RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

I assume this was a typo and you really meant Broker/Plako?

Yes.

[Sullla]

We have a new turn up, and Currency completed research. It made a very noticeable difference, especially in the capital of Gettysburg where we now have two 3 commerce trade routes with plako's cities. The plan is to go on to Calendar next, because we have three different resources to connect (silks, sugar, spices) and our cities are tied up building forges/markets for the immediate future. Yes, we do want Code of Laws in the near future, but the tech itself doesn't do anything until you build courthouses!

I estimated to Speaker yesterday that Calendar would take us 8-10 turns to research. Well, we exceeded my guess by a fair amount, because the tech will actually only take 6 turns! Very nice. It's the same 6 turns whether we go break-even at 30% research (6t at 85 beakers/turn) or if we alternate between four turns of 0% research and two turns of 100% research. The min science tactic comes out very slightly ahead in beakers, however we are going to found Shiloh next turn and that will add to our costs, so I think I prefer going break-even this turn until we see what happens to our finances. The extra costs from Shiloh will probably delay Calendar research by one turn, and wind up taking something like 7 turns overall. Still not bad.



Here's some worker micro for the readers. I have two workers improving St. Albans, who just finished build a mine on the northern grassland hill tile. Next they move SE and spent two turns chopping the forest tile, which completes the forge and removes defensive cover for possible attacking units. (It would be a really bad idea to leave a forest tile right next to a front-line city!) Next they move to the SW and build a farm on one of the few river tiles near St. Albans, taking another three turns. Finally, they move over to the sugar resource at Fort Henry and build a plantation, pausing to add a much-needed road tile along the way, rather than waste a turn moving. It's a small thing in the larger scheme of things, but if you think about where and how to move your workers to minimize or eliminate waste, all those little things can add up to a big advantage.

For St. Albans itself, we do *NOT* want to whip here, because the city has such a low food surplus. Yeah, I know, that probably sounds funny given the way we've played this game so far. But we based our strategy around whipping because our core cities were so food-heavy; Slavery civic fares poorly on maps where there are few food bonuses. We'll do better by letting this city build things naturally - it's getting 13 shields/turn base (16/turn with OR bonus) and we can boost that to 18/turn base with further worker improvement. This city is a very good candidate for the Heroic Epic, because it has great production and poor commerce potential. Just crank the unit pump and never stop training more military!

St. Albans has produced 12 Great Engineer points so far from Hanging Gardens. We'll have the forge done in 2t thanks to the forest chop, then we'll run an Engineer specialist on permanent basis. 10 Great Engineer points/turn. It all adds up to a Great Engineer due on Turn 153, so long as nothing crazy happens during the intervening period. In other words, we should be able to lightbulb Machinery tech in 20 turns.

There's also a Jowy worker... chopping a forest in the middle of nowhere??? I have no idea WTF he's doing. There HAS to be a more productive use of that worker.


We are dominant in the Demographics, and unfortunately the score is starting to reflect this. (Again, it's better not to be out in front in score, but we can't do anything to stop it, argh.) The one interesting thing is that Kathlete has the Production lead, so they are pumping a lot of shields right now. Wonder what they are doing (?) It's likely either a military buildup (to attack slaze?) or they recently discovered Metal Casting and are doing a forge rush like we are. Too bad we lack visibility on any of their cities!

The GNP stat deserves a little more explanation. According to what you see above, we are rated as "Average" in this category, which isn't bad at all when running break-even research. (Keep in mind that our GNP goes to 210+ if we go to 100% research.) But it's actually a little better than that, because our 30% research is being compared against the 100% research of other teams. Kathlete, Nakor, plako, etc. all appear to be running major deficit research at the moment. That boosts their GNP number and makes them look better than their true sustainable rate. Plus, anyone researching techs we already have get a small bonus to the GNP as well. Overall, we're doing well here, better than I expected to be honest. And we still don't have any markets or courthouses yet!!!

We look good in other economic indicators too. Our 8 cities equal or better every other team in the game, with the one exception of slaze's 10 cities (and of course we'll have city #9 planted next turn). Given that we fought a huge war, and even had a city razed, I think that compares pretty well. (Look at the other teams that lost cities: Mortius and regoarrarr are dead, and plako is way behind.) But the civics comparison is further instructive, because we have a major edge there. Let me summarize:

Teams with Hereditary Rule: us, Nakor, Dantski, plako
Teams with Organized Religion: us, slaze

And that's it! Everyone else is running the default civics plus Slavery. Half the teams in the game either skipped Monarchy tech or didn't adopt HR, which explains our population edge despite massive whipping and serious unhappiness. We are also one of only 2 teams getting value from OR, which is a major omission for teams like Kathlete and Nakor who have their own self-founded religion. 7 out of 8 cities have Judaism present, soon to be 8 out of 9, so we are getting a major bonus there. And later on, we'll switch over to Theocracy civic for double-promoted units popping out of every city. It all adds up to a major difference!

