RBP3 [SPOILERS] Hannibal of Byzantium (Bobchillingworth, ManiaMuse & SleepingMoogle)

[SleepingMoogle]

We should have HBR no later than turn 90 or so, but probably earlier than that. It's really hard to say with tile swapping/improvements and city 4 down the line.

About India, perhaps we should send them a message to set up a specific time for the talk? It's entirely possible we're simply unlucky with meeting each other online.

[Bobchillingworth]

I had our chat with India- rather important info, it's saved as usual. We're going to try to set up a 3-way conference at some point between India, ourselves, and Maya.


-Super Important Note-

*All details of the chat are strictly confidential and are not to be shared with other civs, even with our allies.*


Some (but not all) important points from the chat:


-We are India's best friends right now (!) [Well, if friendship is measured by formal arrangments and openess of conversation, anyway]

-India also has close ties with Maya (we knew this) and Aztec.

-In the upcoming wars, India requests that we do not attack Aztec. In return they will not attack Babylon. Neither of us has any interest in attacking Maya.

-India's ideas for targets are... England and Krill, same as us

-India is aware of our main goal of destroying all giant alliances, and seems to be okay with it, and willing to work with us, at least to an extent, to that end. Combined with the intel from Kyan, this suggests that the days of the CAN may well be limited. Kyan predicted collapse in under 20t, although I think he pulled that number out of his ass.

-India has not met France and was not aware that they had been left out to dry by the other CAN members. India is disturbed by this revelation.

-Tech idea right now seems to be: Maya gets Metal Casting, gifts it around. India goes Machinery afterwards. France goes Feudalism, assuming they can survive. Once we get Machinery from India and Feudalism from France, we tech guilds. Darrell would like a number of 'phracts gifted at a 2 hammer per 3 beaker ratio for the cost of machinery and does not expect us to gift him guilds after we tech it. Also, France has decided that they want Feudalism, but they haven't been informed at all of our plans with India (and shouldn't be at this time), so we will need a back-up researcher for the tech; probably either us or Maya.

-India is ammenable to possible long-term cooperation, but we both agreed for right now to just work together through at least guilds and the ensuing wars, and go from there.

-We should probably come up with the long-term NAP agreement soon; we're committed to one, but no one has suggested a length. Perhaps just keep renewing our current 20T one (17 or 18 turns left I think)?



All in all it went much better than I had anticipated. I was surprised to learn that we're the only team that India has any formal agreements with (for comparison, we've had a long-forgotten but to the best of my knowlege still in effect NAP and a settling arrangment with Kyan for dozens of turns now).

[SleepingMoogle]

Interesting chats to be sure! At first glance, the one snag I can see is that if France is beelining Feudalism, we (again) have no friendly Civ who is learning Mathematics. Did Rome already settle on a tech? If not, we could try and persuade them to go for it and trade it for HBR when they finish it.

Will probably do a more thorough read later on.

[SleepingMoogle]

It looks like we're back up and running! The current turn was already finished for us, so there's a few more hours to wake up from our current hibernation.

[ManiaMuse]

Cool. We might want a backup plan for feudalism if it turns out that France get invaded.

[SleepingMoogle]

Alrighty..

I just logged in to make some moves for T74. All workers have been moved according to the turnplan (which doesn't change too much except that Eden Prime now has access to a mine if extra production is needed). Then I moved to military units.

In between turns, the barb Warrior near the Citadel didn't impale himself on our Chariot, and instead moved onto the mine SE of the Citadel. Thermopylae had about a 96% chance to win, so I sent him in.. and lost!

Really sorry about that guys. I'm sure I mentioned somewhere that my luck against barbs is completely rotten, but I never thought we'd lose to those odds. To add insult to injury, the barb still has 1.5/2 health remaining and now threatens our capital, defended by a single Warrior.

Any ideas here guys? I don't really want us to have to switch production and whip out added defense, but do we really want to take the chance our Warrior (with max fortify and 40% culture bonus) would be able to fight him off?

[Bobchillingworth]

Ouch. Ah well, had to happen at some point, and attacking it was the right move. I suspect the barb will promote and pillage; the odds of losing our warrior on defense should still be really low, even if the barb promotes to CR (do they ever promote to anything beyond the Combat line anyway?). I haven't actually done any simulations, so I could be wrong, but don't we have like 90% defensive bonuses on our warrior, including the innate 25% city defense one? Biggest problem I forsee, short of a disasterous loss at our capital, is that the barb decides to pillage around the area instead of attacking- but we can get another chariot to the region soon, right? I guess I'd just stick with the settler, I'd rather not delay that copper.

[ManiaMuse]

I think the code means that the barb will pillage this turn and then attack the capital the following turn at the same health that it is at the moment.

The odds should be hugely in our favour with cultural/fortification/warrior 25% city defence bonuses, I would take the risk of not whipping anything and letting it suicide itself.

Bit annoying though, might want to change the plan to get another chariot out sooner.

[Bobchillingworth]

Hey Kyan is thinking of going for HBR now, it'll take him about 6 turns; do we want to focus on either maths or Hed Rule instead? He said that he'll trade the tech to us once he gets it.


Whether we do or don't want him to research it for us, we should let him know via email as soon as possible, so either of you send one if you can.

[SleepingMoogle]

Alright, I did the rest of our turn without altering production at the Citadel (so we'll finish the Settler next turn). The chariot closest to the Citadel is being recalled, and if the warrior doesn't attack the citadel next turn, we can reinforce it. Other than that, I gave Jenkins his Woody II promotion and let him heal (he needs 4 turns to get to full strength).

Not too many other things of note, other than Krill having moved a War chariot onto the same tile where the Agincourt is healing. I don't think France has visibility on that tile so we may want to let them know.

As for research, we still haven't invested anything except the free beakers into HBR so we can still switch. If Babylon finishes HBR in 6 turns, we might as well since we'd need longer than that. Right now we can't research Monarchy (yet) as we don't have Monotheism or Priesthood (Incans should start researching the former once they finish Archery), so Math sounds like the logical pick. Do we know what Rome is researching at the moment though? We should try and avoid overlap.