mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
edited February 2010
Thanks for everyone who voted for Pi-Dongbury, I shall not disappoint hopefully. I already submitted my build plan in a previous post but if anyone has any other ideas or input I'd like to hear it. Can't say I'll do it, but I'll listen while I fill my maw with egyptian delicacies.
The first that happened was we met two new rival civilizations. First, Louis XIV, the king of the French. Second, Brennus of the Celts. Brennus had founded one of the other religions we had heard about, Hinduism. By the end of this period of history, Louis had converted to this new faith as well.
(Editor's note: due to tech tree happenings and how quickly it was founded, Brennus likely founded Judaism as well. Bibracte is probably a double holy city. For newbies: a religion is founded when a certain technology is discovered for the first time: Meditation -> Buddhism; Polytheism -> Hinduism; Monotheism -> Judaism; Code of Laws -> Confucianism; Theology -> Christianity; Philosophy -> Taoism; Divine Wright -> Islam. One of the discovering civ's cities is made the holy city for that religion. This has bonuses we'll get into later.
The settlers sprinted out to the planned location of East Dongbury unguarded, in a daring risk by the God Queen. Fortunately, they made it just in time before the Lions ate them. Egypt had built its second settlement! Hatshetsup appointed the Merchant mrt144 to be its first governor.
The Egyptians had decided the time had come to make weapons of war! The citizens demanded 10 War Chariots be created to invade the Portuguese. Or, alternately, to ferry the queen around the expanding empire. This is a feature that was introduced in Beyond the Sword. At random times, events happen. This particular one is a quest. Had we built 10 War Chariots before the end of the Ancient Age, we could have gotten some bonuses. They're reasonably nice if I remember right, but nothing spectacular in this particular case. As you'll see at the end of the update, we failed this one.
The Portuguese foolishly left a worker unattended by their border, and by the power vested in me by the cabinet, I stole it. He was marched back to Pi-Dongbury and put to work making us a copper mine. Also of note: the Dutch are destroyed. Not long after war is declared, peace is declared without any terms being imposed by either side.
Having built another settler quickly with their vast food stores, the Egyptians went southeast to the newly explored coast. Hatshetsup needed a port with access to hills to build a navy. She felt awful about having to use a flood plain to build the most advantageous city, but it done regardless. There is another very nice city site to the Southeast of the port of Los Wangeles, to be governed by Steel Angel, a military man with a fascination with the waters of the Nile.
A second scouting warrior encountered a tribesman without any major civilization to look to. These barbarians would prove quite a hassle in the coming generations. However, the first encounter quickly ended with an Egyptian victory, their first over an enemy soldier.
A century later, Raiden333, still wandering along the Portuguese border, found another unguarded worker attempting to build a corn farm. Assuming authority, the Warlord charged in to capture another worker, starting the second Egypt-Portuguese Non-War. Joao was very angry, but again gave up with no concessions on either side not long afterwards. The worker was sent to Pi-Dongbury with the other Portuguese slave.
During the second non-war, Raiden had walked right up to Lisbon. Seeing it containing fortified archers, he declined to attack. He did notice a group of settlers preparing to make way and when the war ended, he began to look for the new Portuguese city. He found it (gaaaah build on the river, morons!) but was attacked by a barbarian. Despite his experience and knowledge of the forest, Raiden333 had fallen. On the plus side: glorious resurrection elsewhere so he remains our Warlord.
Using the mighty power of the whip, Arcadia had created another settler. Sadly, the proposed name for the new city was too long to fit on the signs of welcome, so East Schlongville was shortened to E. Schlongville. There was a pretty good site to the west that Hatshetsup felt would make an excellent site for W. Schlongville. Foomy, a bloodthirsty warrior was appointed guardian and governor of the city that was quite close to the Portuguese border.
When Los Wangeles' culture expanded to use the land farther from the city center, the borders of the Mayans were discovered. They were extremely close and would have to be watched very carefully!
To end this period, the Egyptians created a system of characters to represent the sounds of their language. This propelled them into a new era of history!
WORLD NEWS
It was in France!
