Kyan + Refsteel = Peter + India. Clearly. [SPOILERS]

[Kyan]

Oh, also, thanks to Oracle, Ephesus' borders pop next turn- hence pasturing.

[Twinkletoes89]

Lol Oracle for Metal Casting, sounds familiar after all the times either you or I have done it!

[Kyan]

Lol Oracle for Metal Casting, sounds familiar after all the times either you or I have done it!

Yep and with gems and gold at the capital, the extra happy is more than welcome too!

I'm doing a full update this evening!

[Kyan]

Capital:



Next turn i put 1t into a settler and then whip. I have a chop i can put in next turn also if required. If not i can leave this til later without losing a worker turn. Overflow and chops will go into another settler.



I have THREE chops coming in next turn (improving the cows and sheep in the process.) so will use these to get another worker out. Once worker is built, i intend to build another using the whip.

Exciting news at last!



Contact! Unsure if that's Whovus or Malakai bleeding through the fog but there's only one way to find out! I would prefer Malakai as he has been fairly easy to deal with diplomatically in pbem4.

[Kyan]

We have met Malakai of Korea. Definitely preferential to Whovus!

I sent him a 'hi, we have contact. i'll get you a full message shortly but hope you're well' message along with the turn and received this in response:

Greetings Kyan,

What an interestingly named warrior you have there! Well I do hope that there are not too many bears to the south where you have approached from. Am I to assume this is the direction that your land lies in?

In the interests of good diplomatic relations I can confirm I have already met the following

Nakor / Gaspar who lay to my south east
Whovus of the crazy empire who lay to the north east of Nakor/Gaspar

I am yet to meet Tredge, who I believe lays to my North East
or
GingerEagle, although I believe I have a warrior in Ginger Eagles lands who are to the SE of Nakor/Gaspar.

I look forward to hearing from you in due course.

Regards

Emperor Malakai
of the Korean Empire

Very friendly! DEFINITELY DEFINITELY DEFINITELY better than Whovus'. Malakai could be a great neighbour.

My response:

Emperor Malakai,

We meet once again my friend and it appears we are neighbours once more also (and no having to remove Cull first!).

I'm glad to have bumped into you actually, as my first contact no less, as we seem to have an understanding in PBEM4. I hope we can duplicate it here! After all, you are playing Lizzie of Korea- i somehow doubt ancient age warfare, especially in these forests, is on your agenda. To that end, i'm not going to automatically offer you a NAP as i feel one is unneccessary. However, if you would like one anyway, i'll have no problem signing it

It is incredibly nice of you have helped direct me to everyone! I guess i've been slacking on the scouting front. My theory on the map was a patchwork grid. I presume you had a large area revealed to you at the start of the game also (if not, me and Ruff are going to have to have words!). I feel like i owe you one now though so if you can think of a way to repay the favour, please let me know.

I am directly south of you but there's a long way between us so i can't see borders becoming an issue. My first city build was away from you and whilst my next will be north- it will only be 1 tile outside my culture which is a million miles away from you.

Your friend,

Kyan
Co-Representive for
Lord Chamberlain's Men

Hope you approve! I have also decided to delay slavery by a few turns in order to double-revolt to OR at the same time. I've hired 2 scientists at Ephesus which will give us a Great Person in 3 turns. 60/40 in favour of scientist over prophet. Come on dice, don't let me down!

[Kyan]

Will do a proper update next turn but am short on time. We met a scouting warrior of Nakor/Gaspar in the west ( Gakor / Naspar? I'm going to end up calling them Gaycore and Nascar if im not careful) and send them the following:

Good evening chaps!

