RB Pitboss #1 SPOILER - Mali

[Sullla]

Delaying Animal Husbandry tech with pigs at capital? That is a very bold move! I applaud the idea of unorthodox strategies, so this should be fun to watch.

[Fenton Denton Smith]

Great lighthouse would be really nice but we might struggle to get it for the following reasons:

1 - There are 11 civs - chances are that a few might have it on their minds.
2 - We are quite a few turns in and so it may already be started
3 - Our capital isn't coastal - much easier to get an early wonder in the capital.
4 - Not Industrious
5 - No stone.

If someone decided on turn 0 they wanted the Great Lighthouse and they have a coastal start (ZVP is strong candidate here... especially considering he is Carthage) it will fall a lot sooner than we can get it. I just noticed he starts with fishing and mining... Trade route economy. AND he wanted us to settle a city near him for early trade routes...

I don't want to poo poo the idea completely but it wouldn't surprise me if we see it fall before we can there and then we would have wasted those little piggies for a long time... Poor piggies...

I ZVP gets it we could bash him! and liberate it!

[Fenton Denton Smith]

Just read email from Shadyforce - do you think we are all on little islands?

G lighthouse would be sweet if that is the case.

[dsplaisted]

Here is the response we got from shadyforce:

Hi,

Though I'm sure your heads will look as good on a pole as anyone elses, my lack of boats an immortals means I'll have to settle for option 1.

You are my third contact. As well as Carthage, I have also met India to the north. It looks like you are on a seperate island to the rest of us? Is your capital much further south than where your warrior is? Does it look like you have the island to yourself? My island looks like a msssive snaky continent type thing.

Brian.
(shadyforce of Persia)

And here is my response:

So far it looks like we are also on a snaky continent by ourselves, but we are still exploring it. Have you finished exploring your island? Since you started with a scout and our landmasses are probably of similar sizes, this will help us know how much left there is of ours (it looks like we have explored the majority of ours).

Daniel

[dsplaisted]

Got an email from ZPV:

Hi Daniel,

I see you have met shadyforce. Would you mind diverting your espionage towards him? I have done so now that we can see each others' graphs, and would appreciate it if you do the same.

Also, it looks like you're on an island. Would you consider setting up a coastal city touching my borders, so that we can both get lucrative 3-commerce trade routes before Sailing?

Thanks,
Sam

And my response:

I have diverted our espionage towards shadyforce (and I had done so before I got your message ).

I'm doubtful that we'll be able to found our first new city next to your capital. We have to consider other things besides the trade routes, you know.

Thanks,
Daniel

I'm somewhat suspicious of the request to found a city on the coast right next to his capital. I wonder if he's hoping that he can stage a surprise attack on it.

We also got an email from shadyforce:

The land-mass I'm on is massive and I haven't explored anywhere near the whole thing. Most of my intel is through the exchange of information with others. There are at least 4 civs on it. North of me is India and north-east of India is Zulu. You know where ZPV is and he claims that there is more land west of him that is unexplored so there could be more civs out that way, and India claims there could be more civs to his north-west. I think Mali drew the cosy start.

Brian.
(shadyforce of Persia)

This is very interesting. I'm not sure if we're on our own landmass now. Based on our exploration it looks likely, but I'm not sure how likely it is that we would have our own if a bunch of other civs are on the same one. If we are on our own continent, we would have a bit of an advantage building the Great Lighthouse, as the civs that share a continent have to worry more about early defense.

I have a bunch more to say about building the Great Lighthouse, but it's 3:45 AM here and I need to go to bed. Although, I guess I can show what our recent explorations have discovered. The fogged tile 2 east of the copper is a flood plains, and my plan is to found a city where the "City?" sign is and chop out the great lighthouse with all the forests there.

[dsplaisted]

I thought of a possible espionage swap with shadyforce, and sent him this email:

That is very interesting. I would be somewhat surprised if we were on our own landmass and a bunch of other teams shared their's, although it is certainly possible. If so my neighbor(s) must have explored in the opposite direction of me to not have met me yet. I will keep exploring.

