RBP3 - [SPOILERS] - Team DIM (Mehmed of HRE)

[Ilios]

So, Mukha has convinced Sandover (Rome) to join our cause. He has spoken to Byz as well, and allthough they are in, they can't seem to believe they would be betrayed by their supposedly close allies, Maya and Babylon.

This message was sent by Portugal to India, Ottomans, HRE, Rome and Byz:

Dear WNA,

I've emailed all the people who I think are now definitely on board. Some details still need to be worked out I think with one or two but in principle agreement is there. So welcome everybody! And let's do this!

A couple of priorites we need to cover first.

1. We need a name.

2. We need to convince Incans, Aztecs and hopefully Maya to join us. Maya just teched Metal Casting this turn, so it remains to be seen where they stand with all of us but it needs to be sorted this turn.

3. We need to figure out some goals. Some of us have badly stunted development that we need to get back on track so that is our personal short term goal. To convert completely to a GNP based civ.

4. We have some big problems with techs. Rome and Incans don't have maths and can't be given it by the rest of us. We also can't give monarchy around. So for Rome, Incans, Aztecs, and Byz they need to work out who should tech those.

5. We need to discuss our mutual military defense. Portugal and Rome have now become some of the more securely located civs on the map, but others are now more exposed and isolated to PAT members.

Probably lots of other things to discuss but let's not get ahead of ourselves. We personally don't have as good a relationship as some of you others with Incans, Aztecs and Maya so we will leave that up to those members.

Team Hug.

Mukha & Dantski.

A reply by Ottomans:

WNA,

Sounds good, I'll adress my opinions on the priorities:

1. I'm not good at names, so I'll leave this to someone else. WNA is
good if no-one else can think of anything.

2. I think both Inca and Aztec will join us. Maya is currently unknown
ATM, but Metal Casting will probably tell us if they are/aren't with
us. I'll assume that Inca and Aztec are in and Maya is out for the
rest of this message.

3. This probably fits into the next 2 points so I'll discuss it there.
We aim to be a techer in this new group, while still being able to
contribute units to the cause.

4. This is the main problem. PAT are about to discover the next round
of techs while we are still behind. Even if they choose to honour CAN,
they won't give it to all of us. It doesn't help that none of us are
that good at research yet (as compared to PAT, who are comprised of
mostly strong researchers). With that in mind, we need to get some
researchers going and for everyone to start supplying GNP in some
form, wether it be gold or research. The most important tech that
someone gets is currency since then we can share our gold around to
everyone. It remains to be seen if Babylon will give the tech to any
of us, but someone needs to start researching it so the rest of us can
get it anyway. We also need to start researching the other techs that
CANT didn't recieve. So I think the important techs ATM are:

Monarchy
Currency
Calendar
Construction
Metal Casting (if Maya aren't in, they have given MC to several PAT
members already)

So, I'm not sure what everyone else is Re:GNP, but I think that HRE,
ourselves, Byzantium and maybe India could be techers now while
everyone else saves gold. Portugal could turn into a techer once they
have started to recover a bit. We are saving gold in preperation to
research one of them (probably Construction)

5. A Mutual Military Defense is good but we will probably have to
attack them before we fall too far behind. While we have the numbers
(10v6 is likely at this point) and therefore have the long term
advantage, we need to prevent them from gaining a big enough tech lead
in the short term. With that in mind, there is a possibility that some
civs that aren't researching could attack someone in PAT. I think this
is a map of PAT and their neighbours:

Ottomans HRE Portugal
(Egypt) (Carthage) (England)
Byzantium (Maya) (Mali) (Babylon)
India Aztec Inca Rome

Byzantium might need to be careful about a PAT attack, since they are
surrounded by PAT members. Otherwise, we all border a PAT member
somewhere, so maybe a co-ordinated strike (i.e. everyone attacks at
once) could be sucessful. We would all have to attack sometime soon,
otherwise they will have the next era of units and it will be too
late.

Anyway, what do you guys think?

Enough Talking!
WarriorKnight of A4

And another message from Portugal:

Hey guys,

This email is mainly about the tech problem. India and I were talking and I think we have the beginnings of a plan.

Here is a relevant piece of information to understand the plan:

Great Merchant:

Currency
Banking
Economics
Corporation
Metal Casting
Code of Laws
Mining
Constitution
The Wheel
Alphabet (BTS)
Pottery
Sailing
Paper
Railroad
Industrialism
Monarchy
Civil Service
Guilds

That is the tech preference list for bulbing techs with a great merchant. I think you can probably see where this is going, but I'll go through the details.

HRE is due to complete CoL on t90(?). At the moment Babylon has offered to honour the trade of Currency to us, although I'm not sure if it's going to anyone else. If HRE could somehow convince Babylon to do a bilateral trade of CoL for currency that would be perfect. Currency comes in t92 last I heard from Babylon. Does HRE have metal casting and how likely is it that can you get it from Maya if you don't? It's above the techs we need in the tech prefernce list.

