Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Mardoc]

Any chance of just straight-up flipping that barbarian foodtopia?

I don't think so, in a reasonable time period. Cypress Hill would need to expand at least one more ring before it can start putting culture on the city tile, and I think it's the 2500 culture ring. With CH at currently 300ish culture, that's going to take a while. We want Priests of Leaves anyway for Blooming and Tiger cages, they'll be able to take it long before CH pops its borders again.

On a semi-related note - I'm glad to see that CH is getting a bunch of ancient forests! We probably should let it grow for a while.

[Gaspar]

Just a quick note - MBTM was gracious to get a great jump start on a Sandbox. If anyone has time to continue his efforts, they're sitting in my dropbox:

Here

And Here

In other news - I think we do need to bear down a bit. My gut says Kyan wins in 60 turns. Could be sooner but that's probably the deadline. So we have to figure out if we can get Culture and/or Tower before then. I'm still playing for tower currently, I guess, since that's what I know how to do. Tower means commerce power. I'm amenable to a Culture switch, but I need some to give me a reason to believe its more quickly attainable. Our greatest strength is Geography, so let's hope we can keep quiet long enough to hit the Hail Mary.

Lastly, sending off a quick OB request to Nicolae. Should I send one to RG as well?

[Gaspar]

Hey Nicolae,

Congrats on winning PBEM18app, by the by. Must feel good, I'd love to win one of these someday. I stopped really following because you were smoking them so bad, but that's heavy kudos to you.

Anyway, I got Cartography this turn - would you be interested in Open Borders? RoP as a default no, but can be negotiated on a case by case basis? I'd love to get a hunter through to Kyan's border to get a look at Balseraphia, but I have no problem if you'd rather not allow it. Regardless, I'm primarily interested in the trade route benefits for both our civs.

Whomever sees the save next can propose it, if you're interested. Anything else going on? It seems like you've changed your naming scheme, I'm assuming Brokeback Mountain is not referenced in the Left Behind books.

Regards,
Gaspar

[Mardoc]

Lastly, sending off a quick OB request to Nicolae. Should I send one to RG as well?

My gut says yes. We want to be partners or at least peaceful, which means trade. We also want Kyan's neighbors to be strong, so Kyan has a reason to build military.

Also - you might even make it an exploration-included open borders request, if he agrees then we can Hawk scout and meet everybody finally.

[Mardoc]

RoP as a default no, but can be negotiated on a case by case basis?

Actually - here I would propose trying to get RoP, too. I'd be willing to sell Nicolae maps of our land if we can also show him Kyan's land, for instance. And if we're going to be able to ever goad him into a war with the Balseraphs or support one, we'll need access.

[Gaspar]

Couple pieces of news from an otherwise quiet turn. First, I don't think I've ever seen this before:



We somehow have a trade connection with Acalostas, despite not having actually met them. Especially bizarre as there's been no sighting of units there either. Perhaps a map trade with Rawkking or something has defogged enough coast?

On that note, sent this to him:

Hey Rawkking,

Long time no chat. Just wanted to reach out on a couple quick things. I researched Cartography finally, so I was wondering if you were interested in Open Borders with limited (i.e. case-by-case) right of passage. Primarily I'd love to fly a hawk out of one of your western burgs to gain contact with the Elohim and Grigori. If you'd like to do the same to get a better view on Nicolae I'd be amenable to that. Also, if you wanted to move your work boat back along the coast, if you keep heading south where you hit my culture you'd encounter a coastal city which should at least give you a trade route connection, if not me. Anyway, just throwing it out there.

Anything else burning on your mind?

Regards,
Gaspar

Nicolae tried catching me in chat today, but I ended up not actually at my computer at the time. Here's what he said:

Nicolae: sup gaspar

ive convinced RG that kyan definitely needs dogpiling

....AAAND that's all. I tried replying several times but he never got back to me. Bloody useless, the diplo in this game. Frustrating as all holy hell. By the by, while I'd love to see a dogpile on the clowns, I believe it is already too late. So if they want to throw lots of hammers at them while we try and get a peaceful victory faster than Kyan can curbstomp Erebus, that sounds keen to me. But there's no beating him at this point in time militarily, IMO. 30 turns ago, when I first suggested it to those two? Sure. Now? No way.

On that note:



Here comes Gibbon. Hide the women and children.

Other than that - nothing worth saying. Several builds, including our first PoL complete next turn. I'm aiming to get a good 10 of them up and running. I set research to Writing. saving gold. I feel afterwards we should head towards AV so we can get a few Ritualists on the field as well. Beyond that, perhaps begin the long slog to Taxation? Open to thoughts from the crowd here.

