SQ1: Google Earth

[Sima Qian]

Ok, looked at the save, most things seem fine. These are just a few of my pre-turn observations.

I think I might switch a spear or two to a settler, as I'm fairly confident that Microsoft will get killed off during my turnset. Tone did a great job in setting up the upcoming assault. It seems like his unfortunate luck with the attack on Redmond has kept us under our unit support limit, but if things keep going as they are we'll need more cities to avoid paying for our military.

I'll try to take Redmond last, but is the Oracle even worth keeping? I have a hunch that we might not get our first temple built until after theology, if ever.

Also, if Yahoo survives the barbs I'll be tempted to trade contact. Seems like AOL already has contact with all the other civs. They're not giving much of a discount on tech when I put contact on the table, but they seem fairly eager to trade me contact with the other civs. If I end up buying contact, I'm probably going to switch off the galley builds to a land unit or city improvement (probably barracks or harbor in most cases).

 

[Tone]

I think I might switch a spear or two to a settler, as I'm fairly confident that Microsoft will get killed off during my turnset.

That's fine by me. We need settlers accompanying our troops to claim the land left after auto-razing MS towns. Just remember that Redmond will produce a sword every three or four turns. I suggest that you consider the iron colony idea for swords as well. Archers have had their day.

Tone did a great job in setting up the upcoming assault. It seems like his unfortunate luck with the attack on Redmond has kept us under our unit support limit, but if things keep going as they are we'll need more cities to avoid paying for our military.

You're being kind. It wasn't unfortunate; it was poor judgement, based on Windows only having one defender. I guess you live and learn! BTW, personally I wouldn't be too worried if we go over our unit support as our core are working roaded tiles in the main.

I'll try to take Redmond last, but is the Oracle even worth keeping? I have a hunch that we might not get our first temple built until after theology, if ever.

It's a free town. If you do leave it until last (and you manage to get to it before AOL et al) then keep it. The Oracle is of little/no value but it can't flip, or have you left respawn on? Additionally we've got to be careful about razing too many towns as the AIs attitude will deteriorate. I always prefer to attack on my own terms rather than respond to an AI attack so not upsetting all AIs is useful in this respect.

Also, if Yahoo survives the barbs I'll be tempted to trade contact.

Agreed.

Seems like AOL already has contact with all the other civs.

True, but contacts are valuable. We should be able to get contacts with the galleys so I'd rather not give away too much cash, but it's your call in the end. If we can trade contacts for contacts (and maps?) then I'd say go for it. Maybe wait a turn until we get the new contact and when we are ready to trade contact with Yahoo?

 

[Sima Qian]

OK, here goes.

590 BC (Turn 0):
- Check F7. AOL is not building any wonders (yay). Yahoo! is building Great Lighthouse, but it is NOT in their capital city (I know this because I picked the city names), so there will be some corruption eating away at their shields there.
- Redmond is size 1. Did they just pop rush something, or produce another settler/worker?
- Check F3. Microsoft has captured 2 workers from AOL (got a settler maybe?)
- Check F4. Yahoo! has no contact with any other civs at the moment. I'll keep it like that for now, want to see the upcoming battle with the barbarian galleys.
- Check F8. Yahoo is pretty far up there in score, uhoh.
- Check F11. WOAH. Linux has a size 12 city already!

- Menlo Park switched over to Great Lighthouse, which has same price as Great Library. Due in 30 turns. (This is actually something new to me, since I'm used to 300 shield cost in Vanilla 1.07.)
- Hit enter.

IBT:
- Yahoo galley gets attacked by 3 barbs, and kills them all!
- With IBM joining in the alliance, Bill Gates' days are numbered.

570 BC (1):
- Web Search: catapult -> spear
- Moving units toward the front lines at Redmond.
- I'm actually going to switch GMail from spearman to settler. I want to build a city on top of the lake (across from TIME) so that the iron is within our borders.

IBT:
- Yahoo galley moves out of sight in the west.
- AOL asks to trade contact with Yahoo for contact with Apple. I refuse, since I'm about to meet them at QuickTime.

