[SPOILERS] Bismark of Sumeria (luddite + Atlas1998)

[luddite]

I'm pretty sure you only see cultural borders in fogged tiles if they're next to visible tiles. Since the forest 1S1SW of the whales is not Dutch, I'd assume that you're looking at a corner of the initial 3x3 ring.

Ok thanks, that helps a lot. I guess he must have founded south of the corn, then, which is where i expected him to settle.

[luddite]

I should have posted this a while ago. It's a picture I made by combining 2 of the pictures that Lord Parkin sent me when we were discussing settling boundaries.

With this, plus Mackoti's military screen (still can't believe he sent me that) I have very good information about what Mackoti's land looks like.

[luddite]

No big updates today. I'm working on a new secret plan , and i think the lurkers will like it. Stay tuned... :neenernee

[luddite]

Oh, and I made a mistake earlier. I thought I could prevent a DoW by getting a cow from him, but I that doesn't work. It only works if you demand it, which isn't possible in MP. I should have gone with my original plan of declaring war, and then immediately getting a 10 turn peace treaty. So... I think he can declare war on me again whenever he wants to. I don't think he'll want to do that though, and there's not much he can do even if he tries.

[luddite]

One other thing happened. 2 more contacts made!

Now all I need is SleepingMoogle to finish off my collection. I should meet him soon in the west.

[luddite]

Mackoti is still threatening me with that chariot. And he said something in chat like "I know you are planning on attacking me. I could have attacked your settler with the chariot." And I noticed that he moved right at the beginning of this turn, so he could attack next turn if he wanted to.

He's promised to move the chariot away, and send a scout or warrior later. We'll see if that actually happens. Meanwhile I'm saving some gold, just in case.

[luddite]

Mackoti still hasn't removed that offending chariot, even though he said he would. So, I'm still saving some money in case I need to upgrade next turn. I'll still get mathematics in 4 turns.

My production has risen quickly, and I'm now #1 by a lot, 60 to the 52 second best. And I've made contact with everyone!

[luddite]

oh nice, mackoti did finally move that chariot out of sight.

[luddite]

Got a long email today from regoarrar. Nothing too important, though.

Okay then! Greetings to the first place team (non-plako division) from us suckers in last place (non-WK division)!

It's good to (finally) meet you! Can I make any more sentences end in exclamation points?! No!

Okay but really. It is good to meet you. I've confirmed in-game that we have met, but I still don't see WHERE it is we met??!? Anyways it's nice to finally join the UN - we spent the first 50 or so odd turns having not met anyone. Meanwhile, wars were apparently being fought around the globe, religions were being founded, wonders being built, all the while we were just plodding along. We were actually starting to wonder if we were completely isolated from everyone when we ran into a mackoti scout. Even after that it was another 10-15 turns before we found anyone else, and after that it seemed like we were meeting a new team every turn! Except you guys who somehow managed to evade our detection! But it's good to be able to finally post in the UN, and I'm sure you feel the same way.

So what's going on? I do have to say that you gave us the biggest scare when we were building the GLH. That was when we were still tracking things with CivStats and we knew that you had a high pop coastal 2nd city, and of course you're Industrious, so the turn that you built the Oracle I checked CivStats and saw that you had a 16 point (wonder) increase and I thought well there it went. I couldn't log in right then but I just knew it was all over. It was only a bit later when I realized it was the Oracle! I'm sure that you're pleased with that and your (I assume) early Metal Casting for cheap forges. And then Hinduism (again, educated guessing) a few turns later. Definitely solid play.

Over here we are still trying to play catchup. Of course we did land GLH which will hopefully help, but that set back our development a LONG way. We only have 5 cities (and the 5th only planted last turn) while some people already have 8! I don't know how many you have but I bet it's more than 5 :-).

So what's next? What do we do from here? We're friendly folk over here (don't mind those Impi - they're just looking, I promise!) - but as I've been finding, it's kind of hard to really DO anything friendly in a non-tech trading game. I mean I guess we could open borders, or talk of a NAP (though we're awfully far away), or in some cases you can leverage traits by doing things like trading cheap workers for cheap settlers (though we're both expansive and I'm not sure you could really give us cheap forges or wonders very easily!). So what do we do? Just vague talks of "friendly relations"? Huge dogpiles of Lord Parkin? :-)

Any thoughts on the map? It seems by this point everyone pretty much has a pretty good idea of how the map looks - 5 civs on top, 5 civs on bottom, sea between us and Lord Parkin and nakor and plako (I think? I forget where it is in the south). We had been intrigued by the concept of "peak blocking" tiles potentially separating civs, but further exploration seems to indicate that they are just peninsulas (maybe islands that were joined to the mainland by the mapmaker?)

Anyways I seem to have written quite the novel (but hey, it's me! What else would you expect?) - hope to hear from you soon. If you are ever up for chatting you can reach me at this address on google talk or aol IM.

my response:

Haha, thanks. I was happy to finally be meeting people too. I was isolated for so long...

We actually met down in Nakor's territory. I know plako was trying to help coordinate a meeting between us up in the jungle, but my warrior saw yours down by Nakor's city.

I think you guys are really isolated though, since you're blocked off to the west by ocean. I can at least move to the west by one land route, although that's through Mackoti's land, so it depends on whether he'll keep giving me open borders... I was cut off for a long time because he wouldn't let me through.

It's funny you bring up the GLH. I was SO tempted to make a run at it. But after a lot of planning, I decided that with both you and Mackoti possibly gunning for it, my odds were just too low. So I went for the oracle instead. I think I actually wasted too much effort getting it super fast, since apparently no one else even tried for it. So I have my doubts about whether that (and hinduism) were really worth it, since now I'm pretty far behind Plako and Parkin. I guess I'm basically in the same place as you- trying to play catchup after going for a wonder (and wasting some time skirmishing with Mackoti lol).

As far as friendly relations go- I think it'll be a while before we can trade, but I hope that within the next 50 turns we can get a trade route going, possibly by sailing across the coast from Parkin's territory. For right now, the thing that I'm looking for most is just information. Anything you can tell me about anyone else would be greatly appreciated. And I'll try to do the same.

I've been kind of irritated by the map. There's just so many choke points and dead ends, which has made scouting really annoying. And there is a land connection between plako and Nakor- in fact, they have cities quite near each other. And I know Nakor has a large military, so there's a chance they might go to war. Parkin seems to be claiming the most land so far (partly my fault for not expanding towards him), and is moving south towards plako. So, there's also a chance that they might go to war, or at least have tension in the jungle there.

Anyway I appreciate the long email, and hopefully we'll get the chance to chat some time.

[luddite]

As of this turn (83) I have a trade route connection to sleeping moogle. That's nice. Hopefully one of these days, hinduism will actually spread somewhere ><.

My production continues to skyrocket, and I'll be moving units down south soon, in preparation for a strike down there in the disputed land.