RB PBEM #2 - Justinian (SPOILERS!)

[Dreylin]

OK, I have a question for the Lurkers regarding information that I have about the Mod we're using that maybe other players don't.

We took the NoScoreV2 we're using from this thread at CFC, but the key information is actually in this post on page 2 of the thread:

Max research boost for 'known civs with tech' is increased from 30% to 100%.

I was involved with the start-up of the CFC game, so was aware of this information (at least somewhere in my head) when the game was setup, but I have just been back through the start-up thread for this game and couldn't see anything there about this modification ... though I may have missed it.

Some of my trade negotiations have been made with this info in mind - that researching backward tech is actually much cheaper than usual - and now that I've reslised that the others probably do not share this information, my conscience is telling me to make certain they know.

So my conscience is asking for support.... (and hoping to get my thread's post-count up!)

[Rowain]

I think you should clarify this part of the Mod to all other players. If they already know about it then no harm done and if not then fairness demands it.

So +1 for your conscience and your postcount

[Dreylin]

SL caught the "us" in my last message:

Dreylinian I,

Just tried to catch you in chat.

If I can act as a middle man then I am more than willing to help out, for a price of course! ;-) Nothing too much - we can discuss at the time.

I have no plans for getting Poly yet - I haven't even discussed it with Krill.

CS is a great tech to go for but I worry about the research time on that... It is also quite valuable beaker-wise and I notice you mention "but would get us to Bureau quickly and give control over access to that civic" Do you envisage that I would front you techs/Gold while you persue CS?

Let me know your thought's. Like I have said from the beginning - I really think that this map has been designed to create conflict on the starting islands. If we can rise above that we should be in a good position.

Cheers,
Sitting Bull of the Natve Americans

Sitting Bull,

Sorry; off getting lunch at the time you pinged me.

You noticed the "us" then; I thought I'd slip it in there and see if it took.... 8-) Actually, I was just throwing CS out as an idea; you're right that it would probably be a long research, but I'm the first who could start on it and then is anyone going to want to duplicate it at that point? I hadn't got as far as thinking about bridging the tech gap between CoL trading & CS trades, but the first round should see me set for a little while.

I don't think I was looking at anything like a tech alliance yet, but we could certainly look at striking a deal where you supply me, e.g. Currency, upfront and I give you a beaker discount on the price of CS.

You're going to have problems getting Monotheism from Darrell without Poly, so you'll need to think about it sometime! 9-) Shouldn't be pretty quick to research by that point though, so that may be better than trading it from Krill.

Dreylinian I.

[Dreylin]

t44 -

Warrior finishes at Thessalonica, an exploration Galley is dialed up - I'll whip in 2t once the city grows and then put the overflow into a Warrior.

Returning Scout encounters a Barb Warrior between my lands & SL's ... he's in a forest so has a fighting chance, but the odds are against him. I change the build at Thessalonica to a Scout to ensure that one is available to explore SE.

Western Worker moves to the forested grasshill shared between the two cities and will chop/mine.

Pottery completes at EOT, now on to Writing in 3t.

[Dreylin]

Seems like SL is plotting something...

Hey Dreylinian I,

I have thought of an interesting idea for a tech trade - I'm not sure if you are going to be interested or not - ping me on chat when you get a chance and we can discuss... it will involve you building 2 galley's in exchange for tech... It might create an interesting situation in the world too which the 2 of us would be able to exploit.

Cheers,
Sitting Bull of the Native Americans

Sitting Bull,

So are you plotting a little invasion, or just a land-grab? 9-)

Either way, I might be willing to sell you a couple of boats if the price was right. Of course I still owe you a couple of Missionaries in the near future, so that will tie up my production for a little while.

Dreylinian I.

[Dreylin]

It's daring, I'll give him that:

Hi Dreylinian,

I am disclosing this information in confidence that you will not pass on to another party.

The Operation (would need a suitably catchy name...)

