{SPOILERS} 2metra, Dreylin & OT4E. This is the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

[OT4E]

We cant let them see boat. I had crazy idea of making a channel of 2 forts to hide movements. He will probably miss galley if we keep it in the lake. We can also plant new city on horses and/or chop smth there instead of bringing from north.

Planting a city will uncover our plan, and he will take measures.

[OT4E]

I think we need calendar next for happy.

[Dreylin]

I think we need calendar next for happy.

So are you thinking of just postponing or cancelling the Theology plan entirely? Since we'll be saving gold for a number of turns anyway and we've stopped running our Scientists, I'll set research to Archery and we can continue to discuss.

I still like the Theo plan, but if we're serious about grabbing AI/REM's cities off that island, we may need to delay as you suggest. Calendar is +2happy for everywhere, added commerce for Samarkand and food for our "Front" location, so will definitely help us.

We cant let them see boat. I had crazy idea of making a channel of 2 forts to hide movements. He will probably miss galley if we keep it in the lake. We can also plant new city on horses and/or chop smth there instead of bringing from north.

Planting a city will uncover our plan, and he will take measures.

I'm not very sure right now what our plans are for this war in terms of timing and how we pursue? It'll take 5t+ for us to get the boats from the lake into position for the attack, which is a long lead-in. Since this WB is his Scouting unit, chances are that when he's finished looking at our South Coast he's going to run all the way up to the North as well - that's 10-15t along our coast where we'd be hiding the boats; do we want to make the plan for 20t+ from now? In that case we can turn the galley & Trireme around, keep them on the dtay border and move to settle the North island.

About the Eastern Island: I'm not convinced that our planting a city on that Western point would be seen as aggressive, as it's right across from our holdings - now if he planted there it would be a different story! It also gives us a valid reason to have the Galley in the area. We could even plant it undefended (for now) as a peaceful indication. Once we can get it a border pop onto the Mountain, we'll have good visibility on the rest of the island, plus it gives us a defensive buffer / warning incase they decide to make a move before us. Borders should be popping at Maryland this turn, so we can improve the Crabs and feed the new city before the border pop grabs us the Cows. Note that our current coastal cities are sitting completely empty and vulnerable to attack, so I think keeping a Galley or Trireme around here is quite reasonable anyway.

That's my favoured location to send the new Settler; the other options being Horse/Fish (although I'd stick with the current chop/growth plan rather than harm it's development going for something else), or the Front location in the NW towards dtay. Did we make a decision about where to put this? I saw the new proposal for 1W of the hill, which looks good to me although will be slower to develop (I think) it grabs a bit more of the territory between us and avoids him trying to jam another city location in there.

I'm starting to add some Plains Cottages that we can work to balance growth, but we'll get the Furs online soon and then if we go for Calendar we'll be wanting to grow for a while anyway, so I'm not sure how urgent these will really be.

BTW, if I'm being too hesitant / inexperienced / whatever, I'd be just as happy to hand off turnplayer role and take a back seat for a while ... I'm definitely learning a lot here ad that will be true regardless of whether I have "hands-on"!

[OT4E]

We have 5 turns to build chars and land them and need to attack ASAP. Indeed there is no point in waiting and trying to hide anything. Remember each turn can ruin all our efforts. So I switched Rhodos to char, in Overlook we need char before barracks too. And I turned back 1 of the scouting axes. And I think we need to slave one in CAP.

PS: you are doing fine in general. I doubt anyone of us can maintain thread so active explaining all the moves. Few saved coins or food bushels doesnt make much sense. The game is done by strategy, not much is relied on micromanagement in most cases.
PPS: dont use 1 coin cottage when you can use 4 coin lake. We will grow cottages later.

[Dreylin]

We have 5 turns to build chars and land them and need to attack ASAP. Indeed there is no point in waiting and trying to hide anything. Remember each turn can ruin all our efforts. So I switched Rhodos to char, in Overlook we need char before barracks too. And I turned back 1 of the scouting axes. And I think we need to slave one in CAP.

PS: you are doing fine in general. I doubt anyone of us can maintain thread so active explaining all the moves. Few saved coins or food bushels doesnt make much sense. The game is done by strategy, not much is relied on micromanagement in most cases.
PPS: dont use 1 coin cottage when you can use 4 coin lake. We will grow cottages later.

