RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

Two funny emails came through in the past 24 hours:

HI KA's

Umm a prophet for a single artist is NOT what I am looking for in a trade. I hope I have misunderstood and you were offering an artist on top of the scientist we discussed before.

If we can do a deal then I'd assure you that I wouldn't be bombing on cities on our border (although one of mine is 5% revolt chance last I looked).

This has certainly dragged on a while now so if you feel I'm asking for too much then I'd like to use the Prophet myself sooner rather than later.

-Dantski

Hi Guys,

No problem with the lateness of the response. Obviously I'm not
exactly prompt right now and the game is moving again! Agreed about
the initial espionage agreement not lasting the entire game, I had
just wanted to make sure Slaze hadn't swayed you back!

On that note though It's clear I really don't know what I'm doing
tactically when it comes to waging a war. I'm a sub-par defender at
best and on the attack I'm clearly brutal. If you didn't know that
before I'm sure you would have figured it out sooner than later.
So...I need some help, from somebody in the know. This game can be
nothing but a learning experience for me now, I've completely knocked
myself out of contention. Not that I stood much of a chance but I
still had hopes. Now that they're gone, I need to take something from
this game and hopefully by the end of it I will have learnt to be an
OK warmonger.

With only 11 turns left on our NAP and your power graph through the
charts, if you decided to come after me I'm a dead man. Especially if
I could not secure peace with Slaze, which honestly I don't really
want and highly doubt he would accept anyways. But I'm here asking for
help from the experts. The help could come in a few different forms so
if you want to cooperate we can certainly find a way. I'm sure we can
find some compromise that would compensate you as well.

I need to find a way to get a unit lead on Slaze and then get help
tactically speaking. So is there any way I could purchase units from
you? Get a loan of them? In one way shape or form secure units from
you? Is there any chance at all I could just bribe you into the war
against Slaze? You can march an army through my lands and fight him?
Another option would be that I would be willing to provide you
screenshots of my cities and units and get MM advice on how to
proceed. This last option would require a huge amount of work on
either parties side, so might not be very efficient. These are just
some thoughts I've had.

In terms of compensation, the best thing I can offer is money. At 100%
cash I make atleast the 2nd most money in the game I believe, possibly
first. I have a lot of cottages and my infra-builds have been pretty
focused on markets and grocers.

There might be other ways I could help you as well so what do you
think? Is there any way we can help each other?

Details can always be worked out.

All the best,

Athlete
The Rebel Alliance

[Sullla]

I saw them too, Speaker. Let me post on the current turn, then I'll get some lunch and see about responding to them. Although it's going to be hard to answer Kathlete without setting off gales of laughter in our spoiler thread. :lol:



Speaker noticed last night that there were these three Kathlete galleys sailing around near Vicksburg. We can't possibly believe that this is a sneak-attack coming for us (during an NAP, with the Ottomans in hot war, and with that email message we just received) so this is either reinforcements for Alderaan or a roundabout attack on slaze's backline cities. I'm going to send slaze a short email telling him that we spotted these three galleys, and we'll let him know if they keep moving around to his cities in the back lines.

Note that if we were at war with Kathlete, we could have sunk one of these galleys with our trireme.



Nakor ran a turn of 0% science (after burning himself down to 24g discovering Economics), which lets us see his total gold output at minimum science. In fact, almost every team in the game ran a turn of min science, which lets me compare them here as a measure of each one's overall economic strength:

Kathlete: 313gpt
Nakor: 303gpt (GA)
Dantski: 198gpt

Notice how Kathlete, in non-Golden Age mode, actually makes more money than Nakor does! This is because Kathlete has built a lot more markets, and generally has a better organized overall empire. Nakor does have a lot of cities though (he actually has one more than we do, thanks to getting all those gifted ones on the center island from Whosit) so he'll be in better shape as they keep developing upwards.

For the curious, we make about 620gpt at 0% science right now.



We got an unexpected and VERY nice cultural border expansion over by the Wilderness this turn. That little finger of culture exists because The Wilderness has expanded borders twice (100+ culture) while Bothawui has only expanded borders once (10+ culture). If we can hold this tile, we can make a move on Hoth as diagrammed with two-movers (razing Bothawui along the way) and using slower conventional forces to take Cloud City. Hoth is really the key to Kathlete's western defenses. It's a monster production city, and that line of hills guards the approach very strongly. If we could get past it quickly, and start terrorizing the Ottoman back lines, it could be a decisive knockout blow.

Now, the problem is that I have no idea if we'll be able to hold onto this tile culturally! It all depends on when Bothawui expands its borders at the 100+ culture mark. (When that happens, the tile will start receiving 20 + culture/turn versus Wilderness' culture/turn, so probably something like 26 vs. 11 culture points each turn. We won't be able to hold at that rate for long.) Since Bothawui already has religion + library + Creative (6 culture/turn), it will probably expand borders soon and retake this tile. But it would be really cool for us if it didn't!