My little plan is to boat Ruff with 2 galley's containing 3 Dog soldiers and 1 Chariot.
Ruff has recently been at war with Yaz during which my work boat was in the area - Yaz had at least 2 Immortals and 1 Axe en-route to attack him.
Dogs eat spears and axes (plus a chariot will be taken) which will form Ruffs logical defense.
After the war it would be very logical for Ruff to stop military builds in favour for settlers and workers to try and catch up with the non warring nations.
This attack would drastically change the dynamic of world politics - more on that shortly.
The attack will hopefully secure the Native Americans extra land in the west and allow the Byzantines more room in the east - there is an island I believe to the SE of The Oval that we can discuss - more exploration needed.
With the news you spread in the players thread about 100% back research boost and with tech trading on, I feel military action is more viable in the early game.
World Dynamic

At the moment I believe there are 3 mini alliances forming where all the island buddies are working together. Ruff and Yaz must have realised that the early war was a waste of time and have settled their differences on the negotiating table. If i were in their shoes I would have gone for quite a long NAP to allow for city settling etc, catch up basically. I don't see that either will be gearing for another pop at one another.

Darrell and Krill have co-ordinated their wonder builds. I know the least about this island but I have had quite a lot of diplomacy with both Darrell and Krill. Krill said that relations with Darrell were difficult whereas Darrell said they were getting on like a house on fire... "in cahoots" springs to mind.

Us being the 3rd mini alliance.

The obvious move is to try and recruit one of the other teams to get 4v2 going or try and work a 3v3 but I think that is much less likely considering that it would create massive tensions on one island where the 1on1 was.

Byzantine Involvement

First of all we need to establish if the Byzantine people are interested in entering into this plan? The way I see you involvement is purely by helping to supply boats or troops and what I can give in exchange will be representative of what help you can give. Since my previous mail I have started 1 galley and already have 2 dogs (although I unit is needed for MP atm) so a chariot and a galley are on the shopping list. If we can get 3 galley's loaded with troops - 2 for an initial strike and 1 to mop up then all the better. Troop composition could be 4xDogs, 1xSpear, 1xChariot?? Tactical advice.

Japanese Lands

I do know the location of Japans copper - I need to establish if they have horses and if we would need to take a spear along for the ride too. I know Yaz has access to a horse and he could trade it to Ruff.

Next moves

If you are interested we can start to set the wheels in motion. We can map trade what I know of Ruffs land and co-ordinate the attack - you experience would be very welcome. If you aren't interested then it isn't a problem - I think this is an opportunist strike in the immediate aftermath of Ruff signing peace and don't feel that I have the resources to pull it off without help so will probably shelve the plan.

Cheers,
Sitting Bull of the Native Americans

Sitting Bull,

A bold plan to be sure.

The biggest immediate problem I can see is speed; I can have a Galley sailing out of Thessalonica in ~3t, with another following a couple of turns later, but then it would take them 6t each to reach the Clams NE of Trent Bridge. I don't know how much further from there it is to Ruff's lands, but that's quite a long lead-up, especially on Quick speed.

Intel would be very important for this operation; especially to know whether there is a way of keeping the Galleys in the fog until the turn comes to strike i.e. would he have a turn's warning to prepare defenses? If we're attacking his capital, by now border expansions likely make that impossible, but it might be manageable on a later city with no pops.

Would the target city be on a hill? This is especially important since you seem to have missed one of the most problematic units in Ruff's arsenal - Protective Archers. I suspect he has a couple of these around from before he settled the Copper site; if so a promoted CG2,D1 Archer is going to be the biggest obstacle facing your Dogs. I've not played with Native America before, but I imagine they have even more problems with Archers than regular Axemen due to the lower base strength.

Realistically, an opening of 4units is only going to be sufficient to take a poorly-guarded city that can be completely surprised; once he has at least one Archer in the city with any sort of cultural defenses, I think a 3:1 ratio of attacking units would be needed to ensure the RNG didn't bite our hand off.