We've recently gotten enough EP versus ZPV to see his demographics graphs. We're now redirecting our espionage points towards you (we haven't met anyone else). I was wondering if you'd be interested in a trade of espionage data. If you have (or soon will have) the EP on India or Zululand to see their charts, we could do a trade. I'd like to wait until you have enough EP on me to see my charts too, as the screenshots of ZPV's graphs would include my data (and I assume you feel the same way).

Thanks,
Daniel

Sullla: I think you're going to be the defacto judge for this game if any issues come up. I hope you don't mind. Do you see any issue with swapping screenshots of the espionage graphs? We aren't supposed to trade map screenshots until we research paper, but I think the graphs would be OK.

[Sullla]

I think I'm going to have to say no to exchanging Demographics screenshots as well, since the rules from the General thread explicitly say no to trading pictures until Paper:

Result of poll 15: Screenshot/map trades
Only after paper tech is discovered

You can of course describe the Demographics with one another as much as you want.

[dsplaisted]

Shadyforce has agreed to the espionage swap:

Hi,

I have not yet met Zulu. I can see India's demographics.

Let me paraphrase to make sure I understand this right. You want me to turn my EPs off Carthage and put them all onto you. And when we can see each other's demographics, you want me to give you a screenshot of demographics (of me, you and India) in exchange for you giving me a screenshot of demographics (of me, you and Carthage? Am I right so far? And I assume this is a once off demog swap?

It isn't of huge utility to me since in around 15(ish) turns I'll be able to see both your demographics anyway and I have no urgent need to see either of your demographics. But I guess it doesn't really hurt me either. Ok I'll agree to your proposal.

BTW, congrats on being our current score leader.

Per Sullla's ruling we can't trade screenshots though, so here's my reply:

I asked in our team thread whether it was OK to trade demographics screenshots, and Sullla ruled that it wasn't (until we research paper). So we will have to record the information in spreadsheet form and share it that way. This is more work, but on the plus side we can go ahead and trade immediately (since we wouldn't be disclosing our own charts). Are you still interested in the trade?

I used a plugin for Paint.NET to draw a grid on the chart. I resized the horizontal spacing so each line corresponded to one turn and the vertical spacing so it corresponded to one unit of whatever the graph was of. This made it pretty easy to record the exact values for each turn. I can go into more detail on how to do this if you need.

This would be a one-time swap, but don't be surprised if I come back to you in a few turns asking if you'd be interested in trading updated data.

I don't think being the score leader means much at this stage, but thanks for the congratulations.

Thanks,
Daniel

[dsplaisted]

Reply from shadyforce:

Ok well are we sure that this isn't against the rules as well? Did Sullla say that trading the information was ok even when swapping screen shots wasn't?

Secondly, I'm still not sure how you're meant to read the y-axis value since there is no scale.

My response:

Yes, he said this: You can of course describe the Demographics with one another as much as you want.

You can calibrate the y-axis based on the value for your own civ, which you can read on the other demographics screen (the one with values for you, best opponent, worst opponent, and average). I think it is delayed a turn or two on the chart but I was able to figure it out without much trouble.

Daniel

It sounds like he's not doing too much analysis of the espionage data if he hasn't already put this data into a spreadsheet. Of course now that I'm explaining how to do it he might start analyzing it more...

[dsplaisted]

Response from shadyforce:

Ok, can you send me that plugin for paint? I don't have time to do this tonight, so how about we swap demogs for whatever turn we are on this time kind of time tomorrow evening?

My response:

Well, I tried using the plugin for Paint.NET some more and it's a bit of a pain for our purposes. The source code is available though so I will see if I can modify it over the weekend. So how about we trade the information on Sunday or Monday?

Also, it is not the simple Paint program that comes with windows, it is Paint.NET which is very nice and totally free: http://www.getpaint.net/ So you can go ahead and install that if you want.

Thanks,
Daniel