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[SPOILERS - PBEM29] spacetyrantxenu - Mao of Babylon

I've thought more about motives for this plan and it doesn't sit right. What irritates me about all this is the timing of it. Dazed has an actual threat to his vastly overexpanded empire on both sides of him, me and Sian. At the exact moment he decides he has grabbed all the land he wants, he tries to diffuse our tension by redirecting me toward Sian. That's very convenient for Dazed, don't you think? I proposed a dogpile on Sian ages ago when it made sense to do it and would have been easier (i.e., everyone had a UU in play except Slowwalk and Sian wasn't way ahead on tech yet). But Dazed refused because he was busy spamming cities, "leveraging his IMP trait." OK. Great, so to get yourself ahead you've contributed to a problem we now can't easily solve. And now is when I DON'T want to fight a war. My economy is roaring. I have a few more cities to settle. I am teching very well. And all I can build are maces and crossbows, to fight Sian who will have knights and can build longbows (if he is going for knights - and I just noticed in the current save he has HAs, so he has HBR). That is an attack that is doomed to fail. This is NOT the right era for a war. Once longbows hit the stage it's too late.

Dazed's determination to grab as much land as possible has spoiled any present effort to corral Sian before he got way ahead. I need Gunpowder and probably the draft to make any meaningful headway into Sian's territory, not just galleons to ram maces into his backline cities. Gunpowder is 18 turns away at breakeven research, so probably several turns less than that as my cities grow. And that's IF I wasn't going to fund Dazed to run to Astronomy, which is already a questionable plan. What do I get out of that? He gets a ton of research now that he otherwise couldn't afford and will certainly enjoy the early access to observatories. Funding him now when he is flat broke is just stupid. I don't believe for a minute that I would get good return out of my investment. Even if we get the boats to attack Sian, what units are we going to load onto them? Maces and hwachas from Slowcheetah? (Slowcheetah can build maces, there is one in his capital). Where's the punch going to come from? Forget it. In the meantime Dazed gets a quick beeline to a tech that can help him catch up to me, and I can't get it back from him. Sure, he could start saving cash after he picked up Astronomy to pay me back, all the time building observatories everywhere. As crappy as his economy is he wouldn't be able to pay me back any time soon. Again, no thanks.

Now, objectively speaking given our current game situation, focusing on Sian now would be the correct play since he is threatening on running away with the game -- especially given his cheese whiz fail gold economy (He recently finished the Great Library and has 400 gold in the bank this turn, while running a crazy high GNP rate -- he's obviously researching and has that gold in the bank). I forgot to check last turn but I'll look at previous saves later to verify, but since he recently finished two wonders I'm willing to bet he built them both for fail gold at least twice. That is utter bullshit. Sian can create gold out of thin air and use it to propel himself forward in a way I haven't seen abused before. When each monopoly wonder technology he researches can net him several hundred gold from intentional fail builds, he can keep perpetuating his economy that way (coupled with his Colossus coast and GLH, etc.). The beast can't be tamed. I'm sure soon he'll tech Divine Right for the SM and abuse that a few times, too, before adding it to his monk economy. See where this is going?

Yet with that said I have a hard time wanting to work with Dazed on this because it is so self-serving. We would have all sacrificed 30 turns ago to make war against Sian, but it would have been much easier to do it and would have had a near guarantee of success. Now? We're in worse position to do it, at a worse time on the tech tree, and he is bounding ahead. The only chance to stop his is to hamstring my own forward progress. So should I let him runaway with the game or help stop him, knowing that my efforts pretty much just put Dazed in the driver seat with his inevitable land advantage? (Yes we'll get our new cities built but his will be further down the line when ours come up, growing cottages and getting ahead. The only way he comes out behind from his overexpansion is if we don't help him revive his economy, and if take that stance the attack against Sian is doomed anyway). What a mess.

Anyway I haven't had input from you Boldly to get your take on this plan, so I'm not playing the turn yet. But here's a sneak preview of the event log:

[Image: T95-EventLog.JPG]

That's going to be a double-MoM golden age for Slowcheetah where he piles up great people. FML.banghead

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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Sorry to (both?) of my lurkers out there, just a half assed report for this turn. I did chat with Number One, we agree Dazed's proposal to go after Sian now instead of earlier is incredibly suspect, and we're not going along with it. Yes, it's true, Mao is killing the dogpile. Let someone else herd the cats, I already tried it and got the big brush off for my troubles. In a potential war with Sian my economy would be squeezed as much as the other participants but since I don't share a border with Sian (except what, one or two mostly irrelevant island colonies i could never hold anyway?) I don't stand to get any LAND from a war with Sian. Thus, it isn't worth the expenditure to chase him down. Let Dazed and Slowcheetah deal with it.

