RBP3 [SPOILERS] - Friendly Kittens (Ragnar of Maya)

[Maniac Marshall]

OK, Cull, you might notice we have not ended our turn. There is a very good reason for this. We HAVE to play before Mali next turn, otherwise they are going to plant their thrid city and teleport us to a REALLY bad spot. Whatever you do, even if it looks like the clock is ticking down into the last 15 minutes, DO NOT END OUR TURN. I will be home/online by the time the turn is scheduled to roll, if only just.

[RefSteel]

...

...

Well, at least you can safely call me an expert on border pop 'porting now.

And the rules are utterly, unfathomably insane. Check this out.




This is "Before." I named each warrior for his direction from India's capital.

(Thus, the highlighted one, straight west from the city, is W. North of him is WNW.)

Can you guess where each warrior will teleport?

My only city is 11 tiles east, 1 tile north, of theirs.

Mine is still at first ring culture (theirs was edited to 98 culture in WB).

After taking that picture, I did nothing but end turn.

That's all you need to know if you know the rules.

[EDIT: Well, not quite. Also note the following:

The world has Torroidal wrap.

SSW, S, and SSE are on what would be the "bottom" row if it didn't.]

Okay, have you guessed (at least for some of the warriors)?

Here's the "After" pic, taken immediately after the turn rolled.



!!!

Yes, that's TEN of the sixteen warriors on the tile 4E of the city!
Including W and WNW, who had to teleport 7 tiles!!!
(Yet WSW wound up with the other pack 2SE-1E of the city!)

What's going on?!?!

I'll explain in the following post ... if I can.

[RefSteel]

[ENTIRE MESSAGE EDITED!!! I missed a couple of things the first time through, and therefore provided incomplete information. The following should be COMPLETE rules for teleportation though!]

If you ever have a unit in an "illegal" location - in someone's borders with neither open borders no DoW thanks to a border pop (including the first ring "border pop" when a new city is built) sudden border-closing or DoW, your unit is "teleported" - moved to a new tile automatically (for "free": no movement cost; in rare cases, there may appear to be a movement cost, but this is an artifact of a special case of DoW; see below) - in accordance with the following rules:

(Note: Barbs are always at war with everyone, and thus can never be on an illegal tile. They therefore never get teleported. If the barbs are still "respecting" city borders however, they will immediately attempt to move out at their next opportunity.)

1. The distance between your unit's starting point and the new tile must be as small as possible while still satisfying the criteria below. (The game presumably starts by testing adjacent tiles, then tiles at a nominal distance of 2 tiles, then of 3 tiles, etc.) The distance between any two tiles, for all these purposes, is equal to the minimum number of moves-to-an-adjacent-tile you'd have to make to get from one of the pair to the other, plus HALF the minimum number of those moves that would have to be diagonal, with the final result rounded down to a whole number of tiles.

2. The new tile must be one you have explored. (That is, it can be in the "fog of war," but not in total darkness.)

3. Your unit must have been able to legally occupy the new tile BEFORE the border pop that started all of this. (Note that in the case of closing borders or DoW while sharing a tile, there is no border pop involved, and this rule becomes, "You unit must [now] be able to legally occupy the new tile." This question of border-pop-vs.-not-border-pop, including the assumption that founding a new city causes a first-ring "border pop," is the one aspect of the question I don't think I've adequately tested, but I'm pretty sure what I've written here is correct.)

4. The distance between the new tile and your nearest city on the same landmass must be equal to or less than the distance for any other tile (of those at the same distance from the starting tile) that meets criteria 2 and 3 above. If you have NO cities on the same landmass as the unit, then ignore this rule completely.

Okay, let's go back to our example.



Civ thinks all the dotted tiles are "1 tile away" from Mr. W. Red dot tiles are rejected because they're already within Indian borders pre-pop. Yellow dot tiles are rejected because they're further away from our city than blue or green dot. Blue and green are equidistant from our borders as the warrior walks, but blue needs two diagonal moves to get there, so W teleports 1N to that green dot - the same tile on which WNW starts! But what if Blue was closer to the city than green? This is what I had wrong last time. The warrior would still teleport to green dot! Why? Because...

5. UNLESS the new tile is directly north of your unit's starting point (i.e. above it in on the map in a one-tile-wide vertical line) or anywhere to its east (regardless of whether it's north or south) your unit must STILL be able to legally occupy the tile AFTER the borders pop. Note that so long as the target tile IS east or directly north of your unit's starting point, and meets the criteria for rule 3, the unit CAN teleport to a tile that it can not legally occupy!!! (Remember though, this last bit does NOT apply to closing borders, nor to DoW while sharing tiles.)

