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

[DMOC]

So ... Asterix was logged in the forums about 45 minutes ago. (See the tech thread)

And naturally, he hasn't posted in the tech thread. I also saw him logged in here (RB) on January 9, which was after he said he needed a break. Can we get a replacement player? I wouldn't mind if we had a vote now to kick him out (I vote yes).

[DMOC]

With the news that the game might (finally!) get started, I'm thinking of trying out a new style of updates. I can split them into two parts: the lurker-friendly part, and the internal team discussion parts. The lurker friendly part will give lurkers what they need to follow the game without them getting bogged into the techncial details. Both of us appear to be pretty active in logging in lately so I don't think it's a problem if we cut down on long city-picture dumps.

This will be "Operation: Increase Lurker Interest".

Side note: our current deals with the Asterix (and now catwalk/b4andit) team is just the stone/spices deal, which lasts until turn 123 and we CANCEL it at the start of turn 124. (I sent both of them PMs about this.) No NAPs thus far. Say it's really annoying to type in b4andit's name, I'll just call him bandit if I'm pressed for time.

[DMOC]

Turn 120 - 125 AD

After a super-long delay, the game is up! Time for the start of "lurker-friendly" updates. So this will be divided into two parts, a generic overview that discusses our team along with what we think others are doing, etc. The second part will be more technical, such as demographic updates, micromanagement plans, etc. that are more suited for team reports.

Lurker-Friendly Part:

There were no significant news in the events log. However, there were two significant events that happened in the game. One was that Asterix got replaced with the bandit/Catwalk team. Let's hope we can do some solid diplomacy with them since they appear genuine in their desire for working together:

I wonder why he thinks the empire is poorly-run. Interesting, we might ask him. In any event, we don't have any deals other than a stone/spices deal set to expire on turn 124. We might consider an NAP but it's pretty pointless since we wouldn't be attacking them anytime soon, if we did.

The second major event was that we got maps from Arkipeller (who had already traded them with Yossarian prior to that) so we have lots of new knowledge of the map. Let's go and see what we can discern from our rivals.

A look at Rome and England:

Analysis: There's not much we can say that we didn't know already. I'm wondering if Team Dinosaurs is avoiding settling near Rome, since I imagine there's tons of space near the Cannibal Poines (a.k.a. the team that doesn't expand) area. And looking at this ... I can't see why Rome would logically attack anyone but Dinosaurs. In retrospect, I think signing the defensive pact with Blame Caledorn and Dinosaurs was a mistake, since Rome might have already attacked Dinosaurs otherwise.

A look at Care Bears:

Analysis: Yuufo is finally growing his cities; Love-A-Lot is at size 8, which is typical for our large non-capital cities. He still appears to be stuck in the stone age in terms of military, though, as I'm pretty sure he doesn't have Construction or Feudalism yet. His power is equal to ours, and he is moving military to our borders, so we'll have to be careful. (Our NAP expires on turn 140.) Still, the situation now is far, far better than I could have imagined it for our team when Care Bears got the Pyramids, since I assumed they would have run away from the game by then.

Yuufo appears to be moving his axemen near us.

A look at Cannibal Ponies:

Analysis: One of the weakest (if not the weakest) civilizations in the game. They simply need to expand, expand, and expand into that empty region of land. They have four (!) happiness resources that can be captured with two neighboring cities, and with the food to support it! One thing that strikes me about their worker micromanagement is that classical_hero is apparently a fan of roading tons of forest tiles. Not sure why he's doing that.

Team Aivoturoso:

Analysis: Uh ... what? I checked the diplomacy screen, and these seven cities are all this team has got, so they've got barely over 30 citizens at this time of the game. Yikes! And they're not growing their cities a lot. I really wish we had started in their location. They've got two sources of wine, plus some furs up north (and sugar). If they haven't fog-busted the north yet, then our chariot (who's on his way there) should have some targets to kill. This team is not a threat to win the game.

