RB Pitboss #1 SPOILER - Hatshepsut / India

[regoarrarr]

T77 played and with the Lins getting Alpha, all the techs came rolling in. For some reason, ZPV figured out that you didn't have to wait a turn to get techs with pre-reqs, so all of us have all the techs now.

I have the Iron near GT as well as an iron near the site of my next city (cows / clams). Krill had no iron as far as I could tell.

I will write more tonight

[regoarrarr]

Some talks about getting Imhotep to rush Krill

From Kalin

Hi Everybody,

I had the following thought. Imhotep doesn't seem to be doing so hot
judging by his score so I was wondering if we could convince him to
attack someone (Krill?) in exchange for some techs. For example, if
Imhotep sends some 5-6 Impis into Krill lands within some 15 turns, he
will wreak havoc as Krill seems to not have metal and most of his
defenses at this point are quechuas. Also, it would be quite a
surprise to have an attack from that side. What do you think? We
haven't met Imhotep yet btw.

Kalin

Broker's response

Dont think this is plausable

1) He is pretty far away from Krill. Ruff is actually closer I think.
2) Would be a pretty transparent request considering everyones score jump
3) May invalidate NAPS if he tells Krill we are trying to fight by proxy

My 2 cents

I agree. But I have had some dealings with him and I will try and feel him out all on the sly-like

[regoarrarr]

Some emails going around about the Lin / Krill situation

Memphus to the lins

We accept the NAP until t100, agreeing to not expand
>> > south of the cows
>> > city

Kalin's response

>> > Can you please clarify the "not expand south" clause. It's
>> > not like
>> > you really can expand further S. In my email I said "beyond
>> > that
>> > city", so I assume you plan to still expand in the N.
>> > Would you be
>> > willing to discuss a land partition in the N?
>> >
>> > Kalin
>> >

Memphus to the lins

>> > Dear League of Lin ~
>> >
>> > It seems we were the slow ones this time. And Krill's
>> > message was very
>> > basic. You will see a more detailed one below. After all
>> > the tech
>> > trading that just took place, Krill got quite heated up
>> > again that we
>> > weren't allowed to join in. Thankfully though I have
>> > averted a disaster
>> > and convinced him that attacking you with a 20 unit stack
>> > isn't the way
>> > to play right now, so the units will have to go elsewhere.
>> >
>> > This is of course because of your last letter where proper
>> > judgment and
>> > logic was allowed to prevail.
>> >
>> > So as you have suggested let us move towards mending
>> > relationships and
>> > declare NAP until 120. As per your new request we will not
>> > settle any
>> > further south than Evil Eye. While it would be a nice
>> > gesture on your
>> > part to commit to not settling N of the Hun, we...well let
>> > me rephrase
>> > that, I am a reasonable person. Krill simply wanted us to
>> > tell you not
>> > to settle north of that city.
>> >
>> > However we think it be fair that the river south of the
>> > cows be the
>> > neutral zone. Neither of us can settle along this 2 tile
>> > neutral zone..
>> > It seems like the perfect place since there is no food
>> > anyways to
>> > support a city. This will allow cities to work all tiles in
>> > their fat
>> > cross, and for us to not have a cultural border war.
>> >
>> > We may each have 2 scout units outside of our borders in
>> > the said
>> > neutral zone.
>> >
>> > We eagerly await your response
>> >
>> > In other news are there any resource trades you wish to
>> > pursue? I am
>> > sure your new king, with all of his troops has made your
>> > cities quite
>> > happy. But how is their health? We have many offerings
>> > that can make
>> > citizens rejoice and live longer.
>> >

Kalin forwarded all that to us and this is Broker

>> Hmm Good cop Bad cop. Classic.
>>
>> Couple of thoughts.
>>
>> How much land is there to expand E and W for each of you. I don't have map
>> info up there.
>>
>> If he does expand E or W wouldn't taking the horse city cut him in half
>> leaving cities on our side cut off from his core?
>>
>> There is a catch here they are not being magnanimous. But without map
>> info I don't know for sure.

