RB24 - Big Brother

Good move on the obelisks...culture is usually a problem for Rome. Also, well spotted on the trade route to Monty, I missed it.

Sirian said:
At least I am handing off a stable military and economic situation.
:whipped:
;)

Sirian said:
let's not make the mistake of overplanning for a war with Spain that may, in fact, NOT occur
Hmmm. Aggressive religious nut Isabella is the founder of Buddism. Aggressive lil bro is the founder of Judasim...OUR religion of choice. Isabella is aggressive on a good day, but in this fantasy world, she's aggresive squared. Be afraid.

But I agree. :) I think we should expand while the opportunity exists, not rely on taking Spanish land.

Sirian said:
Any resources that Monty lacks, that we don't have at least two sources of? Um, yep. Don't be getting attached to those in your future economic plans. (Do the math. You'll figure out what I'm implying!)

- Sirian

Monty lacks...at least two...DON't have...lacks...two...at least two...one...

Argh. I need to go lie down.

Monty lacks. Got that.
At least two. Got that. >= 2.
NOT "At least two". NOT >=2. So, smaller than 2. < 2?
Smaller than 2 is 1. (or zero, or -1)
But we can't give away 0 or -1 or -2...
So...1. One. Uno.

So...if Monty lacks the resource...and we have only 1...we should give it to him? (But if we have two...and he doesn't, we can keep it? Nope, that's not in the spirit of the variant, either.)

I'd ask lil bro, but he doesn't seem the intellectual type, either. What a pair we make!

Argh. I need to go lie down.

:)

Good turns, Sirian. I'll borrow Kylearan's roster:

Kylearan -> on deck
Bede
T-hawk
theGrimm
Sirian
Atlas -> UP NOW
 
Got it- now that was :whipped: the cows, tell Lil' bro not "to have a cow man" and set Lizzy on the barbie? Not sure I understand, but Lil' Bro will certainly explain it :)
 
"AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER"

"YES I AM"

The sage of the Brothers Romulus and Monty continues, Monty has has just released his most recent film, something about a Jewish Carpenter :dunno: what will come of it (Monothesim is know by all the civs with religion at least, but Christianity still unfounded). Robin and his merry men continue to rome the wilds of Rome. Monty (aka Lil' Bro) is currently dominating in score, while Romulus is currently...

Lil' Bro is currently out to five cities, just look at him grow, he may be bigger than his older brother someday, keep eating that beef.

T0-IW in 21 turns.

T2- The merry men approach Cumae.... and



T3- perish. Fortunately for us, I found THE Sheriff of Nottingham and Sir Guy of Gisbourne too, they will help deal with the problems.

T4 Lizzy comes asking for open borders... not now, let me consult with little Monty, he is annoyed with her so no. She of course has writing.

T5-Rome grows and barracks finish, what to build next, archer, worker and settler would all be useful. I choose settler (did I choose wisely ;) ) only time will tell. Thoughts on where Philadelphia (duh what else would you name it??) could go





T6- More of the barb tango.

T8- Jumbos are back up.

730-Stonehenge is built.

T15- Unhappiness wears off from Antium whips, but the Gift to Lil' Bro brings one unhappy face back.

Antium is tenatively set for a worker, but nothing is yet invested. Cumae is going to finish that oblisk and should then build a granary. I had a worker building a road to it, but stopped it cause go-to can make you :mad: , but you may want to continue it and then improve some of those tile. The tiles it is currently working are just plain offensive. Without more workers the next city or 2 will probably take our economy close the edge, 50% depending on distance etc. Most of this turn was waiting for happiness to where off so another round of whips can occur and preping a bit for the next player. Now that Lizzy in bordering us in in the East I would recommend moving the Sheriff to the North of the county. Lil' Bro is currently out to five cities, just look at him grow, he may be bigger than his older brother someday, keep eating that beef.

