Ranamar and Lewwyn, ministers for Bismarck of Mali

[Lewwyn]

What's the purpose of a library in Osgiliath? It's a bad enough build in MT! An Osgiliath library will be worth literally a buck or less a turn. And the specialist slots are useless and the culture is unnecessary. Why would we want to spend 60 hammers (a settler!) on a buck a turn?

I think the draw of the efficient 3 pop whip was too much plus (pbem 18 spoiler)

its because I'm rushing libs in my other game for PHI that I seem to be seeing libraries everywhere

In any case, we can switch the build in osiligath to a settler and whip it instead no problem.

[SevenSpirits]

Cool.

So I played the turn as we talked about in chat. I swapped tiles around so the worker in Barad-dur finishes. By the way: no more whipping BD! It has wonders to build...

We met commodore. Still need to send him a greeting. The contact was by Gandalf, with a chariot just inside MNG's borders. Hope he's not a short-sighted warrior-killing jerk.

MNG has gold and ivory hooked. This is kind of ridiculous as we discussed. GES didn't get a single happy resource that didn't need a classical tech; MNG gets two. If the land is going to be partitioned for us, I'd rather it have some semblance of fairness.

In brighter news, I caught MNG in chat just now and he agreed to OB. Pretty sure that means we get circumnavigation!

Gold Ergo Sum says marble will be hooked in four turns. I think that's one turn sooner than our Literature finish date. Not bad.

Edit - here is the chat with MNG:

11:17 AM me: hi!
52 minutes
12:10 PM Hatshepsut: (belated) hi! ... sorry, out and about playing with the kids but will respond slowly. How are things in Mali?
me: hey, no worries
12:11 PM I am still curious about what you said about the unique qualities of our lands!
12:12 PM Hatshepsut: oh goodness, that i was mostly referring to unique resources. I have stone, I know HRE has marble but not stone. So I'm guessing everyone has one or the other - and probably (at least) one unique happy resource
12:13 PM me: ah
yeah, could be
we have I think one calendar resource we haven't seen anywhere else. don't remember which one at the moment.
12:14 PM and you have gold and ivory! that's pretty nice
12:15 PM Hatshepsut: ya, i'm not complaining (yet or too much) about resource distribution
although tbh stone limits my choice of wonders to those i wouldn't ordinarily go for in this game
12:16 PM so i'll live wonder-less, i guess
me: yeah
well, hanging gardens is pretty good
12:17 PM Hatshepsut: pyramids too, but doesn't fit my game plan this time
me: aha
Hatshepsut: would rather have marble... would have liked oracle. but i guess i got beat to that
me: yup
12:18 PM we were trying for oracle too
Hatshepsut: bummer. sorry to hear that
me: thanks
Hatshepsut: at least would rather not have our neighbor get it
12:19 PM me: yes
oh yeah, our warrior is near you (via yuris' lands) so I offered open borders
that all right? we can certainly add a NAP if you like
12:20 PM Hatshepsut: i'm cool with OB. trying to avoid NAPs this time around, but I appreciate the sentiment
me: ok
12:21 PM that's fine, we won't take offense to it
Hatshepsut: my road network is immature but you're welcome to use it
me: thanks
feel free to stop by us as well
Hatshepsut: thanks, i'll do that.
me: btw, about resources
12:22 PM do you have duplicates of ivory/gold?
Hatshepsut: i do have a second ivory but just one gold
me: ok
our dupes are gems (this one, jungled, sadly) and whales
12:23 PM if you're even up for trading in the future, keep us in mind
*ever, not even
Hatshepsut: awesome, will do
12:24 PM on a different note... what have your interactions with GES been like?
12:25 PM me: well, I know him from pbem11, (this is sevenspirits here), so I'd like to be friends
we're really close to him though, so I dunno
12:26 PM I don't know how your blob is laid out, but ours is kind of long
and we are pretty much right at the southern end of it
and GES is also nearer our connection than commodore's
12:27 PM so that is kind of irritating
Hatshepsut: gotcha. that seems consistent with what commodore tells me
me: yeah
12:28 PM how is your diplo situation?
12:29 PM Hatshepsut: i just met him. he came off pretty aggressive, but this is my first civ experience with him, and i didn't follow pbem11, so I'm trying to figure out if that's normal for him
me: ah
12:32 PM all right well, I should go. still have a bunch of stuff to take care of today
Hatshepsut: well happy saturday!
12:33 PM me: thanks! you too

And here's the greeting I just sent off to Commodore.

Greetings sir,

We've found Solomon Kane on the bridge between Mr Nice Guy and Yuris. Our warrior's name (Gandalf) notwithstanding, you are of course welcome to pass.

How goes life in Hyboria? We see you have already organized a religion. Do you have any duplicate luxuries you might be interested in trading sometime? We will eventually get doubles of gems and whales.

