[SPOILERS] Team EggHeads: DMOC and TeddyKGB (Now Lurker-Friendly!)

[TeddyKGB]

I missed last turn, btw.
I did some login during so I wont ask for reload.

[TeddyKGB]

I chatted with Arki tonight, still not sure if we gonna love him or crush him.

[TeddyKGB]

Wanna chat a bit now?

[TeddyKGB]

Anyways, when u login, feel free to move anything as u like.
I put settler on GH near India, I expect we plant city there.
Wonder how long from Monarchy now.

Asterix didnt respond last turn, so we got many cities unhappy. Maybe we should send e-mail to Yuufo about Fur deal...

[DMOC]

Sorry, Teddy, I'm simply too busy to log in right now --- in a few more hours I"ll be okay.

But realy, Asterix didn't accept our trade? He literally emailed us telling us that he'd accept the trade we gave him? What's up with that?

Just to clarify: did you offer the deal? As in, during the game, you put it up on the trade screen for him to accept?

Edit: Crap, my final took longer than I thought and it's 5 AM over here. I'll check in tomorrow and will give detailed feedback.

[DMOC]

Ok, will check game after getting sleep.

But Teddy, just one quick thing, apparently we didn't offer the deal and you only logged in 3 hours before the timer. Since both of us had agreed on this deal beforehand, I'm not sure why you didn't offer it at the start of the turn, since you were the last to play turn 113. Then again, he should have offered it when he logged in. Everyone's at a little fault here, not such a big deal.

However, can I PLEASE ask that you try to avoid sending these kind of messages immediately:

Very well played, sir.
Any more deals you gonna break?

That's the kind of aggressive, no-turning-back message that's bound to bother some people. I added in a quick response hoping that we could clarify things up.

Asterix,

Okay, thanks for clearing things up. Since we had agreed on this deal well before turn 113, I'm not sure why you didn't just offer the deal the moment you logged into the game, since we would have accepted it. Then again, Teddy probably should have offered the deal at the start of the turn as he was last to finish. Either way, I think everyone's at a little fault here (including myself) but in the future, if we have a deal, then whoever is the first to log in should offer it, so that there are no more misunderstandings.

Hopefully we can continue to trade beyond this. I hope you're willing to add another turn to the trade, so we can have stone-silk going until turn 123 (inclusive)?

DMOC

Team EggHeads

And yes, I know you said you were planning on letting us offer the trade, but it shouldn't matter who offers it, and everyone's a little busy lately to log in before someone else.

------


We also got a message from SutOxy about turn timing.

Hey Eggheads,

I noticed you've been waiting until the last minute to play almost every turn for the last while. I understand you are in a tense situation with Rome, but the evidence from this turn suggests that you simply prefer to avoid ending your turn unless you are last to play.

It's such a small thing, but it is unfair for you to reserve for yourselves the last position in the turn order. It delays the turn roll, it gives you an advantage in C&D, and it gives you a defensive advantage not available to your competitors. I also think it sets a bad example for other teams (Dinosaurs, Rome etc.) that feel they need to follow suit in order to play competitively.

We're playing in teams, so it does take time for all members to review the turn, but in the spirit of fair play and a healthy turn pace I hope you would consider ending your turn after you've played it.

Regards,
suttree

This is mainly at you, Teddy, so what do you think of this?

[DMOC]

Teddy --- I'll be able to play in 4 hours from now. Please let me do this turn, it'll be the last one I can do for a while (or one of the last few) before I head for holiday break. I'd like to give a detailed plan for us moving forward.

[DMOC]

Turn 114 - 25 BC

Time to get the detailed turn reports coming again.

Important stuff:

1. We got Monotheism. Now Monarchy is a 1-turn tech for us at 100%, and on turn 115 (1AD), we'll do a double conversion. Hopefully it only takes 1 turn ... how do we tell how long civic changes take?
2. We're generating over 250 beakers at 100% research --- quite nice, in my opinion. And it'd be even better if we could focus only on wealth like SutOxy and Asterix.
3. Founded 13th city. Here are the current updated city counts:

Us - 13
India - 13 (wow, they've stagnated)
SutOxy - 12
Asterix - 12
Blame Caledorn - 12
DT/English - 9
Orgynized - 8
Aivoturoso - 7
GG - 6
Ponies - 6

Miscellaneous moves:

1. I'm going to move retep to guard UMichigan, our 13th city. That chariot has no XP, but the one currently at Michigan has 3 XP, so replace them for security reasons.


Now for a city-by-city plan.

1. Carnegie Mellon:

Looks okay, Monastery is fine since that's our primary research center. The scientist is OK (other cities need the mines anyway) and we'll get Monarchy next turn so the happiness is fine.

