RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - De Gaulle of the Egyptians

[Lord Parkin]

Why didn't you build the granary/lighthouse combo first?

Normally I'd never build Moai without a Granary and Lighthouse first. However, because of the extreme lack of hammers available at this city, this seemed to be one particular case which warranted the unusual build order. Or at least that's what I gathered from my limited testing at the time.

[novice]

Normally I'd never build Moai without a Granary and Lighthouse first. However, because of the extreme lack of hammers available at this city, this seemed to be one particular case which warranted the unusual build order. Or at least that's what I gathered from my limited testing at the time.

OK, I understand your reasoning. I think building the Moai with whip overflow could have worked, though.

[Lord Parkin]

Whip overflow would have only got a small part of the way there though. In a city with more food that might have been a better strategy, but with only the Pigs it didn't seem to work that well in my limited testing. Anyway, I didn't pay that much attention to it at the time. Perhaps the build plan was indeed suboptimal in that city - but nobody commented about it at the time I posted my initial plan, and my testing showed that it worked out well enough, so I went ahead with it.

[novice]

Is your plan to start Moai Statues directly after the axeman in Madagan? The city seems relatively production poor, so I would have figured that we'd be getting a good portion of our hammers there from whips. If that's the case, shouldn't the build order be Granary-Lighthouse-Moai Statues? Even is the intent is not to whip, it seems sub-optimal to have a city sit for so long without a granary.

Well, we wouldn't be growing beyond size 6 while building the Moai Statues. I agree though, I'm not sure building them straight away is the best option. A Granary is only worth slotting in before the Lighthouse and Moai Statues if we're intending on whipping them, that's for sure. It would definitely delay Moai though, so I'm not sure if we want to build it after the wonder. Hmm, need to do some testing there I think.

[Lord Parkin]

Right, and I did some very limited testing which didn't suggest whipping would be a significant improvement. It's possible that my testing wasn't rigorous enough, but without any numbers from anyone else to prove otherwise I just continued with the default plan.

It may not have been the best route, but I think it worked well enough. In any event, there's nothing that can be done to change it now. If you have the calculations to show that an alternative whipping method would have achieved better results in that city, then by all means feel free to post it though.

[Lord Parkin]

Locke sent out an email to everyone except Plako, which I'd been expecting from an earlier conversation we'd had.

Hey there. This email going to all teams in game except plako. This is gonna sound kinda weird but hear me out. We are all losing to plako. Some doing better than others but all losing. You all see his GNP graph spikes. He has 14 cities and most food and most production and most GNP. If we do nothing he just outtech us and eventually kill us. WarriorKnight first and then the rest of us. That is bad result.

So what do we do? Most teams are way far away cant go to war. Also I think war coalition has been tried in other games and it doesnt work well. Because someone doesnt send units and then they get ahead while everyone else fighting. But there is something else we can do. plako has Currency tech. He is running economy off foreign trade routes in 14 cities. That is 28 trade routes to other civs. If we all CLOSE BORDERS with plako, he lose all them at once and economy crashes. It is a lot of income will hurt him a lot. So I want ask everyone to join together and close borders together with plako. Has to be everyone though. This will not work if only some of us do it. It is in eveyones interest to close borders with him. Even if you are friends with plako. We need to present united front. This is peaceful boycott as a group.

Some of us have units in plako borders. We do right now. So if we do this it should be together on turn 110. Give time for units to move through plako borders.

So tell me what you think. I think it is best way for us to slow down runaway. It is easy and you dont have to do anything. Just click to cancel OB. If we all do it together plako cant get mad at any one team. You will still have plenty of foreign trade routes OB from other civs. We need EVERYONE in on this. Lets do this. :D

Locke

PS Please dont say anything to plako. Even if you are friends theres no reason to help him win easier.

On the one hand, taking Plako down a notch or two would be quite nice. On the other hand, while maintaining open borders wasn't explicitly a part of our arrangement with Plako, it was probably implicitly understood. It would be a shame to throw away our long-term plan with Plako over something like this.

There's also the fact that lately Plako's dropped down below us in GNP, and we're now the ones ahead of the pack. If this plan of Locke's succeeds, the next obvious target for mass closing borders would be us. That obviously wouldn't be good.

Hopefully we'll be able to get an easy "out" anyway, since I doubt every single player (particularly Rego) will actually want to close borders with Plako. And if other people aren't closing borders with Plako, then we can simply argue that there'd be little point in us closing our own borders either.

[Lord Parkin]

We're sticking to break-even research for now (even though it's slightly inefficient) so that our GNP doesn't appear too extreme to anyone else. With all the talk about closing borders with Plako going around, it seems the sensible thing to do isn't to go showing off 300-ish GNP numbers right now if at all possible. If someone else starts getting higher numbers again, we can consider switching back to binary ourselves.

Theology will be finished in 6 turns (even accounting for switching between 40% and 50% research), so all going well we should found Christianity on turn 110.



Our demographics are still good. I'm not sure if it's Locke or Plako with the 185 GNP at the moment; we'll find out in a couple of turns once the graphs catch up.

[Lord Parkin]

Something seems a little different this turn. For the first time since near the start of the game, Plako's not quite first in score. A temporary situation, I'm sure, but interesting nonetheless.

Seems that it's indeed Plako just behind us in GNP.



