Since Dave is away, the next save has been taken care of.

The settler has been moved to position 1 on the dotmap.

Worker #1 moves to BG by Springfield.

Warrior east to reveal a goody hut and more BG.

Writing is due in 1, turned down science to 90% to get an extra piece o' gold.

And the big news:

The curragh reveals what I think is borders to the west; I had to really stare to make sure. What is the plan here? Feint from another direction or make contact?

And the big news:

The curragh reveals what I think is borders to the west; I had to really stare to make sure. What is the plan here? Feint from another direction or make contact?

Excellent... na i vote for just going up and saying hi... I wonder which team it is... Perhaps the celts?

Looks persian to me, we know where they are they dont know where we are, this could be used to our advantage

The color code bar at the top indicates the civ colors, and our neighbors are probably either the Celts or Greece, probably Greece.

If it is the Celts, we should probably continue on our current path. Writing is due next turn, then philo 10 or so turns after that.

Greece, however, presents several strategic advantages. We could persuade them to let us do the Republic slingshot while they research Mapmaking and Lit. We could probably be in republic by 1500 BC, as opposed to much later without the free jump. We could give them philo and CoL straight up for Maps and Lit, and withhold republic from them until say 1000 BC (much earlier than they could normally get it).

In exchange they would give us their free MA tech, and I think we could dictate to them and tell them to build the Great Library and give us all those free techs until the Middle Ages or until it runs out. They are the best researchers besides us, and would make a good partner. We certainly wouldnt want to attack them anytime soon. We could no doubt take the majority of the other 2 civs' cities with Greece satiated and not giving techs away to the other teams.

Thoughts on the issue? Ive never PBEMed before but I think we could take good advantage of our situation. We have received the next turn, and have until tomorrow at about noon to discuss.

That looks like Greece, and it looks like they're landlocked.

I don't have much PBEM experience, but killercane's plan looks okay.

How much does it cost to make an embassy? Wouldn't it be nice to move one square... make contact, build an embassy, and then move the curraigh away? With any luck they wouldn't know which way we came from.

Thats a good idea but we dont have the gold. Still 10 gold in the bank IIRC.

How much does it cost to make an embassy? Wouldn't it be nice to move one square... make contact, build an embassy, and then move the curraigh away? With any luck they wouldn't know which way we came from.

If we could do that they still get info on our capital's center square and therefore our location. If that is Greece they probility have no gold also so we don't have to worry about the embassy.

Does making an embassy in PBEM give both teams a city view? Or are you saying it reveals our capital's position on the map?

Let's have a full-blown discussion on the strategy before we do anything substantial. To begin with just a "hi how are you, got anything to trade?" will buy a couple of days.

The thing is, if we can convince them to be our research/trade buddy, we will need to change research to CoL right away while we only have one turn invested in philosophy. Are you back in the saddle Dave?

Edit: Did I read somewhere that we can get a time extension for good reasons? That might be a possibility, and perhaps MIA would want one to discuss as well. Just a thought, I dont know if this is a good reason to ask for more time, but we definitely need to discuss things once we make contact.

Does making an embassy in PBEM give both teams a city view? Or are you saying it reveals our capital's position on the map?

Never played a PBEM so I don't know, my post was based on single player when the AI makes an embassy with you.

The thing is, if we can convince them to be our research/trade buddy, we will need to change research to CoL right away while we only have one turn invested in philosophy. Are you back in the saddle Dave?

Edit: Did I read somewhere that we can get a time extension for good reasons? That might be a possibility, and perhaps MIA would want one to discuss as well. Just a thought, I dont know if this is a good reason to ask for more time, but we definitely need to discuss things once we make contact.

We can ask for time but we should not say anything publically about why. This should be obvious but just in case there was anyone who thought it was ok...

I'm not sure it is safe to use the slingshot in this manner. A safer way to handle the slingshot is if one partner researches CoL before the other researches Philo, and trades it so the one getting Philo can choose Republic. Doing it this way you prevent having the other pair of teams get Alpha+Writing+Philo faster than our pair gets Writing+CoL+Philo.

What if the Greeks think they can win Philo on their own? They could tell us to do CoL and do Philo themselves, and then take MM or Lit as the free one and still have a tech lead on us.

I hope we have a vote on the republic sling shot idea.... cause I don't like it. We would go too many turns with our pants down.

I'm not sure it is safe to use the slingshot in this manner. A safer way to handle the slingshot is if one partner researches CoL before the other researches Philo, and trades it so the one getting Philo can choose Republic. Doing it this way you prevent having the other pair of teams get Alpha+Writing+Philo faster than our pair gets Writing+CoL+Philo.


There is no chance that the other teams could beat us to philo without trading for alphabet from us or Greece, and even then, it would be extremely unlikely that they would even try/could do it as they can figure to trade for alphabet and writing from the Alphabet civs.

