[SPOILER] Asoka of the Vikings (Nakor & Gaspar)

[Gaspar]

Random thoughts collected while taking a look at the save:

Need to get the Silver city founded soon, just for purposes of the happy cap. We do get cheap temples, so if we ever get everything else built, they might actually be worth building down the line.

We only need 2 more cottages down @ Greenland for the short term, then we should move our limited workforce to other cities.

Why is Helluland building an Axe?

Dorestadt needs a pair of cottages laid down though no huge rush, as its food poor.

Financial would be killer on this map, lot of coastal cities. Shame Adlain's doing so poorly.

I switched to working the cottage in Horseland. It sacrifices 4 hammers for 1 food, but it accelerates growth by 5 turns, and we need to mature the cottages more than we need the Confucian Monastery done. I'm still not sure its such a swell idea to spread one of the leaders faiths around, but what's done is done. It can work the horses after it grows as that city will never do anything but suck. We should probably just throw a trading post in there and let it work crappy 2F2C tiles and be done with it.

We need to pick a Moai city. Crossing has 10 water tiles, so its the clubhouse leader.

Beaverpass needs those furs improved post-haste. Much rather be working a 1F1H5C tile than a 1F3H mine. Way too many cities focused on production when we're not producing anything useful. The land leads to production cities, so we really need to force the commerce out where possible, particularly as we're about a billion years behind everyone in tech.

I hate losing cultural battles. Let's invade plako.

I see we're about to settle the city at the Gems-Clams-Clams site. We might want to go Caste for 5T there, as all the food is in 2nd ring. Only thing worth whipping is that worker in Vinland, though I could make a case for not moving off the cottages. Anyway, Vinland has 23T of whip anger already, so I'm going to go ahead and revolt to Caste, so we can move back early as possible if needed. We'll move back to slavery right after the borders pop in the new city. Sorry if this runs counter to your plans, but its only 5T, might as well be spiritual. We can debate the merits of running any other artists later.

Our naming scheme is all over the place. I'd feel better if we had something more consistent. We should either rename the first 4 cities consistent with your new "descriptive" naming scheme, rename the later cities back on the original explorer theme, or pick something straightforward and rename them all.

Perhaps we could homage something from the recently fallen PBEM12?

I went ahead and hit enter after doing what I said above, as we're last to play this turn.

Next turn rolls over... so when Riverland's Granary completed, I moved to a Worker. Feel free to veto that if you have an alternate plan.

For what its worth - two great people born last turn. As of last turn, the following have been born in this game thus far:

Great Prophet
Great Scientist
Great Scientist
Great General
Great Scientist
Great Scientist
Great Engineer

If you're scoring at home, that's 7 great people. The artist we hire in new city will be our first specialist all game as best I can tell. We should probably start thinking about a GP farm somewhere, no?

Well... you asked me to get involved, was that post annoying enough for you?

[Nakor]

Good to have you back into the game again, Gaspar! I'll take a look when I get home from work tonight.
We don't have a clear GP farm site, but maybe Beaverpass will do once it border pops? Or the soon to be founded city?

Don't know about the naming theme. I'm not that interested in a huge theme here, but feel free to change things the way you like them.

Gotta go!

[Gaspar]

I dunno about Beaverpass - Maybe the the fish/deer site? It can also borrow the corn from Beaverpass if we need it to go food heavy. I sort of see Beaverpass as a commerce site, it'll be working two 1F1H5C tiles.

Couldn't decide whether or not I wanted to hire artists in Beaverpass or not. Just takes 3T to get the border pop that way, but there's no good tile configuration for a specialist just yet. Crossing I'd go ahead and do it after it grows next turn, and I'd definitely hire immediately, even delaying growth when we settle the new city, as all the good tiles are 2nd ring. Riverland got its border pop so it has its 1st ring tiles, its never seeing its 2nd ring over there, so I wouldn't worry about it. Regardless, as soon as the 5T is up, we'll want to go back to slavery, so if you want to rush along any border pops, now's the time. We can alternate back later of course, no reason not to switch liberally, its why we chose the trait.

I'm still not really sure what you're up to with most of the units, so I left that to you.

[DMOC]

Any pictures?

[Nakor]

Decided to hire an Artist in Beaverpass, just for 3 turns.
Crossing I hired after growth.
New turn almost played, if you can take a look and end turn, that would be great. Galley is moving towards the land you want to see explored. 2nd WB will go to new city.

EDIT: Plako send an interesting mail about combining our UU's.

[Gaspar]

Didn't get a chance to look last night, wasn't feeling very well. I'm here in full glory now, so let's see... [now with picture, for DMOC, the only person still reading our boring-ass thread]

Not much to do really, micro'd a wee bit to get a couple more cottages in play. The absurd growth rate in PBEM12 has really got me in the habit, so that game improved at least one aspect of my play. The city governor really sucks once you get used to it. The artists in play make us lose a wee bit of commerce, but so it goes. Really need more workers. I assume Helluland's axe is being used as a garrison for the next city to be founded?