EGYPT NEWS
With the discovery of Alphabet, we advanced to the classical age. This means travathian has been promoted from Astrologer to Philosopher. It also means we can adjust the espionage slider and build spies. To manage this new facet of the game, a new cabinet position has been created!
A Spy is required to head the Clandestine Operations and Concealed Knowledge office. Here is our Espionage Screen:
Meanwhile, with the discovery of Alphabet, we may now trade technologies. This can happen between updates (specifically tomorrow evening) so as to give the High Philosopher the chance to give a useful technology update. The Chancellor should make suggestions of what we can afford to give up (if he would like to trade Writing but not give up Alphabet so the AIs can't trade techs with each other, for example) and want our priorities for acquisition should be.
The capital. The governors will be getting PMs with their cities.
The current state of the world as we know it (I continue to suck at scouting, expansion was more on my mind).
LP STUFF:
All civilians are now allowed to move from Arcadia to one of our three new cities! To do, post in a pretty color that is NOT orange or cyan with your name and the city you would like to move to. This will be noted in the OP. For those wondering:
mrt144 wants to make a production city for now. Wonders will probably be built there, if we're going to build them in the near future.
Floomy wants to make lots of units in East Schlongville.
Steel Angel wanted a library and granary first and seems interested in making a commercial port.
Wonders!
We now have a wonder available: The Great Pyramids. As The Great Pyramids produce Engineer great person points, an engineer will have to be in the city we wish to build them in. They will also need the blessing of that city's governor, or if you would like to build it in Arcadia, mine. To propose the wonder, post that you want it in the thread. The governor of that city can agree or disagree.
If you didn't actually read the update (shame on you!) a spy must be selected to lead us. The spies may offer their services for the post, they'll need a second from anyone in the Empire. I'll choose one tomorrow night around midnight. This person will keep their post through the next set of updates (they get 4 updates as a cabinet member).
GAME NOTES
Louis is also Hindu, which indicates to me that he and Brennus are very close to each other. It may be a good idea to get all bloodlusty and conquer everything to our east until we hit the sea. Up to you guys though.
The Maya are to our west, I have a suspicion that they have a coastal capital, just based on how the Civ landmass generator works. If that's the case, we should build our cities to the north and block them off while conquering to the east. We need a port on the other side of the continent anyway, and there are some lovely floodplains just north of Arcadia, as you can see in the update.
Cottaging continues in Arcadia, we are elsewhere mostly hooking up resources. Primary goal is to get the horses in Los Wangeles connected. Lesser goal is to get stone in case we want to go for the Pyramids.
Lastly: hunting (being able to use the ivory and get the +1 happy, I whipped the hell out of Arcadia to get those cities up) and fishing would be super useful, if we can get them in a trade that would be nice, Mr. Chancellor.
I think that's everything, will update the second post... now.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
The Head of C.O.C.K will have the following powers:
Complete control over where we focus our espionage efforts.
Complete control over all spy missions performed by our spies.
Lobbying governors (and me) to build spies.
I suck at espionage and tend to ignore it. If you want to teach me (and the rest of the players) how to do it, this is the position for you!
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
One of the major changes involves moving espionage and spying from the late game to the early game. In Civ IV, you could only build spies after the Scotland Yard wonder was built, which happened so late in the game that spies were all but useless. That's changed now, and espionage becomes available as soon as you research the alphabet technology. You can then build spy units, which are invisible to everyone but you. On the other hand, you cannot see enemy spy units in your territory, but we'll get to how you counter them in a moment. You need to station spies in enemy cities so you can conduct espionage missions, which include sabotaging production, fomenting revolt, stealing technology, poisoning the water supply, and more. However, the more complicated the espionage mission, the more espionage points it costs. You generate espionage points by allocating a certain percentage of your economy to them, just like you allocate research and culture spending. These espionage points are spread evenly amongst all foreign nations that you're in contact with, but you can go into the new espionage screen and redirect points. So if you're at war with Russia, you can focus all your espionage points on the Russians.
