ooh - haven't updated here for awhile. I noticed that Memphus did, so what the heck.
Lot's of things have happened:
Diplomatic
Ronnie General_W and I have formed the "anti-memphus" league, which apparently came around from what seems to be inadvertant brilliant diplomacy on my part. In my discussions with the General, he had seemed less than willing to make trades that seemed to help both of us and he seemed kind of unwilling to talk. Now, the General is an honorable sort of guy, so that kind of made me suspicious - it turned out that he thinks he's in a really bad position, stuck up next to memphus, who has stabbed him in other games.
So, I sent him this email:
Let me ask you something – this is a game, after all.
What would make this game FUN for you? I mean, what are you at heart? You are in a bad spot, but you are expanding effectively. Is that what you want? Expand, build an empire, then take out the world? I don’t think building a SS is much of an option
I think you like the diplomatic aspect – and losing the 5th player changes that a lot, of course.
While I want to win, my main goal is to have fun, more than anything. I’m also a bit of a builder and I’d love to be safe enough to take advantage of my traits and resources - ie, build wonders
I know what you mean about right up next to each other – Ronnie and I have borders right next to each other now.
From that, we got the triumvirate alliance, where we share research among the three of us and both Ronnie and I send the general military support - 125 hammers worth up front and 5+ hammers worth per turn as we go - until we decide that Memphus (who, at the start, is up 5 or 6 techs) is no longer a threat. Oh, and I don't get run over with Praets
This is great for me - I'm sending archers to the general and I'm building wonders and I'm a happy guy
Right now, I have Stonehenge and The Great Lighthouse in AT's Resort and The Great Library in AT's Palace and I figure I'll try for Parthenon and ToA in AT's resort, as well. I'm researching Music and will go for Engineering after that, with a GA fueled golden age, so I'll be able to build castles and courts and upgrade my espionage. I think I'll probably send some spies memphus's way, as well.
Ronnie used a GS to get machinery, for us, so we are up compass, aesthetics and lit over memphus, which is good (since he's up CS, CoL and Currency, plus whatever else he's researching)
Civ
I'm up to 4 cities, which is smaller than anyone else, but I'm also 2nd in GNP (mainly cause of my wineries, gems and gold) I'm hoping to expand to 6-9 in the next 20 turns or so.
oh - I understand why the general showed as not having copper - he's been trading it to memphus for iron to attack me with

So now I'm going to trade him iron for copper so he can defend against Memphus (since Memphus cut him off)