You can see where it goes from there: The warriors named WNW and W are now BOTH "in the way" of the border pop, and have to teleport. The shortest route for them to take toward my city that doesn't violate Indian territory (pre-pop) starts by moving onto NW's tile - which is still "in the way" of the border pop! - and then to NNE's tile ... and then to N's tile... and then to NNW's tile ... and then to NW's tile ... with each tile still in the way of India's border pop!!! Finally, they reach ENE's tile. They're now directly west of our capital, so this giant stack of nine units can just go straight east, toward our capital, right?

Wait, then why did they teleport southeast?!?!



Well, they "started out" on the orange dot, so the green dot tile and the one to which they actuall got 'ported are both valid, and they're "tied" (thanks to rounding) for distance from our capital. The game needs another tie-breaker! And how does it break the tie? This is the kicker (as in, the one that's making me kick myself) - the reason we SHOULD have moved SE as originally planned.

6. If this still leaves more than one possible new tile to which your unit can move, it chooses the southernmost of the possible new tiles - but for Toroidal world wrap, note that "southernmost" is determined by bare coordinate numbers; at the southern/northern "edge" where the map wraps, tiles that appear to lie in a southward direction may be regarded as LESS southerly than tiles that appear to lie northward. (This is what I missed in the pictures above; if the example hadn't been at the very bottom of the world, the southern six warriors would not have been stacked, though the northern tell still would be.) Note that distance calculations (e.g. from the unit's starting location or your nearest city to a given tile) are not reversed or otherwise misled by world wrap.

7. If this STILL leaves more than one possibility, choose the westernmost of the possible new tiles. Again, coordinates are used, so this behavior may be reversed at the wrapping "edge" of a cyllindrical or toroidal map.

8. If the new tile is still "in the way" of a border pop and therefore still an illegal tile (permissible per rule 5) you get to explore everything your unit can see by standing on that tile (though you never actually get to see it outside the fog of war) ... but then the whole process is repeated, starting with rule 1! As shown above, this can happen a ridiculous number of times in succession - EIGHT in the case of "Mr. W," and it can get even worse in the right (wrong?) circumstances!

Finally, for completeness, a couple of exceptional cases:

If you declare war by moving into enemy borders FROM a tile that contains an enemy unit, and choosing the "Yes, DECLARE WAR!" button, you will FIRST be teleported away from their unit (the "free" automove) and THEN be AUTOMATICALLY moved toward the tile you originally thought you were entering - usually not all the way there, and NOT by a route of your choosing - from the tile to which you were teleported. (In effect, your warrior will have been given a "goto" order after teleporting.) Worse yet, the go-to order will attempt to go AROUND any enemy units in the area, so that - far from entering enemy territory ahead of the unit with which you were stacked - you will likely wind up on a tile outside enemy territory, NEXT TO the unit with which you'd been sharing a tile, with all your movement exhausted.

What if you declare war on someone with whom you have open borders while one of their units occupies the same tile as one of theirs within your own borders? Who gets teleported first? Fortunately, they do, and your unit doesn't get teleported at all: In effect, what you have done (even though you didn't specify it, and even if the game wouldn't LET you specify it because the OB agreement was made too recently) is to FIRST close borders (teleporting them out) and THEN declare war (at which point your units are no longer occupying the same tile).


All right; does that all make sense now? Maybe? All right, well in case you're interested, I've attached three save files in a zipped folder, just so you can see it in action yourself. They're all modified very slightly from the example I used here. Map settings and civs were chosen at random for the test, and have nothing to do with RBP3.

Mass Teleport: This one still amazes me. It's basically the same as the example above, except that I've added one peak tile. Just load it, have a look around, fortify the warrior, and hit enter to see what happens for yourself. (Or just hit Shift-Enter if you don't feel like fortifying.)

Teleport Path: This is an effective visual demonstration of the path Mr. W takes, with eight separate one-tile teleport jumps. Again, just fortify the warrior, hit enter, and check out what he reveals en route to his destination.

True Teleport: In this scenario, our brave warrior has been carried by galley along a string of uninhabitable volcanic islands to finally make landfall by India's borders ... just as they're about to pop (galley not shown). Can you guess where he winds up? Once again, just fortify and hit enter. The point of this one is to demonstrate that the teleportation path is not revealed - just the tiles that can be seen from those to which the unit actually teleported.

[And one last edit: I re-attached the file which was lost in the server crash. I didn't bother to correct the teleportation rules posted here though, which are close enough for most border-pop purposes but not perfect.]

