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

[Whosit]

For once, I support a diplomatic solution. After thinking about it a bit more, "Operation Weedkiller" would probably be detrimental to us. We want to expand and put our creative trait to use and block off territory for us. Diverting hammers to an offensive army would slow us down. Of course, we do need to train a token army to make sure that we are not easy pickings.

As for city location, where their Warrior is standing in the screen shot looks ideal. It should grab all those floodplains while missing the peaks, have good food bonus from Pigs, Rice, Floodplains, and at least a little production value from the hills. Hmm. We are Philosophical, so perhaps that should be a GP farm rather than a cottage farm?

There would even be room to squeeze another city in between there and Genesis.

Kyan, if you can smooth-talk your way into securing that location for us, it would be great, although we should probably try to get a Settler out ASAP, even at the expense of Workers. Expand now, make up for it later, right?

Actually, as an aside, I'm not at all familiar with Team Battleground. Don't know if I mentioned that before. So I don't know if there are particular directions in which we want to rush, but it would be nice to get a solid North, East, South, and West border established, and fill in after that. We'll be running an awful Farmer's Gambit, but if we make sure to research some military techs that add to our Power, we might be able to bluff a bit.

We do want to play nice, especially since we can't crack their heads at the moment, but as TT says, we shouldn't get too close to them. I'm not sure about a map trade just yet. Um, we don't want them to "take advantage of us." Heh . . . .

I don't know what kind of sell you'll need to make sure we get that spot. Maybe you already know. Anyway, since you're the one who spoke to them, I'm sure that you can find a way to spin the whole "we're hoping for long-term cooperation, but before we can throw our lot in with you, we need to make sure that our trust is not misplaced." Just don't make any promises, which you seem to be avoiding, which is good.

OK, enough rambling. Where are we with the city production and stuff? ETA to Copper hook-up? Workers? Next Settler? As much as I'd like to expand, should the Gold site be #4 to bring us some income? Though I doubt it could really pay for other cities . . . .

[Jabah]

Wouldn't the hill SW of your warrior (on the last pict) be a good and nice place, regarding the possible tiles (2 flood, 1 oasis, pig, rice, lots of grass river) on a hill for defence (with flat all around) and with no waste with your capital.
Also that could be easy to convince your neighbours that it belong to you.

[Twinkletoes89]

And we have warrior 5....

And for now I'm just going to wait until we uncover the next turn's scouting so that we can decide if its worth going that extra tile towards them.

[Whosit]

Wouldn't the hill SW of your warrior (on the last pict) be a good and nice place, regarding the possible tiles (2 flood, 1 oasis, pig, rice, lots of grass river) on a hill for defence (with flat all around) and with no waste with your capital.
Also that could be easy to convince your neighbours that it belong to you.

I think that there are more flood plains to the east of our current position. I'm not too worried about "waste" at the moment because my thought is to grab out and fill in later. There will be enough "extra" tiles to support a cottage town later, I think.

[Kyan]

I would suggest the grassland to our west is the best position. It gets 2 floodplains, riverside grassland pigs (YUM!) and wet rice as well as an insane number of riverside grassland. The forest we are currently on is about equal in strength and is still technically 1 tile nearer them but will be nice option to 'concede' that spot?

[Whosit]

[img]I would suggest the grassland to our west is the best position. It gets 2 floodplains, riverside grassland pigs (YUM!) and wet rice as well as an insane number of riverside grassland. The forest we are currently on is about equal in strength and is still technically 1 tile nearer them but will be nice option to 'concede' that spot?

Where we are standing is the superior spot, since we get a freshwater bonus. We're not expansive here.

[Kyan]

Where we are standing is the superior spot, since we get a freshwater bonus. We're not expansive here.

Good point. but we *ARE* creative babylonians. Which means later on, when health starts becoming an issue- we can build a super cheap colloseum and get a nice bonus of +2 health. The location also has an insane number of tree's for health initially and still loads left for us to chop.

As for the cottage/farm situation, for now we should prioritise cottaging key tiles like the floodplains rather than farming them. Without representation, cottage economy is easily superior for now at least. We can farm some of the worse tiles later on but for now- the commerce is far superior. We will make great use of the philo trait tho, i don't intend to waste it at all!

