[SPOILERS - PBEM29] spacetyrantxenu - Mao of Babylon

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T 76

I want you to play the turn, but I took a peak under the hood since I haven't been in game in several days.

Santorum - build bowman for Rick's garrison. Move Mitt's new bow back to Mitt to get on the boat for our gold city.

Mitt: 2pop whip settler for Gold city. Mitt currently working 2 unimproved hammer tiles and will regrow in 2T. Move boat into city (currently in canal), put garrison bow on boat. Will replace this garrison unit next turn with bow currently 1N of Rick (don't mis-move him this turn or it will cause Mitt to be pissed for a turn). Will need a worker ASAP for gold, Jack Johnson is most likely target. Move him to the NE ASAP. You can finish the FP road this turn. To not waste worker turns with him, 1T road N, NE, E (2t), Boat should be in position to pick Jack up now. Trailing worker (maybe Brian or Mara?) can finish these roads as settler moves to sheep clams site in near future.

Bachman - 1T Moai, 2T lighthouse, city grows in 3T. Double whip lighthouse (4/2), overflow back to moai (28 overflow).

Rick Perry - Move 2 workers 1E, finish cottage. micro tile off bronze to new FP cottage, 1T growth. Work in whip for lighthouse, maybe next turn, then I would probably max food here until cap. I see several 8/6 whips in Rick.

Ron Paul - triple whip market. regrowth to 7 next turn, happy caps there until gems. No, will then be 9/8 happy b/c of furs. Good. Make srue it stays on cottages. good food here. Whip for production.

Workers milling around Santorum, maybe send one to huntsman and start chopping forests into units. Won't need market there, and you want to clear the field for battle, just in case. Maybe worker David.

Workers Brian/Maria - move to Romney and start to chop. I don't know where else to send him, but that is 3 moves east and a worker action done. They can maybe build the road toward sheep/clam city in North. Or, move back toward Newt and lay down more cottages. That needs to happen soon.

T77 convert to Hindu. 5 builds complete this turn (Granaries in Gary, Tim, Market in Ron, Settler in Mitt, Bow in Rick.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Turn played mostly to plan, though I did screw up and whip Gary before I noticed the chop coming in. Net effect is that we have 20 hammers of overflow (the chop), not sure if I lost us any hammers from the whip overflow. Sorry, Mao gets touchy sometimes. Otherwise, we whipped away enough of the benefit of the HG that no one will mistake us for the #2 team, score is back into 3rd place where we belong.

No photos tonight, I'm tired and going to bed. I'll have a short play window tomorrow night too so when you get the save you can either play it or post a nice plan for me to mostly follow.

Also just a heads up, if you're available this weekend you may inherit primary turnplayer duties for Saturday and Sunday while I'm out house hunting.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Turn played mostly to plan, though I did screw up and whip Gary before I noticed the chop coming in. Net effect is that we have 20 hammers of overflow (the chop), not sure if I lost us any hammers from the whip overflow. Sorry, Mao gets touchy sometimes. Otherwise, we whipped away enough of the benefit of the HG that no one will mistake us for the #2 team, score is back into 3rd place where we belong.

No photos tonight, I'm tired and going to bed. I'll have a short play window tomorrow night too so when you get the save you can either play it or post a nice plan for me to mostly follow.

Also just a heads up, if you're available this weekend you may inherit primary turnplayer duties for Saturday and Sunday while I'm out house hunting.

That was an EXP chop wasted. So, 20 hammers lost. Not helpful, but not the end of the world. Overflow into a library for culture so we can get the other seafood up so this city will pull its weight.

No problem on tomorrow night, just let me know. Good luck with the house hunt.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Actually we have the save again this morning as of 4 AM (thanks Slowwalk/Sian) but there is no rush to play. Today and tomorrow Dazed is out of town according to his tech thread post, so unless Krill plays the turns for him he'll be holding the save anyway. Maybe we should take the time to put together a plan for the next ten turns or so. I hesitate to want Krill to play anything for Dazed to get the save moving because at this stage their team should have finished Currency and now owes us either 60 or 100 gold depending on whether Dazed accepted my offer of 40 last turn. Krill probably doesn't know about the gold deal as my understanding is that he is mostly disengaged with anything resembling details in this game. If we want our money back soon we should wait for Dazed.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, RL is hectic. We're in the process of moving -- well, my wife and son did move out yesterday as she heads out for her new job in Florida. I'll be joining them eventually, but first there's the process of buying a house down there and me finding a job. So. Much. Fun! As a result I've spent less time playing the turns and documenting everything like I wanted to, and less time in the diplo game (which is still fun), and less time planning out strategy, etc. Boldly is doing more of the work and I'm sure his load in this game will ramp up more. I'm going house hunting this weekend so I may not be able to play. If the save stops at my team more frequently...sorry guys. I'll do the best I can.

So, back to the game. Dazed sent me an email this morning, we both played the turn before running in to work. Sian had offered us both open borders. I declined it on my turn, but Dazed accepted it. He emailed me with a few questions about our plans going forward. I just typed my responses below his.

[COLOR="Magenta"]Dazed,

Since you provided a numbered list, my replies are below.

