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

[DMOC]

I was just coming in here after my holiday to post that you should probably go ahead and take my name off the team - I contributed a little bit in the beginning but you guys have everything so well covered that I haven't tried to contribute much.

I'm still reading every post, but I've been keeping quiet about things and focusing on improving my play through my games in Pitboss 13 and PBEM53. A team game may be on the cards next time, but for now I'm not really contributing compared to the amount of work you guys are putting in, so you deserve all the credit.

I hope you'll still stick around as a dedicated lurker, as Teddy said.

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Meanwhile, it's time to analyze our diplomacy! First, let's deal with Asterik, then with LP. I'll comment on each and then think about ways we should respond:

Here are messages from Asterix last night:

Hi Teddy,

I definitely do not want you to break your agreements with other teams - and I am sorry if I sounded harsh writing in a hurry about us not going to break NAP with India. Briefly, my views are that if either of us would break our agreements with other teams - how do we know we can trust each other?

And I do like you much more than any other team. Any frankly do not like OxySutts too much, even though we have good relationships.

I have no idea what they mean about negotiating a fair border deal we them - we already have one and it was proposed by them! They actually declined our first offer. They were rather rude to me recently - about me running timer once till the end, when I need it to be able to play next turn - they even threatened in-game consequences if I do it again -so I have not communicated with them recently and have no clue what they mean.

Hopefully they did not decide that me no pressing end of turn once in spite of playing all my moves invalidates our border agreement . Hopefully, this is just a weir wording - but let me figure it out with them

Asterix

Hi Teddy,

I am sorry, I was very busy so I had some back logs in answering your emails. I also think there is uncanny similarity between PB4 and this game and what i meant about relative danger of LP and Yuufo was that I think Yuufo is Plako here - early threat and runaway, but that he is not going to win this. But to keep things in order more on Yuufo later.

We are also rather disappointed about SutOxy behavior. Perhaps you will be able to change their mind. We sort of have bad chemistry with them. My team was very generous from the beginning with them - offering them early NAP and land deal, screenshots with our explorations and such. But they reacted to everything with suspicion, would tell us that NAP is not good because only constant threat of force will keep us accountable and such. They later changed their mind about NAP and we accepted land deal with them exactly the way they proposed and when they proposed it - and now they apparently complain to you it is unfair. And as I said they keep blaming us that LP use lack of communication between us to forced them into some disadvantageous agreement. And I understand that it was inconvenient for everybody that we were incommunicado for some time but we had a long term NAP and a land deal with them already - and LP has met only one team at that time, them - so it was definitely diplo masterpiece of LP to somehow convince Eagles that us not corresponding with them often but Eagles at disadvantage - but LP's not knowing his neighbor does not But I think that blaming us for that is unfair.

Do not worry, I know we have to work with them - and I will - we simply have no choice having both Yuufo and LP on our continent. I just have troubles warming up to them, so it will likely be less smooth than with you, but there is no doubt that we have to do it. On the other hand, there is also no doubt that you are our partner of choice

I have no idea whatsover about OS agreements with LP - other than their vague remarks that LP "made them pay" for their NAP somehow?

Yeah, I also agree that there is no reason to Open Border with LP at the moment. I have not mention the idea to Care Bears yet since I did not know if you are up for it, but since you are, I can mention it to them - or do you prefer to do it?

I completely agree that LP is likely to aiming at Oracle and Colossus - I am also afraid Great Lighthouse . Colossus especially makes a lot of sense for him - he is IND, hence cheap forges, which require MC. I thought he would try to pick Oracle on the way - but Yuufo beat him to it. BTW, we we be able to see from the graphs if LP got failgold for Oracle?

I know there is a stone on the map - cannot tell you more, I learnt it from another team which asked me not to divulge more than that. BTW, I hope we will establish trade routes through Yuufo soon - would you be interested in using them to trade resources? If so, we could start to discuss which ones we have available nearby and when they can be connected.

Asterix

i Teddy,

just going through your emails. Chat would be great and more convenient way to communicate, if we can manage time difference. I am in US, best time for me to chat is early afternoon there, but only on weekdays.

