It is good for you when WK used his sanctuary. Though now you oughta check out Hyborem's intentions... 30 turns of doing nothing might not appeal to him, except to promote his hero. Luckily as you said you could always give that city to WK to block him out.
Then again, for someone to enter the game at this point of time, Hyborem might think twice before jumping straight into war, esp when he doesn't know the military strengths of all. So pray hard... you might still be safe and could possibly go according to our plans and head down the arcane path.
Email Diplo exchange from Darrell, co-leader of the Infernals:
Its a shame they popped their world spell, but not surprising. Two cities were likely toast otherwise. I doubt very much they can do any harm to us in 10 turns, but they can garrison their backlines. That should hopefully open something up for you to take advantage of, now would be a good time for a military focus. Along those lines, feel free to request the Iron this turn. We don't have an immediate need for it, and we just might take you up on that offer for ice mana later on :-).
I had proposed possible points of cooperation with the Infernals (in an attempt to deflect some of the possible hostility towards us):
(1) Joint attack on the Elohim when the wall comes down
(2) Iron for Ice
And I did mention Nyktorion's unguarded "Yggdrasil island" a hop away...
One of the issues Infernals have is the total lack of information on the current situation of the game (since they are unspoiled). And since they can only see so much with their initial units, it would be critical for us to establish good diplo links with them ASAP, and before the other players influence them otherwise.
Their eventual plans could possibly be.... "guided"... by the amount and type of information we release to them.
And yes, I think... I did a decently good job at that They're offering me Iron.
Other less entertaining Diplo updates:
Mardoc is offering me a Pearls for Mana trade. We need all the happiness now that we are Sac-ing the Weak. Shouldn't hurt to loan him some of the mana types for short durations.
Mardoc has indicated an intention to get Hemah. We now have an official competitor for Arcane Lore.
Mardoc has offered to sign a NAP till t200.
Just to give you guys a good laugh at my expense... :neenernee
I had sent the Infernals a map of the world. I recall some post somewhere down the line about screenshot map trading only with Cartography, so... this is how it went:
Heisenberg Wrote:Thoth has also swapped to Ashen Veil, and has completed the pact as well. (in just 1 turn... )
He's clearly making a run for the Grimoire.
A shame then that your early pact run didn't put him off.
You should still be able to beat him to it though with a good whip and some planning. He has more cities, but the one or two you have with decent production should be about as good as anything he's got. I'm assuming you've started on it already? He's probably got a turn's worth of hammer overflow organised in order to catch up a turn on it (he's like that). The beaker overflow used to snap it up in one turn probably wasn't just good look on his part either.
Best of luck with it. Looks like you'll have to make that Malevolent Designs slingshot indeed. Make use of it by building Mardero - he can't cast snowfall but at least he has Wither. If you're going to get iron from the Infernals that means you can build 4 Eidolons as well, giving you 9 top tier units from one tech. That makes it quite worthwhile. I'd recommend still bulbing Arcane Lore once you're ready to, and then using the Divination Tower for Strength of Will. It'll be slow going, but it's better than trying to research it. But if Mardoc is going to beat you to Arcane Lore anyway, which is likely if he wants Hemah and isn't distracted researching Fanaticism, you should of course use a sage to build the AV shrine rather than saving them all for bulbs.
I'm not very surprised at all that Mardoc is intending to build Hemah, to be honest. Personally, I'd let him keep it (but I'm anti-OO anyway), and take up his T200 NAP offer as well. One thing's for sure, the last thing you want is war with the Lanun when there's nothing but ocean between you and them.
I really don't think you should be genuinely plotting WarriorKnight's demise with the Infernals, at least until Thoth is dealt with. If WarriorKnight is tied up defending himself Thoth will take this game without even breaking a sweat. But you're doing a good job with the Infernals diplomatically I must say.
Quote:I really don't think you should be genuinely plotting WarriorKnight's demise with the Infernals, at least until Thoth is dealt with. If WarriorKnight is tied up defending himself Thoth will take this game without even breaking a sweat. But you're doing a good job with the Infernals diplomatically I must say.
I had to postpone any possible aggression from the immediate Infernal threat first.
I have the Iron they offered already, using it to place some Frigates in the waters. Sanctuary is a long 30 turns, and much can happen in this time frame.
I'm watching to see how the Infernal-Elohim war pans out. And how the other members of the Anti-Thoth league moves--their NAPs would run out soon.
For now, its just keeping the Infernals happy with overtures of possible cooperation, and keeping the waters safe from Cultist/Stygian incursions.
Also, during the last turn the election for the head of the Undercouncil came up, between Thoth, and Nyktorion. Out of the four of us in the council (Thoth, Nyktorion, Mardoc and I), naturally only Thoth voted for himself, and Nyktorion took the post.
