[SPOILER] Willem II of England

[Nakor]

Happy new year to you to, Gaspar!

I'll be away most of the day, so don't have a lot of time for Civ.
Tomorrow or maybe tonight I'll be able to so some writing/thinking about how to proceed after the settler.

Laterz!

[Gaspar]

No time for a real follow-up here, just to say the turn came in, it was played. Warrior moves N, Jol & Hiddink continue chopping. AH officially in, research on to Pottery which will come in a turn quicker after we grow this turn and start working the gold mine. Once we get city 2 up, we will need approximately 57 more workers. Our GNP is artificially inflated by researching Pottery with the pre-req bonus, though maybe its me, and I haven't played a ton of quick games, but boy, does our tech pace seem really fast. Does the fact that the game thinks this on duel size increase tech pace? I'm pretty sure Huge maps have slower tech to balance the extra cities, so it would make sense if duel meant faster tech. Does that also mean higher maintenance costs? I really need to play more games that aren't standard/standard in SP. Is there a lurker or T-hawk out there who can confirm if I'm reading too much into this? (This is what happens when you play a turn a day, btw, Gaspar obsesses over silly things. )

Sadly, we jumped to first in score this turn as well. That's always bad for diplomacy, so hopefully someone leaps ahead of us quickly!

I believe the warrior comes in at EOT as well, so Bergkamp will get to work on the settler for City 2 next turn, followed by some chops, etc. I believe the settler will take 4 turns to complete, so the workers probably should road towards the new city rather than chop after the first set completes, since we won't be able to get a 2nd chop in before the settler finishes (1 turn to move onto forest + 3 turns chopping.)

Anyway, I'll SS Demos next turn, since we haven't shown those to the lurkers recently, and maybe if I'm really bored tomorrow, I'll do some C&D.

[Nakor]

I'll be away all thay again, so I won't be able to reply earlier then tomorrow.

I agree that we need more workers, but they'll come after the next settler. Let's not build to much warriors, just get the copper connected and build axes for defense/offense.

I think we should build another worker after the settler and send the first two with our settler and 2 warriors to our next city site to connect the copper.

Being first in score at this stage is not really a problem, I think...

[Gaspar]

Turn came in late, after Whovus sent us the wrong save initially. I also briefly gchatted with them about trying to find Malakai's warrior, nothing worth relaying here, though we're long overdue to reply to Malakai, so I'll do that next.

The turn was fairly mundane, Feyenoord 3 was trained and began heading towards the site of city 2. Chops came in and were applied to a settler, which will complete in 4 turns. Feyenoord 1 continued exploring northwards in hopes of meeting the Civ above/below Whovus. Next turn the workers should move towards roading to City 2. I took a SS of the demos at the EOT, after Pottery came in, so our GNP is back down to normal levels after our accelerated Pottery rate from double pre-req research. Writing will take 3 turns - we're getting 2 bonus commerce from our trait, but mainly, gold mine starts are just awesome. This is actually about as sexy as Financial will be all game - no rivers means cottage spam is not as nice as normal. Still, we're clearly the tech leader. We're up 12 points on the next team in score, which is overwhelmingly like 2 techs. Though it does make me wonder if someone else is closer to having their first city up. With all the forests, we probably won't see city 2 until turn 28 if my math is right. The growth will explode I'd guess around turn 50 or so, once we get 2-3 cities up with a minimum of two workers per, we can just start chopping the hell out of the place. The question will be whether we can diplomatically keep folks happy long enough to keep our borders safe, since we'll have to run very light on military to make that happen.

Here's those Demos:


Not a lot interesting. We're tops in soldier points, which tells us only that nobody else has used the forests to chop for a rush, other than that our tech and military builds have been fairly typical. Someone is getting higher crop yield than us, which would indicate working a 3rd food tile instead of the goldmine. While I think early food is more important than GNP, I don't see how you can ignore a 3H8C tile, its effectively the commerce of a 2nd palace. While I normally prefer getting to size 4 before going crazy with the settler builds, I think the combination of the quality of Irrigated corn, goldmine, Oasis and all the forests to chop for extra production makes this a worthy change in plans. The other issue is there's tremendous advantage in getting to Mathematics quickly - we're approximately 12 turns away, though that calculus will change as we'll get city 2 settled in that time, which will be a drain on the commerce, at least until it expands to 2nd ring to work the Oasis.

