RB Pitboss #3 [SPOILERS]- Suryavarman II of England

[antisocialmunky]

We should shoot them off a message asking them where the settler is going and talking to them about how HRE and us were negotiating a border agreement in the direction of the settler and how that's all been shot to hell with France. Maybe suggest a new border agreement. Also we should try to defog that one tile up there. We might be able to get a good site.

Don't really need to tell them about our feelings of the site, just inform them of our annoyance so they have fair warning when an army of chariots come down on their heads. Cyneheard wants to talk to Krill about it. I am inclined to hit them after they plant the city but before they can really get the copper up(roaded etc). We should decide what to do with our EP this turn as well. Do we keep it on the Babylonians or switch it to France we we can get their graphs in 11 turns?

As for TUO, I'm inclined to defog that one tile(may be able to settle another city east of BR) eventually. I kinda feel like shadowing that settler. Another possibility after talking to Krill is scouting the rest of France's borders out under the guise of finding the Portugese. With the pause, wars, and reload. It should take a while.

[Cyneheard]

Krill should be getting the Oracle this turn. I think we misinterpreted "T62".

Looking at the tactical situation, we COULD keep France from getting the copper. Our warrior is in a perfect position to mess with their settler, and we could finish a chariot this turn from BR. However, the question then becomes "can we successfully hold the copper site"? That, I'd be less sure about. Also, France is in the cartel. That limits our options.

I think these early wars are over strategic resources. That's got to be Sullla's trick: No one has easy access to both copper and horses. If we don't have iron, then Sullla has made a mistake. These copper sites are at least as much of a reach as the Poly demogame, if not more.

I really wish we'd taken the Maya instead. Oh well, water under the bridge. I checked, we didn't meet Krill before the pause happened, so we can't try to talk to him, either.

[Cyneheard]

Had a chat with Krill, and with Babylon.

Krill:
We're going Monarchy. EOT69, he'll finish Mono, so on T70 we'll turn on 100% science. Therefore, that's our target date for getting BR's library up. Barracks -> Library for London would be ideal, although that depends on what the situation is with Mali. Probably shouldn't be an issue, but they're also not going to be the most responsive diplo-wise.

We're going to concede the copper site, since we're not going to fight France for it, it's closer to them, and they're there first. I moved TUO SW, didn't see anything interesting. We should talk to France about where they're going to settle (without Creative, they're somewhat constrained on where they settle. The spices should be ours). Looks like there's no reason to cut a deal with the HRE.

This group is trading around 9 techs, with 9 teams, and all the ancient-age stuff. Krill is going to be sitting on a pile of gold for when these techs finish up. I suspect we'll personally want to go Feudalism next. And, if you're not familiar with Terry Pratchett's work, read TVTrope's Discworld bit http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Discworld. He's playing Vetinari far too well.

Also, if we can talk to India, who seem to be fighting at the moment, we should be able to land the Great Wall. Lots of bolded stuff to try and clarify things a bit.