However, lest you delurk this thread...

Number One Wrote:Possibly our best course of action would be to declare war on dazed and partition his land. Whatever we do, we need to close borders with Sian. In an act of good faith, close with Sian now and open with Dazed. If he doesn't follow suit, declare war on him.

[COLOR="Red"]Sword-point diplomacy.
[/COLOR]

I know I promised pictures before...OK, just one.

[Image: T95-F1.JPG]

That is after I ended turn. When our T95 production ran Newt 1 turned a mace, Huckabee finished a library, and two settlers finished (Ron Paul and Gary Johnson, these will fill in border sites). We'll only have one exposed border, the nearly useless tundra deer next to Slowcheetah.

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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Gingrich, Romney, Paul, Santorum, Huntsman, Perry, and Bachman should all finish current builds then immediately switch to foreign policy persuasion units, except where forges may still be needed. Bachman, of course, will produce our navy. We can rename them all "Diplomat" ala Civ 2.

Any chat from Dazed today about our settler's progress?
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[Image: diplo_detected.jpg]

I didn't chat with anyone today, I was working away from my office and wasn't around chat. We did get an email from Slowcheetah:

Slowcheetah email to us Wrote:[COLOR="MediumTurquoise"]
I was wondering about the gems site near me, you seem to be looking to settle it? I was actually going to send a settler up there myself in a couple of turns. I delayed a bit because I thought we'd settled a border agreement a while back, turns out I was mistaken. You went off to talk to boldly and I think that was near Catwalk switching off playing so I never picked up the conversation. Anyway I was hoping in view of our previous positive relations (one way resource trades, open borders etc), and your access to the gems on the other side that you would let me settle the site and grab my own source.

Additionally my diplomacy will probably be a bit greater in volume now (I have a lot less work for a period after today). Dazed was talking about closing Sian's borders and I mentioned war with Sian approximately turn 130. He said that he had some issues to sort through with you (i.e. getting you on side) and that he'd get back to me. What's troubling you guys about the idea?

slowcheetah[/COLOR]

Has he forgotten good manners? No Hail Dictator! or Hail Ronald Reagan!? We must declare war over this insult! As for actually responding, we never had an agreement in place and it's really his problem he didn't follow up with Catwalk better about the state of their agreements (or lack thereof). And while the resource trades were nice, we did negotiate those following my ridiculous trade where I gave them marble to build the MoM (yeah how's that working out for us? duh). They owed us a bit more than they paid in that trade, so while their subsequent resource trades were very helpful to us and certainly were viewed as a gesture of good will, that doesn't have a lot of bearing on the current situation, I would say.

I'm not sure what Dazed is trying to sell him, whether it's merely closing borders or if he's trying to coordinate the dogpile himself now. I assume the latter since everyone closing borders is the brain dead obvious move to make, and I've already taken the action (I realize Slowcheetah has not seen the save since that happened). So in our response to Slowcheetah maybe we should ask him what he's referring to, OBs or the war idea.

And if he's wondering why we don't want to play nice with Dazed, we're working on a plan for that. This is a bit of a stretch, but Kuro started this game before Dazed took over. Kuro also started in PB6 before being replaced, and his capital there was...Ponyville. So Dazed is (kinda) Ponyville:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX3WirIH5Rg

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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Sian's gold and rival best GNP from the past few turns (Sian is always the rival best)

Code:
Turn     Year    Sian's Gold      Rival Best GNP   Wonder Completed
T95    650 AD            397                 494   The Great Library
T94    620 AD            217                 385
T93    590 AD            380                 352
T92    560 AD            241                 286   The Colossus, Parthenon
T91    530 AD            112                 246
T90    500 AD              0                 271

Visual form:

[Image: T95-GNP.JPG]

Clearly fail gold is helping to keep him running a higher research slider than he otherwise would be able to do. He is running what has to be a high research slider to generate these numbers, given what we know about his economy. He doesn't have all that many cottages. He has a lot of trade routes. He has Colossus coast tiles, but not that many large cities to take major advantage of it. He does have a TON of mines built up, but surely he isn't building wealth. Some of the GNP is from his huge cultural output, but not the bulk of it.

Conclusion: Sian is cobbling together economy from several sources but wherever the source, fail gold is basically giving him free turns of research every time he builds (and rebuilds) a wonder.

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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More incoming diplo detected. SHIELDS UP!

