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

[mostly_harmless]

Brokers capital is at 136h in the box. And he is doing 15hpt. So if he goes for the Oracle, we will know next turn.
Nothing we can do about it.
And we will get a meagre (EDIT: we get even less gold I think, forgot about the raw hammers )44gold compensation. I turned up our research to 100% again. We have funds for 10 turns, Math takes 12 turns.

I am also wondering what happened to his settler? He still hasn't settled his 3rd city.

mh

[mostly_harmless]

T175 played.
Pyramids next turn.
Broker held back on his wonder. 144h in the box, which it makes it really obvious it is the Oracle. Why would you hold back on the Pyramids.
He probably waits for a tech to oracle something expensive?

Our two scouts penetrate further into The Lins and Imhoteps land.
Our axe is jogging to City 2 site, revealing the odd fogged tile on the way.
Böhm, finished his chop at CoT and should head to BH next turn.
Höpfner started a cottage.

CoT should go for a Granary next and working the copper to get it done quickly. Then work the Oasis for growth to size 2 and get the Lib out. We will have to stun growth a bit to hire scientists for a while to ensure we get our 1st GP out of there.

Or are we happy with a Great Spy now, that the UTA is in existence? What do you think Kodii? I have zero experience with stealing techs.

What about Kobe, should we lose the Oracle. It is no good as a military pump as it lacks copper. If we want to give it to Ruff, we probably don't want to spend hammers on infrastructure but rather on another worker?

We will swap civics next turn to Rep & Slavery.
The chop at BH comes in next turn. Do we put it into the settler or into the library as planned? I would say library.

mh

[Kodii]

I would be very very very happy if we snuck the Oracle from under his nose.

[Kodii]

Do we want to send a message about this?

Yes, send your draft, we obviously aren't happy. We should scout all his cities in return.

I will make more comments in a couple hours, I'm just running out the door.

[Kodii]

shadyforce to the anti-UTA:

Hi all,

(Krill is BCC'd to this message)

Due to a recent barb disturbance, my research on Alphabet has been disrupted and it may be T79 or T80 before I get it. Since we're not doing anything funny with the Oracle, and since the next bottleneck tech, Maths, is not for another while, I assume this doesn't do anyone any damage? Please let me know if someone does have a critical need for Alphabet as soon as I can get it.

shadyforce to the 3Some:

Hi guys,

I got a message from ZPV in reply to my horse rejection email - I told him that I was scared of pissing off Ruff especially because he has an aggresive Praet to my north-east and I didn't want to take sides.

-----------
Hi Brian,

Thanks for the response. Can you at least let me know if the praet marches my way, please?

I understand that you don't want to annoy someone with aggressive Praets, but I assume one would also think it is a good idea not to trade with someone who goes around stealing workers and the like - it would be difficult to trust them at best.
Do you know if he has further plans against me? If not, then he won't mind if you give me horses, will he?

On a not-too-related note - what are you researching? Are you interested in a tech trade? If so, let me know.
If not, also let me know ;-)

Thanks,

Sam aka ZPV
-----------

Thoughts?

To the anti-UTA:

Please relay to Krill as well.

Hi,

Made a little C&D.
Broker's capital is onto a wonder.
It has currently 136hammers in the box.
And is doing 15hpt.

I think it highly likely he is going for The Oracle, in which case he will have it next turn.
Pyramids and Moai are also possible I think, but given he would be interested in quick GProphet points for his shrine, I would say Oracle.

In case we lose it, it becomes even more important to keep our 6-way tech trading together, as the UTA will have 5 techs per round + Oracle.

On the small bright side, the cash refund should help us speed up Math.

mh & Kodii

dsplaisted to the 3Some:

If he does finish it next turn, try disconnecting your marble before
you get the refund (which should be on the turn after). The latest
patch changed it so that you wouldn't get as much cashback if you had
a production modifier resource, but I think if you disconnect it you
should still get the full amount.

If you need to move a unit this turn in order to pillage next turn,
I'd recommend doing it.

mh to the 3Some:

Can you pillage your own roads???

dsplaisted to the 3Some:

It looks like you can't, but you should be able to pillage the quarry.

