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

[Ellimist]

T96 came early enough in the evening that I was able to do T97 as well.

Jkioan revolted to Hereditary-Caste on T95, so I went ahead and started us on Monarchy. There are a ton of Calendar resources on the island, so we'll get that next. Getting Monarchy first shouldn't delay the workers, and we'll be able to benefit from HR as soon as our civics timer finishes(T100). Since we can't adopt HR until then anyway, I delayed the tech to T100 by setting the slider lower.

Arcturus 2-pop whipped a galley on T96 and the overflow was enough to finish a workboat the following turn. We'll send that workboat west, and finish two more on T99 and T100 thanks to another chop. After that, I'd like to 3 pop whip a forge with the help of a missionary arriving on T98, then whip out some more infrastructure with overflow building more workboats. A lighthouse/library/monument/temple would be nice, if we can flip the stone tile it will really help with the hammers. For now, I want to hold off on chopping the forested plains tile, 1/2 isn't bad compared to the rest of what's available.

Arcturus:

Our first Arcturus galley dropped off settlers 5 and 6 on T97, and will pick up Lucas and Vasco the workers on T98. Our second Arcturus galley brought settlers 3 and 4 eastward this turn, and can unload them on T98 at what is probably one of our city sites. We'll have to wait to settle with them until after the SW settler settles, probably on T99. That will most likely mean a one turn delay for one settler, but I'm okay with that to stay within the limits of our agreement with Noble. Settlers 7 and 8 are still on the home island, but will board the galley next turn and unload in Denebola the turn after.

Settlers:

We have visibility now on Harappan, the Barbarian city in the center of the map. It's size 7 and looks like it will be costly to capture; it's on a hill with a guerilla 1 archer and 5 warriors(2 have combat 1). Unfortunately, it sits on Ivory, and I still haven't seen any marble. At least there's no great reason we can't just ignore it for now and handle it later.

Harappan:

Denebola is growing for now while slow-building a forge. I plan to whip it if we manage to get religion into the city, but for now it's just giving us some nice commerce. Pollux and Regulus are building some workers to help compensate for things regarding the island.

We're falling behind on some things for now, but that should change once we found a few cities.

Demographics:

[Ellimist]

Okay, I added some pictures to last night's post. Let me know what you think, especially regarding the possible dotmap(reposted here.)

The spots are numbered approximately in order of when I expect we can settle them. Settling adjacent to the fish resources should allow us to keep cultural control of those tiles. If we arrive at a site and see a great reason to settle elsewhere, we'll probably still be in the same general vicinity.

Right now, I think it's probably best if we move all settlers into place but hold off settling at sites 6, 7, and 8. That should save us on maintenance for several turns while we start making the other cities profitable. If we pop borders for sites 1-5, then we can claim the rest of the land with just the first ring from the last 3 sites. We can settle those either when we see a galley or when we have workers/WBs in place to quickly develop them.

In addition to the settlers, I've also moved axes, archers, and workers in that general direction to send over. Most of our existing workers can go over immediately without hurting our current cities, and their replacements can pick up where they left off.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Can I point out how utterly insane this plan is ? This is going to be a massive hit to our economy and development and diplomacy, all I can do is hope it works out. I'd blame you, but I've been sorta egging you on anyway.

I think we can move (5) 1E. The NE (6) looks best to me. I'd bring up the fact we're blocking off Jkioan and his fish at (2), we want good diplomacy with him.

Make sure to work the phones, everyone is going to be pissed at us.

[Ellimist]

Agreed. It's insane, but I think we can pull it off.

From what I can tell, this will give us a monopoly on various resources, which I think we can use to mitigate any diplomatic impacts. If you think it will help, I can probably get Kuro to give us something else in exchange for extending our NAP with him.

As far as avoiding actual military action from Noble/Jkioan, I'd still like to put the Statue of Zeus in Regulus. The increased war weariness should give us the edge in any war of attrition, and we kinda need a monument in Arcturus anyway. In addition to that, if they become dependent on us for silver or other luxuries, they'll take a significant and immediate hit if we stop sending it or there's a war.

I also plan to precisely follow our agreement with Noble. So far, I've been telling them of resources we discover as soon as we discover them, and I plan to continue this. At this point, there's nothing they can do to get them before we do.

The hit to our development and economy should be manageable. All of these cities are coastal and we have the Colossus and Cothons available to us. The resources will allow our existing cities to become better, and it shouldn't be long before each new city is producing at least 10-15 commerce to offset its maintenance cost. We'll definitely see some short term pain, though. Delaying 3 cities might offset this somewhat.


