RB Pitboss #1 SPOILER - Hatshepsut / India

[regoarrarr]

Response to shadyforce.

Yes, I have christened the lake East Fork Lake. I guess the fjord can still be John Nolan Fjord.

I was unclear which isthmus you were referring to here? As for forts I have literally never built one, but it is my understanding that they can only traverse 2 tiles. You can sail in one, only if one side of the fort touches water? SOmething like that.

I would be very surprised if the map maker, who is known for balancing starts, would put one source of copper for you, me and Carthage. It might be one thing if it were in the middle of us, so that it was something to fight over and / or be negotiated on, but it's 8 tiles from my capital and 22 from yours.

Well, I don't want to show off EVERYTHING I know :-D. Or maybe my C&D department is no good. Your pick :-)

I did see one other source, but it's about 20 tiles north, near Imhotep's lands.

I think that I'm familiar with that. I have not yet discovered that tile 11S, 3W, but it is not far from the reaches of lands that I've explored. And I think I'd have to dispute the fact that there is a fair chunk of land behind that line. I would say that there's probably room for 2 cities - 1 near the copper and 1 on the west coast. Coupled with the sheep / clams city I have to my north, and my capital, that makes 4 cities and a bunch of junk. I'm not sure I can agree to that.

Actually the cow is already in my culture as of T25 and my 100 culture border pop.

Yes that is going to be important. We need to see how much room is down there. Because if there is more room down there than we originally thought, then that could change things. Maybe we shift our border down and I take a few more city sites to the south, or maybe you get that land and I take the area near the cow site - something like that.

I think the important thing is that we continue to talk about it and work something out that we can both agree to.

dan.
regoarrarr
India

I took out the parts of his message that I quoted, since it's in the post above, and the quoting feature on this board doesn't seem to format it right.

I plan on sending this message out tomorrow some time.

[regoarrarr]

Had a chat with sunrise today. The gist of it is that the Lin team wants to declare peace with him (they declared war so they could meet me while standing in Sunrise's cultural borders on that tile), and specifically asked him to teleport their warrior across the water (to what they think is a new continent)

I had mentioned this possibility to sunrise a few days ago and asked him not to do the teleport, since it would only help Dreylin. So I was bummed that they realized it and tried to capitalize on it. But not surprising.

Sunrise has agreed to not do it though and is going to send them a message something along the lines of

"I'm happy to declare peace, however existing agreements prevent me from teleporting your warrior across the water. However there is a possibility that there is a land bridge across the north of the sea, and if you head northwest you should find it if it exists."

Unfortunately that does mean they'll find about the land bridge, but that's okay - I'd much rather have them dorking around up there than in the south. Even though they are peaceful, I don't want them messing around while my worker and settler are heading down to Green Twp in the next few turns. I do have 1 warrior there and another on the way, but having to guard against a stab would slow things down.

And maybe they can tell me if they find anything interesting in the north.

I plan on sending them something maybe later this evening or tomorrow. Quick enough to try and mend fences, but not so quick that they try to negotiate things with me before a few turns pass.

[Mortius]

I'd move red 1 NE: Madrid is going to exert too much influence on those clams for even a CRE civ to wrestle them over.

Absolutely not. The clams would be in the second ring of the red city and in the 4th ring of Madrid. The bigger the distance to the city the less culture it gives. I don’t know the exact formula, but the drop is substantial. Not to mention the clams would be in your cultural borders much earlier then Madrid has any chance to put it’s culture there. If you build Moai, it would give an additional 4 culture per turn, and it will double after 1000 years. With your creative trait, Moai and an library later, you can culturally dominate the area. It can be VERY good city, with much food, commerce and decent production (Moai) to build it’s own infrastructure with easy.

Maoi's best for an otherwise crappy filler, so I wouldn't waste it on red.

I don’t agree. I prefer to have one very good city than two crappy ones. I always build Maoi in a city with many coastal tiles, and red city would have as much as 13!!! The earlier you build Moai, the bigger impact it would have on your growth curve, and rather nobody build crappy cities early. The most important thing, you need very good cities at the start to fuel your growth, the better they are the faster you can expand, the bigger and stronger empire you would have.

