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

[regoarrarr]

Quite the summit here all of a sudden!



So after whining and whining about how we haven't met anybody, we met another 2 civs this turn. We've now met 6 of our 9 counterparts. Only plako, luddite and Lord Parkin left to go.

We got a brief "how's it going" notice on the diplo screen from Nakor but nothing from Adlain yet. I'll send them both some notes here in a bit

[regoarrarr]

In game news, Bill the worker moved on to the hill to chop the forest next turn. It's T55 so 4 more turns of nail biting to go.

Our other worker has nothing to do but mine a grassland hill, which he'll do for 4 turns and then road it once The Wheel comes in.

[regoarrarr]

Email to Nakor / Gaspar

Well met Nakor indeed and greetings from the wonderful world of Last-place-ia!!! :-)

It seems like quite the summit as you, Adlain and us all had units within 1 tile of each other! It's funny - after we've spent the first 50 turns whining and moaning about how we hadn't met anybody, all of a sudden we're meeting new civs like crazy! This is the second turn in a row that we've met 2 civs on the same turn. We have but Luddite, Lord Parkin and plako left to meet now.

So would you be interested in doing any kind of discussions about the layout of the map. I'm especially interested in these "peak blocker" tiles that seem to be all over the place. Have you seen many of those?

Do you know anything about the plako / WarlordDr / WarriorKnight war? I wonder what all was going on to cause such consternation from the mod / lurkers? I've got a note out to WK, but we only met him last turn :-), so he hasn't responded yet.

In any case, hope to hear from you soon. If you'd like directions to any of the civs that we have met, just let us know and we'll be happy to help

[regoarrarr]

Email to Adlain - it's pretty much the same as the one to Nakor

Hello Adlain our Financial Buddhist Friends! Greetings from the wonderful world of Last-place-ia!!! :-)

It seems like quite the summit as you, Nakor and us all had units within 1 tile of each other! It's funny - after we've spent the first 50 turns whining and moaning about how we hadn't met anybody, all of a sudden we're meeting new civs like crazy! This is the second turn in a row that we've met 2 civs on the same turn. We have but Luddite, Lord Parkin and plako left to meet now.

So would you be interested in doing any kind of discussions about the layout of the map. I'm especially interested in these "peak blocker" tiles that seem to be all over the place. Have you seen many of those?

Do you know anything about the plako / WarlordDr / WarriorKnight war? I wonder what all was going on to cause such consternation from the mod / lurkers? I've got a note out to WK, but we only met him last turn :-), so he hasn't responded yet.

In any case, hope to hear from you soon. If you'd like directions to any of the civs that we have met, just let us know and we'll be happy to help

[regoarrarr]

And that's 24 (now 25) posts in this thread today

[regoarrarr]

With CivStats being down(ish) it probably signals the death-knell of C&D efforts, which were kind of dying anyways. I'm not sure it was worth it to do it for the first 50 turns or not. It did probably give us a bit of good information but it's always frustrating to not be able to keep it up. Maybe in a game with less people (5?) you would be able to do it better.

Anyways, Bill the worker began the second and final chop into GLH. I also reconfigured tiles from the 0/3/0 PFH to the 3/0/1 grass farm



We're at 144 / 200 right now, on T56. So even at 12hpt, that should make:

T57: 156/200
T58: 168/200 - 20 hammer from chop and 12 base hammers should make
T59: 200/200 and completion.

Hopefully someone can check my math

Then on to a settler, interrupted by a quick warrior to grow to size 6 when the gold gets mined (T64). Revolt to slavery while that settler is on the way I think.

[regoarrarr]

So a quick diplo update. We have messages from WK, Moogle and Nakor. I'll respond to those shortly, but here's an overall look at who we've met and who they have met (as of T56)

[regoarrarr]

First let's go for WarriorKnight. Here's his email to us. Apologies for the somewhat wonky formatting - it's always weird to figure out how to best post things where they reply quotes the original message. In this case, the things marked with a * are from my original message.