Krill: Hi guys, just met you in game. Egypt here
me: awesome, was wondering when that was going to happen, this is Cyneheard
Krill: Hi mate
me: so, how exactly is the tech deal going to work?
Krill: Basically, out of the following teams:
France/Carthage/Egypt/Ottomans/HRE/India/Aztecs/Portugal/England
trade all ancient era techs so that no one has anything missing
Each team then researches a Classical era tech, and trades it once it comes in. Some teams have done ancient era techs, so they don't get the big expensive classical era techs, for instance Aztecs are choked and have Archery, so they won't be teching MC. Portugal have tech Sailing. India have teched masonry.
me: Ah, nice. We have stone. What is the situation on The Great Wall?
Krill: It's yours if you want it as far as I am concerned
me: of course, we'll have to meet India. so, what are you getting after Alpha? or is that your contribution?
Krill: Just remember that if you get a Great Spy it can't leave your borders
me: right
Krill: After Alphabet I'm getting Monotheism to speed up Monarchy
me: ok. What tech are we researching? We'd been told somewhat uncertainly that we're going for Monarchy
Krill: There is a good chance it is Monarchy. Just wondering, but what is your bpt at 100%, and how much gold do you have saved, and how much gold do you lose at max science?
me: well, we don't have writing, so libraries will come up soon once that comes in. 74 gold, +13 gpt @ 0%, -11gpt @100% (24+1bpt), we're still getting cottages down, and will get furs T65-67
Krill: Yeah, thought you would be. You are a good team to research Monarchy
me: It looks like Sullla decided we're one of the "our nearest copper isn't ours" civs. There aren't 16 coppers on this map. Is anyone trying to intervene on the side of the Aztec in their war? Incan power's crazy
Krill: It is being sorted. [OOC: CLEARLY noncommital there]
Aztecs aren't going to get wiped out, you can be assured of that
me: And Alpha's going to be in next turn, right?
Krill: t63 is tech trade day
me: yay. while we work on micro plans, when do you expect to finish Mono?
Krill: Well, the times of 2 turns per day are probably over and done with now, this game is about tio get very violent
me: just a little, we're signing NAPs with Babylon and Mali to give us some time to grow, especially since we're not going to get the copper that France is about to claim
Krill: You got horses right? They are the more important resource
me: yeah
Krill: HBR should be finished around t70ish
me: and IW soon after
Krill: Yup. OK, just a heads up, but your warrior needs to keep on heading NW to meet Ruff for Archery
me: ok, not surprising
Krill: Once you get HBR, slaving out those HA, and you won't miss copper
me: right, we've got 3 granaries in 3 cities already. Sury's been great.
Krill: I like that leader. Most balanced ancient era leader IMO
me: Babylon is trying to get them and Mali into our group. Not sure that it's terribly useful to let them in, though. 11 teams would be too many.
Krill: Yeah, the game is likely to hold at a 9v7; it would be hard to get everyone to agree to the additions
me: HRE never consulted us about France being in
Krill: That all hapened in like 12 hours. I sent an email to everyone about the heads up, but I didn't have your contact, so you must not have been forwarded the message.
me: aye, we were very confused when we then met France, and they told us about the group
Krill: Hmmh, do you know of Darrells' idea to make a world map from all of those teams in the Alliance?
me: no, but I like the idea
Krill: Well, if you take pictures of your land (with redundancy), at 1280*720 in windowed mode, and send them to me, I can forwadrd them to Darrell, who will add them to the world map, and then the world map will get sent to you via a mutual contact. Everyone who contributes gets the world map. more people that contribute, better it is
me: ah, ok. We have a SS from Mali that probably won't be in that mode, and then we can throw in our lands
me: Pericles: do me a favour, send krill the following message: "Absolute Bastard. :P " Babylon isn't the happiest of civs right now
Krill: Would you mind sending them this message for me?
Krill: "Babylon, I'm sorry that things have worked out his way. I sent my starting warrior north, and met the civs up there. If I had sent it south, things would be different...for one, Korea would be alive, and you might already be dead "
