[SPOILERS - PBEM29] spacetyrantxenu - Mao of Babylon

[Commodore]

OK, I got your post covered in only an hour, maybe no one saw it and we've avoided alarming the conspiracy theorists!

Good fast response time. Although given that there was a theory that I had somehow secertly buffed the cats because I forgot a single desert incense, I've given up predicting you guys.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Predicting maybe, but betting? Did you guys take bets in the lurker lounge when this game started? Or was that reserved for the vets game where you could reasonably count on the players knowing what the hell they're doing?

And if you secretly buffed the cats with the missing incense, you publicly gimped us with PRO. You couldn't wait until the RB mod was ready before assigning PRO to us? :neenernee

Edit: and I've again cleverly covered your post.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T88 - Nothing special this turn but we're in Bureaucracy. I renamed the two unknown candidate cities, meet Mike Huckabee and Bob Dole. Hindu spread to Gary Johnson and then I whipped its courthouse (5-->3). Gary starts a monastery next for culture to get a head start battling Sian's cities before they grab level three borders. We're going to have to fight to keep the cows in our territory and I couldn't decide if building a market here is worth it. I think the safer course of action for Gary is to build barracks, walls, and garrison. Or we could build a settler there for the city between Gary and Tim Pawlenty once Gary grows back to size 4 next turn.workers keep working - started a new cottage at Newt, it's a chop/cottage due in 5 turns. Hopefully we'll be close to having the forge in by then. If not we can cancel when it's at one turn.

Jon Huntsman popped the GS at EoT, so the academy can be built in Newt on T90. We'll turn research back on then, running 100% into Priesthood to generate a ton of overflow. Starting T91 it's on to Metal Casting which I would guess is a 2 turn tech at 100%? I forgot to set our slider to 100% science before ending turn to see what our beaker output is. Anyway I think the worker chopping at Jon should probably not finish any of those chops until MC comes in and put the hammers into a forge instead of a courthouse. With the forge built Jon can slow build the courthouse faster. We probably don't want to whip here anymore because it's so low on food.

We're exploring both of the big islands now, so Sian's settlement in the south and looking for whatever Dazed has on the other one.

I just realized that Rick Santorum can 1T build the next missionary if it works both of its other available hills (take 1 from Newt, Newt is still building wealth). Newt can take the village from Ron Paul and make Ron work a coast or its mine. Boo hoo.

Mitt is 2T from building his lighthouse, after that he should probably either spam military while growing our pump out a few settlers for us to landgrab as much as we can of what's left. That will probably be up to you since 2T from now will likely be Friday with me heading out of town.

It's visible in the MFG graph that Sian is building the Colossus as he said. Let's keep an eye on how many turns this happens. Like I said before, if he gets greedy maybe we can steal it.

Photos:

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

This is my feeling toward Sian and the wonder failgold: it presents an opportunity cost for him to invest hammers into a wonder multiple times which he may not realize for 15-30 turns. Depending on what else he could be doing with those hammers (settlers/workers), I am content to let him continue building the Colossus multiple times. I don't want to speed his RoI.

However, this does force our hand a bit on the issue of whether or not to build wonders. I do not want to allow Sian to build failgold throughout the game, multiple times, to cash in when he needs an infusion of cash. Because we now know he is doing this (why else would he say he is?), we should track the diplo screen each turn to see how much gold he has in his treasury. When he finally builds the wonder, we will see how much benefit he gains, and I'm guessing it will be substantial. This will allow us to (hopefully) dictate some tech paths and assign key wonders to the other players to deny Sian both the wonder and the lucrative failgold from multiple failed builds.

I know the top of the tree has a couple different tech options to reach wonder builds first, and not all wonders will cry out for us to build (Shweddy Papaya, I'm looking at you), nor will all be sandbagged by Sian (GL). But, this could present an opportunity for us to line up a dogpile against Sian. #1, it is beneficial to him in-game to abuse this mechanic, and #2, it is gamey as all hell to do so and irks the shit out of me, particularly since he's the only IND nation. Forget that we were given PRO. I doubt I'm the only one who would not be thrilled about this strategy, so let's make some hay.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I don't know how much we can do to prevent this without causing harm to ourselves in the process. Sure, we could try to race the IND guy with all possible modifiers in place to wonders (pure ) when we probably would rather be doing something else with our hammers. And when he cashes out for his fail gold by finishing the wonder ahead of us, yeah we get fail gold too but not at the rate he is, and not that we want it. I certainly don't want to build SP or something useless like that. We just have to concede that if Sian wants to cheese build that over and over that he's going to be able to do it. However, I don't see a grand coalition forming to stop this. It will irritate people, yes, if they're paying attention to what is going on. We can all see how gamey it is to abuse this game mechanic, and seriously everyone at RB knows this is a grey to black area in competitive multiplayer -- there is a reason this was patched out in RB Mod. Just because we didn't specifically ban it pre-game shouldn't mean it's OK to do it. I'm not saying it's out and out cheating because it certainly isn't that. Playing cheesy can give you a reputation for playing cheesy, not for being a cheater. But to me this feels like, for example, if we were at war with Sian and about to take a city from him and he gifted it to someone else with our army closing in, to deny us a city capture we had earned. That's about the kind of cheese this feels like, abusing a game mechanic to do something that shouldn't be happening.

