Alright, I pvm'ed Provolution again. I told him time was running out, so again, tell us what they'd be willing to trade for machinery, and when.
Notice, if they do tell us WHEN, they'd be giving up info they don't want to. In fact, I suspect I was right all along, that their "We're just about to get Metal Casting very, very soon!" was just a pure bluff to mis-direct us, and cause us to devalue it so they could snatch it for peanuts.
Obviously, Cyrus and Carthage still don't have MC even still, and none are even giving us an ETA for MC. I think the cat's in the bag there. Especially since Carthage obviously hasn't even put one beaker into MC as I can see.
I wonder if we are putting some tension and disagreement in their teams right now, on weather they picked the right civs to play in a blockage against. From their perspective, this is two major techs they're missing out that they could have.
Anyhow, since we are stockpiling up gold, as soon as they get currency (and we still have it) they may wonder what happened. We can lead on we were chopping the mids, but decided to rush it in another city to get the trees-to-gold trick. Haha!
Perhaps I should make another mis-direction post in the public forum, asking about chop-to-wealth tricks, if they are allowed in this game