Lizzy's rise to greatness

[mzprox]

What's our current troop count?

basically non existent , but slaving an archer is cheaper than one pop. we could make an army very fast, however this kind of war is none of us' interest. I'm just bluffing about the threats, but still if they build a city there we will have a good shot destroying it, and they know it. Unless they are making a preemptive strike. that is possibility..

I have sent them a new letter:

Greetings,

I'm sending this new letter to you as we at apolyton worry about our city Izmir would be cut from us and would cause border tension.. I hope we can resolve this matter peacefully with mutual satisfaction once and for all.
First We are sending you a crude map of the world. take it as a gift. We are sending it because we believe you have a misconseption about our possible expansions. as you can see there is really no other place we could expand into and while you can say that settling of Izmir was "aggressive" we had to do it to avoid being completely boxxed at both sides. Our land is small and will remain small, but this is just one aspect. The other is the position of your intended city. You being creative it would cut us off and by taking all of the worthwile tiles in that area we can not even build an other city there.
I think that our proposed borders were fair. we would had built two cites east of Izmir and hoped to move even west, but no more south.
But we understand that right now we need a compromise. So we are making the following offer:
(see second pic): none of us builds city in the yellow area. you can build east of it and we wil build one west.
I think this agreement could be a good move towards long peace and friendship. We wouldn't need to worry about our borders and could work together to stop Egypt becoming that powerfull. i know it's not as good as you wanted, but we aso give up our intended cities..

I hope we can hear from you soon.

MZ of the Ottomans.

and also sent them two pictures:



I'm making this diplo ultra fast now, as they are one button-press to build that city there, and then if we llet it grow it will be a fortress in our empire.. we can not allow that, but we should avoid war if there is a chance.

[Ben Kenobi]

Well, we need Lebensraum. So we should take it.

[Dinner]

I know I will be ignored but starting a war without an army seems like a moronic move especially since we don't even have the techs to build anything worth while. I would let them build the city and then just attack it later. WHEN WE ACTUALLY HAVE AN ARMY.

[Dinner]

I notice we're still researching education; this seems retarded to me. We're on the verge of war and we haven't bothered to research archery, horseback riding, iron working, or construction much less the higher techs. Further more we aren't exactly building up much of a military force right now either. No wonder we're a target for bullying because everyone can see the graphs and see which techs we're lacking and they know we're a push over.

[Dinner]

Next, we have 12 cities and only 5 workers and this is killing us as well as slowing down our growth. We should at least have one worker per city which would mean we need 7 additional workers.

[mzprox]

There is a higher plan in place to stop RB to become too powerfull. Normally others would understand this and wouldn't try to risk a war.. so far any nation started a war just damaged themselves.
We have seven workers right now, yes we could have more, but: we don't really work on unimproved tiles, mostly because our cities are small, but those cities are also very advanced. For example we have 6-7 forges and we are the only civ which have them.. those worth more than extra workers.
I will try my best to avoid war, but I now believe that if we can take out that city with 90% chance we should take it. And our chariot can do it. If it will come to war we will switch to machinery and start slaving macemen. with those we will be strong enough to fight the maya.

[Dinner]

The Maya are probably thinking we have some nice cities which aren't really defended and they're behind so why not take our stuff and see if that doesn't put them back in the running.

[mzprox]

Maya are not behind.. they have much bigger score and about on the same tech level.
They haven't answered yet, not even logged into the game. I believe they want to be sure they can start next turn however it is also important that if we attack then we move first in the nxt turn.
I have asked cfc to no end their turn until I ask them to do, they have agreed, but if maya waits till the very end then it won1t help us.

This is what i think: if they build that city we can easily take it out and possibly capture their workers. anytime later it would be much much more expensive. fortification, culture, they chop those forests for more units etc. I know we can1t win the war.. we would possibly lose izmir in the process, yes, but this war will still cost us less in the long run than it woul cost us later. and i think their arrogant greediness should be punished.
I still hope they are not fool enough to suicide build that city. I predict they will stall building the city untill their reinforcements arrive. That's what i'd do.

I want to ask everyone to not to log in the game untill this conflict resolves, we need to keep track of turn order. It should be the maya who moves second in this turn so we can start the next one.

[Ben Kenobi]

I notice we're still researching education; this seems retarded to me. We're on the verge of war and we haven't bothered to research archery, horseback riding, iron working, or construction much less the higher techs. Further more we aren't exactly building up much of a military force right now either. No wonder we're a target for bullying because everyone can see the graphs and see which techs we're lacking and they know we're a push over.

Mzprox, this is bad. We need military techs. We don't need education.

[mzprox]

and what would we use those "military" techs for? No one wants war while one of the civs is running away. The cheap universities thanks to our philosophy trait and then building the Oxford early will give us an edge. Those techs you are mentioning would just hold us back.
Also we will see if we still have a shot on liberalism, it would be nice to take it from RB.
And about military techs: if we were in danger at the moment we could get the techs for maceme in 2-3 turns. we are closest to the required technology among all the civs. And after we have Education: it opens up gunpowder with that we get the strongest unit if the era, our unique unit, the janissaries.
If war would become a possibility we will research archery and build some archers. until then it1s better to avoid it.
There is a forming alliance between us, india and the aztec. possibly others joining against RB if necessary. We are somewhat discussing our research paths to try to deny as much bonuses as possible from RB (liberalism, Taj Mahal etc) Education is part of that plan, but it is also the most usefull technology for us in the moment.