So having shot the plan with as many holes as I can muster ... if you still think it can be pulled off then I'm prepared to help out however I can. My next build at Thessalonica is planned as a Galley anyway for Western exploration, so I don't need to change anything there. Unfortunately, it'll be a few turns before I could contribute troops, since as you can see I have yet to hook up my Horses - though they are next on the task list - and have not settled for Copper yet; but I can push out a couple of Galleys failrly fast.

Let me know what you think, and any other intel you have that may have a bearing on a potential attack.

Regards,

Dreylinian I.


PS> there's an injured Barbarian Warrior in the forest 3N1E of The Oval ... just took out my poor Scout.

That felt like a lot of holes, but each of them can be overcome / mitigated, however realistically I think that all we could expect to accomplish is maybe take a later city with no cultural defenses, and then the problem would be preventing it from being recaptured.

We'd need Yaz to be part of the plan, and I'm not sure that we could get him into another war at this stage.

[Dreylin]

t45 - yep, my poor Scout was toasted by the Barb on the inter-turn.

Adrianople founded on Red 1W, Granary started. Working the unimproved Corn since Constantinople needs the Cows in order to grow this turn. Corn Farm will complete next turn though.

The added visibility from the borders means that the fogbuster can move further East; he'll sit on the forest 1N of the Sheep, which is the best choke point in the area. Since he is out there to warn of Barb incursions, the injured Warrior in Adrian will head back to Const for MP duty and allow the current MP to be transported across to the SE ahead of the Settler.

Western Worker starts on the chop/mine; I'll need to be careful as this nears completion to ensure it goes to the correct city - don't know yet which that will be, but the tile is currenlty assigned to Thessalonica.

WB rounds the SW corner of the new island; still no seafood in sight.

[Dreylin]

t46 -

Constantinople completes Galley, starts Settler.
Thessalonica completes Scout, starts Galley.

Scout loads up on Galley and sets sail.

WB confirms that the Hut is still there; will circle for another turn at least to keep the neighbourhood de-fogged before the Scout lands.

[Dreylin]

t47 - Judaism FIADL; looks like Darrell finally got Monotheism

Do the MP shuffle in Constantinople with the healthy Warrior boarding ship. Ship sails and Scout lands on new Island. WB continues SE; no seafood, but I do spot my first ever Jungle!



Eastern Worker starts Pasture on Horses.

Writing complete; CoL due in 14t.

[Dreylin]

Morning chat with Krill; maybe not handled in entirely the best way, but I really dislike being tied into something that's not going to be going down for another 7-8t minimum (SL's remaining Alphabet research time).

Keith: Yo mate, how's the head?

me: I've decided to institute a 10min delay for each time you nag me to play the turn
(because it's annoying)

Keith: Actually this is different

me: so I was about to upload the finished turn

Keith: I'm nagging because I want to know about CoL

me: but now I'm going to wait 10mins

Keith: subtle difference
So, I take it you don't want to trade CoL to me?

me: sorry what?

Keith: Dude, I kinda want to work out some sort of trade for CoL
so far I've heard nothing from you

me: nothing specific, sure
you want a "yes I'd like to trade CoL to you"; then you got it
you want a beaker-for-beaker nailed down in blood deal; not happening until nearer the time

Keith: I'd like to work on the specifics with you, so we can come to some sort of agreement. Don;t want to meet you with CoL, and then we both find out neither of us is happy with the deal
ok

me: You currently have multiple techs available
in 10t I may really really need IW
but if I've hammered out a deal for MC
then I'm going to be buggered
(for example)

Keith: I'm happy to work out deals where I front tech

me: or, I may really need Triremes
well that's hardly possible when we haven't met yet

Keith: but if you don;t want to work out the relationship now, then there is always the chance that someone else asks me to not trade with you.

me: Well that'd be up to you then wouldn't it

Keith: But as we both know, we're neighbours
and I don;t think either of us really wants to return to RBPB1

me: If you can't accept a firm commitment that I will trade CoL to you for an "as yet unagreed" price
then feel free not to trade with me

Keith: ok then

me: to which?

Keith: guess we'll find out when we come to try and hammer out a deal.

<Sigh>