[SPOILERS] Team EggHeads: DMOC and TeddyKGB (Now Lurker-Friendly!)

[DMOC]

Yeah, that's what I figured. I'm unable to log in the game right now (seems like TeddyKGB has that same problem) so let's do that move on the gold once the game gets back up.

Score changes:

Us: 35 -> 38 (pop increase)
Victoria team: 35 -> 38 (pop increase)
Mansa Musa team: 35 -> 41 (ancient era tech)

[Dhalphir]

what tech did mansa musa team research?

I want to take a crack at this. Zulu start with Agriculture and Hunting.

Referring to DMOC's C&D analysis here, we can see that the best guess for the first tech was animal husbandry.

Given our starting location, if the others are similar, they have mostly AH and fishing food resources, so the first tech for teams who started with Hunting instead of starting with fishing would have been AH. My next step from there would be Mining to get onto BW, so if we saw an average power increase this turn, I would wager that's what Zulu did.

[DMOC]

Looks good Dhapphir. One thing to mention is that two other teams grew in population, so that provides power (1000 iirc) so for the Zulu to have gotten a tech with power we need to see the average rival power increase by more than 111.

[TeddyKGB]

I agree with Dhalphir.
Timing is perfect for Mining or Myst, if I count their beakers and overflow right. So which one we'll know once game is up and we can check demo screen.

[TeddyKGB]

T19 after reload. I move the scout, damn.

Guess its India, not Rome.
Next tirn we'll see Horses. And we should change queue to Settler.

[DMOC]

Very interesting! That's Victoria of India, the team that moved on turn 1, if you recall. We should prepare a message for them now (I'm in the process of writing one).

Scout 9-9 next turn? That will create contact, if they haven't contacted us by then.

Note: switch production to settler next turn.

[TeddyKGB]

Yup, 9-9 seems fine.
We should think about our open msg to them. Be friendly and sincere.
They are the french guys, right?

Not the best neighbour, I guess. But not the worst either.

[DMOC]

All right, here's a first draft:

Dear Yuufo and Bisons of Team Care Bears:

Greetings! Our exploring scout has come across your land, so hopefully we can start out diplomacy on a positive note. Our team members are Dhalphir, dick76, DMOC, and TeddyKGB, with DMOC and TeddyKGB playing the majority of the turns at the moment. Your team is the first who we have made contact with; out of curiosity, have you found other teams yet?

If your scout hasn't found our borders already, we'll be happy to let you know that we are to your west. Our capitals are about 15 tiles apart, so there's ample room for both of us to grow excellent cities between our capitals. In addition, there's a nice coastline up north of us that might be useful for establishing early trade routes between us.

Meanwhile, since we're neighbors and it looks like we've each got plenty of room to expand, we're hoping to initiate the first steps of what might become a long-term alliance. In particular, we are extremely open to working together with by possibly performing the following tasks: (1) sharing wonder plans to minimize wasted production, (2) sharing gold to help speed up one's tech path or possibly to purchase units from one another, (3) negotiating an acceptable border agreement once we've explored the map in further detail, and (4) possibly combining our armies together to conquer lands for mutual benefits.

Naturally, if there's any agreement between us that you'd like to be confidential, we're happy to honor that request, and we're flexible in other agreements not listed earlier. Our team members plan to honor all agreements we form in this game.

Obviously, these aren't the only things we might do in the future. If you have suggestions, feel free to offer them, as we're fairly flexible and, again, eager to work with your team. As a sign of our cooperative intentions, we'd like to know if you're interested in a non-aggression pact with us so that neither of us wastes military in a (potential) early war that would no doubt come as good news to the other eight teams. Since it's around turn 20 now, we'd like to offer a non-aggression pact up to and including turn 60, with the possibility for renewing it at any time to any extent as long as we both agree.

We look forward to hearing back from you.

Best regards,
DMOC

Team EggHeads
Dhalphir, dick76, DMOC, and TeddyKGB

Most messages probably won't have "drafts" but since this is the first one, we might as well give our best impression. I'll write some of my thoughts on them in a later post. I agree, not the best neighbor but definitely not the worst (so glad we don't have Rome over there, for instance!).

[DMOC]

So, with Team Care Bears as our team, we have Victoria of India near us. This means they'll likely be suited for rapid early expansion like us, only they have different bonuses. (E.g. we have faster worker production and border pops, while they have faster settlers and the Fast Worker with 3 moves.) The good news is that they don't have a military UU like the Roman or Sumerian teams that would make us cautious, but we do have to be careful once we're bordering their culture, because the fast worker can surprise us by putting a road on a forested flatland tile or a forestless hill tile.

At the moment, we should just be concerned with getting our cities developed and getting an acceptable border agreement (that doesn't involve us conceding too much!). We won't be able to explore the land between us completely until at least turn 60, so hopefully by then they'll be amenable to extending my proposed NAP (assuming they accept it). If we get horses, we should consider putting 2 chariots up in the land between us as a sentry net. Note: I suggested a NAP until turn 60, since that means we'll have both AH and BW, in time for us to get chariots, axes, and spears. If you have a different turn number in mind, feel free to speak up.

One thing I noticed; judging from the placement of the gold and the forested tiles, it looks like we are basically guaranteed to be able to work our gold before they are UNLESS they put the cows and gold in the first ring, which means their second city can't share food tiles with the capital. They are not creative, so for a fast gold tile they really do need to have it in the first ring.

[TeddyKGB]

I like this msg. Sounds like LP's 1st msg in PB4 (I've start rereading his thread few days ago). I think we could add possible scout info exchange, like screenshots exchange. I'm ok if we send 2-4 tiles to theirs west screenshots in advance. We can add espionage clause, but its not important now.
I like sharing wonders plans proposal, since both of us probably wont build any early wonders at all, but we can get some info if they gonna.

EDIT: crosspost