Last, I thought I'd compare two pairs of cities in this region: Spotslyvania vs. Cloud City and Chikamauga vs. Ord Mantell. These are all former Greek cities, with us capturing two of them and Jowy gifting the other two over to Kathlete. Here's what things looked like back then at the time of capture/transfer, almost exactly 30 turns ago:





Spotslyvania: size 2, in resistance 3t, granary
Cloud City: size 3, granary

Chikamauga: size 3, in resistance 3t, granary + courthouse
Ord Mantell: size 2, granary + colosseum

Fairly even cities at the time, with Speaker and I having a slight disadvantage because we had to wait for each city to come out of resistance (while Kathlete's gifted cities could be immediately productive). Let's see how these cities look after 30 turns of development:



Spotslyvania: size 9, walls + granary + forge + library + university + theatre
Cloud City: size 4, granary + library + courthouse + market

Chikamauga: size 5, barracks + granary + lighthouse + forge + theatre + courthouse + monastery + Globe Theatre
Ord Mantell: size 4, granary + library + courthouse + colosseum

Obviously it's no real comparison. Through a combination of forest chopping, intelligent whipping, and carefully managed build orders, we're simply getting much more out of these cities than our conterparts across the border. Keeping in mind that Jowy gifted all his workers to Kathlete (providing a powerful influx of a half-dozen units!) these cities really should be ahead of ours in their development. That's what good empire management will do for you.

And I apologize if that comes across sounding condescending or arrogant. I can't see what's going on in the Lurker thread, and heaven only knows what in the world you're all doing with those 2400+ posts in there, but I imagine there are some folks who probably want us to lose because we come off as looking down on some of the other teams. That's not the intention, but yes, we are going to point out contrasts between teams and where things could/should have been done better. Critical analysis is what I do for a living, it's nothing something we're going to stop. Hope we don't step on too many toes in the process.

[Jowy]

Don't you get my old city buildings and tile improvements though? Those two cities were already better developed when I had them. "Chikamauga" was actually one of my strongest cities. Though I did whip them to the ground for you guys.

[Speaker]

Don't you get my old city buildings and tile improvements though? Those two cities were already better developed when I had them. "Chikamauga" was actually one of my strongest cities. Though I did whip them to the ground for you guys.

Buildings are randomly destroyed when a city is captured. The tile improvements were mostly pillaged by Kathlete, who just felt the need to be a jerk, and take advantage of stupid game mechanics that give a city no cultural borders during resistance. That's just 1 of 1000 reasons I can't wait to capture every single city of his.

Also, one thing Sullla didn't notice is that Cloud City (which has just 1 Longbow for defense, as of last turn), can be directly hit by two-movers from our land, and will almost certainly be the first casualty of the war. Poor Lando.

[regoarrarr]

Critical analysis is what I do for a living, it's nothing something we're going to stop

Ahhhh sweet irony!!!

Just kiddin around - I know that's not quite what you meant but I found it funny.

[T-hawk]

I have no idea if we'll be able to hold onto this tile culturally! It all depends on when Bothawui expands its borders at the 100+ culture mark.

The game doesn't directly show the culture ownership value for a tile (only in debug mode), but couldn't you work it out? Presumably you know your own history turn-by-turn on the tile. So simple algebra on the ownership percentages will give you your rival's ownership total, backwards from which you should be able to work to the city's actual culture total. And over multiple turns you can track their rate of change and figure out when you're going to lose the tile. (Assuming the integer percentages give you enough precision to be meaningful.)

[Speaker]

Ahhhh sweet irony!!!

Just kiddin around - I know that's not quite what you meant but I found it funny.

It would have been more ironic if he were an English teacher, or said he taught grammar for a living.

[Speaker]

The game doesn't directly show the culture ownership value for a tile (only in debug mode), but couldn't you work it out? Presumably you know your own history turn-by-turn on the tile. So simple algebra on the ownership percentages will give you your rival's ownership total, backwards from which you should be able to work to the city's actual culture total. And over multiple turns you can track their rate of change and figure out when you're going to lose the tile. (Assuming the integer percentages give you enough precision to be meaningful.)

That sounds like an awful lot of work. I'd prefer to just roll in there in 18 or so turns with a big ol' stack of Currasiers, Muskets, and Catapults, and take what's not already ours.

[regoarrarr]

It would have been more ironic if he were an English teacher, or said he taught grammar for a living.

Very true - I mean I'm no Alanis Morrissette here but he did say that he did critical analysis, which I thought was close enough.

[Speaker]

I'm no Alanis Morrissette here.

Well played, sir.