Philo costs 180 beakers. CoL costs 300. We make 14 beakers per turn right now, with the capital growing in 1. We will probably be making 18-20 beakers in ten turns: scientist in 4 turns at dave's shack, growth in city two, and growth in springfield.

Divying it up between us makes good sense I think, allowing us to get republic in 20 turns assuming Greece can do 15 beakers per turn for the majority of that time (maybe optimistic). The drawback is I think they would want republic right away (which hey, maybe we should give to them anyway? need to discuss this...) and we would have 10 turns of lost research by turning down the lux slider (200 excess gold) which is a mixed blessing. Assuming 5 turns of anarchy, at turn 25 both us and Greece will be in republic, doing 25-30 beakers per turn for lit in 10 for one of us and maps in 12 for the other. We'll call this Plan 1.

Plan 2: We do CoL and Philo, CoL will take us probably 16-17 turns, and philo can be had in 8 I believe (we'll have at least one new city down, perhaps two by the time we start it). So Republic at around turn 25. Greece: Mapmaking and then Lit. Maps (360 beakers) will probably come in for them right before we get to republic, and Lit (300 beakers) maybe 12-14 turns after. So we could get maps and Lit around 35 turns, along with Republic. Similar to the above plan, except we are in republic and Greece is not. With this plan I think we could convince them to build the Great Library, which would waste a lot of their shields but give us the big benefit of free techs that Persia and Greece trade with each other. They might already be planning to build the library. We could also give them republic when we get it for a ridiculous amount of concessions I think. They'll surely pay out the wazoo for it.

Plan 3: Maintain status quo, and take maps as our free tech in 10 turns. CoL would need to be researched (15 turns or so). Republic costs 840 beakers so thats 32 turns at 25 beakers/turn, which is a rate we would not be making in the beginning. Advantages: monopoly on maps, no free techs for anyone. Disadvantages: Republic a lot later, slower overall tech pace for us and Greece (a big advantage to the two other teams).

What if the Greeks think they can win Philo on their own? They could tell us to do CoL and do Philo themselves, and then take MM or Lit as the free one and still have a tech lead on us.

I think they will realize since we have 3 cities down with the AGR trait we are a lock for philo, and if I understand the rules correctly if they sign a treaty they will have to adhere to it.

Of course all of these ramblings are moot until we find out what Greece's situation is next turn.

There is no chance that the other teams could beat us to philo without trading for alphabet from us or Greece, and even then, it would be extremely unlikely that they would even try/could do it as they can figure to trade for alphabet and writing from the Alphabet civs.

Philo costs 180 beakers. CoL costs 300.

I must assume that Alpha costs less than 300. Assuming the same amount of beakers per turn, we would have put in

Cost of writing + cost of CoL + cost of Philo

Other team would have put in

Cost of writing + cost of Alpha + cost of Philo (these are out of order)

You can clearly see that if the only difference is we research CoL and the other civ researches Alpha and goes straight to Philo (without trying CoL first), then they could very easily get to Philo first.

The only way to be absolutely certain of getting the free tech is to just do Philo first and abandon any hope of getting Republic as the free tech. It does not matter in the slightest what the free tech is, as long as it is expensive -- we get the value anyway. Heck, we could even take CoL as the free tech and start on Republic, and we'd still be the first one to switch governments.

Alpha is 130 and writing is 240 IIRC, not in front of CAII at the moment.

So you are right, of course, that technically it would be feasible for them to beat us to philo, but Im putting myself in their shoes. They are simply not going to beeline for philosophy. Persia and the Celts both want Iron asap for insurance purposes, and maybe alphabet for some curraghs to get into the trading loop. The chances of anything bad happening are so small that I feel very confident in saying that they will not foul up any sort of plan we make up.

It is a very, very small risk for a very high reward. With Greece and ourselves in republic and not trading to the others, whoever we decide to go after first will probably have a despotic GA, and have 2 defense defenders for our MWs to whack while we are researching towards Mil Trad.

I think we need to contact MIA and go from there. Lets have more of this good discussion. I think some permutation of plans 1 & 2 would be a big step on the way to victory against some good teams. Limiting ourselves to maps is WAY too safe of a play I think. Maybe Ive been lurking Klarius and Wacken's SG threads too much but I feel we need to take some modicum of risk.

We should be concerned about where our horses are..... We need to research the wheel before we try for republic..... lets get philo, pick up mapmaking for free.....and then start working on our uu

We should be concerned about where our horses are..... We need to research the wheel before we try for republic..... lets get philo, pick up mapmaking for free.....and then start working on our uu

Based on the fact that this map was hand created and picked means that we should have horses near by considering our UU needs horses. Thats like not giving Persia their iron. I personally believe that each island has every resourse.

Im pretty sure DL is right on, we will have horses nearby. And the wheel is a cheap tech that we can grab later, since we'll be expanding for quite some time.