RB Pitboss #1 [SPOILERS] - Louis XIV of Byzantium

[mostly_harmless]

Another point to discuss.
If everything goes smoothly (although I doubt it, knowing my luck) we get the following wonders:
T70 Great Wall in BH (capital)
T76 Pyramids in CoT (southern city)
T78 Oracle in Kobe (northern city)

Without running any other specialists, that will give a Great Spy as our first GP. Since I have zero experience with a Great Spy, I am not sure it is a good first GP to have in multiplayer?
It's probably to early to use him on a Golden Age?
Spybombing one of our opponents, with the intention to steal techs, will generate bad blood obviously.
He cannot lightbulb anything.
I would probably settle him for the extra epts, which will allow us to cover all our opponents (+12ept) and give +3beakers (+6 with Representation).
And there is Scotland Yard, which gives 100%ept, so not that useful in the early game.

All in all, unless someone comes up with a cunning plan, I think we want to avoid having a Great Spy.

There two options that I see.
Option1:
Library in BH and running Scientist specialists.
Say we go GW&Axe > Settler > Library
That means we get the Settler at T80 and the Lib at T84.
Say further we can use two excess food for running one Scientist permanently, that will give us the GP on T100 with still 54% odds for a Great Spy. We would have to run at least 5 turns with 2 scientists (and going to starving most likely) to get 50+% odds on a Great Scientist. GP will arrive at T97 then.
Not convinced that this is good enough.

Option 2:
Build a Library in Kobe or CoT, hire scientist to overtake BH's GP Production and get either a Great Engineer/Scientist (CoT variant) or Great Prophet/Scientist (Kobe variant).

At the moment I am leaning towards Option2 & CoT for the Engineer.

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

All in all, unless someone comes up with a cunning plan, I think we want to avoid having a Great Spy.

How about not bothering with The Great Wall altogether

[mostly_harmless]

Ha, indeed a cunning plan, Baldrick.
It's cheap, we got stones, we are industrial, and .... we are industrial.

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

Ha, indeed a cunning plan, Baldrick.
It's cheap, we got stones, we are industrial, and .... we are industrial.

mh

Well that's half the equation sorted (cost side) but what about the benefits?

[mostly_harmless]

No barbs? I would hate to lose the Oracle to a barb warrior threatening the Marble.

Coming to diplomacy.
As the lurkers are aware of I guess, we got this note from, allegedly, Krill/Memphus passed to us and several other by Ruff:

Shadyforce, dsplaisted, mh and Kodii, and Imhotep, please?

You may have heard that I stole a worker of sunrise, and that would be true. I stole what I believe to be sunrises only worker, and then deleted it, because sunrise has managed to negotiate a 5 player tech aliance (called the UTA, or Uber Tech Alliance). The tech ring consists of sunrise, regoarrarr, the Lins, ZPV and Broker33, and they are currenty less than 15 turns away from researching Alphabet, Maths, Monarchy, HBR and IW. As far as I can tell, they are also well protected, with each player only having 1 flank not covered by a none UTA player (for instance, I have both sunrise and the Lins facing me, which is why I had to criple sunrise before I got 2v1'd). At the speed they are teching they should be at Construction, MC, Calendar, CoL and Currency by t100, easy, then stacks of war elephants, cats and HA are going to roll over us, unless they try it earlier with just HA (which ZPV may be thinking of, because his UU will be much too weak to use with WE).

Here are my (loose) thoughts, Kodii. I want to discuss with you before officially replying to anyone.
- This could be a hoax from Ruff. Possible, but unrealistic.
- This could be a trick from Krill/Memphus, trying to get their own UTA into place, leaving reg, broker, ZPV, sunrise & the lins in the rain.
- Or it is a genuine message stating the truth.
- Problem is, we have not met Krill/Memphus and Imhotep to get discussing a response in earnest.
- We have very good relations with Broker and good relations with the Lins and ZPV.
- The message is not adressed to Ruff?
- Teaming up with Ruff and Imhotep seems suboptimal, as they are currently falling behind from being in a war.
- The Lins offered Alphabet for MC or something in this direction a while back.

At the moment I would refrain from forming a rigid anti-UTA.
Latest message from dsplaisted also said, he is teching MC and ZPV as well. That will of course lower our own trade return from MC (should we be able to land it).
Alternatively, we could oracle another tech, if we have a tech agreement with dsplaisted fro example.

I suggest we get back to the Lins, asking for their ETA on Alphabet and what techs they are interest in.
I would also send an eMail to the "non-UTA" taht we have met (? or all?) asking, who is on Alphabet, right now.

What are your thoughts?