[Calanthian]

And about military techs: if we were in danger at the moment we could get the techs for maceme in 2-3 turns. we are closest to the required technology among all the civs. And after we have Education: it opens up gunpowder with that we get the strongest unit if the era, our unique unit, the janissaries.
If war would become a possibility we will research archery and build some archers. until then it1s better to avoid it.
There is a forming alliance between us, india and the aztec. possibly others joining against RB if necessary. We are somewhat discussing our research paths to try to deny as much bonuses as possible from RB (liberalism, Taj Mahal etc) Education is part of that plan, but it is also the most usefull technology for us in the moment.

This sounds to me as an good analysis.

[mzprox]

Heya Cal, would love to have you back!
you are certanly one of those I'd entrust to be the turn player.

report from the current turn:

The Maya is still not answering our propositions moved their settlers SW and brought a spearman to defend it. They logged in in the first minute of the turn (i was asking India to delay their turn ending btw). I have to assume they don't want a compromissum, they will stick to their plan no matter what.



They might even build a city where they stand now.. that is an instant declaration of war by them.. they would take resources even from Izmir.
But more likely that they intend to move back NE and build their city this time defended by a spearman (also at least one more of thei axeman is coming from the west)
Both India and Aztec thinks that a conflict between us and the Maya would be very bad since we are most likely needed to stop RB. I'm not convinced about this war either.. but 'm sure later we would be a much harder time taking that city, an if we let them take that land Izmir will be cut from the core empire, we couldn't build an other city in the region )they would only leave us the desert)
I think we should give an ultimatum to the mya.. answer in 24 hours or we will take their answer as "NO" and we will act accordingly. Otherwise tgey just keep delayig the answer and city building and bring more and more soldiers there.
Since I believe that the likelyness of war is increased I switched to research archery.. if we still come to an agreement i will switch back to collect money. Also I'm sending our soldiers from the are towards their settler (we have a new chariot joining to the scene)

Other news: RB go the Great lighthouse, we will hve the Sankore University next tun. (at that time it will give us 10 base research/turn)

[mzprox]

letter to the Mayans:

We are getting the impression that you don't want to negotiate at all and trying to avoid all conversation/negotiaton attempts. we don't know how would you feel if we wanted to plant a city so close to your capitol that the city's border would be 4-5 steps from it after the first border pop. And as we are learning more and more about the land now we know that the city you want to plant is 15-17 steps north of your capitol.
There is some disagrement in our team how we react to an aggressive expansion which would cut our land and choke our city. We agree here that developing peacefully is prefered or we just help RB running away, but we also think that it is your interest as well so making a compromise would be your interest too.
All in all since you don't answer our communication atempts, in 24h hwe will have to take the lack of answer as 'No' to our proposal so our team will have time to discuss the situation accordingly.

MZ of the Ottomans.

They had promised an answer in 48h which is over. inao this morning logged out as soon as i logged in. Yesterday Hulkmusclor pretended that he don't understand a word in english yet I found english posts from him on civfanatics forum. The fact that their capitol is bout 15-17 steps from their northern border is leant from our maptrade with the aztec.
i hate this arrogance. i still haven't explicitly threaten them with war, because i'd prefer to avoid it now and in the future untill Rb is the bigger threat, but if they still build a city there we should destroy it for he first sign of weakness.

[Dinner]

and what would we use those "military" techs for? No one wants war while one of the civs is running away. The cheap universities thanks to our philosophy trait and then building the Oxford early will give us an edge. Those techs you are mentioning would just hold us back.
Also we will see if we still have a shot on liberalism, it would be nice to take it from RB.

If we're going to go to war then we need to switch all production to useful military units & techs because right now we don't have anything to even defend ourselves with. I will conditionally agree to attacking them if they persist but the odds are heavily, very heavily, stacked against us especially since we will probably lose our city closest to them from a stack they're no doubt already assembling. I don't see a way to effectively defend our south-western city. Slaving archers might help delay but they can just bring in a stack with catapults and it is only a matter of time before they take it.

That means we need full military production right now, this turn, not next turn.

[mzprox]

letters from Maya:

Dear Ottomans,

What you don't know from your map you just sent is that there are 2 closed seas, one big open sea gulf and lots of deserts and tundra in the area you take as a basis for the shape of our land. So our land is not as huge as you think. We also had to fight against lots of barbs units and put a lot of energy in this.

You decided to build many courthouses to give benefit to your economy instead of settling where you have space and we have cut out economy for years to get this area settled.

You also told us that your cap is not far from Izmir, but we wonder why you take so long to setlle here. Your priority seemed to take the space at your east against incans and profit of the war in this part of the world.

We therefore cannot be in a position to let you all this land for free.

Despite the above, we can agree that Atlas mountains will become our common border and guarantee to live in peace with you, if we agree on this principle.

Still looking forward to hear you,

Best regards,

Mayans



They are talking gibberish.. Atlas mountain as border? it's about 4 steps from Aurora which will be our capital in a few turns (i kinda lied to them, telling as our capital already was Aurora, but it will be anyway very soon and they have no way learning this).
the real problem is that they directly give usnon-sense answers.. they are talking about peace but they can't accept our proposal.. they are extremely greedy who can1t accept to take a step back.