RBP4 [SPOILERS] - Shaka of Zulu (sunrise089, regoarrarr, and friends)

[regoarrarr]

I thought that was what the vassal remark meant...

Yes that is what I meant by that

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Darrelljs:

+392874 Gold Ergo Sum is your dedicated lurker and can crush us like a bug in Pitboss 4 if we cross him.

[novice]

I don't follow the RB mod thread, but could your mod incorporate that in-game (the broadcast feature and the "grey" anonymous modeif not the "black" fake mode)?

I think Krill already implemented the black mode. It requires getting yourself into a drunken stupour first, though.

[regoarrarr]

Some diplo coming in overnight - not looking good for any type of "anti-plako" coalition

First - Locke

LOL well you know how business works. You make high offer and see if other person will bite on it. I understand about Alphabet deal. I will not cut off extra zero, but anytime you want I will send you F4 tech screenshot for 50g. That is final offer and I think it is fair. We would like to work with your team. I think we could be good allies. Definitely no border issues with us.

Nakor signed long NAP? That is a shame. It sounds like him though. I get feeling he does not like to confront teams. Always wants allies to do his work for him. He should not have signed long NAP when plako obviously going to attack WK. Leaves no options. Well I guess we are stuck with it.

Our team signed NAP with plako to turn 130 before. He asked us to renew and we did not. So we can threaten plako at least (although he is probalby not scared of us). We are also happy to boycott cut off OB trade routes like I said before. We are happy to cosign agreement with other teams. I can try to talk with other teams if you want. We are on pretty good terms with everyone I think. They did not listen to boycott earlier though.

I dont have much practice with diplo stuff. I know Civ stuff more. You will probably do better getting coaliton together then me. I will talk to any team if you think it help. Well good luck and all. :D
Locke

[regoarrarr]

Then Nakor

Interesting positions we are in on this map indeed! Just gotta stay alive and become a power ourselves, don't we?
To bad TGL isn't that great on this map...

I think Plako will end his landgrab after WK is gone untill he has another good tech advantage. And I feel that we are the most likely target to be hit next in that scenario since our lands are a lot better connected then LP and you are. We share a much bigger border. Therefore, we got to stay friendly with the guy, I'm sure you understand.

Not signing a ned NAP once our current one ends is a good option. We should have enough defense then to warrant not signing a NAP. But that won't be untill T165. When will your NAP's end with Plako?

For what it's worth, I don't think Plako is becoming the Spullla of this game, there are more people up there, fighting for it and I'd like to see them do the fighting while the smaller ones, like the both of us, can grow and catch up.

We've got a scout near Luddite/Mackoti and there are indeed some impressive stacks there as well. Thankfully we don't border them...

Kind regards,
Nakor

[regoarrarr]

And from sleepingMoogle

Having been a participant in PBEM3, I can say that most of Sandover's gains were due to his neighbor Twinkletoes making a number of questionable decisions in setting up his Civ and during the war when Sandover called him on it. It led to him folding pretty quickly. I guess a similar scenario may be taking place right now (despite WK putting up a fight), but even in the best case scenario for Plako, he would end up with 1/5th of the land, rather than Sandover's 1/3th. Still, another reason why Sandover was able to become such a dominant force in PBEM3 was because the other Civ's never truly united against him. It is possible the same might happen here, more likely so if we fail to persuade other Civs, but I don't see it being quite as dramatic.

Perhaps we can simply agree that Plako is the most imminent threat right now, and that LP may replace him in the long term? :-)

For now we aren't really in a position to openly oppose Plako, so probably the best thing to do is to avoid antagonizing him while we make plans and gather allies. Getting Locke on board would be a start, but I'd definitely look at Nakor/Gaspar as well share a border with him. Between the two of them, they could put out some serious pressure on one side while we can approach him from the east.

I had a quick look through our messages, but couldn't find any real NAP agreement. But since we've been working together for a while now, I don't mind agreeing to a T180 one (or a longer-term one if you wish).

