[SPOILERS] Isabella of Carthage, starring Ellimist, SleepingMoogle, and Nicolae

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Agreed, I always feel uncomfortable wonderspamming in the early game when I could be landgrabbing and workering. I think settling is a good idea too, though I should make a point that bureaucracy multiplies commerce, not science nor wealth. Therefore it doesn't apply to the GMerchant gold. What does matter are the multipliers, I like settling in a high-hammer holy city so the shrine gold will synergise with the ability to build markets, grocers and banks.

I may be getting distracted, but think it's worth building a single chariot and probing around the south, and disconnecting Kuro's copper if he gets antsy? Or would that be a terrible idea from a diplomatic point of view, NH already dislikes us and we need at least one safe neighbour. I personally think we and Kuro should make a decent pair, Kuro is going to be setting his eyes upon his weak neighbour, and if we can direct his attentions in that direction and if we can provide clandestine aid to Jkaen, we'll have a safe front and maybe even a quagmire on the other side of the donut.

[Ellimist]

I had a look at the save, and we kind of have a dire Worker shortage for now (and I hope those half-built roads were put down because the Workers had nothing else to do ).

Yes. The road near Pollux was before the city was founded and the two on the main island were built when the workers were about to be shipped off without time for a real improvement.

Once Pollux has finished that workboat, we should definitely 2-pop whip a Worker to replace the one you want to send to Regulus. We should strongly consider putting Sirius on a worker as well after it has regrown, otherwise we have cities working unimproved tiles and costing us maintenance. Regulus looks especially in need of some Worker attention.

Definitely. We can use whipping in the short term to reduce our need for improved tiles, but our three donut cities need some major attention. I don't want to slow down the landgrab much, though. I think we need to get a city on the inner-donut coast asap, and a city to claim the stone. Depending on terrain, we may accomplish both goals with one city. I'm sending our eastern scout back westward along the inner coast to find a good spot. NobleLewwyn have seriously neglected donut exploration/expansion so far, so we should be able to take some of the better land between us.

Regarding the GP. I don't really expect it to be a merchant, but Currency is a cheap enough tech that using a Merchant to bulb it is rather silly.

I think our odds for a merchant will be around 20%.

We should settle it him in Regulus instead. +6 gpt is strong already, and will become even better under Bureaucracy. Speaking of which, if Regulus ends up as the Confucianism holy city, we should convert to it and build the shrine over the hindu one. Again because of Bureaucracy potential.

I'm pretty sure bureaucracy multiplies raw commerce, not gpt. So gold from shrines/specialists wouldn't be multiplied. We would definitely want to settle the merchant in our future wall street city, though. Probably either Canopus or the Confucian holy city.

[Ellimist]

Sorry, I need to post more chat logs. They're a pain to format.

I don't get the impression that NH doesn't like us. He just seems kinda bad at diplomacy, according to Kuro. Also, Kuro has a NAP with jkaen(to T83 I think.)

There's a wide strip of jungle between Kuro and us. We're definitely more able to push east than south.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Got the save.

Moved Regulus' garrison in NE, so he has the option of covering City #5. I intend to alter the micro plan a bit, we're not going to be able to start the Colossus for another 3 turns, so there's no point finishing the copper on T72. I've completed the road section between the copper and pigs, but won't be roading the pigs until after I've farmed the wet corn in Regulus. In the meantime, I've put 1 turn into a cottage on the floodplains.

A few points I want to make...

We were not working the cottage in Sirius when I opened the save. In that case, there's no point starting these long-term investments, when we could be focusing on 2/1/3 coast tiles, and farms will speed us towards Moai and rexing.

I think we can actually slow down the landgrab slightly, I think NH only has one city on the mainland, we have two. I think NH actually filled in his entire island, I can't see a single resource on the mainland that has been improved by NH. Nevertheless, I only see 2 out of 3 of his clams have been netted on the trade screen. I say ignore them for now, I'd rather stick hammers into workers than workboats. Also, for some bizarro reason, NH built a freaking monument in the capital . He did luck out and get a Judaism spread to city #3.

I'd be happier investing in a couple more workers before our next expansion wave, though a steady 6 --> 3 whip cycle from our capital is a good idea (this is why I don't want to cottage Sirius).

I've offered open borders to Jkioan, how should we approach him diplomatically? I'd be fine offering the workboat deal to him, if he lets us loop his island. We have nothing to fear from one another save wonder/tech races.

Finally, I dislike the workboat deal with NH. I don't want him to have any free scouting information of us, period. He is our most dangerous rival, Kuro's landgrabbing/food focus/colossus baiting notwithstanding. Sure, engage with him, find some rapport, but try not to give away anything free to him. We're going to be antagonising him anyway with our pink dot.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Another note, Kuro's capital has 35 hammers invested into something, his rice/gold city has 34 hammers in it.

Lithium has 49 hammers in it.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Another piece of C&D: Working from average land area, assuming Kuro is #1 in land, Jkioan is #4, NH has 39 land tiles. He's claimed 26 tiles on his starting island, so there's a chance the other 13 tiles are claimed by a single NH city (though why it's so unimproved I'm not sure of).

