Turn 63, 1450 BC

[zeit]

I see another Luxian scheme coming- and we have no time for BS right now. This is just why Lux was hated on BOB, and there's no evidence of this not happening again.

Lux doesn't have the money- where are the planning to get it?
do we care?
I don't think so. So, i think it's worth moving our warrior in a position to threaten Lux. I don't think Vox will just thrown themselves to Lux's rescue, and i don't think this is worth dragging on. Maybe if they give us BOB's screenshot, we let them live for now. But they should be in constant threat.

We should explain this to if we don't want to do it ourselves, because i'd hate seeing ourselves being tricked like BOB's teams were (or at least that's how they see it, and so am i...).

In short- give us something now, because we don't trust you to do so later (given your reputation), or else...

What do you say?


Regaring Vox- i agree, we should send them a message to hasten their research, in the meantime, we stockpile.

[Arrian]

Stockpile the gold so we can do a headlong rush for Republic once we get Philo.

I agree to some extent with zeit (though the moment for moving our warrior in is past, I think, since we've now agree to deal with them). Lets put pressure on them for the screenies.

-Arrian

[Shiber]

We should certainly spur Lux into giving us screenshots of Bob immediately, but I'm not too excited about the prospects of moving our warrior into Lux territory.
Edit: cross-posted with Arrian.

[nbarclay]

My strong impression is that Vox is researching as fast as they can, but they simply don't have the income base to do it faster. We have two cities that routinely operate at size 3 or higher with two gold from each tile, and another city built on a gold hill. Vox's capital is only size 2, and I doubt that any of their cities ever stays at size 3 for long before building a settler or worker. And Vox likely has no more than one tile that can provide growth and production while yielding more than one gold per turn. Thus, at present, the disparity in our research rates is enormous.

But once we get into Republic, we'll be able to burn through stockpiled gold quite rapidly since our free unit support will vanish.

[DeepO]

well... I just reread the Vox chat log, and I agree, it seems as if they aren't keeping back, they're just miserable in research. The idea of them not trading philosophy might work, with only one problem: if they have it and send it to us, other teams will be able to very quickly research it too. It might only be a few turns after we get it from Vox that the rest gets it anyway.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Oh, are we going to delay the deal with RP, or not? If so, I want to send them a message that we'll be running late. BTW, I did not tell them we would end CoL now, they said that as fast as we could offer it, they could give literature in return. Please check research costs again, to see if RP has already discovered literature, if not, it might give us a good reason to delay the trade.

I'd rather have the deal worked out with all teams, though, so we don't need to delay anything...

DeepO

[nbarclay]

But even a few turns' head start could be useful. And if we watch carefully, how quickly others get Philosophy could give an excellent indication of when (and whether) we might need to sell Republic to preempt someone else's plans to finish it and sell it.

[DeepO]

True... I don't mind keeping Philosophy from the rest of the world, and I'm sure we could get Vox to play its part. We only need to say 'we got an NDA on philosophy, sorry, we can't trade it to anyone', Vox can delay, ask for exuberant prices, simply play with it (even outright lying, and saying they haven't got it yet might work).

And yes, once we see someone acquiring it, we can ask Vox to sell it to everyone they want. Plus, indeed, we should get a minimum boundary on how long the rest of the world is going to take to get to the republic (which, BTW, will only be 'until the GL gets built', as both us and Vox will have the tech)

DeepO

[alva]

We could mention to RP, that we heard rumours of ND building lot's of offensive units.
If we can get them all to build units instead of infrastructure...

Another small edge for us long-term.

[DeepO]

Hmmm... and whom do we have heared that from? No direct lies, please... I think RP is going to build units anyway

DeepO

[alva]

Didn't Trip mention something like this?

I wasn't trying to make something up. I honestly thought I read it on the log containing the chat with NYE, Nathan,Dominae, Theseus and Trip.

[notyoueither]

Yes, Trip mentioned the number of ND swordsmen many times.

[alva]

* alva awaits an apology, but is relieved that he's not senile (yet)*

[zeit]

He said 20- but does that make sense- it's 800 gold for upgrades, and even if they did half- they are not behind in tech. So, how did they pull it off?

The power graph analysts could shed some light on this- ND's power should be sky high if they have that number of swordsmen, right?

[Dominae]

Trip said ND has 9 Vet. Swordsmen about now, and will have around 20 "very soon". Seems like he was trying to threaten us with ND's power, to put us at odds.


Dominae