We do have some problems here guys, first of all (we all know it, but have been afraid to say it), Lil' Brother is a little weird. I mean if it were just the headress made of feathers, and the never wearing a shirt thing I don't think most folks would mind, but it is the talk about sacraficing 50,000 slaves and wearing a shrunked skull on his head that does disturbe some people. Understandable, but we know that he is really just a passionate guy and totally likeable if you are just nice to him, well, I still don't have the whole story, but I guess the other day Lil' brother was hanging out with everybody and Izzy, Sally, and Vicky said some mean things to him, and it was upsetting, I guess Alex and Louis stood up a little bit for Monty, but anyway, Monty is a bit peeved at some folks over the whole incident, so keep your eye on the situation, we don't want anybody's feelings to get hurt or to get their cities razed :lol:



And you thoung Bro was happy at seeing all that beef, well I found an even bigger creature for him. So... everybody together you now you know the words- "Happy Birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Monty, happy birthday to you" Now blow out the candles on that grilled hunk of elephant.



http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/64087/Romulus_BC-0700.Civ4SavedGame
 
Kylearan said:
Monty first and we last in score...yuk. We are supposed to be Big Brother! Let's see what I can do during my turns to that end. I will have some thoughts about long-term goals, wonders etc. too, or so I hope.
Our starts have been ... lack luster. The solution is normally just to whip and whip, but we had to wear off the :mad: faces. Fantasy Realm is an interesting map script, gone are acres and acres of grassland or floodplains, every city will get between 25% and 50% dead tiles, that just changes everything.

It seems that we are just destined to be brother to the strongest civ, but that is good 'cause we don't want to win :), I got a feeling that the fortunes of both brothers will improve :yup:.
 
Sirian said:
Any resources that Monty lacks, that we don't have at least two sources of? Um, yep. Don't be getting attached to those in your future economic plans. (Do the math. You'll figure out what I'm implying!)

Oh. Any anybody who touches MY birthday gift to Monty

A question... Do we need to continue this gift for eternity if Little Brother gets cows of his own? And if not, is there any way to see if/when he gets the resource other than temporarily canceling the deal to see if it can be re-gifted?
 
T-hawk said:
A question... Do we need to continue this gift for eternity if Little Brother gets cows of his own? And if not, is there any way to see if/when he gets the resource other than temporarily canceling the deal to see if it can be re-gifted?

I'll have a cow, man, if you touch the Cows. :aargh: :nono: :mad:

Besides, if Monty gets his own Cows source, he could then trade it away for something else useful.

We probably should not do that with every resource type. Some deals can be cancelled, for instance, to set up a return flow of goods (a trade).


What we might do is to designate a "duration" on gifts. The game mechanics do not offer an easy in-game method, but we could just do it ourselves manually. For instance, "Cows For Life", "Ivory for 60 turns", "Sheep until you have something good to trade to us for it", etc.


Also, when a deal is CANCELLED, it resets its value on the "You have supplied us with resources" meter. If the primary purpose of a gift or trade deal is for diplo bonus, then DO NOT TOUCH THE BLOODY THING. That's my understanding of how it is supposed to be working.


- Sirian
 
The desire to heap little brother with gifts is only natural. He's just so cute, so nutty...those puppy dog eyes are hard to resist.

But it is the responsibility of a dutiful older brother to protect his younger brother, and if we do not eat our veggies, we will not be able to protect little bro, say, when Izzy goes all nutso.

The variant rules only require that we supply little brother with whatever strategic resources he does not have. (Unless he asks nicely, of course). I have no problem with giving birthday presents to Monty, but if we volunteer EVERY strategic resource that he does not have and we have only one of, we will remain little brother forever.

Practically speaking, we can do without the cows. There's enough beef in Rome to keep us all happy eventually, and we're a good healthy people anyway. But let us be wary of falling in to the trap that many parents fall into, and that is to give their children all they desire, and thus spoil them rotten and ruin them forever.