Hail Ronald Reagan,

Mao,
Chairman
Republican Party[/COLOR]

Just played my turn--gotta run to work but a couple of quick things:

1. I will be able to repay you next turn. I was just short this turn. Feel free to request 100 gold on your turn or I'll offer it on my turn. It doesn't make any difference in the end.

I'll request the cash on my next turn, either way it will have (mostly) the same result. Unless I was planning to declare war on you in the next 10 turns, anyway, which I'm not. I think the game engine will interpret the gold request to me demanding tribute from you and your payment ("acceptance") would prevent me from declaring on you for 10 turns. Meh. If your citizens find this arrangement unseemly feel free to decline my request and offer the money on your next turn. That wouldn't come with any game engine entanglements, I think, not that it matters.

2. Did you want to talk any further about funding each other's research?

We should definitely do this. I went ahead and teched (eh..Priesthood?) and Monotheism on my last two turns so I can start spreading my religion around and getting the benefit from Organized Religion that Sian has had for a while. I don't know if you or I ever discussed it, but would you like me to send a Hindu missionary your way, or do you have plans on landing a religion? I think the pickings are getting slim in that regard, as I don't know if you can beat Sian or Slowwalk to anything that is left.

In terms of upcoming techs, we'll need to decide how involved (if at all) we want to be in the war/phony war between Sian and Slowwalk. If we're going to make a run at one of them we'll have to coordinate someone teching Construction and someone getting at least horse archers if not better units into the field. If we're not going to fight them for now, maybe it's better to pool resources to catch up on economic techs. I could sure use Code of Laws for courthouses. Paired with OR that might make some of my piddly cities productive building infrastructure.

3. I did sign OB with Sian, just FYI. It's not a sign that I'm buddying up to him, but it does keep him happy with me for now and allows me to finally scout his lands. It's a 10T deal and I will renegotiate it at the end of that time.

I wish you had talked to me about this earlier though so I could have opened borders this turn as well. He offered me OBs and 3 gold per turn, but I rejected the offer, not having talked to you or Slowwalk about it first. I didn't want to break the boycott myself, but if you're going to do it for 10T I'll need to do it too, since it won't benefit him any more but I'd lose the benefit you'll get. Did you negotiate anything regarding a gpt gift from Sian? Since he's ahead of both of us in the turn order, nevermind having the Lighthouse, he stands more to gain from an OB deal than we do. I'd have a hard time calculating his gpt advantage out of the deal but I'm sure it must be more than 3 gpt or he wouldn't have offered that amount. If I can get him to gift the money up front that may make it more palatable to me.

Incidentally, has Sian threatened you or put pressure on you in some capacity? That would seem an unwise course of action at a time when he's already at war with someone else. I did notice his power spike a bit in the demographics this turn (well, visible in the charts anyway, so maybe two turns ago), I wonder if it's offensive or defensive units.

[spacetyrantxenu]

The open borders offer from Sian is:

Open Borders
Sian gives us 4 gold per turn (10 turns)
Sian gives us 10 gold

The 10 gold gift effectively makes the deal 5 gpt for us for 10 turns. I had thrown out 6gpt as an initial offer to counter his 3gpt offer. Without knowing his city trade route situation it's hard to know if the deal is that good for us, but since Dazed has broken the boycott we have to get something out of this or Dazed/Sian come out ahead and we get nothing. At least the kitties can't make a deal with Sian right now, and if they immediately end the war they'll still get no benefit from OBs with Sian until the TR war penalty cools down.

All that being said, I want Sian to offer the deal so the game engine interprets is as a gift, rather than us demanding the gold. This allows us to retain flexibility to declare war on Sian if we need to. One mechanics question about the trade mechanism, though, since we're offering something in exchange for the gold Sian is giving us, would it matter if I proposed it or he did? I think the trade engine may only view a trade request as a demand for tribute if I ask for gold and nothing from him. In any case, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to break this deal if needed. I don't want to abuse the 10 gold payoff by immediately declaring war -- If for any reason we declare war on Sian before these 10 turns are up I'd be OK with gifting the "unearned" part of the signing bonus back to him at the end of the war.

Anyway, he is going to offer the OB deal when he gets the save. Number One, I'll need your input before I play next time.

[Ceiliazul]

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, RL is hectic.

You owe us nothing. Take care of your family (moving sucks) and get back to us when you can. Big props for continuing to play the save though!

When you do get settled in, you can vent your moving headaches with some virtual BLOOD!

When I say "blood" I say it like this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB2qRoNkdTY

[spacetyrantxenu]

T79 - Photo dump since I forgot to post a turn update.

This is the initial open borders offer Sian sent me, which I rejected. I haven't seen the save since, but he is supposed to offer me the OB deal posted previously.


Current builds. If it looks like we're staying out of the war we'll probably need to add in some settler builds to grab more land while we can. Oh, and tech Code of Laws so we can afford it.


A wide empire shot since I haven't posted one lately. That sign where Dazed owes us 100 gold should come down soon. He says he's going to repay us next turn. I don't know if I mentioned it elsewhere but we teched Meditation and Monotheism while saving money (sort of). I want to get Hindu spreading ASAP and switch into OR.