When you attempt a mission, the game checks your espionage point total against the total that the nation you're targeting has against you. If you have more points focused at them than they do at you, the cost of the mission is reduced proportionally. However, if you have fewer points than the enemy, the mission becomes that much more expensive. There are also a number of ways that you can defend yourself against spies. You can station one of your spies in a city, and that raises the cost for anyone who wants to conduct espionage missions there. Also, certain buildings make a spy's job more difficult, such as courthouses, jails, and castles. By giving these existing structures new functionality, Firaxis has made them a lot more valuable. There's also a new security bureau structure that really makes things difficult for hostile spies.
Basically, just fund Spy missions and focus on whomever we want gone or converted.
I would love to be your Spy for sabotage or the like, but I'd need a better idea of what all those symbols and numbers mean on the Espionage screen.
A lesson in the Espionage screen:
1) Here we have a listing of all the empires we know. The % (Spy) cost is an indication of how much of the base cost it will cost us to perform missions. The more spy points we devote towards an opponent the smaller this number will get.
Below that we have the weight we can put on each empire. If we want to put most of our points towards Joao, we'd up this to say, three, and put the others at one. If you put any weighting in, any civs you weight at zero will get no spy points sent their way. Then on the right we have the number of spy points we have thus far devoted towards that empire and how many we are devoting to them each turn.
2) Here's how many spy points we make each turn. The Palace makes 4. We could make more by sacrificing research/gold, but that's probably not in our best interest at the moment. There are also buildings that make spy points: courthouses, castles, police stations, intelligence agencies, and security bureaus. We have none of those as of yet. Courthouses are the closest, at four or so techs away (at least two of which we can trade for).
3) Accumulating spy points towards a civ can give us passive effects, such as seeing their demographic information on the lovely score graph or seeing what they are currently researching. We have Pacal selected currently and as we can see we are 31 EPs from being able to see his research. This is subject to some serious inflation though, so unless we actually devote our points towards him, this won't happen for a good while.
4) Here's all the active missions we can perform in the future. Currently we don't have enough spy points towards Pacal to do any of them.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
0
PaperLuigi44My amazement is at maximum capacity.Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
Nice update. Here's hoping the original Raiden333 is doing the McCain shuffle in a better place.
And when you do make my Scientist, Los Wangeles sounds like a good place to settle down.
Yeah, I know we don't have a Great Scientist yet, just thought I'd let you know ahead of time before I forget.
COMINGATTRACTIONS!
Civ4 has great people! Great people are generated by great person points. Great person points come from either wonders or specialists in the city. In this game, the great people will be renamed for our civilians. When a Great Person is born, I will first check if a corresponding civilian lives in that city. So if Los Wangeles spawned a scientist, PaperLuigi44 would be that scientist (currently). If there are multiples, I'll RNG. If every appropriate type of person in that city has gotten to be a Great Person or there are none of the appropriate type in the city, we'll go empire wide.
Whoever the Great Person is renamed for shall decide what to do with that Great Person.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Also, Curse you, WotanAnubis! Curse you and your well thought out arguments against Heraclion! We would have gotten away with it were it not for you and your meddlesome priests!
Well, that's what you get when you go up against someone who has the Unknowable on their side.
Anyways, it seems to me that the Governor of Los Wangeles has no solid plans for development, other than making a trading port of some sort. It seems to me that he or she is in need of some proper guidance, so I, WotanAnubis, would like to move to Los Wangeles.
Trade our cheapo techs to Brennus (or whoever is in last place) for whatever we can get from them. This will alter my final tech planning.
Taking out Joao should be Priority #1. Why? Notice what you don't see in his sphere of influence. Copper or horses, and he hasn't researched IW yet. Importance: archers are his only defense. Our war chariots, in sufficient numbers, can beat his archers. We will suffer some casualties that is certain, but the land we shall gain is immense. No other civilizations have come exploring from that side of the world, so we may very well have the rest of the continent to ourselves. Controlled expansion is key, but with our cottages lining the Nile and more being built each day, our income can afford the expansion.
