Ranamar and Lewwyn, ministers for Bismarck of Mali

[Ranamar]

I have to admit your engineer offer surprised me.

I really don't know how to value GPs against gold, but I'd definitely support a trade of our engineer for a GSci.

Would selling him stone pre-empt the request by Yuris? Maybe I'm just too nice a guy, but I would have been willing to grant him stone as a return for the great use we got out of the marble he has given us.

EDIT:
Seeing the message GES sent us this morning, (for some reason, I'm only just reading my e-mail now... :eyeroll I'm going to state more firmly: GES is right. He gave us almost-free marble. Let's give him free stone.

for reference:

RL7:

Today is a hellacious day for me in RL. I am not sure I have time to properly process this on the timeframe necessary.

My general inclination is that right now, AP will only add 14 base hpt to my civ. I don't think I can justify 3 full turns of gold for that. If the number was 750 and I was allowed to tech two more turns before gifting gold (Theo & Lib), I think I could do that.

Now I would be perfectly willing to pay maybe 250 gold if I get Sankore/Minaret, and 425 for both.

I must admit, though, it all seems a little steep when I gifted you marble for one reduced cost worker, saving you roughly 450 early game hammers by my count. I didn't balk or start talking about preventing you from running away with the game when you built a food, MFG, GNP and score lead. All I asked for my marble was friendship and implied future favors, which other than a rice gift, I haven't even asked for anything yet. I rushed you a Confu missionary when I only had it spread to two of my own cities. I plan to gift you furs and deer at no charge. I even offered to give you guys a no interest gold loan to rush Astronomy or another vital tech. I think I've definitely given far more than I've gotten, but you haven't heard me complain even once until now.

GES

[SevenSpirits]

He didn't give us free marble. He gave us marble for an early-game worker. It was a favor but not that big of one.

As I mentioned to him we've also given him free settling rights in the middle, free rice (which is really useful to him, like 2f per city in important cities), almost full map info, and free stone for Moai and Oxford.

We are now going to continue to gift him stone rather than recall it to sell to yuris, which is a big opportunity cost for us. I don't think doing it for free would be fair to the other players in the game.

Anyway....

We sealed the deal, with him paying $800 for the engineer. Yay.

I played the turn and gifted it over. I whipped four knights and they completed, shooting our power skyward. Now guess what? MORE KNIGHTS I forgot to change over Osgiliath and Grey Havens' queues, however they should DEFINITELY be overflowing into more knights rather than into buildings. We need as many knights as possible; it's critical. Dale should be queuing up another knight too.

I sent a galley with an axe in it west. Maybe we can annoy/surprise MNG from the other side?

Astronomy is due in probably 2t, maybe 3t.

[SevenSpirits]

To coincide with our rise in power, I sent the following message to team Yuris:

Hey,

We currently have two NAPs, the one tied to ivory and other stuff and the 10t cooldown one. I'm triggering the end of the 10t cooldown one.

Of course, you have nothing to worry about. We still have a NAP. I am just hoping you will be a bit paranoid and confused and build a few extra units.

RL7

And this to Mr Nice Guy:

Hello,

The end of our peace deal with Yuris is drawing nearer. When possible, we will be willing to reopen borders for a reasonable price.

Additionally, this will lose us the ivory that Yuris was lending to us. Do you have a luxury you could trade us to make up for that happiness drop? Our own luxury situation is deplorable (Gaspar should be shot) but we have jumped through the necessary hoops to hook all five (eyeroll) up, and we now have an extra whale to trade! Do you have anything that we lack?

Cheers, Seven

P.S. It sounds like GES is approaching LIBERALISM. Are you anywhere close to that? We sure aren't... :/ Stupid fin, and rivers.

[SevenSpirits]

And in reply to Commodore's message -

Hey RL7,

Congrats on hooking up those whales, must be an awesome happy cap you guys are nursing over there. Optics also lets you research Astronomy, which I understand turns the world upside down on this crazy map. I'm assuming that the potential for beastly maintenance and hard long-distance fighting would generally dissuade you from looking towards Hyboria for using those brand-new Vassalage military toys in my area, but I will need some reassurance or I'll have to bounce your units out of my lands. I hope not to come across as hostile, by all means wage war wherever you'd like and I'll keep my observations to myself.

Hoping things are going well in Middle-Earth,
-Commodore

Hi Commodore, I'd love to talk but I need to know you'll keep things secret.

For now I can assure you that we have no plans to attack you.

By the way: how did your war with MNG end up? I saw you signed peace, were you forced to make any concessions or was it pure win?