Team Blame Caledorn:

Analysis: This team is the most similar to us, being non-financial, expanding quickly and taking the economy while doing so, and being a neighbor of Rome. IIRC from what they told us they're close to being finished with Code of Laws and will be researching Monarchy after that, so we can do a spices/wine trade. I don't think they have Construction yet, though (which ended up being lucky for them since Rome never ended up attacking them), and from what I can tell they are roughly even with us in tech, if not slightly worse. The good news (for us, at least) is that Blame Caledorn haven't been as successful in growing their cities as us. If I counted correctly, they've got 70 population points distributed across 14 cities, while we have 10 + 9 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 7 + 7 + 7 + 6 + 5 + 5 + 3 + 2 = 85 population distributed across 13 cities, and more than half of our cities will be growing in the next 3 turns (assuming my current micromanagement plan remains). Still, Blame Caledorn has a weak western neighbor, so they're probably going to attack them once they get knights (my guess).

Team Orgynized:

Analysis: Lack of expansion (just 8 cities) and population (just 35 total, ouch!) means Arkipeller isn't a threat to win the game. Still, we know from his Theology and Paper research that he's actually in fairly good shape in terms of technology. He's probably building The University of Sankore with the stone resource he has. He's also got marble, too, so we might ask him for a lone someday. The bad news is that I think SutOxy will eventually just conquer him easily, so I'd be cautious about being a wonder-spammer.

I also have NO IDEA why he decided to settle Serena right by our cultural borders, when not only are there many good alternative city spots, but also when we told him that we would settle Georgia Tech right there! And as a result, we've locked up the sheep there which will only further hurt his situation. If I were Arkipeller, I would seriously consider gifting Serena to us (and asking for, e.g., a settler/worker pair as compensation) since that city's effectively useless.

Team SutOxy:

Analysis: It's as bad as I feared (and we don't even know much of their cities!). They have a size 10 capital along with cities of size 11 (!), 9, 8, and 7, and I'm pretty sure those are standard for their old cities. Should we ask if Catwalk/Bandit have an NAP with SutOxy?


Whew! That's the updated map. With regards to how I played the turn, here are the highlights.

1. I whipped Caltech for 3 population points so that we'll get a settler ready next turn. The question is if we want to settle it near our designated city 14 spot (near the dyes) or in the city 15 spot (south of Georgia Tech). Either one has its merits.
   
2. Dropped research to 50%, but we will still get Calendar next turn. Our break-even research rate is barely 30%.
   
3. Fiddled around with the worker micro. Unfortunately, I messed up the worker micromanagement plan, and now we'll only have 3 ready workers near the spices area next turn, so we won't hook our own source up until turn 122. Sorry about that.
   
4. Fiddled around with city micro. Due to our research rate, I decided to keep some cities on wealth (e.g., for Georgia Tech I was actually thinking about a settler, but decided to keep building wealth) to help support our research.
   

Our 30% break-even research rate is indicative of our crippling maintenance costs. Washington is costing us more than 9 gold a turn, and this will become the norm once our far-flung cities start to grow.

With Calendar one turn away, I think we need to get a good sense of our technology plan. I did some quick math and concluded that at our current research rate, we wont get to Guilds until turn 175, assuming we only get all prerequisites for Cataphracss beforehand. Now obviously our research should increase (unless Rome attacks) so I'm hoping we can get Guilds before turn 160. Is that reasonable, bearing in mind that we'll likely need some other technologies?

Here are the techs we absolutely must get for Cataphracts: Archery, Iron Working, Horseback Riding, Metal Casting, Feudalism, Machinery, and Guilds.

Here are others we badly need: Calendar (almost done), Code of Laws, and Civil Service.

My previous plan called for an Aesthetics/Literature/Drama diversion, but I'm not even sure if that's a good idea right now, given how we'll need to use our capital for producing military as well, and the fact that we still don't have a 10 xp unit. But because of our maintenance costs, I think a "diversion" to Code of Laws is reasonable, and I also think Civil Service will be huge for us since we're relying a lot on future chain irrigation to grow our cities.

So instead of researching Iron Working after Calendar, I'm actually thinking that Code of Laws will be useful. I want to aim for the economic techs first, then the military ones. I was thinking a research path of: Code of Laws -> Iron Working -> Metal Casting -> Feudalism -> Civil Service -> Machinery -> Archery -> Horseback Riding (whip stables now) -> Guilds. Hopefully we can get that all done by turn 160, whip cataphracts, and get a good force going by turn 170.

