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Twinkletoes89 · April 28th, 2011, 14:18

I've been much too slack updating this thread - I guess losing my super laptop knocked me off my stride considerably.

Maybe I should think of a gimmick like my prediction competition or guess the themes & see if I can get the lurkers in. Maybe hold some kind of werewolf thing lol!

Turns have slowed a little bit due to various Easter trips and occasions for all players, but we are now into the thirties.

I will be settling a city for copper next turn which has the clams & cows NW of the capital on the coast. Will get a picture up soon.

My major predicament is this.

I am thinking about whether the Oracle is really worth it. I could use the chops & hammers & expand out via the capital & working the floodplains & corn whilst building something like Stonehenge in copper city which would be a much bigger boost for my expansion as I would never need monuments.

If I can really churn out some settlers with no barbs - get Archery & some Skirmishers & I could be in a better position than spending so much capital on an Oracle push.

If only I had a ded-lurker to tell me what to do. Right now I'm leaning towards avoiding the Oracle & going for the Henge & some more settlers.

Lets see how it goes! Pictures soon!

Twinkletoes89 · April 28th, 2011, 14:41

Long skype chat with Piet - agreed on a settling agreement for our land (yes I know that pictures needed soon!).

I will put a copy of the agreement here so I can't forget it!

Quote:NAP - until T80 - then rolling with 5 turn cooldown

Settling agreement - No city can be settled where the BFC will go over the 'wet rice line'.

Settling agreement renegotiated T70

Espionage - graphs & no more

Twinkletoes89 · May 17th, 2011, 15:16

Right guys, its been much too long without a proper update so I think I should show you all what i've been up to!

Here is a picture of my lands at the end of the last turn.

As you can see, I am now at 3 cities, just a couple of turns after JKaen and constructed Stonehenge in MakinYourMindUp a couple of turns ago. Ioan rocketed through to the Oracle to take Monarchy - a little bit of a waste but makes me glad I hardly bothered!

Stonehenge was pretty cheap with the copper and it would help me in my expansion so I decided to take a punt and it worked perfectly. Will help LoveShineALight pop its borders quickly and will help me secure the land on my side of the divide with Piet, especially as I'll be settling on the line a lot sooner than he will.

My next city will be on the eastern floodplains to secure the Gems. Thanks to weedling a screenshot out of Piet, I now know that the plains tile marked 'C' has horses on it, so I shall move the site 1E to pick up the rice and also to gain the health bonus of settling on the river.

Once the workboat is done in MakinYourMindUp, it shall start churning out much needed workers (I have only 2 currently - both roading under the rice tile) with an axe or two should I not be able to secure a NAP with JKaen and truly REX in peace.

Diplo-wise I have pulled off a little bit of a coup with Piet.

He is well on his way to building the Great Lighthouse and I've managed to get a few concessions out of him so I would agree not to compete for it even though I was never going to build it anyway!

In return for non-competition I will receive upon establishment of a trade connection:

50 turns of free Wheat,
20 turns of free Sugar (must give 5 turns notice)
Plus he shall spread Buddhism to 4 cities within 30 turns of me supplying the initial missionary.

Open Borders will only be established once the trade connection is made so he gets no early trade route bonuses before I get my stuff in return.

The other bonus of this is that if I see fit, I would be able to pretty much unofficially keep our NAP going for much longer than was previously agreed. He can't declare war without breaking at least the 50 turn wheat agreement and probably the sugar too, so take the T80 NAP and make it at least 20 odd turns longer.

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I also secured this NAP with Ioan:

Quote:The NAP between our nations shall be in force until the end of Turn 75. There shall then be a 'cool-down' period of 5 turns where all conditions can be re-negotiated.

For the purpose of transparency, 'aggression' is defined as:

- Settling within 3 tiles from the others borders unless agreed by the other party - this is free to be mutually renegotiated as further information is found and an official settling line is drawn.

- Any gifting or trading of military units/gold to a nation which shares borders with the other party unless the other party gives their consent before the gifting/trade has been made
- Either party trading screenshots of the other party's land to a third party.
Transgression of any of the above definitions by one party gives the other party the option of immediately voiding the NAP.
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Other conditions of the NAP are as follows:

- Both parties agree to cease EP spending on each other once mutual graphs have been obtained. Any change to this condition must be mutually agreed. If one party fails to fulfil this, they must first receive a warning from the other party. Should they continue to transgress or do so a second time, the other party has the right to void the NAP.

- Both parties shall Open Borders at the first instance for trade route benefit. Only units with the inability to attack (i.e Scouts/Explorers or Workboats) bay enter the other party's borders. Any other units which enter the other's borders without the prior consent of the other party will be deemed as an aggressive move. In this instance, the first turn of transgression shall result in a warning, a second transgression will result in the voiding of the NAP along with the offending unit banned from entering the borders of the other party for a period of 10 turns after voiding of the NAP.

- Should either party construct the Great Lighthouse world wonder, the Open Borders agreement can be renegotiated or cancelled by the other party from that point onwards.

Twinkletoes89 · May 17th, 2011, 15:17

Oh and of course, I have changed my naming scheme.

Anyone want to guess it?

novice · June 13th, 2011, 00:51

Twinkletoes89 Wrote:Oh and of course, I have changed my naming scheme.

Anyone want to guess it?

Eurovision song contest winners?

What turn are you up to now, and what's your worker and city count?

Twinkletoes89 · June 13th, 2011, 06:34

Nicely done novice - I was thinking someone would get it by next turn!

I was waiting for next turn (or the turn after) for a full update as I will have settled 2 more cities which should put me as the first guy to 6 cities.