Hi

I clearly forgot who I was talking to. Sorry for the 'not much to talk about', some teams have that mindset and I (incorrectly) assumed that you were the same way. Anyway, I'm happy to answer questions:


* I know I'd love to hear some details on what went on with the plako / War(lordDr)riorKnight war. We've heard only bits and pieces and would love to know what exactly went on. Is it true that you gave plako a city for peace?

OK, how do I say this? My predecessor wasn't very good at playing the diplo game well and thus got into a war with plako fairly quickly. However, he failed to adequately prepare for it and subsequently when I took over I was forced to give away a city for peace (so yes it's true).


* Do you know who circumnavigated? Seems awfully early

Someone circumnavigated? *Logs in* Oh it happened this turn. Turns out it was plako.


* If you want to meet SleepingMoogle / locke and I think Lord Parkin and Luddite, you'll want to move your scout 5 tiles north through the jungle and then head east near our borders. If you go north then west that is a dead end, but to the east, you'll meet Moogle shortly (he has a warrior nearby) and Locke is quite aways further to the east.

Thanks for the directions, I'll be sure to head that way.


* Can you direct us to any other civs? That little fork to the east of our units looked to be a dead-end, is that true? What's to the west?

No, the fork to the east leads to another sub-continent area. plako has a warrior running around there somewhere as does mackoti (although you've apparently already met them). I'm afraid that I don't know what's to your west though. I've also met Nakor who borders I guess are a long way SW of you, but I don't think he has any units nearby.


* How far away are you / plako from where we met?

A while away, The sub-continent that I talked about has another fork SW, follow it and you'll reach my borders (it'll take about 15-20 turns from where we met with a warrior). You can't get past there without OB as I have a city blocking the path. plako is close by to the west.


* Okay that was a lot of questions. Sorry for the third degree interrogation - I am happy to share as much as I've asked - you just didn't give me much to go on as to what you wanted :-)

Happy to share info with you. I don't have many questions myself that you didn't answer already but I do have this one:

*Who have you met so far? I know of Locke, SleepingMoogle and mackoti but are there any others?

That's all for now,
WarriorKnight

My reply

Hi WK,

I don't understand why people don't want to talk much in the early game but I have noticed that as well. Personally I think the relationships that are built and created here in the early game are likely to last well into the balance of the game. Maybe that doesn't mean as much in a game with no tech trading, but still! I don't know how much you followed PB2, but I keep thinking of say, slaze (who took over Inca). He didn't really do a whole lot of diplomacy, and then when he was getting attacked, sent out emergency help requests to teams like Sullla, who really had no incentive to help him. But the big "Coalition of Willing" formed an early game bond and it helped them pull off the big attack of Sullla. Not that it really WORKED for them, so maybe that's a bad example :-)

Bummer that you had to give away a city for peace - I'm sure that sets you back some but I know from PBEM8 that you're certainly capable of turning things around!

For all the whining and complaining that I have been doing about not meeting anybody, the contacts have been flying in fast and furious lately. The last two turns we met two civs each. So we have now met everyone but plako, luddite and Lord Parkin. If you continue on the north to east path I indicated earlier, you should meet Moogle as well as Nakor and Adlain, who have units in that general area.

Could you explain a bit more of what you meant geographically? From what I was understanding, the fork where we met has a west and a east. The west fork goes somewhere (plako's lands?) and the east fork has another fork a bit down - east then SW leads to your lands, and east then SE leads somewhere else? Is that right?

Hope to hear from you soon

[regoarrarr]

Here's the email from Moogle

Hey there.

Your guess was almost right. I'm from the Netherlands, which lies directly west of Germany. The timezone is the same though. :-)

Anyway, WarriorKnight is still on the list of Civs to meet, so I'll let Cicero know to follow the coastline south. Please feel free to forward his current position if WK is interested in meeting up. Adlain can be found by going south through the jungle, and following the coastline you find there towards the south-southeast. It is quite a distance, but you will find his borders eventually.

