RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Dr. Nomadic]

Is your plan to just engage in a build-fest or to go out and attack eventually? And if the latter option, will the attack take place in the Renaissance, using The Taj Mahal's GA to switch to a wartime government?

Also, would there be a way for you guys to rename your civilization "British Raj?" I just thought it would be a good touch.

[Kyan]

It's not so much paranoia. To borrow a poker phrase, I just hate leaving myself with no "outs." Much better to just cover your workers on the edge of your land and pop your borders.

By the way, you are a total wizard with your demographics and score analysis. I'm looking for that "bowing down" smiley face, but I guess RB doesn't have it. Ah well.

?

its 'bow' within colons.

[antisocialmunky]

Are there anyways to sabotage your own score without drastically undercutting your position?

[timmy827]

Are there anyways to sabotage your own score without drastically undercutting your position?

Not really. Score is pop, land, tech, and wonders. Maybe if there were some way to "give up" cultural control of land not in any cities radius, containing no resources, and having no strategic importance...

Whipping and drafting your entire population into units will decrease your score as military units themselves aren't counted. Of course, if you use them to stomp a neighbor, the resultant score increases will shoot you right back up.

[Savage Seahorse]

Turn score is cumulative. Calculated:

(Territory + Happy Citizens*2 + Content Citizens + Specialists) * Difficulty

Riding unhappy citizens without any specialist seems to be the only way to keep the score down.

I think you should name the civilization the "Quebec Separatists" as long as Dr. No is throwing out possibilities.

[Sullla]

Savage Seahorse, you have the wrong Civ game there! Civ4 has no "happy" versus content citizens; I think that formula is from Civ3. The in-game score in Civ4 is based on four things: land, population, technology, and wonders. I could say a lot on that subject, and it can get quite complicated, so you'll just have to trust me (or look it up at CivFanatics).

Ummm, we don't need a civ name either. We're the Killer Angels, remember?

Turn 72 ticked over very late US East Coast time, so I just logged in and did some movements without ending turn. VERY eventuful stuff:

- Chamberlain revealed 2 Greek cities, including a new settler in Athens!

- Not to be outdone, Jubal Early found Broker's borders and made contact!

- In a very surprising turn of events, sunrise + regoarrarr have finished the Oracle!!! What a nice break for us, the irrelevant team gets the free tech. They haven't picked it yet, since they haven't logged into the game, but hopefully something that helps keep them in the game.

- I offered Mortius Open Borders, as he requested.

- I covered our two exposed workers in the east with Jeb the chariot, just to be safe and not offer Nakor a tempting target.

- I have not finished Worker E (Eylau)'s moves yet; he's going to chop the silk forest, but let's wait until Dantski moves first, so that there's no chance for him to attack and steal our worker. Turn is therefore left unfinished.

Pictures on all of this stuff coming tomorrow, now time for bed! :zzz:

[Swiss Pauli]

- I offered Mortius Open Borders, as he requested.

Return of the zombie civ

[Sullla]

OK, nice catch Swiss Pauli. Naturally I meant Whosit there... gotta watch those zombie civs, ya know!

Here's some pictures from the current turn:



Here's Corinth, just where we thought it would be. Note that there is no road connection between Athens and Corinth (a huge error in MP!) and the horses - while improved - are not connected to the trade network, so no chariots can be built yet. The city of Corinth has a monument inside (which is surely what was whipped there on Turn 66 a little while ago) and 17 shields in the box right now.

A quick note for viewers: generally speaking, this isn't the best way to get culture in a new city. A better option is something like what we did at Fredericksburg, chopping a forest to complete a monument without setting back the city's early development. (Better yet is using a missionary to spread religion into the new city.) Falling back from size 2 to size 1 is something you'd prefer to avoid, because a city at size 2 works double the tiles! That makes a big difference, especially if you have two food bonuses and can increase growth even further at a larger size.

Corinth also appears to be one tile OFF the coast, which is kind of a dumb placement...


Here's Athens, which was whipped down to size 2 last turn to produce a settler. Athens is working the unseen clams resource and the irrigated rice; this is unquestionably a weaker double food resource combo than our irrigated wheat + cattle. (Jowy gets 9 food, 0 shields, 4 commerce while we get 9 food, 3 shields, 2 commerce.) Athens has a granary for infrastructure, which was a good build given all those settler double-whips. Jowy has built his last two settlers in Athens via the double-whip. While it's true that the city will regrow quickly, at the moment there's an enormous difference between our soon-to-be size 6 capital (with 4 cottages + library + Academy!) and this small capital with a single cottage. Note again the unchopped forests and lack of road network here...

We have to hope that settler isn't going for the White location. At the very least, Chamberlain should be able to watch and see where it goes! If White gets taken, we'll likely fall back on the weaker Black spot. Not good, but not the end of the world either.