Another thing we might consider is researching Alphabet, so we can produce spies and put them in Rome. It's probably too late for that, though, but we could beg Catwalk to do this. And we should also ask Yuufo if he's see anything in Rome (he has open borders).

Team Report Part (mainly aimed at Teddy):

Some micromanagement to consider (and questions):

I didn't end turn yet because I don't know what worker M should do. Cottage Michigan or cottage Stanford?

I'm not sure if you were going to just do this but I put both of those workers on the tile north of MIT this turn and roaded. They will be able to improve the spices next turn.

Here's where I messed up with the worker micro. The two workers near UT Austin looked like they were doing inefficient activities (moving without doing anything) so I thought I'd build a road, but I didn't realize that they could have been next to the Caltech spices, and thus we would have had 5 workers ready. Instead, they can improve UT Austin's spices (probably should start with the plains one to improve it first, then they can do the grassland). Hopefully it won't be a big thing in the grand scheme, and perhaps the tradeoff of getting faster spices near Austin could make this worth it in the long run.

City micro:

1. I moved pigs back to CM so it could grow, and moved a chariot over to help out if needed for Hereditary Rule. MIT stagnates at size 8 and 2 turns away from a catapult. Gives the gold to Georgia Tech, and Georgia Tech continues building wealth. The worker that's chopping the forest can put the chop in a settler (and Georgia Tech can finish the settler once we think our economy can afford it).
   
2. Alternatively, Georgia Tech could build a worker right now. I'm not sure if it's needed (maybe it can do it at size 7) and in any case if Georgia Tech goes off of wealth we'd need to tick down to 40% research.
   
3. Up in the north, I gave Wisconsin's wheat to Berkeley and Berkeley's horses to Washington. It results in faster growth for Wash, much faster for Berk (and Berkeley can stagnate at size 8 pretty nicely while working the scientists -- 11 turns left!). The cost is a slower Wisconsin growth but there's a slight beaker and gpt advantage right now to doing this change.
   

For workers near Wisconsin; did some roading and farming. Do we want to chop the plains forest?

Demographics and graphs:

There's not much we didn't know about before.

Last thing: I got rid of a few signs. We do have a lot of cluttering but most will go away soon once our workers get in action.

[DMOC]

Things to decide right now:

0. 14th city goes where? Near dyes? If we delay Iron Working then the city will be weaker to start
1. Iron Working or Code of Laws next? (Or other?) The cost of delaying Iron Working is a delayed dyes hookup.
2. Worker M in the south?
3. Tile shuffling between MIT/CM/Stnaford
4. Tile shuffling between Wisconsin/Berkeley/Washington
5. Military shuffling for managing hereditary rules
6. What to send to Yuufo and Catwalk? We'll want to update on diplomacy.
7. Production for Georgia Tech
8. Production for Michigan (want library?)
9. What does Cornell build after its Hindu Missionary? Wealth/worker? I assume its missionary will go to Berkeley?

(Putting this in a separate post for clarity)

I'll check back soon in case we want some discussion.


EDIT: We got an important message from SutOxy. I'll post it up here soon.

The next few days, we need to contact Yuufo, Catwalk/bandit, and Sut/Oxy and make sure we think about what we write carefully. I need to finish for the night but I'll be back tomorrow night.

[Zed-F]

That's an informative report alright! Keep it up and you may yet surpass SutOxy in posts and views to win the forum war.

[TeddyKGB]

Good thing game is restarted finally. I could probably logged in later today, but you may finish the turn if you wish.

0. I tho its decided -- 14th near dyes. IW is a cheap tech and not much of delay on this. Remember, we want another worker there to chop single forest into granary growing on Fish, probably.
1. IW, imo.
2. Has no idea.
3. After I logged in, I could tell.
4. Same as 3.
5. There is not much need for HR right now except CM and if we accept Silk deal soon -- we'll got more happiness.
6. Its up to you completely.
7. I was planning start Settler there at some point soon like you said.
8. There is one chop done in UMichigan and 2nd is coming. Plan was to start library once we spread Hindu into UMichigan from Cornell (on t122, I suppose). Keep at wealth till then.
9. Back on military, I suppose. Berkeley will get missionary from UMichigan later. Also, I was thinking of growing Cornell 1-2 pop more soon.