Krill: "Hopefully we can still be friendly neighbours. You know that we have a tech group set up, and I fully expect you to set one up as well, but that doesn;t necessitate that we all go and wage war on one another. Just because we aren't trading techs, doesn't mean that we should cut off all diplomatic communication"
me: How did you get around Korea's starting warrior?
Krill: They sent it somewhere. Are Babylon to your south BTW?
me: yeah, somewhat east. Mali's slightly west
Krill: OK, something else for you to send, if you don;t mind... "I am somewhere to your NE. if you want to send a scout, warrior etc to meet me, I'm more than happy to try and meet you half way to reduce the travelling time"
me: he knows where you are already
Krill: thought as much, but doesn't hurt to try and be friendly with them
me: not at all. you have War Chariots already, right?
Krill: Um
me: no horses?
Krill: for public infomation purposes, yes?
me: oh, not for Babylon's ears
Krill: I have horses, they'll be hooked next turn, and I could have WC the turn after that. I just don't have any right now, but if anyone turns up on my borders, even right now, I can get a WC out before my horses get pillaged
me: ok, just making sure. You know, if France wasn't in this group, they would be in trouble. We're in the perfect position to mess up their copper city, and claim it for ourselves. But it's closer for them, so we're going to wait for IW and pray that's around. Have you met France officially?
Krill: Not yet
me: should we tell them to go east?
Krill: and fwiw, France weren't supposed to be in the group, but Incans decided to play stupid and Rome decided to stick with Exploit. they know they need to go east to meet me
Krill: tbh I'm not fussed if they take a while.
They are likely going to research Currency, so they'll need a fair whack of gold to complete that
me: yeah
Krill: OK, just looked at the numbers for Monarchy. I should finish Mono end of t69, which gives you a further 8 turns to save gold
me: ok, that'll be plenty of gold; we'll be at 4 cities fairly soon
Krill: also, don't expand beyond 5 cities
me: not a problem, our 6th is a lot worse than our 5th
Krill: it will also crash your economy. Set up a decent front city asap against bablyon/Mali [OOC: GIBRALTAR NEXT with the to-be-whipped settler from BR] and populate that with a few units, chariots etc
me: right, that's our next city, should be ~T70
Krill: Great
me: Rome's got to be well into IW
Krill: Yeah I reckon t75 tbh unless they stay small, in which case sooner, but they can't get as many preats, so they aren't that big of a threat
me: and have a settler built when IW comes in
Krill: If they only have 2 cities and a settler, they aren't playing it that well
me: true, we had our 3rd settler built T45. Or, 2nd settler.
Krill: I still don;t have a third city
me: yeah, but you're sinking 160 hammers into the Oracle, and don't have BW
Krill: Yup, Didn't have time to tech BW...
me: Oh, what are the expectations of this group after the classical eras come in?
Krill: That is up to everyone... I only set this thing up to recieve Pottery and BW.
me: haha
Krill: I suppose you could call it overkill
me: You're referring to yourself as Havelock. There is no overkill.
Krill: True, but everything has to be well balanced, and that balance maintained, so that life without me is worse than life with me [OOC: That's either a quote or a near-paraphrase.]
me: yeah, you're playing the part very well
Krill: FWIW, I don;t see this alliance holding together much beyond the Classical era, People are still going to want Allies
me: this game's big enough for 3 groups
Krill: but I reckon it will devolve into funding pairs and a researcher, oh, it is big enough for 6 [OOC: 5, he means] 3 groups won;t work though. 2 groups will group together to destroy the third, so 4 is the minimum, most likely small groups that have mutual agreements will join other teching groups to form largert military alliances because of hte geopolitical situation. I mean, ideally for me, me, Carthage, and you group together as 1 group after it all falls apart etc. That would be a decent group, with you and Carthage as quite large civs, and me with multiple shrines to fund Carthage teching
me: and we can be funders or researchers, that's the beauty of Stock Exchanges, We'll certainly talk about that later
Krill: Sure.
me: So, can we get a list of the 9 techs that are up next? Or is it 8, and you've done your part?
Krill: Alphabet/Maths/Monarchy/Currency/CoL/HBR/IW/MC/Construction
me: no one's going for Aesthetics?
Krill: Well, construction or Aesthetics. ah, afk, need to go eat now
me: ok, I should as well, thanks for everything