SevenSpirits for team RL7

[Ranamar]

Here is a response from Commodore Sven:

Salutations RL7 (I'm assuming these should be addressed to The Legion, for you are many),

Glad to see the Middle Earthers following the theme of good guys, and Solomon will cheerily knock staffs with Gandalf as he passes by. How has your exploration/contacting been going? I now finally have the complete set, which makes only poor GES unable to post in the hypothetical UN thread.

Life in Hyboria is going very well, our organized religion is a great inspiration to the slaves as they work on our beautiful buildings. Would your own slaves like to become Hindu? In perhaps a thousand years time we might be able to spread it to your distant corner of The Great Wheel. Perhaps we could send it along with an expedition to show our fine silks for your legendary gems.

/rp How's it going in your neck of the woods, guys? I thought it was well done getting a good fast Stonehenge. What are your general reads of your two neighbors? Yuri and I have only just contacted each other, and GES is a long way away for being "near" me.

Hope things continue going well,
-Commodore

I haven't played the turn in a little while, so I'm going to do that, before I head off to go skating.

[Ranamar]

Mostly, I just let everyone who was already on autopilot do their thing. You'll see pictures of scouting later after I get back from skating.

I turned research down to 0% because Literature is in 3 turns, but we only have cash for 2. We'll have cash for ... 3 ... after this turn.

I whipped a settler in Osgiliath and the library in Minas Tirith. I know you think the library in MT is pretty useless, but it seemed convenient, and our maintenance is really high. MT regrew to whip-unhappy levels at the end of the turn.

I followed the instructions for running one scientist in Barad-Dur, but, well, if we want to not grow, we need to run two scientists and two cottages, whereas extra cottages instead of mines will result in growth. Unfortunately, this seems to have turned off some sort of yellow border on the scientist. You're going to need to tell me sometime how the governors get turned on and off, because I really haven't interacted with them, I suspect.

Edit: Oh, and I had the unnamed worker that I'm pretty sure is going to be given to GES (needs to move in the next couple turns) to work on the "1t cot" tile, since I figure we can at least get that done before shipping him off. You may want to cancel that and send him this turn, but, because of the way things fall out, we won't delay more than that single turn, moving him.

So, yeah... pictures later; I have skating to do now.

[SevenSpirits]

You must have been following instructions for the last turn. Instructions for this tun in game were work 2 scientists and cottages.

[Ranamar]

You must have been following instructions for the last turn. Instructions for this tun in game were work 2 scientists and cottages.

I thought the instructions were kind of conflicting... and it reduced the Temple of Artemis time from 20 turns to 15 turns.

Scouting!

[SevenSpirits]

Is there something I can do differently to make it easier to follow micro plans? The signs in-game work well when I'm playing by myself, not so much here.

Now about the current situation: What did you actually do? (With our citizens in the capital.) It's hard to figure out how to get back on track without knowing this.

For sure we will get our great person a turn late if you only worked one scientist, but what else happened?

[Ranamar]

I think an easy fix would be to label each note with a turn number, if it's only for one turn, with some sort of other notation (maybe a '+' at the end of the turn number?) for things which are for multiple turns.

As for what I actually did, it was working 1 grass cottage, 2 mines, the FP cottage, the cow, and the scientist. This is precisely population stable. I did see your comment about Barad-dur having wonders to build, so I wasn't sure how this was supposed to be balanced against commerce and research, given that the cow and the center tile only give 5 hammers of construction, meaning the mines double that.

We've got the save back, but I'll post pictures so you don't need to actually fire up the save to do it. Besides, I think It's T50, so traditionally, we have a big report coming up, but let's do that at the end of the turn. I think that would look less bad.

Anyway, some pictures to save you loading time initially...
Osgiliath

I'm not sure there's any messing around we need to do here. I suppose the settler is going to Edoras?

Minas Tirith:

Obviously, this one should have its mine moved to the gem mine, but I wanted to screenshot it as it was when the turn came in so that whoever plays it can know to change it. (Also, it really needs to start a worker or settler.)

Barad-Dur:

was what I did where I think you wanted this:


I just looked at the instructions and figured out what I did wrong. I read "add scientist" as "work a scientist" instead of "work another scientist". I think the solution to that is to use specific numbers...

The other two cities are pretty straightforward, although there's a question of what to build next in Dale. I was figuring a workboat.

[SevenSpirits]

How about we just always interpret signs as being for the next turn? It's not like we're writing any multiple turns in advance. I guess it's important to know that you can delete signs with alt-s and clicking on them, and make new ones with alt-s and clicking on a non-signed tile.

We are not actually trying to build wonders yet. We don't have marble. The purpose of the temple of artemis in the queue is so that the hopefully minimal hammers we are getting at least go towards something we want the capital to build in the relatively near future.

About reading the scientist instructions wrong, I guess saying work two scientists is clearer. But there is no reason to not run a food surplus anymore. That was for a single turn three turns ago.

[Ranamar]

T50 played... I have to run, so you'll get pictures later, but it was in close consultation with SevenSpirits.

Oh, and Literature in 1 turn. :D