RBP3 [SPOILERS] Hannibal of Byzantium (Bobchillingworth, ManiaMuse & SleepingMoogle)

[Bobchillingworth]

Played the turn. The south just keeps getting richer...



You can see a potential city site marker on the far left side of the screen cap. I currently envision a city there and a corresponding location 1SW, 1S of the gems- including the 3rd city location already agreed upon in the area, those three locations should secure most of the floodplains without having to settle on any of them. Subject to change based on later map knowlege and team consensus, of course. The chariot should move either onto the gems or the hill 2NE; the gems will give better visibility for future city sites, while the other hill is more likely to lead to contact. I suggest the 2NE hill first, and then scouting the gems on the return trip after making contact.

Also we are now dead-last in score. I don't think it really matters this early in the game, though. Also the Incan score is strangely low, considering that I would expect them to already have 3 cities by this point. We probably should go easy on the whip and workers for at least a little while after the 4th one finishes, though.

[SleepingMoogle]

The score isn't something to worry about this early. It's not nearly as much of a difference is it might seem on paper. While I'm fairly certain we will be slightly behind teams that were able to utilize chops and the whip earlier, there are also a number of teams that are higher than us right now because they have a Creative leader and are already credited for third-ring tiles. I suspect that by turn 100 we will at the least equal most teams again.

It also looks like we have lost 10 hammers because of that overflow cap. Argh! Well we learn as we play. I'll have a look at the turn plan to see how it affects us in a bit. It probably won't change too much except for a slight delay on the third cottage. And since we won't be using all three right away, it won't hurt that much in the end.

[SleepingMoogle]

Okay, I amended the turn plan on the first page. Basically, we finish the third worker and third cottage one turn later than planned, however we still finish the settler on T61. Losses in the end aren't too bad considering.

[SleepingMoogle]

Quick question: around which turn do you guys think we should settle city 4? How about city 5? Basically, in how far do you want us to expand over the next 50 or so turns and are there any key units or buildings we should pick up over that period?

[ManiaMuse]

Oh well, I think for the most part we should try to always whip more than one population point at a time to avoid a similar thing happening again.

As for cities I think we shouldn't expand too quickly. By that I don't mean that we necessarily delay city 4 but we don't need to rush to it either. And city 5 could wait quite a lot longer possibly to focus on military/infrastructure/workers.

[SleepingMoogle]

It was a 1-pop whip.. unfortunately it was on the same turn as a forest chop and the combination resulted in the loss. Lesson learnt though. And I do agree with you there; every time we whip one pop, we should then grow at least 2 sizes afterwards. Hooking up the silver won't take too long if we research IW after Pottery, and we can build a monument in the Citadel as well to take the happiness cap to 8.

Expansion-wise.. does having 5 cities at T100 sound reasonable? Or should we aim for 6? I've been toying around a little with the turn plan and while there's not a lot Feros and city 4 can do by that time to help with it, we can try and whip the citadel as much as possible while growing to the happy cap, and the 3rd City, once grown a little, is made for whipping until we can work some specialists.

[Bobchillingworth]

I think I take a somewhat different view toward expansion than Mania. I favor rapid growth for an extended period of time- grow the citadel to size 4 or 5 or whatever will allow it to produce settlers most effectively (as you can no doubt tell by now, I hate forming long-term micro plans), and then produce a constant stream of settlers until we have the fp in the south secured and at least a solid ring of cities around The Citadel. This isn't a map like PB1, where the land is okay, but there's plenty of it and nothing is particularly spectacular. This is a crowded world with absurdly rich production and commerce potential terrain literally surrounding our capital. It would be a terrible shame to not grab as much of it as quickly as possible, and I believe that with all the rivers we should be able to cottage quickly enough to fund the growth- plus we don't need to self-research everything, so we can keep up with tech without having to have the best rate possible. I advocate we have Feros do military units, Citadel produce settlers, the 3rd city and my 2 suggested sites in the south to fund our economy, and settlers to the NW, N, NE, and E for production, all settled ASAP. New production sites can help make up for the lack of military building in the capital. I don't know how many cities we can have by turn 100, but my suggestion is: as many as possible. Especially since we already seem to have one flank secured.

[SleepingMoogle]

Turn 51:

Lots of things happening when I should be asleep already. Ah well.

First of all, the Citadel's borders expanded this turn. It didn't reveal any additional tiles, but no one will be able to see the citadel and it's inner ring until we sign open borders.

Our workers are busy chopping and mining. Anoleis just started chopping a second forest at Feros, whereas Barla Von will finish mining the plains hill next turn. Both cities are working on Workers; the Citadel will finish its worker next turn, and Feros will finish on T54.

Scouting is where the big things happened this turn. Jenkins is still on his way yowards the English, but look at this:



That's a Mayan scout right up next to our eastern border so it looks like we have an Aggressive Civ that may or may not be our neighbour (They're played by Cull, RefSteel and Maniac Marshall: Ragnar (Fin/Agg) of Maya). I'm not quite sure what to think of it yet.. we pegged them as a possible early aggressor so that may be good or bad for us.

I don't have the time to write up something to send them now. If either if you has a moment, please write up a greeting of some sort. I'm guessing they'll probably contact us soon as well.

Once we've done that, we should let Babylon know of the contact and once communications get started, let the Mayans know about Babylon to our west as they requested.

I moved the Normandy up onto the gems hill to get maximum visibility of the region, and it doesn't disappoint. More floodplains, as well as a bananas and river wheat resource Plus now that we have contact with a civ to the east, we probably want to start filling the east and SE quickly. There is a barb warrior on the bananas tile. If he moves into out of cover, we may want to take him out.

That's all for now. I should have been in bed an hour ago.

[Bobchillingworth]

That land! I swoon!

Sent a message to the Mayans:

Hello!

This is Bobchillingworth of the Spectre Council. It seems that your warrior has found our borders; we would like to open a dialogue with your fine team regarding land, maps, scouting, and the other subjects that men of action such as ourselves deign to discuss. I will probably be on G-talk for several more hours if one of you gentlemen should care to chat in real-time (much preferrable in my opinion). You can reach me either on this team email account, or on my personal email at [email]Bobchillingworth [at] gmail [dot] com[/email]. I think we will find we have many things to talk about!

I didn't want to be terse, but flowery role-playing language isn't much my style either, so they got machismo


I'm mostly witholding opinion on the team until we have in-person contact with them, but there are a lot worse civ / leader combos we could have met. Their UU is resourceless, so no chariot rushing even if we had wanted to, unless they have seriously neglected defenses. They're almost certainly our other neighbors, given how slow warriors move.

[ManiaMuse]

They could be problematic but I think we should withold judgment until we find out who else they have met. But yes we should inform Babylon definitely since we seem to be getting on well with them so far.