[SPOILERS] Catherine of China

[plako]

I sent this to Luddite:

Hi,

Just to let you know that Rego has a unit north from our capital. I can't check now whether I see your unit, but I belive it was between us and the Vikings. Would you be intrested in, if I try to arrange meeting between you in the connecting isthmus in the north.

Best regards,
Plako

Fast response from Luddite:

Thanks! actually I've got a warrior north from there, moving south along the western coast. So if you tell him to move his unit northwest, I'd appreciate it.

[plako]

I think we'll sign a long term deal with LP. I'm still stunned he got me accepting a border agreement where settles the whole jungle area. However after seeing the WarriorKnight's land it is quite possible his expansion possibilities are bad to other directions. Alternatively he just misdirected us to belive so . He is tough ally mainly because of his perseverance in negotiations. However I think it is better this way lets us to concentrate on other things. I'm pretty certain he'll also exhaust to accept him to take the fish city .

Sorry I've been a quite busy today. Partly because of our legthy discussion yesterday ;-). I've given this more thought and in general this seems like a good idea. However I think we still need one more step before acceptance i.e. writing up all the terms we've agreed upon

Ingredients are something like this, but maybe they need to be written with more care:
* NAP until T180 - Probably no right right of passage unless agreed separately
* Confidentiality i.e. no info from plans or discussions to others
* Maybe some kind of "fake diplomacy" clausule. Although I don't know what it could contain.
* Neither of us settles the city with fishes on BFC
...

FYI. We got also border deal finalized with the Vikings. They'll be settling near or at the choke point west side of the lake.

[plako]

T71

Research+Expansion time.



I also had a chat with Adlain. I try to arrange a meeting between him and Mackoti. Also he sent me this screenshot in exchange to the one where Mackoti's scout is visible.



That jungle is very nice. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like we would have a good shot at getting any of it .

[Krill]

T71That jungle is very nice. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like we would have a good shot at getting any of it .

Well you won't ever find out if you don't build any settlers

[plako]

Well you won't ever find out if you don't build any settlers

Too many libraries/granaries you think . You might have a point, but Monarch difficulty can be brutal, if you overexpand yourself.

I accepted Regos OB offer and offered it to Nakor also. I'm pretty certain Rego will get enough trade routes even wihtout our input so we might as well take the positive diplo merit from accepting OB.

[plako]

One thing concerning the Cho-Ko-Nu. It is potentially very useful when combined with our fast boats in this map, since it is only unit that can cause collateral damage, when attacking from boat. It would be even better, if we could get a deal for berserks with the Vikings later Combining these bad boys together. Early Astronomy would make them a very effective tool to take coastal cities.

All this obvivously assumes that we fight a war after signing these long term NAPs .

[Square Leg]

Too many libraries/granaries you think . You might have a point, but Monarch difficulty can be brutal, if you overexpand yourself.

I disagree. Cottage spam whilst expanding can mitigate Monarch costs fairly well. Admitedly, a shrine also helps with quick expansion. Whip settlers and workers off the cottages and regrow. Currency helps adding an extra TR to each new city and throw down markets in your core letting those cities grow up nice and big. After all you will have a low slider. Keep all you other cities fairly small and whipped until the economy catches up.

Tech won't be great but you will secure a pretty big chunk of land. If the NAP's get signed you should be ok to run a farmers gambit.

[plako]

As you can see I've now switched gears building mainly workers and settlers. I could do it faster with a whip, but I want to 1st to take a shot at Judaism before I start to crawl with my economy again.

I'm also not sure that more cottages would have made a big change to our current status. It surely will in the future, but so far it couldn't have helped us much. After all most of our cities are natural production centers. We also have low happy cap and lot resources and I consider very important to work them all the time leaving room for just 1-2 cottages to work. After we get some more room to our happy cap we can start growing on cottages and really use whip. That is why I consider otherwise mediocore silver city top priority. Furthermore I wanted these cities to grow to utilise their good tiles + be prepared to run Scientists in a race situations. I didn't need e.g. more troops. On the contrary at one point I was struggling a bit even to get to Pottery. I even deleted couple of our warriors that would have been higly useful military polices now.

[antisocialmunky]

I... LIVE. Looks like I missed a lot. Sorry, job interview in Madison, WI IRL.

Getting Jews and the OR bonus will be quite good. Missionaries will also be nice if we ran out of things to build with out faster build speed.

I think we'll sign a long term deal with LP. I'm still stunned he got me accepting a border agreement where settles the whole jungle area. However after seeing the WarriorKnight's land it is quite possible his expansion possibilities are bad to other directions. Alternatively he just misdirected us to belive so . He is tough ally mainly because of his perseverance in negotiations. However I think it is better this way lets us to concentrate on other things. I'm pretty certain he'll also exhaust to accept him to take the fish city.

Yeah, its going to take him a horde or workers and a good chunk of the game to make the jungle as productive as we can make MORE GRASSLAND THAN OUR EMPIRE HAS ROOM FOR! Additionally, if we get lucky and get enough land, one our our hills might just become diamonds. Anything is possible if you have enough land.

[plako]

Mystisicm ready. Next turn Masonry. We also get 2 settlers ready soon. Capital settler goes to silver. Another one could take future Moai location or place south from capital to grow its cottages. What do you think?