RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - De Gaulle of the Egyptians

[Lord Parkin]

Reply to SleepingMoogle:

Hi SleepingMoogle,

Thanks, that's great news about the Open Borders. I'm happy to agree to only pass through to the southwest and not go exploring your lands.

It would be great if you could direct us to meet Adlain and/or Rego's units. We're very keen to make contact with both of them. Any information you might be able to give us about how to meet Locke would be appreciated too. Is there anyone you've got left to meet that we might be able to help with directions to?

Kind regards,
Lord Parkin

Would certainly be nice if we could meet 2 new people in the next few turns. Then in a few more turns we'll get Open Borders with Nakor and meet Locke, and our Scout heading south should be able to get around and meet WarriorKnight. That'll finally complete the set. Looks like we'll be one of the last to do so at this rate, largely because of the geography of our position on the map.

[Lord Parkin]

Sent to Nakor:

Hi Nakor,

Congratulations on meeting everyone at last! We're still a bit behind in making contacts (four to go), but will hopefully catch up in the near future. Sending our Warrior through to meet Locke and maybe Adlain once Open Borders become available with you will help a lot there. Looking forward to being able to participate in the UN thread once we finish meeting everyone.

About Plako... I hope for your sake that those good relations you mention do hold up with him for a while. I know I'd be quite scared to have him on my doorstep right now if I were you. Feel free to let me know if you need anything or want to arrange anything at any point and I'll be happy to chat - I certainly don't want him to start bulldozing civs and becoming a megapower any more than you guys do, so I'm keen to help out if I can.

Plako just hooked up a Gold resource at his new city by the way, in case you didn't already notice, so I expect he'll be taking advantage of that higher GNP to expand even more soon. Maybe you could try and nudge him away towards the WarriorKnight (rather than towards you and me) with a border agreement, if that's at all possible. I'm sure it's in both of our interests for most of the land to your north and east, and to our south, not to be largely dominated by plako.

Anyway, keep in touch.

Kind regards,
Lord Parkin

[Lord Parkin]

Quickest reply I've ever had from Nakor - usually he takes several days or a week to get back to us. So apparently we hit the right note with our message before. Either that or we just got lucky with our timing.

Hey LP,
Thanks! We're happy to have met everyone.

Regarding Plako, we're trying to get the deal you mention.
We have it in place already, but Plako wants to see what he can get.
We are getting a good defense/offense up, so we are not that afraid.
Getting our own gold online next turn will help our research a lot!

I'll let you know what deal we make with Plako.

Kind regards,
Nakor

Sounds good, we seem to have made a friend there. Will be interesting to see what they end up agreeing with Plako.

[Lord Parkin]

Message from SleepingMoogle:

Hey there,

Adlain's scout is currently just a few tiles to the southwest of where your Warrior is. Rego's is currently out of sight, but should be close by as well. I sent both a message saying you're interested in meeting up, so they may decide to stick around.

I'm still trying to get in touch with luddite myself. If you know of any paths that would lead to him, or any of his scouts that may be in the neighbourhood, that would be much appreciated. :-)

Pleasant dreams,
-SleepingMoogle
Patriarch of the first tribe of Somnus

[Lord Parkin]

Reply to SleepingMoogle:

Hi again,

Thanks for all that, very helpful. I'll head the Warrior southwest next turn then in the hope of bumping into Adlain. If I log in before you next turn, I'll request Open Borders. If you log in first, it'd be great if you could offer Open Borders so I can accept when I log in.

Luddite is unfortunately one of the trickier civs to get at. I understand that there's no connection N-S directly below his land, so the only way to find his borders is through mackoti or through me. To head through mackoti I believe you'll need Open Borders with him because he just blocked off a choke point between you with a city (just after my Warrior passed by). If you want to make contact through me, you'll need to turn north up a land bridge which is located slightly east of Nakor's land (or slightly west of Plako's land). There's a N-S arm going right up the map there, and you can then turn west at the very top to encounter luddite. This is much more of a convoluted route than going through mackoti, but if you have a unit in the nearby area then it might be quicker.

I'm pretty sure Luddite doesn't have any units in the area near Mackoti, though I believe he has one somewhere around Nakor and Plako. I'll ask him for more details and pass on the message that you're keen on meeting him. He's pretty keen to make more contacts, so he might even head a unit west to try and meet you if he and mackoti can get Open Borders.

Anyway, thanks for all the help, and I hope I'll be able to help you soon with Luddite. Will keep you in the loop.

