[SPOILERS - PBEM29] spacetyrantxenu - Mao of Babylon

[Commodore]

Ding him on the tech thread, he seems responsive to shaming. What was his initial post? Something about being better about playing his turn? Quote it at him, calling out publicly is often the best way to goad these things.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I've already posted the timer. Too bad he can't see my (hidden) diplo modifier! Bwahahaha.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T16 - Not much to report, except that Sian continues to run EPs on me. He needs to go meet other people. I'll send an email to Sian and Catwalk about EP allocation to see if we can keep graphs on each other. Or not.

I have the workers moving around and got around to naming them for NPR newscasters and hosts. Audie Cornish is our first worker followed by Brian Naylor (maybe he's a more minor correspondent but I couldn't find a more familiar "B" name than him).

Photo dump:

In a surprising twist, it looks like we'll have to name our next city Mitt Romney as he captured Iowa by 8 votes. At least that saves me from having to name it for Rick Santorum. I expect he'll be gone before we get to building a third city. Also, we may have to spam cities in a hurry or the primaries will have essentially crowned Romney by then. If that happens we may have to just name cities for the worst of the Republican crowd. I would love to whip Rush Limbaugh into the ground. If someone captured that city I would insist it be razed.

We need more turns to play so I don't have to discuss our naming scheme anymore. Also, shame on C-SPAN, I found this year's coverage of the Iowa caucuses to be lackluster. What was with the call in show??? They should have been showing the old people counting votes and talking about how great Michelle Bachmann is (was!).
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"Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the kind of spirit that I have, too" -Rep. Michele Bachmann, getting her John Waynes mixed up during an interview after launching her presidential campaign in Waterloo, Iowa, where she grew up. The beloved movie star John Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa, three hours away. The John Wayne that Waterloo was home to is John Wayne Gacy, a notorious serial killer. (June 2011)

Batshit crazy!

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[spacetyrantxenu]

Emailed Sian about EP allocation:

[COLOR="Magenta"]Dictator Sian of Sumeria,

What is your position on espionage point allocation? To placate the paranoid generals in my army it is my preference to maintain demographics visibility on everyone we meet so we can properly defend ourselves in the event of someone sending a nasty stack of axes our way. It seems that you are spending in excess of what is necessary to view our charts and we're wondering if you'd like to reallocate your espionage points onto someone else so that we can begin catching up on your spending against us. If you're building a huge army in secret and would not want us to know about it of course it is your option to not reallocate your EPs, I just thought I'd suggest it as one great dictator to another in the pursuit of ongoing friendly relations between our two states.

My diplomats do not report recent contact with you, how are things in your mighty empire? (If I find that you have sent us messages and my diplomats have not passed them to me, I will of course slaughter them until I find a messenger who does not need to be shot, as Republican protocol demands). I assume Sumeria has a busy corps of cartographers out in the world seeking out its secrets. Would you care to discuss any of their findings? Our own scouts have been busy, but I think they tarry out in the wild out of some (unfounded) fear of returning back to my palace....If I ever hear from them perhaps we could exchange their maps for yours?

I know you're a busy despot running an entire civilization on your own, so I won't take up more of your time. If you ever want to chat I'm usually available.

Hail Ronald Reagan!

Mao,
Chairman
Republican Party[/COLOR]

Edit: I'll catch Catwalk or Slowcheetah on chat to discuss this with them. They're easy to get in contact with.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Any chance I can get a shot from inside the city? After the long break between turns (ahem), I have a hard time remembering tile allocation/city build. Bowman IIRC to grow to size 3.

As a summary, we have 2 workers, are working farmed corn and pastured cow, hooking up Ivory for size 3, then building settler? Have we determined a certain site for city #2? I think getting some roads to that site and getting it on the board a turn sooner isn't the worst move, esp if you'll need the roads for the trade route. Don't want to have the city not generating that +2gpt (two-way trade) at this point, as that will largely pay the maintenance. I think this is a better play than roading forests at this point. You'll need the roads between to speed troop movement anyway.

Looking further ahead, what is the tech path beyond pottery? I think delaying mining/BW much further will quickly hurt us, so mining should probably be next.

On demos, you seem to be doing well. I think food + hammer >>> GNP at this stage in the game, and even more so when you can whip, so let's move toward BW.

Any other nagging questions we should discuss?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

What do you know about Sian from other games? Was he in your SG5? Do you know if he has met others yet? Since you met him right around the same time as Team Kitty, I would assume they've met. EP allocation could be a result of your no-NAP policy.

