Turn 162 : 470 AD

[Cort Haus]

We've beaten ND and GoW to Astronomy!

[Cort Haus]

Vox, however, are now level with us. Does this mean they have traded PP to Lego, or have Lego sorted them out in advance?

[Cort Haus]

With Bolderburg only 1 turn from a mkt, and ND lux coming in next turn we can drop the 10% lux, set some entertainers and see Chemistry in 7 turns, Banking in 5 and Navigation in 7.

What if we can trade Astro to ND or GoW for Chemistry? We need to get in touch before we play the turn.

[Cort Haus]

Should we approach ND & GoW and say "Hey, we got Astro, when's yer Chemistry coming in?" - or waffle more generally about tech deals. No-one tells us what they've got, and I thought GoW hinted that they had Astro - hmmm. OTOH, if we're not direct then we'll never get the answer we need to decide what or whether to research this turn. Trading Astro for Chem would be cool - we could either snatch Banking or tread water and get cash for a couple of turns.

I think that Civs who aren't called Lego might do well to trade tech with each other at this point.

[vulture]

Rp won't be able to help out with research. Even at 100%, they get banking in 25 turns (or worse - 25 is the one science per turn pace), so they're not going to get Chemistry or Navigation any more quickly than that. Or to put it another way, they're not going to be able to research a single one of the three techs next in line before we can research b[]all three[/b] of them. So is there any point them doing research at the moment, as opposed to a) giving us gpt - only worth it if we can use the cash to run science 10% higher (or rush-build a significant number of universities / banks), or b) stockpiling cash while we research banking, and then they go for democracy at full tilt (or one of the optional techs) while we concentrate on polishing off the mandatory middle age techs.

[DeepO]

no harm in trying to sell Astro around... certainly not if it goes against Lego.

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

More news - Lego's 13 Knights are all stacked up now on two tiles. They're not GoW's sea wall this turn. Lego are still going bananas on the power graph, where Lego + Vox = GoW + ND.

Also, ND have Gems available. That'd be good for our WLTK.

[DeepO]

Lego's 13 knights are only an annoyance to GoW-ND, they can easily be dismissed if needs to. And as they can't get here, I wouldn't bother about them.

ND having gems is good news, though!

I realised something else: Lego still doesn't have Astro, right? In that case, they only get a lux from us, as the others can't trade with them...

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

Astro is 4 points lower than Chemistry = 96 beakers. If it's usual to split the difference then we'd pay 48 on top, if they want to be precise.

If GoW or ND can trade us Chemistry for Astro in a couple of turns we could stop research, rake some gold, then do Physics. If it's nearer to five turns for whichever of them to get Chemistry, we should maybe do Banking first.

[Cort Haus]

Lego does have Astro, and so does Vox.

[DeepO]

ah, pity... then their island is fully disclosed.

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

sent to Darekill - same again for GoW?

Hi Darekill,

We now have Astronomy - would you be interested in a tech trade? Perhaps you are researching it yourselves, but if you're near to completing Chemistry, we would be very interested in a possible trade.

We have the turn, so if you're up for trying to do a deal this turn (we don't want to start researching something if we can trade for it), please let us know.

Many thanks,

CH

PS - we can do that lux deal this turn

[DeepO]

Sure, why not...

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

OK, similar PM sent to UnO cc MZ

[Cort Haus]

I fwd'd the Darkill PM to Zayxus, and notice that UnO has seen the one to him. I'll be playing the turn after midnight GMT tonight, so there's time yet, but it is quite likely that we won't get a deal by then, even if we hear back - if so, we have to make a decision - Chemistry or Banking. I'm leaning towards Banking - it'll be another possibility to trade for Chem, and I don't think we want to wait 25 turns for RP to crawl there.

It would be good to get some initiatives coming in from other teams for a change - it seems to be down to us to make all the running {sigh}.

It's possible that ND and GoW have decided to wait for Marines, then destroy us & RP and claim a domination win. Though Lego would come riding to our aid rather than let the Bobians get domination.