[SPOILER] Asoka of the Vikings (Nakor & Gaspar)

[Gaspar]

Well, Elimist, if any of the workers had bothered to wager on the field, you'd be 20g richer right now.

Turn rolled around, so I'll give some thoughts on that, then follow up on diplo in the next post.

Civil Service due in 5. I think we might want to get a few turns out of serfdom for the jungle cities at the same time, so we have 5 turns to get our whippin' on.

The city micro is less interesting at the moment, everyone is pretty much doing what they need to do, though I did tweak here and there. The missionary finishing up in Greenland should head to Broccoli Pie, so it can get the borders popped in time to net the clams. I think I like the idea of settling this city here:



Just in the interest of sort of sealing the border.

That's all the turn news. Everything else is pretty mundane.

[Gaspar]

On diplomacy - I don't think we need to get involved with anything because the builder turns are boring, per se. If I found builder turns boring, I'd be playing the wrong game, Civ is a builder game, the war stuff is much less important in the grand scheme. I just think eventually we're going to fall off the pace if we don't have more land.

The way I see it, here are our options for the next 30T:

A. Go CS -> Archery -> Paper -> Education, work on getting Oxford up as quickly as possible.

B. Go CS -> Archery -> HBR -> Construction -> Engineering -> Machinery. Work on building the war machine, find a partner, invade someone.

The someone to me is less interesting. I think the options are plako or nobody. LP isn't an option yet, to me. Even if we could snipe a few of his most stretched cities, they wouldn't connect well to our empire and we couldn't hold them. Locke's empire fits in more neatly with ours than even plako's, but as you said, he's been a decent enough friend, and he has no enemies. What, is Adlain going to help us over in Threecityistan or whatever he's calling his empire? luddite is the other choice, I'm sure he'll want to be our friend since we've a) never talked to him and b) dumped a ton of EP on him. That's why I don't like this passive aggressive EP strategy, but that's neither here nor there. The only person who both has land we could keep and we could get an ally against is plako. And I think the only person we have any hope of allying with him against is rego. LP is a snake, and we don't even know that he and plako aren't working together - remember the fishy situation around LP's gold/jungle city?

Here's my thought: The absolute best time to hit plako is as soon as we get Knights and to do it with rego hitting the former WK lands. His economy won't have recovered yet, he has a large ancient army with axes and HAs that we could hit pretty hard with Knights. Maces are really out, they'd need cat support, and by the time we teched zerkers/cats, the window of opportunity is over. A few zerks coming off galleys at underdefended coastal cities? Maybe. And we wouldn't be trying to take him out, just trying to basically grab the land west of his capital. So that's one option.

The other option is to just keep building along. Other people aren't teching well right now, but that's not going to last forever. Eventually their markets and Courthouses will go up, and their cottages will mature, and we'll fall behind. If we can push the econ techs so we're staying ahead of the game, that's the other option. But what I don't think we can keep doing is buddying up the 3 civs we can go to war with while ignoring the rest of the world. We need to make a friend of rego or luddite, ideally both. I'd like to have a chat with each and see if I can get a sense of where our relationship is right now, but the fact that we EP bombed them is going to make it hard.

I'm all over the place here, but I think this Switzerland routine is going to end in tears. You get to end up like Switzerland, a small country that could have been invaded by any of its more powerful neighbors at anytime if it ever stopped laundering money.

I'm not sure there's a coherent plan in there, but hey, its a start. :P

[Nakor]

Hmm... that's pretty much no plan at all! But I do get your drift.
I'm not that worried about falling behind if we go the economic route, I've done that in PB2 as well. But if we go that way, we need a better plan than we have now.

It all comes down to talking to Rego and Luddite. I'll see what I can do with them and will inform you. Still think Locke is by far the better target for us, but hell, what can we do.

What do you think we should ask of Plako in exchange for 10t gems? He's willing to gift units.

[Gaspar]

If you don't get a chance to talk to rego or luddite due to timezones (I actually think both of them are easier for me to reach as rego is a yank like me and luddite is on Korean time, which fits my ridiculous sleep schedule) I'm happy to do it. I'll keep an eye out tonight, just post here to let me know if you get ahold of them first.

I don't want plako's units. We're NAP'ed all over the place, and they'll all be obsolete by the time we go to war. He's either going to have to delete them or he's going to have them dragging his economy down for a long time. Just don't give them away. WW must be murdering him at this point, happiness should be worth a lot to him. And anyway, he's gotten the better end of our earlier deals, its time for him to start plumping for us. You should tell him that, actually. :P

If he can't give us a resource in exchange, I dunno. Maybe some Jewish Missionaries? A few monasteries in key cities wouldn't be a bad thing, especially our soon to be bureaucratic capital.

The reason my war plan isn't more coherent is because there's too many variables. Biggest thing we need to do is make friends who can hurt plako and/or Locker and/or LP. Once we do that, we'll be able to make a more coherent strategy down the line. In the interim, we should probably just push Education until we have a plan. We're not getting invaded, Nakor, so there's no reason to worry about it. Locke and LP are napped til 200, and plako won't be in any position to add more territory for many turns.

[Gaspar]

For the lurkers, thought this was funny. Keep in mind A: We swapped to Vassalage roughly 24 hours ago and B: That we get very minimal entreaties in diplo, since we're strong enough that people don't view us as an easy mark, but weak enough that people don't want anything from us.