To the anti-UTA:

Update: Broker is not using his full production.
144h in the box. So if it is the Oracle we will see next turn.
Or maybe he is holding back to get some techs first to oracle something expensive.

shadyforce to the 3Some:

Is pillaging a quarry and its (8?) worker turns worth the money you would save?

Nobody has Alphabet yet this turn.

To the 3Some:

We could pillage the quarry
But the amount of additional refund is nowhere near enough to justify getting rid of the quarry.
We were planning to put a whip to complete it.

In hindsight we could have gotten the Oracle in our capital earlier.
Ah well. We get the other wonder though, unless we get a bad coinflip.

shadyforce to the 3Some:

What other wonder? Pyramids?

Kodii to the 3Some:

Just to add, I (Kodii) am fairly confident that Broker is waiting to
finish Monarchy (which he is researching) so he can Oracle Feudalism.
I do not know how soon that will be, but if he delays any longer, he
will lose it to us. That would be golden.

dsplaisted to the 3Some:

You're probably right about pillaging the quarry.

Trading the marble away to shady or me might work as well. I think there might be a 10 turn limit before it could be cancelled, but if you don't need it for anything else that wouldn't be a problem.

dsplaisted to the 3Some:

FYI, I told ZPV that you were researching Alphabet. (There didn't seem to be any objections to that yesterday.)

If you want to "hide" your research plans from him, it would make it look like we aren't cooperating closely. Also it might keep him friendlier to me if/when you do attack him, so I could either surprise attack him or get information from him about the war.

[Kodii]

From Krill via shadyforce:

> Hi mh, Kodii,
>
> First of all, congrats on getting the OB with the Lins, that's quite a feat, considering that I just discovered that I can't actually get to the south of the Lins or sunrises lands; their culture and interspersed lakes make it impossible to do that without OB which I can't get.
>
> I'm keeping a quechua on the tile 5NE of the Lins capital. I daren't approach any closer because the quechua might be discovered and killed, until your unit exits the Lins borders (preferably heading straight NE from the capital tile), then I can move the quechua to intercept. I'm not sure of the layout of any Lin roads, but there is a barb city 6 tiles to the north of the Lins capital, so if they plan to capture that and road towards it, either meeting my quechua to the NE, or following the roads and heading straight north to meet my culture would be viable methods of meeting quickly.
>
> Anyhoo, I have HBR available now to trade once either of us gets alphabet. If you are missing any techs that I'll have, I'll gladly front them to you to speed you on to the next big tech.
>
> I hope everything is ok in your part of the world.

To Kalin:

Hello The Lins,

after signing Open Borders, we are now a bit irritated to find your
scout has diverted from the given directions (straight west) for three
turns in a row and headed straight to our capital and further north in, what appears to be a clear mission to scout as much of our land as possible.
You can of course do with your scout whatever you want in neutral
territory and head west in a see-saw fashion.
However, backtracking your steps and heading straight to the hill
overlooking our capital will need some explanation.

Here a quote from your eMail:

"I can assure you that
if you would grant us OB we would follow your instructions to move
through your territory and would not share any information with a
third party without permission."

I think, you can see where our irritation comes from.
Would you care to comment?

From Kalin:

Hi Kodi & MH,

Well, I screwed up and I apologize. I understand your irritation and I
would like to do something about it but not sure what at this point. I
was in a similar situation earlier in the game with Broker, when we
let him move through our territory and he did inadvertently something
similar.

In terms of explanation, I can only say I got confused and was trying
to look for a road to maximize scout movement. I know it may not sound
credible but it's the truth. I do give you my word that I would not
tell anybody anything about your lands.

I understand if you want to cancel the OB, although I hope you won't
choose to do so. To show you good will, I will from now on (fwiw)
follow your directions exactly so maybe you can help me here by
providing them (for example, move W, the N etc.).

I hope we can go over this incident and can have good relations in the
future. I apologize again.

Best,
Kalin

P.S.: FWIW, I am playing the turns alone, Dreylin being on vacation.
If he were around the chance of this mishap happening would have been
nil as we would have conferred together...