Speaker, I've left the military units for you to move, although this looks to be a pretty quiet turn.

[Beamup]

Fascinating indeed, and I'm very impressed with the degree of economic recovery you've already accomplished! I couldn't come anywhere close to that.

St. Albans has produced 12 Great Engineer points so far from Hanging Gardens. We'll have the forge done in 2t thanks to the forest chop, then we'll run an Engineer specialist on permanent basis. 10 Great Engineer points/turn. It all adds up to a Great Engineer due on Turn 153, so long as nothing crazy happens during the intervening period. In other words, we should be able to lightbulb Machinery tech in 20 turns.

Do you anticipate going after Civil Service anytime soon? (I'm wondering about maces, obviously.)

[Sullla]

Well, it looks like our next tech will be Code of Laws after Calendar, and then we'll be pretty set economically for quite a while. Then we'll have a choice to make: hit the top of the tree for Aesthetics/Literature (Heroic/National Epics) or push straight to Civil Service for Bureaucracy/maces. I don't know which way we'll go yet - a lot will probably depend on the diplomatic situation. Whosit is almost certainly going to build the Great Library (he was heading for Aesthetics and has marble) so that takes some of the lustre off the top of the tree...

We have two messages in today, one from plako and one from slaze:

Dear Killer Angels,

Your suggestion makes lot of sense. Now we just had to find a feasible way to do this. We also need to consider what Kathlete/jowy does. If we're going to attack HRE optimal moment would probably be when Kathlete/Whosit start aggression against Slaze. Assuming they're actually going to do it.

In best case scenario we can get X-bows ~145 and Maces ~157 assuming that research almost useless alpha and bulb the Civil Service. Our main problems are terrible production and spreading of our cities to quite wide area that makes them vulnerable for naval attacks.

I decided to made some rough calculations and the numbers aren't looking that great. I estimate that our cities could generate a tad over 1000 hammers for military production over the next 20 turns, if we try to keep our cities relatively functional (not accumulating too mcuh whip anger) and continue developing our immature cities.This amount of hammers enables mainly defense and attack would be quite futile unless the dogpile makes the target spread his troops too widely or we can really surprise the target.

One possible way to proceed is that I'll declare on Whosit and try to raze the Whosit's latest settlement as long as we've cultural control over the tile right beside it. That should make HRE+Whosit to attack us and we could devote on defense while Dantski might be able from other direction. Main problem here is that Jowy/Kathlete would had to be kept of this mess. We won't be able to handle 4-way attack.

Best regards,
plako

Pretty much what we thought; plako has a lot of economic power, but little produtive capability. We'll have to send them back something; maybe Speaker has an idea of what to say. I don't have any immediate thoughts.

Then this rather confusing message from slaze:

Fair enough for all of your points. I suppose it was written in haste in with a lack of proper inflection; our position is increasing with each turn, as it does for all/most of us. Except I can't place what you mean by the whosit/nakor absurdity: I don't believe I get access to such information/word doesn't get around.

But I understand your position and willingness when it comes to certain people in certain locations. And It appears that Whosit may have little interest in pursuing me, and it may be others that wish to break the peace.

And congrats on the Hanging Gardens. They've clearly bumped you into the top spot, and it appears you'll be honding onto that for some time.

Cheers
slaze
Inca

Mostly I'd like to ask for clarity on what he means about Whosit. I mean, three days ago slaze told us that a dogpile on him was imminent, now he doesn't appear to be worried about an attack at all. Something fishy is going on here....

I dunno, I still don't trust this guy. But we need him for the time being, to avoid a 5 vs 3 situation.

[pocketbeetle]

We look good in other economic indicators too. Our 8 cities equal or better every other team in the game, with the one exception of slaze's 10 cities

Are you getting the city count from a particular info screen, or individually counting them from each player's trade window?

[timmy827]

Re marble: there's some on that northern island, does that figure into potential Epic plans?

Remember that there is all sorts of junk that makes the GNP stat unreliable. Culture counts, which makes Creative Kathlete and Incan slaze's look bigger. What tech you are researching also - correct on noting the boost for researching techs known by other teams, this also changes significantly on how many "arrow" prereqs of your current tech you know.

[Sullla]

Those cities numbers were coming from counting on the diplo screen - there's no screen that tracks number of cities. Those numbers are actually already outdated, as there's been a flurry of new city plantings in the past couple turns. I'm going to check again and update soon. Long story short: most everyone that was at 8 cities before is now at 9. Including our team!