I don't want to be too bitter about this, I mean we've already outlined what Sian is costing himself in terms of immediate opportunity by spending his hammers on a super-lucrative conversion to gold. But I don't doubt he's considered that and decided that the cash payoff is too great to ignore, otherwise he wouldn't be doing this.

If you want to try to organize a dogpile on this basis go right ahead. But I don't see anyone committing to it.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T89 - I played this turn with Boldly so I didn't take as many pictures as I could have. The most important event is that Charles Darwin will build us an academy next turn. When he does we'll restart research. We will have 372 or so gold in the bank. We'll 1 turn research Priesthood with a lot of bonus overflow, which will go onto Metal Casting.

We made two decisions this turn that are a bit aggressive and won't please Slowcheetah but we're going to try it anyway. You'll recall that we talked things over with Catwalk about a border deal down by the jungle area not long before he stepped back from this game. All we did was talk, we never agreed to a final partition of the area so we have no settling agreement. Our placement of John McCain two turns ago was the first land grab in the area. Now we're planning another. We're building a settler in Ron Paul that should arrive at the site in 7 turns. If the site is gone by then we'll turn it around and settle closer to home. We have several backfill locations that need settling anyway, but this is worth a shot. Here's the location:

It's very close to Dazed's city, though, so he may not care for the idea either. But where he placed his city (in the middle of everything down there, garrisoned only by a single warrior!) he hasn't given me much choice if I'm going to settle my pigs in a way that is useful to me. I could settle this city 3S of Herman Cain but that wouldn't help by defenses much and would leave all the resources exposed to Slowwalk. No thanks.

We're looking at taking another location that Slowwalk are being slow to expand into, north of our gold city and the next one further north:

I don't know if this is worthwhile or not, except that it gets us another fishing city. It is dangerously exposed to being boated, though. Slowcheetah has 3 move naval units courtesy of circumnavigation, not that he would need it to attack here. He could boat the city out of his stone city. Still, He should have city over here by now. We're working on settling the mirror location of our own. Gary Johnson is 2 turns from finishing a Hindu monastery for its cultural battle against Sian's island cities, and then it will build the settler. We have two workers nearby to put a chop into it to speed it up.

Hopefully Slowcheetah moves his trireme away before we settle this city. He's going to be irritated when we take both spots at the same time.

Demographics from this turn, still running 0% research:

GNP:

At 100% we're way ahead of whatever Sian has posted for this turn, but he could be saving cash. We're going to have a decision to make soon, though, regarding binary research. I have a feeling that when we run 100% science next turn on a tech with double arrow prerequisites, someone is bound to notice how far in front we'll be for that turn with GNP. But I don't want to waste those beakers when I think we're still behind overall, so it may be worth the risk of being called on it. What do you think, Number One?

Sian is still building the Colossus if the continuing spike on his MFG graph is any indication:

The other number that jumps off the page on the demographics panel is that we're last in power now. We need to go on a building spree soon. We're getting some thinly spread garrisons while we're farming away (just like everyone else is, but I don't want to get caught with my pants down. I think we need to rush out this round of cities and then build a lot of power. I'd think about building a few triremes after we get Metal Casting, but we need military first (well forges, then military ).

Also, someone (Slowcheetah I still think) is getting killed in trade route income. He really needs to close borders with Sian, all of us do. I sent a message to Dazed about that when I sent him the save. I need to figure out when we'll be able to close borders, when our 10 turns on the deal are up.

Edit: well after rereading the post I did post a lot of pictures. I've met my quota for the day. Oh, and I updated my PB 7 thread. That means I didn't get anything productive done tonight!!!

