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

[regoarrarr]

Oh the other thing is that when I whipped the monument (after I took the above picture), we saved 1gpt on expenses, which allowed me to put science back up to 90% at breakeven, giving us 31bpt (+1, * 1.4).

We are 10th in food, 10th in prod and 1st in GNP

[pindicator]

We are 10th in food, 10th in prod and 1st in GNP

Obviously this is proof that food and production are vastly overrated

[darrelljs]

From Cleveland. Yes, that likely means you are infinitely more reasonable.

Now THAT is funny.

Darrell

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Now THAT is funny.

Darrell

Your boy down there in south Florida would know that first hand right?

[regoarrarr]

Now THAT is funny.

Darrell

I was wondering if that would slip past you

[regoarrarr]

Email sent out to plako

Hi plako,

Been awhile since we chatted so I thought I would drop you a note and say hello. We'd actually been meaning to send something for a few days but just hadn't gotten around to it.

First off, sunrise asked me to ask you to please not send your scout 8=) further west to scout near us. There is no outlet if you go further west (or north) - everything is blocked off by either coast or peaks, and we would prefer to at least have SOME secrets after all. Wouldn't want you sending one of your hordes of settlers towards our rolling expanses of floodplain corn / grassland gold :-D

But that kind of brings me to what we had been meaning to chat you up about - it will probably not surprise you that nearly EVERY person that we've come in contact with has brought you guys up. Talking about how you have a huge advantage in food / prod / GNP / cities / etc, and how something needs to be done about you. And given that one of your neighbors is pretty crippled, I don't know if people are just looking at us as one of your other nearer neighbors (though I'm not really sure how close we are to you anyways...).

So anyways, like I said, I'm sure that doesn't come as a huge surprise. That is one of the downsides to having such a good early start ;-). But I guess it beats the alternative - I'm sure you wouldn't want to swap places with WarriorKnight, right?

But anyways, just between you and us, I am not really interested in attacking you, either now or in the foreseeable future. It is much closer to my preference, generally speaking, to ally with stronger players, rather than play "gang up on the leader". And as I know you know, in dogpile situations sometimes it just takes one "friend" to turn things from a nightmare into a survivable situation (like you being Sullla's friend in PB2).

Anyway I just wanted to throw out some thoughts. At some point we'll probably want to figure out where borders make sense between us, but it's probably way too early for that.

Talk to you later

[regoarrarr]

Sent an email out to Adlain

Hi Adlain,

I thought I'd drop you a note since it's been awhile. I was in game earlier this evening and looking at Centralia 2.0 (the jungle highway) and trying to figure out where the eventual borders might play out. Obviously it's way too early to start signing border agreements and such, and frankly we probably don't even know who all the civs that might have interest / claims are!

But specifically I was looking at mackoti's lands. I don't know how much you've scouted up there - but we had a scout going east through SleepingMoogle's lands and the border between the two of them is pretty set. And then I started looking south from mackoti and it looks like there is also a connection south too, and it seemed like he has a HUGE swath of land that he would have a pretty good claim on. The civ east of him (luddite, right?) doesn't seem to have a connection to Centralia, so all that stuff to your NE seems like mackoti will be going for. Plus he already has 5 cities as well (though plako is now up to 6!)

Anyway not much we can do about it right now, but it may make sense for you to focus that way, if and when you start settling up this way. And when that time comes, we'd be amenable to some sort of understanding about the border between you and us might lie.

Hope to hear from you soon

Trying to stake our claim to as much land in Centralia as we can by getting everyone else to focus elsewhere. Same basic thing driving the email to plako

[regoarrarr]

In actual game terms, we played T67. After discussions with our crack team of MM experts, we swapped 1 turn of 5/0 corn for 1/3 grass hill mine to get the granary out sooner. It will gain us 3 food in the long-term (faster granary, more food in it when we grow, and faster to size 4, etc)

I also turned science off to collect gold for 1 turn to do binary science and save our 1gpt from rounding. It will delay AH by 1 turn but that's okay - we don't really need it right now other than to find out we settled on top of our horses or something

I've shuffled a few warriors to try and kill plako's scout if he tries to sneak it by us. Hopefully he will just send it down south though.

[regoarrarr]

Sent a quick note to ioan and mackoti

Thought I would drop you a note. As you probably saw, we have a scout near your lands. Are you anywhere near Writing / interested in signing open borders? We are still looking for luddite if you know of any of his units around

thanks and hope to hear from you soon

[sunrise089]

Obviously this is proof that food and production are vastly overrated

With no tech trading and chokepoints it actually might not be that crazy of a statement. Food and production allow you to expand, but if we all hit natural expansion limits at chokepoints anyways the only real advantage to earlier expansion (if our tech is higher due to the wonder) is military, and that takes us back to the choke point thing. Now that makes a few assumptions, such as 1) we actually plant a nice defensive chokepoint, 2) people don't get really clever with like galleys and chariots, and 3) someone doesn't beeline catapults and come in on us with allies, but as opposed to say RBP1 I could see leading in GNP but sucking in food+production to not be as bad as usual.