[SPOILERS] The Peaceful Centaur: a Study in Possibility

[Mardoc]

Good turn, and great message Mardoc, thanks. Good idea deleting the doomed scout.

We'll have a great sage before we could work a priest anyway. Whether to work a priest for the next one I'm not sure, but I'm guessing by then we're better off working two cottages than a priest and a farm. I'd highly recommend switching production to a worker soon, because we definately want to have two of them building cottages. Even if it does delay growth to pop 8. We want to be at pop 8 working basically as many cottages as we can get away with.

Yeah, that makes sense. Particularly since we have further to go to upgrade them, we'd best start pronto. I went back and forth on worker, settler, and Temple - this is weird, compared to my Lanun game, having more production than I know what to do with instead of having to always debate which I need now and what can wait.

But I believe a worker is down to a 3-turn build, and a settler's only 5-turns, so we should be able to manage some of all the above.

The idea of our third city being JKaen's capital is certainly tempting, but personally I'd wait until centaurs before trying anything. He's crippled now but he's only going to remain crippled in the future too. It's a possible reason not to delay horseback riding despite being a long way from Sciz. Although we don't have to fight him, we might be competing with him in cleaning up the vulnerable players fast...

That makes sense. The real problem with moving in now would be holding it afterward, especially in the paranoia sure to result from the score leader killing someone, and of course there being a hostile Mistform around. I will probably go ahead and pop our second dungeon and the graveyard, though, while Jkaen is still holed up in his capital. Baddies have decent odds of going after him instead of us, after all, and a death to barbs would have the same effect for us, but at a much lower diplo cost.

Also this is my Terry Pratchett reference for the day.

What, just one? We should roast you on a turtle for that!

[Mardoc]

[COLOR="Lime"]yes ive been thinking that the world loks like this too, have met
everyone except jkaen now.

we probably shouldnt have any troubles in the close future[/COLOR]

[Mardoc]

Played. Nothing newsworthy except the switch to a worker instead of temple.

[Mardoc]

[COLOR="SandyBrown"]Irgy and Mardoc,

I'll keep this one short, since I don't have much time. Much of the subjects we are talking about can be delayed a bit (I don't think we'll have mana/adepts for the next couple of turns, for example), so I'll only adress the one that I find to be urgent.

I'd like to secure a non-competition pact regarding Runes of Kilmorph. I'd like to get the Holy City! You mentioned earth mana loan + free spreading as payment. I'll gladly accept both these conditions. There's only one problem: I can't spread the religion without open borders. And I'm not sure if I can get cartography in less than 20 turns... Maybe if I add a non-competition agreement regarding another wonder to make up for a delay on spreading the religion? I'd spread it as soon as I get cartography, which can be made into a priority (but 20 turns it's not enough time to get it without severely hampering my tech plan). Then we could get open borders too!

What do you think about it?

Ah, as a side note. Have you heard any comments from other players regarding the RoK religion? If you could share this kind of info with me, I'd be very happy. Especially regarding Dantski. Of course, I'll understand if you prefer to keep this sort of thing just to you guys.

Kind Regards,

Ichabod[/COLOR]

I'm inclined to something in response like this:

[COLOR="Magenta"]Ichabod,

That seems like a perfectly reasonable caveat. Of course, it will be in your interest to spread Kilmorph to us ASAP anyway, to power up your shrine, so I think we can rely on your goodwill that it doesn't take too too long for us to get our spread. Perhaps you'd be willing to grant us a non-compete on Form of the Titan as the trade for a delayed entrance of Kilmorph into the Kuriotate lands?

As it happens, we've heard nothing either way from people on Kilmorph, but we haven't exactly been pushing hard for that knowledge, either, what with our easy access to Prophet points. If we do hear, without any confidentiality clauses, we'll pass it on - after all, no one else has offered us anything for a noncompete .

- Mardoc (and Irgy)[/COLOR]

[NobleHelium]

You're not interested in founding RoK? I'm surprised.

[Mardoc]

You're not interested in founding RoK? I'm surprised.