Sunrise

> Hmm,
> Now that the tech trade is in I think it is time to confirm I have a NAP
> with Krill. If not, those units nay be coming to me
> -sunrise

Kalin

I doubt K/M want to mount an attack at this point but would be good to
see what the deal with the NAP is.
Kalin

Me

I bet Krill does :-)

ZPV

I call BS on the 20 unit stack. They have been whipping recently, but with their rate of expansion I doubt they have had the production to put together a stack of significant merit. Furthermore, memphus didn't actually say they have the stack - he just implied it. This seems like the kind of posturing empty threat one would use when negotiating for a beneficial NAP. And if he were to attack LoL (what a name!), surely he would have to believe we would invade with a 60 unit stack. I guess we'll just have to send those units (of production?) elsewhere too. (^_^)

Does anyone have visibility of his cities, or know which techs he has? That will tell us, in the worst case situation of him having the highest power, roughly how big his army is.

btw, do we want to coordinate espionage? I have the graphs of dsplaisted, imhotep, shadyforce, mostly harmless, ruff (and sunrise). If we all take note of our respective power ratings this turn, we can work out krill's.

ZPV

Sunrise

Good thoughts sir.

Re: espionage what I think we should do is have one player only run espionage versus Krill and then trade graphs (as in, I ask regoarrarr or whoever what someone chart looks like). That makes it the most difficult for Krill. If no one else wants to volunteer to do this I will do it as soon as my espionage agreement with Krill runs out.

-sunrise

Me

Just thought I would mention that I have not seen any iron in Krill's lands (and I have explored about 80% or so of them). Also, as you (the Lins) have I'm sure already spotted, there is Iron to the north of Hun.

I plan to do an analysis tonight of everyone's tech situation, just to see where we're at.

Also, I thought that I had mentioned it but maybe not - I signed an NAP and OB with K/M that can be canceled with 5 turns notice. This was part of the deal to keep my warriors alive for the circumnav bonus. As part of this, I agreed to pay him a cheap tech, which turned out to be Sailing, which I gave him this past turn. Just in case anyone was wondering about it. As I mentioned, I remain committed to our alliance.

[regoarrarr]

I had a conversation with shadyforce last night asking about trading for Math. We talked about various options and then I asked him to send me an email with his thoughts (as I was pressed for time last night and wanted to just play my turn and get off the computer)

He came out with

I don't think I can afford to pay for Maths. Commerce is valuable and I'll need it to research my next tech. I believe that if I hold out a while, I can get Maths in a tech exchange which does not hurt my research rate in the near future. So the benefit to me of a Maths deal is not getting Maths outright but getting Maths a few turns earlier than I would have. And I don't think that's worth more to me than a small-ish sum, say 50 gold. Perhaps from your perspective, it's a case of getting 50 gold for sharing maths now vs getting nothing and I end up with maths elsewhere in some trade anyway and perhaps you can consider it worthwhile. But I understand if you want to hold out for a full price (nobody seems to agree but imo somewhere in the region of 1/2 to 2/3 of the beaker cost).

My reply

Okay - that is fair enough. I've passed this on to Dantski and I'll see what he thinks and I will noodle on it as well. What are you researching now, if you don't mind my asking?

[regoarrarr]

Email to Imhotep

Hey Imhotep,

As you may have seen, I recently acquired Alphabet and thought I would see if you were interested in trading for any of my techs. I don't have the game in front of me so I can't remember what techs you need, but I seem to remember from when I looked last night that you could use Writing (and Mathematics). What about Mysticism or Sailing?

I'm not sure what the trade would be for. I will be getting Currency before too long, so we could do something for money. We could negotiate whether the tech was fronted or not.

I was trying to brainstorm what else that I might be interested in that you might want to trade. A few thoughts I had

* Some sort of resource trade
* Some sort of favorable border treaty
* Units?
* What about some sort of military harassment. Not of me, of course!! :-) I was just trying to think that it might be interesting if I traded you a tech or two in exchange for your sending out a few Impis to harass someone else. I don't have anyone in particular in mind, and I don't know what your current military is, but I thought I would throw it out there.

