[SPOILERS] Athlete and Lewwyn are SHAKA OF THE VIKINGS

[T-hawk]

Maybe this is a bug where the game thinks that the forge bonus was in effect for your overflow hammers, causing them to be adjusted back from 38 to 30 even though the forge was obviously not in effect prior to its own completion.

Yes, this is normal behavior and always happens when completing a forge or other hammer multiplier building.

[athlete4life10]

I'm not in OR and the overflow will be applied to a Trading Post.

I don't believe I understand the responses mainly because my 38 hammers are all base production aren't they? None of what I did included any +25% bonus from the forge but if this is normal behaviour than OK. I guess I should have completed the mine/chop after the forge was completed and worked it then.

[novice]

I guess I should have completed the mine/chop after the forge was completed and worked it then.

I guess so. I've always thought I could get a head start on using my forge by creating overflow. Too bad you had to be the one to correct me... I guess it's fair enough when you're aware of it - chops are better spent after the forge has completed.

[athlete4life10]

So I got a couple of e-mails yesterday which I'm just responding to now.

The first is from The Reverend Doctor of Babylon:

Still no turn (sorry about that... I guess Jowy left for the weekend too!) but wanted to shoot you an email.

You'll probably gain control of both gems eventually, even my creative trait can't beat 1st ring culture. Think I could get first dibs on trading for one of 'em? If I research calendar before you I'll be awash in those resources.

Barbs pickin up on your end too? The axes have started a mini invasion over on the left side of the island. Guess I can't expect to have nothing pillaged with raging barbs on...

Regards,
James (the reverend)

And my repsonse:

Hey TRD,

I was starting to wonder if Diplomacy was even going to happen this game! Maybe just for me as I'm not being very proactive about it this time around...No biggie about the turn as it never made it to you! Doesn't look like we'll get a turn today either /shucks.

I won't mind trading a gems to you at all once I get both hooked up. I'd probably want a calendar happy resource in return as I don't have Calendar as a tech on my short term radar. What kind of time frame are you looking at before you have Calendar?

As for barbs their definitely still being a nuisance. I'm sorry to say it but I'm glad somebody else is finally having to fight some barbs. I've been held back a lot because of them!

How's things shaping up for you overall? For me, apart from being deadlast (and for a while at that) think I'm doing OK. The game is fun if not entirely what I was expecting/wishing for but I'm not entirely pleased to see India start to run away (I'm so sick of India the civ, nothing against Seven!) but I guess that's how it goes.

Until next time,

Athlete
Shaka Of The Vikings

Depending on when he gets Calendar I might be close to declaring war...but can't hurt me to do the deal for the short term.

[athlete4life10]

And Nakor of Byzantium, to me:

Hey athlete,

/edit out the personal stuff...

Now, let's talk a bit about this game.

What are you up to? Easy question.
You've been dead last in score almost all game, so you're either playing some grand trick, or things aren't going that well.
Are you building an army of Berserkers and head for me or TRD? Sure hope one of them is not the case...

Lot's of barbs around, pretty bothersome. Keeps me from expanding faster, but new cities must be founded soon, or I'll loose contact with everyone.

Care to share some information on the others?

Hope to hear from you soon!

Cheers,
Nakor

And my response:

Hey Nakor,

/edit out personal stuff...

As for the game I don't think things are all that terrible but they're definitely not great! I had some major issues with Barbs really early and as the game progresses, it's just highlighting how much it set me back. I don't really think I'm that much worse then the others in skill level in the game! Anyways, I doubt you'd need to worry about Beserkers. They're not around the corner anytime soon and you're not exactly close to me either. Your not very desireable as a target for me.

I don't know if I have a lot to share about the others apart from my border with Babylon seems to have formed naturally. I would have liked to take a barb city that he got early on but the barbs holding me back means he got to it first. No big deal really. I really haven't put much effort into diplomacy this game as it just isn't fun for me. I'd have thought Jowy would try and use his Praets but it appears to me his largely missed his window of opportunity. Or atleast his major window. They're still good right now but I'd expect you to have atleast one of HBR or Construction and with atleast one of those you should be able to hold your own. With LB's on his other side he's kind of missed it hasn't he?

Seven is going to run away with those Great Lighthouse Trade Routes but nobodies really in a position to do anything about it and I don't exactly fancy organizing or participating in any big dogpile this go around so c'est la vie I suppose. So what are your thoughts?

Athlete
Shaka Of The Vikings

[athlete4life10]

Well I expect to get a turn at some point tonight. In the meantime I've had 3 e-mails come in today.

First from Nakor:

Hey Athlete,

/edit out personal stuff

Regading the game... tell me about those barbs... you need an army to escort a settler these days. The Middleland is spawning barbs like crazy. Good for XP, but troublesome when you want to expand...
Good to hear those berserkers won't cross the island to look for my cities.

I'm not to worried about Jowy, I should be safe soon if things go correct and then I can expand without worrying about Preats.
Seven seems like a nice guy, as does TRD. Time will tell, I guess.

Cheers,
Nakor

From Jowy:

Hey Athlete!

Just wondering how's the catching up going on? Stats show you're making some progress!
So uh, congrats buddy! Maybe you'll fill me in on the details lol.