[RefSteel]

Okay, turn 50 finished, turn 51 mostly played. Here's what we've got:

First things first: Maniac was right! (Again!) I moved 1NW onto the forest hill (not W into the flat forest) because there's forest leading north from the hill ... and the flat forest is (now) a dead end...



...because it's flush against the 3rd-ring borders of Byzantium!

We need to compose a diplo message. Let's keep it light and friendly, but bear in mind we may be targets for 'phracts somewhere down the line. And Prrsha has moved safely out of teleportation range, into a jungle; she should have a decent path of safety for a little while, at least.



Note the spot Mali planned to put a city per an e-mail I'll post in a minute. The corn Maniac and I decided to tell them about might change their mind though; we'll see.

[RefSteel]

Diplo:
Maniac and I had a LONG discussion last night about our e-mail to Emperor Capac.
But part way through, we got THIS:

'Nuff said

[RefSteel]

That message is a tremendous gesture; it gives us all sorts of semi-useless (but often-hoarded) information about their civ, and TERRIFIC information about their east for scouting purposes, as well as letting us know 2-legged barbs are on the loose. We finished hashing out our response, but in the future, I think the best thing to do is to NOT wait too long for team input on messages (and sometimes not even consult before sending them when it's time-critical) and just send them. Keep the tone light, friendly, and positive, and don't edit the things to death. None of us have time for that anyway, and we're about to be flooded with diplo stuff!

Starting with the reply we got from Capac this morning:

Hi Guys,

We directed you south then east because that would allow you to meet Babylon (culturally) and Byzantium (scouting unit) in short order. We were a trifle vague about England because we'd only just met them, and weren't sure whether they'd welcome your warrior. We've since learnt not only that England is keen to meet you, but it's also likely that they (along with Byzantium) will soon have a scouting unit in the hills north of that pesky barb warrior, giving you 3 civs for the price of one (or something!).

We hope to found our next city 1W of the forest so there shouldn't be a bump scenario. That said, we're in no rush to play T51, so no problem for you to make a legal double move. We will soon finish our turn 50. Thanks for the extra cover, though

Best Wishes

Emperor Capac

The surprise is the city location I allude to above. They're right that it won't 'port us anywhere, so that's definitely good news, but I wondered if they might have missed the corn tile. Probably not, but it doesn't hurt to make a friendly gesture of our own:

That all sounds great to me! Thanks very much for the heads-up! Have you seen the grassland corn 1NW-1N of the horses, by the way? I'll send a screenie in a few minutes when I can dig one up. I assume your city will grab even better stuff that's fogged for us in the south, but in case your scouting in that direction fell just short of the corn, I figured we should at least tell you about it!

Thanks again!
- Ref Eriksson, for the Friendly Kittens

Shortly thereafter, we got this:

Thanks for the info!

Logged in to see that the barb has moveed 1S. Will keep you posted on his movements.

Swiss

And I responded:

Many thanks, Emperor Capac!

Knowing where the barbs are in that area will obviously help a lot; here's hoping that barb warrior winds up suiciding against Prrsha (or against one of the other warrior-diplomats moving that way) when she's up on a forested hill!

Oh, and more good news: ManiCat was right! Yalara just made contact with Byzantium!

Finally, just in case you haven't seen the area, I've attached a couple cave paintings Maniac made of the corn+horses and vicinity back when we first spotted it. (i.e. before it was in the fog of war). They're from turns 45 and 47. I hope they prove useful!

-Ref Eriksson, for the Friendly Kittens

The pictures I included were the screenies of the region that Maniac posted in our thread for T45 and 47 - the best ones I had of that area that don't have fog o' war all over 'em.

AND FINALLY...

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 Bobchillingworth@gmail.com. I think we will find we have many things to talk about!

We've agreed to chat in about an hour. Heaven help us if we start posting all our chats in this thread though!

[RefSteel]

ONE LAST THING!!!

I haven't ended the turn yet because I'd like to move Jasana. We're going to start having workers outside our borders soon, and we'll need her to fogbust and make sure they don't get eaten! Just one of many, many things we need to discuss. Chmeee will be on the floodplains 2E of his current position on T53, and he and Toulouse will be on the river grassland 1SE of their current tile on T54.

Also, I've got overview screenies for T50, but we might want to grab 'em for T51 too.

[Maniac Marshall]

Had a very nice and long chat with Chillingworth. Waaaaaay too long to post. He seemed to enjoy my sillyness, and he seems to be very interested in forming a tech alliance with us, Babylon, Mali, and England. Thats sounds great.... in theory. Of course, the other teams would have to go along with it to make it fly heh.