550 BC (2):
- Googleplex: archer -> archer
- Workers finish mining plains by Googleplex, so I work that tile now instead of unroaded forest.
- Spearman makes contact with Apple. They're quite a bit ahead of AOL in score, over 1000 already. And not surprisingly, they have a TON of culture, although about on even terms with AOL in power. Techs avail: HBR, Poly, Construction.
- Apple is also building the Great Lighthouse.
- Another spearman walks onto iron, notices a barb horse preparing to attack TIME.

IBT:
- Barb dies attacking TIME.
- Macs begin building the Great Wall.
- Another Yahoo galley appears off our coast.

530 BC (3):
- A blue city, z/OS is spotted (IBM). We can make contact in 5 turns.
- A red city, Flickr, is also spotted (Yahoo). I think Yahoo and Apple are going to make contact very soon.

IBT:
- some AI unit shuffling
- Linux builds the Great Wall. Dangit, Helsinki is hogging all the wonders.

510 BC (4):
- Googleplex: archer->archer
- Googleplex has grown, I create a taxman.
- Mountain view: spearman->galley

- Another AOL settler seen, escorted by Monthly Subscriber.
- AOL has currency. Asks for contact w/ Yahoo, WM, 326g, 22gpt. No way I'm doing that.
- Yahoo still hasn't made contact with Apple. This might be our last chance. So I trade. Contact with Yahoo nets us Contact with Linux + HBR + 3g.

- Linux: score 828, second place. Techs: poly, construction. Pretty strong in power and culture though not as much as Apple. 14 cities under their control, two of which have names that show they were captured from IBM and Sun, either through war or culture.
- Sell HBR to Yahoo before any more contacts are made. We earn 97 gold.
- In case Apple sells contact with Yahoo to AOL, I do this: Sell contact for Contact with Sun, Territory map, 45 gold, 2gpt.

- Jackpot! Sun has polytheism but doesn't have a bunch of other techs that we have. I sell Map making to them because they have extra luxes, and would like them to set up harbors soon so trading will be possible. MM+contact+territory map for contact with IBM, polytheism, their territory map, 8 gold.

- IBM is on tech parity with us. Nothing I can buy from them at the moment.
- So, since contact with Yahoo will likely be traded among the AI, I will take all the advantage I can of it now:
- Sell polytheism to Yahoo. They offer nothing but their world map.
- Sell contact to IBM. I get TM + 10g.
- Sell contact to Linux. I get TM + 3g.
- Trade WM for WM with Sun. I find Apple's map from that.
- Trade WM for WM with Apple, Linux, IBM after that. Before that trade with Sun, they all wanted gold from me.
- Sell WM to AOL for 6g + 2gpt.
- Since we have contact with all civs, I change galley builds to other improvements. Scholar -> barracks. Mountain View -> horseman. Print -> barracks. Googleplex also -> horseman.

IBT:
- Watched 2 swords from Redmond attack successfully, don't know what they were attacking but must have been AOL units.
- Great Lighthouse now under construction by every civ except AOL, and none of these are in capitals.

490 BC (5):
- Web Search: spearman -> horseman
- Elite archer attacks and kills archer near Redmond

IBT:
- AOL builds another city, Warner Bros.

470 BC (6):
- Silk road completes!
- Froogle: barracks -> temple?? (to relieve cultural pressure from Yahoo)
- Menlo Park gets its scientist to work a tile. Science raised to 10%.

IBT:
zzzzz

450 BC (7):
- Googleplex: horseman -> horseman
- GMail: settler -> harbor (not too sure about this)

IBT:
- A stack of 3 monthly subscribers leave TIME.

430 BC (8):
- Just moving some units around, sending archers to Windows.

IBT:
- AOL units defeat a MS archer by Windows.

410 BC (9):
- Mine built on horses. Every citizen in Menlo Park is working a 2-shield tile.

IBT:
- Apple declares war on AOL.

- Some AOL units get killed attacking Windows and MS-DOS.
- Massive barbarian uprising near Scholar!

390 BC (10):
- Googleplex: horseman -> horseman
- Mountain View: horseman -> settler
- Found Talk, we now have iron in our borders. Building barracks.