[SleepingMoogle]

If relations with NH are already delicate, I'd rather not do anything to antagonize our other neighbor unless there is a very good reason for it. That, and building a Chariot will divert focus away from setting up our donut cities. Let's try and keep good relations with at least one of our neighbors for now. It would be a good idea to build up something with Jkaen as well since we have no real reason to be enemies, and we can probably discuss ganging up on one of the two others at some point. I would not be surprised in the least if Kuro and NH are doing the same thing.

Sirius working a mine over a cottage sounds like a micro error. No reason for that when doing regular whips.

Also, NH's monuments come from Henge. So that's not really a weedy move on their part

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Oh that makes perfect sense. Bah, I accidently read a spoiler in another subforum regarding someone building a monument in the capital and got confused for a second. I understand that it's bad practice to pull a Sandover in pbem3 and antagonise someone you want as a safe border.

Also, how's this for suckering up to Jkaen and strengthening him slightly?

"Hey Jkaen,

How's things going on the opposite side of the planet? As teams as physically distant as possible, I think we have little conflicts of interest and wouldn't mind some good honest dealing. Our workboat finally bumped into your borders, would you be interested in opening borders with our team so they can pass through? Also, because we've pretty much circumnativated the mainland, would you be interested in purchasing this finely crafted workboat from us? For instance, open borders and perhaps 10 turns access to a duplicate resource of yours in the future?"

I'm not particularly practiced at diplomacy, especially when I'm from a position of strength, I'd imagine any gestures of friendliness would sound hollow. How would you write this?

[Ellimist]

I sent him a hello message yesterday. They haven't responded yet.

That message sounds good though. Feel free to send it along.

I agree (in principal) with pausing a bit on settlers so that we can catch up with workers, but I think we should still try to plant a few more cities first.
1) The inner coast of the donut. Whichever team gets the central island mapped and settled fastest will get best access to whatever goodies Krill put there.
2) The southwest city of the starting island. This city will have access to the Canopus mines and 2 clams to quickly become profitable.
3) The stone between us and Noble. As the only industrious civ, they are going to take this soon ubless we do. Luckily for us, they don't seem interested in exploration. At the very least, I want this soon for Moai. With the sort of high-production cities we have, we may get even better use out of it.

It may be possible to secure (1) and (3) with a single city. 2 cities with stone in the overlap is probably better. An axe or two in any border cities should be enough to deter the possibility of an attack.

[Ellimist]

Moved Regulus' garrison in NE, so he has the option of covering City #5. I intend to alter the micro plan a bit, we're not going to be able to start the Colossus for another 3 turns, so there's no point finishing the copper on T72. I've completed the road section between the copper and pigs, but won't be roading the pigs until after I've farmed the wet corn in Regulus. In the meantime, I've put 1 turn into a cottage on the floodplains.

That's fine. The short delay before the copper city was founded seemed like a chance for some roadwork to speed travel toward Regulus.

We were not working the cottage in Sirius when I opened the save. In that case, there's no point starting these long-term investments, when we could be focusing on 2/1/3 coast tiles, and farms will speed us towards Moai and rexing.

Sounds fine. I've always been a bit dubious of cottaging Sirius, as the city seems perfect for Moai/Colossus. I even tried to build a lighthouse to speed up the whip regrowth.

I think we can actually slow down the landgrab slightly, I think NH only has one city on the mainland, we have two. I think NH actually filled in his entire island, I can't see a single resource on the mainland that has been improved by NH. Nevertheless, I only see 2 out of 3 of his clams have been netted on the trade screen. I say ignore them for now, I'd rather stick hammers into workers than workboats.

Sounds fine on the workboats. I do want to grab the stone and an inner-coastal spot soon, though.

I'd be happier investing in a couple more workers before our next expansion wave, though a steady 6 --> 3 whip cycle from our capital is a good idea (this is why I don't want to cottage Sirius).

I like keeping Sirius on 6-3 for now. Once we get stone hooked up we can start it on Moai, but until then let's pop out settlers. We definitely need workers, but other cities can do those. Canopus can build 2 workers every 5 turns and Pollux can go on a 4-2 whip cycle. The copper-gold city can stop growing at size 3 working fish-copper-gold and can put out workers quickly at that size.

Finally, I dislike the workboat deal with NH. I don't want him to have any free scouting information of us, period. He is our most dangerous rival, Kuro's landgrabbing/food focus/colossus baiting notwithstanding. Sure, engage with him, find some rapport, but try not to give away anything free to him. We're going to be antagonising him anyway with our pink dot.

I will then move the work boat over to EMC and gift it once I've established trade routes.

With this WB deal, he gifts us the WB as soon as he reaches our copper city. He'll gain zero visibility on Sirius or anywhere else. We'll use the WB to net the fish at that city, and gift Aleutian ballad to Kuro in the south. It actually benefits us, oddly enough.