Woe is us, all that Monty and Romulus have in this world anymore is each other. As the older brother, let us exercise the path of wisdom.

(In laymans terms, don't give all the good stuff away while we're last in score next to nutso Izzy).

Edit:
I wanted to suggest that the duration of per turn gifts be set that of the next players turns. But remember, if we give, and then take away, Monty's people might become angry. So let's go easy on the giving of our only resources, m'kay?
 
I do hate to quibble over semantics, but here's the rule in question:

Kylearan said:
Any strategic resources he lacks, we must offer to supply to him. We will take whatever he offers in return. If that's not good enough, just GIVE it to him (we may renegotiate the deal later).

It's a cut-and-paste from the Civ 3 rules, and includes the important qualifier "strategic". In Civ 3, this referred specifically to military resources like horses and iron, and excluded luxury (happiness) resources. In the Civ 3 games, the player was obligated to provide Little Bro with horses and iron by any means necessary, but there was no such requirement for luxury resources. I'd read the intent to not be that the players must always surrender their only source of a particular happiness or health resource to Little Bro. We don't need to cripple ourselves that way.

The cow gift is fine, for the long-term diplomatic plus. But future non-strategic resource gifts aren't compulsory or locked in to any particular time period longer than the game itself enforces.
 
There's no use cancelling just to turn around and re-gift, though. (And we have to gift something if we can). So until we get to Currency and can gift small doses of cash, or get Open Borders and can gift units, the resources are the only gift we can offer.


- Sirian
 
Sirian said:
There's no use cancelling just to turn around and re-gift, though. (And we have to gift something if we can). So until we get to Currency and can gift small doses of cash, or get Open Borders and can gift units, the resources are the only gift we can offer.
This was exactly my problem. Of course if we had open borders we would still need to have units to be able to gift something ;), right now we have about 3.

@Everybody- note that once little brother gets construction Ivory will be a strategic resource ;) .
 
Hi,

I'm back online again, yay.

T-hawk said:
I do hate to quibble over semantics
Liar! :p :lol:

T-hawk said:
Kylearan said:
Any strategic resources he lacks, we must offer to supply to him. We will take whatever he offers in return. If that's not good enough, just GIVE it to him (we may renegotiate the deal later).
It's a cut-and-paste from the Civ 3 rules, and includes the important qualifier "strategic".
No it's not a cut-and-paste from the Civ 3 rules. The original rules lacked the word "strategic" which I added for exactly the reasons you mentioned. :rolleyes:

-Kylearan
 
Reviewing the diplomatic situation, I see that our little brother is on pleased terms with Alex and Louis. Both know Writing already, so I sign open border agreements with them. Too bad the Monty himself doesn't like us enough yet to do the same! He's annoyed with us, but that should change soon once he's eaten enough of our beef.

Then, I take a look at the power graph.



This is not good! We are last in power while our little brother, annoyed with us, is first! I don't want him to declare war on us, so I will try to build up some military during my turns even if that will slow down expansion somewhat. Big brothers have to make clear that they are the BIG brother so that the little brothers won't get funny ideas!

I also decide to burn our cash now to get Iron Working and then Writing faster. Science gets increased to 100%.


In 655BC, Iron Working comes in, and of course we don't have iron in our borders yet. :rolleyes:



Our newly produced settler will claim the iron south of Cumae, and Neapolis gets founded in 595BC one tile southeast of the iron (it will have pigs and deer too once borders will have expanded).


Convinced by our resource shipments, Monty went to cautious in 580BC and we were able to sign open borders with him! :clap: He finally seems to realize who we are...

Izzy is a bit on the slow side though, and doesn't seem to know this. She actually demanded this from us:



Woman, are you mad?!? :spank: Of course I decline and send her away sulking.


I wanted to have Writing at the end of my turnset, so Rome worked some lake tiles for the extra commerce for some time. After Writing came in, I started us on Alphabet next.