Perhaps the most interesting piece - there's a Civ at 1000 pop points, meaning they have only a size 1 capital. Either they've been building nothing but workers/settlers, or more likely someone just slaved down to size 1. It'll be very interesting to see how everyone else approaches this weird map, since REX is clearly the only smart play, but I bet we've all taken different approaches to it. Its exceptionally rare that on turn 21 I'd have chopped 3 times already for sure. Its also rare that I'd beeline math *this* hard. Seems the smart play though, but it will be interesting to see if someone decides to call someone else on the obvious REX play and go for early aggression. If I were say, the Zulus on this map, I might well take that approach. Especially since contact will take a while, you could crush someone with a couple of chopped Impi's and the rest of the world might not even know about it until you were already dotmapping their former lands. Fortunately, nobody took Zululand! Though I suppose a couple quick Holkans could do the same trick...

...I wonder if that's why Whovus adopted Slavery so early and if his capital is at size 1 right now, after slaving a Holkan - perhaps that's their approach, to rush us? I can't see it working unless they're really fast. We'll have copper online in ~12 turns, and as soon as we can slave an axe, a Holkan rush is a loser - its not possible for him to bring the 3-4 units fast enough for it to work. I wouldn't put it past them to try it, so we'll have to keep an eye out. While I'm not worried per se, I'd rather not waste the resources defending against that while Kyan chops out another half-dozen Fast Workers and REXs us all to oblivion. Regardless, we should see their graphs next turn, so we'll be able to know what's coming.

Note to Malakai to follow.

[Gaspar]

I just sent this off to Malakai, hopefully you approve!

Emperor Malakai,

Long overdue on the reply here, all apologies, been a busy pair of lads this week, just enough time to play the turns/communicate with each other in the spoiler thread. Anyway, just wanted to address a couple issues. I spoke for a bit with the Crazy Coalition about how to best meet your warrior - you'll want to head south of your current position, I believe they are a turn ahead of you in moving that way, however. We lost visibility on their warrior a couple turns ago. Best of luck in meeting their scouting unit, and hopefully your discussions will be fruitful.

With regards to the map scouting we last showed you, here's a revised version. Take a closer look at the areas you've explored in our lands, I believe the starting squares were mirrored to reduce detection. For example, our southeastern lands are mirrored in Whovus' SW. By that logic, what you see in our NW should be reflected in your NE, though I suppose it could be any quadrant. I'm 99.5% sure I have the idea of the map nailed on correct. The only question, which your map intel helped with greatly, is whether or not there was an "offset" between the squares, so that they aligned in a rigid grid with each Civ equidistant from all others, or if they are as you have indicated, offset. The question now is whether the offset is staggered in all 3 rows, or if the middle row is offset from the two side rows. Though this picture shows the latter, I've noodled on it a bit, and I think it might be the former, meaning all 3 "rows" are slightly offset from the next row over. We'll know when we see the position of the lakes north of us. Unfortunately, that's many turns away, since we can't really devote a lot of time/units to scouting, with all these trees!

Anyway, a link here's our latest map theory picture:

What's going on in your neck of the woods? I assume you haven't met anyone else yet, we have not, though our scouting unit is hacking through the many trees in an attempt to meet the Civ north of Whovus. I assume after you encounter Whovus you'll aim to meet whomever is south of us? Interesting that none of us seem to have met Kyan, Gingereagle or Tredje yet. You'd think odds are one of them would have stumbled upon your borders by now.

Vriendelijke groeten,
Co-Trainers Nakor and Gaspar

[Nakor]

Took a look at the save. Things are looking great!

I suggest we road NE of Bergkamp and move east from there over the sheep and copper. It might be a plan to use the southern worker to chop E of Bergkamp before helping to road. The chop can go into a third worker after the settler. After that we can slave out that granary and hopefully build a Library between workers/settlers.
Our second city should focus on axes after the Granary, I think.

Writing in 3t. Research is going great!