Also got the pointless AC=10 spam. Fascinated, I'm sure you all are.

[Mardoc]

We somehow have a trade connection with Acalostas, despite not having actually met them. Especially bizarre as there's been no sighting of units there either. Perhaps a map trade with Rawkking or something has defogged enough coast?

That sounds right. In PBEM 3 I had a trade connection with the Sheaim long before I met them, due to map trades with Mr. Yellow. It doesn't have any effect, though.

....AAAND that's all. I tried replying several times but he never got back to me. Bloody useless, the diplo in this game. Frustrating as all holy hell. By the by, while I'd love to see a dogpile on the clowns, I believe it is already too late. So if they want to throw lots of hammers at them while we try and get a peaceful victory faster than Kyan can curbstomp Erebus, that sounds keen to me. But there's no beating him at this point in time militarily, IMO. 30 turns ago, when I first suggested it to those two? Sure. Now? No way.

Well - yeah, unless they attacked literally now (or at least before Gibbon has a chance to get any meaningful XP). Still, I think we should offer Hawk flights to Nicolae, at a minimum - very little cost to us, might make the difference to him.

If Kyan goes for skeleton spam - well, we know Nicolae already has an Adept, maybe he'll make it to Mages in time - in which case I don't see a downside to offering him a Life loan, too. It's not like we'll be running many/any undead ourselves against the Sheaim.

Still - they ought to at least be able to force Kyan to keep a bunch of summons around eating gold. And who knows? Hippus and Sheaim are the two in best shape to counter a Balseraph puppet defense, through mobility or Pyre Zombies. Never give up hope, particularly when it's cheap .

Other than that - nothing worth saying. Several builds, including our first PoL complete next turn. I'm aiming to get a good 10 of them up and running. I set research to Writing. saving gold. I feel afterwards we should head towards AV so we can get a few Ritualists on the field as well. Beyond that, perhaps begin the long slog to Taxation? Open to thoughts from the crowd here.

Trade ought to be fairly accessible from Writing, I think we need only HBR or Sailing to unlock it, both of which are good eventually. Now that we've got foreign trade, an extra trade route/city will be worth at least 14 gpt - more if we decide to run Foreign Trade instead of Agrarianism (probably not worth it, but it is an option). More than that - this is a bonus that doesn't require any hammers, unlike taking advantage of AV.

Of course going for Ashen Veil has its benefits, too. We'd be able to pick up Slavery instead of Apprenticeship - which as long as we're training Divine units we don't need the bonus XP anyway. And we'd be able to start some Savant pre-mages, in addition to the temples and ritualists. But I think I'd still argue for Trade first as long as our production queues are booked like this. We've still got PoL, carnivals, markets, disciples and temples to kilmorph, libraries, settlers, workers, and maybe more to build. Let's catch up a bit on that before adding in Mage Guilds and Temples of the Veil/Ritualists to our wishlist.

Either that, or aim toward Currency, but I think Trade is the easier one to grab.

Speaking of civics - what's our city maintenance bill these days? How much would swapping to City States help, if you're willing to let the Chronic's 3 turn PoL lapse to 5 turn PoL?

[Gaspar]

Ok, lot's to talk about for once. First off, I received these messages in response to my messages to Nicolae and Rawwking:

Hey Gaspar,

Thanks for that, PBEM18 was over long ago when Ioan signed peace after our initial war. Everything after that was simply a roflstomp. Not quite Sevenspirits level, not quite Nospace level, but it felt dirty hurting those guys. Still wish I got a chance to finish that 3-pronged attack that threatened 5 cities at once, but that was a pretty convincing sign things were over.

I've accepted open borders, I desperately need the commerce. Things don't look good in FFHVII, after all Kyan just landed Esus, he already has writing (and with his marble, I expect the Great Library will fall shortly), and is likely to be a dozen turns or so away from Sorcery. I'm a long way from mages. How are your Leaf Priest plans?

Also, I will be capturing a barbarian city that is close to Kyan soon, so I can let you rebase a hawk there and point him in whatever direction you fancy. In return, I'd like to do a map trade, so you'll know where that city is, and so I'll defog a trade connection to RG. I know what Kyan has, I suspect he has the mirror of heaven (sun mana), incense/reagents, and a ton of happy. I'd like a little more info on what RG has, as he'll be the obvious #1 if by some divine intervention a dogpile works.

