Mitchum said:
Brennus finally went from Annoyed @-4 to Furious @-5. We should be able to figure out the hidden modifier, right? They normally go from Annoyed to Furious at -10. So there must be a "hidden" -5 from Ramesses toward Brennus.
You're talking about Brennus' Attitude toward Ramesses, right? I'm pretty sure that in your earlier screenshot, Brennus was already Furious toward us.
Mitchum said:
The trade was made. We are still at +11. Trade relations stayed at +3 because the last trade was even...
Another possible explanation is that we might be Brennus' Worst Enemy. There's still some anger for "fair" trades with a Worst Enemy, but you're right that it's usually a pretty amount minimal.
If we were the Worst Enemy at the time, you'd check Brennus' Attitude toward Ramesses (the same applies for the timing of our next tech trade--checking to see which player is Brennus' Worst Enemy at that point in time).
Mitchum said:
The barbs just pulled two workers into Cherokee, the western barb city. There must be an AI getting ready to attack it.
In the test game, the Barbs did that when they "ran out of things to do" while waiting for Animal Husbandry to come in.
Mitchum said:
not Aesthetics ("He has his reasons.). He must be building Parth, Zeus or Shwedagon.
I guess that we'll just have to keep an eye on this tech trade every turn. If he switches away from building said Wonder, completes it, or loses it to an overseas AI, we should be able to snag the tech.
Mitchum said:
built the Statue of Zeus in Thebes and Aesthetics is now on the trading table.
Fair enough, that works... at least unless/until he starts building another one of those Aesthetics Wonders.
Given that Ramesses had Stonehenge, him building the Statue of Zeus was pretty predictable (it requires at least 3 Monuments/Obelisks).
Mitchum said:
Brennus just popped a GPro...
Brennus builds the Mahobodhi!
That works better than having to gift away his capital to Ramesses.
Mitchum said:
Ramesses just went from Furious (-5) back to Cautious (-4) toward Brennus.
Was that Furious -> Annoyed or Annoyed -> Cautious?
Mitchum said:
Ramesses is showing Math in 1T.
Compass in 1T...
Al-Kindi (Great Scientist)...
Ramesses will give us Aesthetics, Math, Meditation and all 60 gold for Machinery...
With our crap economy, it will take 10+ turns to learn Optics. If we trade with Ramesses for Math, we can bulb Optics this turn if I'm not mistaken.
What can I say? We probably will be able to Lightbulb Optics after all.
We WILL need to get Aesthetics and Math in trade, but if we take Meditation, we won't be Lightbulbing Optics and will instead be Lightbulbing Philosophy.
Lightbulbing Optics will free us up to self-tech Theology...
Yes, I said it are you happy? Note that I not only said it but I also mean it.
Mitchum said:
Brennus hasn't learned anything since he learned Math a long time ago.
That's likely because he is researching Construction with a hurting economy.
Mitchum said:
Brennus want Gems for peace.
I wonder if that fact indicates that this City will be his primary target if and when he sends units our way instead of at Ramesses.
Mitchum said:
Now quit building wonders and get busy with Brennus already.
I'd rather that he keeps building Wonders, including The Parthenon (whether we get it or whether he gets more Great People, either way it's good), The Apostolic Palace, The Great Library (do we really want it for a Cultural game? Normally, you skip it in Cultural games, due to late-game Great Scientists sucking), The Sistine Chapel (so that we can capture it at the right time), and the Mausoleum of Mossollos. Of course, he'll need a couple of more techs first, but you get the picture.
Ramesses having Calendar could also mean him getting Happiness Resources that we lack which we can probably get in trade.
Mitchum said:
We've got 72 fail gold in the 'Mids with 45 more going into them if we want in HE City this turn.
That's probably a good idea. We can always 2-pop-whip a Granary, but it's hard to get a good chunk of Failure Gold.
Mitchum said:
I guess that's me. Since it will be a while before we'll get a Great Scientist to partially Lightbulb Astronomy, if anyone doesn't like the self-teching Theology idea, then speak up now!
Actually, being serious about it, do we want to wait until we have both of our next Great People before we decide whether to invest any Flasks in Astronomy? Double-Lightbulbing Astronomy is a very strong play, but if we didn't get a second Great Scientist out of our next 2 Great People, we'd still have to put in the manual Flasks later.
Should we try harder for a Great Scientist out of GLH City by hiring 2 Scientist Specialists there when running 2 Specialists and hiring 1 Scientist Specialist when only running 1 Specialist, as opposed to the current emphasis of a Great Engineer?
Or, are there any Wonders that we want to hold out for, and still try reasonably hard to get a Great Engineer, such as The Sistine Chapel/The Apostolic Palace/The Great Library/etc?
cas said:
Without looking at the save, do we have a city on both the east coast and west coast (or islands) that can build/whip caravels quickly ?
I assume the only reasonable east coast city would be GLH...and there are more choices for the west coast/islands.
Do we even want to meet the eastern AIs just yet? I mean, we could whip 2 Caravels in the west and circle around both sides of the first continent that we come across.
That way, we'll have a quick and clear picture of who is whose Worst Enemy and can make the appropriate trades ASAP. Otherwise, we'd only be meeting 1 or 2 AIs out of each group of AIs and would either have to trade blindly or wait even longer than my suggested approach to be able to "safely" trade (i.e. be able to pick our Friends/Enemies most wisely).
We'll delay Circumnavigation by a bit, but it would have come 10 turns later without the Great Scientist.
This way, we won't have to whip population points from any one of our three eastern Cities, which are all working on generating Great People.
Further, we'll delay taking WFYBTA hits with the eastern AIs.
That's all assuming that there are two continents' worth of AIs out there, which makes sense from a scenario perspective and seems to match the Demographic data that we collected, but it could also be that there is only one other continent of AIs out there, in which case it could be argued that arriving at said continent from two sides at once would be preferable.
Still, even in that case, with one Caravel going north and one going south around said continent, we'd meet all of the AIs at about the same time as we would with a "Caravels in two directions" approach, as we wouldn't be getting Circumnavigation until we'd met every AI in a one-other-continent scenario anyway, after we'd circled the continent from the south-east and north-west, as opposed to from the south-east and north-east as we'd do with the "two western Caravels" approach.
So, looking at it that way, it seems like a strong play to whip both Caravels from western Cities, perhaps from our two Big Island Cities that seem to be both about to grow into Unhappiness for a turn and which are already our western-most Cities.
Either he's on his way to the Buddhist Holy City or he settled him. At least he wasn't used to bulb a tech.
We've avoided the GPro debate! 
Now Dhoom probably wants to self-tech Theology... 
) next turn. All of the cities on the east coast are planning to pop GPs soonish and may not be ideal. Although, Pigs could whip a caravel and grow back to 4 pops fairly quickly... If we had the deer camped, which could be done in 3 turns. 
and -8 gpt @ 30% which gives Optics in 11 turns
I will not be able to check the game till Monday.
