Ranamar and Lewwyn, ministers for Bismarck of Mali

[Ranamar]

Turn report south:


For the sake of anyone who wasn't in that chat...
Also moved northern warrior SW into forest; no sign of bear, neither.
We are now working the (pastured) cow.
Other worker started a chop.
This is after EOT, if you're looking at research time.
Yuris, apparently, still hasn't grown to size 3.

I got waaay to little sleep last night because I was an idiot and stayed up later than I should have, so I'm nearly falling asleep in my chair here. Thank goodness I didn't have to think for this turn.

[SevenSpirits]

I didn't pay enough attention to note the details, but here is a summary of one continuation I tried which seemed decent.

Research Mysticism, Fishing, Polytheism, Priesthood, Pottery
Finish settler, then revolt to slavery, then build warrior, then build stonehenge (eot 26).
Then a settler then 2 workers while waiting for priesthood, then oracle (eot 37).

Workers have done a mine + chop into stonehenge, another mine, a chop into the second settler, the gem mine, road to the second city and an improvement (e.g. pig pasture), a chop into the oracle, and a road to the gems.

Second city borrows the sheep until it has a fish. It whips out a WB, then another when it's almost size 3, then adds the gem mine at size 3.

[Lewwyn]

Got the turn.

North Warrior went west onto hill. The bear is 1S 1SE. No Lion in the south. Moved onto the jungle, still no lion, yay!

Worker built road. End turn.

[Ranamar]

Got the turn.

North Warrior went west onto hill. The bear is 1S 1SE. No Lion in the south. Moved onto the jungle, still no lion, yay!

Worker built road. End turn.

Yay!

Is there more jungle south as revealed by the fact that you can see along the coast?

[SevenSpirits]

When the turn eventually comes, my probably reasonable default suggestion for worker 1 is to move onto the forest hill to mine(+chop) it. That's in the absence of some sort of plan.

Note that we do not want him to start a simple chop as that would go into the warrior. Nor do we need any more roads for a while - fishing will connect the second city on its own. So the only other option I'd consider is building a mine on the unforested grass hill.

[Ranamar]

Lacking a better idea, I walked the spare worker onto the forest hill. He will start a mine next turn.

I also decided to move the southern warrior another space down the spit of land to our south. As you can see, speculation on more blobs was correct:

There's a river delta in between the two fogged forests where it branches out to the west.

(The other warrior moved SW into a forest on his way to examine that far bit of fogged not-coast, which I'm really starting to wonder if may be another land bridge.)

Also, it looks like two players (by score, I'd say Commodore and Mr. Nice Guy) have grown to size 4. Yuris is still size 2. I wonder why. Score-wise, though, they seem to be competitive or even ahead of us, once that's factored in, so who knows. Two workers and a settler (like we did) maybe? I can post demographics if you'd like.

[Ranamar]

Played turn; it turns out that the far west extension is also a land bridge. Pictures will come sometime later, but I found another coastal crab on the south blob.

Worker 1 is making a mine; Worker 2 is moved to chop another forest.

Settler (completed end of last turn) moved south; it can found the city next turn, so I revolted to slavery this turn.

Pictures will go up later.

[Ranamar]

This just in when I checked my e-mail before going to sleep:

Hello RL7:

We have met. I am not really up for any long-winded diplo, so I'll leave that for a later date.

I am not a role-player or a double-talker. I'll pretty much come out and tell you what I think. I am pretty easy to get along with as I think Seven will attest to. (BTW, what happened to this being a noob game with Seven playing?)

That said, I am simply not sure how to approach diplomacy with your team. Ranamar is a complete unknown to me. Seven is very skilled but easy to get along with. And Lewwyn seems like a war-mongering lunatic from other games. Will RL7 be a largely bi-polar entity, or will one personality win out? I just need to know so I can decide whether to war chariot rush you or not.

When my borders pop in two turns, you will be blocked by my culture from advancing your scouting any farther. Now if you want to agree to an NAP of some sort, I suppose I could sign OBs whenever one of us techs Writing. But otherwise, you should probably just turn your warrior around, as there is nowhere else for him to go.

It might be good for us to work together, though, since I don't know any of the other players. Unless there are a bunch of civ ringers, we might be the two best teams.

If we are allowed screenshot exchanges already, I am down with that if you want.

GES

It looks to me like GES is firmly in the driver's seat regarding diplo.

I'd post images now, but I want to get this written down, first... and photobucket is maintenancing on me.

[Ranamar]

draft reply:

Hello GES.

It is interesting to know we have met. I am guessing you are south of my warrior? I did not notice anything at the end of my turn.

It is late for me, and I think you have gone offline, so I am not up for long-winded diplo either, so we can put that off for later. I have no complaints about straight talk as opposed to role-playing; it saves both of us trouble, and I can't see my partners disagreeing with that. I'd like to think I'm pretty easy to get along with as well.

Seven would like to know which one of us you want to declare war on. Lewwyn points out that he has only declared war once ever, and if you want to fit into his pattern you should declare on us and subsequently be beating into irrelevance. I myself am a reasonable if analytical soul who would like to point out that war chariots and skirmishers are just going to stalemate against each other anyway, especially in these lovely jungles.

We don't think a NAP is terribly necessary at this point, in any event, but I don't think you need to worry about us trying to start any messy stalemates anytime soon. We just want to tech in peace and build wonders. ;-)
Speaking of teching, your team is spiritual. Are you planning on going for an early religion, and, if so, which one? We could arrange to not compete for it.

Personally, I would prefer to wait on trading screenshots until after map trading is allowed, but that's mostly on philosophical grounds. More realistically, I'm not sure there's much to share at the moment, although I would be happy to discuss hypotheses on the shape of the map.

--Ranamar

The first line is obviously obsolete if we hold this until the turn comes back around. I'm not sure what to do with it. Perhaps some sort of comment on first contacts?

To summarize:
- some rambling on straight talking
- some joking around in response to the chariot rush threat
- decline a NAP (justification in the previous point)
- discussion of priorities and plans, intended to be kept as vague as possible on our end
- I have no screenshots I want to trade, although world-modeling could be interesting.

Yeah, I'm tired and in a silly mood, too.

[Lewwyn]

RL7, I like it.

We wait. Depends on which side he's at.