And here is Broker and plako! Now we can double back with Jubal and explore Nakor and Dantski's territory on the return trip.

In other news:

- Still waiting on sunrise or regoarrarr to log in and choose their free Oracle tech.

- athlete discovered a Classical tech with is extremely likely (95%+) to be Iron Working. We'll have confirmation from the Power graph next turn.

- Dantski conducted two whips this turn, a single whip at Djenne (city now has 60 shields, so possibly a lighthouse?) and a double-whip at the capital of Timbuktu, which I expect is a settler. He said his next city would go down by Nakor's border, so let's see if that's true...

- Still no word from Jowy about extending our NAP; I'll separate diplomacy into the next post.

- Everyone else has been whipping their population recently - likely for settlers for city #4, which we already have - and so we are really getting some separation from the pack. We have 14 population at the moment, and Whosit is the next closest at 9! We have half again the population of the next closest team, and every city is working improved tiles!!! Yeah, you'd better believe that makes a difference.

With all the new info, all of you should really check out the Excel file, which is bright and colorful with all of the teams we've now met!

http://www.cassiopeiathedog.net/Images/P.../RBPB2.xls

If you think that we're going to post in the public thread that we've met everyone, however, you're crazy! Why would we tell everyone that (?)

- Oh, and Great Scientist + Academy next turn!

[Sullla]

As usual, these emails have not been sent yet to leave time for some feedback. We'll start with Jowy, who has been very quiet lately:

Dear Jowy,

How are you doing? We haven't heard back from you in quite a while, aside from our in-game chat. There are only a couple of turns left before our current Non-Aggression Pact wear out on Turn 75, so we'd really like an answer on our proposed extention. If a further 25 turns (to Turn 100) is too many, we're willing to hear your counterproposals. But please give us an answer one way or another as soon as possible.

If you don't answer us by the end of Turn 75, we'll have to assume hostile intent from your team. Speaker and I really don't want to do that - we've greatly appreciated our cooperation so far - but we have to have some kind of answer.

Hopefully we can chalk this whole lack of response up to holiday busyness. :)

Sullla
The Killer Angels

Kind of hardball, but we really do need an answer. And if Jowy says nothing and lets the NAP run out, I think we do have to assume hostile intent there...

Letting Whosit know that we've accepted his offer:

Dear Galactic Emperor,

As you can see, we've offered Open Borders in-game. Best wishes to Bib Fortuna on his continued scouting mission.

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Tidying things up with IKZ:

Dear Iamjohn, Kodii, and Zeviz of IKZ,

OK, based on your last email, we consider an NAP in place between our teams, lasting until Turn 100. Good luck way over there in the east!

Sullla
The Killer Angels

A short message to Nakor:

Dear Nakor and DMOC of Holy Rome,

I noticed that we have both been spending some Espionage Points against each other. Perhaps we could agree to spend enough EPs to see one another's bar graphs, and then switch our efforts to other teams? I understand that if we both spend 43 points against one another, then we'll both have Demographics visibility. How would something along those lines sound to you?

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Finally, we got this message from regoarrarr. Poor guy is the only one doing diplomacy right now, it seems:

Hey guys,

Still no word from Jowy,

We were wondering if you might be able to suggest to him that we would react favorably to clauses along the lines of "we'll never attack you this game" and maybe even a "we'll always come to your defense with a team unless we have a pre-existing NAP" to boot.

We'd write them himself but we've written him quite a bit lately and don't want to over spam him

dan.
regoarrarr
India

I think we tell them the truth of what we know thus far:

Dear regoarrarr and Team Byzantium,

First of all, congrats on completing the Oracle! That was quite a surprise to me and Speaker. I hope you were able to slingshot something useful.

We've been hearing very little from Jowy in the past week too. I don't know if this is due to the holidays eating up lots of time, or if he's being secretly hostile, or what. The only time we were able to hear back from Jowy was when I grabbed him in-game for a quick chat.

Jowy said in that discussion that he doesn't like or trust your team; I get the feeling that he would be perfectly happy to let you be killed off. We've made the case three different times that he should support your team for balance-of-power reasons, but it doesn't seem to be doing much good. We even offered to supply Jowy with our copper if he would send you his iron, which didn't get a response.

We're doing what we can over here, but we can't make Jowy help you if he doesn't want to. Sorry about that, I don't know what else to tell you. :(

Sullla
The Killer Angels

I'd be interested to get your thoughts, Speaker.

[Ruff_Hi]

Corinth also appears to be one tile OFF the coast, which is kind of a dumb placement...

errr ... didn't you guys just put down a city 1 tile off the coast too? Hmm ... pot, kettle, black expression comes to mind