I suggest that once we get Hereditary Rule, we immediately give the pigs to the capital (currently at Caltech), and put any extra military units we have into the capital to let it grow

Production: Hindu Monastery -> Colloseum -> ??? (National Epic eventually?)

2. MIT

Again, okay, since we need axes. I suggest another axe following this one, since it looks like Rome is roading towards us (more on that later). EDIT - maybe a worker or wealth build is actually better.

Production: Axe -> Axe (or another military), for Rome defense or Hereditary Rule. ALTERNATIVELY ... we could have it produce a worker (4 turns) or a settler for that marble spot.

3. Stanford

I debated as to whether we should put a citizen on the new cottage or the mine, but I kept it on the mine. Reason is so that the missionary is ready 1 turn quicker, since Georgia Tech needs the missionary ASAP in order to get cultural control over the sheep tile. After this missionary, it's a bit unclear what to do. Stanford's not a great production city for military, and we'll get happiness via Hereditary Rule, so how about a second missionary after that, to go to either Illinois or MIT?

Production: Missionary -> Missionary -> Worker(?)


4. Berkeley

Here's where I disagreed with the current build. Berkeley generates about 15 gpt at 0% reserach, and will get enough happiness with HR, so I'm not quite sure how beneficial a market would be. I changed the build to a wealth, and I also assigned 2 great scientists, so we get a Great Person in 16 turns. Hopefully an Engineer, but a Scientist wouldn't be so bad (we could save him for a bulb). I suggest Berkeley stay on wealth for a while, possibly changing to something else down the line.

Production: Wealth (for now)

5. Illinois:

Yes, a second galley is great, serves to protect the one we've got right now. After that, I'd suggest building an axe, then stopping and finishing a barracks, then the axe after that (so we can get XP on them). In other words:

Production: Galley -> Axe (1 turn to completion) -> Barracks -> Finish Axe (or do axe earlier in an emergency).

6. Wisconsin:

Again, I'm not sure if a market is going to bring us any sort of benefit right now, especially when the city has no production to speak of right now. The only thing we really need in this city right now is military, which can be whipped easily. Also, in the long-run, what we'll need are some religious buildings (i.e., Hindu monasteries), as we want the culture to prevent Orgynized from getting some of the land there.

Production: Wealth (for now) -> Eventually chop/whip into a culture building.

7. UT Austin

I spread Hinduism here with the missionary we had, and fortunately it succeeded despite Taosim there. So we get an extra +1 culture and can build a monastery there. We're going to need it to protect our territory. We do have forests we can chop for easy production.

Production: Hindu Monastery (chop, probably) -> Hindu Missionary (?) or military?

8. Washington

I put the axe back in the queue. It's 1-turn to completion, so to save on unit upkeep, let's build another missionary (this one should probably go to Berkeley or whichever city will grow into unhappiness soon). A temple would be nice, though ... and with +2 it's not that bad, and probably better than building another cheap military garrison.

I reassigned the city so that we're growing --- might as well do that since we'll get more happiness the following turn.

Production: Hindu Missionary -> Axeman -> Hindu Temple OR Wealth?

9. Cornell

The city looks fine, catapults are needed, unfortunately. I changed the city build to grow next turn, since I think we should start building a settler for the marble site right now.

Production: Catapult -> Settler (or military, if needed).

10. Georgia Tech

It's right on the border, so we'll need hindu buildings out here to helpculturally battle. A worker's about to chop and the missionary will come from Stanford so that will be fine in the near future. With a total of three other forests (not including the one the worker's on now, whose chop will probably go into a monastery), Georgia Tech would be a good city to save forests in case we want to build a marble wonder there eventually, so please keep the forests.

Build order: Wealth -> Hindu Monastery (once Hindu arrives) -> ?? (More wealth?)

11. Princeton

Not a good city right now since Michigan has the corn. Just keep working the cottages and eventually we'll get some more farms down here.

Build order: Catapult -> Wealth (?)

12. Caltech

Since it has the pigs, it's growing well. A lighthouse is fine to get the 3f lake but we still need more farms up here (fortunatey, we're getting them). Once we have HR, we should give the capital the pigs. Also, Caltech should probably help produce the military garrison units for the capital.

Build order: Lighthouse -> Cheap military for itself and the capital -> Library eventually.

13. Michigan: just starting out, so a granary as usual. Next -- Library? Or even a worker (once at size 2)?

THE ROMAN BORDER

Right now, there's a partially built road in case we want to move something forward. Next turn, we'll have 13 axes, 6 catapults, 2 spears, and 2 chariots in the area -- quite a nice defense. Our galley moved and cn see Ravenna. I suggest moving the galley all the way over to the tundra so we see what's on the other strip there.

WORKERS

Minimal comments since it should be clear what they're doing. One thing I'd add is that we need to get more farms/mines around the MIT area, so the workers chopping Caltech's spice should go over to MIT to finish up some of the improvements there.