Last thing, I suggest taking a screenshot of your capital with your tags in place and then removing all your markers on the game file. Just keep the screenie up on your other monitor. It's hard to see what's going on in your screenie with so many tags. Also, it will be easier for you when you trade maps so you don't have to cover up the markers. My $.02.

[Ceiliazul]

Emailed Sian about EP allocation

Edit: I'll catch Catwalk or Slowcheetah on chat to discuss this with them. They're easy to get in contact with.

What kind of EP agreement would you like to have with each team?

[spacetyrantxenu]

What kind of EP agreement would you like to have with each team?

Preferably one that lets me have demos on them without them seeing ours when we are building a massive army

More realistically, I'd just like to avoid an EP war with someone when it isn't necessary in the early game. As the guy who won't sign NAPs, I'd like the security of knowing if someone is building Way Too Much Military™. At this point we can only generate 4 EPs per turn from the palace anyway so running up a huge lead on someone isn't that productive unless you have something to hide. I think with Slowwalk we only needed about 32 EPs invested to get their charts, but the cost is around 35 right now with Sian, so I think he has charts on me and is going to keep me from catching up. If that's what he wants to do, it's OK, just inconvenient since I won't be able to catch him for now if he's determined to spend his points on us. To wit:

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]
currently, i have no reason, for or against, to redistributing EP's and have most interest in spreading it out evenly, untill there's a pressing reason not to,

as for exploring, i'm just about finding to the east what i found to the west, but would like a bit longer before sharing the knowlegde tlil i've sorted out internal business, such as planing infrastrucutre[/COLOR]

So his plan on EPs is to do what he wants anyway, so it looks like we won't have an agreement there. And apparently he wants to find El Dorado before he exchanges maps. That's fine too.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Any chance I can get a shot from inside the city? After the long break between turns (ahem), I have a hard time remembering tile allocation/city build. Bowman IIRC to grow to size 3.

Boldly, I've emailed you last turn's save. You still have the password I hope? You are correct on the tiles and build. Bowman will complete a few turns after we reach size 3, then I'll use a warrior and/or the bow to cover our workers as they work tiles at the edge of our land. No use in encouraging a worker steal.

As a summary, we have 2 workers, are working farmed corn and pastured cow, hooking up Ivory for size 3, then building settler? Have we determined a certain site for city #2? I think getting some roads to that site and getting it on the board a turn sooner isn't the worst move, esp if you'll need the roads for the trade route. Don't want to have the city not generating that +2gpt (two-way trade) at this point, as that will largely pay the maintenance. I think this is a better play than roading forests at this point. You'll need the roads between to speed troop movement anyway.

That's a good idea about spending the turns getting the second city settled sooner. I think I'll get a cottage down on the FP first, though, so that will be four good tiles, so build settler at size 4? Is that late? We do need to figure out where to put the next city, though.

Looking further ahead, what is the tech path beyond pottery? I think delaying mining/BW much further will quickly hurt us, so mining should probably be next.

On demos, you seem to be doing well. I think food + hammer >>> GNP at this stage in the game, and even more so when you can whip, so let's move toward BW.

Any other nagging questions we should discuss?

Yes, the plan is Mining --> BW next. We can't delay that any longer. At size 3 we'll have +6 food for fast growth if we work the cottaged FP over the ivory camp, so we can whip regularly especially with the early happiness from the ivory. I'm not great with whip micro and figuring out where the 2- and 3-pop whip thresholds are, so I have some work to do there if we want to be efficient. But anyway, with 2 workers out we'll probably want to chop the settler once we figure out where to send it.

I'm not worried terribly about being last in GNP since we're surely the first with 2 workers. Let's get the city working those improved tiles and catch up. I'm more worried about having researched non-worker techs early. We'll find out later if that was a bad decision.

[Commodore]

Yes, the plan is Mining --> BW next. We can't delay that any longer. At size 3 we'll have +6 food for fast growth if we work the cottaged FP over the ivory camp, so we can whip regularly especially with the early happiness from the ivory. I'm not great with whip micro and figuring out where the 2- and 3-pop whip thresholds are, so I have some work to do there if we want to be efficient. But anyway, with 2 workers out we'll probably want to chop the settler once we figure out where to send it.

Whip thresholds are pretty simple, actually, on quick speed its 20 hammers per pop. Thus, for example, if you are making a settler with +6 food surplus, +2 hammers for ivory, +2 hammers for plains hill, that's 10 foodhammers per turn. So as a settler is 65 hammers, put one turn into it (to avoid whip penalty), then next turn it is at 10/65, or 55 hammers remaining. Thus, a three-pop whip (60 hammers) finishes it, with 5+whatever hammers as overflow (60-55, plus the foodhammers put into it during the turn).