Therefore, with our new techs from Brennus I suggest building a lone scout to explore the area S/SW of Arcadia to confirm it is a peninsula, then head west. All workers should be developing a road network to connect our cities and a path to Joao, and specifically hooking up horses. Cities should be working on barracks, so that when horses are provided we can train war chariots immediately, whipping during the second turn of production, if able, to avoid the penalty. Attack with overwhelming numbers and enjoy the fruits of our labors with 2-3 new cities and land as far as the eye can see.
Going this route means we can skip the IW side of the tech tree and work towards Currency, which benefits from our large number of cities, and Calendar which opens up a whole host of happiness commodities already visible in our empire. Thus allowing our cities to grow to great sizes, further increasing our research and production power, allowing us to work on building the late Ancient and early next age wonders of significance.
I would say pass on the spying for now. We have too few points invested in Joao to do anything of worth, and that is production we could spend making a war chariot. Given that we know Joao is going to be destroyed shortly, I would suggest focusing our espionage points either completely to Louis, or split with him and Shaka, and then after our first real war, shipping out a spy.
I would suggest opening borders with Louis and Brennus in order to get Hinduism to spread to our cities, either via trade or them sending missionaries. If we switch to it, it helps align us with another top civ who isn't a direct neighbor, then keep our fingers crossed that Shaka joins us instead of the Buddhists.
Sign me up for ahem.... diplomatic duties in C.O.C.K.
If we're going for a chariot rush against Joao in the near future, then we'll end up with our eastern frontier bordering upon France, so we should split our espionage weighting between Louis and Shaka for now. Louis because he's close and high on the leader board, Shaka because he's a crazy mo-fo.
If Pacal is stuck alone on a peninsula to the west then he is a prime candidate for becoming our tech-pet/vassal. A city to the NW of Arcadia to pinch off his eastward expansion is definitely a high priority in that case.
Louis and Brennius are the beginning of a religious alliance block. We should endeavour to be the third leg of that alliance, keeping Joao out of it (by killing him probably). So open borders to encourage hindu missionaries is a good idea. If Shaka comes into it as well then that might calm him down a bit, but we'll probably end up fighting him at some point.
It looks like most of the action will be in the east, so I think I'll emigrate to E. Schlongville.
Regards
Luke
PS
Enlightenedbum, I know you don't want to fuss around with the BUG stuff too much, but can you enable the relative power indicator please? That puts up a power ratio between our civ and each of the other civs on the leader board part of the main screen, which is a very handy clue-in when it comes to figuring out the likely actions of our rivals.
The people of Pi-Dongbury need a Holy man to guide them on their lofty quest of being a wonderful city. I, WilDPanthA05 would like to be sent there to oversee the proper education of our people.
My queen, quarthinos has sent me to you to advise you of the fact he is moving to Los Wangeles!
Looks like Brennus is a prime target for trading. Give him the wheel and animal husbandry for hunting and fishing. And then maybe give louis animals for mysticism?
My tech vote is towards calendar, so that we can start getting the luxuries flowing!
Posts
Also, I could use Steel Angel reporting in, if it at all possible. Los Wangeles needs plans!
Streaming 8PST on weeknights
I shall not handcuff my governors without the full approval of the cabinet (Raaaaaaaaiden!!!)
I shall have the power to declare war to seize workers! (2-1 vote)
We shall reconsider the matter of Lisbon's name at a later date.
Our third city shall be Los Wangeles, to be governed by Steel Angel!
If I build a fourth city this update, it shall be East Schlongville, to be governed by Foomy!
That's two military governors...
I thought this would happen in another 3 minutes! :P
It looks like there was a last minute surge for East Schlongville.
Would be hilarious if it were built directly south of Bends-Slightly-To-The-Right-Schongville.
Hindsight:
* Los Wangeles/Danglelies are combined
I can't wait for this.
Bah, he deserves it.
The first that happened was we met two new rival civilizations. First, Louis XIV, the king of the French. Second, Brennus of the Celts. Brennus had founded one of the other religions we had heard about, Hinduism. By the end of this period of history, Louis had converted to this new faith as well.