Other thing is settler from CM, it might start decay hammers by now (can't remember exactly), so we might wanna whip it there soon. I suppose it will be last whip from CM for some time.

[WilliamLP]

Thanks for the reports! Just a post to let you know I'm reading and enjoying the info.

[DMOC]

That's an informative report alright! Keep it up and you may yet surpass SutOxy in posts and views to win the forum war.

Thanks for the reports! Just a post to let you know I'm reading and enjoying the info.

Sounds good, I'm glad you two are enjoying watching the game in action.

Things to decide right now:

0. 14th city goes where? Near dyes? If we delay Iron Working then the city will be weaker to start
1. Iron Working or Code of Laws next? (Or other?) The cost of delaying Iron Working is a delayed dyes hookup.
2. Worker M in the south?
3. Tile shuffling between MIT/CM/Stnaford
4. Tile shuffling between Wisconsin/Berkeley/Washington
5. Military shuffling for managing hereditary rules
6. What to send to Yuufo and Catwalk? We'll want to update on diplomacy.
7. Production for Georgia Tech
8. Production for Michigan (want library?)
9. What does Cornell build after its Hindu Missionary? Wealth/worker? I assume its missionary will go to Berkeley?

(Putting this in a separate post for clarity)

I'll check back soon in case we want some discussion.


EDIT: We got an important message from SutOxy. I'll post it up here soon.

The next few days, we need to contact Yuufo, Catwalk/bandit, and Sut/Oxy and make sure we think about what we write carefully. I need to finish for the night but I'll be back tomorrow night.

Good thing game is restarted finally. I could probably logged in later today, but you may finish the turn if you wish.

0. I tho its decided -- 14th near dyes. IW is a cheap tech and not much of delay on this. Remember, we want another worker there to chop single forest into granary growing on Fish, probably.
1. IW, imo.
2. Has no idea.
3. After I logged in, I could tell.
4. Same as 3.
5. There is not much need for HR right now except CM and if we accept Silk deal soon -- we'll got more happiness.
6. Its up to you completely.
7. I was planning start Settler there at some point soon like you said.
8. There is one chop done in UMichigan and 2nd is coming. Plan was to start library once we spread Hindu into UMichigan from Cornell (on t122, I suppose). Keep at wealth till then.
9. Back on military, I suppose. Berkeley will get missionary from UMichigan later. Also, I was thinking of growing Cornell 1-2 pop more soon.

Other thing is settler from CM, it might start decay hammers by now (can't remember exactly), so we might wanna whip it there soon. I suppose it will be last whip from CM for some time.

With regards to Iron Working or Code of Laws, I originally thought city 14 should go near the dyes primarily because we'd be getting Iron Working (so we could get the grassland there cottaged) and so we could help buffer UT Austin's culture against India's city of Cheer. A delayed Iron Working means we might consider delaying that city. I'm going back and forth on this but we are putting research at 0% next turn anyway.

I logged back into the game to finish the turn.

1. I switched Michigan back to wealth. I'm assuming that overflow (e.g., from chops) is always "stored" when building wealth? EDIT: Yes, I verified it.
2. Worker M went towards Stanford (pre-chopped a forest along the way) so next turn he can go and cottage the non-roaded tundra river in Stanford. The city has something like 4 surplus food now so it's not a terrible thing to do (would prefer grassland but oh well).
3. As far as Carnegie Mellon goes, here's how the hammer total is like:

Hindu Temple: 45/80 hammers
Colloseum: 18/80 hammers
Settler: 20/100 hammers

As far as I can tell, we built the colloseum a while ago, but buildings get 50 turns of decay, while settlers (and units in general) only get 10 turns. Let's just keep the city the way it is and see if the hammers decay. Unfortunatey, switching to the unit periodically (e.g., one turn, then switching back to a building) will not stop the hammer decay. Also, if CM is building that settler, then Georgia Tech should really just stay on wealth or build a worker later. No need for additional cities right now when the economy is terrible.