Got a reply from Malakai:

Nakor and Gaspar,

No worries, we all have lives apart from civ, I completely understand and hope you will feel the same if any of my diplomatic messages are delayed as well

With regards to meeting the crazy empire....well from what I understood when we first spoke about this, their warrior was on the eastern border of your city and mine was on the western. Both were going to head around your city and mid somewhere around the southern border of your culture? (this meant we were both heading directly towards the other and there could be no misunderstandings). I am unsure why this current and sensible plan seems to have changed and considering that both his and my units move the same speed it makes no sense at all to go chasing him through the forests (if he is heading south i would never meet him til he stops or reverses direction)....why is he now heading directly away from my warrior to the south?

Please can you let him know my location and that I am going to continue to head east along your southern border if he 'actually' still wants to meet me, it is him that changed the plan to something nonsensical without discussion or thought and I am not changing my plans to match with his crazy theme. If I have not met him or been given any updates on him closing in on my position by the time I come to your south eastern corner I am going to continue on a south easternly trojectory following roughly the same angle as I took to find your city and see if I can find any more civs. (not met anyone other than you so far).

I would like to thank you once more for aiding in my communication with whosit, I do not understand what game he thinks he is playing but it certainly is not your fault that he keeps moving the 'goalposts' so to speak and if he fails to respond in a positive manner then I will not expect you to chase the matter any further. Many apologies for any inconvenience that his madness may have caused to you.

Thank you for your most recent image, I can confirm that your NW lands actually match with my SW, so if there is some kind of "rotation" here then it seems your lands are a 90 clockwise of my own, or to look at it from your perspective my lands are 90 anti clockwise of yours

I should be able to give more confirmation on this soon, as my warrior heads into the south eastern area of your lands, in thoery this should match up with the north eastern area of my own?

I will of course let you know if I manage to meet anyone else, to be honest your lands seem to be magnetically drawing interest from all around, the three of us only know of our meetings and both myself and whosit me you in your lands lol. So maybe I will met others wandering aimlessly around your lands searching for whatever drew us here

Kind regards

Emperor Malakai

[Gaspar]

Yeah, the tech pace is excellent. Not sure how much longer it will keep up, but if we have Mathematics somewhere around T32, I will be ecstatic. That should be a real production advantage over anyone who didn't make that play.

With regards to the build plan, I don't know that we need a granary/library in the capital just yet. I think I'd wait until we're close to a 3rd city going up to take the capital off worker/settler production. I'd agree that the 2nd city should be working mostly on military, though we need sometime in the next 50 turns to really take a hard look at our lands and figure out what our military pump city can be. I like to have one city build pretty much nothing but units, and since Bergkamp is a nice hybrid, I think city 2 as a military pump followed by perhaps city 3 on the lake as a commerce city might be the best play. I do generally like to expand more circularly, but I think Whosit is going to move to seal our border quickly, and I'd rather not give up that lake site.

By the same token, I think Malakai will also expand in our direction simply because its the only border he knows. However, perhaps we can avert that option with diplomacy? Our early entreaties seem to have earned some trust, and he's clearly over-reading my emails and is extremely irritated with Whosit's warrior taking the path it did. In fairness, we did tell Whosit the proper direction to get to Malakai's warrior, so I'm not sure why he took a different direction. I don't know that I'd get all that frustrated about it, however. Regardless, if it drives him more closely to us, that can only work to our advantage. Perhaps we can come up with a reply to Malakai that encourages him to settle in a direction other than ours, so we can focus on sealing our eastern border first?

[Gaspar]

Turn played, followed your plan for the workers, Jol will road next turn, Hiddink will chop. Feyenoord 1 hits area outside of Whosit's box this turn, so we'll have to keep an eye out for repetition. Pottery in, research onto Writing in 3. We also get graph visibility on Whosit this turn, so we'll have to switch to Malakai next turn.

Other than that, no new info. No new contacts, no new nothing.

[Nakor]

Maybe next turn then...

[Gaspar]

Turn came in, played, nothing happened. Settler's due in 2, as is Writing. Jol started roading, Hiddink started chopping. After the Settler is done, we'll move on to another Worker. Have to make some decisions after that, but I think getting City 3 up and running as quickly as possible should be the priority. We'll have to decide which City that should be as well, getting the Horses up is a priority, as is moving out towards our borders. Perhaps we should revisit the dotmap as well, now that we have greater map knowledge?