~ Jowy

My response to Jowy:

I don't know if I'm catching up or not but I think I wasn't the last to 6 cities which is a first for me! You're the only one out to 7 so congrats on that! As for the details you can read my thread when the games over . If I don't get some libraries up soon though I'm going to take some serious hurting. Apart from that, I think I'm in a decent posiition. How's things over on your end? I think we might end up getting Seven squished a little bit which will hopefully slow him down as those Great Lighthouse routes are going to throttle him ahead tech wise so if we can keep him behind in land/cities that will be good.

What do you think?

Athlete
Shaka Of The Vikings

And lastly I received one from TRD:

Hey bud,

Sorry for the delay in responding, I was hoping to just send the save along with my next email (I do have it now though, just have to wait to get home from work... so expect the save tonight before 10:00p).

Yeah I don't have an actual ETA for calendar, I just figured I might be getting there before you do (I have an abundance of calendar resources for sure).

Re: the barbs. This delay has been painful, there was a barb poised to attack one of my units and I've gone almost a week without knowing if I won!

Yeah India is getting a good rep from all these games at Realms Beyond, at least our normal speed game equalizes the power of the fast worker a little bit (although normal speed messes with me when I look at where civs in other games are relative to me at the same number of turns).... you should probably go attack your southerly neighbor when you get some berserkers going

Regards,
The Reverend Doctor

[athlete4life10]

Here's something that I noticed when I replayed T94 earlier and forgot to upload. We have Iron on our starting island. Seven completed this on T95 which I played tonight.

[athlete4life10]

And here's a look at really the only thing that went on during T95.

Bobby Clarke killed the axe that was on the Quarry and Hextall took out a warrior to get to 10xp now. One more axe incoming (for the moment) as you can see.

[athlete4life10]

Well first off what's gone on with the barbs:

I decided to move Brent Seabrook to help cover cause a bad dice roll causing 3 workers to be lost would really really suck!

Now onto my cities. Had a few builds complete at EOT 96 so here we go.

Charlottetown:

Just completed a worker. I'll probably build an axe next, then mix up some military units before starting a settler at size 8. After the settler completes I'm thinking of building the Collossus here.

Fredricton:

As you can see I've just triple whipped the Forge to completion. I shall slow build a chariot while growing again. After that I'll be chop building a library with a probable 2-pop whip to overflow onto a military unit. I'm flirting with the idea of putting Stonehenge here and building a temple to force a priest after I get my engineer (due in Halifax on T130 - I think).

Halifax:

And I've just completed the Trading Post here. As you can see I've also got the engineer hired now. I've actually got 1T into a cottage on the grass tile 1N of the city so by the time Halifax grows again I believe I'll have the cottage finished. The other grass tile is 1SE, 1E of the city I believe contains Iron. Hopefully it does as a few more hammers here would be awesome.

Montreal:

And another Trading Post has just been completed. Montreal will start immediately onto a Forge. I'm not certain as to when it's going to be whipped though it definitely will be. I think I shall try and 2-pop whip it at it's earliest chance but that could change.

Niagara Falls:

Here is where it's going to be fun. On T97 I shall complete the cottage that has 6T invested into it giving me 30H and I shall complete the chop that has 2T invested in it giving me another 30H. I shall have about another 30 - 40 H invested into the forge by slow building it come T100 and I shall chop another 30H into it on T100. Immediately after the forge I shall get a worker from here, perhaps by chopping (could potentially be a 1T worker with only 1 chop). Then slow build an aqueduct and then a settler. I shall probably 2-pop whip the settler for some overflow onto The Hanging Gardens and chop the rest of it. That should give me 8 cities on the mainland + my 2 on my island.

Ottawa:

Once the gems are hooked (T98-) up I shall work them and the grass/hill/mine until the granary completes, then move onto a Library while working the farmed Sugar and mined Gems.

[athlete4life10]

Jowy to me:

Hey Athlete,

Congrats on the achievement I'm good here, just the paranoia of my neighbours makes me uncomfortable, though it's justified. SS is running out of land, which is good for the rest of us. He has seemed a bit hostile lately, perhaps he wants to expand towards Rome once our NAP runs out.

~ Jowy

We had a quick chat on g-chat last night (morning for him). Discovered his NAP with India is done shortly (probably T100). I don't know if Seven plans to go to war with him or not but I think he might be relying on my gold to get him to construction or another key tech. I'm definitely gonna slip in Iron Working prior to Currency...possibly construction as well though doing that will probably be detrimental to me. I could use the extra trade routes as well! I'm just not in a rush to pay off that money.

And got an e-mail from Seven today I think (popular guy, I am, the last 48 hours ):

Hey athlete,


Just want to check how everything's going. (If you can even remember, with how long the save has been taking...)


I'm founding a couple more cities but I'm no longer claiming any new food resources in doing so. (I can't see any!) Ah well. Things are just plodding along I guess. Would you be interested in trading for an incense once I get calendar? (It'll still be a while.)


Seven

My response:

Hey Seven,

Things are going as well as can be expected I think. I'm not sure but I think I'm going to start making some headway in the demographics/graphs soon. Atleast I hope so!

I don't think I've seen any incense near my land so I could probably use some. I don't think I'm going to have anything to offer to you though. We shall see when the time comes. Are you close to getting calendar?

Athlete
Shaka Of The Vikings