Regards,
Lord Parkin

[Lord Parkin]

Sent to Luddite:

Hi there,

Just letting you know SleepingMoogle is quite keen to meet you. Do you have any units near Mackoti, and are you close to being able to open borders with him? What about down south, roughly where's your exploring Warrior located? I'll relay your information to SleepingMoogle so I can try to fix a meet-up for you guys.

Anyone else I might be able to help you to meet? Just let me know.

Regards,
Lord Parkin

[Lord Parkin]

Message received from SleepingMoogle:

Greetings,

I let Adlain know that you're just on the other side of the border, and to keep his scout in the area to meet you. As of this message the turn hasn't rolled over yet, but I'll have another look later tonight. Thank you also for the information regarding luddite.. I don't think I have scouts anywhere near the passage you have described, so I may have to get in touch with Mackoti about opening borders. If luddite is also keen on meeting up and has other ideas though, that should be fine as well. :-)

Pleasant dreams,
-SleepingMoogle
Patriarch of the first tribe of Somnus

[Irgy]

Diplo diplo diplo. A whole page's worth. You sure are keeping busy anyway.

Just one question. SleepingMoogle (I think it was him anyway), in response to your suggestion to co-ordinate on wonders to avoid lost hammers, told you in good faith that he was after the gardens. You're now using that info to inform your efforts to outrace him to it. Are you concerned that this is going to significantly upset him when he finds out?

[Lord Parkin]

Diplo diplo diplo. A whole page's worth. You sure are keeping busy anyway.

Just one question. SleepingMoogle (I think it was him anyway), in response to your suggestion to co-ordinate on wonders to avoid lost hammers, told you in good faith that he was after the gardens. You're now using that info to inform your efforts to outrace him to it. Are you concerned that this is going to significantly upset him when he finds out?

A little, yeah. Though we never specified an agreement not to build the other's wonders (so SleepingMoogle could still try for the Pyramids or Great Library despite me having mentioned them to him). The problem is that I forgot to mention the Hanging Gardens my original message to him, probably because we were only vaguely considering it at that time (didn't know that Pyramids and Great Library were almost definitely out of reach). And there's no real way to let him know right now without tipping him off to tech faster towards the Maths and Masonry.

What I'll probably do is to let him know, but further down the track. Probably make it sound like after we finished Maths, we looked at our empire and decided that the Hanging Gardens would be really beneficial, and as such we'd make it a race. There's also the fact that being denied the Pyramids and Great Library due to someone else going for them earlier (along with Temple of Artemis and Colossus), we felt like we were quickly getting left out of the early wonder races. That's the truth, after all.

I do feel slightly bad for SleepingMoogle (no doubt he won't be that thrilled when he reads this later ), but that's about all I can do without directly sabotaging my position in the game right now. All in all I think it was a mistake to try to extend "wonder agreements" to all the Industrious civs upon meeting them. With three players it just balanced out, kind of... but with four or more it starts to get to the point where you're restricted too much in your available choices. I think I prefer everyone just racing for wonders and having a "first in, first served" philosophy, rather than splitting all wonders four ways and only getting a measly share. It's more fun when you just don't know if you'll win the race or not, like old times.

[Lord Parkin]

Okay, so turn 62 is done. Back to 100% on Writing, will have it in 4 turns. Happened to log in with SleepingMoogle by chance, so signed Open Borders right away so my Warrior could pass through his lands and meet new people.

Our Copper city, Tigris, was founded. Started building a Work Boat which will be ready just after the borders expand. Workers will hook up the Corn in 2 turns, then work on hooking up the Copper. That city will quickly become a good Worker/Settler pump to take over some of the load from the capital... glad we founded it.

Incidentally, the founding of Tigris brings us up to par with Plako in city numbers, and (as far as I can tell) makes us the second civ to reach 5 cities. Did we really just catch up in expansion to the Cre/Imp guy who got a free city? (No doubt he'll top us again soon, but still, an impressive achievement. Not sure if it says more about our aggressive play or his apparent lack of focus in expansion right now... probably a bit of both.)

We also just stole the #1 spot in score from Luddite, even if only briefly!



Felidae is connected by road to the rest of the empire. In 2 turns the Deer will be hooked up, then in 7 turns the Gems will be hooked up and in 10-11 turns the Pig will be hooked up as well. That city's also looking like a great early bloomer.



Bob starts heading through SleepingMoogle's land to try to find new contacts, now that we have Open Borders.



Joe is still exploring down south, waiting to pass through Nakor's land as soon as we get Open Borders (4 turns away now).



All in all, I'm pretty pleased with how we're doing so far.