Dazed to Slowcheetah, Boldly, and Xenu Wrote:[COLOR="Cyan"]Slowcheetah, Boldly and Xenu (Hail Ronald Reagan!),

I am writing so that the three of us can discuss the "Sian Situation." In order to facilitate this conversation, I'm prepared to put all my cards on the table. I am also trusting you not to forward this to Sian, but that is ultimately your choice. I spent a while chatting with Krill yesterday (somethign I don't actually do often--at least, not about this game. I'd say Krill looks at 1 out of every 15-20 turns. He answers my specific questions when I ask but that's it) and have come to some conclusions based on his advice and the current diplomatic/tech situation in game. First, some history:

When I took over for Kuro, things were bad. He essentially had three cities with 2 workers and few helpful techs. I'm not interested in disparaging Kuro but it was a significant shortcoming given Civ's snowball effect--for details about this effect, see... just about every game ever! :P The only plan I could imagine to make up for it was to leverage IMP to a crazy land grab (see my city count vs yours). However, I have almost no experience with that type of gameplay and Krill's occasional advice wasn't enough to compensate for the situation I was in. Resulting in the fact that I'm far behind despite my score. Slowcheetah should be able to confirm this since he has completed Alphabet.

Xenu had previously advocated for a dogpile against Sian and I declined (see plan above). The truth is that if I had realized the threat he was at the time, I would have been all for it. I simply underestimated the fact that IND/ORG is very powerful on this map, not to mention having early courthouses! For that, I will own up to having poor long term vision.

At this point, though, Krill and I agree that unless something happens to significantly slow down Sian, he will win. He has GLH, GL AND Colossus, plus the highest GNP and strong production. Any wars between the three of us will only assist him. I'll be blunt and say you can fight me and probably win at things stand now--though I have enough skills to make it very painful. Or Xenu/Boldly could fight Slowcheetah. The point is, anything between the three of us isn't going to be enough to slow Sian down. Personally, i'm not interested in playing for second place. Therefore, for any of us to have a chance, Sian needs to be taken down a notch (yes, this is Xenu's same argument from before). I also realize that it may seem hypocritical to agree now but not 40 turns ago. See above explanation then either decide it's self serving and we can hand the game to Sian while fighting between ourselves OR let's agree that he needs to be stop and figure out how to play from here out.

This email is my effort to make this game worth the continued effort of playing. Coming in 2nd or 4th makes no difference to me. So, let's either decide that we're all interested in trying for 1st or decide that we aren't and at least I know that I don't need to make a serious effort.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts,

Dazed

P.S. If you're wondering why this sudden focus from me, it's mostly as a result of getting my butt kicked by Krill and him giving me his stark opinions on what will happen in game if things continue down the current trajectory. [/COLOR]

TL;DR - Come on, it's a dogpile request. Who doesn't want to read it? Anyway, now that Dazed is done building settlers he wants to enact the same war plan I advocated ages ago. He says he was raked over the coals by Krill (I hope that chat is posted in his thread) and now sees that Sian is about to win the game if action isn't taken. But you guys already knew that because you've been reading my thread where I whine incessantly about the wonder whoring and fail gold cheesing and the failure of the international community to blah blah blah. Dazed says that rather than fighting each other, this is the pivotal moment to come together and take collective action. This, just as I posted that beautiful Youtube video firing the orbital friendship beam at his land. angry

I sent a reply all email response that was heavy on ideas and notably light on commitment. shhh

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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A retaliatory dipolmatic missive, FIRE WHEN READY:

Xenu to Boldly, Dazed, and Slowcheetah Wrote:[COLOR="Magenta"]Hail Dictators!

Dazed forgot to mention Sian's fail gold cheesing so let me add that to our list of grievances. I put up a post about this in my thread, feel free to read this one post:

http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showp...tcount=315

As for how to stop Sian, the easy answer is to start throwing massive numbers of troops against him. The bad news is that he has or will soon have the ability to build longbows, making now a horrible time to attack anyone. While we wait around and tech up to some useful military units he's going to keep the snowball rolling. I don't have a real suggestion for what to do here. We need to collectively attack him to stop him, but it's a really bad time on the tech tree to go on the offensive.

One suggestion I can make is that we all three declare war on him now and allow a phony war to persist. He'll build a lot of units in response, maybe enough that unit support costs will slow him a bit. Of course if he'd like to throw units at us he's free to do it, it's much easier for us to defend than attack, same as it is for him.

Slowcheetah, I think you could get some good results with your circumnav naval advantage. I've seen a trireme or two around, why not stack them together and go pillage all his seafood? Did we ban blockades? If not, deny him his beautiful Colossus coastal tiles.

If we did want to invade, if we only raze two cities we can set him back a long way. Closest to Dazed is the Colossus city (Ragnar - city wall, flat terrain), and on Slowcheetah's coast is the Lighthouse city (Victoria - no wall, flat terrain). If we're able to mass units to burn one or both of those it would be very amusing. But keep in mind it will be expensive for us to do it.

