Turn Discussion Thread

The next build is a warrior because its overflow allows us to get the library out one turn earlier.

Ok, that's a very good reason then.

grant2004 said:

The next build is a warrior? I thought we were supposed to have another workboat built for exploring in the other direction?

Also at the plan for building warriors and a galley to explore the other island, it's been suggested we build 2 warriors, then the galley. Wouldn't it be better to build one warrior, followed by the galley, and then the 2nd warrior? This way we can send that first warrior to the island a few turns earlier, while the 2nd warrior is still building.

Click to expand...

This would get the first warrior there 2 turns earlier, but the second would be there a turn later, so it only saves one turn really, and it means the galley is a turn behind as well if we wanted to send it off exploring.

More importantly though, if we want to put the research slider down to 0% for three turns then we won't have sailing until we've built the second warrior anyway. To get sailing in time, we'd need to only put the slider down for one turn, which basically costs us 14 beakers in the long run.

Our brave explorers have proven the theory that we are not alone in this world.

I just checked up on the game to see if it had rolled yet, and an Amazon workboat has rounded the tip of the island and come into view. We have contact with our first opponent. I guess it's time to start the diplomacy game.

Also, in our inbox:

We Zenobians hail the leaders of the Sirius Empire.

Our intrepid high-seas explorer Jenny has exchanged ship-to-ship greetings with the intrepid Voyager off the coast of Northern Jennilund. Word has been quickly sent back to the AMAZON camp where partying and general rejoicing broke out in the streets. After the raucous cheers died down the AMAZON tribe convened the Allied general council and this greeting was hammered out (with metaphorical hammers) and dispatched as quickly as possible to our new friends.

We hope this message finds your civilization prospering and we look forward to many years of friendly, mutually beneficial relations with the good people of the Sirius Empire.

The AMAZONs would like to enter into preliminary negotiations with the Sirians and discuss a potential for Open Borders, a possible Non-Aggression Pact, and the potential for future tech trades.

Please send all diplomatic correspondence to AMAZON1@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you. Our official Diplomat, SilentConfusion, will be contacting you soon with a much more detalied correspondence. Feel free to address all further communications to him.

Sommerswerd,
Captain of the AMAZONs

That looks friendly, lets hope they mean it, because an early ally would be very cool. The only thing I take fault with in their message is that they named OUR island.

They apparently have an official diplomat, should we have an ambassador to them?

This is excellent I do think we should ally with the Amazonians. We will have to discuss the "jenniland" island as I agree it is ours probably has our strategic resources. I do wish to find out how close they are to us to see how contested Jenniland will be.

Indeed, what is our proceedure for diplomacy? Are we going to have an official diplomat for each of the other teams? Do we have any volunteers* or a process for picking one? It would be nice to send a reply relatively soon.

This puts the prospect of Alphabet after writing back on the table. It might be good to talk to them and arrange some tech trades. I expect this is going to be earlier contact than other teams, we seem to have got lucky and headed towards them at the same time as they headed towards us.

That's assuming we want to co-operate fully with them. Personally I think it's a good idea to take advantage of this early contact opportunity. I'm going to quote Lord Parkin's analysis of them here though for its high relevance:

Amazons - The team of the slightly dodgey female images. Probably the most well known player on Team Amazon is TheMeInTeam. He's a fairly strong player, and I expect his opinions will hold some weight on their team. He's used to very fast paced games though, so may be a bit out of his comfort zone here. As for some of the other players, most of us who played in the last game will be familiar with Sommerswerd. Let's just say he's an opinionated guy. Depending on how much influence he has over his team, it's possible it may end up being a bit of an anarchy. If this is the case, they may be slightly less efficient with their empire management, but they will be much more unpredictable (and unreliable) diplomatically. (Anyone who was in the last game knew that Sommerswerd's team were a handful to communicate with!) To sum up: A reasonably skilled but unpredictable team which has picked an extremely military leader; I expect to see them making and breaking many deals and warring early. I would be disinclined to trust them as an ally. Let's hope they're far away from us.

Click to expand...

Sommerswerd is indeed in charge, although SilentConfusion was stated to be the official diplomat. I'd still be in favour of early co-operation and tech trading, but maybe be wary of trusting them long term.

* I'm happy to be a diplomat. I don't mind if it's to these guys or someone else though.

I'm really starting to believe this "Jennilund" (I'm using their name because we don't have one of our own ) is the star-shaped mainland that was suggested. Certainly locally, this desert appears to be an artificial star tip. They really can't be all that far away, and probably even closer as the crow flies than via the water.

Whether it's a mainland or an island between us, it's going to be somewhat hotly contested between us and the Amazons. Our lack of strategic resources is really going to make our claim to it more difficult to enforce.

How likely do people think it is that we've got iron on our island?