Anyways, hope to hear from you soon

[regoarrarr]

While writing that email to Imhotep, I thought about some of those things that I suggested and realized that it might work to send that to shady

Email to shady

Hey Shadyforce,

What about something else besides money? A few other thoughts I had while brainstorming - what about a few units? Or maybe a favorable border agreement in the dyes area? Anything else that you can think of that might work?

[regoarrarr]

Email to ruff (does it look familiar?) :-)

Hey Ruff,

As you may have seen, I recently acquired Alphabet and thought I would see if you were interested in trading for any of my techs. I don't have the game in front of me so I can't remember what techs you need, but I seem to remember from when I looked last night that you could use Mathematics? I also have Sailing and Mysticism as well as some other worker techs.

I'm not sure what the trade would be for. I will be getting Currency before too long, so we could do something for money. We could negotiate whether the tech was fronted or not.

I was trying to brainstorm what else that I might be interested in that you might want to trade. A few thoughts I had

* Some sort of resource trade
* Some sort of favorable border treaty
* Units?
* What about some sort of military harassment. Not of me, of course!! :-) I was just trying to think that it might be interesting if I traded you a tech or two in exchange for your sending out a few Praets to harass someone else. I don't have anyone in particular in mind, and I don't know what your current military is, but I thought I would throw it out there.

Anyways, hope to hear from you soon

[regoarrarr]

Email to M-h

Hey M-H.

I know that we talked about a wonder agreement earlier. I understand that it can be challenging to figure out information from other people while still keeping your own interests going forward. You of all people as the C&D master should know all about that!

So, in thinking about things, I am going to just lay all my cards out on the table. Hopefully we can use that as a starting point to have a good dialogue about what we can and can't do.

I am going to make a run at the Hanging Gardens. You will have noticed that I have Mathematics. I've actually had it for a few turns but it just showed up this past turn when I was able to trade for Alphabet. I have already started on my aqueduct. I have a high production city (plains hill copper + a few mines) with forests available to chop. I think I will be competitive in this race. You can ask shadyforce or Imhotep who have enough EP to see my demographics - I am #2 I believe in overall production.

However, even with my head-start, you may be able to beat me since you are Industrious and maybe even have stone (given your build of both TGW and the Mids). Certainly if you go all out to the detriment of the rest of your empire, you may be successful. I suppose it's a matter of how much you want it. Obviously at some point you will be getting a GP who may be an engineer, and so that might be in play as well, depending on timing.

Obviously I don't know what your overall game plan is / has been. Maybe this has been a huge part of your strategy and you will fight to the death for it. Or maybe you have had no interest in it, so you'll pretend that you did and are making a huge sacrifice and try to squeeze me for as much as possible :-). But probably it's somewhere in between.

So I see 3 major possibilities.

A) We agree that I will not go after the HG. As you pointed out in your earlier email, this doesn't necessarily give you too much, since there are 9 other civs after all. However, I do think that I might be able to get no-build agreements from the civs that I traded Math too, and the other civs don't have Math, so with Industrious you shouldn't have a problem.

B) We agree that you will not go after the HG. I pay you in some way. This could be techs, money (I'll have Currency before too long), or something else. Again, there are other civs out there, but I do have a head-start

C) We can't agree on anything and we race. I'd prefer to avoid this, but if it comes to it, it does.

I am very interested to hear your thoughts. As I said, my aqueduct is already in production, so if you're wanting me to agree to not go after it, the sooner the better. I'll be much less likely to agree to not build it if my aqueduct gets very far along, if that makes sense.

Hope to hear from you soon!

I am hoping that he will agree to not go after it but we will see.

[regoarrarr]

2 replies back from my flurry of emails this morning

Shadyforce:

50 coins is about what it's worth to me to get Maths now, on this turn. The money would be delivered immediately once you have researched currency (or either of us have acquired it by other means, but since that seems likely to be when you research currency, that was why I was asking about your ETA). It's the highest and best monetary offer. It's just not worth more than that to me.