[Mortius]

I have to say I'm still a bit nervous about having to wait 6 extra turns to be able to start a spear or axe (1 extra turn for settling, 5 for borders to expand)

What would you build in the green city, at the start? Not a spear, or an axe, but a work boat. At the time you finish it (at least 9 turns), you can build a spear no matter what site will you choose. So, the extra 6 turns doesn't really matter.

[regoarrarr]

Email from shadyforce - it's not good

Well, I don't have a back-yard with bad terrain I can expand into. I have only one place to go and that's into the area between us. The given line gives you 2 (is that really all you can fit) cities south of your capital, a defensible border line which is one city removed from your capital and the only copper in the area, and leaves you the as much of the 20+ tile expanse to your north between you and Imhotep to settle. If you are seriously suggesting that you have only one city in all that room to the north and all the rest of your cities must go south then that is a serious problem for both of us.

Still thinking about how to respond, but I can see us definitely clashing sooner rather than later. I guess that means I need to find ZPV sooner rather than later.

[regoarrarr]

Here was my response to shadyforce

It was good to hear from you. I continue to be glad that we both seem to be willing to talk and negotiate and work something out. Believe it or not, I do understand where you're coming from about only having the one place to expand, and I'm not trying to take that away from you. In fact, I think it is in my best interest that you have a healthy amount of land. My opinion is that if you feel that you are squeezed or shortchanged, you're more likely to feel like you have to go to war to fight, and that's of course only going to ensure that we both lose.

First of all, to answer your question, there are 31 land tiles not in the BFC of Cincinnati, that are north of the lake and west of the river (as I understand that was your proposal for a border). So yes, 2 cities (*maybe* 2 and a half) are all that can go there. How many cities are you looking to peacefully get between us? Obviously you have scouted more than I have, but I have seen vast grasslands including ivory, grassland corn, and a few other resources that I am assuming are closer to you than me.

I guess I'm having trouble understanding why a cow tile, that is 3 tiles from my capital (8 if you consider the walking around John Nolan Fjord) should be settled by you, whose capital is 23 tiles away? To continue your analogy of the Cape Copper spot in the Apolyton Demo game, this isn't like RB vs. Imperio in settling that tile, to me this feels more like if RB was haggling with the *Templars* over that spot!

I mean, when I try to step back and take a more impartial view of things, I feel like I know what you're doing - you feel that you have to try and push and fight for as much land as you can possibly negotiate for. And that's fine - I'm sure you feel that I'm doing the same things, and I probably am. It's only natural. But somewhere in the middle, there has to be something that we can both agree on?

Perhaps the best course is to reach some sort of agreement until we can scout more of the land out? As you have said before, we are kind of scouting blind here. For all we know, there is more land than we are expecting. As I mentioned in my last email, the sea I thought was on my east coast is in fact East Fork Lake. I am starting to think from some comments I've heard and some of my own explorations that the coast I thought was on my west is in fact *another* lake.

I'm starting to think that we are in fact all on one connected landmass, separated by several large sea-like lakes. Have you seen anything in your scouting that would either confirm or deny this? I know that I plan on trying to hug the coast more with my explorations to see if this is true.

So I know that you have been reluctant to sign any kind of NAP until we can figure out more of a border agreement, but maybe we should agree to some sort of ceasefire for now? If you agree to not settle your first city north of the latitude of that 2 tile lake, I will agree to not settle my first city east of the river? And then we agree to revisit the border when we start thinking about more cities, like say T45 or 50 or so? Is that something that you could agree to? I'm just trying to propose things that have a good chance of leading towards peace for our nations. I worry that if we don't agree on ANYTHING, that you'll feel like you have to settle your cities to the far northwest, to "stake your claim". I'll have to respond to that and send my guys to the far SE so that you don't take the whole area. I'll build up a military to "defend what's mine", and you will do the same, and this whole cold war escalation will just ensure that ZPV (or someone) is the real winner. And so I'm trying to avoid that. If you cannot live with what I proposed, I am happy to listen to counter offers.

