[SPOILERS!] Pericles of Babylon. Kyan, Twinkletoes, Whosit.

[Kyan]

Well, you have no idea how glad i am to see you two favouring a more diplomatic approach

Team work makes the dream work...

Oh yeah. Cheese-tastic.

About the two sites TT, bear in mind that a desert site is actually rather good because it gets the same stats as any default city- therefore turning a useless tile into a great one.

It's ok pal, i have possibly the most stubborn family n friends in the world. I much prefer diplomacy. Don't get me wrong, if someone in this game is taking advantage of us- we will smash them.

Slow pace has it's advantages also. Plenty of time for diplomacy and for team bonding sessions. Paintballing anyone? haha.

Let's perhaps use the previous email as a base and get a team consensus going? I'd like to send it out no later than tomoro, the last thing we want is for them to get suspicious of our activites. After all, we've gone very quiet all a sudden whilst our thread has gone crazy. If i was them i'd think we were planning war...

[Twinkletoes89]

The letter is fine as long as we edit the picture as I requested earlier - i.e. Black out Tech and City

[Kyan]

Sounds good. Sorted.

http://i849.photobucket.com/albums/ab54/...ali2-1.jpg

is the new image.

[Whosit]

Sounds good. Sorted.

http://i849.photobucket.com/albums/ab54/...ali2-1.jpg

is the new image.

Looks good. They could tell that our city is size 2, but I don't think that matters too much.

I'm not really keeping good tracks of the turns in this game (I've left that up to you guys), so where do we stand now? Settler done yet, or are we still waiting for that?

[Kyan]

Settler is done and on his way along with worker. A bear has appeared nearby the proposed site so Banshee has held back to escort them. The bear won't enter our cultural borders tho so it's no biggie. Potentially he could pose a problem if he moved in an exact way 2 turns in a row but as long as that isn't the case then city will be founded in 2 turns.

Worst case scneario we'll keep worker and settler safe and wyrmsbane will come out to meet them.

Worker was used to road 2 tiles towards new site (one of which was via sheep so they're now connected). His first job will be to pasture pigs asap once Exodus is up allowing it to grow into the marble.

[Kyan]

turn played. Received acknowledgment from Mali. Exodus founded next turn!

Bear moved away thankfully.

[Whosit]

Soooo . . . what's happening? Have we won yet? Like I've said, I'm not really following the turn flow very much (or at all). Is Exodus founded? Have we heard from the Mali? Are we on track for the Oracle?

Should I do some calculations for some reason? OK, probably too many questions. Just want to make sure we're still on track.

[Twinkletoes89]

Sorry, it seems that Kyan played the turn last night but no screenies. Exodus was founded on yellow dot, and we have recieved this message from Mali:

Dear Kyan,

Thanks for your email, and congratulations on founding your second city!

Whilst we would like to claim the entire corn-marble-pigs region for ourselves, we are more than willing to compromise in the spirit of co-operation between our two civs. We are therefore happy for you to settle in the spot indicated on your screenshot.

That said, we're not so keen on your proposal for the location of our border city. As far as we can see, it lacks a single hill, and given the relative lack of food we've found so far, having two specials in one city is a luxury we may not be able to afford. We therefore reserve the right to settle one or two tiles directly north of the corn: this would give us use of grassland tiles that would otherwise go to waste for lack of food. What about the close borders and a fight for the marble, you may ask? Given the great Bablyonian Empire is Creative, we are well aware that this is a 'battle' we will surely lose, and we are comfortable with this fact. As an IND civ, we have less desire for marble than most civs, and we would only lose 3 tiles from our BFC, so this seems quite reasonable to us.

We hope that you find this to be an equitable solution, but we would like to repeat the fact that we're only reserving the right to settle on the tiles mentioned above. We'd be happy to co-ordinate the actual settling of this area with you to avoid unwanted misunderstandings.

In other news, our scouts have discovered some more floodplains, rice, and a bear (now a fetching over-the-shoulder number to keep Keef, our warrior, warm) to our north, and horses to our SW. We also happened across a lion, and our warrior, Mick, has clearly learned some tricks from Novice in dealing with fearsome felines, as he dispatched him without much trouble!

Best Wishes

Emperor Capac

This is great that they have no issues with Yellow Dot. Yes, they are moving their proposed spot further north, but as they say, our creative trait should win the culture battle for marble.

Now when it comes to the Oracle, we are still on track, but me and Kyan had a lengthy discussion on that plan and it seems that the problem we have is how long it will take to get the necessary techs, not actually building time.

As such, we have drawn up a plan B:

Operation Alphabet

When BW is researched next turn, we head towards Alphabet with haste. We send out scouts in as many directions as we can and gain contact with as many civs as we can find. We then use NTB to try and gain all our lost early techs in exchange for Alphabet.

The Tech Path will be -> Pottery -> Writing -> Alphabet

Now Pottery may be missable for the sake of speed. Pottery is included for the growth bonus of granaries, so we can use the 2 scientist specialists from Libraries to go for an early academy.

However, I feel that if we lack copper in either of our cities, we must sacrifice Pottery for a quicker run at Alphabet.

NOW - we have come up with a diplomatic plan, but I want to keep it secret for now, so I'll PM you it.

[Twinkletoes89]

Turn Rolled

As there was nothing to wait for this turn, I thought I'd best just get the turn over with and get some new screenies for you all.

Our 'Empire' at a glance



Exodus



Speaker is now pasturing the pigs, with Banshee as cover. Why are we going worker first here?

Genesis



Warrior due next turn, growth in 2. Should we spend one turn of production on another warrior or barracks? Then onto worker 2?

The trials of Novice - Barbarian Hunter



Yet another lion appeared, so I fortified Novice in the jungle where he was for extra defence.

Demographics



Not looking as nice as before, though it looks like we are the 2nd team to build city number 2.

The Bad News

Due to building Exodus, we are now at 70% research, which slows down our next techs significantly. Methinks plan B is necessary now, and Pottery is essential for some more gold to boost our research again.

Mali

I will send them a confirmation email. We shall keep discussing diplomacy via PM for now and we can decide how we want to respond to this latest email.

[Kyan]

Good work on the turn. Appreciate you sending the email.

A few key points: we are building a worker in Exodus because once the pigs are pastured, Speaker will move to the forest 2s and chop it it speed up the worker production. This will mean a very quick worker, we can then proceed to grow Exodus up in size.

Genesis needs to be bigger. It has a good amount of nice tiles it could potentially work so i would quite favour growing it up to size 4 even before chopping out another settler. In the mean time we could produce some more warriors. These will be needed as: 1) we want to meet more civs asap, 2) they can always be used for hereditary rule happiness later. They are also useful for making us a much less attractive option to attack.

The costs for maintenance here are very high. I change my earlier prediction on map to say i believe it now to be toroidal which means with emperor commerce sites will become invaluable. I would really like to get that gold hooked up asap. Perhaps cottaging the FP tile that will be in exodus' range when possible and getting one or two riverside ones going at Genesis.

Demo's: They appear at first glance a lot worse than they are. On food we are higher than average, on production and gold we are average. We are also one of the earliest to get a second city out meaning we get it growing even quicker.

Mali's request re: the city a tile or two north. That's not an issue, they actually built their own city last turn and it wasn't in our direction! by the time they establish there we will have some heavyset culture in place.