Maga told me Yuufo has MP experience and is a good player generally, but she heard that his weakness is diplo - that he thinks he can do whatever he wants and thus alienates other players. Sounds spot on so far

And as I said, we know for sure he is against land deals - our initial position was that we will not accept T80 NAP with him (that he proposed) without land deal, but he said so let us make NAP for just 5 turns instead . And then I decided that I am not likely to want to fight him anyway before T80 and just accepted NAP with him without any additional conditions. Might be a mistake in hindsight

I think we should be able to figure out India's exact army right now - especially that your team seem very good at demo hacking . We probably see most Yuufo's city - and know that his newest ones are size 1.

I see his capitol, Tenderheart, size 3 and his city #7, Friend, size 1. City #6 must be size 6, too. Knowing that he got oracle, we should be able to figure out most of his technologies. I also think he does not likely have Pottery yet, probably not AH, either, since he researched a lot of religious techs. Do you know when he got priesthood? Probably recently. I have no idea what he researched after priesthood. Do you have any idea what technology he could take from Oracle? I do not remeber if MC is available from Bronze Working.

Asterix

Hi Teddy,

I completely agree that we cannot let Yuufo pick us one by one - that would be suicide. I actually think this is a good time for us to make a formal agreement that if India would attack one of us, the other team would DoW them. Are you up for it?

I am not LP neighbor, but I understand your concerns, I am actually worried of him anyway. What I am afraid of is to replay of PB 4 - everybody was afraid of early runaway Plako (Yuufo in our case) - and they cooperated too closely with LP, who turned out to be real danger. But when everybody realized it around turn 180 - it turned out that everybody had a secret NAP with him and they could do nothing about LP.

So what I was thinking of doing was to address India problem - or in plain English, conquer them - by ideally T150, perhaps a bit later. My numbers are very vague here, but I think I would not have a meaningful tech advantage before turn 120-125. So let us not focus on numbers here.

But anyway, your letter got me thinking - and I was very glad you realize how dangerous India is and want to cooperate. Frankly, I was getting a bit discourage and wa s ready just to unconditionally extend NAP with them again, but I think your general idea of starting to prepare for 2 vs 1 war instead is much better. It will just require a lot of work and preparation to figure out how to do it best.

My "best case scenario" would be something like this: from now on, we start preparations to 'solve India's problem'. We can do couple things:

* coordinate research that we will get different military techs (e.g. one of would get mounted units etc). In practice, I got better starting techs, so I have Writing already, I am currently researching Math, but I am e.g. close to construction (cats). I was thinking about going Sailing -> Calendar next (and Maga originally wanted Currency), but can reorient towards more military techs, or do them after Calendar. Anyway, even though Yuufo number of cities is twice ours, our combined research is easily twice his, so if we go for different military techs, we can have very powerful army.

* the problem is that we are separated - Yuufo may make it on purpose, actually. I think I am done with Maga's "let us being nice to Yuufo, I'm sure he will reciprocate sooner or later" policy. So what about I will settle my next city (a turn from now) very aggressively towards him, North East of his capitol? (will send you screenshot). Then you try to settle asap on the other side (as close as possible to his gold city). We both try to push aggressively our culture on him - we are CRE after all . This way, when it will be time to fight him, we will not be that far away and we will thus have a possibility for our armies to meet early during the war and have more balanced unit composition. We can even join our stack before attacking his first city.

* we will fight Yuufo together until we conquer him and divide his cities between us. It will cost us, of course, and LP will likely grow more powerful in the meantime, but even if he would swallow whole OxySuttocracy in the meantime, we should be still OK, if we will stick with each other and will not let him play us against each other. In this worst case, our combined power ratio against him should be roughly 3:2. What do you think?

Asterix

Hi Teddy and Eggheads,

Here is the screenshot, my aggresive city plant would be 1E of the scout, I was also thinking of trying to grab the island with my culture for further settling. Please try to let me asap if you like this plan of us settling on both sites of Yuufo's gold city like this - and are up for a mutual defense pact against Yuufo's attack.

I generally agree with all your idea with one, but important exception - in my experience, it is best not to fight while there is still land to settle. Do you have any idea how long it will take Yuufo to settle all free land? Or how long it will take you?

