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**Shiber** · February 3, 2003, 06:40

Re: Turn 48, 1870 BC

Originally posted by nbarclay
- Do we want to push back the fog of war or leave it for barb farming?

As long as we can intercept any barb warriors (assuming that barb horses are not a reality at the moment), why not?

- Do we want to found our new city (Tempest?) at Gold Hill (extra commerce and worker pump) or Site #4 (better for a barracks)?

I vote for the gold hill.

- Start work on a proposal to Vox regarding their possible participation in the Great Library project, assuming we want to involve them.

I'm getting second thoughts about this. Can we really trust Vox, whom we have already established are opportunistic and foolish, to keep our secret?
Something tells me they might leak it to another civ (particularly RPG) for some immediate reward. Actually, leaking this information to RPG while helping us build our own GL would be the smart thing to do - if RPG finishes the GL first, they'll thank Vox and might repay them, whereas if we get the GL first, we'll repay Vox for their cooperation, as promised.

How about this - we ask them for two slaves, and tell them that in return, we'll use these slaves to irrigate all the way to Dissidentville. Then, we join those slaves to Hurricane. That way we can get Vox's cooperation without disclosing any information about what wonders we intend to build, and we don't have to repay them in expensive medieval-age techs later. What do you think?

**nbarclay** · February 3, 2003, 08:45

Vox has a lake, so they don't need any irrigation from us.

There are three issues regarding whether or not we let Vox in on the Great Library scheme:

1) I don't see any feasible way to get them to contribute workers to the project unless they stand to gain a great deal from it. Early workers are simply too valuable. And for them to know what they stand to gain, they have to know about the project itself.

2) If Vox stands to gain from the project, and especially if they have workers of their own invested, they have an extra incentive not to attack us should we appear weak at some point while we're working on the Great Library. And if Vox invests workers, it will be significantly harder for them to get in a position of military advantage to begin with.

3) We'll be slowing our REXing down a bit (two and a half settlers from EotS and at least one potential settler from Hurricane if we don't get Vox's help), and that could cause problems if Vox gets their side of the border settled and we don't have ours settled. If that happens, Vox will probably feel like the borders were negotiated in bad faith unless they see good for them coming out of what we slow down our REXing for. (It might be useful to run some calculations on how quickly each of us is likely to settle our side, but I don't have time at the moment.)

Nathan

**Shiber** · February 3, 2003, 10:52

Originally posted by nbarclay
Vox has a lake, so they don't need any irrigation from us.

Right, I forgot they told us that.

Regarding the wonder, perhaps we could lie to them, saying that we're building The Colossus, and offer them a free tech per a certain amount of workers. This makes sense, because the Colossus does increase your income, and thereby speeds your research. We could tell them that this is why we're offering them free techs, and they probably won't suspect that we're really going for The Great Library, or at least won't have much to base their suspicions on and won't tell RPG that we're building the GL.
By the time they find out that we lied, we could always say that we've changed our minds, but kept our end of the deal so it doesn't matter.
This isn't 100% failproof, but it's better than spilling all the beans and telling them that we're building the GL, IMHO.

**nbarclay** · February 3, 2003, 10:56

The team agreed, no lying, remember?

**Shiber** · February 3, 2003, 11:49

I honestly don't. Maybe I forgot there was a concensus against lying within diplomatic relations, or maybe this issue was discussed before I joined.
In any case, I withdraw my proposal.

**DeepO** · February 3, 2003, 12:16

First of all, the message to RPG will be sent immediately after this one, sorry to be late (busy weekend). It's good to know we're only 2-3 turns behind RPG in getting writing, I think I'll use that to delay them a little.

I prefer the gold city too, as it is both towards Vox, and a better commerce city. We should have adequate defense for the time being, with an extra 2 vet units planned...

I don't want to tell RPG at this point that we're going for the GL, we should make sure we will get it, and only then start negotiating with what we could gain from it. Vox is something else, I agree we can't lie to them, but we could just keep the whole truth from them. What if we tell them that we're considering to build a wonder (without specifying which), and that for each worker they are willing to commit in 15 turns, we give them a tech in return (minimum tier 3, if they want to)? It keeps us from lieing, it won't mess up our relation if we somehow are beaten to the GL, and it will mean they'll be peacful for a time.