On my last turn the Pyramids get BIDL, and little bro' founds Confucianism in Tlaxcala! Let's see what religion he will follow long-term...

For his birthday, he gets a toy solder from me. :D



Have fun with it, little brother! But be careful not to break your new toy, okay? :mischief:
 
I have built a worker during my turns and started another, which will be finished in a couple of turns. We probably need more though.

I also build some archers, but we will need more of those too. We are increasing in power and will be second last soon, but that's not enough I guess - although Monty seems to have lost a unit and dropped to second place now, behind Victoria.

We hurt for happiness, so I suggest to cancel the ivory deal to Monty if Atlas approves. Little brother is strong enough already, I think.

Where should our next settler go? My suggestion would be to claim another iron in case Monty needs one.



This would also grab wines, a happiness resource we desperately need. An archer is on its way to scout the region more.

An alternative site would be here:



This would claim a second horse resource, deer and pig.


After Rome has built a settler, I suggest building a library next. Our research rate is awful! For this reason, how about going for Literature next and build the Great Library? With so few cottages around, its power is even greater than normal. This would also get our great person production going.

-Kylearan
 
Kylearan said:
We hurt for happiness, so I suggest to cancel the ivory deal to Monty if Atlas approves. Little brother is strong enough already, I think.
Sure cancel away, Open borders (and later currency) make Lil' Brother's B-Day so much easier. He is very difficult to buy for :mischief:.
 
Got it for Tuesday morning.
 


Romulus returns from touring the outposts of empire and finds Li'l Bro waiting in the the throne room, digging in the dirt with his toes and doing that thing with the back of his head



Thinks "He looks embarrassed. Hmm, wonder what the problem is? And mother should do something about those lice, it's probably from the chicken feather headress" but says "Yo, Bro' whassup?"



Monte looks up at him from under that skull and mutters something about "those elephants".

"Speak up, youngster, I can't hear what you are saying"

"It's those elephants, Rommie. I can't ride them, they smell bad, I can't eat them because I can't kill them, and the poop, pounds of poop all over, tons of poop, in the gardens and everywhere. I know they were a birthday present from you but I can't do anything with them, and I told you I wanted a pony!"

"The little brat", thinks Romulus, "and calling me Rommie, too! And that defiant look in his eye."



"Calm down little brother", says Romulus, "let's see what I can do about this. Have you tried hiring an Indian to teach you how to ride them? You could go on tiger hunts with Alex then"

"There aren't any Indians", said Monte. And now his lower lip begins to tremble.



That is Not a Good Sign.

Just then the chamberlain reminds Romulus that the Imperial Stud was now in operation, so Monte could have his pony.

"How about this, Monte? I'll take the elephants and give them to the Imperial Riding School, and meanwhile you can have your pony. What do think about that?"



That is as close to a smile as Romulus has ever seen on his brother's face. "Oh our sainted mother, why did she burden me with a psychopath for a brother!" muses Romulus

"Rommie, you are a peach. And by the way, don't trust that little witch, Isabella, she's been calling me names again"

Monte runs out of the palace to claim his mount and whips off into the distance, shouting "Yeeahh, Alex, I got the pony!!!"

The northern exploration reveals a nest of barbarians who claim the archer, and wound the Sheriff, who has now come full circle.



A second archer is dispatched to keep watch over the nearest barbarian town



While the settler is sent to the southern spot for more horses, pigs and another deer camp



The iron is online so Praetorians are abuilding to go knock out the barb infestation and to start a demonstration on the Spanish borders.

South of Neapolis (or north of Antium as the archer in the lower right corner is The Sheriff healing north of the second barb town north of Antium)



And the southern view



Use the barbarian towns to train up the Praetorians! And it looks like Little Bro is starting to push on the northwest.

I did not start a library in Rome as I felt more archer defense is needed in the north and the cottages by the lake need to mature a little before it is worth it. Another settler or two for the northlands would also be handy. And we are still a worker or two short.
 
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