My sole reason for acquiring Maths early is to boost my shield output. I am holding off doing a lot of my chopping until I would get Maths but I estimate that about 6 chops would have to be done before then. 6 Maths boosted chops means it's worth 60 hammers to me. I could cut you half the 'profit' and build you an Immortal? Any more than that and I'm actually spending more shields than I'm gaining by the trade, so it's not worth my while.

A city site is much harder to evaluate. Land is everything in this game, pop is power, grass = cottages = money/beakers, etc. The original border agreement of ours had you with your 2 cities NW of the river barrier, Cape Cow and then a city to your south, where you've built your new city (can't remember the name). The rest was mine, including what was to be a filler city getting dye and some grass (one or two tiles on a river) in between my Rice city on the East coast and Green Township, and just south of the Cape Cow site. Losing a city site is quite a blow primarily because it's a permanent loss of it's hammers and commerce (you don't lose anything by trading tech). It's certainly worth a lot more than ~60 hammers. However, I would consider ceding the area as a city site, basically giving you another city to put in the area, for Maths now and Currency as soon as you get it. I think this is quite a reasonable offer since it's probably worth more than just a technology and a front of a technology, but I'm making the minimum offer that I would be sort of happy with for the sake of brevity.

So I guess to summarise, your choices are:

1. Maths on this turn for 50 gold as soon as monetary transactions are allowed.
2. Maths on this turn for an Immortal (other other similarly priced unit) as soon as I can build one and march it to your territory. (Let me know if you would like a specific deadline in your deal - but I'm not going to drag my heels.)
3. Maths now and Currency on the turn you research it for rights to found the filler city location in the region between Green Township, Cape Cow, The Bank and the Rice city. (Assumes good faith to minimise cultural disruption on other cities)
4. No deal... which is ok - sometimes there isn't a deal that can me made which is 'worth it' for both of us.

I tend to think no deal there. An immortal is not that much, and getting the city site won't give me that much if ZPV is going to take him out anyways. Maybe the 50 gold? That is about 4-5 turns research, and I guess it depends on how that might affect things with ZPV

And here's ruff

I did see a flurry of score increases that could only have been tech trades. It seems there is a little cartel going on? How do you break into this group? Are you allowed to trade outside of this cartel?

I'm pretty sure that I don't have any techs that you need (except maybe IW) but I am hungry for your techs. I do have a few unused Preats lying around somewhere that I could use. Name a target that is reasonable close to me and we might be in business.

Ruff

My reply to ruff

Ruff,

I wouldn't call it a cartel. We did have a tech trading agreement involving Alphabet which was consummated last turn (T77). I am allowed to trade outside of this "cartel" and would be happy to discuss ways to make that happen.

As for the Praets, who are close to you?

[regoarrarr]

Exchange with ruff

Close to me ...

Imhotep (North)
mh / Kodii (South)
Broker (further South - probably too far away)
Dsp (South West)

Is your cartel (I just like the word ) organizing another round of
tech trades?

Ruff

My reply

Ruff,

So wouldn't that make Krill to your northeast? I know that he is somewhat to the east of Imhotep, but am fairly unclear on the distances involved. Where are your Praets now? I know (think?) that they were near Imhotep a few turns ago but am not sure where you have moved that since then.

But let's assume that a) we could find a suitable target and b) we could figure out a suitable payment. How would it work?

What I mean by that is obviously you have a wide range of latitude in determining how... aggressive? you are with your forces. You could declare war but only half heartedly attempt to harass the person, or you could go whole hog and really knock them around. I don't know what the best way would be to arrange things. Maybe some sort of upfront payment as well as some sort of additional payment per city taken / unit killed / worker stolen? I don't know how we would best "prove" that stuff though.

Do you have any thoughts on that? As for another round, we have had some discussions about another round but nothing set in concrete. What are you teching right now?

Obviously Krill would be the best target (from my perspective), though m-h would be a good one too with his double wonders, and Imhotep isn't bad either, though he's probably already "been there, done that"