The peak blocks that you mentioned are actually something that I only just noticed because you mentioned it. There are some peak tiles roughly east of where we met, but they appear to be bordering a coast rather than block off a passage. Perhaps your theory is correct though, and peaks were added to limit the amount of ways Civs can reach each other. If that is the case though, it does not seem to have been done in a level manner. There is a passage linking to Ioan and Mackoti to my east (the north is blocked off much like you described), whereas you appear to have had no such connections. Either way though, my best guess is that Civs are placed 5 in a row from west to east, below and above the equator, and that the Jungle is a more or less continuous feature much like a central highway of sorts.

Does this match at all with what you have found so far? The topic has come up during conversations with other leaders, but none seem to have that much to share. I'll probably be around tomorrow afternoon/evening if you wish to discuss this via chat. :-)

Oh! Almost forgot, circumnavigation was done by plako. We met a while ago, but are so far removed from each other there haven't been too many messages back and forth.

and our reply

Hi SleepingMoogle!

Thanks for the info on plako's circumnavigation - we have not yet met him so it just shows up as "a distant civilization". Hopefully we'll find him before too long. It's funny - the 3 civs that we haven't met (luddite, LP and plako) are the top 3 civs in score. Maybe only the "losers" want to hang out with a last place civ like us :-D

We ended up meeting Adlain (and Nakor) the very next turn after you - their units are roughly south of where we met and heading west, so if you haven't met them, you're likely to do so soon.

The general consensus on the map does agree with what you posted - 5 on the top, 5 on the bottom, but yeah, I think that the connections were not accurate. And I think I'm okay with that - a map that is exactly the same for everyone is kind of "boring". For as much as Krill harps on map balancing issues, I feel confident that if a certain civ had less connections to others, then maybe their lands are balanced by being better in a different way. We shall see?

So we had a double deer / cow start - it looked like everyone had the same start - does that match with yours? Also what about resources? I think that I've seen at least one of every resource in what I'd consider "our" area - does that match for you too?

Hopefully we can hook up for a chat later on today. Saturdays are a little crazy for me but I should be off and on around from about 2pm my time (8pm your time I think).

[regoarrarr]

Nakor

Hey Rego,
We're fighting you for last place, so be warned!

The map, from what I can tell, looks like a "ladder" with 5 civs north and 5 south, with a few landbridges to connect them. Some nice choke positions and interesting placed mountain ridges and watermasses to make attack difficult.
In the south we have W-E: Adlain, Locke, Us, Plako, WarriorKnight.
Plako's scout was one turn ahead of us,so you just missed him, I think.

We did meet LP and he is middle north, I think, unless the north and south landmasses have a splitting ocean on different places. He's north of us anyways, I think....

We still need to meet Luditte as well, think we got the rest now, or I'm missing one other civ.

Guess that should give you some directions. Plako is a zillion turns away with a scout. The others are in the north.

We know more about the war between Plako and WK, but aren't in a position to tell you anything, sorry.

We hope for a long friendship in this game, especially since we won't be in a position to fight each other in the next 200 turns... maybe we can agree to an information sharing agreement or something along those lines.

Kind regards,
Nakor
(the traiterous bastard from RBPB2, according to Sullla)

My reply

Fighting us for last place? You've got 96 points man! That seems like a million compared to someone with a lowly value of 82 :-) That sounds like something only a traitorous scumbag would say!!! :-)

So when you say you know more about the plako / WK war but can't say, what do you mean? You've been sworn to secrecy or something? From what we've been able to gather, warlordDr wasn't the greatest at diplomacy, and he and plako were pretty close geographically. Then war was declared, but maybe warlord was acting in such a way that got him booted. WK took over and paid plako a city for peace. How's that?

Thanks for the map information - that fits with what we've seen and heard from some of the other civs. I think that W-E up top are us, Moogle, mackoti and then LP and luddite in some order.

I was very intrigued by what you said about a splitting ocean in the south. So there's a splitting ocean between WK and Adain? I'm not sure if or where there is a splitting ocean on the north side or not. Obviously there must be some sort of connection since someone (plako I think?) circumnavigated recently.

I think we'd be happy to agree to some sort of information sharing agreement - like you said, we're not going to be in any position to fight each other any time soon. That is, of course, unless you want to send an army of berserkers halfway around the world on a world tour of some sorts. But who would ever do anything crazy like that!!!???!? :-D

Hope to hear from you soon