BTW, I seriously doubt that Vox is going to attack us while they still haven't built a barracks.

DeepO

**nbarclay** · February 3, 2003, 12:41

Originally posted by DeepO

BTW, I seriously doubt that Vox is going to attack us while they still haven't built a barracks.

If Vox started a barracks right after the settler who founded Dissidentville, they could have one very soon. I'd just as soon not make any assumptions about their barracks situation.

Nathan

**asleepathewheel** · February 3, 2003, 13:01

Originally posted by DeepO
First of all, the message to RPG will be sent immediately after this one, sorry to be late (busy weekend). It's good to know we're only 2-3 turns behind RPG in getting writing, I think I'll use that to delay them a little.

didnt vox say thar lux already had writing?

I'm not sure if its been commented upon, but if Vox was correct then it would appear that its a bit frigid over on the continent. Perhaps Lux and DG have allied? Thoughts, speculations? RP is up there score wise, have they built stuff like temples at the expense of research?

**DeepO** · February 3, 2003, 13:09

Originally posted by nbarclay
If Vox started a barracks right after the settler who founded Dissidentville, they could have one very soon. I'd just as soon not make any assumptions about their barracks situation.

True, but I still feel speculating on Vox' situation a worthy pass-time. And for the moment, Vox doesn't have a barracks, and can only get one in 6 turns at the earliest, a second one 3 or 4 turns after that.

asleep, Vox did say that Lux has writing, but maybe this is a chance to find out about how trustworthy Vox is. We still have a message to Lux that needs to be sent, so maybe we can ask about writing...

Otherwise, we can push the subject with Vox, asking for writing for contact with Lux again.

Last possibility is that RPG seriously didn't know Lux was Civ X, and therefore didn't know that trading writing was no option to us either way. But I hope RPG will respond to my last message with some comments on that, they have been very open with us this far.

DeepO

**Shiber** · February 3, 2003, 13:12

According to the list of top 5 cities, there must be temples in GoW's Imperial City and RP's Madrid. Otherwise they wouldn't have gone ahead of EoTS in the list while having 3 and 4 citizens less, respectively.

**Arrian** · February 3, 2003, 16:23

With respect to a temple in Imperial City: I find that kinda interesting. They're mil/ind, and they stopped to build a temple in their capitol? That's usually one of the last places I build a temple (don't need it for border expansion, usually pumping settlers/units out of it, luxury slider works well because of the absence of corruption). RP building a temple as a religious civ, OTOH, is unsurprising.

Re: next city, I vote Gold Hill.

Re: barb hunting - only if we are reasonably certain we have enough barb killers to cover ourselves should we actually lose a battle (unlikely, I know, but unlikely things happen. Just ask my 9hp swordsman army and its companion elite swordsman, both of which I recently lost to a single regular spearman*).

-Arrian

* - he was fortified on a hill, so he was defending at 3.5. Still, I threw 14hp of swordsmen at him and succeeded in knocking of 2hp (both by the army), and promoting the little ****er at least once.

**nbarclay** · February 3, 2003, 18:47

Originally posted by asleepathewheel

didnt vox say thar lux already had writing?

I know they said Lux was ready to give them a good deal on Alphabet, but I don't recall anything about Lux's already having Writing too. Then again, it's not impossible that I might have forgotten.

**DeepO** · February 3, 2003, 19:37

I've been thinking on why RPG proposed this NDA on writing thing, would they want to make sure they don't have to deal with a middleman theirselves? For them it's better if their neighbours don't grow in power at their expense, it's interesting to see how they want to compensate for that.

Perhaps there is a chance of becoming primary trading partner with RPG, it seems they don't consider us such an immediate risk then the rest of their neighbours.

DeepO

**nbarclay** · February 3, 2003, 19:52

Originally posted by Arrian

Re: barb hunting - only if we are reasonably certain we have enough barb killers to cover ourselves should we actually lose a battle (unlikely, I know, but unlikely things happen. Just ask my 9hp swordsman army and its companion elite swordsman, both of which I recently lost to a single regular spearman*).

Once we get the spearman, we'll have one more unit than we'll need for the duties currently assigned (city garrisons and Vox-watchers). That should be okay, if only marginally so, especially considering that barbs don't go so far as to actually capture or raze cities.

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Turn 48, 1870 BC

Turn 48, 1870 BC

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