I completely agree with you that Yuufo's research should suffer and expansion costs may kill him, or at least slow him down. On the other hand, especially if we will coordinate our efforts to get diverse military technology. our chances at fighting him should be much better. Of course, we cannot afford to wait too long.

I think the sweet spot for war with India would be soon after he will finish settling. He will have many small cities expanded over long stretch of land, without infrastructure and not that well connected. And most importantly, I hope that by coordinating our research effort we can be at least 1-2 military techs ahead of him, likely more - and fighting with superior units is another story.

I understand that i ask a lot, but I have settler that I have to use somehow next turn, so if you can give me just general "yes" or "no" answer would be very helpful.

Asterix, M&L

He talks even more than LP does! (He just split it up into more emails.) Here are the main points, roughly in order:

1. He likes our team more than any other
2. He's not a fan of Care Bears or SutOxy
3. He doesn't want to break deals, e.g. NAPs
4. He still thinks Orgynized is a bigger threat to win than Care Bears.
5. He wants to establish trade routes through Care Bears -- I'm cool with that, so we may want OB with Care Bears after all.
6. He thinks Orgynized will aim to build other wonders such as TGL and Colossus. (TBH I think Care Bears has colossus in the bag)
7. He doesn't think it's necessary to OB with Orgynized -- that's actually something I'm worried about, since we want OB with Orgynized! The last thing we need to do is alienate them by declining OB and then declining NAPs with Care Bears. We need at least one ally in Orgynized or Care Bears.
8. He's not sure what tech Care Bears took with Oracle -- pretty sure it's Colossus, and yes BW does unlock it.
9. He wants a defensive pact against Care Bears.
10. He wants to settle aggressively towards Care Bears -- good, let him know we're doing the same thing! But he wants a yes or no answer first ...and he sent us 3 screenshots but none of them seem to match what he said in his emails. Maybe we should clarify?

Long story short: I hope he's serious about settling in Care Bears' direction, as we're doing the same with city 5. I'm still getting a little annoyed at his constant "LP is the threat to win" comments. Right now it's Yuufo we need to worry about, and LP won PB4 partly because he had an isolated start and his neighbors signed ridiculously long NAPs. Just to be clear, we're not going to do that. We should sign some deals here and there since LP is a trustworthy guy, but that doesn't mean giving him a free reign to control the game diplomatically.

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All right, now time to address LP's message:

Greetings EggHeads,

It’s a pleasure to meet you at last! We’re sorry it took so long for us to get in contact… we would have met you around T20 but for horrible RNG luck (we lost our Scout at 20% odds against a lion). We’ve seen your Gold being worked from afar for some time now, but like you we weren’t able to spare our troops for exploration until recently. Never mind, it’s good to be in contact now!

Thanks for the kind words about our opening. We’ve been impressed with your opening as well – working your Gold exceptionally early, expanding quickly and managing to keep up in tech while being one of the few non-Financial civs. Nicely done!

The rest of this mail got quite long, so I'll try to break it into clearly labelled parts.

The Map

Your experience with the map mostly matches ours, though we can correct you on one point – having finished Stonehenge, we can see that we are in fact in the northern hemisphere, not the southern. Apparently the mapmaker chose to use artistic license and line the equator with tundra and ice, which is interesting. We haven’t yet ruled out the possibility of a Pangaea map… continents layouts are unusual at RB, and the lack of north-south contact could be simply due to folks not bothering to explore the icy wastes. Either way, from Stonehenge we know for sure the map dimensions are 76x48. This matches the average east-west distance between civs of around 15-16 tiles, and indicates a likely north-south distance between civs of 20-24 tiles.

It certainly seems the northern hemisphere of the map is packed with the stronger civs on this map, which is quite unusual. The score split right now makes this very clear – the top 5 civs are all at least 14 points ahead of the bottom 5 civs, and every single one of those top 5 civs is in the north! Pretty interesting, and it will likely have big implications for the future of the game. One possible scenario is that a reasonably competent team in the south (perhaps Blame Caledorn) may have a field day expanding into one or two weak and backward neighbours while the northern nations are in deadlock with one another, cruising to an easy win. Alternatively, the game could end up as some sort of north vs south variant (perhaps minus the Care Bears) – that’s a scenario we much prefer, so we’re keen to forge a strong alliance with you rather than wasting our efforts attacking one another.