From Ruff:

Species #1,

I see that you requested OBs with the Borg. Sorry - turned it down because we hadn't discussed it. What are your intentions? Are you looking for trade routes, wanting to scout Borg Space or other?

I'm still trying to figure out why you planted a city way off to the East - was there a nice resource there that you wanted? If so, is that resource connected back to your capital? You will notice that I did move that warrior you mentioned AND that I walked him right past your worker with our twitching .

To Ruff:

OOC:
Species #1
So it will be quite a while until you encounter species #8472.

IC:
Ok, we understand your need for clarification.
Our most pressing reason for OB are trade routes. Our colony (Kobe Niku) east of Unimatrix 1 would benefit from the proximity to UM1 without knowing Sailing.
We believe your collective will also benefit from trade routes with our people.
We have currently no intentions to traverse Borg Space, as our scouts are roaming elsewhere.
We might need to go through Borg Space later on though, bringing our scouts back home safely.
Of course, we will ask for your permission and a safe corridor before hand.

As you will know from your scouting, Kobe is not yet connected by roads to our core. But we are working on it.
Us settling such a far away colony was indeed governed by the presence of a rare kind of stone we were keen to put to use.
We did not realise by then how close we were to Borg Space.
It has become clear to us by now that Unimatrix1 is essential for your existence and your outfitting of your "Praetorian"-type drones.
We are puzzling about the odd location of Unimatrix2.
We would have expected Unimatrix2 to go to a much better spot. A bit further NW.

It would probably help if we coordinate settling to some extent in the future to prevent misunderstandings.
What do the Borg say?

We appreciate your Warrior drone passing our worker without twitching. We see this as a sign that Borg and we can coexist in peace and cooperation.
Btw. We see hostilities between Borg and species ZPV have ceased.
May we enquire what the outcome was?
Has your warrior drone survived and assimilated many enemy workers?

Concluding, we hope you will accept our renewed offer of Open Borders and hope to get some feedback from you on the issues raised.

From Ruff:

We are up to Species #9 and we only expect to reach #10. #8472 will not be possible.

I'll agree to OBs next time I open the game - probably tonight.

Unimatrix #1 was only ever a filler city as you can work out. Unimatrix #2 will be a very nice city in the future. We are planning on building some Statues there - would you have some stone that you could lend to us?

The skirmish between the Borg and Species #4 (ZPV) has concluded. Our drone was successful in assimilating 2 ZPV workers that were roading to a new city without protection. There was a 3rd worker in the area but he ran away.

Re settling - We don't have enough map knowledge at the moment - I will be sending some warriors out scouting over the next turns to improve this.

To Ruff:

ruff.tad realms beyond schrieb:

We are up to Species #9 and we only expect to reach #10. #8472 will not be possible.

Ok. I heard #8472 is rather nasty.
/Transfer file/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_8472

I'll agree to OBs next time I open the game - probably tonight.

Very good, we are looking forward to trade with the Borg.
If your scouts need the usage of our roads, please let us know before hand, to avoid irritations.
We had a bad experience with The Lins lately.

Unimatrix #1 was only ever a filler city as you can work out. Unimatrix #2 will be a very nice city in the future. We are planning on building some Statues there - would you have some stone that you could lend to us?

This one I have to present before our council (=Kodii), but there might be possibilities. We would need to connect Kobe to our core first, though.

The skirmish between the Borg and Species #4 (ZPV) has concluded. Our drone was successful in assimilating 2 ZPV workers that were roading to a new city without protection. There was a 3rd worker in the area but he ran away.

We congratulate.

Re settling - We don't have enough map knowledge at the moment - I will be sending some warriors out scouting over the next turns to improve this.

Ok, we would be interested in what you find to Kobe's SE as we lack knowledge of that area as well.

Another point, now that relations become more cordial.
Do you have knowledge of the location of Iron ore beyond Borg Space.
Since Alphabet is delayed we will have to wait longer for IW from you and knowledge of Iron might affect our colonizing plans.