So here's the Diplo updates:
[COLOR="DarkGreen"]Nyktorion:
Dear fellows in the intersection between the Undercouncil and the Anti-Thoth alliance,
last turn, I was quite pleasantly surprised by being one of the two candidates running for the lead in the undercouncil, and of course, I am happy to see that I have been elected. So, what do I plan to do with my new position as the head of the undercouncil?
As you know, most undercouncil resolution are about giving all members some benefits in a return for a small amount of gold. Since almost every civ in the game (including Thoth!) is a member of the undercouncil, directly going for the biggest of those benefits becomes rather meaningless. Instead, I think that the best way to utilise the undercouncil would be to select those options which give us the largest benefits relative to Thoth.
When I go through the list of available resolution, the smuggling ring option seems the most appealing to me. As far as I can tell, all three of us have a healthy number of coastal cities: Mardoc's cities are most obviously focused towards the coast, and scouting plus knowledge of my own land reveal that both Heisenberg and I have a very healthy amount (>50%) of coastal cities. On the other hand, a recent discussion within our whole alliance revealed that Thoth probably has just 3 coastal cities (and maybe another newly founded one). Thus, we should profit from the smuggling ring a lot more than Thoth, making it a very nice candidate for the first undercouncil resolution.
Any thoughts/comments/counter-proposals?[/COLOR]
[COLOR="Blue"]Mardoc:
Smuggling ring is definitely a large potential benefit, and definitely
fits the category of helping us more than Thoth. The other one that
might make sense is Enlist the Nightwatch, but I think that would be
more logical closer to D-Day, so we can surprise Thoth with a power
differential. And, well, it's also probably best to make sure Hyborem
is either enlisted or eliminated before giving him more troops.
On reflection, GSage and Gambling Ring are probably the other way
around, since he's further in the tree, so would bulb something
better, and has more cities to profit from gambling houses. I'd still
like to get to those eventually, of course, but they can wait until
we've caught up a bit, I think.
The other options: Slave trade, fund dissidents, open borders, force
war - none of these appeal to me at all, except maybe Slave trade, and
even then, not until after I've actually captured some slaves.
WK has triggered a GA with a G.Prophet. Looks like he's going to get the Grimoire.
Elohim-Infernal front:
WK has claimed that he would be defeating the Infernals "in 5 turns"
[COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]Hi all
Hyborem declared war and immediately sent units towards one of my backline cities. I was forced to cast Sanctuary in response to avoid losing anything. Even though I've had no contact with him I highly doubt he will make peace with me without some sort of land concession on my part since he's extremely cramped. Since I'm not willing to give him that and forced me to cast my worldspell I intend to kill him. I see that he's already lent Iron to Heisenburg though, so maybe some of you can ask for stuff individually. (He can't supply units against Thoth since he can't go through me while Sanctuary is active, and besides, 4-5 units won't be of much help anyway)
You don't need to worry about helping me eliminate the Infernals, I should be able to manage it myself with little effort. I'm guessing it'll only take 5 turns or so.
As for Thoth, Sanctuary may indeed be helpful against him. However, since I probably won't be able to reach his cities in 1 turn (Heisenburg, he's scorched tiles inside his culture where I can't spring them, so it's not as simple to dismiss as that) it probably won't change too much unless I can capture a city or two.
BTW, Thoth started a GA so he's pretty much got a lock on the Grimiore. If your curious what his Adaptive trait is now, it's Organized.
Heisenberg Wrote:WK has triggered a GA with a G.Prophet. Looks like he's going to get the Grimoire.
Is he running slavery? If not, you should still be able to beat him. I know you only get 10 hammers per population point whipped on quick for wonders (so 5 per total population point in the city since you need 2 to whip 1), but along with your small headstart it should still be just barely enough if you whip on the first turn you can.
It might mean you can't afford to delay for a tech though, depending on the timing. It's worth denying it to Thoth even if you have to take something fairly worthless from it.
By the way, for what it's worth, if you finish both a tech and the Grimoire on the same turn, you can get something that tech was a pre-requisite for from the Grimoire.
I would suggest that you don't give up on Grimoire, though chances are you might not beat Thoth to it.
Given GA and I assumed he could buy out the Grimoire if he needs, the few factors which could possibly slow him down would be:
1. he is trying to go for a higher level tech, thus requiring him to research some other pre-reqs.
2. your diplomatic skills are so awesome that he decides to give it to you.
On your side, the only thing you've got is population. Perhaps you could calculate the exact number of turns you would need first? Grimoire on quick is around 200 hammers? And how many hammers are you getting per turn and when would you be able to whip it out?
Sadly I have no clue how fast Thoth can get it out but I am guessing he doubles your production and could possibly buy out just to beat you.
Pray hard that he uses his gold elsewhere.
We now have an official competitor for Arcane Lore.![[Image: HorriblePaintJobMap.png]](http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/cc417/HeisenbergFFH/HorriblePaintJobMap.png)
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