(Editor's note: due to tech tree happenings and how quickly it was founded, Brennus likely founded Judaism as well. Bibracte is probably a double holy city. For newbies: a religion is founded when a certain technology is discovered for the first time: Meditation -> Buddhism; Polytheism -> Hinduism; Monotheism -> Judaism; Code of Laws -> Confucianism; Theology -> Christianity; Philosophy -> Taoism; Divine Wright -> Islam. One of the discovering civ's cities is made the holy city for that religion. This has bonuses we'll get into later.
The settlers sprinted out to the planned location of East Dongbury unguarded, in a daring risk by the God Queen. Fortunately, they made it just in time before the Lions ate them. Egypt had built its second settlement! Hatshetsup appointed the Merchant mrt144 to be its first governor.
The Egyptians had decided the time had come to make weapons of war! The citizens demanded 10 War Chariots be created to invade the Portuguese. Or, alternately, to ferry the queen around the expanding empire. This is a feature that was introduced in Beyond the Sword. At random times, events happen. This particular one is a quest. Had we built 10 War Chariots before the end of the Ancient Age, we could have gotten some bonuses. They're reasonably nice if I remember right, but nothing spectacular in this particular case. As you'll see at the end of the update, we failed this one.
The Portuguese foolishly left a worker unattended by their border, and by the power vested in me by the cabinet, I stole it. He was marched back to Pi-Dongbury and put to work making us a copper mine. Also of note: the Dutch are destroyed. Not long after war is declared, peace is declared without any terms being imposed by either side.
Having built another settler quickly with their vast food stores, the Egyptians went southeast to the newly explored coast. Hatshetsup needed a port with access to hills to build a navy. She felt awful about having to use a flood plain to build the most advantageous city, but it done regardless. There is another very nice city site to the Southeast of the port of Los Wangeles, to be governed by Steel Angel, a military man with a fascination with the waters of the Nile.
A second scouting warrior encountered a tribesman without any major civilization to look to. These barbarians would prove quite a hassle in the coming generations. However, the first encounter quickly ended with an Egyptian victory, their first over an enemy soldier.
A century later, Raiden333, still wandering along the Portuguese border, found another unguarded worker attempting to build a corn farm. Assuming authority, the Warlord charged in to capture another worker, starting the second Egypt-Portuguese Non-War. Joao was very angry, but again gave up with no concessions on either side not long afterwards. The worker was sent to Pi-Dongbury with the other Portuguese slave.
During the second non-war, Raiden had walked right up to Lisbon. Seeing it containing fortified archers, he declined to attack. He did notice a group of settlers preparing to make way and when the war ended, he began to look for the new Portuguese city. He found it (gaaaah build on the river, morons!) but was attacked by a barbarian. Despite his experience and knowledge of the forest, Raiden333 had fallen. On the plus side: glorious resurrection elsewhere so he remains our Warlord.
Using the mighty power of the whip,
When Los Wangeles' culture expanded to use the land farther from the city center, the borders of the Mayans were discovered. They were extremely close and would have to be watched very carefully!
To end this period, the Egyptians created a system of characters to represent the sounds of their language. This propelled them into a new era of history!
WORLD NEWS
It was in France!
EGYPT NEWS
With the discovery of Alphabet, we advanced to the classical age. This means travathian has been promoted from Astrologer to Philosopher. It also means we can adjust the espionage slider and build spies. To manage this new facet of the game, a new cabinet position has been created!
A Spy is required to head the Clandestine Operations and Concealed Knowledge office. Here is our Espionage Screen:
Meanwhile, with the discovery of Alphabet, we may now trade technologies. This can happen between updates (specifically tomorrow evening) so as to give the High Philosopher the chance to give a useful technology update. The Chancellor should make suggestions of what we can afford to give up (if he would like to trade Writing but not give up Alphabet so the AIs can't trade techs with each other, for example) and want our priorities for acquisition should be.
The capital. The governors will be getting PMs with their cities.
The current state of the world as we know it (I continue to suck at scouting, expansion was more on my mind).
LP STUFF:
All civilians are now allowed to move from Arcadia to one of our three new cities! To do, post in a pretty color that is NOT orange or cyan with your name and the city you would like to move to. This will be noted in the OP. For those wondering:
mrt144 wants to make a production city for now. Wonders will probably be built there, if we're going to build them in the near future.