Some other info:

Civics (notice how NO ONE is in Hereditary Rule right now! If we didn't have Rome to worry about on our border, we would have gotten Hereditary Rule 10 turns ago!):

Techs (Asterix doesn't even need to worry about military )

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Next turn, we will revolt into Organized Religion and Hereditary Rule. Hopefully it only takes one turn.

With hereditary rule, we need to focus on GROWTH AND GROWTH.

1. Keep growing cities if possible.
2. We might need 1 more worker (from MIT/Washington? Or whip from Caltech or a new city?)
3. Keep cottaging, but we will need farms later for chain irrigation, so we might as well build some now that will be needed later
4. Keep shfiting military units to the cities needing happiness the most.

Here's the domestic advisor (need growth + balance with military)

Demographics, etc.:

Coming up next (after a break) is my "high level" idea .... in other words, what should we be doing to put ourselves in a better position? Will discuss this soon.

As a side, take a look at the tech tree:

There are lots of interesting options after Monarchy, but let's keep research at 0% now to develop a plan.


EDIT

Diplo updates (yes, it's Asterix again. ):

Hi DMOC,

Yeah, it is a problem of perspective. You kinda break the "set in stone" deal for me to get Stone T113 . I could gift you Spices T113, but even doing so, Teddy made sure there was no way for me to get Stone T113 Unless I could spend 24 hours being logged into the game. I had these kind of deals with others team and we always offer them to each other first time somebody is logging into the game given turn.

And much more important to me, you seemed to change 180 your views on geopolitics . You wrote on Oct 12, from your official team email:

"Back to our decision about India, as I said, both our teams should be in or out.
There is no glory to deal with India and leave the other team fighting. It'll backfire on the team who avoid confrontation with India, I'm sure.
We are not willing to extend our NAP with them."

and than you suddenly announced to us something opposite

I am trying to assume good will on your side, but we also have to protect our interests - and some of your decisions, like your recent allying long-term with India, are simply difficult to understand for us. As you said yourself earlier, it would most likely end in India picking as one by one ..

Regards,

Asterix

And my response:

Asterix,

As an absolute backup plan, if something like this happens again, we will request a reload (especially if the deal was extremely important). In the future, we'll make sure to offer deals immediately whenever possible. =)

Just a couple of other points ... if you wouldn't mind, we'd appreciate some of your thoughts on our thoughts :

(1) I'm not sure why you think we're in a long-term ally with India. I specifically said that we were worried about Rome, so we've adopted a policy of "be nice/friends" with our neighbors, so that they wouldn't come looking our way. But you claimed (I don't want to use "confronted" since that sounds like a strong word) that we are in a long-term ally with India. If you define long-term as having a short NAP and open borders, then technically we're allied with almost everyone in the game. Our NAP isn't super-long, but Yuufo and us agreed on keeping the length confidential to other teams.

(2) Do you still think that India will still pick us off one-by-one? We followed our policy of expanding towards them and focusing on our economy (whenever possible), and that has resulted in us arguably having just as good a position in the game as India, and we have higher power than they do. If we had focused on hardcore military versus India early, I'm sure that we'd all be in a worse position right now.

Sincerely,
DMOC
Team EggHeads

[DMOC]

Next turn rolled. It's 1 AD and ...

yes! Converting to both civics will only take one turn! I switched so now we're in anarchy for this turn. So it looks like we're the first to get Hereditary Rule ... we can't be the first to Monarchy, though ... right??

Tech path is tentatively set for Calendar, so we can get spices ASAP, but should we prioritize Aesthetics/Lit/Drama or IronWorking/Metal Casting stuff? Or even Code of Laws => Civil Service? Keep research at 0% for a few turns so we can debate. We will research techs quickly at 100% anyway. We will need Feudalism as it's on the way to Guilds, but we don't need it right now.

I did not move any workers, Teddy, but I left signs as indicating what I did on turn 114, so feel free to continue them or move them in a different direction. (I'm pretty sure most of the worker actions are straightforward, but e.g., the worker that finshed chopping Michigan should probably get some cottage OR farm set up somewhere, even if the farm is just for eventual chain irrigation.

Rome continues to be unreasonable.

Are they trying to wait until they can add catapults to their stack?


I also sent this to SutOxy:

Team SutOxy,

I'm aware that we've been playing late frequently. I'll try and see if we can finish them earlier (and I'll post this in our thread), though it can take a while. It took me over an hour to do last turn, not even including my turn report. But if Teddy and I both know what we're doing for a given turn, then I agree, we should just end it as soon as all the moves have been made.

Let me know if you have any issues or comments.

Sincerely,
DMOC

Team EggHeads

[WilliamLP]

I just want to say thanks for the full empire update!