RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - De Gaulle of the Egyptians

[Lord Parkin]

I would go with the NE placement. Not sure but I think it has 2 hills which is enough. Most importantly though you have a very long coast on both sides which makes you susceptible to a naval invasion, therefore having visibility as far from your coast as you can is a good thing.

I say the SW one. More overlap is not a bad price to pay for more production.

Hehe, so already we have two polar opposite opinions.

The point on having visibility as far out as possible is a good one, although later on in the game it'll be less relevant due to faster-moving ships. More production would be nice, although looking at the screenshot again, that extra production would come at the cost of practically eliminating the production at Silvestris. So maybe it's not worth the extra overlap after all.

Still not sure though, so please feel free to continue to weigh in.

[nabaxo]

Heh, didn't actually look at the screenshot to see exactly how much overlap it was. I just tend to read what you write. I just looked over the screenshot now and maybe all coastal is the better choice in this case after all?

[Lord Parkin]

This should be fun... let's do "before" and "after" pics for the Shrine/Sankore/Parthenon combo.

Here are our "before" pics, with breakeven research on a regular 1-prereq tech:





"After" pics coming next turn.

[Lord Parkin]

We got the Mausoleum, by the way. Woot!

Time to focus on the Taj Mahal now, I think. I think we can manage it if we focus, even if Locke gets the tech from Liberalism (which - hopefully - he won't).

[Lord Parkin]

The Shrine, Sankore, Parthenon and Islam are all in.

Here's the "after" pics, researching a regular 1-prereq tech at the breakeven rate. Quite the difference.

[Lord Parkin]

Locke just got a Great Scientist, so will probably bulb Education this turn if he's going all-out for Liberalism. That means Liberalism (and possibly Nationalism) are potentially just around the corner for him.

As such, I think I'm probably going to push our GNP up even further by temporarily building Wealth in a few cities. It's not a bad investment in cities with Forges + both Christian buildings. Sucky in the long term, but well worth a short burst for a couple of turns to push forward our start date (and therefore completion date) on the Taj Mahal. Those few turns of Wealth will turn out to be worth the investment many times over if they make the difference between getting the 12-turn Golden Age and losing it. We can't afford not to make the best grab we can at such a shiny bonus.

So, 3-turn Nationalism, anyone?



Demographics at the above research rate.

[novice]

Nice tech rate!

[Lord Parkin]

Nice tech rate!

Thanks! I thought it was fairly impressive for pre-turn 150.

[Lord Parkin]

So a bit of diplomatic news this turn - Rego has accepted a NAP until turn 250, in return for us providing Open Borders to him for that period. A great breakthrough!

He's sending us Banana as well, and I've offered to send him some of our resources when/if he needs them too. Earlier on I was pretty dubious about dealing with him, but he seems to have become a lot more pleasant to chat with recently. He at least seems to have lost the attitude of fishing for information and then trying to avoid providing it in return. (Hopefully he turns out to be more trustworthy than my initial perception of him. Does anyone know if Rego has broken any NAPs in the past, incidentally?)

Anyway, there were a couple of main reasons for approaching him about a long-term NAP. Firstly, if we're going to be attacking Luddite at some point then we want to be sure our eastern front is fairly solid. And secondly, as I'll elaborate on below, I'm more and more frequently getting the feeling that Plako is distancing himself from us.

While Rego has (apparently) been becoming more friendly, Plako on the other hand appears more and more to be giving us the "cold shoulder" lately. It's mostly not anything specific that he's saying towards us - it's more what he's not saying. Conversations between us over the past 20-30 turns have more and more often consisted of us parting with information, and Plako saying "thanks" but not doing much else. Case in point, he's declined extending our NAP to turn 220, which seems odd if he truly appreciates our partnership and still views us as a long-term ally.

I mean, I know we've moved into the #1 spot recently, but when we originally made our arrangement he was far and away the #1 civ. I thought our arrangement was to support each other as two of the top civs regardless of who specifically was ahead at the time. However, it seems Plako was apparently only happy with a "partnership" as long as he remained the #1 partner - which is a bit disappointing.

Our relationship with him isn't entirely unsalvagable, but I get the feeling more and more that it isn't worth continuing to try. It's really stopped being a relationship of mutual trust now that Plako's philosophy towards us seems to have shifted to "take everything and give as little as possible - preferably nothing - in return". If that attitude changes, then things could still potentially work out between us - but it isn't looking that way at the moment, unfortunately. I guess we'll see. At least he's still NAP'd until T200 regardless.

[Lord Parkin]

New NAP table:

Moogle - T185
Nakor - T200
Plako - T200
Luddite - T210
Rego - T250
Mackoti - (theoretically) permanent

There's no way in the world Adlain will ever be attacking us (nor us him, probably), so a NAP with him doesn't particularly matter. The only player who has consistently refused to sign a NAP with us is Locke, although he claims that he hasn't signed them with any of the larger nations (Rego/Plako in particular).