Floomy wants to make lots of units in East Schlongville.
Steel Angel wanted a library and granary first and seems interested in making a commercial port.
Wonders!
We now have a wonder available: The Great Pyramids. As The Great Pyramids produce Engineer great person points, an engineer will have to be in the city we wish to build them in. They will also need the blessing of that city's governor, or if you would like to build it in Arcadia, mine. To propose the wonder, post that you want it in the thread. The governor of that city can agree or disagree.
If you didn't actually read the update (shame on you!) a spy must be selected to lead us. The spies may offer their services for the post, they'll need a second from anyone in the Empire. I'll choose one tomorrow night around midnight. This person will keep their post through the next set of updates (they get 4 updates as a cabinet member).
GAME NOTES
Louis is also Hindu, which indicates to me that he and Brennus are very close to each other. It may be a good idea to get all bloodlusty and conquer everything to our east until we hit the sea. Up to you guys though.
The Maya are to our west, I have a suspicion that they have a coastal capital, just based on how the Civ landmass generator works. If that's the case, we should build our cities to the north and block them off while conquering to the east. We need a port on the other side of the continent anyway, and there are some lovely floodplains just north of Arcadia, as you can see in the update.
Cottaging continues in Arcadia, we are elsewhere mostly hooking up resources. Primary goal is to get the horses in Los Wangeles connected. Lesser goal is to get stone in case we want to go for the Pyramids.
Lastly: hunting (being able to use the ivory and get the +1 happy, I whipped the hell out of Arcadia to get those cities up) and fishing would be super useful, if we can get them in a trade that would be nice, Mr. Chancellor.
I think that's everything, will update the second post... now.
p.s. there's no l in my name.
Sorry, typo!
The Head of C.O.C.K will have the following powers:
Complete control over where we focus our espionage efforts.
Complete control over all spy missions performed by our spies.
Lobbying governors (and me) to build spies.
I suck at espionage and tend to ignore it. If you want to teach me (and the rest of the players) how to do it, this is the position for you!
Basically, just fund Spy missions and focus on whomever we want gone or converted.
Edit: Also, found this website that speaks into greater detail about Spy strategy.
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/espionage_guide.php
A lesson in the Espionage screen:
1) Here we have a listing of all the empires we know. The % (Spy) cost is an indication of how much of the base cost it will cost us to perform missions. The more spy points we devote towards an opponent the smaller this number will get.
Below that we have the weight we can put on each empire. If we want to put most of our points towards Joao, we'd up this to say, three, and put the others at one. If you put any weighting in, any civs you weight at zero will get no spy points sent their way. Then on the right we have the number of spy points we have thus far devoted towards that empire and how many we are devoting to them each turn.
2) Here's how many spy points we make each turn. The Palace makes 4. We could make more by sacrificing research/gold, but that's probably not in our best interest at the moment. There are also buildings that make spy points: courthouses, castles, police stations, intelligence agencies, and security bureaus. We have none of those as of yet. Courthouses are the closest, at four or so techs away (at least two of which we can trade for).
3) Accumulating spy points towards a civ can give us passive effects, such as seeing their demographic information on the lovely score graph or seeing what they are currently researching. We have Pacal selected currently and as we can see we are 31 EPs from being able to see his research. This is subject to some serious inflation though, so unless we actually devote our points towards him, this won't happen for a good while.
4) Here's all the active missions we can perform in the future. Currently we don't have enough spy points towards Pacal to do any of them.
And when you do make my Scientist, Los Wangeles sounds like a good place to settle down.
Done! Not that you have an actual Great Scientist to settle down as or any scientist specialist, but you now live there.
I should note that none of y'all are ever going to govern Arcadia so get out of the queen's city!
Of course, there is at least one civic that rewards you for hanging out in the capital.
COMING ATTRACTIONS!
