[SPOILERS] Yossarian blames Caledorn

[YossarianLives]

Turn 60:

Workers and Quechua moving in to support our new city location. We're actually sending 3 quechua out west. One will garrison City 4, another will scout the fogged coast and then garrison city 5, and the last one will check out what's north of BowAivo.

Demos and power:

[YossarianLives]

Turn 61:

A lion showed up near our new city site, but this time we're prepared. Govt Shutdown will be settled next turn. In the northeast, on the other hand, things don't look good for Elayne. Copper is connected and we have two axes on the way.

Demos:

With all those units moving outside our borders and two more quechua completing, we were two gold short of completing Writing next turn. I had to switch off a grass mine and onto a 1-0-2 coast in order to keep our schedule. Fortunately this doesn't delay the completion time for our next settler.

[YossarianLives]

Alright, diplomacy time.

Proposed message to GG:

Hi Gladiators,

We're disappointed we did not hear back from you. If you ever decide to get in touch with us, we're always ready to talk to you guys. We think that cooperating together could be good for both of us.

For now, we have to assume that your silence is not a good sign. We'll be prepared if we sense praetorians may be on our way.

Let's talk,

Blame Caledorn

And for BowAivo:

Hi Aivo and Bow,

Just wanted to let you know that we're finishing Writing T62. We were hoping we could use OB to get our scout past your lands. It would land on the forest hill southwest of Cosa Nostra on T64, then would be on his way.

Let us know,

Blame Caledorn

Feedback would be appreciated. I'll probably send these out tomorrow morning (in maybe 10 or 11 hours).

As for BowAivo, I would be willing to offer them a screenshot, either of some of the land between us or of land that our scout uncovers, in return for letting him pass. But, I'll see if they give it for free before offering anything. Screenshot trading is not mentioned in the rules so I assume it's allowed upon contact.

[Cheater Hater]

City 1 looks fine
City 2 doesn't seem like it does anything--it lets you work some of City 1's rivers while stealing a food from Server Problems. If we want that city to grow quickly, I might found City 3 first (though I don't like that one that much either :/ ), or maybe the desert city that would share the fish. You could then save City 2 for later.
If you replace City 2 with City 3, the next couple I would want to found are the dyes city near Bad Economy, the eastern copper city (is the dot a plains hill? Moving it 1S seems better otherwise), and then trying to get the good southwest cities.

[YossarianLives]

Good points Cheater Hater. Too often, I get something in my head (in this case, the next few cities must be very close to the capital), and then I'm slow to change course as better options appear. You're right that city 2 isn't the best option for our next settler. However, I'm reluctant to settle east before we get a better idea of what the Gladiators are up to. The desert city especially would be tough to defend if they come at us with Praets in the next 15 turns.

Here's another revision:

[YossarianLives]

Both messages have been sent.

[Cheater Hater]

Oh, the Romans are to the east? I haven't been following that close, and I wasn't sure
As such, it makes sense to not settle that much east, but is the eastern dyes city that hard to defend? It certainly seems better than some of the 3? spots (most notably the northern 2 deer spot, pending further fog investigation of course)

[YossarianLives]

The Dyes spot is easy enough to defend. My main concern is that we can't use the dyes until we get IW and Calendar, so I felt that it didn't add too much to our empire. However, it can share the dry Corn right away and will get 3 nice river grass tiles once borders pop, so I've probably been under-valuing it. In fact, maybe that's where we want to send our next settler that will finish in Silent Neighbor on T64, and push the current #2 spot back.

Actually, yeah, I think you've convinced me that this is the best spot for our next location after we settle the #1 spot this turn.

[YossarianLives]

We got a reply from BowAivo:

Hi Yossa and Cal,

Sorry again about long response time. OB suits us very well. We are assuming that you mean OB without any restrictions on passing through. There has been some barbarian activity to our west. Currently we don't see any barbarians, but be careful if you head to that direction. We have not met any other teams yet. We actually lost couple of scouts in the beginning. We're hoping to change that soon with couple of scouts carrying some pointy sticks BTW, would you like to have an agreement to notify each other whenever we meet other teams?

Thank you for the offer about sharing info about hidden resources. Currently we don't need that though as we have BW and AH as well. Is there something else you have learned about the world? So far, we've seen that our neighbourhood seems to consist of relatively large areas of land with small seas dotted here and there.

Cheers,
Aivo & Bow

I am very pleased by this response

[Caledorn]

Ah great, they are friendly and cooperative! This means we don't have to worry about our west (for now).