Ranamar and Lewwyn, ministers for Bismarck of Mali

[SevenSpirits]

Hm, hard to get a picture of the worker situation without looking at the save which I am too lazy to do.

But we don't want to make non-river cottages yet. They're not worth working at our low pop levels. We do want a road segment SE of Osgiliath and another SE of that one. As soon as we build the former, 1 or 2 workers that worked on it can hook the copper. Then (assuming the latter is complete by then if not first) 0-2 of those 1-2 workers can move E-SE-SE and start a cottage there. It's riverside, grass, and shared by both cities! Yay.

As for tech I think we should do Writing next. GES has promised OB, and we have sailing. And it's on the way to Aesthetics. I don't think we should prioritize the Great Lighthouse at anywhere near the level you are suggesting. Other wonders are also powerful (Great Library, Parthenon, Mausoleum, for example) and I suspect they will be much less intimidating to everyone else.

[Lewwyn]

I agree with writing next. OB will be good and it will be nice for our relations. Glad to get the happy hooked up as well. Good on the granary too. It'll be good for whipping but since we have so many good tiles I'm not sure if we want to whip the capital or not. It'll depend on the situation, but 2 pop whipping a settler might be good.

[Ranamar]

Apparently, people want an impromptu blitz session. I'll try to accommodate them. In the meantime, Turn 63!

Scouting:


That's a blasted waste if I've ever seen one... those hills are ice.


Pursuant to current policy, we follow that snaky coast. Last turn, he was on the gems.


Sorry, nothing here... I'll run him up the coast for that one other tile to defog, because we can.

The worker who finished the FP cottage went and finished the grassland cottage, and I decided to override the governor and put the citizen on the cottage instead of a plains forest:


The two workers who had been there, moved SW and built a road. One or both of them can now go to the copper and start mining it the same turn. Alternately, 1S of that spot is a river tile shared between Osgiliath and Barad-Dur, and we could build another cottage.

Frodo, in the south at Minas Tirith, went onto a forest hill. Next turn, he will start building a mine so that city has another improved tile to work. We need to figure out how to best make use of the hammers coming from the chop. We also need to figure out what to build next after the warrior finishes in 2 turns. If we started on a granary next, we'd probably finish it before the chop came in.

EDIT: oh, and I put writing in to research... I just realized that, at this point, it seems like the Great Library is only about 50% farther away than Metalcasting. I don't know if Yuris will actually try to build the Colossus, but, if he went that way with the Oracle, we have a good shot at the GL; it's true, and that could buoy our tech rate if/when our economy crashes, though admittedly not by much.

[SevenSpirits]

K. The two workers who built the road should split up. One mines the copper, then roads it. The other moves SE, roads, finishes the road SE of that if necessary, finishes that road, builds the cottage.

Timbuktu needs to be named Osgiliath.

Yuris' borders are in sight in the NW. And we have a trade connection with him already. Sweet! Definitely want writing.

I'm glad that's Yuris there, being next to a potential wonderspammer is good.

We really need a warrior to scout south with. Both for a trade connection to GES (I think right now only he has one with us) and to circumnavigate vertically.

Barad Dur should take back its corn and probably sheep, and grow while building a warrior, now that it has a granary. That can be the one we send south.

Great Library is only 25% farther than MC after we finish writing I think. And it comes with the amazing National Epic too. I think we should go that way, personally.

[Ranamar]

K. The two workers who built the road should split up. One mines the copper, then roads it. The other moves SE, roads, finishes the road SE of that if necessary, finishes that road, builds the cottage.

Timbuktu needs to be named Osgiliath.

Yuris' borders are in sight in the NW. And we have a trade connection with him already. Sweet! Definitely want writing.

I'm glad that's Yuris there, being next to a potential wonderspammer is good.

We really need a warrior to scout south with. Both for a trade connection to GES (I think right now only he has one with us) and to circumnavigate vertically.

Barad Dur should take back its corn and probably sheep, and grow while building a warrior, now that it has a granary. That can be the one we send south.

In order:

1. Sounds good
   
2. Yeah, I keep meaning to do it and forgetting.
   
3. Buhwhah? Where? in the corner?
   
4. You mean, like us?
   
5. Yeah, do another warrior shuffle, this time in the other direction.
   
6. Alright... swap the grass cottage for the farm until Barad-Dur has grown. Possibly grab sheep, too, if it makes a difference.
   

EDIT:
Also, apparently I missed that Judaism was founded this past turn. GES says it wasn't him, which is annoying (for him).

Also, Seven pointed out that we managed to hit a second city on the top cities list:

[Ranamar]

Workers:
As you said, 1 worker to copper, the other SE. (I forget names.) The one who went SE put 1 turn into a road and will go SE and finish a road next turn so that Denethor can return to Minas Tirith with all haste.
Frodo starts mine.
We overlooked a worker, so he went 1N to build another shared river cottage.

Barad-Dur took back its food to grow in 2T. (Warrior in 1T with most of a warrior in overflow.) Osgiliath (renamed) took the grass cottage for tile #2.

Warriors moved. We've definitely found Yuris now. Now, to hunt down Yuris of Radioland.