T93 both HRE and ourselves whip markets in our largest food surplus city and revolt to caste system and run as many merchants as possible. As neither of us have had a single great person yet eta for our first great merchants would be 17 turns running 2 or less with more. We hope to run at least 6 ourselves but no idea how quickly we can grow our cities at this point. We will starve the city if needs be.

The first tech on that list of tech preferences with us both having monarchy is Civil Service. One of us bulbs Civil Service hopefully around t100. To get everyone powering through techs I think it should be a priority so that everyone at least has the prerequisites for Civil Service for when we bulb it. So those techs need to be made a higher priority than Construction and Calendar. Meanwhile, Byzantium should tech Machinery (I noticed that you must have had MC was that self researched or from Maya?), we will tech feudalism. Aztecs? maybe should tech monarchy and any other tech required to get civil service, feudalism and guilds should be assigned so that they can all come in around t105. I know what you're thinking, why don't we just slow tech Civil Service starting today? But this way we can slow tech something else and still get CS.

After Civil service someone needs to tech paper. It's not an expensive tech. We could also try to arrange a bilateral with any friendly PAT members though this is unlikely. The only reason we need paper is that it becomes available with CS and it's above guilds in the tech preference list. So as soon as paper comes in whoever else ended up running merchants could then bulb Guilds, hopefully around t105-110.

Good aspects of this plan is that we get everything within a few turns of each other so there is very little warning for Byzantium's neighbours. I think Beaurocracy would be best for recovery for all the civs limited by their number of cities. I know some people here are aboslutely sick of war (ourselves included) so while this tech path has a powerful military goal it has very powerful developmental techs on the way for those who just want to build.

Let me know if you think this is feasible. As for ourselves we are now turning everything over to commerce.

Mukha
CBE

My reply:

That's some solid ideas!


Couple of points:

- We discover CoL T89. Assuming Krill doesn't bulb the tech with a Prophet before that date (he didn't take Monarchy from England for this reason), I suppose, in theory, we could ask for both Currency and Metal Casting from Babylon and Maya respectively. We met each other relatively late, and haven't had the time to establish cordial relations, so I'm not sure how likely it would be (Portugal somehow manages to get all the techs... )

- Does one really need Market/Currency to be able to run Merchant specialists in Caste System? The way I see it, you just need to revolt and you can basically run as many Scientists/Merchants/Artists as you like. (provided you have the food)
If that is the case, then we will probably be able to run 3-4 merchants by T95.

- While looking at the little map Ottomans drew of the teams' locations, I couldn't help but notice Krill's Egypt sits a bit exposed, surrounded by a lot of non-PAT members: India to its north, Ottomans to its north east, Byz to its south and Portugal to its northwest. I suppose a lightning strike is out the question, but I think that a 3-4 pronged attack on Egypt should sufficiently cripple our opponents' prime supplier of gold.

That's all I can think of for now, more to come though...


Ilios - DIM

So a question for lurkers:

The way I see it, you can run as many scientists/merchants/artists as you want under Caste System right?

So I'm not sure why Mukha wants us to whip a Market before starting to work the Merchants in a high food city...

Anyway, I've already singled out Singa Mati as the Merchant-Generator ™.

I'm going to 2-pop whip a settler there on T89, growing it back to size five on T91, and possibly size 6 the turn after (T93 at the latest). I'm not sure if I should start working 3 Merchants at size 6, or wait 2 turns to work 4 Merchants at size 7, but I'm guessing I'll get the Great Merchant faster if I start working three of them on T93. But I might need to hold off revolting until I finish a worker in DIM and Midas. I know, I should be waiting to revolt until I finish a settler, but in this case i think it's better to wait until the workers are finished so they can start improving the land while anarchy rages in the land.

I don't think I'll be able to switch to Hereditary Rule/Caste System/Organised Religion in one turn, so I'll have to switch to HR/CS for now. I'll swap back to Slavery/OR as soon as a couple of our cities have Confu (again, provided Krill doesn't steal it from under our nose), or I can just wait until Civil Service comes in and swap to Bureaucracy as well.

I will have to build a Confu Monastery to build those Missionaries though, but I suppose I can build that in Marble city or DIM. And it should spread naturally, naturally...

Good thing about Caste System is that Marble city will have access to that wet Wheat tile much sooner by forcing an Artist for 2 turns.

I'm thinking of building a Wonder. I've seen Ruff and Portugal have access to Marble, but they will be too busy either building more cities (Aztec) or expanding the economy (Portugal). India will have a monopoly on Aesthetics, at least for a while, so I'm considering either Parthenon or Swedagon Paya, since we have access to gold as well.
Parthenon would be nice, but I'm leaning towards SPaya at the moment, as it will allow us to switch to Pacifism.

Anyway, I'd only start building as soon OR and forges are online. Not sure if I should build from scratch or just do a massive forest chop in a new city location...