Mooooooo.... wait, wrong animal. Neeeigghhh

[Square Leg]

I wonder who loves whom in that ninja-stack under the heart

Clearly it is the unnamed warrior who loves the RB'ers! :neenernee

[Rowain]

I see the nameless fanboy adoring the Heroes

[Iskender]

Sorry, I've been busy lately.

So we got FotT, how about that! Double promos on all units, 95% withdraw horses - fear Erebus !

I think GA is still better than academy even in the long run. Ascot is making 33 beakers atm, the net gain from academy in the next few dozen turns would be about 20 beakers/turn. GA would give us some 50 commerce + 20 to 30 hammers/turn for 9 turns and a turn's worth of commerce + hammers + food if we make the religion swap. In the academy variant it't take about 30 turns to catch up with commerce and still have ~250 hammer deficit.

GA would also help us get more GP - with GA's +100% GPP we can get 162 out of 201 GPP if we run 3 specialists in a city during the GA.

There'd also be a conflict between academy and the Heroic Epic in Ascot (how about making it the next build?). The capital is still our top production city, with academy we'd kind of sit on the fence unable to make the best of neither production nor research.

[Square Leg]

Poor Ascot is already a little confused bless it with the brew house there... You are of course right, t112 is a little late to be founding an academy and the production benefit is going to be pretty important to us too. I am moving the GS towards Ascot where he can sit until we fire off the GA. I'm thinking that the timing is going to be so that we can swap into Empyrean for free so probably in a few turns.

WRT the Hero Epic, I queued up a stables in Ascot next as I want to tech Masonry next to hook up our marble at Aintree. It will give us 100% hammers on the build and we aren't desperate to get it pronto are we?

Writing finished at the end of the turn so we should probably throw down a few libraries. Production is our real problem right now and not having any cheap buildings is a pain in the arse. In other news I sent this to Serdoa:

[COLOR="Lime"]Hi Serdoa,

I'm sure you will have noticed our scout making his way along your southern borders. He has managed to evade the bears using anti-bear™ powder but I am conscious that we could get trapped by your culture at any time. Is there a way through to meet krill?

Cheers,
SL[/COLOR]

Of course - Serdoa picked up on this straight away and replied with some concerns:

[COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]Hey SL,

you shouldn't get trapped my culture - in regards to going back - but you are right that my culture is covering the whole land-strip. Now, I don't really see an issue in theory about your scout moving through it, using the route on the southern edge of the map but before I agree to that, I'd like to know whats going on. Iskender - I think - told me that you guys don't want to contact Krill for as long as possible, so that you don't need to discuss NAPs and stuff before you actually have several horses in front of his empire. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't mind if you give up that plan, it is your civ and your decision after all, but it keeps me surprised as to what - if at all still - we are going to do against the one with the 14 cities (I think thats the current number for Krill) or if the new plan from your side is to simply hand him the victory by going against me. I surely am the more tempting target for you, being much closer.

So, having looked at the save, you are some tiles still from the point where you need to enter my culture, so I think we have time to talk a little bit before I need to make my final decision.

Kind regards,[/COLOR]

My first reactions to his reply are:

- So you get to agree if we can pass through terrain without your culture in it? What are you going to do? Kill our scout? Our NAP states nothing about meeting other players and if he did that it would be a clear breach and we could rescind the NAP as and when we pleased imo.

- Yes, we had said that we didn't want to meet Krill straight away but we think we have sussed your ToM plan and so our priorities have changed!

- 14 cities is a lot - I'd like to be able to vouch for some of these numbers myself now rather than relying on Illian propaganda!

- You a tempting target?? We have a NAP until t150...

I then thought about it some more. Serdoa's response is very defensive in nature, he clearly is against us meeting Krill. Is that so he can feed us imformation on what he is doing? Serdoa is basically in control of the Hippus-Illian and the Hippus-Clan relationships which means he can influence our foreign policy with 100% of the remaining relevant players... I don't like it!

I'm going to reply to him later on - I might just send him a little "got your message" first though as I think we need to phrase our response correctly.

[Square Leg]

Actually - I may have mis-understood Serdoa's opening line and his culture is going to be in the way...

[Square Leg]

possible reply:

[COLOR="Lime"]Hey Serdoa,

I think initially when we talked about Krill we were being a little naive in thinking that not making contact with him would be best and whilst the thought of talking to Krill makes me whelp, it is probably time that we approached that juncture. Krills numbers are pretty scary wrt city count and I'm sure it won't be long before he is wielding Ogres and the like. Obviously we aren't going to have a chat with Krill and then suddenly attack you, but we do need to start building up our knowledge on what he is doing, and that is much easier with in game contact.

If we need to pass through your borders to meet him (which is what I think I have understood from your message! ;p), we will of course remunerate you reasonably and will follow your specific route so as not to scout where you don't want us to.

We haven't met the Grigori yet either, although we have a scout en-route assuming he doesn't get eaten!

Cheers,
SL
[/COLOR]

[Square Leg]

Ok - had a chat with Iskender and decided we wouldn't persue this any further but withdraw our scout. In the meantime we can get a mobility II horseman out of Ascot in the near future and send him around the long way past the grigori, we have a mobility scout heading that was already who may make it too.

Here is the response I have sent to Serdoa:

[COLOR="Lime"]Hey Serdoa,

Thanks for your reply. If we cannot make it through then we will just turn our scout around and head off somewhere else. Him having 14 cities is pretty scary. Actually - one of the reasons we wanted to meet him is so that we can get some omre info on him. Would you be able to send us some of his numbers from the next turn? This is the sort of thing we'd really like to know:

- exact # of cities
- whether he has trade
- %tage of global pop in F8 advisor
- what resources he has to trade

It would just really help knowing what we will potentially be up against.

Cheers,
SL
[/COLOR]

It is pretty clear that he wants to keep us in the dark regarding colluding with the Clan against him. We know that; he doesn't know we know that, so lets try and get some solid info on the Clan - the sort of things we'd get by meeting them.

[Square Leg]

Serdoa has sent this reply:

[COLOR="Cyan"]Hi SL,

attached find a screenie of his cities. As you asked for the exact # of his cities after I told you, I guessed you wouldn't believe it without screenshot

He doesn't seem to have trade (no techs showing up). His %tage of global pop is 30%. As for resources, we are not connected to each other as I have not scouted his land and therefore don't have visibility on even one city. Do you need a screenshot of this data as well or is my word as an ally enough?

Let me know if I can be of help in any form.

Kind regards,[/COLOR]

This image was also attached:



So Krill actually has 15 cities as he can't trade his capital. He can't have much more room before having to beat on the Grigori - perhaps we will meet him in the process...

I don't doubt that Serdoa is telling the truth, it's just we suspect your motives...

[Brian Shanahan]

Spelt "more" "omre" in the last message.

Something very fishy in the state of Diplomacymark, IMO.

[Square Leg]

Spelt "more" "omre" in the last message.

Something very fishy in the state of Diplomacymark, IMO.

Heh - I can't type at the ebst of times and I certainly can't spell!

Any comment on "Brians Planning" - a PBEM VII reference I'm sure!