Maybe if we can tease info out of Amazons as to whether they have a strategic resource on their island it would tell us something.

Swell if I had been map maker I would have made sure every team had a strategic resource in there starting point. I am really feeling the need for hunting and copper or iron. If we want that island were going to need spearmen.

I think both Alphabet & Iron Working both received a bit of a nudge upward on the priority listing. But perhaps we can get them to research Alphabet instead? Perhaps an agreement along the lines of us trading them the Monarchy line of techs for something comparable beaker-wise? Just initial thoughts...

More tangibly, this early on I'm guessing we want to be friendly, but I don't know if we want to get into specific settling discussions yet. Our next settler is going off our initial island after all; perhaps it would be better to ask for forgiveness later than ask for permission first.

I've gone and set up two new threads. One to track the messages sent to and from AMAZON, the other for discussions about our overall diplomatic strategy with them. I recommend moving the discussion of what to do over to the diplomacy discussion thread. This is a perfectly good place for discussing it, or anything else, but the more stuff we can move off to other threads the easier it's going to be to follow the discussions here.

Well, that didn't take long. I'm not sure Cyrus is who I'd pick as a neighbor, but I'm keeping an open mind about these things.

Irgy: I'm happy to have you represent yourself as our "foreign minister" for now. I'm new to MP, so I'm not sure how diplomacy is typically handled, but my instinct is to be cordial, but tip our hand as little as possible. I would tell them we are happy to discuss any sort of alliance without spelling out where we stand tech and development-wise. As far as switching to Alphabet, I think we should stick to our current plan as much as possible. If we can research Monarchy while they research Alphabet, great. But I wouldn't divulge that that's what we are planning just yet. Also, with regard to IW, perhaps we should get a warrior over to the other island ASAP to scout for the resources we can see, before we make that decision.

It also occurs to me that they are likely to meet our neighbor to the west before we are, if their WB continues westward.

Edit: I copied this to the AMAZON diplomacy discussion thread.

Trystero said:

It also occurs to me that they are likely to meet our neighbor to the west before we are, if their WB continues westward.

Click to expand...

Remember that the reverse is likely to be true as well, unless they have 2 exploring workboats, we are likely to meet their eastern neighbour before they do

Gressh said:

Remember that the reverse is likely to be true as well, unless they have 2 exploring workboats, we are likely to meet their eastern neighbour before they do

Click to expand...

Good point.

AlphaShard requested a screenshot of our first contact, so I posted it here.

When I logged in, I had to pick the next build for Sirius since the Settler was finished. I chose a Warrior as we had planned. I did not finish the rest of the turn (moving the Settler, the Worker, and our exploring WB), so as to allow a little more time for discussion of the AMAZON encounter, if necessary.

Trystero said:

... I did not finish the rest of the turn (moving the Settler, the Worker, and our exploring WB), so as to allow a little more time for discussion of the AMAZON encounter, if necessary.

Click to expand...

I do agree with your decision not to play the rest of the turn. However, I am going to contend that meeting AMAZON has no impact on our micro plans for the next few turns.

The next few turns the plan is currently to:
* Finish Writing and building a library. This includes chopping with Lord Parkin and biulding a warrior now for the overflow.
* Send the settler to found Canopus to the northwest.
* Switch research to Sailing. I think we have now if anything have all the more reason to do this.
* Set the slider to 0 while the library builds.
* Get Canopus set up with workboats and improved gold.
* Build two more warriors and a galley to explore Jennilund (we need our own name for this island before theirs catches on!)

I can't see any reason to change any of that.

Which doesn't mean no-one else will though, so we might as well hold off for the moment.

We don't actually want to play too quickly, because we get the most out of this early contact if we can get the discussion with them going 'sooner' (i.e. sooner in game turns), which means not hurrying the turns along while we're still spending 12 hours to send a basic hello back to them

Meeting Amazons has no impact on our short-term plans.

We should see if we can get a trade route with them so we can know what sort of units we may have to deal with.

Can someone explain why we are moving the slider to 0? We arent running at a deficit and the beakers are important this early on.

GoSkins said:

Can someone explain why we are moving the slider to 0? We arent running at a deficit and the beakers are important this early on.

Click to expand...

We will be running at a deficit of 2gpt once Canopus is settled in a few turns from now. The 0% slider is to save up gold while we don't have a library so that we can run 100% for longer while we do have a library, giving us 20-odd extra beakers in the long run.

Irgy said:

We will be running at a deficit of 2gpt once Canopus is settled in a few turns from now. The 0% slider is to save up gold while we don't have a library so that we can run 100% for longer while we do have a library, giving us 20-odd extra beakers in the long run.

Click to expand...

Oooh...good strategy. I never thought of that. Thanks!

I hear about it every few months, and never remember to use it in my own games.