[spacetyrantxenu]

T90 - I took several photos when I played the turn this morning before work so I could try to build a report later. Our scouting chariot is on the way back to Jon Huntsman now after a successful mission scouting through Sian's territory. On the way to Jon he made two interesting discoveries:

Dazed has a good garrison in TI-83 Plus, which is a good idea considering its central position bordering everyone. Dazed apparently likes to grab land and doesn't mind a bit of cultural competition to do it. In that first screenshot you can see that TI-83's third ring borders have popped and stolen a deer from Slowwalk's first ring in his front city, Missing Gifts. Kitties must have next to no culture invested on that tile for that to have happened, and since you only need 5 culture to pop the border on quick they must have zero cultural buildings in that city, or at least have just built them (I'm not really one for staring at map tiles to discern city builds but now I'm curious and want to check).

The second screen shot shows Dazed moving a settler in position to seal his end of our border. He's going to end up with two cities vs. Jon Huntsman here, and probably 3 cities vs. Herman Cain and the proposed second city snipe we're working on down in the jungle end of the map. If he wants he can control those borders with having more city cultural output than we can match, running slider if he has to. That could give him an advantage if things ever get nasty between us, so we have to watch our garrisons when tensions get higher. For now, I think he'll settle the city where the settler stands, since that will let it borrow food from two existing cities to grow quickly. However, he could also settle 1 SE to move the deer into his first ring, which will put it under his control without much trouble. That would deny me the only deer currently inside my borders, but I can still grab the one north of Jon Huntsman (SE of Missing Gifts) later. That will mostly be a fishing town so it isn't a huge priority. We shouldn't settle it unless we think Slowcheetah is going to steal it, or until we don't need Mitt to grow anymore since it will borrow Mitt's fish.

I've posted a trade screen showing the city count discrepancy between us and Dazed. He keeps spamming away, he built 10001 last turn I believe, which is funny. 10001 = 17 in binary, and this is his 16th city. It is the 17th city he has built overall since I think he has only lost one in this game. Banter time!

Mao: i think you miscounted on 10001, it's your 16th city (well maybe the 17th you've built?)

Dazedroya​lty: i don't really know binary well

Mao: lol

Dazedroya​lty: it was supposed to be 16

Mao: 10001 = 17
10000 = 16

when you post about it just say it's for the 17th city you've built and you'll be right.

Dazedroya​lty: it looks cooler than having 10000

Now, the next screen (Foreign Advisor) has set off my paranoia alarm. Am I reading it correctly in thinking that Sian and Slowcheetah have gifted Dazed all their money, or is it a coincidence that they're both broke and he's sitting on a mountain of gold? I wonder if he has secured a loan to go for Civil Service from everyone in the game not named Mao. That would be unsettling. I've been tying my foreign policy to Dazed for a long time now, and although I know it's an alliance of convenience for him (well aren't all alliances mostly of convenience?), it would be a great concern to find him working with the other two teams. That would leave Mao feeling isolated. You wouldn't like an isolated, paranoid, worried Mao. That gets people killed.

In all seriousness, can someone confirm that this page says what I think it says? It shows the amount in your treasury, not your GPT, right? (if it was GPT that would be much worse because no way Dazed is generating all that per turn...and to explain the zeroes by Sian and Slowwalk, the only rationale would be that they're sending their entire budget this turn to Dazed. That makes less sense than that they've sent him everything in the vault).

Charles Darwin was kind enough to build us an Academy in Newt. This is curious since we Republicans don't believe in evolution. If there is one thing a lot of evangelical Republicans believe that Civilization has confirmed over and over again, it is that the earth is only 6000 years old. So Darwin...stuff it. (But thanks for the academy). However, it appears the flat earthers were wrong, the world wrap is toroidal. </tangent>

F1 shows current city builds and just how many beakers Newt generated this turn. I took the screen shot before ending turn, so this probably is inflated by about 40% from the double prerequisite for Priesthood, but it still looks nice for 500 AD, I think.

Here's a comparison of the demographics screen showing what double prerequisites can do for your GNP. This will be a one turn blip on the graphs but it's going to stand out. Countdown to international alarm in 3..2..1...go. Again, PBEM mechanics question. I assume that the value I posted before ending turn will be what everyone sees for GNP "Rival Best" as they play the turn until it gets to me again, not the value shown in the F9 after ending turn, right? I think if this was pitboss I could have successfully hidden my true GNP output for the turn, but in PBEM if that number is written to the save when I ended turn everyone will get one turn to read that in F9. But I think it will always be in the charts, so we can't really hide it anyway.