We wish you always a oily film on your implant.

From Ruff:

Knowledge of Iron - We do.
We will pass this knowledge on for an agreement to trade Stone for Statue construction.

From regoarrarr:

Hey M-h / Kodii,

Don't have a whole lot of time but wanted to just touch base and drop you a note to celebrate our meeting.

So what is going on? Not much going on over here.

Like I said in-game, I would be interested in discussing wonder builds. I know that you're Industrious, so it might make sense to talk about which wonders each of us want and possibly agree to a no-compete clause on certain ones.

Here are some of the somewhat upcoming wonders I have various levels of interest in.

Great Library
Parthenon
Hanging Gardens
Mausoleum of Mausollus

thoughts?

[Kodii]

Foreign Affairs Thoughts:

Kalin
I had a chat with him and he appear sincerely apologetic. I would certainly think that Dreylin would try to sneak extra information from our Open Borders, but I am unsure whether Kalin would have done the same on purpose.

He did mention that he would take any instructions from us as "punishment", so I propose that we ask him to trek around CoT, instead of through. It's not a big idea, but when I suggested it, he seemed okay with it.

Krill
We just need to send him a response to his message (through shadyforce of course) confirming that we will meet him 5NE of the Lin capital.

Ruff
I am happy to trade him Stone to help him build Moai, but by the time we can have it connected to him, we'll already have Alphabet and IW. I would rather he give us something else in exchange for a stone gift in the future.

regoarrarr
Dan makes it sound like we are the only two civs ever to compete for wonders
I'm not so hot on telling him what we plan and don't plan to build, especially since he is a member of the UTA. Plus, I don't think we even KNOW what we are hoping to get in the future. I don't know how we could word a message to hide that information from him. mh, thoughts?

[mostly_harmless]

Foreign Affairs Thoughts:

Kalin
I had a chat with him and he appear sincerely apologetic. I would certainly think that Dreylin would try to sneak extra information from our Open Borders, but I am unsure whether Kalin would have done the same on purpose.

He did mention that he would take any instructions from us as "punishment", so I propose that we ask him to trek around CoT, instead of through. It's not a big idea, but when I suggested it, he seemed okay with it.

Well, I am more suspicious. Old C&D habit.
We could feed him to the Borg. Close borders and have our scouting warrior teleport northwards meeting Krill.
Alternatively, I am more than happy to not guide him to CoT.

Krill
We just need to send him a response to his message (through shadyforce of course) confirming that we will meet him 5NE of the Lin capital.

Yes, will do. Gut feeling is that we are seeing The Lin's capital to our NW.

Ruff
I am happy to trade him Stone to help him build Moai, but by the time we can have it connected to him, we'll already have Alphabet and IW. I would rather he give us something else in exchange for a stone gift in the future.

I agree. He can have stone if we can get another stone from the threesome. Because I think we want our stone for Moai as well. Probably shortly after the tech trade. For now, I would decline his offer. Knowledge of Iron will not change our dot map much, will it? And we are creative for quick border pops.
Are we still considering, offering him Kobe any time soon?
I would rather secure Marble until we have Great Lib and the the Epics?

regoarrarr
Dan makes it sound like we are the only two civs ever to compete for wonders
I'm not so hot on telling him what we plan and don't plan to build, especially since he is a member of the UTA. Plus, I don't think we even KNOW what we are hoping to get in the future. I don't know how we could word a message to hide that information from him. mh, thoughts?

I totally agree.
Lets not give him any info.
I think Great Lib (Representation synergy?) and HG (in CoT for extra Great Engineer points?) would be nice for us as well. Also 3 out of the 4 wonders Dan mentioned require Marble. So he probably has access to it.
Will try to draft something.

mh

[Kodii]

Are we still considering, offering him Kobe any time soon?

Every discussion about Kobe's location thus far has been brought up by us. I think it is best to leave it on the back burner until he brings it up himself.

[mostly_harmless]

Yes, good.
Sent a few messages. The crucial ones to you for review.
Lets hold back on the Ruff message for now and see if they indeed sign OB this turn.

mh