway, onto bigger matters. Would you be interested in talking about plans for cooperation in the future? Looking at the big picture, you'll no doubt agree it's an interesting situation we have here. Two industrious civilizations, both with strong offensive early unique units, as close neighbours in a highly competitive game. Many people might say that such a setup is a sure recipe for conflict down the line. However, I believe we're in a unique position to pool our collective advantages to each gain significantly.
What do I mean by that? Well first of all, as we represent between us half of the Industrious nations in the world, we stand a lot to gain from working together. By discussing with one another about which wonders we'd like to lay claim to and dividing them up fairly between ourselves, we can potentially save one another from wasting large amounts of hammers. Plus of course, we'll each know we have at least one secure border that no-one will pass through to steal the wonders we build. It seems like both of us can only gain from such an arrangement!
Out of goodwill, we're happy to start out on this front by letting you know that - as you may have guessed for Ind/Cha Egypt - we're intending on an early Stonehenge build. We're not sure if you're interested in this wonder yourself, but we'd be happy to start discussing the topic if you wish. Just as an example, one of us could agree not to provide competition against the other on the Oracle, in return for not having competition from the other on Stonehenge. This increased security in early wonder-building would surely benefit us both a lot.
I must admit that I'm also rather intrigued by the idea of a combined Vulture/War Chariot army a bit later on. Rather than wasting our superior unique units fighting against one another, we could combine them to form a very powerful force, which would surely be almost unstoppable early in the game. That certainly sounds very interesting and novel to me. I don't know about you, but I've never tried fighting with that combination of unique units before... it seems like it could be pretty powerful. Alternatively, we could always combine arms for defence instead, if one of us gets attacked. We'd certainly be happy to offer the services of our War Chariots to you in the event of an emergency if you'd be willing to offer likewise with your Vultures, for instance.
It's a shame we don't have the option to trade technologies directly in this game, but there are still certain possibilities for technological cooperation down the line. For instance, after researching Currency we would have the option to supply one another with gold at any time to enable research at 100% speed towards critical techs. Consequently, we'd both have the ability to reach critical techs earlier than we otherwise could.
Anyway, I'm probably getting a bit ahead of myself (not to mention overwhelming you with text!). In a nutshell, we're suggesting the following right now:
* Non-aggression agreement, leaving us both safe to expand and build wonders early on (happy to take suggestions for a renegotiation point... 2000 BC, 1000 BC, 1 AD, later?).
* Sharing wonder plans, resulting in mutual gain and minimal waste.
* Potential agreement to help one another out if possible in an early emergency?
And if you're interested, we're open to options for more long-term cooperation too, such as:
* Negotiating a fair and reasonable settling border between us, after we've both revealed more of the map.
* Sharing gold after Currency, letting us both get to critical techs quicker.
* Defensive agreement to help one another out if either of us is attacked by a third party.
* Offensive agreement to utilise a future combined army of Vultures/War Chariots against a mutual rival (or potentially we could act as a mercenary against a rival of your choosing).
Those longer-term things don't have to be sorted out right now though. At the moment, we'd be interested to hear what you think of forming a non-aggression pact and sharing wonder plans, if nothing else. If you want to comment on anything else though, please feel free to go ahead.
Anyway, hope you didn't get lost in the wall of text there. We're looking forward to hearing back from you!
Kind regards,
Lord Parkin
Let's see what kind of response we get back. I do hope he won't be too overwhelmed by the length of the message.
The nice thing about mentioning Stonehenge in there, of course, is that it doesn't really disadvantage us at all while potentially gaining us a slight edge. At the very least, even if luddite doesn't respond at all to anything about wonders, we will have got into his head and made him think. We never mentioned anything about a time frame for Stonehenge, just that we intended to get the wonder early. Now Sumeria has the exact same starting techs that we have, and we know they went for Hunting first. Thus, their tech (and Stonehenge) options have to be pretty much identical to ours. That is, either:
#1: Turn 27/28 Stonehenge
#2: Turn ~40 Stonehenge
#3: Turn ~55 Stonehenge
#4: Not bothering with Stonehenge at all
In any event, we lose nothing by mentioning that we're interested in early Stonehenge (without any specified time frame), as he must have suspected that Ind/Cha Egypt would likely give it a shot at some point anyway. On the contrary, there's an outside chance that us confidently mentioning about early Stonehenge will put him off trying to compete for the wonder if he was previously planning on some variation of #1, #2 or #3. Not much of a chance, granted, but it's a possibility. Depends how susceptible he is to mind games, I guess.
Or maybe I'm just barking mad with this whole idea.
Seems like amidst all the diplomatic excitement, we forgot to discuss the Warrior's next move. Ah well, not a problem - I made an executive decision to head him 1NW. Why's that? Actually it would have been identical to 1W for this purpose.
Basically, since we can see that luddite's Warrior is pointing towards the SE (he hasn't moved nor logged into the game since we met him last turn), we know he must have come from the NW (at least last turn). Of course it's possible that he could have doubled-around at some point to trick us, but that seems highly unlikely given that it's only turn 10. Much more likely that he's headed in one general direction since the start of the game, like us.
Thus, if we move onto the tile 1NW of where we found luddite's Warrior and see what we see there, we may be able to work backwards to find the exact location of his capital. (Knowing precise tile counts between us will be useful later, as well as knowing what the land and resources around him are like.)
It looks like there's another lake/sea to our Warrior's west, which is good - it means it's highly unlikely luddite could have come from the SW, and instead he must have followed around the coast of a lake/sea for at least part of his trip. Thus, next turn I suggest moving 1W (onto the tile 1NW of where luddite's Warrior was when we met him), then probably 1NW afterwards (depending on what we see). Hopefully we should run into luddite's capital pretty quickly.
In domestic news, our Worker has started a Camp on the 3f/1h Deer resource, and our capital has started building a second Warrior.
![[Image: Civ4ScreenShot0779.jpg]](http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l323/LordParkin/Realms%20Beyond%20Pitboss%204/Civ4ScreenShot0779.jpg)
However, I'm hoping it'll provoke a positive response.
And technically if I was quick and vicious enough he might not be able to counter War Chariots anyway. Either way, I suspect it'd be a weight off his mind not to have to worry about my UU. 
![[Image: Civ4ScreenShot0783.jpg]](http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l323/LordParkin/Realms%20Beyond%20Pitboss%204/Civ4ScreenShot0783.jpg)