OK, so we want to get a couple of Chariots over ASAP and then follow with 2 Galleys with Axes in, right?

Confirmed that we want to plant the city over there next?

One final consideration before we pull the trigger on this; AI/REM is currently the one team supplying us with foreign, intercontinental trade routes, so we will take a dip in income as a result of the war. (Particularly since HAK refuses to sign Peace and there's no way of offering Open Borders until he does ... actually, should try offering him a Cease Fire which he may actually accept...)

[OT4E]

OK, so we want to get a couple of Chariots over ASAP and then follow with 2 Galleys with Axes in, right?

I think that we need to bring as much as we can considering loading/unloading aspects.

Confirmed that we want to plant the city over there next?

In my opinion it would be a wrong move. I have nothing against planting there in 10 turns when we finish our attack
We dont need to pull unnecessary attention to ourselves. If he notices empty city he will more likely send something to watch it and may be starts building units before we show our true intentions.

One final consideration before we pull the trigger on this; AI/REM is currently the one team supplying us with foreign, intercontinental trade routes, so we will take a dip in income as a result of the war. (Particularly since HAK refuses to sign Peace and there's no way of offering Open Borders until he does ... actually, should try offering him a Cease Fire which he may actually accept...)

This is true. We must find more civs there. Being tied to keep friendly relations with neighbors is bad thing. They will only look for the first chance to betray us and get rid of us.

BTW: Plako offered to trade maps. He might be unhappy and close borders since we are freely scouting his lands.

[OT4E]

About Theology. I am not yet decided. We need to start saving gold as you said. Then we will need more detail plan of what we get and when.

[Dreylin]

Confirmed that we want to plant the city over there next?

In my opinion it would be a wrong move. I have nothing against planting there in 10 turns when we finish our attack
We dont need to pull unnecessary attention to ourselves. If he notices empty city he will more likely send something to watch it and may be starts building units before we show our true intentions.

OK, understood. We'll plan that for the Settler from Rhodes then. In the meantime Samarkand's Settler needs to go somewhere. The Horse/Fish site is a cheap and easy one to get going, but I think we're better going for one of the "Front" locations; what do you think?

One final consideration before we pull the trigger on this; AI/REM is currently the one team supplying us with foreign, intercontinental trade routes, so we will take a dip in income as a result of the war. (Particularly since HAK refuses to sign Peace and there's no way of offering Open Borders until he does ... actually, should try offering him a Cease Fire which he may actually accept...)

This is true. We must find more civs there. Being tied to keep friendly relations with neighbors is bad thing. They will only look for the first chance to betray us and get rid of us.

Hopefully a Cease Fire will be acceptable to HAK, there's also the likelihood based on past events that GermanJojo is past the pair of them to the East, so we should find them soon.

BTW: Plako offered to trade maps. He might be unhappy and close borders since we are freely scouting his lands.

Geez, everyone and their map trading! I'd be fine with it if either we got something out of it or we could make sure it wasn't traded around any further. As-is, I don't really want either dtay or AI/REM to know too much about our internal terrain. It's a pity that no-diplo is so restrictive. He doesn't know that we're 3civs away from him and therefore basically no threat. I doubt he has much knowledge of Commodoria, let alone dtay. Sigh, it's a slippery slope; maybe we should just trade it to everyone and have done with it...?

[2metraninja]

Once we capture REM's cities and after we plant cities of our own there they will give us nice trade routes on their own and will make up a bit for losing trade routes with REM.

[Dreylin]

In Foreign news:


Yay! I accepted and turned around to offer Open Borders.

I took a look around the cities and we've got a single intercontinental route with Commodore - probably he has settled the island nearer to him, unless it's something across the the far side of his Capital.

Oh, and there's this:


Another couple of Academies in the World and a Shrine and AI/REM has taken back their temporarily Barbarian city.

Oh, and another dtay plant...

On the other front, we have 2xChariots and 2x Axes coming next turn, another Axe we can whip in at 54, and we'll overflow enough at Stronghold to complete another Axe or Chariot.

I also decided to send the Settler to Fish/Horses spot because it'll require less support (Worker, etc.) to get going than any of the other spots.