Mooooooo.... wait, wrong animal. Neeeigghhh

[Iskender]

T127:

A Galley built in Ultigar heads east. If there's nothing in the way it may unfog a trade route with the Clan.

There is something in the way if Serdoa wanted to sail in our direction (and further to Letum Frigus).

Another node found! This made me reconsider the location of 13th city. I'd like to move the settler further east to secure another node.

The eastern scout is in trouble.

Or not. These kill stacks look like they had no idea what they're doing.


EOT F1:

I'm researching Alteration as we agreed on chat. Gems-Ivory deal with Serdoa cancelled.


Krill got KotE. Serdoa must have triggered another golden age - a single one should have expired this or last turn. He doesn't show any signs of intending to build two towers at once, maybe he wants to have all towers in one city for defensive purposes. His power is rising fast, 500k atm. What is he training? Maybe Adepts instead of (or apart from) Javelins, for wall o' bones? Would be fun if it got whooshed away with Dispel Undead.

[Square Leg]

I sent this message to Serdoa:

[COLOR="Lime"]Hey Serdoa,

Out of game note - Happy new year - hope you had a good break!

Just wanted to drop you a note to say that we will be cancelling the Ivory - Gems deal we have currently, of course, unless you have anything really cool to offer us instead of ivory (like a magic carpet, inflatable lampshade, cheese flavoured soap....).

Cheers,
SL[/COLOR]

He replied with this:

[COLOR="Cyan"]Hey SL,

<snip>

As for the game: Thats fine. As I said I have not many ToK, so I don't mind too much about losing the happy from them. I also unfortunately don't have cheese flavoured soap (not that I am sure I'd actually would want that... how would that smell?) and on a more serious note I can't even sell you some of my immediate surrounding land as it seems you decided to settle quite up on me, despte having a vast amount of unsettled land to your east still. Really a shame but I didn't expect anything different when you told me you'd try to contact Krill.

However, I hope you'll honor our NAP. And maybe consider afterwards that attacking me is handing the game to Krill. And if you can choose between him winning and me winning, wouldn't you rather have me winning? I mean, certainly you would vote for me if we had a diplomatic victory wouldn't you? :D

Kind regards,[/COLOR]

Yeah - we'd vote for you in a diplo victory (ITCHY CHIN)

I'll reply and say that of course we will honour the NAP but not a lot else.

[Square Leg]

[COLOR="limegreen"]Hey Serdoa,

<snip>

On the game: Of course we will honour the NAP we signed to T150. We have settled up on you a bit but obviously you Temples make the lands you hold pretty undesirable, we Hippus prefer grasslands for our ponies to run free in rather than the cold icy wastes you reside in!

It seems the Grigori's days are numbered and they have asked us to not interfere in trying to save them - I guess Amelia wants to go down fighting and get out of this game asap. Once that war is done I'd probably worry about Ogres massing on your borders... Realistically I don't think the Clan are likely to attack us - we are too far away.

All the best,
SL[/COLOR]

I hope this message comes accross cordially as I don't want him to be massing troops on our border really... My only worry is that it will lead him to try and get us to sign up to a new NAP, which of course I will dodge like the plague!

[Brian Shanahan]

[COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]Hey Serdoa,

<snip>

On the game: Of course we will honour the NAP we signed to T150. We have settled up on you a bit but obviously you Temples make the lands you hold pretty undesirable, we Hippus prefer grasslands for our ponies to run free in rather than the cold icy wastes you reside in!

It seems the Grigori's days are numbered and they have asked us to not interfere in trying to save them - I guess Amelia wants to go down fighting and get out of this game asap. Once that war is done I'd probably worry about Ogres massing on your borders... Realistically I don't think the Clan are likely to attack us - we are too far away.

All the best,[/COLOR]

Have you come over all Illian all of a sudden. And if so where did you stash Serdoa?

OF course I had to pick the wrong blue!

[Square Leg]

He's in my pocket.... :neenernee

fixed!

[Iskender]

I like the tone of Serdoa's message - if he was sure that he had ToM in his pocket I bet he would've been more cocky. Now he still seems genuinely worried that a dogpile might put an end to his ToM victory plan. Good, maybe it's true.

He also seems more concerned with Krill's Ogres than with whatever we'd throw at him. Maybe because getting through 140's is critical for Illians and 150's is just adding finishing touches to the ToM (I doubt he can be that fast though), or maybe it's because he doesn't expect us to pose a greater threat to ToM than the Clan. If it's the latter he might be in for a big surprise (unless he's working on some kind of wunderwaffe, if it's just Adepts or Javelin Throwers I think we could handle that).

I'm off for today. A couple of things if you'd like to play the turn SL:

Add another (2nd) specialist in Aintree, Epsom should be working four specs until its GP is out (3 turns).

Workers generally improve whatever is left to improve, mostly tiles in the south and around Ultigar. The crowd around the new city (Atheriol-ATM) can extend road towards Gavenholm so our horsies and the elite squad can capture the city. Improving ATM's tiles is not critical.