IBT:
- Apple begins building the Great Library (!!!)

370 BC (11):
- Linux has republic.
- Apple got currency, monarchy, lit. Clearly some tech trading happened.
- Googleplex has grown to size 7, one citizen turned into scientist, science set back to 0%.

IBT:
- Yahoo lands a Yahooligan on horses by Menlo Park. What could they be up to?
- AOL starts work on Sun Tzu's (!!!!)
- Linux also starts GLib

350 BC (12):
- Web Search: horseman -> settler
- I can't ask the Yahooligan to leave or declare war, so I leave him alone.
- 2 archers kill 2 MM's and raze Windows.

IBT:

- Yahoo declares war on us!
- Yahoo kills a warrior defending Menlo Park.

330 BC (13):
- Googleplex: horseman -> horseman
- Horseman kills Yahoo spearman
- Horseman kills Yahooligan
- Build embassies with all the other civs. Everyone wants a lot of gold for an alliance. I think this was a bad move, since I'd probably prefer to keep this war short, and not have to deal with alliances. I did, however, get to see this:

IBT:
- Linux completes the Great Lighthouse. Uhoh.
- Yahoo lands spearman + 3 Yahooligans outside of our borders near Print.

310 BC (14):
- Menlo Park switches back to Palace prebuild. Lit due in 6 turns still.
- Vet horseman kills Yahoo spearman.
- 2 Vet horsemen kill 2 Yahooligans.

IBT:
- Yahooligan attacks horseman and dies.

290 BC (15):
- Mountain View: settler -> horseman
- Scholar: barracks -> archer
- 2 archers kill 2 MM's, raze MS-DOS, capture 2 workers. Strangely, they are AOL nationality.
- 5 cats bombard Redmond, only one damages a MM
- Elite archer kills MM
- Elite archer kills MM
- 3 Vet archers die to a single MM (grr)
- 4th Vet archer kills MM, captures Redmond
- Our evil nemesis Microsoft has been eliminated!

IBT:
- Lots of movement of AOL units around Redmond. Scary, but let's hope they don't declare war.
- Sun and IBM begin building GLib. What fun.

270 BC (16):
- Googleplex: horseman -> horseman
- I'm sending units over to Flickr, the Yahoo settlement on our continent.

IBT:
- Yahoo lands a single Yahooligan near Redmond.

250 BC (17):
- Web search: settler -> swordsman (heh, iron from Redmond)
- Desktop: catapult -> settler
- Video: harbor -> galley
- Vet archer kills Yahooligan.

IBT:
- Yahoo lands swordsman + spearman + Yahooligan near Redmond.

230 BC (18):
- Elite archer kills sword. Elite archer kills spear. Vet archer kills Yahooligan.
- Our horses meet up with a barb by Flickr. Will they help us or hurt us?

IBT:
- Barbarian horseman *redlines* the spearman guarding Flickr for us!
- Yahoo lands spearman by Redmond.

210 BC (19):
- Googleplex: horseman -> swordsman (??)
- Raze Flickr. That's a no-brainer.
- Vet archer kills Yahoo spearman.

IBT:
- AOL settler seen near Redmond... will it beat us to the gems?
- Linux starts working on Sistine Chapel (!!)

190 BC (20):
- Lit researched. Menlo Park converts prebuild to GLib, due in 5 turns.
- Print: barracks -> harbor (not much else I can think of...)
- This shouldn't do a thing to our rep, but I wiped out the barb camp that helped us take Flickr. Thanks barbs, but we don't need you anymore (25 gold!)

Current situation:

- Yahoo is willing to sign peace. They'll even cough up 9 gold for it.
- GLib is due in 5 turns. I don't know if that will be enough. If it isn't, could we possibly put Menlo back on palace and save shields for Sun Tzu's or Leo's?
- Linux is the only civ we can make luxury deals with at the moment, since they can trade over ocean tiles.
- I have a settler moving toward the gems, hopefully it will reach them before AOL does.

