[SPOILERS] Catherine of China

[plako]

Had a long chat with Lord Parkin trying to iron up a deal around the idea he had cooked up concerning close co-operation. ASM and I need to make desicion within next 24h. More details a bit later.

[antisocialmunky]

The jist is. Parkin and we make a secret pact with each other with a long term NAP to about T150-200. We then pretend as if we are fighting against each other which is what everyone thinks will happen anyway. We will eventually both build up militarily in some sort of cold war but instead of fighting each other in an inconclusive fight, we invade our neighbors and try to get in the #1 and #2 positions.

I'm favoring this, its what the big boys should do: Team up against all the little teams. Since its no tech trading, we should be able to out tech and snowball ahead of the smaller teams in the end game.

Of course, there's some details to be ironed out like the length of NAP exactly and our mutal borders (which are giving us most of the issues).

Of course, we're going to try and mess with Parkin and play to win. It might also effect our diplomacy with Nakor since he's closer to the disputed border than we are. Thus, I'm thinking of getting Nakor to try and hold the positions that we would cede to Parkin. There's a very nice pigs/gold site that's like 6 tiles away from Nakor. If he takes that, its denied to Parkin and Nakor is spread even more thin than he would be with just the landbridge to defend.

[plako]

Message to Rego has been sent as is.

edit. I sent the Locke message also.

[plako]

I also had a chat with Nakor. WE agreed upon a NAP until T130. A bit longer than I wanted, but I think it is quite alright. He was ok with option 1 i.e. we can settle c on my earlier picture. I promised to move f 1E that was actually what I wanted. They get g on the spot presented below.



I also think there will be a settling race between them and LP for the gold/pigs site that is direcly north from their border. They realized it themselves so I really didn't need to give any hints for that direction.

Diplo situation seems suprisignly favourable to us considering we should be the main dogpile target. We've good opportunity to use Catherine's main virtue now. I switched Noms from Axe to Worker and consodered thoroughly utilisng more Scientists, but decided against it. I want to grow cottages on capital and asl is building impoertant settler that I don't want to delay.

edit. I also sent a 1 liner to Locke to let them know about our NAP.

[plako]

3rd optimization effort for T69. I focused all on economy and stopped military builds. I also hired the scientists again on Asl. However I keep capital growing its cottages.

[plako]

Turn rolled so here are some screenshots. 1 more turn I'll collect gold and the start to go towards monotheism at full speed.

[Cyneheard]

I see you're running four scientists (15bpt = 3*4*1.25)

It looks like Noms and ASL to me: are you trying to knock out 2 fast GSci, or is this just a "don't want to work unimproved tiles" logic?

[antisocialmunky]

Well, it looks good. Just need to stay alive and build up a good group of allies.

[plako]

I see you're running four scientists (15bpt = 3*4*1.25)

It looks like Noms and ASL to me: are you trying to knock out 2 fast GSci, or is this just a "don't want to work unimproved tiles" logic?

Get mono as fast as possible, but work also cottages in the capital .

[plako]

Messages from Rego. Any opinions concerning OB. They obvivously want "food" for their GLH, but it might be diplomatically wise to accept nevertheless. Since they didn't want us scouting them I think it is only fair to request them to turn around. I think there is Luddite's scout between Vikings and us somwhere I'll send him a message to ask, if he wants to meet Rego.

Well right - I knew that you had already met everyone (we are missing only luddite currently) - but still I thought you might be interested to directions to where certain civs' lands might be.

As for Parkin, again, I don't mean to single him out - that really has been a pretty consistent topic of conversation with a few other civs. But no worries - it sounds like we're on the same page.

As for actual types of cooperation, I'm not really sure what we can do at this stage in the game other than agree to have "close ties", whatever that means :-). Or maybe we could do some sort of settler for worker exchange, leveraging your imperalistic and our expansive traits? Seems like it probably wouldn't be worth it due to transit time at this point though.

Speaking of that - our warrior Dave found your borders this turn! At least we see them off in the fog - this city's borders are 1S of a copper tile. We had been wondering where this narrow neck of land went. So I guess at some point we'll want to discuss where borders lie and what each of our interested "claims" might be along that narrow neck of land. For now though there's plenty of land in between and plenty of land in other directions (at least for us and I assume for you)

I saw that you have Writing so I have proposed Open Borders in-game. I don't think either of us have the ability to get trade routes with the other yet but at least that's a nice way of "cooperation", even if it is mostly symbolic ;-)

anyway we'll talk to you soon

dan.
regoarrarr
zulu

PS - would you prefer that I copy both plako and antisocialmunky on further diplomatic envoys?

Oh and also if you would prefer any restrictions on unit movement within the other person's borders let me know - I will not move Dave actually into your borders till we decide on how we both feel about that