RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

Speaker, why do you want a longer term NAP with Jowy?

Because through Jowy's land is the only way they can reasonably expect to take any cities. We'll have triremes in the ocean, so we'll have plenty of warning of any boat attack. I would much rather have time to build up our economy and cultural borders than have to worry about killing more ancient era units in the next 25-50 turns.

[Sullla]

I went ahead and sent the updated messages. Nakor sent us a very short response even before I sent out the email, containing news that he signed an NAP with Dantski until Turn 150. Everyone seems to believe that we're going to attack Nakor with Dantski when Turn 150 comes due, which is pretty funny because we have absolutely no intention of doing so.

It really makes you question what Dantski's doing though. Why sign an NAP extention with a team who you are clearly going to fight at some point, and who is just as clearly teching much faster than you? If Dantski's not going to fight Nakor, then what was the point of signing peace with us? What in the world is his overall plan???

If we're Dantski's supposed ally, and even we have no clue what the hell he's doing, imagine how confused all the other teams must be!

[Speaker]

Diplo responses for Sullla to see when he gets back from the basketball game:

Dear Speaker and Sullla,

Thank you fo the offer. What would you say, if we we pay 130 in advance for the 2 promoted HAs? In 2 turns we would have ~100 and the remaining 30 would be paid turn after that and you could put your HAs on the boat and deliver them in ~10 turns. If you later have Fast workers available we would be very intrested in purchasing 2 of them.

I'm not sure, if we want to delay our research now more than this. 130g will delay our research ~3 turns and I really want to get MC + Feudalism or Machinery way before T150. After these techs are ready we could do further trades.

In general the intrest rate of the loan feels quite low. Of course we could consider using this rate for a friend, but as I said I think it is not in our best intrest to delay our research too long at this point.

Best regards,
plako

Dear Speaker and Sullla of India,

It's great to know that you are willing to start over on a clean diplomatic slate. I (DMOC) was initially reluctant to send you those emails earlier saying that we wouldn't attack you (or something along those lines) because that was our old plan all along, and I should have tried to stop our team from sending those emails. Naturally, I didn't put in as much effort as I should have, which is entirely my fault.

We'd certainly be willing to gift you 100 gold in exchange for you not doing a massive gifting of units to Dantski (of course, that depends on what you mean by massive gifting - any clarification would be nice =] ). We've just finished a technology and are at 0% research at the moment, so we'll get the cash in no time. You are right that we are strong in research but weak in military - which is something we're definitely going to rectify in the following 25 turns.

Once we make a cash repayment, I think we should make some further steps to patch up our relationships. Do you have any suggestions on how to do this? Resource deals? Extended NAPs? An exchange of units (such as your fast workers for settlers)? We'll gladly consider whatever action you suggest to us.

Sincerely,

DMOC (Yes it's been a while since I wrote something) of the HRE team
PS: Do you consider us the tech leader? It wasn't completely clear from the message.

[Speaker]

So, there it is. 230 gold in exchange for 2 Horse Archers. Not a bad deal if I might say so, myself.

[binary010101]

Shouldn't it be ~260 gp?

[Speaker]

Shouldn't it be ~260 gp?

Yes, I forgot about the 30 gold that Korea would be sending afterward.

[Speaker]

Here's a photo from the current turn.


Looks like Jowy is planting a city in the east, but where are those Praetorians going?

In another interesting twist, Kathlete gifted a galley to Dantski. I noticed it in his land last turn, and this turn it has a brown flag instead of green. I guess the feelings aren't quite as hurt as they made it seem....

[Speaker]

Sullla, feel free to end our turn whenever you have a chance.

[Sullla]

Yeah, sorry about stepping away from the game for a while there. I didn't have to teach today, so I was doing some celebrating last night over Maryland's big win, and I didn't wake up until almost noon today. Yes, that is one very nice perk of being an academic, you can set your own schedule much of the time! The downside being, I still have several hundred more pages to type on my dissertation, and every day spent sleeping in is another day before the whole thing is finished, bah!

You guys should really check out this video highlght from ESPN from the game I was attending last night. It was pretty awesome!

OK, I finished our turn after moving the workers and doing some slight micro. Here's something I spotted with our exploring horse archer:



Jowy has replanted Thebes, and stuck to the same name. It's a decent spot, although I think I might have gone one tile south to grab the sugar and horses tiles, even if it meant giving up the sheep. Why? Because with his current city placement, there's really no way to use that line of tiles between Thebes and Kassite, which happens to contain two resources! Also, if we do land Hanging Gardens at St. Albans, our culture is going to expand and take control of that road between the two cities - it will be nearly impossible to hold onto Kassite if our borders envelop it.

So let's talk a little more about St. Alban's:



Unfortunately I had to move the workers east this turn, so there was precious little improving they could do. The one action I could take was chopping the forest tile (which was third-ring for all cities, and thus not worth preserving) in order to complete the catapult at Frederick. I don't like having half-completed units in the box, because I always forget about them and then they suffer from build decay. This way we get the cat finish, and then can go onto forge (or market).

