RB Pitboss #1 SPOILER - Hatshepsut / India

[regoarrarr]

Email to Munro - note that the last few paragraphs are pretty much the same as what I sent to Elkad. I am trying to sort of "repair" (or build) my relationship with these guys (adn Dreylin), with the idea of avoiding the dogpile scenario I mentioned in those emails.

Honestly, I think it's probably too little too late, and is a definite source of failing in my diplomatic game here. Broker has spent the last 50-100 turns having these guys' backs, so it seems odd that they would dump him for me in the end

Hi Munro,

So you saw that I have given notice of canceling my NAPs with everyone (by initiating the 10t cool down period). There were a few reasons for that, but mostly it was to provide flexibility in case shadyforce and dsplaisted declare war on Elkad (as seems imminent).

The reason I sent it in an email out to everyone is to not tip them off necessarily, though I doubt it was very effective as a ruse.

I would still like to have a NAP with you (and Dreylin and Broker). Broker and I have already agreed to one - what would you say to something like a 10-15t cool down period - no gifting units to other civs to war, no RoP war (people using your lands to attack me) or active espionage missions. Though some of those clauses don't really fit us since we're all the way across the world from each other.

I just wanted to make sure that you didn't take my email as any kind of indication that I wanted to attack you.

So how do you see things proceeding in the game now? What are you trying to get out of things? I have to say, there are a few civs trying to really push me into attacking shadyforce now/soon, something that I assume you would support.

I do see some advantages for me in doing that, but I guess my big problem with it is that I see you, Dreylin and Elkad all very much tied up with Broker. So let's say that the 6 of us attack and kill / cripple shadyforce and dsplaisted. I'm having a hard time seeing how that won't lead directly to the 4 or 5 of you (with sunrise as the maybe) declaring on me, or at the very least embargoing me.

Does that make sense to you? What are your thoughts on the likelihood of that?

Hope to hear from you soon

[regoarrarr]

wrong game

[regoarrarr]

Shadyforce sent a brief email after my NAP cooldown activation

Interesting, I half expected you to be turtling up and pushing for a cultural victory. Is invading me going to win you the game?

My reply

I thought I might hear from you! I was worried that you might take my email as a sign of an impending invasion. That was actually the main reason I put in that last paragraph. I really don't have any concrete plans of invading anyone.

One of the main reasons that I sent out that email was that it appears imminent that you and/or Daniel are going to be attacking Elkad shortly and I was not sure that was in my best interests. Now, to be sure, I'm not entirely sure that it's NOT in my best interests either. But this at least gives me some flexibility. Of course that does come at a price of some security, but I guess I felt like taking that risk.

Honestly I think that anyone chasing cultural or space victory in this game, at least before the very very end game, is only deluding themselves. If I started turtling and going for a cultural victory, I think the odds that the remaining 5 powers in this game, yourself included, would attack me (or at the very least embargo me) would be pretty high. I don't see this game ending very shortly if at all before 2050.

But what are your thoughts on the game? Where do you see things going? What are your aims for the game? I know in the past, you have mentioned to me that you thought your chances of an outright victory were low, but they seem like they would have gone up at least some with your recent land acquisitions.

So if you're interested in discussions about our short or long-term relationship, I'd be interested. I don't really relish the thought of attacking you, both because I feel like we've had a good relationship, even (or perhaps especially) during the times when we found ourselves on opposite sides of the diplomatic spectrum, and because tactically speaking, our USA/Canada length border is likely to be very annoying on both sides during a war.

So now what?

[regoarrarr]

Reply from shady

I understand. Though the invasion of Exploit was clearly not in my best interests but rather than give my 10 turns notice and attempt to force your hand away from such a move, I decide to simply send you emails voicing my concerns but ultimately accepting that if it had to be done, it had to be done and I didn't get in the way. So I am disappointed by you taking the opposite course of action. But I guess you gotta do what's best for you.

Dunno kinda smells like a bit of shenanigans to me

[regoarrarr]

Reply back from Elkad

I am planning to be at war with Shady soon. Preferably with the support of others. As the smallest remaining civ in the game with 5 cities, I sure can't go it alone. I never agreed to any arrangements with Shady, and his recent post indicates he feels no obligation to give me warning either.

dsp continues to annoy me (most recently by leaving me out in the cold on Artillery). And he is accumulating gold and positioning his fleet (sail stuff that needs upgrading) to transport units over the channel between him and I. Obviously he is a problem as well. And the score leader...