Mostly our thinking at this point is that yes, of course we're interested - but there's too many other things we'd like to do as well. Founding Order and Empyrean and summoning the Mercurians, for instance. And being able to either defend people against Sciz or help him divide the world. Since we have to give up on something in order to get the rest, we're probably doing well to get concessions for a decision we'd likely make anyway.

PB was able to get a bit of everything - but then, he was up against underdeveloped and Agnostic empires who underestimated him. And he was buddy-buddy with anyone who could logistically hit him, so he could afford to run a complete Farmer's gambit for the longest time, once he convinced Selrahc to go east instead of west.

[Irgy]

IMHO RoK was only ever worthwhile if we could bulb it from a cheap philosophical prophet, but from playing with the test game I noticed three things:
1. By the time we had a temple ready to run the first priest, we'd almost popped a sage already.
2. For the second great person, a priest simply eats up too much food to be really worthwhile.
3. Although we're a little overflowing in hammers right this instant, once we have crafting (for tailor and brewery), and once we want to start building settlers, and certainly once we can build centaurs, we're going to want more production than we've got. The raw cost of the temple, and slowed growth from running a priest, hurt our production too much for my liking.

Without bulbing it, it's just too big a tech detour and not worth racing for.

I'm inclined to something in response like this:

Looks good, just a couple of things. I'm a little worried the last sentence kind of indirectly highlights how silly he is for giving us things just to not compete for something. Also, I'm a little dubious about asking for non-compete on the Form of the Titan. With everything else we want to research I'm not inclined to try and grab the Form anyway, so I wouldn't want to push things by asking for a non-compete on it. Otherwise I agree with all of it, it's very close to what I'd have said as well.

[Mardoc]

Well, part of why I asked for a non-compete on a Wonder is that Ichabod offered that. If you don't think we'll want Form, then I think we should still ask for something - maybe Bone Palace?

[COLOR="Magenta"]Ichabod,

That seems like a perfectly reasonable caveat. Of course, it will be in your interest to spread Kilmorph to us ASAP anyway, to power up your shrine, so I think we can rely on your goodwill that it doesn't take too too long for us to get our spread. Perhaps you'd be willing to grant us a non-compete on the Bone Palace as the trade for a delayed entrance of Kilmorph into the Kuriotate lands?

As it happens, we've heard nothing either way from people on Kilmorph, but we haven't exactly been pushing hard for that knowledge, either, what with our easy access to Prophet points. If we do hear, without any confidentiality clauses, we'll pass it on - after all, an alliance has to start somewhere.

- Mardoc (and Irgy)[/COLOR]

[Azoth]

Hey! I'm still following along, though I'm not posting much: these early turns leave very little to post about! I think picking a Great Scientist over a Prophet was the right call. Founding Runes can give quite an economic boost - 9 gold per turn in a holy city capital with a temple running God-King - but it can't compare to an Academy, especially once you start laying down the cottages. And building the Runes shrine with a second prophet only delays the Academy further.

That said, a non-compete on the Bone Palace is almost worthless. As PB mentioned in his thread, the bonus Golden Age hammers might just about make up for the cost of building the Bone Palace - if you have Marble. (Not to mention, he had four mega-cities to play with while you're stuck with three.) And if you're looking for bonus commerce, there's probably a more efficient option - like the Great Library, at half the cost. But I don't think Ichabod will accept a non-compete on that! (Though you could probably beat him to it either way.) And that's pretty much it for the FFH early game wonders. There's not much else on which you could ask for a non-compete. (The Mercurian Palace gives Iron so there's no need for Mines of Galdur.)

[Irgy]

Well, part of why I asked for a non-compete on a Wonder is that Ichabod offered that. If you don't think we'll want Form, then I think we should still ask for something - maybe Bone Palace?

Bone Palace seems like a better option to me. I'm interested to see whether there's any marble on this map though. It will be worth the hammers at some point though, if that point is a little later than usual because of the lack of marble, well it's all the better to have a non-compete on it with at least one player anyway.

Only thing is, I wonder how soon he's even likely to bother researching Philosophy anyway, I expect it's not really on his tech path.

I'm happy with that message though anyway.


PS Sorry about the double-turn drama. If I'd posted here then it probably wouldn't have happened, so my fault as much as yours. I do appreciate you taking more turns since I'm so limited in time now.