Chairmen NobleHelium and Gaspar Demand Your Presence in the Collective

[Gaspar]

We received our first head-scratching Seven trade offer.



It means one of three things:

• They're hurting for health and would like us to help out.
  
• They would like a vague but meaningless showing of goodwill.
  
• They think we should watch for woolen covered-axemen disembarking from fishing vessels at Workers Nest.
  

Your guess? As good as mine. Nevertheless, we declined.

Onto the turn, which was extra-uneventful. In our northeast, you can see the micro for the new settlement being executed - Settler on boat, the Bow will swap places with the worker in 2t so we can begin quarrying immediately. The workboat in Factory Maze will net the clams at the new site immediately.



In our southeast, similarly we're prepping for the next city there, worker roading ahead for a settler who completed in The Colony this turn.



In our northwest, we moved this worker to the forest underneath the bowmen prepping to chop out the new PH cities crucial monument for the Settler you can see begun this turn in The Labyrinth. It will be 2-pop whipped in 2t.



While there's no settler yet in production for this site, we did decide to pickup Factory Drift's garrison warrior and move him to sentry on the city sign you see there. FD whipped in a lighthouse this turn and will regrow on replacement garrison. Settler for that spices city could come from there or more likely, from The Colony which can slow-build settlers reasonably quick with it's pair of copper mines.



Not much to say about the core cities. The Hive started on a Market to regrow, though it will probably do another settler once it re-reaches its happy cap. Market's will be quality builds around the empire now, with Furs already hooked and Ivory and Silks forthcoming shortly. Worker's Nest banged out a worker, our 8th. A little light for 7 cities, but keep in mind that the island burgs need very little worker attention. Also the general slowness of expansion has necessitated less worker labor as a whole. Nonetheless, I expect to see a fair number of worker builds in the near-term to both support the burgeoning happy cap and somewhat more rapid expansion.



In foreign news, no7 put down their latest city, Iced Mines (Medicine) this turn. No other new settlements on the board.

The demos, as ever, are uninspiring.

[oledavy]

They think we should watch for woolen covered-axemen disembarking from fishing vessels at Workers Nest.

Definitely This

[Gaspar]

Played very late last night, so this is a 2t recap. And when I saw a 2t recap, what I mean is that everything you'll learn about the previous turn will be from what I remember to tell you as I recant the current one. In other words, let's just consider T66 part of the ether.

Lewwyn and mackoti made peace this turn. mackoti settled a new city last turn, Uruk. Have I ever mentioned I hate that? This turn we spied a settling party for no7.



It appears they'll be claiming the Banana nearest us. Instinctively I'd think they'd settle right there. But there's no questioning that's pretty forward for this point of the game.

Whipped a Settler in Labyrinth, will do what it says on the tin:



Meanwhile the Settler for the FP city is almost there:



Likewise the Marble city is almost ready:



Borders popped, so Ivory is being camped furiously to push happy caps again:



Calendar comes in next turn, though we dropped research to 50% to retain flexibility. While we're both still assuming that no7s GE will rush MoM, Calendar is still a good tech for us so no reason not to continue to ride that particular train. Here's the demos, which I'm not going to lie, are starting to get depressing:



I take a lot of pictures for absolutely nothing interesting really going on.

[Gaspar]

Not going to get around to reporting this turn, but here's a question for lurkers:



Complete this sentance: The highlight city plant by no7 is _________.

A. Aggressive
B. An overreach
C. Insulting
D. All of the above
E. None of the above

Just curious what you guys think.

[oledavy]

Complete this sentance: The highlight city plant by no7 is _________.

D. All of the above

(Aggressive, An overreach, Insulting)

I recommend the following:

[Mist]

I can agree with A)
I should and will not answer B) ( confirming an overreach gives you information they don't have army/deals to back it up, denying informs you they do and there's nothing you can do with it )
I disagree with C) ( they might be simply thinking you're in no position to contest it after bickering with Lewwyn and be trying to exploit an perceived weakness for example )
therefore D) and E) don't apply.

[NobleHelium]

All right so we played turn 68 yesterday.

We're going to settle three cities next turn. That's rather crazy and not planned, but it worked out that way. Our GNP might go down by a lot.



Island marble city.



Tundra border city.



Flood plains border city.



We're shuffling units around Factory Drift and will scout the big island with the chariot, while picking up the soon-to-be-complete bowman to defend our first plant in this area.

And yeah, we saw N7's jungle plant as described above.



We finished Calendar. Although I suspect N7 will complete it as well next turn and then rush MoM the turn after that, but we'll see.

[Gaspar]

So yeah, all the news of this turn was really already reported. We settled 3 cities on 1 turn:

Deep Clustering - the best of the sites, for marble, silk, seafood:


Plex Anthill - the worst of the sites, to shore up the Lewwyn border:


Social Artery - Fish, Incense, Floodplains:


Beyond that, N7 still hasn't used their GE, but they ARE taking advantage of Metal Casting. Here's what our scouting chariot saw. Mite bit scary, that.



And the demos. We're saving gold for a run on HBR, probably.

[Gaspar]

At the moment, mostly just waiting for the GEng rush of MoM by N7 and sparring with them a bit. N7, being a bullies, naturally continue to pick on us rather than the "even" competition. Well, keep poking the bear with the stick, we'll see how well they do without a major military tech advantage.



We have a Bow ready to be whipped next turn. Could have whipped it this turn, but better to wait until it can regrow immediately.

Here's you see their Trireme which at 3 moves can pillage our seafood next turn. We've pretty much decided if they make that pointless move to antagonize us we're just going to go AW with them. See how many games like that it takes for them to realize humans aren't AI.




In non-N7 news, not much news. A settler for that spice city completes next turn. After that, we're probably done settling for a little bit while we let the economy re-recover. Border city with Lewwyn had its monument chopped this turn.

As I lack motivation to go deep into detail, here's an overview shot:



And the always contemptuous demographic shot:

[oledavy]

We've pretty much decided if they make that pointless move to antagonize us we're just going to go AW with them.

I thought we were already AW with Lewwyn