I took the liberty of showing them an overhead screen of our area circa turn 25 (so, before our copper was found, or our second city was founded) with the understanding that we would get some screenshots from them on Sunday. I might have given them a little more information that I needed to, but, I got the feeling that being very up front would cut a lot of ice with these guys. We'd be giving them open boarders before long anyhow, I think, and I wanted them to see how far south they'd have to detour if they wanted to meet Mali that direction, as Chillingworth suggested they might want to do.

I also shared our thinking for taking Ragnar with him: That we were trying for the aggressive redcoat combo. That really made him go Ah! and I think convinced him we're not planning on starting a war anytime soon. I really think we can work with these guys. They are looking to be the military buddy for a group of techers, and that makes sense.


Meanwhile, just as I was about to sign out of chat, I got another taker and I think this one went extremely well, though I used my more "professional" tone for this one as befits this team we surmise:

Capac: greetings
10:14 PM me: hola
Capac: com est ta
probably spelled wrong
10:15 PM me: Wouldn't know actually >_>
Capac: I dont speak spanish my brother does though
me: "google it" isn't that the answer to everything? =P
10:16 PM This is Maniac, btw, in case you're currious
Capac: guess who?
me: Swiss ?_?
Capac: Name is Paul but not Swiss
Broker
10:17 PM taking the chance to catch up on the happenings in this game
me: ah, I was never very good at guessing (sniff)
10:18 PM Capac: lol my involvement has been minor so I would have been surprised if you guessed me
Swiss has been running the show
mostly dsp and I do provide input
me: I nearly did simply because swiss doesnt usually show up to play the turn until about 60-90 min from now
Capac: It is early am for him
10:19 PM me: Yeah
Capac: very early 4-5 am I am guessing
me: I'm supposed to be a dedicated lurker but lately i've been the primary turn player...
Capac: It happens. Real life has a way of ignoring Civ commitments
10:20 PM me: Yeah, we're thinking he's probably GMT +2, but we didn't check
Capac: Yeah accross the pond is enough for me
me: possibly only +1
10:21 PM Capac: Just trying to get a picture in my head you guys are west of us right?
me: Yes
Capac: scout swinging around our south to head east to babylon?
me: yes
we met byz this turn
10:22 PM from the other direction obviously
they are MUCH closer to us than you are
Capac: really
me: it's almost like there is a "missing civ" between us
Capac: you didnt say you west or south?
10:23 PM me: but there is not quite room for it
Capac: Babylon is east England north
me: we're west. but like 18 tiles or so
Capac: Ah ok
guess spacing isnt exactly even
me: we saw no one between us
10:24 PM no, it seems not.
i think we're 11 from Byz and we half moved away from them and towards you
Capac: pleanty of room for frendly settleing of a couple cities between us. Always makes for easier relations when land is not at a premium
10:25 PM me: Yeah. If you guys want, we're willing to show you a screenshot of the land west of you. We don't know how much of it you've seen
Capac: byz is past you to the west 11 tiles just trying to get a picture
not much mostly heading north
real conservative scouting didnt want to be Korea'd
10:26 PM me: See, we risked being korea'd... but we got Bear
like 4 different bears
Capac: sounds like my PB1 start
10:27 PM me: we had a warrior on a forest hill accross a river that got taken to 0.1 by a LION for chrisakes. an aggressive warrior no less
Capac: wow
although when you lose a 99,8 percent battle let me know
I have
10:28 PM me: yeah, and then we found a bear with the next scout
saw 4 different bears
Capac: we did see our first barb warrior
me: pack of lions tried to keep us from founding city #2
10:29 PM Capac: dont they know you are kittens?
me: yes
they dont know we're friendly though it seems
10:30 PM all they need to do is mouse over our boarder. I mean, it reads "100% Friendly"
10:31 PM Capac: stupid lions
I am sure we can swap screenshots (I dont have any though) on my laptop
10:32 PM would like info of our west and would recprocate
reciprocate
ah hell maybe that is how it is spelled I am tired
wow svk just scored 2 quick goals on canada for a 3 2 game
10:33 PM was 3 zip a few min ago
10:34 PM anyway if you couldnt tell was just saying hi and random chat dont have any real diplo to do
although relatioship buildign could be considered diplo
me: heh, no problem
10:35 PM I know Ref sent a few of my small area shots earlier (they should be in your email)
10:36 PM Capac: yeah I may have seen them read alot. Swiss has a better grasp of the geography. PB1 pause gave me some time to catch up in this and PB2
me: we wanted to make sure you knew there was a corn just north of those horses before you settled
10:37 PM Capac: ah yes I did see that
Thank you for that info it was well recieved.
me: You know, Ref did 5 hours of testing on the rules of warrior teleportation because of the situation last turn. He's now the world expert heh
10:38 PM Capac: lol you got teleported to the wrong spot?
me: no, we moved so we would NOT get teleported
moved onto the tile with your worker
Capac: good faith gestures like the corn go along way with me and I do remember them
10:39 PM Ok I remember that an extra guard
me: well, we figured out that, from waht we know of the map size, there's an unsual ammount of land betwen us
10:40 PM and so it seemed to us geography mad it logical for us to cooperate
Capac: wonder and I am just speculating out loud here if we are on the world wrap and that explains the extra distance
10:41 PM wow they missed an open net
nice bang bang pass rebound open corner and wiff for the tie
10:42 PM canada moves to the final
me: we think
10:43 PM its 64X64 torodial
Capac: square wouldnt explain uneven spacing
10:44 PM me: we made a copy of the world we know it and stuck it on a 64X64 map, and the maint cost was exactly right
Capac: well that makes sense then
10:45 PM me: No, it thin the Sulla mapmaking of roughly equal starts explains the inexact spacing
Capac: true
10:46 PM I dotn know i try to play the people not the hand
not very good at guessing the map and such
hell I thought I was on an island in PB1 for the longest time
dopy me
me: lol
10:47 PM Yeah, I don't do that either. I let Ref do that stuff
Capac: well it is late and I have to run
good chatting with you
will talk again later and you can always chat me up on my normal signon
me: Good chatting with you too