OK, so the arrows. We have 2 workers on the rice tile east of Spartansburg, and 4 workers on the chopped forest tile. St. Albans had Judaism spread inside this turn, allowing it to double-whip its aqueduct for 75 shields with the Organized Religion bonus. Next turn it overflows into Hanging Gardens. Three of the workers, including the two up in the north, move onto and chop the forest tile to the SW of the city. The other three move NE-NE and chop the forest to the SE of the city. All this is indicated in white.

The following turn (T130), St. Albans will get a border expansion and allow us to chop the forests in the second ring. The first worker group moves into the city, then E-NE and chops the forest tile that conveniently still has a road on it! The other group simply moves NE again and chops the forest there. 4 forest chops each grant us +125% shields with stone and Organized Religion boosts, for 67 shields each. 4 * 67 = 268 and with the whip overflow and two turns of production, that will be more than enough to complete the wonder.

Hanging Gardens will finish on Turn 131 - really hoping no one finishes it in the next two turns! Note that these micro actions would take about twice as long without Fast Workers. India is the only civ that can move and chop like this!

Let me split off diplo into a separate post again.

[Sullla]

Oh, almost forgot to mention: I checked and we can research Currency in 12 turns at 20% science. Yep, only 12 turns even at a pitiful research rate! Our economy is actually pretty darned strong, we just have mammoth costs at the moment due to distance maintenance. We are really going to be in excellent shape once we get Currency and Code of Laws for some markets and courthouses. OK, now the diplo to ensure that we get to those techs!

I'll start with Broker/plako:

Dear Broker and plako,

I think that sounds acceptable to us. We would actually rather have the money in advance as well, so that we can start researching Currency ASAP! So, just to put it in formal writing, we will trade:

2 horse archers (both 6XP, promoted Combat I and Shock) in exchange for 130 gold.

Whenever you have the gold available, simply make the request in-game on the diplo window and we will accept it. On our end, we will be loading the horse archers onto our galley next turn (Turn 129) and start moving north across the world wrap. Based on my best guestimation of the black part of the map, we should reach you sometime around Turn 135-140.

We'd also be happy to revisit the subject of Fast Workers down the line, after we've had a chance to add some more tile improvements at our new cities. Thanks very much for your help! :)

Sullla
The Killer Angels

I know we asked for 150g, but I think 130 instead is fine. Let's not split hairs with the only real team we can rely on. So long as we can get 100 gold from Nakor, we'll be in great shape to complete our Currency research.

Speaking of Nakor... (did you notice that they used DMOC for their message to us? Not a coincidence, haha!)

Dear Nakor and DMOC of Holy Rome,

Thank you very much for accepting our proposal! Would you like to make the arrangements in-game, or should we do so?

Your first paragraph in the previous email really hits the nail on the head. It wasn't that your team attacked us that caused serious resentment - this is a competitive game, teams are going to fight one another - but rather that your team sent out that series of emails pretending to be our ally which secretly building up to attack. Nevertheless, we truly appreciate your gesture of goodwill towards us, and look forward to building towards a better future together. Look at what Germany and France have done together since 1945, to use a real-world example.

As far as working together, resource exchanges might be a nice step forward in that direction. I haven't looked at the resource screen in-game recently, and will make a note to do so next time I log in. Non-Aggression Pacts might not be a bad idea either. I mean, we're already under one at the moment, but it never hurts to think about the future! As we said in some of our old (pre-war) emails, our teams don't share borders and have no natural rivalry with one another. I don't see any reason why we would necessarily have to be enemies moving forward.

Our main concern over here is to prevent a repetition of the dogpile alliance that formed against us earlier in the game. If your team can help offer us some security against a repeat performance, I think we'd be happy to work more closely together.

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Mostly, I just want to get them to hand over that gold, haha. Then we can sort things out afterwards. And note that I didn't promise anything there aside from some nice-sounding rhetoric. Still, I think it might be to our advantage to lock some of these teams into NAPs of varying length. Let's say, for example, that we have an NAP with Kathlete until T150, Jowy until T165, and Nakor until T175. Even if we hate these teams, that would prevent them from effectively combining together against us like happened previously. Worth thinking about, right Speaker?

I also wanted to send something off to Dantski:

Dear Dantski,

We gifted you the extra catapult this turn, as planned. Thanks again for letting us borrow your units!

While we're communicating, would you mind if we stopped to discuss strategy for a moment? The ending of the big war has opened up a lot of new diplomacy between teams, and we'd like to make sure that our teams can continue to work together and not get divided up by the others. Would you mind letting us know a little bit of your plans for the future going forward? For instance, how exactly do you see yourself interacting with teams like Kathlete and Nakor? We're sort of cautiously responding to their messages for now, but didn't want to make any promises on Non-Aggression Pacts and such with discussing with you first.

We also probably should renew our Non-Aggression Pact, which runs out shortly on Turn 130. Do you have anything in mind there?

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

I can't imagine that Dantski is planning any kind of aggression against us, but he's just been so flaky in this game that I think we should lock him up safely for a little while again, if possible. I'd really like to know what's going on with him and Kathlete too...

I went ahead and sent these messages, since they were mostly agreeing to things we already discussed.