[Spoiler]Capria Crusadin' Crew - Bannor

[Mist]

Interesting. Is this mainly intended to prevent yourself from being attacked, or is the havoc itself what you're after?

A little bit of both actually. The motive beneath all this is simple - war by proxy is much less expensive than war in person. If you consider amount of production/commerce required to take an important city from someone else ( under normal conditions ) it's actually quite obvious that paying someone else something like 100-200g is significantly cheaper.

Uh well the deal looks very one-sided to me. Nothing says they actually have to attack anyone. They could just do it at their leisure or just take the shrine income and not do anything. Now you could say the shrine income makes them less likely to attack us, but they might very well take the gold up to the point where they'd normally attack. Basically the deal doesn't say they have to do anything they normally wouldn't do, and if what they do happens to coincide with what we want, we pay them extra for it, even if they would normally have done it anyway.

Yes, it does look one-sided. Yes, it does not require him to do anything he wouldn't do anyhow.

But it's still worth it.

• I did not commit to any sort of time frame. I do not have to mangle my tech plans as a result.
  
• I still plan to build enough of a standing army to make a deterrent.
  
• He does not get a penny before I tech Currency. Even if he plans to hit me, if he wants the money, he'll have to wait for it.
  
• It makes it easier for him to be a warmonger. Which means he won't be pushed as much to build up his economy. Which makes for a real possibility he'll overreach and risk crashing down as soon as I withdraw the support. It's pretty easy to get addicted to easy money from outside.
  
• It's also generally easier to convince people to do something that they are already inclined to do. He will war and pillage. He forced himself to do so by the picks he took. He might hope for some extortion, but people here do not like to cough out money under threat. So he'll find himself at war eventually, with encouragement he should do that earlier and somewhere else.
  
• Finally, there is no reason for him to accept any kind of deal that gives us hard guarantees. He is strong early, we are not. He has units fast enough to easily cross distance separating us and we will not for quite some time. We are one of the two prime targets early on for any warmonger on the map ( Amurites being the other ).
  

Think of this as a foundation for future diplomacy, it will be easier to tangle him into future deals once this is in place. And if it buys the time needed to summon Angels we might end with Basium as a shield and Hippus as the scattergun.

[NobleHelium]

That makes sense. I just didn't like the "we'll head for Currency if you agree despite not committing to anything" statement. Him adopting RoK is good in that it gives us angels. I don't know what you mean by withdrawing support though, not a fan of unilaterally ending the agreement without good reason or without a cancellation clause.

[Mist]

[SIZE="4"]Turn 51[/SIZE]

Plains hill mine finished and cuts time to settler from 19 to 12 turns. I'm going to chop and farm one of the river forests now which should allow for the settler to finish this side of t60. We're still slightly behind the curve on growth compared to everyone else, but capital will be on worker and settler duty exclusively from now on and we should catch up pretty soon.

[NobleHelium]

We're going to wait a turn or two on the city and found RoK in the capital, yeah?

You know, we could use the thane to pop borders and just wait for a natural spread...it's bound to happen.

[Mist]

[SIZE="4"]Turn 52[/SIZE]

Rivers of Bloods have finally been triggered. After some tile tweaking we get delayed only by 1 turn in research ( eta for runes turn 62 ) and settler ( current eta t64 ). Scientist is unaffected and still due on turn 61.

[Mist]

We had a chat with Mr.Yellow today. To boil it down to a single point, he wants me to 'buy NAPs'. So basically one off tribute payments with each NAP and extension on top of everything else offered by me before. He didn't even bother to put this in a nice way The amount of money he floated is not huge, but I don't really feel like paying him anything just because he says so.

What I'm thinking at the moment is this -

1) Finish teching RoK, soldiers of kilimorph and disciples ( these guys get potency and gain exp ) will be enough to hold cities.
2) Start working priest for a Prophet and use that to bulb priesthood.
3) In the meantime tech Deception via HBR and put down Nox

Once I get that I can pretty much ignore him and carry on.

From what he says, he borders me and Sareln and there's Clan further on in that direction. I can't see these guys paying him anything, and he won't make money out of pillaging my farms and plantations.

Thoughts NobleHelium?

[NobleHelium]

How much per turn, exactly?

We'd use Stonewardens with Priesthood? They're...okay I guess. I'm definitely a fan of getting Nox Noctis. Not so sure about the bulbing plan. Nox requires a priest too (or merchant), so we'd need two of them. It might be better just to tech Priesthood.

[NobleHelium]

If we can get contact with say Sareln, it may be possible to sign an MDP against Hippus aggression or something. Getting contact is probably not likely so eh. Maybe after we get access to horsemen?

[Mist]

How much per turn, exactly?

5 turns of 100% gold apparently. He calculated that as 285g right now and offered 45 turns of NAP in exchange

We'd use Stonewardens with Priesthood? They're...okay I guess.

Beggars can't be choosers. Since we're chasing RoK Stonewardens are the fastest priest we can get to. And we need something that can at least block C1 horses from running around as they please.

I'm definitely a fan of getting Nox Noctis. Not so sure about the bulbing plan. Nox requires a priest too (or merchant), so we'd need two of them. It might be better just to tech Priesthood.

It's doable. RoK temple + Pagan temple open two priest slots. That's 22 turns to get a Prophet on pacifism as a second GP. After that we need Prophet or a Merchant for Nox and we get 4 slots to chase that ( Pagan Temple, RoK temple, Market ). We should actually get the Merchant well before we tech Deception.

If we can get contact with say Sareln, it may be possible to sign an MDP against Hippus aggression or something. Getting contact is probably not likely so eh. Maybe after we get access to horsemen?

I'd kill for a griffon right now. But RNG doesn't like us and offed that experienced scout picket at low odds. We'll have to live with no contacts for a while yet.

[NobleHelium]

Also how did you know who the Hippus's other neighbors likely are? He said we were his first contact also.