(0) 1725 BC
preturn diplomacy check: india, germany, france, and england have iron
working, writing, and horseback riding on us; japan only has i/w and
writing. we have heard rumour of the great cities of Babylon and Persia
across the oceans, but no one knows how to find them. liz is only
cautious with us; joanie is polite; nobody else seems to really matter since
we don't border them.
nobody seems to have math or polytheism yet.
we're working on writing at min sci.
Poke around all the cities -- no apparent opportunities for
micromanagement, and the current builds seem sensible. no changes.
(1) 1700 BC
english settler/axe emerge from canterbury.
i move towards blockade, but the third axe is still too far away --
there's not going to be any way to stop them from getting to the flood
plain, unless the french axe keeps going somewhere where i can take
advantage of him.
no, wait a minute! if i play this right, i can push him north, and that
buys enough time to bring in the warrior and a slave to help. i can at
least keep him off the flood plains; maybe that'll discourage him enough
he won't choose to found.
one worker stays at nanking, to hook up the third wine. (on reflection,
this was probably
, but what's done is done.) two head west, to
connect up canton and/or join the settler blockade.
(2) 1675 BC
rheims' borders expand! shanghai has lost culture race.
temple completes in shanghai; start settler.
more french spears cross into our territory, don't know where they're
going.
i decide to take a gamble with the warrior doing guard duty in shanghai,
and send him north. am going to do a in-n-out border incursion onto
that mountain just inside france, to see what there is to see.
diplo check: mapmaking has been traded around, but still no-one has math
or polytheism. philosophy, laws, and literature are unknown because we
still lack writing.
I guess that makes this the time to get us a map. we buy india's world
map for wm + 5gpt + 11g, and then find that this makes it valuable
enough to get horseback riding from france -- well, for world map + 1gpt
+ 21g. riding isn't what we need most (i'd rather have iron working, to
see where the deposits are), but it's what we can afford, and the value
of our map might disappear at any time, so I do it.
Sell our map to Japan for 13g and England for 1g, just to clean up.
The upshot of buying India's map is that we now know there is a great
desert south of the english jungle, and india, japan and germany are
south of the desert. germany is scrunched into a corner behind india.
i gamble a little and switch beijing from the spear it's currently
building (due in 1) to a settler (due in 2), because we're in the last
lap of the land grab, and if we don't get that settler *now*, we aren't
going to have any place left to put him.
(3) 1650 BC
i send the worker by shanghai into french territory to complete our
road, risking french wrath.
(4) 1625 BC
joanie demands the worker leave. but we're only here to *help*, joanie!
she's still polite, so i may risk ignoring the demand. no, wait! i see
she's finished a road segment i can connect to from neutral territory.
i think that wasn't visible before i made the incursion, or i hope not,
else this whole move has been big weed.
persia completes the pyramids.
settler finishes in beijing; builds warrior. (at this point, getting
into a war means we've lost, I think -- we just need warm bodies.)
(5) 1600 BC
japan takes oracle in the cascade
end 1gpt to india.
end 2gpt to england.
yes! my four-man hook-block on the english settler causes him to
retreat a tile. we'll get the river! (unless something else goes
wrong.)
france, india, england, and japan have acquired mathematics. germany
still doesn't have mapmaking. we don't have anything to trade, so
nothing we can do about it.
(6) 1575 BC
nothing much happens. continue to dance with english settler. french
warriors cruising through our territory briefly join in the wall.
(7) 1550 BC
beijing builds warrior, starts settler.
shanghai builds settler, starts granary. there's really only one site
left for us to try for, and if jaffa elects to continue the plan, the
settler coming out of beijing will be ready first.
canterbury's population is currently 1 -- i *think* it was higher than
that before, at least two. settler, worker, or whip?
(8) 1525 BC
nothing much happens.
(9) 1500 BC
cruel joanie politely demands i pay tribute to her hotness. wm+19g. i
become her beach.
the floating blockade drives the english settler back into english
territory.
tsingtao founded at the mouth of gold river.
set to build granary first, since its only cultural battle is with
london (1 tile), and that's already a lost cause. otoh, expanded
boundaries *would* pull in the second flood plain, which would make this
a food powerhouse. okay, screw the granary -- temple first.
worker completes road to France! joanie will give us iron working +
stuff for our only silk. i think we can live without the silk -- it's
much more important to know where the iron is while i've got a live
settler impatiently waiting for directions.
trade: silks to france for iron working + territory map + 15g
bismarck still doesn't have mapmaking, but he's picked up math, so he's
still at least two up on us.
well, well.
our only shot at iron is at sullla's turquoise reach site.
options:
(a) go for the reach site. advantages: may give us iron.
disadvantages: low food, no water, will be a glorified fishing village.
risks losing the core site to a (potential) french settler. will take
six turns for current settler to get there -- he can beat the english
settler i know about, but if canterbury just produced one i don't think
there's anyway I could stop it from beating me.
(b) go for the central site (sullla's red dot). advantages: could found
there today; guarantees cohesive territory. no water, but has plains
cow for food bonus (already irrigated). disadvantage: high risk of
losing the iron: settler currently building in beijing will take ten
turns to get to the site.
okay, i'm going for the iron. if Jaffa wants to veto me, all we'll effectively have lost is a
few turns at getting the red dot settled, but not enough that we could
possibly lose the site -- any settler able to beat us back would have to
be visible by now.
i relax the blockade on the english settler near tsingtao for a turn, to
distract him from going for the iron for another turn -- maybe a waste
of effort, but you never know.
(10) 1475 BC
london drops from pop 5 to pop 3, so we've got another english settler
to worry about, in addition to the question mark at canterbury (where i
didn't notice if it was a drop of 1 or 2).
state of the nation:
* settler south-east of canton is heading to found next to the iron,
four moves to the southwest.
* one slave is building a road towards canton and the ivory; the native
worker is coming down from shanghai to help, since there didn't seem
to be anything urgent left to do up there. canton desperately needs
irrigation, as well.
* canton doesn't actually need the temple for territory any more,
if we get the town sites we want, because both the ivory and
the horse will get swept up in the border closure. might be worth
switching to granary, but i leave that call to jaffa.
* one slave is building a road to connect to tsingtao; another is
irrigating the flood plains there. that latter has been part of the
blockade, as has the spear now fortified in the town. probably you
will want to interrupt the worker to keep him in the blockade -- i
just figured as long as he was standing there he might as well start
making himself useful.
* beijing is schedule to grow to pop 3 in two turns, and has a settler
due the turn after that, who should be able to grab sullla's red dot.
* two french axes have already disappeared into english territory; two
spears are following them, and a sword and another axe are just
starting the crossing. say hi to liz for us, boys.
* writing is due in 7 at min sci.
* haven't seen any french settlers yet -- it seems like we're due soon,
unless joanie has a peninsula back there she's hiding from us. note:
we just bought her territory map, so we at least know what she's got
now.
hm. can't figure out how to get the forum to make an href-style link (it keeps quoting
my code), and i don't see how you get to the upload server, either. so here's the
save file, from my own web space.
http://www.gungeralv.org/civ3/RBE3-1475BC.zip
Expect my ten turns to be done sometime tonight.