We've apparently taken over Luddite in MFG, bringing us to #2 there. Luddite completed the Colossus this turn, incidentally, which wasn't much of a surprise given that he Oracled to Metal Casting.

[Senseless]

Have you heard anything from the other players about Locke's proposed OB embargo on Plako?

Also, it would be interesting to gauge their reactions to our taking first place in the rankings this turn. Hopefully it's not a condition that will persist if coalitions can form based upon taking down players based on score. Regardless, we have been up there for a while now, so I wouldn't be surprised if many players have been formulating an eventual plan for us, as well.

[Lord Parkin]

Sure, there have been a few messages sent to "reply all" since Locke's original message, most of them last night. I'll post them below along with my interpretations.

Nakor seems to be uncommitted, but fishing for information from others.

Thanks for your thoughts, Locke, we'll take it into consideration.
It would help a lot if others would share their thoughts, though...

Cheers,
Nakor

Luddite seems a bit dubious about it, but it sounds like he'll "go with the flow" if everyone else is doing it.

I'm torn. On the one hand, plako's putting up some very scary demographics right now, so the logic of this makes sense. But on the other hand, I do feel bad about punishing someone just for playing well, when he's never really done anything bad to me.

I'm not wild about it, but if everyone else wants to do this, I'll go along with it.

WarriorKnight is, understandably, pushing all for it. After all, he doesn't have Open Borders with Plako anyway, and from my most recent chat with him it sounds like he's planning on heading to war very soon. So he has nothing to lose and everything to gain if everyone else suddenly decides to help him out indirectly.

Well, the two most important things to realize is that no matter what way you put it, there is no prize for second place in civilization, and currently plako is the runaway leader. Therefore if the rest of us want to have a shot at this game, we need to slowdown/stop plako somehow. True plako may not have given all of us a reason to do so, but the truth is, he has by being the person closest to the finish line.

If anyone is concerned about losing trade routes, I would be happy sign OB with any and all of you to make up for it. I would highly encourage everyone to go through with this, as it's probably the only thing we can do to give all of us a chance to catch up.

WarriorKnight

SleepingMoogle seems like he'll go along with it if everyone else is, but is also fishing for information.

Hey all,

I can see the value in this, but there's been little response since the initial mail was sent. If we're going to do this, it needs to be agreed to and done by all of us. Even a single Civ keeping their borders open renders the effort pointless.

-SleepingMoogle

Finally, Locke sent out yet another mail to pressure everyone. I can't say I particularly like this - it feels a bit like bullying everyone to make a response to what is, after all, not really a completely logical and watertight plan. Yes, I did tell him off the record that it sounded like a reasonable plan if we could get everyone on board, but I'm a bit uncomfortable with him broadcasting that publicly without asking me. I think I'm starting to see the first flaw in Locke's brutally honest diplomatic approach to everyone.

Yea come on guys. We are pretty good friends with plako and he seems like good guy. But this is game and you have to try to win. Do you want to sit and wait for plako to beat you? Feels like some people are just going through motions right now. Game is boring. This will make it more interesting. :D
regoarrarr, Nakor, luddite, WarriorKnight, and Moogle have at least responded. Where are rest of you? Still waiting on Adlain and Parkin and mackoti. I even talk about this with Parkin earlier and he thought it was good idea. If you are reading this then send email and let us know what you think.

We are not asking you to attack plako. Just close borders. It takes one click on diplo screen. Help out WarriorKnight before plako attacks him LOL.
Locke

Apparently Rego was the only one to reply in private to Locke, which is annoying because he's the one I would have been most curious to see the opinion of. I guess I'll try and hit him up in chat to see what he thought.

My thoughts: Basically, on the surface it sounds like a sensible plan. However, since Locke's original email, we've rocketed up in both GNP and score and are now - arguably - approaching a similar level to Plako (minus the three extra cities). What's to stop Locke (or someone else) trying to start a similar campaign against us in the near future? And what about after that - he's in third place, what does he expect to happen once he approaches becoming the next runaway?

At some point the logic breaks down, because not everyone is going to close borders with everyone, and if you embargo two or more people then the embargoed folks can just open borders with one another. However, I'm still not keen on going ahead because of one major problem - spoiling relations with Plako by breaking an implied agreement. Sure, if we're both embargoed later then we can open borders with one another again, but the diplomatic damage wouldn't be undone.

Right now, the best situation would be for this whole thing to fall on its head due to at least a few people being uncertain about closing borders. If that happens, we can safely "stick with the crowd" and not ruin our reputation by being the only ones not to close borders.

Fortunately, it seems this plan may be headed that way anyway, simply due to most players' natural cageyness. We can probably assume that those people who haven't replied by now may have at least some reservations about the plan, and even out of those who replied, most were noncommittal and fishing for information from others. Psychology may actually work in our favour here, because most people (excluding Locke, obviously ) are fairly cautious by nature - unwilling to reveal their own hand before others do, and not keen to be the first of the group to actively take a potentially controversial step.

Then again, psychology could work against us if enough people take that first step that everyone else feels compelled to follow suit. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, I suppose we should think about how to draft a noncommittal yet vaguely positive response to pacify Locke. Or perhaps we should just remain silent and watch how things turn out on turn 110, given that apparently he'll feel compelled to share anything we say with everyone else anyway.