Edit: Pictures:
Well, that's embarrassing... I failed to screenshot the central area again, although there's not much to see (nor is there on the east coast) but here are Yuris's borders:


Also embarrassing is that I failed to notice that we're running out of money and the tech rate was reduced. Next turn, I'll set it to something that doesn't suffer from rounding errors.

I tracked down contact information and sent a message stating that we have met and expressing an interest in negotiating open borders. I hope that wasn't too rash.

[SevenSpirits]

I can't stick around for more blitzing, sadly.

My recommendation for BD is grow as fast as possible while making warriors to size 7, then whip out a settler and overflow into a worker.

Gandalf we would ideally like to be able to explore all the way to the west. see if we can get circumnav without optics. That's another reason for OB with yuris. I'd also suggest complimenting him on oracle and see if he's interested in telling each other which wonders we're building. Ones we are willing to cede to him are Colossus, GLH, HG all of which are quite good so we should be able to secure whatever we do want, I think.

MT could build workers/settlers. If it has a granary it needs to whip them, otherwise (and I think this is the case) should just slow build them.

[SevenSpirits]

Before I forget: we should switch 100% EP to yuris, since we already have GES' graphs.

Diplo:

Greetings.

I'm not one for long-winded introductions, so I am writing to say that we, RL7 of Middle Earth have met you, Yuris of Radioland, in rbpbem19 with our exploring warrior which you should be able to see when you next get the turn.

As an early order of business, we would be interested in negotiating an open border treaty.

--Ranamar

Hi Ranamar,

We're very glad to welcome to Radioland! Hope our relations will be
friendly and beneficial to both our empires

Unfortunately, I don't see an Open Borders option in the trade screen
yet, so I assume you don't have Writing yet; neither do we. We expect
to get Writing in 2 turns

Once this happens, we would be happy to sign open borders with you and
give your wounded Warrior safe passage through our lands. However, we
would ask you to agree to a NAP with us beforehand. This NAP would be
effective immediately, before the Open Borders agreement is signed,
and last up to and including T60

Please let me know if you can accept this. I would appreciate a quick
reply, because our actions this turn depend on it

Could you please include my trusted colleague Maestro
(maestro.rb@gmail.com) in future diplomatic messages to our team? Both
of us have the power to negotiate and sign treaties, so he does need
to receive all diplomatic correspondence

Best regards
yuris125, Music Director of Radioland

Good to meet you both! We will have writing in a few turns, too. We'll have to think about a NAP until t60 a bit, to give all team members a chance to weigh in. But in the interim, to avoid worries about our warrior near your lands being a bother and as a favor to you, we're willing to agree to a 10t rolling NAP immediately. (Lasts indefinitely on its own, but can be cancelled anytime with 10 turns notice.) Agreed?

In addition to talk of open borders, we would like to discuss wonder builds as we are the only two industrious teams. If we avoid going for the same ones, we can avoid failed attempts which might cause us to fall behind the other three teams. Additionally it would provide a strong foundation of trust for future cooperation. Does this interest you?

SevenSpirits (dedlurking, in case you didn't know)

[Ranamar]

Response to your message, Seven:

Hi SevenSpirits,

Good to meet you too!

10t rolling NAP sounds good! It's agreed. I will finish the turn in a minute

Discussing wonder builds is a good idea too; it looks like we managed
to avoid conflicting builds so far, and it would be very helpful to
avoid failed attempts in the future. Seeing that you have discovered
Sailing, I have a suspicion that you're going for The Great
Lighthouse, is it the case?

Best regards
yuris125, Music Director of Radioland

We should probably say we are, and perhaps ask about The Colossus. However, the big sticking point is almost certainly going to be the Great Library. We should come up with a stance for negotiation on that soon.

[Ranamar]

Ffffuuuuuuu...

Apparently, all the fancy tile micro I did last turn didn't take. (EDIT: This probably means I screwed up the worker micro, replayed the turn, and forgot to redo the tile micro.) So, this turn, Osgiliath gets renamed from Timbuktu, and Barad-Dur takes back its food resources. I also made sure to give Minas Tirith access to both 2H forests it can get, because it had a spare tile to work.

Barad-Dur grows in 2 turns, and we get writing in 1. It's going to incur unit cost, at least for a bit, I think, but I queued another warrior. Next turn, I want to put a turn into a library, and then we ought to build another settler, I think. (4t for a settler, with all the food resources, at least) We now know that going out toward the sea is not worth it for the pig city, too, and it should be in coastal-trade range, too. In any event, we'll need the garrison eventually.

Our warrior near Yuris's borders moves next to them, but he's probably going to have to wait for a turn... which, at least, gives him a chance to heal 1 (out of 3) turns of his damage. Then we can continue scouting up the river to see if there's a city there. We explored farther into the blasted wastelands that is the middle of the map. Pictures can come later, because there's not much to see, although the center is kind of interesting.

With regards to writing coming in next turn... I decided it was worthwhile to sacrifice 1 commerce this turn (to rounding) in order to get Writing. (80%; came in EOT; all we needed for completion was 30%, so we should have some nice double-bonused overflow) Next turn, we should turn down to zero to get more gold.

We need to draft a reply to Yuris soon, I think.