Well, i presume it's evening where you are as i'm assuming your dutch? Anyhoo, just a quick hello as it appears my scouting warrior has stumbled upon you this turn. There's not a lot to say really at this stage of the game but i can tell you that i've met Korea as i'm aware you also have. My scouting efforts have been pretty poor thus far but my units haven't been particularly lucky regarding the wildlife! My scouts are going M.I.A. all the damn time. I'm beginning to wonder if there's some hidden utopia somewhere that they're all buggering off to hah. The bastards

If there's anything i can do to help you in anyway, just let me know and i'll also keep you in the loop if i find anyone else. If you do the same, that'd be great but i'm not going to force words in your mouth- it's your civ

Yours,

Kyan
Co-Advisor for
Lord Chamberlain's Men

I'm pretty sure our titles just changed again. Oh well. Hehe.

[RefSteel]

We have met Malakai of Korea. Definitely preferential to Whovus!

Doesn't mean we and Whovus aren't neighbors, of course; see below.

Hope you approve!

I approve by definition! Just to make them clear, here are our official roles for this game:

Kyan: Make all diplomatic decisions and all other final decisions for that matter; perform all diplomacy; play all turns (except maybe in case of vacation when RefSteel can substitute a bit).

RefSteel: Suggest names for units and cities; offer advice that may or may not be even approximately sane; post silly-looking pictures that mostly at least come from the right game; theorize about things we can't possibly know for sure yet; make jokes that may or may not be funny.

That seems a fair division of labor, right?

[RefSteel]

Some more notes:

1) Assuming the unnamed warrior near Bohemia-to-be is going to be the city garrison, we should name him Archidamus (the first Bohemian character to speak in The Winter's Tale). If he's going to explore, he can be Cleomenes.

I have also decided to delay slavery by a few turns in order to double-revolt to OR at the same time. I've hired 2 scientists at Ephesus which will give us a Great Person in 3 turns. 60/40 in favour of scientist over prophet. Come on dice, don't let me down!

2) If I'm reading this correctly, our odds of our first GP being a scientist should actually be a coin flip, where the prophet gets the edge. If he's a prophet, what should we do with him? Settle in the capital? Save him a few turns and lightbulb Theology? Build a shrine? (I think I'd settle him, for what it's worth....) Also note that Judaism was just FiDL this past turn.

I'm pretty sure our titles just changed again. Oh well. Hehe.

3) If you want, our "short name" can be King's Men - or we can just make that our civ's name after we adopt HR.

4) We're second in total power. Partly, this is due to Metal Casting, but even so ... we're a couple of pacifists, we've built the world's first Wonder, we have a holy city and will soon have our first GP, we were the first to two cities, and lead the world in every economic category ... and we also have the second-most-powerful army! I'd love to take credit for this somehow, but ... there's only so much skill required. Playing as Expansive India on an all-forests map just isn't fair to the other teams.

5) If Dion (survives and) defogs a few more tiles to the west (or northwest or southwest) I might be figure out what ~2/3 of the entire map looks like, to the exact tile. In some ways, that's kind of cool. In other ways, it's kind of depressing. I have to admit, I'm a fan of Sullla's non-mirrored, non-equal, imperfect maps. Exploration is more encouraging and rewarding that way, and (as this map reveals; see point 3 above) identical/mirrored starts are not actually balanced.

6) I'm going to have to participate even less going forward, for various Real Life™ reasons. I'll still follow along, and I'll contribute when I can, but I can't write the equation for Life vs. Game because I don't have enough > signs to put between them.

[RefSteel]

Elaborating on note 5, above: Check out what Antigonus is seeing south of Korea.



Now check out some of what we know about our own south.



If you noticed it's a mirror image, give yourself three points. Korea's capital looks to be exactly 19 tiles north of ours, and they founded their first city ~eastward (as did we, except that the tiles they chose are mirrors of the ones to our west). If the directions we received from Korea are broadly correct, it probaly means the map looks something like this, with toroidal wrap:



That's slightly inelegant - there should really be only three tiles (there are four) between the "revealed" 15x15 squares for symmetry - but it's also most likely correct. Note that this would mean Korea is our neighbor both to the north AND the south - but there would be 72 water tiles out there somewhere, so about a third of them might well be forming a mini-sea south of us and north of Korea if Ruff didn't want the border-on-both-sides thing to be quite so absolute.