[Maniac Marshall]

You know Ref, I honestly don't see how we can cover all these units with ONE warrior unless we delay the founding of the city by a turn so that the chariot can cover the settler. We can ALMOST do it, but the worker on the FP tile would have to risk being 2 moved by a fast barb unless there is something I'm not seeing.

Nevermind, I figured it out, but man, it's very precise.

OK, I'm going to move Jassana 1SE and end our turn. See how this looks.

T52:
Settler2 complete at Fierias; start Worker.
Farm complete.
Chmeee moves 1E to a river plains tile, roads, and CANCELS orders.
Jassana moves 1NE to a FP Tile and fortifies.
Settler moves 1SW-1W to a river grass hill.

T53:
Marie finishes her chop.
Chmeee moves 1E to join Jassana on a floodplain, roads, and CANCELS orders. .
Toulouse moves 1E to a river plains tile and roads; road complete (This is Uberly important!) .
Settler moves 1SW-1S to Toulouse's river plains tile.

T54: At Pride Rock, Chariot complete! Start a Barracks, working the farm.
The Chariot moves by this EXACT path - SE (using the road), SW (Scoping the gold hill for a 2 move barb), and finally SE again onto the sugar.
The Settler moves 2S onto the Sugar/chariot tile.
Chmeee moves 1SW to a river grassland and roads.
Toulouse moves 1S to the same river grassland and roads; road complete.
Marie moves 1SW-1S to a river plains forest.
Jassana moves to cover Marie.
If these moves are followed to the letter, the other 2 workers should be totally safe as every tile from which a panther could attack their tile will have been observed!
Reduce research rate to 50%.

T55: Pottery hits! Start Hunting?.
Worker4 complete at Fierias; start Granary.
Red Dot built ON the sugar tile! Start Monument, working a floodplain. Red dot can build chariots immediately! (It doesn't actually do so, of course.)
Chmeee and Toulouse move 1SW to the copper and mine. Marie chops.
Worker4 aka Berlioz moves 1SW to a river grassland and roads.
Pride Rock starts Granary; Barracks on hold.
Reduce research rate to 0%.

[Maniac Marshall]

The turn rolled. I played most of it, but I have not yet moved Jassana just in case there is some better military cover masterplan than the one I devised last night.

Edit: I've come to the conclusion that. It's actually probably better to leave her in place this turn and move to the FP next turn, just because it will prevent babs spawning on tiles she can see. It's a real shame we have to be concerned about the FP tile getting double moved from the hill tile to the SE... OR, wait, I don't think we do afterall. Afterall, the worker could see the hill from the FP and the warrior would only have to move to cover if there was a threat there... You know, I was really tired at 2am last night when I composed this thing. I'll recheck this when I get home tonite.

More Edit: Thats what I get for going from memory. As far as I can see, I was actually right the first time.