Finally, my naming scheme was always how we liberals are plotting to destroy America . Lady Gaga is just one of our tools: http://vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusiness...ti-puppet/

Cheers,
Nic

Sup Gaspar

I recall RG telling me that Kyan was running around springing his desert empire. However, last I checked, he lacked Elementalism. This leads me to suspect that he has/had some kind of mana deal with the Elohim. Not only that, but apparently the Elohim and Grigori are going to war. Therefore, don't count on help from the west

Cheers,
Nic

Open borders would be great, and I'm fine with a limited degree of hawk scouting though I'm not sure even my most westernly city would be able to hawkscout an elohim city at this point, and for the grigori you are pretty much limited to having to find a unit of his wandering around. I'll be on the lookout for opportunities for you to make contact and will let you know with the turn file; since your turn is right after mine you should have no problem making contact. Getting more map awareness of nicolae would definitely be appreciated even if I don't really see much strategic value to doing so.

I also suppose even if I am really losing investment in this game being stuck with a long NAP with the clowns while watching them run away we should prepare some concrete plans to attack them. I can't tell you the duration of the NAP except that it is in the T150ish range as you worried about in an earlier message. I'm admittedly somewhat tempted to go with your plan to just call the game, but on the other hand that seems against the realms beyond spirit to not at least try to stop him. We should definitely chat; I'd like the discussion to be confidential between us and the Sheaim when we do get some time to hammer out a plan (can you do three-way google talks even?). We'll probably have to deal with an archmage or two and loads of puppet summon spam so it's definitely going to be a heck of a fight.

Do you have sailing yet? I plan to research it soon and am wondering about coastal trade routes.

On an added note, you'll notice that I am currently trading my nature mana to Kyan, undoubtedly for him to get vitalize gibbon as he just converted to Esus. Unfortunately this mana trade was set in stone with the NAP agreement back when Kyan could have crushed me with his lucky lizardman pop from a lair.

Interesting to find out our fears were correct regarding Rawkking's NAP as well as that now, when the snowball is rolling hard, these guys start getting interested in a dogpile. T150-ish Rawkking wants me to think about? Yeah, good luck with that buddy. There's no hope of beating him then. You have like the third best rush Worldspell in the game (For the horde, Stasis) perhaps the time to think about that was T50, not T150. Anyway, nice to know we seem to have managed decent relations after all, for all it matters. Turn report and sundries to follow.

[Gaspar]

So the turn itself is here, and we're welcomed by the birth of our first Priest of Leaves, Hulk Oaken. He heads directly to the mines north of The Chronic to begin Blooming. We really need those fast priests, so I plan to stay in God King a bit longer. Right now, switching to City States would save us 5 GPT in civic maintenance, plus I'm sure some more in distance maintenance. Still, I can't justify that until we have a decent Blooming force out. Also, the -20% culture is probably not what we want to see until we've secured our share of the Domir/Where It's At cultural battle. I'd like to switch out of Apprenticeship, as the 2 XP is really unnecessary on Potency units, but we don't have another option. Caste System would be ideal right now, but I think probably Slavery is the next stop in that column. I suppose access to the whip with our eventually ridiculously high food cities isn't a bad idea, though FFHs nerfed Granaries make it more a nice toy than the uber-civic it is in BTS.

I settled our 7th city, Rainy Day Women ("Everybody must get stoned...") in the jungle this turn. Its going to take a while to be productive, but it will eventually be a cottage-filled grassland paradise.



I flew the hawk south out of the ville this turn, revealing that the island in the south is completely worthless (Probably has Mithril or some such on it, like I'll ever see that tech):



Once we have a couple more priests out, we'll add Kabhalg to the pile, accepting name requests now. They've finished their kill team, so they'll be suiciding on Cypress Hill shortly.

Techwise, Writing research now on, due in 2T. Pretty sure Masonry next, to connect Marble. Not sure if we want to take a bash at Great Library, but we should probably at least leave ourselves the option.

Here are the demos, since they haven't been posted in a while:

[Gaspar]

Oh! I knew there was a piece of news left! MBTM has sharpened up his sandbox to the point where he believes it ready as it will ever be. I'm going to take a poke about it tomorrow morning and I'll get a "finished" product out on my dropbox. After that, if everyone is still interested, I'd like to see if we can run our tests. I think we really need to decide within the next 5-8T which way we're going. For example, if we're headed Cultural, we might head immediately towards the boosted Artist wonder techs, whereas if we're aiming tower, probably makes sense to head towards AV soon, for the science-y goodness of the temples, since Tower requires more beakers than Cultural (at least in my mind it does.)