Roster:

tupaclives (up next)
Andronicus (on deck)
Tone (if back from Switz.)
Mirc (???)
Sima Qian (just played)

 

[tupaclives]

I have to finish off my update for Tupacatha's Most Excellent Adventure, then I have to play my turns for Tupac02, so I'll not get to this for a day or 2. Hope thats alright.

 

[Sima Qian]

That's fine. I'm not that strict with deadlines.

A couple other things I forgot to mention:

- Yahoo is probably in their GA now (in monarchy too). Triggered on turn 12 of my set, so it'll last well into Tupac's.
- Froogle is building temple, probably useless. Switch it to a lib maybe?
- Research set to min on Republic. If you want to change it and have some difficulty doing that in your game, just let me know and I'll switch it for you.

 

[Tone]

Looking good! Nice trading SQ!

Do we know if there was a cascade from the GLHouse to the GLib? If not then we should be safe.

 

[Andronicus]

Our evil nemesis Microsoft has been eliminated!

So its Republic we want?

 

[Sima Qian]

@Tone: Unfortunately I think there was a cascade, GLib is being built in several of the AI's coastal cities now, so chances are they carried over the shields from Lighthouse.

@Andronicus: We have neither tech for republic or monarchy as of my last turn. Yahoo is still at war with us, although it's Tupac's call whether or not we want peace yet. I'm actually tempted to raze a few of Yahoo's coastal cities to relieve the cultural pressure they have on us, or maybe stack a few units in their territory and get them to surrender some tech to us. But that's probably just wistful thinking, as we don't even have galleys built yet.

With the settler going to the gems I think it'll be good to get currency soon, as those markets will give an extra happy face to our third lux.

 

[Tone]

So its Republic we want?

If I'm reading your post correctly, I agree that (now that we will not be at war constantly) we should aim for Republic.

@Tone: Unfortunately I think there was a cascade, GLib is being built in several of the AI's coastal cities now, so chances are they carried over the shields from Lighthouse.

During the IT when it was announced that the GLH was built you would also get notification of any civs that started buiding the GLib, implying these are cascades. If you don't remember this, we could look at any saves you have before the GLH was built to see if the site is the same for failed GLH builds and current GLib builds. Alternatively we could investigate the cities or just hope for the best. I'm happy to go with the finger crossing option but I'm just curious.

 

[Sima Qian]

@Tone: Yeah I think there were pop-ups like that, for Apple and Yahoo. Seems like I messed up my estimation, I had been stuck in the v1.07 mentality thinking that GLhouse cost 300 shields and would be built very early on. It was a bit of a surprise to see them take so long to build it.

Only three turns passed between Apple starting GLib and Linux finishing GLhouse. Darn! So close to breaking the cascade!

 

[Tone]

Seems like I messed up my estimation, I had been stuck in the v1.07 mentality thinking that GLhouse cost 300 shields and would be built very early on.

GLH normally does cost 300 in 1.29f as well! I think that this is another change caused by the alterations you've made but I've no idea why. I checked using CAII (as I'm using my drive to transfer music to my MP3 at the moment) and I also note that cathedrals will only cost 140 shields in this game. Do you think that it anything to do with one civ getting all traits?

Edit: FP costs 300 rather than the usual 200 and Wall Street also costs more than usual. Can anyone see a connection?

 

[Sima Qian]

Woah! I'm starting to suspect I did something very wrong with my patching. Was I supposed to apply v1.16, v1.17, v1.21 and such before installing v1.29?

Or maybe I'm just a very inept modder (probably the more likely scenario). Oh well, too late for me to go change anything with that now. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

 

[Tone]

I've no idea! You might get an idea in the C&C forum. We'll just have to keep our eyes open as new things become available. I might scroll through the various pages of CAII with one of our saves to see if other units/improvements have an altered cost. It's no real problem though so, as tupaclives might say, no worries!

 

[Sima Qian]

[rant]
GAAAH!!! Clearly I should've done some extra testing before releasing this mod. And I call myself a software engineer! Shame on me!
[/rant]

I think what happened is that some of the pre-patch rules somehow sneaked their way into the .bic file for this game. I loaded that up and indeed found several differences between that and the civ3mod.bic file (default rules).

