Peanut checking in ... it's been a hectic weekend here. Yes, Civ_Steve, I live in Brisbane, Australia at 10 hours ahead of GMT (and 16 or more ahead of the Americas)
I don't know why I am honoured with a team name and nominal leadership - I expect we will run this as a sort of democracy where key decisions are agreed to by all.
I hope we can get our strategy nailed down quickly, particularly our ancient age plan, then trust each of us to play the game as best we see fit when we are at the wheel .
The golden rules in my opinion are :
- pick up and play the game roughly on time, or let us know if you will have a short delay.
- be prepared to pass on your turn as soon as possible if you can't make it - your turn will come around again quickly anyway.
- respect the decisions of others made during their turn playing, and expect others to respect yours.
- express your ideas freely, constructively and positively, so that we learn from eachother.
So - some strategy thoughts to chew over :
If we are to win without bulding the UN then we can 1) either capture it from whomever builds it before they hold an election, or 2) be big and loveable enough that we are the other candidate and that we get most of the votes.
I think that working towards option (2) is safer, however if we can bribe our way to a dogpile on whoever is likeliest to build it then that might work.
In any case a quick finish means fast research which means we need to be big and loveable anyway. I suggest that we aim to take out our neighbours as soon as practicable, and get two productive cores running, then be sweet and generous to everyone to push things along until Fusion is invented. Then we strike.
Ancient age strategy - I suggest that we get our settler factories running (with granaries) as soon as possible to expand as fast as we can. I like the idea of a tight ring of cities that we can abandon later if needed. Research IW at minimum, build only warriors and the odd worker or settler in our satellite city ring, and accumulate cash for a massive swordsman upgrade and then take over our continent. Rapid expansion should also mean we put our foot on more luxuries and resources. Hope we can trade for pottery fairly soon.
Roster - looks like civ_steve is ready to go, and the ideas for the first few moves sound ok to me. How about we just follow the roster from there, so Keith follows civ_steve, then Peanut and so on.
A last suggestion - when we write up, emphasise at the end any deals done in your round so the next player doesn't inadvertently ruin our reputation. I think our rep is going to be important to us this game.
By the way - we are playing PTW aren't we ? Speak now or be really confused when you try to load the game up ...