Worker count is a little low (I think roughly 4 or 5 atm) but had to build some axes as my NAP with JKaen (Zulu) was near its end. Luckily he has proposed a pretty large extension to it so I can keep expanding. Am sending a workboat to explore the landmass to my west, with aim of settling there soon.

Twinkletoes89 · June 15th, 2011, 12:51

Ok I promised you all a proper update once I settled my last 2 cities in the last 2 turns, so I shall deliver.

Here is an overview picture of my empire - the first one to reach 6 cities!

[Image: civ4screenshot0004z.jpg]

I settled 'PuppetOnAString' a turn ago and settled 'The Voice' this turn. That pretty much sorts out my border with JKaen, at least for the mainland.

The borders between me and JKaen, Ioan and Piet are starting to be fully established now, so I shall show you each of them and do a quick analysis over everything going on in each sphere.

JKaen

Here is a closer picture of what the JKaen border looks like.

Ignore the 'C' marker 3 south of 'PuppetOnAString' as it was put there long before I knew where JKaen was and have just forgotten to delete it!

JKaen has a settler under that fortified Impi and so will likely settle a city there next turn. The auto-monument from the Henge should give me initial control over the tiles we shall share, including that peak tile which should give me some very good visibility into his lands in case of hostilities.

'The Voice' is building a worker simply as I don't have enough and it will not have massive worker labour for a while that growth will be much more useful. 3 of my 5 workers are mainly getting a FP cottage up and then hooking up the Iron by 'PuppetOnAString' before even thinking of moving over there. There is 1 worker finishing a road to 'The Voice' though, so it will soon be hooked up to our network at least.

In terms of diplomatic contact, he has dropped his roleplay (thankfully) and has now become a decent, friendly person to deal with. We have just signed a 50 turn NAP extension to take us to around T125. No Impi rushes to worry about. Not sure how the whole map is, but it does worry me a bit that he may be only bordering me and so could be pressed to conflict with me out of later necessity.

Piet

Here is the border with Piet:

As the picture shows, the border 'line' is the rice and all tiles on the same vertical column. By settling there before him, I have secured the rice for myself and he is now rushing to settle on the hill 2E of the rice just so that my culture doesn't become too dominant I guess. You can see his culture already creeping towards the line so we shall soon have our trade connection so I can get the resources he has agreed to give me previously.

You can see to the north the culture of Ioan also, and so my one other city planned for the Piet border will also provide a land border with Ioan should I get there before his culture is too dominant (C2a). The settler being built in Waterloo may end up going that way before (C1) should I decide it to be the more pressing concern.

Diplomatically it has been very friendly with Piet. We talk on skype maybe once a week just to keep in touch and have a pretty open exchange of info and are building a relatively strong bond. Could be a very useful ally for me.

Ioan

Here is the other (water) border with Ioan:

Putting Stonehenge in 'MakinYourMindUp' has really paid off here. I wish I could say that this was all planned in advance but it has pretty much paid off as a lucky unforeseen bonus. I have established cultural dominance over some of his coastline, and with C1 possibly settled very soon along with another border pop for 'MakinYourMindUp' due in 3 turns, that dominance could be further improved. If C1 does indeed manage to pinch the crab like I hope it will, then it will make settling on the coast very unattractive and difficult for Ioan and will mean I am more secure from any naval attacks and can focus more on the tiny land border we may have. The fact that I can clearly see into Mariesti is another really helpful bonus for me, especially while it remains undefended.

I have just completed a workboat in 'MakinYourMindUp' which will head due west and scout out the landmass and see whether I would get a good advantage by settling it early. I cocked up in PBEM 7 by not exploring navally and spotting the juicy continent over the other side, so I want to make sure I know exactly what is out there this time!

By the way, with 2 hills in the BFC - wouldn't C1 be a pretty nice Maoi city?

Diplomatically, not much has happened at all with him. He has had a pretty uneventful war with v8mark which he notified me about but has not updated me about it since. NAP isn't long for this world and may sound him out soon, but if Mariesti remains undefended, I may consider keeping the silence and seeing if I can boat it.

v8mark

No border but for sake of completeness I shall fill you in on our diplo contact. We said hello and mentioned the war. That's it really. So far apart and much more pressing concerns, so nothing really to bother with. Was initially expanding very Kyan-like but thankfully the 'war' with Ioan stopped that and I have now briefly overtaken him. If I have any ideas against Ioan, I may broach the subject of some 'revenge' but we shall see.

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Here's a city view of my 4 more established cities so you can see how i'm doing in terms of city management and tile use. One thing I will say is that I don't think I've made a better decision in RB MP than moving my capital where it ended up!

I have also got some other stuff - military advisor, demos, power graph so my update is truly enlightening. Notice the (lack of) power build up by Ioan and v8mark despite having been in a war together.

In terms of the Demos, I think I'm doing pretty well. I've been top of GNP pretty much consistently thanks to my lovely cottages that will soon be towns. My production is solid along with my crop numbers and my power numbers are keeping up with the average. I am low on population but thats due to whipping and mainly focusing on settlers and some workers. I have a good happy cap so I will soon let everything get growing and I'll catch up.

For the current aims, I am looking at trying to secure the Great Library in Waterloo (if I can) though I will likely divert to Metal Casting for the useful Mints before Literature to make both building wonders & wealth easier. Along with this, I shall be turning 'MakinYourMindUp' and 'BoomBang-A-Bang' into dedicated worker pumps as they both soon reach size 4 so I can really keep improving as I expand. Keeping the peace will be critical to this, especially if I find bounties on the western landmass, but I will still ensure that I am aware of any opportunities there may be for a 'surgical strike'.

Hope this update satisfies you all for a bit while I finish my exams, then hopefully I can make updates like this much more common place instead of letting it tail off again. I hope that my play has improved enough that my updates are no longer classic examples of 'what not to do'!

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