Two bits of key news this turn, i miscalculated the tech. We're doing 1 more turn of 0% science and will go back to full next turn. This puts us 6 turns of research from pottery and we'll have 8 gold spare to use later.

Second piece of key news, i saw Swiss in-game and informed him of the Byzantines, he asked us to provide them with directions to him. He has also found another civ! The english are to his north but around 3 tiles east. Which goes along with the 'staggered theory'. I.e. the row of civ's above us won't be straight above but rather diagonal.

eg. one civ NW and one NE, each equally spaced between us and our neighbour.

I have requested Swiss informs them of us and to feel free to pop down and say hello. We can't spare a unit to go meet them right now. Swiss is liking the potential of a trading bloc of our 4 civ's though. We are all strong teching civ's for sure. England are creative and expansive so expect some early cities. We'll have to watch for aggresive founding. I asked Swiss to keep us informed.

Based on the Byzantine prescence i think the worker should complete in Genesis and immediately chop the settler. Wyrmsbane can also move towards Plako at this stage to cover for any cheekiness. I will do my best to get consent for this site first though. We pulled it off with Mali and ended up as great friends. This is just as big for us. Possibly better as it's a FANTASTIC site. I'll try to instigate some conversation asap and construct an email momentarily.

[Kyan]

Oh, also, welcome Jabah! We have renamed the warrior looking after our capital in your honour!

Greetings Spectre Council,

We are delighted to meet your acquintance. Kysit's Periwinkles feel we learned a lot about the nature of your team from our initial contact and we found nothing but positives.

Perhaps as a start point we can look at the 'border' more closely. I am loathe to call it contested. With one city in our direction already, we feel it would be fair for the Babylonians to find a new home in this area also. If my estimations on your capital location are apt, which you have confirmed, then the middle ground between our capitals would fall either on the tile east of our warriors or perhaps one more east of that depending on how accurate my guess is. We have no intention of claiming land nearer to yourselves than us. Perhaps you can consult your maps and we can come to a mutually beneficial way to dive the land?

Your mention of building up a relationship involving potential tech trading was one that was very well received. Other contacts are beginning to be made in this part of the world and groups are starting to form even at this early stage. We suspect this is something you would be very interested in and we intend to keep you very much informed if discussions continue as they have begun. We spoke to the Malinese on your behalf and they have agreed for us to guide you to them.

Please take that as a further token of our friendship. You mentioned an interest in exchanging maps. I feel i have been very open with lot's of information so far and i would like this to continue to be the vein for our relationship going forward. Let's discuss the border first and if an agreement can be found, we will divulge the rest of our extensive scouting.

Your Friends,

Kyan
Kysit's Periwinkles

Thoughts? It may not be great so feel free to dissect it if need be. I was attempting to be nice but also pressing that i feel that spot is ours. I offered them incentives such as inclusion in a future tech bloc and maps as an incentive. Byzantine have met nobody else and have scouted no further from their capital than their warrior's current location so our maps are far more valuable than theirs currently.

[Kyan]

haha, look what i received in the mean-time:

[COLOR="DimGray"]Greetings Babylon,

Since we last spoke, our engineers have discovered the secrets of working Bronze. A comprehensive study of our lands revealed a source of copper that would allow us to apply this new-found knowledge. There is a catch though: The source lies in between our lands, due east of where we last saw your scout Plako. We are interested in discussing how to approach this. For obvious reasons, we are interested in constructing a mine there at some point. At the same time, we are aware that this metal may be used for both good and ill, and that the facilities would be constructed in the direction of your borders.

We are curious about Babylon's thoughts on this matter. We also would like to let you know that our scout Jenkins will be heading due north for the moment to chart the lands there. We would be happy to share this information with you if desired. We are considering having Jenkins travel west afterwards to establish contact your other neighbour, Mali. We are also willing to trade screenshots of land scouted, if you so desire.

With regards, and on behalf of the Spectre council,
-SleepingMoogle[/COLOR]

[Kyan]

Am in gmail chat with them now, if either of you are about, set-up a seperate gmail account asap if you don't have one and let me know the details. i'll invite you to the convo (on gmail).