Sian has two cities on this island. We need to settle the northern spot so we get our share.


The good news is that we're not last in everything. The bad news is that we're not first in anything that matters.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I haven't seen the save in ages but I'll look at it tonight. I'm told it's turn 84 or 85, or so. Maybe an update or two would have been nice, Number One? *ahem*

I talked to Dazed today, I'm not sure if the topic of conversation was relevant anymore or not since I don't know the status of our research, but we have a rough agreement that he'll fund us to get to Civil Service if we're close to it, and we'd fund him to make a run at it (all loans to be repaid both ways, no gifts). My idea here is that we have a lot of cottages around Newt and CS is going to be very good for us. We'll greatly increase our GNP in Bureaucracy, and apparently Dazed will as well. He claims to be "a cottage maniac". Hopefully this helps us out without being of more use to Dazed. Then again, we're not in a race to avoid being last, we're trying to catch up to Sian and Slowcheetah. If that means we bring Dazed up a bit too, so be it.

One other bit of diplo news is that I've renewed our (secret) NAP with Dazed through T115. He threw that turn out into the air and I accepted it. If it is T85 now that's 30 turns, which is much longer than our previous NAPs and probably longer than I'd like to go in a game where I wanted to avoid long term hamstringing, but as long as he isn't the leader in the game I want to work with him to catch up. Apparently he has taken over the #1 spot in score through finishing some wonder and population growth, but if his underlying economic fundamentals are still weak then I don't consider him to be the #1 team right now (and thus Mao's dogpile target of the day). All this being said, I haven't seen the save in about 5 or 6 turns so I don't really know what is going on right now.

One thing I did hear was that the war ended between Sian and Slowcheetah. Mao literally cried , because no war means less people dying. I think Number One carried out a 4-pop whip of a market somewhere over the weekend, though, so that took a bit of the sting out of the war ending, I hear. Anyway, I'll get an update out tonight if I can play the turn and get through my job hunting for the day.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T85 - Evidently I had no conception of where we were in the game after missing the turns all weekend. We were about three turns away from researching Civil Service on our own without help from Dazed. With a bit of work Boldly has a plan to get it in two turns. We have 154 gold in the bank, and will spend 153 of it this turn at 100% research.

Next turn 60% research slider gets us 160 beakers, and we should need 158 beakers to finish CS. To run 60% research we'll have to find 59 gold from somewhere (Number One figured 60g, so it's close. My numbers are based off before EoT 85).

Muddying the picture a bit, we have 5 cities growing this turn. City maintenance will increase a bit in each of those cities unless we get lucky and the increase isn't enough to raise the rate. (Is city maintenance a truncation/rounding down or rounding up?) Each city that grows will either be able to work an improved tile to build wealth, such as a mine, a cottage, or in the worst case, a coast tile. But that's still 2 commerce and in a tight plan it will help as long as the increase in city maintenance isn't that much. Anyway, here's the plan:

EoT 86 = 1g in treasury
need 158 beakers.
need to run 60%, so need 60g total

Base hammers available for wealth building:

newt = 16
mitt = 5
rick = 12 (missionaries. last resort) +22 if working all mines.
ron paul = 11
huntsman = 4 (already used, no addition here)
rick perry = 6
Bachman = 7 (14/turn for Moai. Last resort)
Pawlenty = 6
johnson = 5
roemer = 6 (wealth + work gold instead of fish)

This gets us to ~ +15g at 60%. Should be enough to get Bureaucracy EoT 86.

This is switching all cities to wealth except Bachman (Moai), Cain (library), and Roger Gary (Granary). Also have to do some tile micro to make sure you're working mines where possible. Really, only micro I had to do was the fish/gold swap in Roemer, and moving hills around between Newt, Mitt, and Rick. Very doable for 1T CS.

Also keep in mind that we can use our libraries for a boost in places where the tile improvements aren't as good as specialists, like in Gary Johnson. Running 2 science specialists will add 7 beakers next turn, which is better than working a river cottage (2c).

The upshot of teching CS on our own is that we won't have to help Dazed get it himself. After checking his status in game, I'm beginning to think he can research it on his own. He has thrown down several more cities -- up to 14 now, which beats Sian (12)and Slowcheetah (10). We have 12 now with one settler moving around. Dazed has settled cities aggressively since he took over for Kuro in this game and, as a result, has led in city count most of the way and has had low GNP output from higher city maintenance costs than anyone else. When all those cottages he's building mature, though, his economy is going to take off. In the long term he's as much of a threat as anyone else to win this, so maybe I should roll back some of my planning on teaming forward with him. (Did you just get whiplash from the flip flop I pulled from my last post to this one?) Anyway, if we can get CS quickly on our own I see no reason to help Dazed get it faster to revive his economy. Once he researches it we can go back to loaning gold to fuel research if it still makes sense to do it.

One suggestion, Number One, if you play the next turn please rename that settler from "Snipe Cat Dyes (Settler)". That might give away the plan....

More pictures next time. For now it's just a giant map.