It seems like in v1.29 synthetic fibers has prereq as just ecology, not recycling, yet the v1.07 rule that requires recycling managed to work its way into this as well. UGH.

And I think the palace cost is bugged, 1200 shields obviously isn't right. In the v1.29 rules, palace cost should be 1/4 of that.

Well, best of luck to Tupac...

 

[tupaclives]

Pre-flight

Everything looks good, well as good as I can actually see I check the demo's and we are first in approval, pollution and annual income (the investors would be pleas). Dont know how we rate anywhere else as I can't see it decide to keep going with the Great Library, we might nab it at the death, who knows? Personally I wouldn't have expected to even get as close as we have. Switch Talk to a lib (did we really need to build it at ICS to the AOL city?) and Web Search to a settler.

IBT - Apple starts Sun Tzu's. Hopefully thats what they cascaded too.

Turn 1 - Froogle: Temple --> Sword.
Use our archers around Redmond to make a human (ok, pixel) wall blocking the AOL settlers. Bombard Yahoo galley.

IBT - Apple completes the Great Library
I never thought we had a chance of getting it but we almost got there... almost.

Turn 2 - Switch Menlo to palace, maybe we can get something to go for instead before everything is built. I see what you mean about the palace... it only has 1 shield in each line... how odd and will take 113 turns. At least we;ll never have to worry about it finishing too early
I decide I want something to build other than military so time for some trading (my trading skills are not the best so if anyone would tell me what I could have done better that would be great)
Check around, everyone has monarch, some have currency, some have construction, Linux also has republic and would sell for silks, furs + 450gold...
Buy Republic for 450 gold + silks + furs (I really hope thats a secure trade route... I would hate to have be the one to kill our rep this early...)
Buy Construction from apple for 430gp (nearly all our left over gold)
Buy Currency from Sun Systems for Construction +8gp + 3gpt.

We are into the Middle Ages and we get monotheism as our free tech.

Everyone in the MA already has Feudalism and Monotheism but AOL lacks Republic. Sell it to AOL for Feudalism + 6gp + WM.
Sell it to IBM for Monarchy + 6gp + WM

All up spent 876gp, silks, furs, 3gpt and got
Construction
Currency
Monotheism
Republic
Feudalism
Monarchy
an updated world map.

As I said, advice as to what I could have done better/differently would be greatly appreciated.

Research gets set to Chivalry, sorry guys I can't change this Would way prefer it to be Engineering but there you go, Chivalry's not all bad, we could do a big upgrade of Web Crawlers to knights if we wanted to.

After all that excitement the rest of the turn is very dull. Switch a few cities to markets in preparation of getting the gems online and revolting to Republic.
Switch Menlo to Sun Tzu's (due in 22, almost def wont get it)

IBT - nothin'

Turn 3 - Found Blogger. Found Orkut and gems are online. Drop lux slider by 10 and we are at +43gpt. Remember I was meant ot whip the library in Talk 2 turns ago. Thats just sloppy on my part.

IBT - Yahoo lands a spear by Menlo.

Turn 4 - use cats to weaken the spear and then watch in dismay as a vet sword dies against this redlined spear. Send a horse in and he finished the job (but is yellowlined).

IBT - zilch

Turn 5 - All quiet on the google front.

IBT - the AOL marching ants continue in a steady stream.

Turn 6 - nothing interesting.

IBT -

Turn 7 - Nothing interesting

IBT - 2 Yahoo galleys show up

Turn 8 - bombard said galleys

IBT - and they leave. AOL founds CNN in the jungle between Redmond and our core.

Turn 9 - Bombard Yahoo galley. Real quiet turn.

IBT - zzz

Turn 10 - Googleplex: Market --> Sword (income up to 49gpt).

Ok I'm going to pause here (I jsut find it hard to play 20 turns straight TBH), so we can have a bit of discussion.

Obviously I can't see what the diplomatic status is or nething like that so If someone could give me a full run down of the current status it would be great. Same if I could just find out where we stand in Mfg. Goods (placing), I like to use that as a guide to how we compare with other nations.