-SleepingMoogle

[regoarrarr]

Okay I was asked what my next steps are

1) send an email to plako trying to get something
2) send an email to "everyone else" (defn of everyone still up in the air)
asking if we're willing to do anything and if not then i'm not going to stand on my own and we'll just have to deal with it
3) potentially raze mycenae, depending on the responses to 1) and 2)

i think a Cr1 c1 impi should have 85% odds vs. a warrior on a hill

[regoarrarr]

Email sent to plako

Hi plako,

How's it going? I figure at some point here we should finish up our conversation.

I'm sure you probably spent some time thinking about things - so did we. After thinking a bit, I am hoping that we are able to come to an arrangement that works for both of us. As I have stated before, it would be my preference that we work together vs. the other powers, rather than having to work on another team against you.

So as I was driving home from work last night after we chatted, I was feeling kind of bummed. I felt like we had been giving and giving up things, but hadn't received back anything from you, so I was even wondering if you even WANTED to be friends / allies with us? I know that you have said that you do, but for all I know, you're currently planning on marching that stack north once you're done with WK and trying to take us out too.

For example, as I mentioned yesterday, our initial plan before talking with you was that we would take Knossos and Mycenae. After discussing it with you, we were willing to cede those cities to you. I can understand if you don't feel like that is a big deal (that they were YOURS beforehand) but I hope you can understand that it was a big deal to us. After that we proposed that we have a front city 2N1W of the pigs but you didn't like that. We offered to throw in the cows city SW of Bob's Fork but you didn't like that. You made mention of a city near the cows north of Knossos but even that you said you didn't really like the border.

Do you understand why I'm feeling frustrated? It's doubly frustrated that I feel like you are taking lands that WK had already ceded to us. It's bad enough that you're taking the Greek cities we were planning on taking, but to even go further north into lands that we had already divided is even more! I do understand that Greece is ... uh... "under new management" ;-) but still!

So what do we do now? Is there a way that we can still work together, or are we going to have to go to an uneasy ceasefire where we both have to always watch our over shoulder?

Hope to hear from you soon

[regoarrarr]

Sent this to the 7 folks that aren't plako or WK

Hi guys,

So over the past day or so, I've talked to some of you about what I called ... "the plako problem" :-)

WarriorKnight is going down hard as most of you know, which is going to leave plako with twice the land of everyone else. I've been trying to talk to him about it, but he doesn't appear to be willing to cede any of the lands, including open lands that were north of Greece and closer to us.

So the question is what, if anything, are we, as the community of other civs going to do about it? Like I said, I've chatted with a few of you, but the feeling that I've been getting is that nobody really wants to do anything right now.

I understand that things aren't always that simple - most of you are very far away and can't really send military - and I agree, military intervention at this point probably doesn't make sense. But I've heard reluctance to cancel NAPs, or not renew them, or close borders.

And that's fine if that's the consensus. Without really getting into specifics, I will say that we in Zululand are willing to do some things that plako probably wouldn't like, but we're not going to do it on our own.

So are there concrete suggestions that each of you would be willing to take? Or do we just punt it and say that we'll deal with plako later (gulp!)

[regoarrarr]

So what about, like, some actual game talk instead of all this diplo blibber-blabber?

Founded 2 cities this turn (our 17th and 18th)

First - in the north, the darrelljs inspired city of "Miami"



Astute lurkers will notice this was the site of the worker micro shot I posted a few pages back. Of course, after all that planning, I realized that a better idea would be, after James roads the PFH, Harry can make it all the way to the pasture, starting that 1 turn earlier, rather than roading the plains river tile.

Miami cost me 3 gold.

Then we founded Paddock (for the horses, of course!! )



This was the first inland city we have founded, and cost 6 gold. Note the worker 1N who has been chopping the last 2 turns and finished off the chop into the granary, which will complete next turn. We'll pasture and road the horses and the worker I whipped this turn in River (bottom of pic) will start farming the wheat, since River's borders expand next turn