The settler east of Galvenholm heads east to grab the easternmost node in BFC. No rush though, he might even wait for the guys to deal with Galvenholm first.

[Square Leg]

Done - I'll post a report tomorrow morning.

We have mail from serdoa too!

[Square Leg]

Well, I turned my laptop off before the screenshots uploaded to dropbox so no pics I'm afraid. I hired another specialist as you suggested and generally did my best with the workers. We could still do with some more really - especially if we want to send some on ops.

<Ignore - I was being lame>

Here is the latest message from Serdoa:

[COLOR="cyan"]Hey SL,

I AM worrying about Krill and I guess by T150 (when my NAP with him ends) we'll have some fireworks. Maybe you'll be able to use this time of war between Krill and me to sail to a victory? If you want to try, I am happy to sign a NAP with you for longer than T150. Just let me know how you feel. I won't be upset if you decline to take some war-spoils for yourself - just always keep in mind that Krill can leverage more land quicker than I can, so helping him is ultimately making it harder for you in the end.

Kind regards,[/COLOR]

So Krill tells us his NAP ends on T140 with the Ilians but Serdoa thinks it is T150..... I suppose we have a choice here - who do we tell about this, if anyone? Did Krill lie or this that they have just both gotten confused?

[Square Leg]

Had a chat with Iskender:

11:51 Iskender hey there
i'm just for a sec
Square Leg morning
11:52 Iskender if you can squeeze in some workers please do
11:53 Square Leg yes - we need some.
Iskender i focused on military cause we don't know what we're going to face on T150
Square Leg have you seen the latest message from serdoa i posted in the thread?
Iskender a couple of workers will help, but in several turns we should be virtually 100% military mode
just reading it
11:54 Square Leg seems he thinks his nap with krill is to t150
Iskender this is interesting
11:55 i thought Krill would lie, but if he did he should exaggerate the duration of their NAP
Square Leg indeed - It may be that krill has lied, serdoa has lied or that they both believe different things!
I'm hoping the latter as it will draw aggression
11:56 I might send them both a message saying - err the other thinks your nap ends...
Iskender krill wouldn't make a lie that can be easily verified on T140 - if their nap ends then he should declare
11:57 Square Leg yes - but why would serdoa lie?
I can't think why he would.
Iskender hm
Square Leg most likely explanation is one of them has got it wrong for some reason
11:58 Iskender could be. maybe confront krill with this?
Square Leg If that is the case then I like the idea of poking both of them to make them annoyed and argue
Iskender also, maybe he's got any idea what constitutes illian power graph
11:59 Square Leg yes - Serdoa did mention he wanted a mage army and adepts are 8k each
quite a lot of power for not much punch... yet
12:00 Iskender adepts are fine by me - 2xp out of the gate
vs ours 8
Square Leg yes - and he isn't arcane
it will be interesting to see what trait he takes next
Iskender if he's gotten a command post, 4xp
12:01 Square Leg yes - he is in mil state isn't he?
btw - i wanted to ask your opinion on building HA's vs Horsemen. Obviously the 95%ers will need to start as Horsemen
but other wise which do you prefer?
Iskender he's in conquest + arete (if i'm not confusing the columns)
12:02 Square Leg ah - makes sense - his mfg is big
Iskender we'll need HA as well - can't afford upgrades if we went 100% horsemen. 85gc for each upgrade. we've got 4 horsies already
12:03 the ratio will depend on when we want to stop teching and how much $ we'll get from pillaging
the HA in Aintree i wanted to send over to amelia as a muscle behind pillaging horsies
12:04 he might take ie. CII or CI shock or MII
Square Leg well if the war goes well against serdoa we will be able to make quite a lot of $ in pillage - lets face it - we don't want to keep his cities
Iskender yes, and if he went Javelin Throwers we can even keep some horsemen unupgraded
12:05 with their +40% vs archery
Square Leg yes - he will likely swap into mil state for a war and his draftable unit is likely to be javeln throwers.
12:07 Iskender ok, gotta go
Square Leg k bye
Iskender cheers

I have sent this to Krill:

[COLOR="Lime"]Hey Krill,

Seems while I was away we made contact with you in game finally. I'll cut to the chase - we agree that Serdoa is getting very close to the ToM victory and as Iskender has already implied, we will be preparing an attack when our NAP ends on T150. In the meantime I have talked to Serdoa and he confessed his NAP with you was until T150 whereas you told us it was only to T140. I can't see why either of you would lie to us - it sounds like you two have crossed wires somewhere...

Anyway - I'll leave it to you to resolve.

Cheers,
SL[/COLOR]

[Square Leg]

Turn 129

Now that the forum is back up I can post this:

Woot.

In other news I messed up our adept movement a bit but I don't think it will matter too much in the long run. We got this message from Krill:

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Oh, turns out you are right, it's T150 I can attack him on.


Nice, means something like another 20+ ogres...[/COLOR]

Fair enough.