Hope to hear from you soon

Obviously my agreement is not really conceding a whole lot, since neither of the 3 sites I'm considering is east of the river (my understanding is his proposed border goes south along the river and continues south once the river turns west). It's possible that he may call me out on that, and that's fine, but it's also possible that he will not, considering he hasn't scouted much over here and has no idea where the copper is or any other resources. My settler will be whipped next turn (T30) and start its move the turn after that (T31), founding on either T36 (the uber spot) or T35 (either of the other 2).

Shadyforce whipped something last turn, going from size 2->1. Could be a settler, but I would doubt it actually. Even if it is, it's got a long march before it gets anywhere near me.

I am considering again the "uber spot", since it is looking possible that any settlement to the east (that would pick up the bananas if I settle 1 tile to the west) might be a contested city. I will do some more number crunching on early build plans at Green Twp in each of the scenarios.

[regoarrarr]

Okay - let's talk culture! From a thread over on CFC, I found some info on culture.

Here's the relevant section

To make sure that that's clear, let me describe it another way. Think of the city's potential cultural area as a series of rings. The first ring consists of the city and the 8 surrounding squares. The second ring contains the other 12 squares of the city's production area, and so on. When the city's cultural level is 1, only the first ring gets the points from the city's CPT. When the city's cultural level reaches 2, both first and second ring get the base CPT and the first ring also gets and additional 20 points a turn, even if the city isn't generating any culture at that time. When the city reaches it's third cultural expansion, The inner 9 squares get an extra 40 points, the next ring gets 20 points and so on. At the highest level of culture, the inner ring gets a whopping 100 extra points of plot culture per turn.

So basically, when Madrid is at cultural level 4, and Red city is at level 2, both cities will exert cultural influence on that clams tile equal to the city's produced culture. But, when my city reaches level 3 (100 culture), it will start exerting city culture PLUS 20 cpt on all 2nd ring tiles, including the clams tile, while Madrid will just be producing city culture on it. That will remain until Madrid reaches level 5 (5000 culture). Or if Red city gets level 4 first (500 culture), then it will produce city culture plus 40 cpt on the clams tile.

So short answer is that I think that keeping Red there and putting Moai is a good move.

[regoarrarr]

3 way chat with sunrise and Kalin.

It looks like the league of Lin is heading towards Alphabet and we are looking at arranging a n-way trade. This is something that I have been expecting and trying to work towards in my planning. Being in on these exchanges is going to be crucial, and the civs that miss out are going to start to be more and more marginalized.

Current plan is

Dreylin / Kalin: Alphabet
Sunrise: Monarchy
Regoarrarr: Maths or IW
Someone else (possibly Broker33): The other one of those.

I really do seem to be kind of in the middle of the map which is nice, and suits my play-style well. It's kind of like being Austria in Diplomacy. If you can survive the early game, you can do well if you talk a lot because there's so many different ways you can expand.

[regoarrarr]

Some map guessing

This is what sunrise thinks


I took that and made my own guess



Sorry for the image widths - how do I make a spoiler tag?

[regoarrarr]

Email flying fast and furious!

Rego/Sunrise,

I have been talking a bit with Broker and would like to include him in
a trade that will involve alphabet. He is a bit far but I think he can
reach sunrise at the very least in time. It seems a bit more
challenging for Rego. We hope we would be able to find the rumored N
passage. If that is the case, Rego could you send a unit over there as
well to make sure that contact is achieved?

Otherwise he also expressed interest in Mathematics like Rego and said
he doesn't have much jungle around his capital. Would it make more
sense for you Rego to research say IW? I would like us to try and work
out the trades so that everybody is happy and gets a good deal.

Is it possible / do we want to get the other people closer to Rego
involved in this?

Kalin of the League

My reply

1) Yes I plan on sending a unit north by northwest in about 5-7 turns. If such a passage exists, we can meet your unit that is exploring and have a picnic. I can send him NE towards Imhotep's lands and you can point me SW towards yours and Brokers.

2) Here is my problem with not researching Maths myself. I am going to want Writing sooner rather than later, due to my cheap libraries (I know Broker and the Lins are also creative). But it seems silly to have 3 of us all researching Writing.

3) If we were to include 5th and more civs, what would they contribute?