RBPB3 - Gandhi of the Egyptians

[Krill]

Reply.

Wassup,

Well, you're the first civ that I've found that hasn't proceeded to die spectacularly. Thank you for the map information, it helps corroborate my own suspicions. I agree that it is likely a 64*64 TBG map script, with toroidal wrapping. I'm pretty sure of this, because I've just wandered through 16 rows of tundra forests, much too many for any normal map script.

On that note, you now have one less neighbour; Lobo of Korea was 12E4S of your capital. For comparison, my capital is 12E17S of yours. This seems to be quite a cramped map, with neighbours about 12 tiles away in different directions. For instance, I think their may be a team south of you and west of me.

Would you be willing to exchange information on other teams that both of us meet in the future, and their relative positions to each of us? That should help improve both of our limited scouting and give us some more information about the map.

Krill

[Krill]

My first real barb encounter Luckily it will be a wolf and Gaskin is on a forest hill.

[Krill]

My warrior is going to head straight NE, maybe deviating depending on the forests and hills, searching for the player that is north of Korea. I've already moved 7 tiles north, now I just need to swing around heading eastwards.

Hopefully before turn 35 I'll have met another civ. I'm not sure if/when other players are going to run into my capital though, so many players went worker first, alot of them may have kept their starting warriors home.

[Krill]

Slightly annoyed at the combat with the wolf. Gaskin got hit twice for 22 total damage, so he is now at 78 hp. The wolf had combat odds of 0.0%.

I have 4 choices. Move NE without healing. Heal for 1 turn, heal for 2 turns, or heal for 3 turns. Now, with panthers, bears and lions out, I'm pretty sure that I should heal to full strength for when I step on flat land, but this is how I see it any combat happening:

On a hill, with 98 hp out of 100, I still have odds on the lion or panther. The bear I'm screwed. Against a bear I only have odds on a forest hill, and the odds are pretty similar at 98 or 100 hp. The only place they might be different are on a normal forest.

Other option: run into a barb warrior. At 98 hp and on a hill or forest that is probably OK for me, but the warrior would be out of commission for a while...although I would get the promotion, which would speed the healing...anything less and I don't like my odds.

I think I'm going to heal for 2 turns and then carry on. I do hope however that another wolf turns up and hits Gaskin at the end of the turn so I can promote him to woody 1 for some quick hp and better defence...

oh well, I should count my blessings. I could have lost Gaskin, and then I would be really pissed off.

[Krill]

And now we witness the weaknesses of warriors as scouts. Spending time healing is time spent not scouting. This is where the trade off between strength and movement speed becomes important. The faster a unit can move, the more time it can spend healing compared to a slower unit, so the weaker it can be and still uncover the same land.

However, scouts are too weak and die to barbs, and the only other fast movers are chariots, which take so long to research, hook up horses and build that warriors built at the start of the game will have a large head start. Warriors built after the first worker however don't have such a large head start. If this game had faster teching speeds (and Alphabet wasn't so far away) I'd plant the first city for horse and spam out a few WC. Scouting with archers is slow and they still get dented a fair bit by bears and have to heal, nor can they get woodsmen, (forests are more plentiful than hills, normally), which is why axes are the best other scouts. They can get woody and slaughter barbs of any type without needing to heal (for long anyway).

Moral of the story: If you want to scout, get chariots asap, planting for horses in your second city, or warriors out ASAP before a worker. Economically speaking, the chariots are always the preferred method...unless you luck out, go BW first and get copper in your capital.

[McClure]

I have a question about how you dealt with Korea:

Did you ever consider just extorting him? Ask for the worker he built and a guarantee he not settle his first city in your direction in exchange for staying in the game?

As it stands I'm not sure you've gained that much from eliminating him and put the target more squarely on your back. You have gained more leisurely expansion in one direction, but given the same to his other neighbors. With Korea alive you might have had a subjugated civ that could at least keep some cities warm for you (and pay the maintenance, improve the grounds ...) until you felt like taking them, and he might even have been able to tech something for you in the meantime. I assume you want to do tech deals with the (perceived) weaker players and a slow-starting Korea would fit that description nicely. (I have no idea how good a player Lobo is, but his civ would have been ~12 turn behind in development if he had to give you his worker.)

[Krill]

I've been asked that question before, so it's not a problem to answer it. I think this segment of a chat log will be a nice introduction:

Someone: Q: what would you do if you had the chance to eliminate a rival early?
me: Depends on the game
Someone: ok, say a game with 6 players in it ... you and 5 opponents
me: I wouldn't see anything wrong with killing them, if that is what you are worried about
Someone: no, not worried about it
but would you kill them
or extort them?
me: Kill
Never extort
Someone: because ... ?
me: When you negoitiate with someone under duress, they will only deliver their promises if you keep them under duress
And in the early game you can never keep someone under duress.
Someone: are you sure your middle name isn't ruthless?

That's the gist of it. What could I hope to extort from Korea? A worker? Look at RBPB1 if you want to see the outcome of that situation, and in hindsight I'm not sure I could have gotten teh worker back home. Tech? We can't trade. Land, or rather a favourable border treaty? What is to stop Korea from coming back with an ally or two and taking me out of the game, or at least regaining what he gave up. What if I choked him and came for hte city later on? After all I have WC. however, I didn't know I had horses so close at the time, it would have tied up my warrior from meeting other civs, and the religious gameplan would have had to be abandoned.

I would probably have been better served by getting Korea as an ally than extorting anything, because I come across as a nice ally, rather than the aggressive warmonger. I think a fair few people will not have been that bothered that I wandered into an empty capital, whereas they would be much more unhappy if I kept up a war or extorted him.

You're dead on that I haven't gained anything just yet from killing Korea, however there are now a few of us (and not all) that are less cramped. Also, depending on the quality of land, I can cede some of it to other neighbours in the west, south and east and appear like a good ally, expanding more to the north. And with the difficulty level, I have no wish to spam cities all over the map, so a judicious placement of cities is in my best interested.

So really, this is a paper advantage, and I need to realise it over the course of the rest of the game, but it is something that I have and others don't. I'm kinda metagaming that; getting as many long term advantages as I can, but hiding them, so I don't get dog piled. That's the lesson I've learnt most from RBPB1.

[Krill]

From Mutski

Hey Krill

We're happy to exchange info on other teams whereabouts.

In a small goodwill gesture, I'd also inform you that if your warrior continues WNW you will likely run into a bear that our culture revealed so stick to those forests!

We're happy to discuss trades etc later on with you.

-Dantski

[Krill]

Scouting update. NE again next turn, and re-evaluate from there. That looks to be a hill 2N2E from Gaskin, but I don't think it has a forest on it, so the decision depends alot on what is revealed.

[Krill]

Message to Dantski:

Thank you for the information on the the Bear, and because of that I'm hoping to explore more to the NE than the NW.

I look forward to discussing trades with you later on, when they are possible.

Krill