RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - De Gaulle of the Egyptians

[Lord Parkin]

Take care and let me know if you need a pause. We got hit by a 7.2 here in San Diego last Easter, but luckily everything in SoCal is well prepared for that.

Ironically if I actually need a pause I won't be able to tell you anyway.

Most of the city's well prepared, but the central city has a lot of old buildings that are more susceptable to damage. Plus, even though this 6.3 was smaller than our 7.1 last year, this time it was extremely shallow and pretty much right under the city. So the damage is quite bad even though it's technically a smaller quake. We just lost water here, but already have plenty of supplies backed up. Power's still holding out for now.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Ironically if I actually need a pause I won't be able to tell you anyway.

True enough.

I was actually playing Modern Warfare 2 on my Xbox when the Easter Sunday quake hit here, and I managed to get back to my Search & Destroy game online in time to plant the bomb and win the round. It was like, OK, is that it? Alright, back to Xbox.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Poke. :waratt:

Everything OK post quake?

[Lord Parkin]

Things are slowly returning to normal, although the death toll is still rising. Main issue for most people is still questionable water quality (if they have any at all). Lots of students (and others) are doing what they can to help out with the recovery though, since we're in one of the least worst hit areas.

I'll post an update about the game in a few hours if I have some time.

[Lord Parkin]

Message to Mackoti:

Greetings Mackoti and Ioan76,

Apologies for not replying until now, the recent earthquake in Christchurch has disrupted life here quite a bit.

Glad that we're both agreed on the NAP until 1AD. I hope this will pave the way to a long and mutually beneficial relationship between our nations.

As you'll no doubt have noticed, we completed Stonehenge recently. We hope that this didn't disrupt any of your own plans. Hopefully we can keep one another informed in future of our intentions regarding wonders to minimise hammer wastage.

All the best,
Lord Parkin

Basically not saying much, apart from the last paragraph. We're pretty sure that they were trying for Stonehenge and just not telling us about it, so it's fairly certain that we did disrupt their plans. Hopefully this message will give them the hint that they can't try this sneaky diplo stuff around us, and they need to be more upfront if they're intending on going for wonders.

[Lord Parkin]

A reply already! Funny how quick they can be when they're not trying to be sneaky.

Great to hear news from you - and you're OK now.
I hope that also none of your friend/relative was hurt ...

Congratulations for completed the Stonehenge - unfortunately for us we also tried to built it ( started it before receiving your notice and ... decided to give a try ). Didn't disrupt too much our plans because we know that this is always a risky gamble when alot of other Industrious leaders are in game.
For the moment we didn't plan any other wonder.

Best regards,

Ioan

Well, at least they're honest. Seems like they're genuinely willing to be friendly after their initial sneaky move.

[Irgy]

I offer my humble apology for doubting you and calling you paranoid.

It's better that they were "sneakily" silent than openly dishonest anyway. You caught them a little off guard on the subject no doubt. Worked out well for you by the sounds of it anyway!

[Lord Parkin]

I offer my humble apology for doubting you and calling you paranoid.

It's better that they were "sneakily" silent than openly dishonest anyway. You caught them a little off guard on the subject no doubt. Worked out well for you by the sounds of it anyway!

Well, I still could have been wrong. I took the gamble and it paid off this time though. Although we're still a long while behind on our first Settler and will probably be the last to found our second city, so all is not rosey... if I could go back in time I wish I could have just gone for the turn 27 Stonehenge plan instead. Ah well, lesson for the future I guess, when playing with a competitive crowd like this at least.

Update with current screenshots coming soon.

[Lord Parkin]

Righto, so time for the update!

Bob has located mackoti's borders. Assuming that's his capital (we'll be able to confirm this next turn), it's 17 tiles west and 4 tiles south of luddite's capital. Works out perfectly with the 15-20 tiles E-W I was predicting between capitals.



James Cook continues to unveil the south-west. We'll have a Settler ready in 2 turns - we need to decide now whether to settle the Pig-Gold or Corn-Fish-Gold-Gold site first. Personally I'm leaning towards Pig-Gold, because it gets up and running a lot faster and still leaves the other site open. We won't have Fishing for at least 20 turns, so the Fish would also be useless at the other site before then - leaving us with a crappier food resource for much of the city's early life and 10 turns' wait to even start hooking up the Gold, and greater maintenance costs. Not good. Anyway, getting those two Priests running ASAP is an attractive bonus of going for Pig-Gold first.

Assuming we go for Pig-Gold first, we may want to go for Corn-Fish-Gold-Gold second. That or going for the Pig-Gems a little further south of that site.



Joe continues to explore the south. We've passed the equator now (as revealed by Stonehenge), so I expect we should be encountering our southern neighbour within 10-15 tiles. Looks like the north-south dimensions are somewhere in the vicinity of 50-60 tiles, from counting to halfway and doubling it.



Max has just encountered the top of the map, so we can confirm that it's cylindrical. This is also interesting because it means we definitely don't have any easy land connection to our eastern neighbour. This is good in a way because it means we can safely go with very light defences in the east for much of the early game.

Not quite sure where to plan cities around that area. Looks like there might be quite a decent spot to grab those Furs though, with plenty of food.

[Irgy]

We'll have a Settler ready in 2 turns - we need to decide now whether to settle the Pig-Gold or Corn-Fish-Gold-Gold site first. Personally I'm leaning towards Pig-Gold, because it gets up and running a lot faster and still leaves the other site open.

The only thing I liked about corn-fish-gold-gold(-silk) was that you could then settle 1E of pigs rather than the pig-gold site, which gives a more efficient coverage of the available land in the long run. Not really the most important thing though. The other site will get one gold slower, but two gold quicker, so it's probably not that much worse. But less maintenance is a good thing.