As to my agreements with Broker.. I've been just agreeing to whatever for a long time now, not through any sense of loyalty, but because he was keeping me alive. All the aid he (and dreylin and sunrise) promised in my prior war with Shady never actually appeared, other than funding my research.

I was actually in back-room negotiations with Exploit to jump in on his side, but he folded too quickly for me to do that. Munro was supposedly onboard as well, but he was obviously playing both sides. He agreed to help Exploit in messages, but (according to Broker), Munro gifted a stack to Broker to be used against Dler.

Obviously I don't think I'm going to win. But I'm sure not going to give up. Since dsp and shady are apparently never going to give up their quest to destroy me, and Broker keeps promising help that never actually arrives, that makes you my best option.

I'm pretty evenly matched with Shady in my local area. If you drew some of those forces off, I'd be in good shape. Without that, it will be a meatgrinder for both of us, and he has more production. I'm also considering pre-emptively striking dsp's fleet, before he upgrades it. Just wish I had a Blitz destroyer

[regoarrarr]

Replied back to Elkad

Hi Elkad,

Thanks for the note - some good stuff in there.

I actually did an airship flyover of (part of) your lands this turn and was impressed at the quantity of units that you had, given your manufacturing base. Shadyforce doesn't have too terribly much around, though I assume his army is SOMEWHERE. Please don't pass this on to anyone especially shady himself (not that I think you would), but I have city visibility on much of his empire.

I saw that dsp did not provide Artillery to you, and like I said, that was one of the reasons I decided to cancel things with shady and dsp. I was talking a bit with Broker and he had mentioned the possibility of not trading Electricity over to dsp, and researching Artillery himself to provide it to you (and deny Electricity to dsp). But I guess he decided not to do that, though he did mention to me that he (and Dreylin) were planning to somehow provide you with artillery units. I'm not exactly sure of the details so hopefully for your sake that materializes.

I am definitely intrigued by the possibility of cooperating with you but at this point I don't want to promise anything because I am not sure what I can provide. I don't want to give promises that I can't fulfill. As you have probably seen, I am currently in Organized Religion and am building up my manufacturing base. I'm nearly done with Factories and Coal Plants and will then start cranking the units, and then we'll see where we are. I have 10 (well 9 I guess) turns to gear up for whatever happens. In the meantime, I can provide intelligence on what I can see if you let me know what you're looking for.

It's interesting - I'm not sure if you know, but if you look back in your spoiler thread, you'll see that your predecessor (ZPV) and I had plans to knock out shady in the very early game. Well, actually it was mostly if not all ZPV - in exchange for my allowing him to settle a horse city between my current cities of Fairfield and Newtown (since razed by shady), he was going to build up a Numidian Cavalry army and eliminate or at least cripple shady. I asked if he wanted me to participate as well and he said that he didn't really need me. Unfortunately, due to the extremely fast tech pace in the game, by the time things got really going, we were into the Age of Elephants, and obviously Numids vs. Elephants is anything but a fair fight. But it would be seem to be an interesting bookend in the game to go down that road again

Lastly, I saw your post about coal in the public player thread - do you need coal? I currently am supplying both Dreylin and Broker, but with recent gains one of them might have their own coal - so if you still need some, let me know, and I can see what I can work out to free one of my resources.

Talk to you soon

[regoarrarr]

Having a nice chat with Elkad in-game. I believe he will be pre-emptively declaring war on dsp this turn and sinking 6 of dsp's fleet, the turn (or 2) before dsp's oil is connected.

I did a brief hammer potential overview of my cities

Code:

CITY    Base Hammers    Max Base    Levee?    Engineers?    
Fairfax    12    57    N    3    
Green    50    56    Y    3    Shop over Ivory
Lockland    29    51    N    1    
Mason    27    49    N    0    
Mariemont    4    47    N    0    
Indian Hill    9    43    N    1    
Evendale    20    42    N        
Arlington    37    41    N    0    
Camp Dennison    19    39    N    0    
Cincinnati    36    38    Y    1    Shop over Ivory
Fairfield    22    36    N    0    7 towns could provide 21 more base
Montgomery    29    36    N        maybe more from Harrison
Newtown    13    35    N    2    
Sharonville    23    31    N    3    
Harrison    18    29    N    0    4 towns
Terrace Park    20    28    N    0    
Loveland    7    28    N    0    3 towns
OTR    1    28    Y        
Cleves    1    22    N

What I was trying to do was figure out where to put the Ironworks. This shows that Fairfax is my highest potential hammer city, but obviously it has a lot of infra that it still needs to roduce, as it's only size 5 right now and is working on its forge still.

