There's a weird glitch in this game. We are able to declare on YNL right now!
I did not offer a cease fire. I only offered a 10t peace treaty. I've verified in a test hotseat game that if you accept a 10t peace treaty even with no other terms, the peace is enforced. I also verified that you can't downgrade a treaty offer to a ceasefire and accept it. I'm absolutely certain I did not offer a cease-fire, just as certain as I am that I didn't declare war on Mackoti (I played it very gingerly).
What should we do? (It's complicated by the rules against diplo, gotta be careful when we talk.)
IMO we
1) Ask yuris if he signed a peace treaty or cease fire.
1a) If he signed a cease fire we need to tell him that was not under offer (It was a bug that it was) and find out what his reaction is then.
2) If he signed a treaty or his reaction now is to sign the treaty, we can either try to replay last turn or (much more simply) agree to play as if we'd correctly signed the treaty.
2a) Else we just need the chance to replay our turn to start a warrior. (And I guess we should then redeclare war.)
I want to be careful not to overstep my bounds as a player but on the other hand I don't think anyone wants to play a game where someone could declare war only because of a bug, when it's possible to fix it.
Everything's fine, Yuri thought he was accepting a peace treaty too. (The dialog he got was cease fire though. And after accepting there was a mysterious second dialog that was empty, apparently the treaty one.)
Quote:7:56 AM me: hi
7:59 AM Yuri: hey hey
me: this is Seven, it's about pbem25, it's not diplo, rather mechanics
8:00 AM we did not offer a cease fire, only a peace treaty (10 turns)
how did it show up for you?
Yuri: you mean 23, right?
me: uh right
Yuri: the first dialog showed a cease fire, I accepted
then there was a second one, and it was empty
I accepted it too
me: weird :/
8:01 AM Yuri: well, we can agree to consider it a peace treaty
because I was under assumption I was accepting a peace treaty, and that was what we discussed in the thread
8:02 AM me: that's good. we were under that assumption too, lol
I did test it out in a test mp game
you can offer peace treaties or cease fires both
and treaties are enforced even if there's no other terms
my guess is that if you'd declined the first dialog, the second would have been the peace treaty we proposed
8:03 AM Yuri: probably. but who knew I needed to decline it
me: not sure wtf is up with teh first dialog though, I was really careful to only propose a treaty
8:04 AM but anyway, if you meant it as a treaty and we did too, I think we should play that way (else we definitely need to replay the turn, because we assumed this was enforced peace)
8:05 AM I can look up the exact mechanics of who is allowed to declare on what turn, so that we mimic it correctly
Yuri: well, you're before us in the turn order, so I assume we both should be able to attack on T32
8:06 AM me: me too - but maybe it expires only at the beginning of YOUR t32
8:07 AM (trying to be very mechanical here in the resolution of this because diplo's not allowed)
8:08 AM Yuri: heh, well, if you have time to test, go ahead, I'm ok with assuming the treaty ends on your T32
me: I'll try it in a minute, and I'll let you know if it works differently from what you expect
8:09 AM Yuri: great, thanks
8:12 AM actually, if you want, you can just declare war & offer peace again, and I will know not to accept the cease fire
8:13 AM me: ok, tested it
first war declaration allowed is on your t32
8:14 AM we may declare t33
let's just play following that so nothing needs to be replayed, ok?
Yuri: ok!
8:15 AM me: cool, sounds good. I think this is the first time I've encountered a pbem bug
crazy
Yuri: yeah, very strange. glad we could sort it out
8:16 AM me: yup. thanks!
Yuri:
We decided we should play as though the treaty was enforced. I tested out the exact mechanics and it means that he cannot declare until t32, and we cannot until t33.
I tried to figure out the 30gnp which looks like mackoti (he did indeed settle on the plains hill - the forest is gone). Only reasonable way I could get to 30 was researching AH at the highest possible rate with 0g stored, namely 80%, while knowing two people who already have it. That's 6 culture + 4 espionage + 1 gold + 19 beakers. The way we get 1g/19b is 15 commerce (palace + FP + Fish + 2 cities + 2 TRs) split 80/20 into 12b/3g. Subtract out 2g maintenance, add the free beaker, multiply 13b * 1.5 (he has both prereqs for 20% each, and if he knows two people who have it...) and you get 19.5 which rounds down to 19.