Civ4 has great people! Great people are generated by great person points. Great person points come from either wonders or specialists in the city. In this game, the great people will be renamed for our civilians. When a Great Person is born, I will first check if a corresponding civilian lives in that city. So if Los Wangeles spawned a scientist, PaperLuigi44 would be that scientist (currently). If there are multiples, I'll RNG. If every appropriate type of person in that city has gotten to be a Great Person or there are none of the appropriate type in the city, we'll go empire wide.
Whoever the Great Person is renamed for shall decide what to do with that Great Person.
Anyways, it seems to me that the Governor of Los Wangeles has no solid plans for development, other than making a trading port of some sort. It seems to me that he or she is in need of some proper guidance, so I, WotanAnubis, would like to move to Los Wangeles.
True, but if there's going to be any action in that area I will not let Schlongville fall.
Taking out Joao should be Priority #1. Why? Notice what you don't see in his sphere of influence. Copper or horses, and he hasn't researched IW yet. Importance: archers are his only defense. Our war chariots, in sufficient numbers, can beat his archers. We will suffer some casualties that is certain, but the land we shall gain is immense. No other civilizations have come exploring from that side of the world, so we may very well have the rest of the continent to ourselves. Controlled expansion is key, but with our cottages lining the Nile and more being built each day, our income can afford the expansion.
Therefore, with our new techs from Brennus I suggest building a lone scout to explore the area S/SW of Arcadia to confirm it is a peninsula, then head west. All workers should be developing a road network to connect our cities and a path to Joao, and specifically hooking up horses. Cities should be working on barracks, so that when horses are provided we can train war chariots immediately, whipping during the second turn of production, if able, to avoid the penalty. Attack with overwhelming numbers and enjoy the fruits of our labors with 2-3 new cities and land as far as the eye can see.
Going this route means we can skip the IW side of the tech tree and work towards Currency, which benefits from our large number of cities, and Calendar which opens up a whole host of happiness commodities already visible in our empire. Thus allowing our cities to grow to great sizes, further increasing our research and production power, allowing us to work on building the late Ancient and early next age wonders of significance.
I would say pass on the spying for now. We have too few points invested in Joao to do anything of worth, and that is production we could spend making a war chariot. Given that we know Joao is going to be destroyed shortly, I would suggest focusing our espionage points either completely to Louis, or split with him and Shaka, and then after our first real war, shipping out a spy.
I would suggest opening borders with Louis and Brennus in order to get Hinduism to spread to our cities, either via trade or them sending missionaries. If we switch to it, it helps align us with another top civ who isn't a direct neighbor, then keep our fingers crossed that Shaka joins us instead of the Buddhists.
If we're going for a chariot rush against Joao in the near future, then we'll end up with our eastern frontier bordering upon France, so we should split our espionage weighting between Louis and Shaka for now. Louis because he's close and high on the leader board, Shaka because he's a crazy mo-fo.
If Pacal is stuck alone on a peninsula to the west then he is a prime candidate for becoming our tech-pet/vassal. A city to the NW of Arcadia to pinch off his eastward expansion is definitely a high priority in that case.
Louis and Brennius are the beginning of a religious alliance block. We should endeavour to be the third leg of that alliance, keeping Joao out of it (by killing him probably). So open borders to encourage hindu missionaries is a good idea. If Shaka comes into it as well then that might calm him down a bit, but we'll probably end up fighting him at some point.
It looks like most of the action will be in the east, so I think I'll emigrate to E. Schlongville.
Regards
Luke
PS
Enlightenedbum, I know you don't want to fuss around with the BUG stuff too much, but can you enable the relative power indicator please? That puts up a power ratio between our civ and each of the other civs on the leader board part of the main screen, which is a very handy clue-in when it comes to figuring out the likely actions of our rivals.
Looks like Brennus is a prime target for trading. Give him the wheel and animal husbandry for hunting and fishing. And then maybe give louis animals for mysticism?
My tech vote is towards calendar, so that we can start getting the luxuries flowing!
I'm a WW whore, I just can't help it :P
It'd be faster to build them in Arcadia with a whip/chop rush.
Another Engineer for the production city! I'll be joining my fellow engies in agitating for giant monument construction.
Can't leave the city of wangels without any religion, can we?
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget