RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Iamjohn, Kodii & Zeviz

[Kodii]

I put together a test and confirmed that the city will AUTORAZE.

Our capital, after the workboat, should probably produce a settler, while the southern Quechua mills around to the south, and our northern Quechua loops back down to our capital.

[Zeviz]

I put together a test and confirmed that the city will AUTORAZE.

Our capital, after the workboat, should probably produce a settler, while the southern Quechua mills around to the south, and our northern Quechua loops back down to our capital.

I also did the same test, and I am not sure what to do. The advantage of free city would have been too great to ignore, but just taking somebody's capital location with the second city might not be worth the diplomatic hit.

I also feel kind of bad about eliminating somebody so early, but leaving the capital undefended is a calculated risk. And in the previous Pitboss game all lurkers said that they would have killed Sunrise if they were in Lins' position.

The other option is to offer Mortius to "vassalize" himself to us. (NAP until the end of the game, supporting us in all wars, etc.) If he would accept an agreement like that (and follow through), that would be an ideal solution, because two teams are stronger than one team that got a slight boost on the growth curve.

PS Here is a draft of an email if we want to go with a vassalage option:

Hi Mortius,

Leaving your capital unprotected is a calculated risk, and when you take risks sometimes you lose. When a similar situation came up in Pitboss 1, all lurkers said they would have killed the player with an unprotected city. (If you haven't followed that game, what happened in game is that player with empty city successfully bluffed the other guys into signing a NAP before they got a chance to look into the city.)

So we would be well within our rights to walk into your capital, getting ourselves double room for expansion, second city at your capital cite, etc.

However, there is an alternative solution. If you are satisfied with a second place finish, we can sign a game-long alliance with the condition that when only our two teams are left, you will let us win. Since there is no tech trading, the alliance would be mainly about military assistance and cooperation with expansion.

What do you think?

IKZ

PS What do lurkers think? Would you take out an opponent in this situation?

[SleepingMoogle]

It seems a bit odd to me. Regardless of the answer to your offer, any other civ that becomes aware of it may consider putting the decision in the hands of Mortius to be a sign of weakness on your end. A civ that appears to be indecisive may end up giving them as much incentive to assume an aggressive stance as an aggressive one would, simply because it's a potential weakness that can be pressured.

Not saying that you are indecisive of course. But if you move forward with this, you'll probably want to keep other teams from finding out.

[Krill]

Pointy end in the other fella. Rinse and repeat.

[Kyan]

Pointy end in the other fella. Rinse and repeat.

In terms of improving your chances of winning the game, this option is almost certainly best.

[Rowain]

Considering that you had only very few turns till you ran into his captial one could guess that keeping him alive would leave you with little space to expand. Killing him would mean more room to settle and with you beeing organised = cheap courtrooms to not kill yourself with the costs.

PS: were techtrading possible in this game than letting him live as your vassal would be better.

[Iamjohn]

Sorry I had a long message here, but the forum ate it, so I'll have to summarize: I feel bad killing someone this early in the game, but it's his fault for not building a warrior first, if we hadn't found him early enough it would have put him ahead, unfortunately for him, that's not how it happened, so it means that he dies. IMO there's just too much threat and not enough pay off for us to have a vassal (and why would someone play when they are destined to be just a vassal anyways?). There's just no real reason that is good enough to keep mortius alive.

To be honest, in relation to a diplomatic hit with other civs I feel it's a plus- IMO they'll be forced to respect us that they might not have before.

[Iamjohn]

Letter to Mortius? If no one comments I'll send it in a couple hours.

Hey Mortius, I'm sorry about the lack of any communication, I certainly understand that this isn't the easiest thing for you, and we're doing our best to conduct this in a gentlemanly way. I'm sure it doesn't really help any, but all three of us do feel bad about killing someone this early in the game, it simply isn't a nice thing to do, and we aren't attempting to hide that fact, but it doesn't mean we can't at least try to be decent about it.

Unfortunately we simply couldn't not come up with a practical reason to not kill your civilization, and could come up with plenty of reasons to eliminate your civilization. You are an aggressive zulu civ, even a long term NAP can not totally take away that threat. We apparently quite crowded, so competition for land is going to be quite fierce. Even if our team and you decided to come up with some sort of vassal agreement to attempt to counter that threat there would still be the issue with the fact that we really can't get anything from you that we would not have better were your civ out of the picture. There's no tech trading allowed in this game, which means there's nothing you could give to us of any real benefit in the long term, and there would always be the threat or suspicion (however misplaced) that you might back stab us at some crucial strategic point.

It is true, the threat of Rome is substantial, and although it would be nice to have your civilization as a buffer between the two of us, it would benefit us more to be able to have that space to be able to expand into, as well as taking away the threat of Zulu Praetorians attacking us.

With sincere apologies,

Iamjohn for IKZ.

If you guys want to offer to bring Mortius into our team as well that's fine with me as long as there's no issue with the rules.

[Zeviz]

The letter sounds good, but please mention the precident from Pitboss 1, where lurkers unanimously supported eliminating Sunrise.

As for joining another team, he can probably wait about 20 turns for his map info to become irrelevant, and join any team he wants. We can invite him to be nice, but I doubt he'd want to join the team that eliminated him.

[Iamjohn]

Okay- Version 2:

Hey Mortius,

I'm sorry about the lack of any communication, I certainly understand that this isn't the easiest thing for you, and we're doing our best to conduct this in a gentlemanly way. I'm sure it doesn't really help any, but all three of us do feel bad about killing someone this early in the game, it simply isn't a nice thing to do, and we aren't attempting to hide that fact, but it doesn't mean we can't at least try to be decent about it.

Unfortunately we simply couldn't not come up with a practical reason to not kill your civilization, and could come up with plenty of reasons to eliminate your civilization. You are an aggressive zulu civ, even a long term NAP can not totally take away that threat. We apparently quite crowded, so competition for land is going to be quite fierce. Even if our team and you decided to come up with some sort of vassal agreement to attempt to counter that threat there would still be the issue with the fact that we really can't get anything from you that we would not have better were your civ out of the picture. There's no tech trading allowed in this game, which means there's nothing you could give to us of any real benefit in the long term, and there would always be the threat or suspicion (however misplaced) that you might back stab us at some crucial strategic point. Even in PB1, where Sunrise could have been eliminated, all the lurkers reading the spoilers supported attacking Sunrise's city, and the benefits are much greater in this game. You are correct, the threat of Rome is substantial, and although it would be nice to have your civilization as a buffer between the two of us, it would benefit us more to be able to have that space to be able to expand into, as well as taking away the threat of Zulu Praetorians attacking us. Sadly, in the end it just doesn't make sense not to attack you.

With sincere apologies,

Iamjohn for IKZ.

Unless someone else wants to I'll carry out the dirty deed in an hour or two.

Also, on another note- where do we want to go tech wise? I selected the Wheel simply because we needed to select something and because we want to get granaries soon, but I'm certainly willing to be convinced to do something different, we haven't put anything into it yet.