Seven

[Ranamar]

Played turn. Sadly, it was at GES's prodding because I had neglected to check my e-mail all evening.

Anyway, here's the scouting of Orleans:


I'm going to call that an easy target for knights, even off a boat.

Unfortunately, we were $1 short of being able to fund our same 50% research as it was. (Treasury of $6, costs of $7 at 50%.) I didn't want to turn research down, as, if left like that, it would delay Astronomy by one turn. So, I hired a merchant. The least-developed tile we are working is the forest hill near the Gray Havens, so that citizen was switched to a merchant.
We're getting a grocer in Barad-Dur next turn, so our cashflow situation should improve greatly next turn. At that point, we should fire the merchant in the Gray Havens and put him to work in our newly-completed mine.

I also set Gray Havens to build another knight instead of finishing the lighthouse.

[SevenSpirits]

I can't play it tonight.

Let's go SE SE NW NW with caravel (see a bit more),

Put BD back on 4 specs,

2-pop whip a knight wherever possible,

Start some galleys which will turn into galleons in the queue.

[Ranamar]

I can't play it tonight.

Let's go SE SE NW NW with caravel (see a bit more),

Put BD back on 4 specs,

2-pop whip a knight wherever possible,

Start some galleys which will turn into galleons in the queue.

Crap... now you post suggestions.

I just played it, having previously not seen any suggestions. I haven't sent it off yet, however... was about to.

Because it involves movement, you're getting E SE SW NW for your caravel movement.

I can go back and do population micro that you suggest, though.

Edit: checking timestamps, wow, I took a long time on the turn, to have missed that.

Edit2:
For better or for worse, we couldn't actually whip many knights: Most of them are finishing next turn on their own. Worse yet, Lorien, where I was going to try to swap a Galley in before the knight, has enough production that it'd finish the galley... so I had it finish the knight instead. In the end, we're pre-building a ship in Minas Tirith, and I had Khand start one that I expect will only be finished if we whip it into the ground. Given the state of that city, I figure we can live with that, though.

Incidentally, Lorien was ignoring cottages for specialists because the specialists are, without growth, better than plains cottages. (I set it to focus food, but I'm not certain that was wise.) So was Angmar, which I had take the quarry from Lorien because it was running an engineer for the hammers. You might want to fiddle with those yourself.

On the other hand, scouting has good news:

Rouen is undefended! I wonder how long that'll last if we try to attack, though. Actually, if we get a galleon in the right place and he doesn't have optics, we might be able to take it straight out of the fog.

Barad-Dur got 2 more specialists for a total of 4. It now is producing enough gold that we're running a (minor) surplus again. That's also nice. Meanwhile, I turned automation back on in Gray Havens, which put the merchant to work in the mines.

[Lewwyn]

Okay I played the turn this evening!

We got Astro and began galleons. I 2 pop whipped 2 galleons in Dale and MT. I stole the quarry for Lorien and got the Galleon to finish 2 turns naturally in Lorien. Will finish next EOT. Whipped another knight in BD, didn't affect GP eta next turn. Did a bit of tile MM around Edoras and finished the knight there in 1 turn, you may want to change the tiles back(stole a mine from Dale). Left signs for 2 pop whips next turn in Osi and Grey. A note on Khand, it needs one more turn before it can 2 pop whip a galleon, so think of that as 2 turns out.

It's looking good. We only have the one galleon in Dale right now though and one built EOT in Lorien. Right now Dale is set to Knight, we may want to set it another galleon. Depends how long it takes to get the MT Galleon up the coast. MNG might be suspicious he has Triemes coming up the coast:



I set tech to construction and we got it in 1 turn. I didn't see any reference to what our tech path should be but I thought bridge building and cats were two things that might come in handy in our warlike future. Additionally it leads us to Engineering which might be useful as well. CS is also on my list. So what say ye? CS or Engineering? Or gunpowder?

I say we attack in 3-4 turns. maybe even 2. Rouen is still empty. We could easily send two galleon loads out of the fog and take the two coastall cities with just the two galleons. I'm referring to the lorien and Dale galleons, so that's not even considering the MT Galleon that can be in striking distance in 2 turns. Circumnav is wonderful.

[NobleHelium]

Watch out for the vision MNG gets from the funky strip of culture near your shore. He can still see two tiles over coast, so don't show him the galleons until it's time to strike.

[SevenSpirits]

All looks good.

Tech path IMO is Construction - Engineering - (Archery?) - Gunpowder