In fact, for curiosity, the cities that have any sort of queue in production are:

Cornell: has 25/50 hammers in a catapult
MIT: has 33/35 hammers in an axeman (we could consider holding off on finishing these units and have MIT build wealth next turn)
Illinois: 3/35 axeman
UTAustin: 4/150 in market
Wisconsin: 54/150 in market (will probably chop the last forest in BFC to help out but I think we want the OR bonus)

4. Here are screenshots of cities. My plan is to stagnate Berkeley at size 8 for about 8 turns (until it finishes the Great Person). Then we can rearrange tiles as needed among Berkeley, Wisconsin, and Washington. In order to found the 14th city on turn 122, we need the worker on the city tile to road BEFORE the settler moves there. And we need a plan for Georgia Tech...

5. Yuufo fortified the axemen. I'm not sure what that's for.

6. No clue why Yossarian has a bunch of workers in the tundra, despite having no apparent special resource to improve.

Later tonight, after my work is finished, I'll get to work drafting the 3 messages. We won't be trading spices until turn 122 anyway so it's not stuff we need to send today (but we should do it tomorrow). Finally, did you notice Yuufo finished the turn in 2 minutes? I think in all I've spent almost two hours on this turn alone!

[DMOC]

Turn 120 - 125 AD Diplomacy Updates

It's going to be an important set of turns in the near future for diplomacy updates. I came up with drafts of messages that we might consider sending after some revision/review. First things first, here are our current NAPs:

Dinosaurs (English): T130
Care Bears (India): T140
SutOxy (Native America): T150
Aivoturoso (Zulu): T150
Arkipeller (Dutch): T155
Blame Caledorn (Inca): T170

We have no active NAPs with Rome, Ottomans, and Sumeria.

At the moment, I think the biggest NAP-thing we need to rectify is the T140 NAP with India. In addition, we're also going to want to make sure Yuufo doesn't turn our eye with his military. Thus, here's a possible message:

Care Bears,

I'm glad the game is finally back up and running! Hopefully we can continue where we left off in terms of our positive relations. Apologies for the rather long message but I think excellent communication is key in a full diplo game.

(1) I couldn't help but notice that you're bringing more military to our border. This is just a friendly reminder that we have an NAP to turn 140. In fact, given that we're both in roughly second place in military (behind Rome), I don't see the harm in extending our NAP by, say, another 20 turns. Would you be interested in accepting this? This way, you don't have to worry about your border with us for a while.

(2) We also noticed that you have Open Borders to Rome. If you wouldn't mind, we'd be curious to know who initiated it (i.e., who offered it) and if Rome was possibly communicating with you. All attempts for us to negotiate and communicate with Rome have failed, as Barteq has continually ignored us. Do you have any scouting units in Rome's land that can pinpoint their possible stack of doom? Right now, we treat Rome as our biggest enemy so any assistance you could provide in this regard would be great.

(3) In terms of military, it seems like you have a pretty nice invasion target in your eastern neighbor. Asterix (who has now dropped out) continually asked me to work with him against you. Asterix also said that you would attack him on turn 130. Don't worry, we've NEVER given Asterix (and his replacements, Catwalk and bandit) any sort of official agreement that we'd do a 2 vs 1 against you. Quite frankly, we don't have any desire for war right now.

(4) Finally, do you have any sort of general plan for the next few turns? If you're wondering, we are trying to beeline towards Civil Service (and take Code of Laws on the way) since this would greatly help us in terms of economy and food. We're hoping to avoid building military right now, but we are forced to continue building some cataputs/axes to stop a possible Roman invasion. Not much we can do about that, as we prefer to play safe.

To recap:

1. NAP extension to turn 160?
2. Do you have units or spies in Rome that we could use?
3. Any future plans against bandit/Catwalk (Asterix's replacements)
4. Anything else you'd like to discuss? Future plans? Other deals?

Sincerely,
DMOC
Team EggHeads

We also need to discuss things with Catwalk and bandit.

Catwalk and bandit,

Let us welcome you to the game once again. Catwalk and I already chatted via in game, and we both confirmed our desire to work together. Right now we only have a resource deal (that we'll cancel on turn 124). If you're interested, we can sign a fairly lengthy NAP (turn 175 as a ballpark --- I offered turn 170 to Asterix in an email right before he left, but he never responded), though an NAP probably isn't necessary for us since we're unlikely to ever border each other unless India gets conquered.

