RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Iamjohn, Kodii & Zeviz

[m4gill4]

I WILL recover.

Rego, there will be no peace. I will burn their cities to the ground. And I will rename Endor Paris, as I have seen from the beginnings of this thread.

the force is strong with this one

Prophecy and prescience — How can they be put to the test in the face of the unanswered questions? Consider: How much is actual prediction of the "wave form" (as Muad'Dib referred to his vision-image) and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What of the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife?
- Private Reflections on Muad'Dib by the Princess Irulan

[dsplaisted]

Any updates slaze? I'm still keeping myself unspoiled on the other civs, so I have only your updates to rely on to tell me what's going on

[slaze]

Boy do you have one, alot has changed/happened. I'll try and put something up sometime tonight

[m4gill4]

there will be no peace. I will burn their cities to the ground. And I will rename Endor Paris, as I have seen from the beginnings of this thread.

What happened? Stockholm syndrome?

[slaze]

Not so much stockholm syndrome, but more out of selfish reasons. I did get a little delusional there but i'll explain later. I'm just trying to do what's best for inca. I'll put up a "wall of text" about the whole thing at some point, couldn't get to it last night.

[slaze]

So after my last update, which was like 15 turns ago

in the north, the next turn athlete has all his stack on A, I abandon Ollytambo save the whipped spear and have the entire olly garrison move to G (I didn't have all these roads up then, these pictures are from now) thinking that DINA, with it's shrine, is much more valuable than olly, I'll put up my defense there. Next turn I face him splitting his stack like this: melee (4 prats, 3 axes, spears) and catapults to B, 2 axes to F and mounted (6? HAs, 1 chariot) and trailing troops (not much) STILL ON A! I had one catapult, 3 axes and 6 longbows and maybe a spear and quecha. I send in the cat which withdrawls, and 3 axes on the prats and two out of three win. And then my 6 longbows are next and they are up against catapults. He didn't promote any of the axes or have the horse archers there defending. So i had 6 longbows get to attack catapults at 78-88% odds and all of them win. Just like that I took his 8 catapult stack to a 2 catapult stack (he had 2 others that came in later). I could have destroyed the whole thing with my retreating Ollytambo army, but I didn't have the workers around to do it. And then the next turn came and he split off more towards Olly (like six units) which got destroyed at little loss and eventually his army move to C and D and E and out. He coulda had two cities at least but lost. more on athlete later.

In the south

Whosit landed at L and M at i abondoned the city, he hung around for a handful of turns and then put 9 prats, 1 axe and 4 cats on N and then O. On O i had 2 guerilla II longbows on X to see how bad he wanted the hills and then he went P and at P I moved my whole defense to Z. I had all the culture up to N and above that he couldn't see Z. Next turn he's got 3 prats in whatever he renamed tiwakanu and a cat and 3 axes take back the city at no loss. At P my longbows got to Y but he just alphabets out of there while at a cost of 2 catapults I destroy his whole stack over 2 turns.

At that point I'm getting close to a stale mate up north. I could maybe threaten/take a city but didn't have all the cats i wanted and he could have easily whipped/assemble adequate defense while i bombarded it down. And if he counterattacked while i was in there I would have had to do yet another round to whip myself an adequate defense. About that time sulla was "wrapping up" the jowy war, and I could much use his help having athlete need to plit his army to his other border (i had/have espionage in his cities and all of it was one archer each. I send my almost daily report to him about opponents research etc and in this one, I roughly tell him it's time to get after athlete and his response is for me to calm down. That he wants to develope the jowy land and he's concerned with maintenence costs and such. And I get this one morning, and I have it floating in my head all day and I come to the conclusion that this guys just gonna do whats good for him, no more no less. When we were discussing what was going on some turns back, I was under the impression that the jowy war was really a war against athlete as well, that they were the same enemy.

So in my head I started think about a way to get to him, to trick sulla at the right time. Later that day I come home and find out that sulla and athlete have a NAP that lasts till 170 (it was ~ 163 at the time) which i wasn't yet aware of, so under that he couldn't have even attacked athlete anyway. But I was already starting to think that sulla's a runaway. Compare to my civ, his civ is much better prepared to overpower me later. If he want's to press technoligy instead of eliminating rivals then his lead (over me specifically) will only get bigger and bigger. So i decide that i want to see if I can stop the athlete war, and mybe work with him to stop sulla. For the Inca, it would be much easier for athlete to be the number one civ than sulla. So I sent out an email to athlete saying one sentence "what would you think about peace". He responds with something then i expose a little bit more (all in one day) and then he asks if I'm available to chat at our usual playing time. I agree and in our chat i tell him my plan, our still being in a state of war, but secretly agreeing to let my army pass through his land to the sulla border and at the right timr either A, capture a small city, make peace and then gift the army suddenly, or B just finding an roaded but uncultured tile, making peace and gifting/attacking. I would be a turn by turn sort of progression but all of it secret and all of it towards sulla (I was still reporting to the sulla/plako/danski group and would over/understate athlete to sulla as was hoping to lead him to a vulnerable position. We, me and athlete, agree to this in our caht and then the next day as i get home from work I get this from sulla:

Dear plako and Broker of Korea, Dantski of Romali, and slaze of IKZ,

Hey, you may have seen that Kathlete accidentally posted in the email thread today. Speaker saw the message before it was deleted, and we are forwarding it to all of you:

<quote>
Well, so here I am with an update. Warning this is just a wall of text.

So I ignored my intuition and convinced myself that India wasn't going to take Greece out (I was thinking this around T148 or so). Along with the Inca getting Feudalism, Rome and my attack on the Inca was particularly foolish. Especially mine. I completely failed to make any progress, when I should have atleast taken 2 cities.

Now, Greece is gone and India is on my very weak border, refusing to renew our NAP. Now if I represent some reasonable strength, I don't think they'll attack, they'll just be content I've whipped my cities. But I'm also at war with the Inca. Or am I!!!

I had a long chat with Slaze last night and we're going to try and take India back down a notch. We'll remain at war in game and but not march against each other. This free's up my units to defend my western border (and his to attack Rome ). Then he'll supposedly help me to attack India a bit later. There are definitely some details to be cleared up but if I was to stand any chance I needed my current army available to clear India out of my lands, or atleast keep them at bay.

I'll try and post some more later (answer any questions as needed) but that's the basics of it for now.

Athlete
</quote>

slaze, care to explain what's going on to the rest of us?

Sullla
The Killer Angels

So there went that. There was no way for me to deny it, It was clear that athlete had made a mistake and that our whole surprise was blown. So i fess up and send:

The Zimmerman note didn't make it either. You didn't tell me about the NAP. It was turn 163 or so, and your telling me to put on the brakes. I get only about a half day, but I get this in my head rolling, and I'm thinking up some ideas. Although later that day I finally became aware of your NAP, and now I gotta wait around 7 turns, in this wrecked economy? While india's over there, putting in seven more turns on me? I knew then that was always gonna be something. If it was misinformation or tying yourself up in these arrangements, I knew you were more into your own interests than mine (understandible but not my favorite arrangment). i thought you'd keep going with athlete, I thought that was the whole purpose of the thing. Jowy's land makes you a runaway if your going to stop and reconsolidate. No way I can compete with that, your getting like 20-25 modern age turns ahead of me with how we add up now. I needed you to fight athlete, and you failed me. You lead me to believe things would be otherwise from a jowy-snatching war. So it's my responsibility to keep you from being a run-away civ. I could keep going but I best wanna sum it up like this: It's like oyzar said: I play to win.

I was gonna write you my first "lie" email tonight, and this is the stuff I come home to see. It's too bad, cause I was gonna put one hell of a surprise on you.

to which he replied:

Dear slaze of IKZ,

Well. That was quite a response, and a surprising turnaround. Four days ago, you wrote to us and said, "I have no intention of making peace with either of these two [Kathlete and Whosit] for the rest of the game." Then we find out yesterday that you are planning a secret arrangement with Kathlete to stab us in the back. That was... unexpected. Let me try to address your concerns.

On the subject of our Non-Aggression Pact with Kathlete, this was an arrangement that we had signed much, MUCH earlier. We signed that deal on March 8, which was roughly Turn 130. In other words, we made that agreement some 35 turns ago, before we had any idea that you were even going to be attacked. The goal was to make sure that we were not the subject of another massive attack, which we had ample reason to fear. Since you also signed longterm NAP deals with your neighbors, I hardly think it's fair to criticize us for doing so. We did what we could to assist you during your war, given that it was taking place on the other side of the world from us: offering resource gifts, strategic information, and so on. No, it wasn't military units, but could we have even gotten them to you in time to make a difference?

The notion that we "tied ourselves down" is just silly. We started our war with Jowy on Turn 161, and we thought it would take quite a while to capture or raze all 8 of his cities. Don't blame us because he stupidly suicided his whole empire in a couple of turns! We didn't think we would even reach the Ottoman border until well after the NAP had ended its duration.

We then rejected Kathlete's (repeated) pleas for us to renew the NAP, explicitly so we could help you if required. Since you had clearly beaten off the invasion and were not in mortal peril, we advised you to hold off on an attack against Kathlete, because neither of us had the economy to capture more cities there. That's not abandoning you, it's sound advice. No, we are not going to ram our units into Kathlete's cities and suffer big losses just to raze some of his cities. That would be pure foolishness, as dumb as the attack that came after you. Kathlete has already done exactly what we predicted, started whipping longbows galore in his western cities.

The smart thing to do, for both of us, is gain better technology and come back when we have a better advantage - you know, exactly what we told you in our last email! Attacking entrenched longbows with medieval units is dumb. We both know this. Do you really think that we're strong enough right now to eliminate the Ottomans with our current forces? Even if we won, it would be a Pyrrhic victory not worth the cost... and we still couldn't hold on to the captured cities because of maintenance costs. The only way to win is not to play that game.

Much of your email more or less states that you need us to attack Kathlete so that you can "catch up" your own damaged economy. I'm sorry, but that doesn't make any sense. No one sat back and gave us a pass when we were recovering from our own invasion earlier. (You certainly didn't, taking advantage of that time to race out to a dozen cities! My goodness, you wouldn't even sign Open Borders with us at the time - talk about being a fair weather friend!) It's not our fault that you were running a Farmer's Gambit style of game and were called on it by your neighbors, then were forced to whip out an emergency army of defense. We will help you take down Kathlete and partition the land right down the middle - honestly, we will! - but we are not going to deliberately wreck our own civilization just to help out other teams. Come on, that's ridiculous.

Now if you want to flip this around and become our enemy - cuddling up with someone who just brutally invaded your territory - I guess that's your decision. We certainly can't stop you. If you change your mind back, we'll be willing to talk.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

To which I haven't responded. And a few turns have gone by. I'm gonna continue on the athlete plan, It's better for my northern border not to be so fiercely contested for as it recently was. So I made a trade with athlete. I'll help you with sulla if you leave me alone against whosit, and that's where I'm at. I've tried to break up the whosit/nakor alliance unsucessfully although it looks like I'll get friendlier which nakor. Plako and I have been in close contact through this and are still fighting whosit. Global alliances are/will be changing. And I think that sulla may get overrun.

Here's the north


The lonbbow shown there is actually ~15 units that will be heading against rome

Here's the south, starting with the deep south


I recently put that whole stack on whosits city and he attacked with 3 cats only, leaving the prats and one xbow. I went back to heal and now he has 3 xbows, his HE city is the next city in. Next turn i will probably invade again (i'm healed). He doesn't have many cats it seems and I have numbers. We'll see how this goes.

The economy is picking up some. I have I feeling I'll be around for some time. I still have alot of cities (13).

[novice]

Nice going, and great report!

[Axiis]

Great update

[Rowain]

Thanks for your great update and the detailed showing what was going on

[BobRoberts]

Thanks for an awesome update!

A question - is that 15 unit Ottoman stack heading down to fight Rome directly, or will it be gifted?

Cheers!