[Cyneheard]

Babylon's chat will be up later tonight; it's on the rbpb3chasm account, if you two want to read it.

[haphazard1]

Very interesting chat with Krill...lots of info in there.

Note that he listed both Ottomans and Aztecs...and the Ottomans have now declared a three-way war with Incas and Aztecs. No idea what is up with that. One truly incredible city site between the three of them that they all want? Inca/Aztecs so weakened by fighting that the Ottomans think they can jump on both of them? Something else?

Anyway, sounds pretty good for us if the tech trades start as expected. We get Writing soon, and some turns to get libraries up everywhere while continuing to pile up gold. We should also get the ancient era techs filled in, giving us Hunting for our furs and Masonry for our stone.

Will we want the Great Wall? With the stone it will be very cheap, and we can always use some GPP. Security from barbs attacking our homeland would be nice, although there are enough civs on this map that I do not think barbs will be a big problem overall. Guess we wait and see how long it takes to meet the right civ for Masonry.

The combined world map idea is interesting, and I see no problems with contributing our knowledge. We haven't really explored all that much, and we will get a much better idea where everyone is.

I really wonder about all these wars breaking out, though. Fights over copper? Or horses? We could have fought France, but I just don't see the point when we have more important things to do. As long as we keep our core cities strong and get all our first ring, we can worry about more land later. I am not sure which should be next -- DP or Gibraltar. DP may be the stronger city long term, and getting those wines under our culture so we can get more happiness will be very useful.

[antisocialmunky]

Well we would have fair advantage. We can knock over the city quite easily with 1-3 chariots but the political fallout may or maynot be bad. The main issue is that it owuld take quite a while to subdue France and it would get quite drawn out.

To be honest, these sorts of dilemmas and making the best out of crap land are just how Sullla rolls. :-\

PS. Along this line, what do you think Babylon will give for fishing to work those lake tiles? One wonders how Hangolia would have been in our situation...?

[Cyneheard]

Gibraltar is stronger than DP: 2 food resources to 1. Wines are nice, but Hereditary Rule is our happiness solution. That extra dry rice makes a huge difference, and both the rice and the wine are equally vulnerable to pillaging.
Also, if we're going to have a fight on our hands soon, it's going to be Mali, not Babylon. And Babylon wants us to be friendly with them later, so we don't have to worry as much about war as most of the other members. Babylon has signed OBs with us, so Gulliver isn't going to get kicked out. Since they haven't said anything about where he moves, he's going SE next turn to search a little better.

Micro:
Animal Farm is going to get some chops going, finishing the current chariot and then getting the library, but that will be it for infra. Until we get Monotheism, I think London should be pure hammers: mines over cottages. Still building the cottages, of course, but not really using them. We need some military.

So, thinking about London:
Right now, London is at 5 pop, 3t from growth (so T65). Right now, its happy cap is 5. However, the furs will come online on T65.
Two things to decide:
1) Priority of cottages versus mines. I think mines win right now.
With 3 mines, we get 11hpt. 8hpt w/ 2 mines.

2) Whip. We're going to run out of happiness room at London unless we do a 2-pop whip. With the barracks nearly done, the only options are:
a) Library
b) HAs when they're available. That won't be in time. A whip at London is going to be necessary.
c) Workers: we could. A library at London's more useful for when we go 100% science, a guaranteed 3-4bpt.
d) Settler: A 3-pop whip could be done. We'd be switching Beaver Rock to a chariot this turn (the chops are done), and having London whip out Gibraltar's settler T66.

So, the Library plan:
Barracks this turn (T62).
Library next turn (T63).
2-pop whip library on T64 (5->3), regrowing to size 4 at EOT.
Finish Barracks T65.
Finish Chariot T66.
Probably grow to size 5 (max with the whip penalty) EOT67 or 68.
Get another chariot T69? Ideally, the chariot will finish the turn before HBR comes in.

The settler plan:
Build barracks T63. Begin chariot.
Grow to size 6 EOT64.
T65: Build settler.
T66: Whip for 3 pop.
T67: Finish chariot. The chariot could be bumped up to T65, and the settler then gets built T67 instead of T66.

I need to know THIS TURN which one we're going, since Beaver Rock's actions depend on it.

[haphazard1]

I am cautious about more military at this point -- we are already paying several gold per turn on unit maintenance (3 gpt last I checked, over the weekend). We need the capability to produce more military quickly, but I do not think we want a bunch of units sitting around costing us money every turn. Our tech rate would crash, even running off saved gold.

Sticking to the tech rate theme, I think we do need cottages. We need more commerce to pay for our maintenance, especially if we add another city (or two). And if we do not work them, they aren't going to grow.

I favor the library plan for London -- we are CRE, we get cheap libraries, we should put them in as soon as we have the tech to do so. Let's get that extra culture, and those extra beakers. Why wait?