So you swap to Vasslage? Well good luck with whoever you are going to be fighting. As long as it is not us LOL.

Locke

Hi Nakor,

Hope things are going well for you. I noticed you've already pulled into fourth place on the scoreboard - some truly excellent work! Well done. Looks like you're also putting your Spiritual trait to good use. By the way, is the Vassalage adoption out of pre-emptive self-defence, or for economic reasons, or are you starting to think about potential targets? As always, we'd be more than willing to discuss potential 2 vs 1's (or more vs 1's!) against your neighbours, since of course that'd be very much in our mutual interests. Just give us the word if you're considering heading down that route - we'd certainly be glad to help out.

In other news, WarriorKnight seems to be on his way out of the game, although he recently planted a new city that I believe must be off the coast near Rego or Adlain's land. (Nowhere else he could get to as far as I know, and my Scout near his former territory hasn't seen any borders.) Interesting turn of events... I wonder how long he'll be able to hold on out there.

Not sure if you noticed, but Locke just got Construction this turn - and his last tech before that was Horseback Riding. I don't know about you, but to me that seems more than a bit suspicious - like he might be up to something. Not sure if he's considering fighting Adlain or you or someone else, or if he's just preparing a defensive force in advance. However, I thought I'd let you know about it anyway.

By the way, you mentioned earlier that you were interested in our Ivory. It seems we may have an option for trade now that you have Bananas hooked up. I don't need them right away, but we could definitely work something out in the near future. Perhaps something like Ivory in return for Banana and a tiny amount of gold (to offset the health vs happiness) would be fair? Let me know what you think.

Anyway, all the best. Let me know if I can do anything else for you.

Kind regards,
Lord Parkin

Nakor responded already, much nicer than I would have in both instances. Also, I'm always in favor of upping the happy cap, but I don't really have a desire to send LP gold along with Bananas, especially since its a single copy resource for us. I'd do the trade straight up only. Happy cap won't really be much of an issue for a bit, between Forges/Markets going up everywhere and HR. I'll keep an eye out for luddite or rego and take it from there. Be interesting if they're willing to talk.

[Nakor]

Finished the turn, got the corn farmed in Ironic, so we'll work that instead of the oasis to speed up growth.
I did struggle with the decision to work a cottage or an unimproved Whales in Vinland...

[Nakor]

And another turn started. Seems like LP wanted to move at the end of turn...

Greenland finished a Missionary and will start another one for Crossing and Crossing II. Working a mine to get it done in 1t, so we can swap back next turm. There's a second missionary read in Helluland next turn, so they can go both on a Galley.

Started to move another worker towards Paradise so we'll have 4 there. My plan is to get the silk connected and then move 2 workers to farm the rice near Dashboard Light and let the other 2 workers improve Paradise.

Didn't whip yet, but we can whip the Forge in Crossing.

Not much more to tell...

Oh yeah, CS down to 3 turns, so I guess someone else got it last turn.

[Gaspar]

CS down to 3 works nicely, since it directly coincides with our next opportunity to swap Civics. So hurrah for that. It appears mackoti is the one who discovered CS, as he just swapped to Bureacracy. Luddite also got the GA from Music and used it to fire a golden age. Good for him.

Tiptoeing through the micro... let's whip Crossing the turn we swap Civics. No great rush on the forge, and the site is so production poor, may as well maximize overflow.

Really didn't see anything else newsworthy, so ended turn.

[Nakor]

New turn!

Greendland finished Missionary, building a Spear there but feel free to veto.
Fishfood finished Courthouse, Market next.
Helluland finished the second Missionary and will get back to building a Monastry.

Founded our next city: Fisherman, starts on a WB.

We popped a second copper near Helluland, just amazing!

Did a bit of micro in my round through all cities. Changed the build in Broccoli Pie to a Granary, we can't use the WB untill border pops.

that's if for me for now!
Do we send the Settler from Beaverpass to Pardise to found Cheeseburger?

[Gaspar]

Helluland, eh? I'll take the improved yield, but I can think of a few places I'd rather have seen that happen. Nonetheless, gift horses and mouths and all that.

Cheeseburger in Paradise sounds decent enough, just need to be careful to ensure we can get the Corn improved immediately after settling, that's really about all that city has to offer. Then we can settle the last 3 backfill sites and we're done until we get some land via pointy sticks.

Couple cheap MPs in Greenland to let us grow to max capacity sounds good in between Missionaries. Let's get a Taoist Missionary in there soon as well for another Monastery. An extra 10% in our Capital with Academy in Bureaucracy is nothing to sneeze at. Did a quick pass through, everything seems to be in order.

Adlain declared on WK. Whatever that is I expect that it is A: Gamey and B: Means WK is just a few turns from being eliminated. Tough luck on him, though I'll never understand why humans feel the need to game their elimination. Just give your opponent the best fight you can, and if you're destined to lose, then tip your cap and let him enjoy the spoils of victory he deserves. I don't know the details, but I'd bet every penny I own whatever it is, it wasn't just Adlain feeling opportunistic. Anyway, doesn't matter, but felt it was worth saying.

For lack of anything else pictureworthy, here's our southern core at EOT: