RBP3 - [SPOILERS] - Team DIM (Mehmed of HRE)

[Ilios]

Hehe thanks for updating MB, I'd already taken the screenshot, but didn't have the time to post it. You won't believe me, but I actually expected copper to appear in Midas' Folly (allthough I had picked the tile SE of the copper as the one).
This moves MF from being a good site to an excellent site! At size three, we'll be producing 8 hammers/12 commerce, and still have a food surplus of +4.

In other good news, Tricky survived the damaged lion attack without a scratch, getting him up to 4 XP. One more kill and we get Woody II.

I will send a message to England later this morning. It will include a greeting, a question regarding the teams they've met so far, and I'll maybe ask if the border Tricky just encountered is their first or second city (unless someone can confirm this). Do I need to add anything? I was going to mention the tech alliance as soon as they've given a couple of replies.

Although I'm getting very nervous because of our lack of credible defenders, I'll initially go along with going The Wheel, because with the discovery of another CRE neighbour, I'm mulling over another radical shift in our research path.

[Ilios]

Email sent to England:

To the leaders of fair Albion,


Hello and well met!


We are most pleased to have met your fine civilization. To finally hook up with you, our exploring warrior has recently managed to shrug off an attack by a lion, albeit one in a weakened state...

You are the fifth civilization we've met so far, and hope our future relations will be cordial and mutually beneficial. We would appreciate if you could direct our exploring warrior to other nations you have met up till now.

Hoping to hear from you soon,


Cordially,


Ilios for the Principality of DIM

I haven't mentioned yet that we are neighbours, because I would like to see what they're like before we do.

[Ilios]

So, as I mentioned earlier, we now border at least two Creative teams, so I've been thinking about what we could do to counter this, without having to resort to expensive libraries.

I know we had decided on going for HBR, via Archery after we finish The Wheel. But with copper available in the near future, and our Creative neighbours, I would like to propose (another) change of plans.

As you know, we will be meeting up with Carthage soon. Their Unique Unit, the Numidian Cavalry, replaces the Horse Archer. So, we can be sure they will be wanting to head for HBR sooner rather then later.

Therefore, I would like to propose the following to Krill:
Instead of going Archery and HBR, we head for Masonry (which we'll need to access our Marble resource), and then go max gold.

As soon as Krill finishes Oracle (does he need Masonry to finish it?) and obtains Alphabet, I would like to trade him for Polytheism and Priesthood, which we can easily trade for Bronze Working. We then go full bore on Monotheism, which we could conceivable have in 7-10 turns. After we finish Mono, we'll have both discount techs for Monarchy and I suggest we go for it.

I'm sure we can land Judaism, as there's no-one except for Krill who has Polytheism for the moment.

Anyway, let me know what you think

[meatbalz]

If we build City 3 by the lake versus on the river:

Gain

Peak x 1
Lake x 2
Plain x 3

Lose

Grass River Sheep x 1
Grass River x 1
Grass x 1
Plain River x 3


That's not a pretty comparison, i thought it would be bad but not this bad.



1NW of the W grass sheep as ilios suggested is not viable. The reason can be seen in the revised dotmap i posted, with Ottoman city2's borders in black once they expand out after 25 turns. basically 1NW of sheep would be a half-city for a long, long time.

i believe we'd also have to re-negotiate with ottomans although that's no biggie.

maintenance costs suggest we need to found few, high-quality cities. i'd rather settle the river spot + waste a few (poor) tiles.

logistically is the only point of view under which the lake plant makes sense but even then i thought the whole point of negotiating with ottomans was so we could go relatively light on defence on that front. we should focus defences in midas' folly anyway. i'm going to vote for the river location.

england slightly complicates things but i somehow doubt pacal of england is going to rush us, particularly once we dangle the carrot of the tech alliance. i swear i hadn't even heard of them until now, so i'm guessing they haven't met many neighbours. it's a powerful bargaining chip if we've read their contacts situation correctly.

our aim with them is to secure, maybe not as strong an agreement as with the ottomans (we should by all means try, but it's unlikely), but at the very least some sort of NAP. again the aim is to free up our defences where they're most needed. i wonder if england have met france? if not, we can definitely work the situation to our advantage. france WILL be back. that's one front we need to defend with real military. and...

i'm going to take the opportunity to flog a dead horse and say for what feels like the 100th time that rome scares the crap out of me and i think we're making a grave mistake by not contacting them. we've been playing it safe all the way so far yet we're just taking it on faith rome will attack someone else (it doesn't sound like they'll be in the alliance).

i think we're taking a huge risk.

[wild speculation] ilios if the "major shift" is to mono, we'll need assurances at least from the members of the nascent tech alliance they won't target it. i think our chances of landing it are slim to none anyway[/wild speculation]

FYI, lake plant has the following tiles

peak x 1
lake x 2
plain x 4
grass x 3
plain hill x 1
river grass x 6

(forest x 9)

wheat
sugar
horse

[meatbalz]

wow i called it (mono)

edit: oracle doesn't require masonry

edit 2: have a word with krill and see what he says.

masonry = 144, requires mining OR myst (we have both)
mono = 216, requires masonry + poly (only get 1 discount)

@ 20 raw beakers, masonry = 5 turns w/ 1 overflow, mono = 9 turns
@ 25 raw beakers, masonry = 4 turns w/ 0 overflow, mono = 7 turns

so @ 20 raw beakers figure 14 turns, @ 25, 11 turns

[Ilios]

Ok so we'll found Horse city at the original location then, and try and get an early NAP with England to saveguard the south.

Regarding Rome, I believe I mentioned Brute will meet up with Ruff's unit not far from him. This means he can move east afterwards, and try to find Rome.

Regarding Mono, don't forget a lot of teams will be simply saving gold until they get Alphabet, after which they will head for the techs assigned. Only the team heading for Monarchy should go through Mono and/or Priesthood. Add to that the prohibitive tech and horrible upkeep costs, I'd be surprised if anyone else heads for it. I think getting Mono around T70 is pretty decent on MP, and in these conditions.

I'll see what Dazed has to say about it, and then have a chat with Krill

[dazedroyalty]

I'm very glad that we are going back to the original plan of settling city #3. I do hate to waste tiles but I think our original location is simply a much better city site. As MB pointed out, with maintenance costs being so high, quality is very important!

I'm open to monotheism pending a discussion with Krill. It's definitely a gamble, but I trust Ilios' C&D. Who is the other team that has Polytheism already? Do they have a religion? I'm not up to date on current religious matters. Who founded Hinduism? Krill or the other team? If it was the other team, then I highly doubt they'd go for monotheism right away.

[Ilios]

I don't think there is another team with Poly except for Krill, who founded Hindu. I'll see if I can hook up with him tonight.

In other news, India has forwarded a picture of Ruff's warrior's current location. We had assumed this map is 64x64 tiles, and thought our units were pretty close to each other. I should check ingame, but I don't think his warrior's location is close to us...



So that means we're wrong about our warrior's current location in relation to India's capital, or this map is bigger than we thought.

I sent a message back that we would check it out, but that it doesn't look like the location is close to us.
You can find a screenshot of known lands to our NE at post #311 in our thread.

[meatbalz]

great, let's see what krill says. my line of thinking since before the game even started (check the 1st page) was he'd try to run the table on religions. i'd imagine he's got plans to land judaism + we'll need to make concessions, possibly no foreign missionaries for x turns or something along those lines.

i just don't see why he should trade us the pre-requisite techs and allow us to land a religion just out of the goodness of his heart is all - we'll have to make it worth his while.

the good news is we're on good terms with him and as i said earlier after RBP1 he's probably looking for a couple of solid friends. not sure if india's wariness has permeated to the diplo between them but regardless we're a perfect candidate to ally with him in the medium term. he may well be thinking along those lines as well and so maybe willing to cut us a bit of slack.

another thing to consider is we do have a strong UU that comes into play when egypt's is useless - we might want to consider putting the offer on the table of a landknecht or two further down the line.

some of the things we could put on the table
- no foreign missionaries for x turns
- 1 or 2 landsknechts
- beaker credits on future tech trades

[Ilios]

Request from Ruff via India:

Ruff asks if you can send him (via us) a screenshot of what you can see and he will match up the terrain and see what he can figure out

DJ Civ

i suppose we could send a screenie of our NE lands with Brute's current position, but I don't know how to send a screenie with just the map.
Any volunteers?