EDIT: 5 and 6 are indeed less definite sites than the others. I agree on #6 but #5 I'm less sold on. I think both these sites really require visibility to be sure.

Lucky for us, Kuro and NH don't seem to get along at all. I haven't been able to chat with Jkioan and we haven't exchanged many emails either.

Right now, we have the highest power rating, and I expect to build some more units soon now that we have HR (almost).


EDIT EDIT: The fish at #5 isn't even within reach of a possible Kuro city. 1N of my proposed site might even be better, to pick up the second fish in the BFC.

[Ellimist]

I'll probably be hurting my future diplomatic efforts with this, but I think it's relevant to know why things were decided. One thing to keep in mind, always, is that ultimately everybody is(or should be) trying to win the game. I don't think I'm any different than most in that regard. I'm not against deals that benefit other players, but whether or not I agree to them will depend on whether I think they help me to win.

Tonight, I sent Jkioan another email. Here's our most recent correspondence:

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Sorry, I meant to reply sooner. Congratulations on researching currency before us, our two teams seem to be a bit behind the others on cities but at least we're catching up in other respects.
I just noticed(and sent a message in game) that you're putting quite a few espionage points onto our team. I don't particularly mind, except we're still trying to get graphs on you as a result! It would probably benefit you more to get additional info on the teams that are geographically closer to you. Lewwyn in particular is a very aggressive player (see his other games) and it would be prudent of you to take precautions.

Ellimist[/COLOR]

[COLOR="Yellow"]Hi guys - it nice to hear from you after all. ;)

Well ... the tech rate is not so bad for us in this game ( yet ) - just hope that we will plant enough cities too. ;)

Regarding espionage-points ... thanks for pointing this out : it is the default settings, personally I don't adjust anything there. :)

Best regards,

Ioan[/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Congrats on landing Monarchy before us as well. To be honest, I am a little concerned with your expansion rate, if you aren't careful, your neighbors will end up with a good chunk of your land. It seems like they're both already starting to settle closer to your capital than their own.

As an FYI, we recently discovered Iron Working. We don't have your lands fully scouted yet, but I'm aware of two sources in your vicinity. The first is 3 tiles south of Kuro's "Aradia Megido" city. He pretty much has that one locked down, but the other one is 4N4W of your capital, or 1E4S of "new city" if you prefer to look at it that way. I'll let you know if we spot any more when we get more visibility of your land. (I don't believe you have Iron Working yet, but if you do, I guess take it as a good faith gesture that I'd tell you anyway.)

Let me know if there's anything you'd like from us. I know I'm not great at returning emails, but I try to be available on google chat and MSN messenger.


Ellimist[/COLOR]

I went ahead and told him where his iron was as a freebie. I don't really know what else I could have given to try and improve relations, but right now I think we're relatively friendly with them. I could probably get a NAP with them if we want, they were pressuring Noble/Lewwyn for one not that long ago(and didn't get one).




Now, let's briefly review our agreement with Noble, because it's particularly relevant right now and in the near future.

1) Neither EMC nor NL will settle on or immediately next to the center meridian, with the exception of the tile next to the inner sea, between the corn and the horse. EMC will settle a city on that tile.

So far so good. This allowed us to settle Arcturus and holds them far enough away that their culture won't be a major concern. My original plan, remember, was to settle Arcturus where it is now but also settle the plains hill tile adjacent to the stone. Clearly, I underestimated them quite a bit if I thought we could accomplish this without making it our top priority. I'm not planning to repeat this mistake with regard to our next settling venture.

2) NL has ownership of the Stone resource whenever there is no war, regardless of who actually owns the tile.
3) EMC will have the Stone shortly after it's hooked up for ~1-2 turns for building Moai Statues. EMC will not use this Stone to aid in the completion of any world wonder. EMC may partially build world wonders for fail gold.

So far, we are in compliance. We sent the stone over immediately after hooking it up, and completed Moai on that same turn. NH was willing to give us additional turns, but we didn't need them.
#2 was tough. It all came down to the fact that there was zero chance of us coming to any sort of agreement with them unless we ceded them the stone. Once I put that on the table, they really didn't have any reason not to agree to a deal is relatively reasonable. Does it favor us? Well, it lets us do what we want to do without interference from them, which is expand like crazy into a very fertile map without getting into a fight with skirmishers. As far as I'm concerned, we're better off than we would be without this agreement.

4) NL and EMC will enter into a NAP from now through the end of turn 118.

This is mutually beneficial, but I didn't want to fight skirmishers anyway.