My original plan had been to put it in Mason and that still seems like a decent plan.

Was definitely wishing I'd have realized the importance of levees, and not placed Fairfax (and Camp Dennison) 1 tile off of rivers Or actually in CD's case, it's on the crook of a river so doesn't count.

Not included in the Max Base total is potentially workshopping over towns, which I could do if it comes to that, or workshopping over my 2 ivory resources, once ivory becomes obsolete, which is at Industrialism, which is the next tech I'm researching.

[regoarrarr]

So the other reason I wanted to do that hammer count, was to check my cities for my "Stealthy Space" endeavor.

There are 16 possible parts to the ship (including 5 casings, 5 thrusters and 2 engines), not all of which might be needed.

If I figure forge, State Property, factory, power plant and aluminum, that's 210% doubler towards a 1200 hammer casing.

If I figure I want it done in 8 turns (oh and I forgot a Golden Age, so let's add say 8 to each base hammer count just to be on the safe side), the smallest base hammer count that can do it is 41.

That is 49 in a Golden Age, and 49 *3.1 * 8 is 1215.

There is actually 1 part smaller than that (Cockpit - 1000h), which can be done in 8 turns by a 33 base hammer city in a GA.

So the top 4-5 cities need to be on
* Engine(s) (1600 - no doubler),
* Docking Bay (2000 - aluminum)
* Life Support (1000 - copper), but Ecology potentially researched after Apollo
* Stasis Chamber (1200 - no doubler)

which means I need 10 cities besides those that can do 41 base hammers per turn.

Survey says.....

No Looks like I have 4.

Time to check some Golden Age assumptions - next post

[regoarrarr]

Okay, most cities have at least 10 tiles that will gain production in a Golden Age, up to a max of 21 (Lockland, my Moai city)

That still leaves me with only about 10 cities that can do 49 hammers per turn in a GA, so we may need to do something along the lines of

* Workshopping over towns
* Capturing good production cities from shadyforce

I also realized that in my newer cities, I've got a LOT of forests (mostly but not all tundra).

Each forest, with a resource doubler, counts for 93 hammers. So each forest that can be chopped into a (wooden?!?!) spaceship is equivalent to about 4 base hammers in a city.

I also realized that a railroaded lumbermill is equivalent to a workshop (on grass, a workshop is 2/3/0, vs. a grass forest which is 2/1/0, +1 hammer for lumbermill and +1 for railroaded lumbermill).

Plus I have tricks up my sleeve with overflow and/or starvation that might be able to put me over the top in a few of those borderline cities.

So I don't think I NEED any of shady's cities to do it, though obviously I'm sure he's got plenty of good production cities that could help.

But I think what I should do is drag that war out as much as possible, then somehow sign peace with shady right at the Apollo moment (ensuring that his lands can't be used against me for RoP war purposes).

This still doesn't deal with sabotage, but I guess that's why I'm planning for 8t builds when really I only NEED 10 turn ones?

[regoarrarr]

Let's talk tech path.

It's currently T205, and T206 I will finish Flight. The techs I need with current research times are:
* Industrialism (10)
* Radio (Trade)
* Rocketry (8 )
* Satellites (11)
* Plastics (12)
* Fission (8 )
* Fusion (14)
* Computers (12)
* Composites (13)
* Superconductors (12)
* Genetics (12)
* Robotics (14)

So that is 126 turns of research . If we assume maybe a 20% increase in research speed, as well as trading for 1/4 of those beakers, we've got more like 75 turns till the "Apollo" moment, call it T280. VERY rough estimate, but probably enough that I can start making plans for things.

Another thought I considered is that depending on how close other civs are to various victory conditions, I may be able to launch a really SLOW spaceship (like 1 thruster, 1 engine). If nobody can catch me because I've really gone out of the blue (i.e. everyone's far from culture and nobody has even built Apollo yet and woudln't be able to build all the necessary parts to beat me to AC, then I can launch a slow one.

Still need to figure out the exact mechanics of how many thrusters / engines corresponds to how many turns, but I got plenty of (like 75! ) turns to do that!