So I'd guess that's what he's doing. But also, it's possible that he's a bit below 30gnp and the 30 is someone else. If I'm not mistaken, the 30k rival pop increase means that in addition to Fierce growing to size 4 (+27k), no less than three opponents founded a second city on t22: Sian (who goes before us) on the previous round of plays, and Luddite and Mackoti in the most recent round.
Also I THINK that Luddite and YNL got a tech t21, and Sian got a tech this last round. Hard to tell with land scores though.
To summarize what we know (or guess, at least) about techs:
Sian and Ichabod:
[SIZE="1"]Hatshepsut (Spi/Cre) of the Ottomans
(Agriculture, The Wheel, Janissary, Hammam)[/SIZE] Animal Husbandry (t9) -> Mining (t12) -> Bronze Working (t23)
Novice, Spaceman and SevenSpirits:
[SIZE="1"]Isabella (Spi/Exp) of Egypt
(Agriculture, The Wheel, War Chariot, Obelisk)[/SIZE] Hunting (t5) -> Fishing (t9) -> Animal Husbandry (t16) -> Pottery (t20)
Yuris, Nicolae Carpathia and Lewwyn:
[SIZE="1"]Louis (Ind/Cre) of Byzantium
(Mysticism, The Wheel, Cataphract, Hippodrome)[/SIZE] Agriculture (t6) -> Mining (t11) -> Bronze Working (t21)
Fierce:
[SIZE="1"]Cyrus (Cha/Imp) of the Holy Roman Empire
(Mysticism, Hunting, Landsknecht, Rathaus)[/SIZE] Mining (t5) -> Bronze Working (t14) -> The Wheel (t19)
Luddite and Pindicator:
[SIZE="1"]Suryavarman (Cre/Exp) of Zululand
(Agriculture, Hunting, Impi, Ikhanda)[/SIZE] Animal Husbandry (t8) -> ??? (t13) -> ??? (t17) -> ??? (t21) (I'd guess Mining - The Wheel - Pottery but it's pure speculation)
Mackoti:
[SIZE="1"]Pericles (Cre/Phi) of Greece
(Fishing, Hunting, Phalanx, Odeon)[/SIZE] Agriculture (t6) -> Mining (t11) -> Bronze Working (t20)
Finally, the map. Like you last pointed out, Commodore said we're all on the same landmass. And with the additional scouting info we've gained in the meantime, we already have a decent idea of that that landmass looks like.
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... with vertical world wrap. Since it's 64 tiles high that's 10-11 vertical tiles between players. But OK, here's the interesting bit. I counted the tiles in 10 rows near us and it's pretty close to 9 tiles per row. In other words this landmass looks to have about 570 tiles.
There are 1051 land tiles on the map. So my guess is that Sailing and Astronomy will be important techs.
Good job. So the interesting twist with the map is probably that everyone has four neighbours to share land with - two on land, and two different ones with which to share islands. We have islands that are contested by the players two spots north of us and two spots south of us.
I played around a bit with Io locations and I actually think it should go in the south again. Reason is simply that our workers are tied up on Stonehenge and can't effectively farm the northern corn until the city's had to work unimproved tiles for 3 turns. Meanwhile our work boat from the capital is too late, too.
If we settle Io in the southeast spot it can work Titan's fish for 2 turns (while Titan's building a fifth settler and doesn't need it) and then the now-improved cow, to grow in 3. Then one more turn of Cow + Fish and then Cow + Oasis to grow to 3 in another 3 turns, at which point it adds the gold and stagnates. We get a great commerce tile (plus the happy, which is useful too), the city is up and running very fast, and we can settle the northern city right about when the workboat gets there.
In order for this to work out in the most efficient way, we should road the tile 1S of the flood plains instead of directly one it, in order to cross Ganymede. This allows the double-whipped Ganymede worker to go south quite efficiently.
(And I guess we should then redeclare war.)