Speaking of hiding our tech progress, I think later on once it's more feasible we'll want to do that because Sian has a massive EP advantage and I think he wants to get research visibility on us. I'm still spending all our EPs on him to slow his advantage but we need more courthouses for this.

Finally, here is F6 showing that we'll 1 turn research Metal Casting next turn on a ton of overflow + running some research. We won't be able to run 100% so it won't be at max efficiency, but it will mean we can start building forges a turn earlier than if we stopped research and then ran 100% again. I think getting forges a turn sooner is worth losing a few beakers to rounding, and we really need to get Newt back to building something besides wealth. Newt can start a forge next turn and finally commit that chop overflow it has been carrying for about four turns now.

I may not have mentioned this to you, Number One, but I talked to Dazed last night about the second snipe city. He made some fair points and I think we should consider settling on the rice instead of on the gems hill. The main points were that the city center will be +3 food on the rice, we won't waste an otherwise great gems tile, the loss of settling on the hill is somewhat mitigated by there being no way Slowcheetah can attack without attacking across a river, and it won't put so much pressure on Dazed's city, which would surely lead to strife eventually. Plus, I can guarantee he is going to build the Globe in that city with so many food sources, so best not to be 2 tiles from someone's Globe. We'll get crushed. What do you think about that? Refresher photo from last turn for the purpose of this discussion:

I'll post my chat with Dazed from last night when I get it formatted.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Found the chat from last night:

Mao: are you there?
need some input from you, i'm thinking about sniping a spot from slowcheetah because he's being slow about settling it. i want to settle on top of the gems 3W, 1S of Function. i know that's very close to your city but you planted that city in the middle of everything down there -- a very nice draft camp for you I think.
mostly i want the site for its defensive position. it's on a hill and is across a river from slowcheetah
he drawback for you is that my city's BFC would overlap yours considerably, but it would not jeopardize any of your resource tiles
you would lose a grass hill and grasslands tile (once jungle is cleared off them)
but it would create a good defensive front for me against slowcheetha

[b][COLOR="Cyan"]Dazedroyalty[/COLOR][/b]: do you have a screen shot you could send with teh spot marked on it?
that would help

Mao: yeah

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/44346970/RB/PBEM...sSteal.JPG

Dazedroyalty: oh that's pretty

Mao: and i just realized it does overlap with one of your pigs
but your culture will control it
especially after you build your globe!

Dazedroyalty: honestly, i'd like it better if you settled on the rice

Mao: yeah but that's flat land

Dazedroyalty: true but he has to attack accross a river

Mao: you really only lose the hill and grass tile, other than having me peeking over your picket fence

Dazedroyalty: which is basically the same as being on a hill

Mao: i can't tell, does the river go east of the rice tile?

Dazedroyalty: i believe so
but it wouldn't matter
cuz you can't attack from a mountain

Mao: right. that's the point. so on the hill it woudl be +25% for the hill and +50% from the river

Dazedroyalty: river is 45

Mao: so he can only attack across the river unless he wants to step onto the rice

Dazedroyalty: *25
not 50

Mao: oops
oooo, amphibious penalty is 50%
there's a reason i'm going to lose this game, i miss a lot of small things like that

Dazedroyalty: i will also point out that settling on rice will give you +1 food in the city center
settling on gems makes them a complete waste

Mao: wet rice is only +4 right?
when farmed?

Dazedroyalty: gems are a much better tile than rice
no they are plus 5

Mao: so that isn't a huge loss...i was mostly interested in this site for its defensive value
oh
so we do lose a bit on food, not that it matters with this city
there's a lot of grass to farm. i dn't think i'd cottage a front city too much

Dazedroyalty: the pigs will be plenty of food to grow cottages

Mao: you think that'd be safe?

Dazedroyalty: plus teh rice in the city center

Mao: pillage fodder

Dazedroyalty: i mean, until you get windmills and stuff
you don't have a choice
not a lot you can do

Mao: farms everywhere nd whip it like crazy. there's a lot of happiness on this map

Dazedroyalty: i wouldn't cottage the south side of the mointain

Mao: no that would be silly.

Dazedroyalty: i'd cottage the back
farm the front
but i still prefer the rice tile
and i will tell you sian is trying to do the same thing to me
so i'll give you the same line
militarily, it's just a not good thing

Mao: so on the rice tile it would be +25% defense, on the hill +50%?

Dazedroyalty: yes that's correct

Mao: keep in mind i'm your friend and sian is the boogeyman

Dazedroyalty: that's true
but someday, things might change and you decide to double move me with knights

Mao: but i agree that you want your city to be defensible, even if you did plant it in the middle of all those resources. but since they aren't my resources i don't care about that.
and therefore i congratulate you on sniping my opponents.