The capital:


We should probably just smack out a cheap temple after the Monastery to up the happy cap. We should also get a settler down to the silver site.

The area plako refers to in his email is here:



The south site on the horses won't be great, but its good enough, and we really need to scavenge every site we can. Its definitely partly because of that terrible settling agreement we made with plako, but if you look at our expansion options, we had to be more aggressive to get off our plot of land without naval settling, while plako and Locke both had outlets in their natural growth areas. The fact that our easy expansion spot is both blocked by a peak and doesn't lead anywhere is a factor. Our holdings on that northern peninsula will be very vulnerable to LP, so I think we'll actually have to get some razing parties ready sooner.

Here's F1 on 100% science:



and 100% gold:



Yeah... we're well behind.

[Gaspar]

Here's the message from plako:

Hi,

I just noticed that there are Clams west from the land bridge in the north. It is yours by default. However please let me know, if you don't plan to utilise it since as far as I can tell you would need to settle on top of horses to do that.

I've also been toying a bit with an idea of combining our UUs together to make a quite powerful sea force. Cho-Ko-Nus are only units that can cause collateral damage from the boat and your Berserkers+Navigation I boats would be ideal pair to utilise this feature. Would you be intrested in a bit more closer co-operation? Main things would be getting these units as fast as possible and then raise an army and trade units to be ready for action.

Best regards,
Plako

No plako, we're not giving you any more resources. Come take em if you want em. I know you can, but I have full intention of making you work for it.

As for the second plan let's see... we can give him nav1 galleys and Berserkers, which he can put on his circumnavigation winning Civ. So he gets 4-move galleys and Amphibious melee. We get... collateral? I'm not saying it wouldn't be useful. I'm saying its not an even exchange in any way. He's obviously negotiating from a position of strength, but... let's be frank here. If we beelined our UUs, we're talking 67 turns. Obviously that will improve as other Civs beat us to them and our tech rate grows, but we're really a million miles from zerks. I don't especially want to send plako an email that says: "Hey, we might do your deal, except we are eons from our UU and haven't even built our UB once yet. So, y'know, was your attack plan intended to start in the 20th century? Cause we could maybe manage that."

Let's send him something that asks him when and against whom he plans to use this coordinated attack. That will give us a better idea of [strike]how we can say no without offending him much[/strike] how interested we are. I don't want to help him take out WK, I'd rather that were as difficult as possible for him.

Oh, and by the by, I did end turn.

[Nakor]

I'll try to get some more pictures next turn about our other cities and the region.

I don't think we need that much more workers. Cities are not growing that fast so 1.3 per city should do the trick here.

We still have some time before we need to build units, even north. If we make a deal with Plako, who do we have to attack with all our long NAP's? No-one... so tell me again why we should agree, Plako?
We could trade him Galley's for Cho's and then attack him with them...

[Gaspar]

This message came in from Locke. I <3 Locke:

Hey there. This email going to all teams in game except plako. This is gonna sound kinda weird but hear me out. We are all losing to plako. Some doing better than others but all losing. You all see his GNP graph spikes. He has 14 cities and most food and most production and most GNP. If we do nothing he just outtech us and eventually kill us. WarriorKnight first and then the rest of us. That is bad result.

So what do we do? Most teams are way far away cant go to war. Also I think war coalition has been tried in other games and it doesnt work well. Because someone doesnt send units and then they get ahead while everyone else fighting. But there is something else we can do. plako has Currency tech. He is running economy off foreign trade routes in 14 cities. That is 28 trade routes to other civs. If we all CLOSE BORDERS with plako, he lose all them at once and economy crashes. It is a lot of income will hurt him a lot. So I want ask everyone to join together and close borders together with plako. Has to be everyone though. This will not work if only some of us do it. It is in eveyones interest to close borders with him. Even if you are friends with plako. We need to present united front. This is peaceful boycott as a group.

Some of us have units in plako borders. We do right now. So if we do this it should be together on turn 110. Give time for units to move through plako borders.

So tell me what you think. I think it is best way for us to slow down runaway. It is easy and you dont have to do anything. Just click to cancel OB. If we all do it together plako cant get mad at any one team. You will still have plenty of foreign trade routes OB from other civs. We need EVERYONE in on this. Lets do this. :D

Locke

PS Please dont say anything to plako. Even if you are friends theres no reason to help him win easier.

He's right, but everyone won't do it. Herding cats in these games is impossible.

[Gaspar]

By the by, I don't think I mentioned this, but I do think its a good idea... but where it does it stop? LP is pretty clearly in 2nd, so do we boycott him after plako's economy takes a dive? Locke is in 3rd, do we hit him next? Its a great thought, but it just can't work, not in a 10-player game. I'd be willing to do it if I didn't think someone ($5 on LP) would rat Locke out and have this whole thing come crashing down. Real question is, once plako knows and it creates hostility between China and England - what do we do? I like the idea of a 2v1 involving us, I don't like the idea of it being fought mostly in our lands.

(T-3 hours until Nakor comes in and tells me I'm overanalyzing/worrying to much in an 8-word post, and then we never speak of this again.)