Has Yuufo contacted you to update the whole situation with you? From what Asterix was telling me, he was getting worried that India would attack him on turn 130. Based on the information I have, India is much higher in power compared to you but behind in tech, so do you think you'll be able to muster enough defenses in 10 turns to defend against a possible Indian attack? Let us know if you have any questions. In case you're wondering, we're thinking about extending our NAP with Yuufo to something like Turn 160-170 ish, because by the time it expires we will hopefully have a nice decent force of cataphracts that might be able to attack Yuufo/India. Please keep this confidential, though, as while it should be obvious that we are heading towards cataphracts, we have not decided on an invasion target yet.

Sincerely,
DMOC
Team EggHeads

I'm trying to play a fine line between just probing for information and actively supporting both sides of India/Ottoman.

Finally, the big thing is SutOxy's message. For reference, here's what they sent us yesterday (italic text is my text from my earlier email that they quoted in):

Eggheads,

Apologies if I come off as abrupt; I thought it helpful if I spoke as directly as possible.

"we also have to face the realization that our open borders with you are not economically advantageous to us (we've been terrible in imports/exports the entire game)"

This is mistaken. You currently net 1cpt from trade with us (we have an island city, you don't) and so your cpt income will immediately decrease if you close borders with us. It is true that several of our trade routes go to your cities (you are distant) but closing borders with us will not reduce our income. Our trade routes will simply adjust to less distant partners or island cities. We are upset with KGB's threat because it appears to us as aggression for the sake of aggression. Your imports/exports stat reflects the way the game assigns trade routes - you opened borders early and often - I'm not sure it tells us anything about your economy.

"In addition, you are currently in the runaway leader position and we know that you want to avoid dogpiles. My guess is that you're going to get Liberalism and then take Nationalism as the free technology, so you can build the Taj Mahal."

As I've told KGB, we are very open to a plan that benefits your civ at our expense so long as - for both of us - our standing with respect to the other teams is improved. If a potential Liberalism run on our part is not in your interest, what can you suggest as an alternative?

Our goal is first and foremost to guarantee our own security. We also would like to find an equal partner so that we can grow together in the long term. You too are at the top of the scoreboard. Why should other civs tolerate your expansion?

"We kindly ask that, to maintain open borders, we can negotiate a spices-silk deal that also involves a small gold-per-turn as compensation. We were thinking of along the lines of 5 to 10 gold per turn."

You will net 2gpt from our island cities in the immediate future. We offer an additional 3gpt and a silk for spice trade that you can trust is secure for the duration of our NAP. We would offer more, but please remember that this is a deal you already agreed to in chat and immediately afterwards by e-mail.

"This extra gold would give us some badly needed economic benefit that we could use to tech to Guilds to take over nearby land (e.g., India). you also have the more important benefit of having substantially weak neighbors or neighbors that are more concerned about others. As for the question of what you should do with Asterix, I think that's really up to you guys."

Attacking our neighbours does us no good if we have to play tower defence for the rest of the game - perhaps we can work together to co-ordinate our expansion. I think our relation to Asterix really does affect your team - it would be profitable for us to feed tech to Maga via co-operative espionage. Do you think we should do that?

"PPS: "Island cities" you say. Do you think there are other islands in this game, other than the 1-tile islands? We have only found 1-tile islands thus far."

We only see 1-tile islands on the map.

Regards,
suttree for the OxySuttocratic Republic

I haven't written a draft yet since this is one we'll need to think about. I suspect we'll want to say something like this:

1. First, say that anything in chat doesn't reflect our true diplo since true diplo comes through email (and DMOC ) and chat means it's easy to forget things. Also, I think we should emphasize that I was never really involved in the whole NAP-cancellation thing.
   
2. We maintain open borders up to and including turn 149, and we open communication with each other before expiration to negotiate possible extensions
   
3. We accept their 3gpt and silk in exchange for spices trade, which we do from turns 122 to turn 149 (inclusive), so we'd get an extra 84 gold.
   