From a morale standpoint, it was really nice to get Shiloh back again. Feels like a long-running injury has finally been healed at last. Because Whosit never bothered to pillage the fish resource (which was a minor oversight), Shiloh can immediately get off to a fast start. Even better, we'll have Calendar tech coming in at the same time that Shiloh grows to size 2, allowing us to add a plantation on that sugar resource. The sugar will be a 4/0/3 tile after improvement, and take Shiloh up to the very strong +7 food/turn threshold (+8 food/turn with lighthouse later). Shiloh's development plan is pretty simple: grow ASAP to size 4, double-whip granary, and then build upwards. That should take a little over a dozen turns, and then this city will be in good shape.

FYI, the sign on the sugar resource says "road 1t", as we reconnect the city to our road network. There is also a Jewish missionary on the same tile, to get border expansion going right away and add OR bonus for whips. I'm hoping Dantski won't bother to place another city over here if we can expand borders fast enough.

I was curious to see what effect planting Shiloh would have on our finances, so here's the F2 screen before and after settling:



Expenses went up by 11, while our income increased by 8 units of economy (1 commerce from center tile, 3 commerce from fish, 4 commerce from trade routes). After rounding at our current slider settings, the result was 2 extra beakers and 5 extra gold. Thus we actually only paid a visibile 6gpt for this city, which frankly was less than I expected. The big difference was naturally those bigtime TRADE ROUTES, doubling the commerce from this city. We just crossed over some invisibile line with Dantski, such that his cities now give us 2 commerce trade routes instead of 1. If you just count up the second trade route in our nine cities, we're getting an extra 22 commerce/turn - the equivalent of 4 maxed out cottages! You'd better believe that makes a huge difference!

Here's another reason why the GNP stat can be deceiving, beyond the reasons listed by timmy above. Last turn, our GNP was 140 and we were #5 overall, with the "Average" GNP at 153. I mentioned how that was artificially inflated from a lot of teams running 100% deficit research. Well, this turn we did basically nothing to our GNP (it increased from 140 to 142) but between other teams founding additional cities and turning down research, the "Average" has fallen all the way to 119, and we are now ranked #2 overall! Yes, we are #2 in GNP at a mere 30% research!

The morale of the story: don't put too much faith in the absolute GNP numbers. You have to interpret them based on a lot of different factors. And when we get our markets built, and whip some courthouses, we're going to be in really good shape...

Speaker's doing a really good job of shifting around military units to keep all our cities happy under Hereditary Rule. (Thankfully Calendar will soon ease our happiness crunch, with three extra plantation resources.) That's not as exciting as the military battles we were doing earlier, but it's been a huge factor in our economic recovery. Great work!

[Sullla]

Messages responding to plako and slaze. Both pretty short:

Dear Broker and plako,

Thanks for sharing some of your thoughts and plans with our team. We agree that coordination between our teams will be necessary to succeed in any future military engagements. In other words, make sure to have slaze and Dantski on board before going forward with anything!

We have a Non-Aggression Pact in place with Kathlete until Turn 170, but we don't have an extended agreement with Jowy, Nakor, or Whosit. If a "world war" were to break out, we see our role as grinding down what's left of Jowy and forcing Kathlete to support him, leaving you and Dantski and slaze to team up against Whosit and Nakor. I think that would be a very difficult conflict for their group to win.

While there's still a long time before we hit the Turn 150 date, it's definitely a good idea to plan ahead, so please do keep in touch with us as you've been doing. Thanks!

Sullla
The Killer Angels

And for slaze:

Dear slaze of IKZ,

I'm sorry if our last message was unclear; we were referring to the declaration by Whosit and Nakor that their new Mutual Defense Pact would override any previous Non-Aggression Pacts. We think that whole thing is a load of bull - you don't get to pick and choose what deals to honor!

Would you be willing to tell us what's been going on in your neighborhood diplomatically? A couple turns ago, you thought that you were going to be the target of a dogpile, but no such attack took place and your recent email didn't sound worried at all. We're glad to hear of your good fortune, but a little curious about what changed so suddenly!

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Went ahead and sent these, because there wasn't anything too binding or earth-shattering inside.

[Savage Seahorse]

If you want to know what is going on with Kathlete, why not fiddle with the spying mechanic? I understand that commerce is a precious commodity, however proper intel has a value as well.

[Speaker]

If you want to know what is going on with Kathlete, why not fiddle with the spying mechanic? I understand that commerce is a precious commodity, however proper intel has a value as well.

No thanks. Would not be an efficient use of commerce at this point. Maybe once we have courthouses and jails.