***Spoiler*** 4 players continents

[Beorn]

This is a PBEM that started as a spin-off of a spin-off. After we agreed that Soul_Warrior's big 5 people PBEM was on its end path, both he and I started new PBEM's. I went with Darwin's island, he did a Sengoku scenario Always War 4 players game.

More players showed interest, namely denyd and Tribute.

I remember having been coaching Tribute into DG-D level and he is very promising. I'd consider him a serious player in this game if it wasn't for the fact that it seems we all 4 are 'serious', high caliber enough to pull a win for ourselves.

denyd is a CFC GOTM regular which generally pulls scores a bit higher than mines. He has never played multiplayer before but I trust he has solid micromanagement skills and he can hold his own in a brawl. We exchanged here and there in the GOTM threads but that's about that.

Last is Jokeslayer, a bit of a newcomer to me. He is in a couple SG's and has an AWE thread in their stories and tales subforum. Very little details, lousy story, inexperienced at AW but he did win the game, solo, on a low-food low-shield grass start. Could very well be the cinderella team.

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Here comes the usual drill: if I have talked about you already, yes you, denyd Jokeslayer and Tribute, Ctrl-W or Alt-F4 that browser now.

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So this time it is continents, 2:2. There will obviously be the initial tensions, the joint run for Republic on both sides, the suicide curraghs and the wars on zillions of fronts.

This is my quiet little hamlet. I thought about renaming the cities I built like animals this time. Nothing to do with Amsterdam for first city ...



We all have a scout for starters because none of us is EXP, so it makes it more convenient this way.

Barbs are roaming: some huts, not too many barbs. Level is emperor so the hut odds are 65% barbs as soon as we have military. Without military or on a city build, the huts would give us:
14% city
28% tech
14% gold
14% settler
14% warrior
14% maps
... make that 33%/16% and remove city if it's a city.

So the plan is to pull a curragh out and make a hill city second that will crank out workers. There is what looks like coast to the east, so I'll go ahead and guess the land is narrow and I'll need a strong core because the peripherals will be far and corrupt. So no double settler thing, just settler-worker.



5 things to notice from this one:

- we all have a cow (or similar) start for 4fpt / 5fpt AGR and 2spt

- denyd named his capital Trantor, he gets super props from me for that

- My capital tile alone is world #1 for commerce and I'm AGR. This means that I should systematically be the one to pull philosophy should I so much as try for it. If I'm on the same continent as Iro, I'll offer him to go for a joint philo/CoL, hopefully the slower of the two of us will get philo before the other team does, and after the faster one gets CoL.

- Korea has moved away from its first land tile. I doubt Blarst would make the starts so unbalanced as to put a cow 1 tile off or no cow at all so my take is Jokeslayer lost a huge turn there.

- Y-wrapping

I have no idea how this one will turn out. None. But with the Dutch, I'm solidly geared up for overseas cavalry/SwissM drops. Let's just hope I survive my neighbor if it's Iro or Persia.