And, yes, Broker is asking to leave his settler alone. I think we can agree to that.
Maybe, saying "We heard rumours of atrocities with regard to civilian units. We want to ensure you that we have no interest in harming your settler, but will offer our help to protect him should the opportunity arise." Since he will have the route fog busted, the opportunity will not arise, and we lose nothing by offering it.

Amybe we should get together in that chat room later tonight?
I am on my way to the movies in an hour "The Hurt Locker", but might have some time afterwards. Wife and kid are out of town.

mh

[mostly_harmless]

We should ask dslpaisted what his ETA is for MC and how much he already invested.
We could tell him our ETA is T78.

Thinking about it, I would prefer a smaller tech alliance. 2 or 3 partners max. (incl. us). Would be less efficient, but with more civs involved you run the risk of one with a hidden agenda.

I think dsplaisted & shady would make good partners. Broker as well, if he interested and we can ensure he has no ill intentions against us.

mh

[Kodii]

This game suddenly got a lot more interesting. I think I need to sort through everything, take a short trip online, and gather my thoughts. I would certainly be up for a chat session whenever you're available.

[Kodii]

In the light of the recent message/warning, I would prefer to hold back on the OB, as it is not needed that urgently. Neither their scout, nor our warrior is in need of OB to continue.

Hold off on the OB.

He is coming from the Silky River. We ran into his scout south of Broker's capital and he said he was going to continue west.

[Kodii]

At the moment I am leaning towards Option2 & CoT for the Engineer

Me too. Can we run some numbers to make sure we can overtake BH?

CoT is a prime location for the library anyways, especially since we're likely to cottage the heck outta that thing.

[Kodii]

I had a very brief chat with shadyforce over GMail (never knew it had the option). All I said was that I was in discussion with you and that we'd get back to him as soon as possible.

Here are the conversations from other teams for reference and for lurkers.

From shadyforce:

Hi guys,

I haven't said hello in a while so I thought I'd drop a line. I was originally going to ask about arranging a few tech trades and stuff but it seems there is something more urgent to discuss.

Regarding the message from Krill that Ruff passed on, what do you make of it? Is Krill rocking the boat or might there be some merit in it. If there is an Uber Tech Alliance then how did they find out about it, including the name of it?

I have no particular reason to suspect it's true other than a general quietness but that's from all the players rather than the "UTA" in particular. But I can't rule anything out either.

I would almost be inclined to arrange a mini-alliance 'just in case'. I don't know what Krill is up to and Ruff and Imho seem to be wrapped up in a little feud at least for now (plus I've had very little talk with any of those three). But perhaps if myself, yourself and maybe dsp arrange at least a 3-way tech agreement as a safety play. (I haven't approched dsp about anything yet.) Would you be interested in this?

(Edit: It seems that Imho is interested in a larger tech alliance against them. I would up for that. My intention above is not to exclude the other 3 but to at least arrange some sort of tech agreement with the guys I have actually been talking to. And I'm talking to you first because it also ocurred to me that Krill may be manipulating the situation to get the jump on someone who thinks they are entering an anti-UTA alliance so the alliances may not be what they seem. You and I have reasonably friendly early contact and we are far enough away from each other to make conflict between us impossible, so as it stands you're the least likely nation to be planning on stabbing me. I gotta trust someone.)

From Broker33:

Greetings

I have a settler heading the same direction as your warrior. Can I trust you to leave him unmolested or do I have to slow him down and move an escort with him. His route is fog busted.

I would like a formal agreement to leave him unmolested. I am probably going to be away for a couple turns and will be having T-Hawk play my turns and I need to give him instructions. Step Daughter is starting labor.

Thank you and I trust our good relations continue for ages to come.

From the multiple team conversation:

Imhotep:
(Technically, we shouldn't be in conversation with him)

If this is true, the only way to stop them will be a tech alliance of our own. What are you're thoughts in that regard? I would be up for it. That's why I hate FFA - damn alliances. The note from Krill makes me very suspicious - regoarrarr has written me several mails, all very friendly, and always trying to gain information - especially on the war news. Maybe those guys are really up to something...

shadyforce:

Hi all,

I don't know what Krill is up to, or how he got his info. But my initial reaction was to try and arrange some sort of tech alliance as a safety net 'just in case'. So I'm also in.

dsplaisted:

I don't know if there is an Uber Tech Alliance or not. It is certainly plausible- but Krill snagged Sunrise's worker early on, I believe, and it seems doubtful that the UTA would have existed at that time, much less that Krill would have known about it. Also, none of us but Ruff/TAD actually have contact with Krill, so for all we know this could be a Borg fabrication.

Whether there actually is an Uber Tech Alliance or not, we are certainly interested in trading techs. We are researching Metal Casting at the moment. We had a deal lined up with ZPV to trade MC for HBR and Writing, but he is trying to back out of that now and wants to self-research MC.