The New Situation

[Jon Shafer]

Discussions with NDE have gotten us no where.

A half-hearted effort to form a new border agreement first suggested by us has been deemed not worth it.

NDE no longer has the capability or the desire to trade techs with us anymore.

However, NDe has agreed to move its scout and settler away from our territory.

We have discovered we're on a peninsula that faces eastwards... that means we can only expand one direction: west. We cannot be limited by border agreements of any type anymore.

Therefore, this is our current situation:
We will try to bide our time and use up as much time as we can (originally their plan). When the time comes, we will militarily occupy the neutral territory. We have bronze working, and will have Iron Working soon enough. By the time NDE considers getting hostile, we will have IW, and that should cause them to avoid war at all costs. Should the situation change, our plan will change as well. For now, this is our plan.

[Zero]

I think they know more than they are letting us.. They probably wanted to cut us off expanding south for a reason.

Lets secure fertile land site on north while scouting south.

[Vlad Antlerkov]

Actually, we could be on an isthmus on the north side of an inland sea. (Admittedly, it's a big isthmus.) I won't be convinced either way until we get the east mapped out.

How soon until we can build a Settler? Should we develop the lands to the east, or settle aggressively on NDE's border?

[Zero]

lets try to REX toward NDE. They probably will expand the other way then...

[CiverDan]

I agree REX towards them. We can backfill later though we shoud try to get a city to our NE to take advantage of wheat/game combo, but not until our 3rd city at least, maybe. We should be vary of a possible archer rush though.

[WarriorPoet]

The Dictate of the War Minister:

REX AGGRESSIVELY, but we need some speermen in the new city sites ASAP!!!

Settle the river area ASAP!!!

Arabia will now become very aggressive towards us, we should respond similarly by building up our defenses and aggressively occupying the river area. I recommend sending our first settler and first spearman to settle just south of the cattle bonus.

[BigFurryMonster]

What is the 'official' situation with ND?
How did the chat end?
Was there any neutral zone established?

Questions... Questions...

[WarriorPoet]

There appears to be no neutral zone and nothing officially recognized between us. This essentially means that if we want this highly valuable location (see trip's map, I would like to see the city one square west of your proposed red square postion, see my other posts for reasons) then we are going to have to get aggressive, send in our settler and some military backing ASAP!!!

[BigFurryMonster]

Still, I would like to try to keep up good relations with them (if they are that close by).

[statusperfect]

If we get into a war we and demogyptica will fall behind the rest of the world. I'm AGAINST a war. And we sould do anything to avoid it.

[CiverDan]

well, almost anything. If they were to tell us "you must not build another city to avoid a war" should we obey? of course not. You get my point...My gut feeling if they are trying to box us in a corner and keep us from contacting other civs. This would keep us isolated and we would fall behind in tech as a result. This is not acceptable IMHO.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by BigFurryMonster
Still, I would like to try to keep up good relations with them (if they are that close by).

I don't think that's possible any longer.

NDE is getting more aggressive. The best we can do is try to stay out of war with them. We'll butt heads too much to ever have an alliance I fear.

[Admiral PJ]

We could squeeze a little more science out.

An Aggresive policy seems to be sensible with NDE, I think his team are more aggresive than him.. at first he seemed willing to give us something in order to keep their settler safe.

I don't think we're ready for a full offensive war, so we should try and keep them neutral at least, we need to start making them fear us, show our spearmen to them possibly (or draw out their archers - if any), and follow closely their vulnerable units.

We can do a good defencive war with only 1 city to defend (2 hopefully) and our spearman , they can use the practise anyhow.

If we want IW Soon, we could change the city production to produce more science, by working the river or spice squares, butit only makes it 4 turns shorter (19turns) from 3450bc, rather than 23.
We must keep growth rate high though.
I suggest increasing science when irons about 8 turns to completion.. should have a big enough army then.

We could put our Rex on hold a little, if our city goes upto size 12 we'll have a great industrial base, and I quite like Munchkin civs - concentrated.

[WarriorPoet]

I don't like munchkin civs...but I do like the idea of a defencive entent (spelling?) We essentially build a city (or several-inbound thread) in the fertile area west of us, and fill it with spearmen.

[Admiral PJ]

We could always capture any cities they built by the cattle using swordmen, though this may be the hard solution.

It might be an idea to make a city by the eastern wheat, this is closer and will be more productive. We wouldn't be provoking ND by building on the cattle.. and ND might not see that city either as they haven't scouted there.

I think we can still keep diplomatic options open, we shouldn't give up yet Trip.
If we put on more pressure to ND after our spear is in place they might begin to want to be more friendly, though this tactic about threatening war for something didn't work last time.(settler incident).

We could try the alliance approach, and try and work with them rather than threaten their settlers, Borc seems a peacemongerer so we might be able to persuade his team through him.

We can tempt ND by making them think we will trade them Ironworking, I told them we'd get it in like 11turns to fool them in the chat, they said they'd get bronze working in 3 turns which is even more silly maybe(need to test if they could, with PTW it may be possible).

MASONRY: perhaps ND traded Masonry with another Civ? Many civs have masonry (industrious trait) and its strange they found it just as they found us, maybe they thought they could pressurise us into giving Bronze.

Still try to get Warrior code from them, and we need to scout for more huts if they haven't taken them all(lets play hunt the scout).