Also do we want to revolt to Republic now? I was goign to wait until we had more than 1 market but watd you guys think? Also do we want to change our research? Noone has Chivalry but several civs have engineering and theology. Do we want to risk an actual run on Chivalry and hope to trade? If we want to change research can someone change the research and repost the save? Thanks guys.

The save

 

[Andronicus]

Had a quick look at save - we need morew workers for all that jungle - 10 workers and 14 cities

I note we have a few potential buyers of our wonderful WM

Interestingly peace treaty +327g +4gpt will get Theology from Yahoos

Best research we can currently do is 26 turns for engineering and 29 for chivalry whilst still maintaining pos cash flow (yeah I remember this time ) I suggest better min research and save gold for purcheases

If we do revolt now we will need to hire a few taxmen to keep positive gpt

Demographics page attached as requested

I'll be away for weekend so please swap or skip if I'm due - will be avail to play Mon pm (I think)

 

[Sima Qian]

Well done with the trades, tupac. Selling republic to AOL was a good move

I just looked at the save and here's my input (mostly crap, but the major points are toward the end):

Current diplo screen:

The two Steves are still at war, and nobody has gotten particularly close with Yahoo yet (only peace, no RoP or anything).

Trade screen:

Well, I take that back. I suspect a lux trade between Linux and Yahoo. Linux has GLHouse so they have sea route to everybody, but AOL is at war with Apple so that route is broken!

Looks like Sun Microsystems doesn't have iron... that would be a very nice trade once the route opens up... (The AI seems very dumb with city placement, Forte is built on top of wheat).

Sun Tzu's due in 14 turns. Yeah, I have some major doubts about that, but if you can turn it into Leo's, great! Just gotta hope there's no cascade...

There's an Apple settler/spear wandering around on our west side. I think AOL will probably wipe them out, with all the units they're sending over there. (They won't pay us for an RoP. Idiots!).

I'm not sure if Redmond is the right place for our scientist. I know I left it there because the city is really corrupt, but do we want any pop growth there? I don't see any compelling reason why though, nor do I know of a better place for the scientist, so you're free to keep it as it is.

I would agree with Andronicus on the point about the workers, 10 workers + 9 slaves seem to be a bit... light... for our size.

I think there ought to be a way we can get Print to above one shield per turn. If I use the roaded jungle tile (don't do this), I can see that it keeps 2 uncorrupted gold out of 7 commerce. It's at 6 corrupted spt right now, so I think if the furs get mined, 7 spt should leave us with 2 uncorrupted.

Marketplace finishes 4 turns earlier in Froogle if you use the forest instead of the unroaded grassland. (Just being nitpicky here.)

Froogle would be a nice place to base our galley. We can load units in there and deposit them on Yahoo's island on the same turn. Mobile and Local conveniently have mountains for them to land on

As for building Talk on that tile, there were only a few other choices if we wanted to get the iron within our borders, all of which would involve some ICS-like spacing. I didn't realize Microsoft would go down so easily though

If we do revolt now, I'd prefer to have it after we sign peace with Yahoo. We should be able to trade silks for incense with them afterwards. Andronicus raises a good point about the discount on theology, as it's quite a big discount (Linux wants 327g + 16gpt). However, I'm not sure if that's necessary. If we are shooting for Leo's Workshop, I'd save gold for engineering/invention. If we can land some units in Yahoo territory, maybe we could get theology for free. (???)

As for keeping research on chivalry, I think that's a good idea. I still think the AI will beat us to it, but if we are researching an optional tech at minimum, at least it won't get in the way of us buying the required ones. If we do eventually get chivalry, I'd say upgrade the horsemen and not the web crawlers, since then we won't be able to build any more of those, and I do want that GA at the right time! (The AI likes to build longbowmen from what I've known, and web crawlers can kill those fairly easily I'd imagine.)

Okay, I think that's all I could come up with for now, best of luck to you!

 

[tupaclives]

Thanks for the pictures guys most helpful. I'll keep my eyes open for discounts with yahoo. I'd rather stay at war with them if we don't have to actually fight as that will slow them down.

