Ranamar and Lewwyn, ministers for Bismarck of Mali

[Ranamar]

Played turn... it mostly amounted to following Seven's instructions.

I started cottaging the last forest near Lorien, since the governor seems to favor forests over unimproved cottages. If you think we should hang onto it for some reason, there are still four more turns to completion. It can be canceled.

I have an unreasonable aversion to less-than-possible exp on the units I build, so Gray Havens is getting a lighthouse for the turn. (2T completion...) We can switch it back to a missionary when we activate the two we have. Minas Tirith is building a missionary for the same reason.

[SevenSpirits]

Btw I noticed last turn that a Great Merchant was born. This was surely MNG's.

If our chariot in the area has the chance to kill the merchant we should definitely take it. I know I saw a french axe a few turns ago too, and tried to chase after it.

Speaking of which... which GP did WE get?

[Ranamar]

Btw I noticed last turn that a Great Merchant was born. This was surely MNG's.

If our chariot in the area has the chance to kill the merchant we should definitely take it. I know I saw a french axe a few turns ago too, and tried to chase after it.

Speaking of which... which GP did WE get?

The axe was running back to MNG's land. (It's one tile out, now...) I turned around rather than stacking up on it, though.

Sadly, I failed to notice things, again, with regards to GP.

Also, GES is going to want his marble back sometime soon to make a run for the Taj Mahal.

[SevenSpirits]

The axe was running back to MNG's land. (It's one tile out, now...) I turned around rather than stacking up on it, though.

What do you mean turned around? Are we no longer on the road?

[SevenSpirits]

GES says we got an engineer. Dang! Really wanted a scientist or merchant - both were worth about $1000.

He suggested that he might wish to buy our engineer and asked how much. I said $1000. He said what would he get, Sankore or Minaret maybe? Hm. I said AP is more expensive (no doubler). He said maybe $750 for it and he builds AP.

We both said we'll think about it.

Thoughts?

This is better for us than using the Engineer to bulb something, as he would only be worth about $666 worth of research. Additionally, Confucianism becomes the AP religion instead of Buddhism which Yuris and MNG follow.

If you guys like this plan, I will let GES know (though try to get a bit more money if possible).

[SevenSpirits]

About building non-Knights like that lighthouse, let's be clear about the timetable:

We will get Astronomy in 5 turns or fewer. At that point we whip out a round of galleons. Then we want to attack! We need to be building serious freaking knights. That is the reason we don't have time for stables everywhere.

It's true we don't need to be in such a hurry. But I think that the faster we are, the more successful we will be, by a lot.

Lots of knights are going to die. It doesn't matter if they die with 5xp or 7xp in the slightest.

[NobleHelium]

Have you decided who you're going to attack yet? I see lots of talk about building stuff to attack and not any concrete plans on how or what to attack.

[SevenSpirits]

Played t90.

GMerchant and Axes are gone, I suspect he saw our chariot and decided to go another way. (Or maybe he bulbed something?) Ah well.

I queued up some knights and put signs to whip some!

Moved the Great Engineer South to Minas Tirith and wrote this to GES:

So, not a word from my teammates about the Great Engineer which I am taking as a tacit endorsement of letting you have it. He is currently in position to enter your borders (ending on the tile 1N of your border city) next turn, which means you could use him that same turn to rush a wonder.

I highly recommend the Apostolic Palace. It's simply the best if you are spiritual, 2h per temple/monastery is an insane bonus. As such I would recommend researching Theology in the next 1-2 turns. Speed is important because Yuris got Theo a couple turns ago and has exactly that many turns of production put into his most productive city (according to espionage). So you only have 3-4 turns to beat him to it, I would guess.

If you want the engineer, I think this is a fair price that doesn't interfere with your teching:
* 350 gold before you tech anything other than Theology. (i.e. ~ once you have theo)
* Another 550 gold before you tech anything else other than Lib and its prerequisites. (i.e. ~ once you have lib)
* We will also promise to leave Taj and SoLiberty to you.