Here's some of the less-certain stuff:

1. We say we want to work together, and they can tolerate us since we are unlikely to ever pull ahead in tech (we are nonfinancial); by working with us, sut/oxy can guarantee themselves a strong ally that they can depend on while also making sure that they don't have to worry about a dogpile. We could even go as far as to say we're happy with 2nd place given our land quality and our neighbors (not quite accurate but could be convincing )
   
2. We ask Sut/Oxy in what way they can weaken cat/bandit, since we want India and them to get in a war and right now I'm not sure India has enough to win.
   
3. We suggest that SutOxy go to Liberalism anyway but kindly request that they avoid sandbagging for an expensive tech; we can get fast Great Scientists anyway. We generally ask that they avoid being more than an era ahead of us in tech.
   

I guess one of the problems with working with them is that we also want to help Arkipeller actively work against sut/oxy at the same time. Our diplomacy will be important for the next few turns ... We cannot commit to doing things unless we are sure we can follow up on those regards (e.g., a coordinated war).

Also, how does suttree know we net 1cpt from him? I thought we were actually getting 3cpt, judging from the information screen.

UPDATE (1/18/14): Here's a draft now.

SutOxy,

Thanks for the message. We'd like to confirm some of the stuff we've said somewhere and also make sure we're clear on what we'll do going forward in this game. I've divided up the email into several parts.

Our Deals

1. We agree to the 3gpt, silk, and spice deal. Starting from turn 122 and ending on turn 149 (inclusive, so we cancel on turn 150).
2. We agree to maintain open borders for all turns up to turn 150.

We can also discuss other things, such as extensions to our current NAP (turn 150 right now) in the future.

Our Team Diplomacy

I'm not sure if we have told you this before, but all official diplomacy goes through me (DMOC), as it does for all other teams in this game. While Teddy does most of the chatting for our team, we hope that this will be mostly for informal discussion, and that no official deals will be set in chat. In case you're wondering, I had no idea that Teddy was thinking about canceling open borders with you. I always thought that we would keep it at least until our current NAP expires. I'm happy that we'll be able to continue the open borders. As far as the resource deal goes, I think you discussed this in chat with Teddy. You said that we agreed to our currently scheduled silk/spices (with gpt) deal by email, but I couldn't find where we exactly said that in our team email account. Were you talking about the January 10 email?

A Possible Plan

At the moment, it makes sense for us to work together. Our teams appear to be the ones most active in Pitboss 14, in terms of gameplay and diplomacy, so by working with us you'll be able to guarantee yourself a powerful ally. The main concern for our team, though, is that you have by far the better prognosis for this game than we do: (1) you're financial, (2) you have more population, (3) you have weaker and less aggressive neighbors, and (4) you have the Mausoleum of Maussolos. However, there's still an incentive for you to work with us; by doing so you can more easily avoid a dogpile later in the game. If we work together and are theoretically dogpiled by everyone else, I actually like our chances in a 2 v 8, given how we'll supposedly increase our technological advantage over the other teams.

That said, how should we proceed with the game now? It shouldn't be any surprise to you that we'll be aiming to research Guilds earlier than usual so that we can deploy Cataphracts to attack at least one civilization. We have not decided on a possible target.

For you guys, I think the plan that makes the most sense for you is using a Golden Age right to power yourself to an early Liberalism. If you can get Nationalism with the free technology, and then build the Taj Mahal, you'll certainly be well-positioned to be the first team to get cavalry and riflemen, which you can then use to take over at least one civilization's land. Hopefully, by that time, our team will have already taken over lands with our cataphracts, and we can use that time to catch up to your team in tech (or at least close the gap), as allies should ideally be roughly equal in technology and military. Our main request is that you do not "sandbag" Liberalism in an effort to get an expensive technology. We've all but conceded Liberalism to your team (or Catwalk/bandit) but with an upcoming Golden Age, we could theoretically bulb all Liberalism prerequisites with Great Scientists that we get from our planned Golden Age.

As far as Asterix (and now Catwalk/bandit), we currently view the team as a friend right now and hope that you share the perspective. I'm not sure how the cooperative espionage would work, though, unless they got a Great Spy to use on you. (I think Asterix stole technology from Yuufo). As we hope to support them, we wouldn't mind if you attempt to help out their position, though again, I'm a little unclear on how much you'd be able to help more than you already are, given that, presumably, (1) you already have an NAP, (2) you already have open borders and resource trades, and (3) their espionage points are directed at Yuufo.