Alternatively, Korea might be mistaken about some players' locations. A map with cyllindrical wrap would be much more elegant:



There would still be 72 water tiles, which might be anywhere. (Maybe ~circular seas at the corners where four civs come together?) My guess is that we're dealing with the Toroidal version though. (Given sufficient WB skill and/or time-on-one's-hands, one could create a 38x57 "duel" map and test it at Prince difficulty with first toroidal and then cyllindrical wrap, placing two cities of in the positions (and with the sizes) of The Globe and Ephesus and check maintenance costs against those in the real game to find out for sure which one, if either, is right.) A flat map is also possible of course, but given what Korea has said, I seriously doubt it.

One other possibility: We might have a toroidal map laid out sort of like the cyllindrical image above, but more extensive to north and south, with the southern/northern-most parts of the map comprising a sea that wraps all the way around the world east to west. That would be the most fun and elegant of the three options in my opinion, but I'm not holding my breath.

[RefSteel]

Wheeee! An update! Sort of!

I opened up the save (note I don't play the turns; I just see them come in and observe the situation before our turn properly begins; this is usually out-of-date by the time I see it, as Kyan has played the turn and sent on the save) and was greeted by the message, "The enemy has been spotted near Bosworth Fields!" (Apparently Bosworth Field multiplied. Hmmmmm....) Here's then enemy in question:



Note that our only unit in the area is an injured Woody 1 Warrior! OH NOES WHATEVER SHALL WE DO H37PU5P73453!!1!1!!

Note also that the city is building an axe BUT ON NOES IT WILL TAKE SEVEN MORE TURNS AND WE CAN'T EVEN WHIP IT CUZ BF = SIZE 1 OHNOOHNOOHNOWAITISTHISPRONOUNCEDNUNUNUNUNUNOWWHAT'SGOINGONWITHTHESERUNTOGETHERWURDZ?!?!

Ahem.

So those two Fworkers hanging out under Dion already pre-chopped the forest last turn, so it's now a 1-turn chop. What I would do therefore is have one of them complete the chop into a granary(!) - completing it right away since we're expansive - while the other moves to the wheat and starts chopping (and Dion spends a turn healing in place, to 1.7). Then if the barb has moved to threaten the city, both Fworkers can chop the wheat into the axe, completing it just in time to kill the barb. We can also move Dion into the city next turn if this is the case, thereby increasing the odds of the city's survival from 99.99+% to 100%. Note that we also have just produced an axe up in Bohemia, which will be able to intercept the barb long before it reaches any of our other cities or tile improvements, should it proceed in that direction.

Of course this takes a risk: If more barbs come out of the fog next turn right around Bosworth Field, we'll regret not chopping the axe out this turn. Frankly, that's a risk I'm willing to take, but YMMV.

Anyway, in Empire-Wide news, we've now got four cities and are in Slavery/OR, but still have no state religion. Oh, and we won the Great Person die roll and now have an Academy in The Globe. We've got an unnamed Fworker on a sugar tile (I disapprove of chopping the sugars when it will be some time before we can improve them, but that's just micro obssessiveness) who should hopefully be called Cobweb soon, and another one mining a hill nearby who will hopefully soon be named Moth. Yeat another is about to complete at Ephesus who might be named Peaseblossom. Bohemia features a nameless Warrior, whom I'd name Archidamus. It also features an axe, whom I'd name Cleomenes if he's going to go off exploring someplace, or Dogberry if he's going to stay around home fighting barbs. (Dogberry is the Constable from Much Ado About Nothing, and a highly [cough] appropriate choice for "policing" our civ.) When the new axe is produced from Bosworth Field(s) he can be called Dull (the constable from Love's Labor's Lost) since he's sure to be on barb duty.