Other Civs

We haven't met anyone from the south yet, same as you. We’ve met everyone in the north except for the infamous Care Bears at this point. We’re concerned about them too – seven cities already, now coupled with the Oracle! We’re not sure how they’re managing the maintenance costs. Based on what we’ve heard from Team Margarita (and now yourselves) it doesn’t sound like their rapid expansion is making them particularly popular. With their overexpansion and crippled tech rate, they may be a target ripe for the plucking at some point in the future… perhaps you’ve already considered that. Let us know if we can help in some way – this early the distance is a bit of a limiting factor for us, but we might collaborate in other ways. I think we can both agree, for instance, that Care Bears with the Pyramids is in neither of our interests.

Our Agreements

We are happy to accept your offer of a NAP to T90. In the spirit of friendship we’d be glad to extend our NAP well beyond this if you’re interested – for instance, a NAP to T150 as a ballpark figure. Our reasoning is that given the map, any attack on a competent civilization at tech parity prior to at least Knights isn’t likely to meet much success. Being Byzantium I imagine there’s even more incentive for you to wait until at least Knights to attack. Of course we hope that your attention will be focussed towards the bigger threat of the Care Bears rather than us when the time comes.

We can certainly agree to Open Borders with you for the length of our NAP. We should get to work on building a road between our nations so as to get those foreign trade routes (and possible resource trades) up and running soon. We’d prefer that the Open Borders agreement was for trade only – so our units would not enter your territory and vice versa, unless agreed in advance of course. What do you think?

It’s good to hear you’re not planning on settling further west right now. It seems a border agreement would be in both our interests, so as to avoid any potential hard feelings in the future. We propose that neither of us settles more than 5 tiles from our capital in the direction of the other nation (east for us, west for you) without first coming to a mutual agreement. We can of course fine-tune this later, but it should be good enough for the time being and prevent any misunderstandings. What do you think?

Would you be open to an espionage limiting arrangement? We’d be happy to limit our espionage spending to 43 EP’s for the length of our NAP if you’d do the same. That way we’ll both have enough espionage to see graphs, and we can focus the rest of our spending on more threatening nations. We can of course make minor adjustments later if (for instance) different numbers of Courthouses causes one of our graph thresholds to move beyond 43 points.

Anyway, that’s probably enough for now. We will of course not share your information with any other nations, and trust you will do likewise. We look forward to hearing back from you!

Kind regards,

Lord Parkin of Orgynized

Comments (in order):

1. So we're actually in the north, interesting. Since it's toroidal it doesn't really matter, though.
2. The scores right now do seem to imply that the northern civs are stronger right now. Heck, look at them from turn 60 after Yuufo got the Oracle:

Yuufo 160
Teddy KGB 134
Molly Ringwald 133
Asterix 128
suttree 128
Yossadorn 114
GG 109
Aivoturso 109
DT Darius I 107
classical_hero 95

Average score of the northern civs: 136.6. Average for the south: 106.8. And it might get even more skewed in the near future now that we're getting Writing next turn (for at least a +6 bonus). I really wish we can get in touch with one of the southern civilizations soon. We might need workboats.

3. They're worried about Care Bears, and don't want them with The Pyramids. But they never said they were aiming for them.

4. They accept our NAP to turn 90, so now we have 100 with SutOxy, 90 with Asterix, and 75 with care bears (which we will not renew). He's offering us an NAP to turn 150, but we should not accept that, since it's too long.

5. They agree to Open Borders. Since we're getting writing next turn, I don't see the harm in offering it to them now. It's non-scouting now but once we get workboats we'll probably ask to enter their borders. What do you think Teddy?

6. Their border agreement: "We propose that neither of us settles more than 5 tiles from our capital in the direction of the other nation." We should take this, since we actually don't have plans for settling his direction, at least within the next 30 turns, right? We're settling towards Care Bears, after all.

7. Espionage agreement: fine with me.

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Wow, lots of stuff to respond to! I'll be around later today to think of ways to respond. Maybe we should send a quick message to Asterix saying that he should settle towards care bears, and we're doing the same with city 5 coming up in 5 - 7 turns.