Signing the Treaty of Athens:
![[Image: RBPB2-205s.jpg]](http://www.cassiopeiathedog.net/Images/Pitboss/RBPB2-205s.jpg)
I imagine that if this were real-life, one of our Great Generals would have ironed things out with Jowy at the negotiating table in his capital. I can think of a couple of examples in history where an enemy army in the capital city forced some humiliating peace treaties. We did find out some interesting tidbits this turn, from my chatting with Jowy and Speaker talking briefly with Whosit and Nakor:
* Dantski rejected an NAP renewal with Nakor; their current deal ends on Turn 135. Very interesting - looks like a surefire attack will be coming there. Poor Dantski, not very subtle with his attacks! He shouldn't have locked himself into those long NAP deals though, his mistake.
* Jowy told me that Dantski came up with the whole gangpile alliance against us. Pretty interesting if true. Jowy was obviously trying to turn us against Dantski, and I pretended to go along with him, but I think that ship has sailed. We're pretty committed to Dantski now (who makes a great ally because his GNP sucks).
* Jowy
hates Dantski. He specifically used the word "betrayal" when discussing our peace treaty, and blames Dantski for the attack failing. Not true, but whatever, I wasn't going to dispel that notion. Jowy also asked if Dantski gifted us axes, and I answered honestly that he did. These guys really want revenge on him - I'd watch my back if I were Dantski!
* Everyone (Whosit, Nakor, Jowy) were all super nice to us. They are all clearly terrified of our military, haha.
We'll play nice with everyone for now, but eventually it's gonna be bigtime payback for all involved. Jowy just got the first dose!
Here's the new situation with the city gifting:
![[Image: RBPB2-206s.jpg]](http://www.cassiopeiathedog.net/Images/Pitboss/RBPB2-206s.jpg)
Speaker, I mostly just moved units into cities for Hereditary Rule MP purposes and/or into our territory to avoid unit support costs. We have plenty of time to set up our defenses the way we want them, even before the mandatory 10 turns of peace are up (much less the 28-turn NAP we signed).
"City 1" is where we will replace Sparta, one tile south because of the Athens borders. It sucks to move off the coast (and we could use more naval bases!) but that spot still has triple food bonuses (sheep, rice, deer) along with multiple hill tiles and oodles of grassland river tiles. Will make for a powerful hybrid city along the Sparta or Chancellorsville model. The plan is to whip the settler under production at Chancellorsville (which we started last turn - yes, we're always planning ahead!) and do some worker road-building which will allow us to replant the city on Turn 124. And we'll do it right at the start of the turn too, so unless Jowy has a settler ready to go next turn (and I don't see how that's possible, since Athens isn't even large enough to whip a settler, and Corinth is too far away) we're a lock to land that site. Pretty cool, eh?
![[Image: biggrin.gif]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Smilies/biggrin.gif)
Let's look at the new cities:
![[Image: RBPB2-207s.jpg]](http://www.cassiopeiathedog.net/Images/Pitboss/RBPB2-207s.jpg)
Argos I see as our new barracks city in the east. With the stone + iron and few river tiles, I don't see the new to go commerce here. Instead, let's farm the few river tiles we do have (and spread irrigation to more grassland tiles post-Civil Service) and emphasize shields here. I have the city set to a stables, but that's basically a placeholder. What we really want is a Forge, which we'll chop out when Metal Casting finishes researching. (Thanks for leaving us those forests, Jowy!) We can very easily get to 16 shields/turn here, which becomes 20/turn with a forge in place... very strong production at this stage of the game. Get a stables here too and we're cranking out 2.5 turn horse archers. Powerful stuff. (Alternately, let's get Judaism in here and build some 2t missionaries. That would really help some of our other cities develop.)
Other points of interest: because the city was gifted and not captured, Argos retained all of its buildings, including the monument!!! No need to get culture in here, it'll pop on its own in 10 turns. Very nice. Not as good: maintenance costs are 10gpt!
The Toroidal map is going to force our hand and send us to Code of Laws next after Metal Casting. We're going to need those courthouses up and running. The good news is that forge + Organized Religion followed by courthouses, markets, etc. is actually a pretty good economic development path!
![[Image: RBPB2-208s.jpg]](http://www.cassiopeiathedog.net/Images/Pitboss/RBPB2-208s.jpg)
Thebes is a more interesting project. Now this is not a good city, but we can make it productive with some elbow grease. (I have 4 of our 7 workers assigned here, because it needs serious attention. And yes, we'll need more workers soon too! After we finish this crop of settlers though.) I thought it over, and I see Thebes turning into a commerce city. It just isn't strong enough to serve as a military producer; on the other hand, the sole redeeming quality of this location is its oodles of grassland river tiles. So the best plan I can see is to farm some of grassland tiles, get up to +4 or better +5 food/turn, and then cottage everything else in sight. I know it doesn't look like it, but this will actually be a backline city once Sparta's replacement is founded, so it will be relatively safe to build cottages.
Jowy managed this city awfully... He mostly worked unimproved grassland forests. Ugh! That's really, really bad.
And I know this was a frontline city, but he could have done some farming and mining to the north/east. Anyway, the first thing we have to do is get some farms down to increase the food per turn. I couldn't do that this turn, but what I could do was replace one of Chancellorsville's cottages and assign it to Thebes (since Chance has enough improved tiles right now) to get rid of one of those horrid grassland forests. On the next two turns, I plan to add farms on the two "F" tiles, which will get the city up to +4 food/turn. Next, the workers will chop the jungle on the sugar tile, then cottage it to create a 3/0/1 tile, as good as a grassland river farm, so it can work that tile until we research Calendar down the road. That would get the city to something like this:
Center tile 2/1/1
Sugar tile 3/0/1
Grassland farm 3/0/1
Grassland farm 3/0/1
Total: +5 food per turn
Then start chopping the forests (to complete the library, very nice) and just add cottages as it grows. With that granary already in place, this city won't totally suck, and will grow decently. Give us 10 turns, and we'll turn this into a solid productive city.
And the overall Demographic view:
![[Image: RBPB2-209s.jpg]](http://www.cassiopeiathedog.net/Images/Pitboss/RBPB2-209s.jpg)
Our economy is going to be down for the immediate future, so expect the GNP number not to be super-impressive. But now it's a "good" low GNP, caused by expansion and maintenance costs rather than losing cities and whipping constantly. Note that our army is still kinda large...
We won't have to add much there, and can concentrate on our infrastructure push. We'll actually go down, when we gift those borrowed units from Dantski back.
I'm more concerned with the Food and Production graphs. We were starting to fall behind badly there, stuck at 5 cities while our rivals raced out to 7 and 8. That spelled a slow death if we didn't do something! But now we're back on the right track, with 7 cities now and plans to expand as far as 10 in the next dozen or so turns. We should retake the food lead in due course, and that will pull along our economy with it.
Overall, it was a *VERY* good pair of turns for us here. We can declare the misnamed "Operation Krondor" a success!