5) EMC will inform NL of any resources they discover east of the center meridian on or off the coast of the center island.
6) EMC will not settle east of the meridian on the center island until after they have settled west of it.

I believe I proposed these when they hesitated about us settling on the coast before them. At the time, it was the first things I could think of that seemed generous enough that they couldn't object to them. I didn't really want them to propose terms here, I wanted them to agree to mine, which they did. Why did I propose these two terms? Well, at the time I was already considering some sort of settler rush, and we would be well positioned for it with the first city on the inner sea. Both 5 and 6 are actually "trojan horse' style gifts. It looks like a freebie to them, but it helps us in a way that is hard to see.

To them, #6 is relatively worthless. It only really has value if we're planning to slowly add cities to the center island, which by now it's clear that we aren't. However, to us, #6 buys us some time. It removes some of the urgency they might otherwise have to plant a city on the inner sea. This seems to have worked(or at least hasn't backfired); they've founded Oxygen and Flourine since our agreement and neither are on the inner coast.
#5 seems like pure benefit to them, right? Well, not really. It also encourages them to delay founding on the inner sea, but if they do delay it makes them dependent on us for scouting info. Never underestimate the harmfulness of dependency. In this case, we only had to send them info that we knew. So, as a result, we could withhold scouting info from them by not knowing it ourselves. By using settlers for our exploration, we'll have the cities basically owned by the time we find out what resources are present.


Tonight, I've chatted sporadically with Noble. He asked where city #7 will be founded, and I told him. I don't want to seem evasive but I don't want to give him a chance to try and talk us out of settling the entire island either. He wouldn't be able to, but I'd rather handle the issue after it's done.

NobleHeli​um: I am really wondering why you haven't planted a seventh yet
Ellimist: shhh
we're settling #7 on the inner island near Kuro
(hush hush)
NobleHeli​um: well i'm not telling him
Ellimist: yeah I know you and him don't seem to get along lately
NobleHeli​um: your galley already dropped him off? lol
Ellimist: yeah we went part of the way with the settler then dropped it off and he's walking the rest of the way
We ought to have it founded within the next 5 turns though, and I'll inform you when we do(you'd probably notice already)
NobleHeli​um: anyway i do hope you will not block us off with your next settler
we still don't have an inner coast city
Ellimist: I expect that your next city will be on the inner coast, no?
NobleHeli​um: it will be, yes, but still a while before we can get a galley out

One thing to note here is that he doesn't seem to have noticed that Arcturus has now built two galleys and a workboat. I made sure he didn't see the 6 settlers that have already crossed over, but I can't hide the boats when we produce them in Arcturus.

[SevenSpirits]

Your plan to settle the entire center island is very bold - I like it.

[Ellimist]

Thanks Seven!


No time for a full T98 update. Here's the center:

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say the reward is worth the risk. The lack of marble is still rather irritating, though.


What I sent to Noble:

[Ellimist]

Right now, I'm thinking about modifying our current plan in a couple minor ways. First, I think it would be prudent to settle two cities on the west half of the island, and one in the southeast quarter, before we settle in the northeast quarter. It will be hard to spin things positively to Noble, but at least that's more reasonable-ish to him(but we'll still get the sites.) I don't want him to think we raced to deny him access to the island sites; hopefully he'll be more okay with us racing to deny everyone access to them instead. Delaying them a couple turns will also allow us to have more workers and workboats in place to make the cities profitable sooner.

In addition to that, I'm thinking a small delay before we adopt caste-HR would also be good. Whipping is really the only way to get decent production out of Arcturus, and we need a monument, library, and temple there in addition to the workboats. I'm working on the micro, but I think I can stack whips properly to accomplish this with minimal delay. Remember, we can whip two things on the same turn and finish neither if we choose. I plan to whip stuff and overflow into workboats, but I need to be able to whip away 2 popuation twice. Once we're in caste, I'll complete the chop and let the overflow happen to rapidly get some workboats out.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Huh. Why is Harrapan up to 60% cultural defenses, yet only on its 2nd ring? When you zoom in, can you see any evidence of culture sources? Or did Krill simply edit the culture values into worldbuilder?

[SleepingMoogle]

It's a bit of a weird place for a barb city as well (Spanish inquisition redux?). To capture it, we'd have to build a line of Forts in order to get Galleys to that lake. Is an Ivory resource really worth all that trouble?

Nicolae, iirc barb cities can't grow their borders beyond the second ring. The culture seems a bit odd, but I'm guessing that was edited in to make the city harder to capture.