I'll play the rest of the turns now.

 

[Sima Qian]

Sounds fair to me. I personally think we're in no real hurry to get out of despotism, since the map doesn't have that many hills and we can live with 2-shield tiles for now.

Republic would be very nice for the commerce bonus though. We definitely have to switch to it before our GA - that's a no-brainer.

EDIT: Seems like I've crossposted with tupac right now. Looking forward to see what he's got!

 

[tupaclives]

As Sima suggested move tiles around in Froogle. Sorry I wasn't MM any cities n got caught out

neway...

IBT - LInux drops a settler pair where I'd roaded too what a waste. Yahoo completes Sun Tzu, Penguins start on Copernicus.

Turn 11 - sink a yahoo galley

IBT - Linux founds a city on our land. They also finish Sistines.

Turn 12 - sink another galley.

IBT - Yahoo asks for peace I tell them to shove it. Linux demands we leave, I do. Linux starts Leo's. We have nowhere near the cash we need to get Engineering (511gp+21gpt the cheapest), let alone invention (which would be at monopoly).

Turn 13 - just moving guys around. Load up our galley.

IBT - Linux completes Copernicus. Apple starts Leo's... still can't afford to buy engineering... if only yahoo knew it...

Turn 14 - Our galley leaves. Bombard yahoo galleys. Wonder how I can get us engineering.

IBT - AOL starts Leo's.

Turn 15 - AOL would sell engineering for 560gp + silks. Yahoo will sell it to us for 362gp with peace... Check with everyone else and I figure we wont get a better deal so I hand over the dough.

AOL: Peace + 362gp for Peace + Engineering

Check the lux trade possibility, silks for incense is only 'doubtful' we would need to pay 4gpt to get it to happen. As we have no happiness problems right now I decide to withhold the trade (we can trade later)

Go to AOL to see what invention would cost and nearly have a heartattack.

World Map + 281gp +34gpt + silks.

I say no thanks... we probably have time to wait for a few more to know it before buying... if we bought it that would mean no revolt until we had the deficit covered (cant go, potentially, 6 turns without giving the investors any money now could we).

Check the cities and I notice previously happy citizens are now unhappy.. we must have been benefitting from War Happiness, yet we are in despotism
So to prevent a riot I pay Yahoo the 4gpt + silks for Incense + 4gp
That should also prevent AOL getting cute and demanding silks from us.

IBT - zzz

Turn 16 - not a lot. Invention price hasnt come down at all.

IBT - AOL demands 32gp + TM and obviously I cave.

Turn 17 - Found Picassa. Invention is as expensive as ever.

IBT - zzz

Turn 18 - we get another set of silks. Have a rare stroke of brilliance (ok I just remember it, it wasnt that brilliant). We are selling Linux Furs and Silks (the republic trade). If we hook up a 2nd lot of gems we could put 3 luxs on the table (at no cost to us) and added with some gp that should be enough to buy Invention. 4 turns away, I send a group of workers down to the unconnected gems (will be there in 4, hows that for perfection ).

IBT - Apple lands what looks suspiciously like an invasion force on the mountain beside Blogger.

Turn 19 - we get our 2nd lot of iron online, was going to check who we could sell them to and hit F4 causing the game to quit... great form Sam

IBT - with the game quitting i forgot to make a gpt deal with apple, and just as well. They dont attack us, they wander off toward the AOL city south of Talk. And then I watch AOL pick them off with embarrasing ease. Oh yeah Apple dropped more guys off on the same spot so meh.

Turn 20 - Nothing of any interest. A few builds finish.

NOTES FOR NEXT PLAYER

The furs + silks trade with Linux ends in 2 turns and we can then use those luxs plus gems to buy invention. There are several military units on go to. There are also 3 workers on go to to the unconnected gems.
I didn't MM so feel free to change things around, should be a few golden coins to be found
We have most of our military in either Redmond or Picassa.

Nothing else really for me to say, cant comment on diplomatic status so thats really all I can contribute right now. If I think of anything else I'll let you know

Good luck Andronicus (on monday)!

The save