Sincerely,
DMOC
Team EggHeads

Does the above message make sense? Give away too much? Really the only thing we need to work on is the "Possible Plan" with them. And before we send, we should have a "Recap" section so we can clearly itemize what we want to do.

Finally, we might also consider sending Arki a message and encourage him to found and grow more cities.

---

As far as our civ goes, I'm starting to think that Code of Laws is necessary after Calendar, and we can research Iron Working afterwards. Will think it over a bit after sleeping a bit but consider the merits of being able to get Courthouses 4-5 turns faster in Washington, Wisconsin, and Georgia Tech. They will help! And do we even want to whip CM for that settler ASAP? I'd at least hold off a few more turns, but again, I'll think about this carefully.

[DMOC]

Turn 121 - 150 AD

There were no significant news in the event log. In general, for this turn I've configured our empire towards growth and wealth. I set research to Code of Laws. The way I look at it, an earlier Code of Laws brings an immediate economic advantage, since we can whip courthouses in the 2-3 turns after we finish the tech, which will drastically help our gold-per-turn. (We have multiple cities that need courthouses.) In contrast, Iron Working just lets us get dyes earlier, which isn't that big of a deal since we'll be getting silk next turn from SutOxy.

Now that we've finally finished Calendar, I've moved five workers near the two spices area, three on one spices and two on another. Thus, next turn, we could get two spices hooked up and can trade with SutOxy. Given that we don't cancel our current stone and spices deal with catwalk/bandit until turn 124, I'm actually going to suggest that one of the workers in the group of three (near Caltech's spices) instead go and mine Washington's hill after it's finished with its spices.

Our settler continues to go towards the 14th city site. We'll found the city that turn and then we'll hopefully get some workers over to chop. The 14th city (UCLA) can steal the fish to grow to the halfway point before we get the granary done. We'll be a bit slow with the granary so we might consider just letting Washington have the fish if needed (?).

Good news --- we still don't have hammer decay. I'll let Carnegie Mellon grow one more size. Maybe we'll whip the settler next turn, but I'd rather not. (Actually if hammer decay pauses while the settler is being built we might just wait until we can 2-pop whip, since we'll need to strengthen our economy first.)

Here are our current city buids. Lots and lots of wealth builds. I'll explain what I've done in the next screenshots.

(Quick note: a lot of our cities are at the happy cap. However, we'll be getting silk next turn so that won't be an issue. Furthermore, Carnegie Mellon is the only city growing next turn, and I've got a chariot in place for Hereditary Rule happiness. MIT is stagnant at size 8, Washington won't grow next turn, and UT Austin will have whip unhappiness wear off.)

We currently have a Hindu Missionary heading over to Michigan, pulling off the "wait until we spread Hinduism before getting the Organized Religion bonus for chops" trick.

Washington's Hindu missionary, which will complete next turn, should go to either Wisconsin (our city bordering Arki) or Illinois (the Roman city). Here are screenshots of the two areas:

I'm leaning towards Illinois, so we can get an extra border pop sooner (currently scheduled for 7 turns) so we don't have to move our chariots away from our borders.

Here is our other city bordering Arki, Georgia Tech. We'll keep the city this way and grow it to size 7, and possibly reevaluate from there. I think we'll actually want a barracks here. We might consider whipping it at size 7.

I put MIT on wealth. We have 2 units 1 turn to completion, and MIT on wealth gets us about 20 extra gold per turn, which is badly needed in this time of economic crisis. Don't worry, we can switch back to military once we get some decay (or the turn we think we'll get decay --- I'll have to check back with our logs). We really need Civil Service for MIT to grow further.

It looks like bandit/Catwalk have been doing some whipping (and renaming). Their capital used to be size 13.

Demographics:

Let's hope that the food and population areas will substantially increase. Right now, we are projected to gain five population points next turn and the turn after that. After those two turns, assuming Rome doesn't declare war on Dinosaurs, we might invest that extra population into some more axes for security. (As well as saving some for courthouse whips.)

I sent all 3 diplo messages (with minor revisions) in the previous post.