For future happiness...Calendar will be huge for us, but is a ways off. Wines will be nice and Monarchy is already in the plan. Lots of HR units == lots of unit maintenance, although we can build even more cottages as we grow I guess.

If we are expecting to face military threat in the very near future (and I agree it would most likely be Mali if we do), we could use a few more roads to connect London and AF. We can't escape river crossing penalties yet, but we should have roads in place so that our 2-movers can be positioned to reinforce either city.

Gibraltar before DP is good, you are right about the extra food. Founding it is going to cost us, though. Why did we ever vote for Emperor level, anyway.

[antisocialmunky]

Gibralter before DP. Not sure which way to go. We can get the city down one turn faster but our commerce will suffer which isn't going to be helped by more units. :-\ Not sure what the best solution is. One thing for sure though is that we need to start working our cottages more to grow them. Another thing is that Conan needs to go on patrol around Mali borders so we can see any attack coming and pile units into Gibralter.

I'm inclined towards Settler -> Chariot. We can get the library out later when we start researching after we get the needed techs. It may also be useful to do axe for chariot trades at some point with HRE or France.

[Cyneheard]

EDIT: We're going 100% gold until T70, when we get Mono from Krill. Just to make it clear that's the plan; we need that long to get enough gold anyway.

I defer to the majority on the cottages. London returned to the cottage, and will prefer cottages over mines as able. Still, we're very split on whipping the Settler or Library out of London. We can still go barracks-chariot-settler (Whip)-library: It might finish T71 or so instead.

Unit maintenance is going to be expensive. We're just going to have to deal with it. The furs will help a lot. We'll get 2gpt when AF grows and works the horses again.
Let's look at what we have for a military at the moment:
3 exploring warriors. We do need a full set of contacts, so that's necessary. Gulliver just needs 1XP for Woodsman II, which will be a huge help for that.
Conan. We need something beyond just warriors. Especially with barb warriors about, as he's proven.
5 workers: Well worth the cost. "Too many workers" is nearly impossible, and we're about to hit 4 cities.
3 garrison warriors. Necessary. And they'll be HR happiness soon enough (~20t).

The problem is, running low military can get us killed. Yes, each unit costs -1gpt, so we want to get the best bang for our buck. Still, we can't go 1-unit-per-city. Also, what are our cities going to build? We have 2 barracks built already, and 3 granaries. Yes, we can get libraries done soon (the chop's going to accelerate AF's by a bit). But that's really it, and those are cheap. Even with the whipped settler, we could then knock out the Library. We don't need libraries online until T70, and the library would be done pretty close to that (EOT71?).

Units we are going to need, medium-term (by T80-85):
A sentry net. 2 chariots (Conan where he is, at least until Mali expands north) in the S-SW, and probably 1 to the SE. Knowing what's coming is worth having to shell out some gold and hammers for the unit that's going to tell us.
Some Horse Archers + a chariot or two for mobile defenses. I think we'll want to keep a large portion of them in London: they'll have the mobility to go where we need.
Gibraltar will need some garrison units, an archer, an axe and a spear would do well for holding it.
HR happiness units: Those can be anything. Not just archers, since we'll need to be prepared for mounted and melee units at some point.

We have iron, or else Sullla has some explaining to do. Don't worry about axe-chariot trades. If we don't have any iron, then this game is lost, no matter what we do. Period. However, if the iron is far enough away from us that we have to defend that city (say, to our SE), then we need a military.

I'd rather have Conan be a fixed sentry, than trying to have him patrol a specific route. He's on a hill, with no forests or hills around him, it's hard to get better than that. The only reason to have him mobile is if we're hunting for XP, and I think we'd be better off having a second unit being a more mobile patrol somewhat to Conan's NW. Or having the 2nd unit (chariot is preferred, since he can run in the event of an approaching force, or hit a stack of axes) spell Conan.

A good suggestion from ASM: One of our cities should build a stable. Animal Farm looks like it's the strongest; it's got plenty of hills, great food surplus, and is well-developed.