Dazedroyalty: i settled there because I can effectively defend 3 cities with one set of units

Mao: positioned between the three cities?

Dazedroyalty: essentially but i'd prefer not to disclose all our defense plans

Mao: i understand zone defense, it's no biggie

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T89 - I played this turn with Boldly so I didn't take as many pictures as I could have.

You play too slow.

We made two decisions this turn that are a bit aggressive and won't please Slowcheetah but we're going to try it anyway. You'll recall that we talked things over with Catwalk about a border deal down by the jungle area not long before he stepped back from this game. All we did was talk, we never agreed to a final partition of the area so we have no settling agreement. Our placement of John McCain two turns ago was the first land grab in the area. Now we're planning another. We're building a settler in Ron Paul that should arrive at the site in 7 turns. If the site is gone by then we'll turn it around and settle closer to home. We have several backfill locations that need settling anyway, but this is worth a shot. Here's the location:

It's very close to Dazed's city, though, so he may not care for the idea either. But where he placed his city (in the middle of everything down there, garrisoned only by a single warrior!) he hasn't given me much choice if I'm going to settle my pigs in a way that is useful to me. I could settle this city 3S of Herman Cain but that wouldn't help by defenses much and would leave all the resources exposed to Slowwalk. No thanks.

Your "slowcheetah too slow" signposts made me Nice.

We're looking at taking another location that Slowwalk are being slow to expand into, north of our gold city and the next one further north:

I don't know if this is worthwhile or not, except that it gets us another fishing city. It is dangerously exposed to being boated, though. Slowcheetah has 3 move naval units courtesy of circumnavigation, not that he would need it to attack here. He could boat the city out of his stone city. Still, He should have city over here by now.

This location is certainly a reach, and an aggressive plant for a very mediocre city, and one we would not be able to defend against a half-determined attack. But, I'd like to see their response. If we get our hand slapped for getting into the cookie jar, so be it. I haven't seen a lot of active diplomacy, or active settling from this team, and I'm starting to wonder what they're waiting for. Good to keep in mind they are up machinery on us, but we can close the gap and have maces in 2 techs very soon if need be.

We're working on settling the mirror location of our own. Gary Johnson is 2 turns from finishing a Hindu monastery for its cultural battle against Sian's island cities, and then it will build the settler. We have two workers nearby to put a chop into it to speed it up.

Hopefully Slowcheetah moves his trireme away before we settle this city. He's going to be irritated when we take both spots at the same time.

Yeah, guess we should fill in our own holes before wandering into someone's back yard. But I think we can get both.

Demographics from this turn, still running 0% research:

GNP:

At 100% we're way ahead of whatever Sian has posted for this turn, but he could be saving cash. We're going to have a decision to make soon, though, regarding binary research. I have a feeling that when we run 100% science next turn on a tech with double arrow prerequisites, someone is bound to notice how far in front we'll be for that turn with GNP. But I don't want to waste those beakers when I think we're still behind overall, so it may be worth the risk of being called on it. What do you think, Number One?

Binary. If they don't like it, let them come after us. Then we can find a use for being protective...

Sian is still building the Colossus if the continuing spike on his MFG graph is any indication:

2:


That will be all. Time to start the chat machine and drop some info about this.

The other number that jumps off the page on the demographics panel is that we're last in power now. We need to go on a building spree soon. We're getting some thinly spread garrisons while we're farming away (just like everyone else is, but I don't want to get caught with my pants down. I think we need to rush out this round of cities and then build a lot of power. I'd think about building a few triremes after we get Metal Casting, but we need military first (well forges, then military ).

Whip settlers, regrow on units until we're solid again.

Also, someone (Slowcheetah I still think) is getting killed in trade route income. He really needs to close borders with Sian, all of us do. I sent a message to Dazed about that when I sent him the save. I need to figure out when we'll be able to close borders, when our 10 turns on the deal are up.

I'll mention this if I can catch Slowcheetah on chat. As well as Sian's fail gold shenanigans.

Edit: well after rereading the post I did post a lot of pictures. I've met my quota for the day. Oh, and I updated my PB 7 thread. That means I didn't get anything productive done tonight!!!

As always, good job. I never take that many pictures, pretty wifey always wants me off the computer.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Apparently Boldly and I disagree about where to settle the gems city. I have a feeling this will be decided by whoever plays the turn when the settler is in position. If relations worsen with Dazed I blame you and your damn insubordination, Number One!