You'll have to let me (us) know by next turn or we won't know to gift him.

Also if you're interested, I'd like to offer our stone for the other religion wonders. For $300 you can use it for one (Minaret or Sankore), $500 for both. (You'd save a total of 368 hammers.) With stone I bet you could beat Yuris to those, too, since we wouldn't be loaning him the stone while you had it.

I think you would be in an insanely good position with those three wonders (or even just two of them). (That's why I gotta charge you a reasonable amount of money. You don't need the win handed to you for free!) And I think it would be really fun and it's what I'd want to do if I were playing your seat.

Seven

Basically proposing we help him build all three (non-sistine) religious wonders in exchange for piles of gold. It's better for us if Yuris gets these (because GES is doing so well), but not hundreds and hundreds of dollars better. I hope he takes the offer. I consider it reasonable.

Noble: We just finished a caravel, it's on its way to scout out MNG's coast. He is the assumed and most likely target. Below is a tentative plan, assuming that things seem as undefended as we'd expect:



The green line is how we scout. As long as a) the caravel never ends turn adjacent (even diagonally) to MNG's borders, and b) he lacks optics, he won't know it's there at all. That's how we want to keep it, hence moving in and out with the caravel in a single turn. After that maneuver we should probably scout the north of his blob too.

The blue lines are moves on the first turn of war. First we move up and amphibiously attack Orleans, capturing it. Then we move galleons into the Orleans tile, they unload knights with full movement and said knights head east. On the second war turn we capture Paris and can hopefully immediately culture bomb it, assuming no weird culture artifacts. (Note: culture bombing Orleans would have next to no effect; Paris' culture will be too strong.)

Sadly I don't think we'll have enough troops to do more attacks concurrently, though if MNG is particularly lax in defending we may be able to throw in one or two more violent surprises (probably razing though).

Ideally we also bring a missionary to give culture-bombed Paris 1 culture per turn, which given its massive culture radius will actually be really valuable in gaining control of tiles. (Inner ring tiles get an extra 20cpt for each ring outside them, but only if there's more than 0 culture per turn in the first place.)

[NobleHelium]

Very nice plan, I like it. Where are you getting the GA from, Music? Are you attacking MNG because you have NAPs with your other neighbors, or some other reason?

[SevenSpirits]

Very nice plan, I like it. Where are you getting the GA from, Music? Are you attacking MNG because you have NAPs with your other neighbors, or some other reason?

We currently own an artist, prophet and engineer despite scientist/merchant totalling about 50% odds (and being the ones we want). But that's fine.

MNG is the best target because 1) he'd be least likely to expect it, 2) we have NAPs with our real neighbors currently, 3) Commodore is farther away than him and has a strong military.

At the time we started planning the attack (and made the NAP with yuris) he was also the second-most-dangerous opponent due to GLH and his city count. He's lost two cities to Commodore in the meantime though.

DIPLO:

GES thinks our price is too steep, so I chatted with him. I offered the following amendment:

For the stone, he pays us 10gpt, plus 150 per world wonder he builds with it. (This should come out to about 500g anyway if he builds both sankore and minaret, but spreads the risk more evenly between us.)

I was also going to offer him to drop the price from 900 to 800 for the engineer. However before I could do so he assumed I was willing to do his offer of 750, so I held my tongue for the moment. He still wants to run all of this past Luddite.

As 750 is low and he had seemed to have been willing to trade it for his scientist (due in 4t or so) earlier, I offered to do that swap again. And he seemed to like that better! Maybe his gold/beaker skew is extremely high? (Ours is pretty much even.) I think he's overvaluing the gold and undervaluing the scientist. It's hard to comprehend how powerful great people are sometimes.

Anyway, he is going to ponder this / do math / ask lurkers. So we don't know whether we are selling him the engineer yet. We probably shouldn't play the turn until we know. Don't worry about holding it since MNG is only playing evenings anyway.