I don't suppose anyone has a great artist laying around that could shift borders to make a ground attack on Ragnar possible? Dazed could move adjacent to the city from his culture if not for a peak tile. Failing an artist bomb it's two tiles to be adjacent to the city. That would give a lot of time for Sian to reinforce.

As for attacking Victoria that could only be a naval assault, and I don't see where we'd get enough boats to do it. We would have to capture Hannibal (Sian's silver city), fort the tundra NE of the city to build a canal around the ice, and then Slowcheetah could sail a fleet 3 tiles at a time toward Victoria. But that would be easily spotted and likely stopped as well.

Other options include relieving him of all his island possessions. He doesn't seem to have a lot of cottages to pillage, not that that would be a good way to spend our troops as he would kill off anything less than a full invasion stack if he's close to knights.

Now, if I remember right he's been expanding quickly recently toward the jungle. How much garrison do you think he has down there? Maybe we can eat away at his periphery if the core is too secure. That doesn't reduce his production edge, but between blockading his islands (or capturing them, if we banned blockades) and removing those ICTRs, burning his periphery cities, and harassing him all over the map forcing him to keep large garrisons everywhere, we could slow the beast.

Is that enough for any of us to catch up?

While we discuss what to do, I'd suggest you guys at least build some power. As a minimum step I think everyone declaring war and persisting in a phony war will force Sian to react, and his reaction will have to slow his economy.

Hail Ronald Reagan!

Xenu,
Tyrant
Republican Party[/COLOR]

TL;DR - I whine again about fail gold, lay out a few military options if we choose to go that route (specifically options to raze the Colossus and Lighthouse cities), propose a phony war at minimum to force a response, propose capturing island cities to deny ICTRs, and blockading if we didn't ban it.

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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FIRE!!!

email reply to Slowcheetah Wrote:[COLOR="Magenta"]Slowcheetah,

I'm realized this morning I had replied to Dazed's messagea and not yours. Yes we're planning to settle the site, as we did not have a settling agreement in place. We did not rush the site, we have settled several other locations since we previously engaged Catwalk on the matter. But we need to nail down a border in that area and that is what this city will do. We'd be happy to discuss any resource trade you'd like, regarding gems or any other resource you may lack.

As you have the save you no doubt see I've reopened borders with Dazed and closed them with Sian. I hope you'll close with Sian as well, since I do not believe you need trade routes with him to supply each of your cities with foreign trade routes. This step will become unnecessary if we all declare war on him, but it's a good first step.

As for the dogpile Dazed is floating now, you've seen my previous message about that. I've always been for dogpiling the leader but I think we've waited until a time that doesn't make sense to do it now, and in the intervening time between now and T130 or so he very well could be far ahead of us, maybe enough so that it will be difficult to attack at that time as well. Hopefully you'll get good mileage out of your double golden age and can keep apace in military technology.

Hail Ronald Reagan,

Xenu,
Tyrant
Republican Party[/COLOR]

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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THEY'RE RETURNING FIRE, SHIELDS UP!!!

Quote:[COLOR="Cyan"]There are many methods that could be explored. Personally, all I'm looking to know is if we can agree that Sian needs to be the focus. If yes, then we can discuss how. If no, then this game is essentially over and I would suggest calling Sian winner now.

I understand Xenu's concern about Sian's defensive capabilities now (longbows, etc) but the truth is that since his GNP is so much better, there won't be a better time. We wait for muskets, he has rifles. Since Civ is a snowball game the situation will only get worse.

I'd like to hear everyone's intentions/committment. Xenu, I appreciate your ideas but would like to know what your actually committing to yourself. Slowcheetah, I think you said your big week for school was this week, so now that it's over, it'd be great to hear your thoughts.

A "maybe" is just as bad as a "no" on this front. We're all in or all out. I'm all in if we're all in. What about you?

dazed[/COLOR]

Sigh. So if we decide to take Dazed apart that means Sian wins the game via concession? What kind of ultimatum is that? The meta game is really irritating me. No one else had a problem with Sian ages ago when it would have been easy to smite him but now that Dazed is done with EXPANSION MODE and is moving to the next phase of the game, he realizes that, oh crap, Sian is a runaway.

So if we concede, we lose. If we attack Sian, who stands to benefit and have a chance to compete for the win? The only way we benefit is to suffer less (and therefore spend less resources on the dogpile) than both Dazed and Slowwalk, while still managing to bring Sian back to us. This is the typical non-committal committal that you see in Civ dogpiles. Someone doesn't do their fair share in an effort to come out of the war better than his competitors and the dogpile fails to achieve its goal. The alternative to that is that we go full bore into the war effort, hope our allies do as well, the war very likely succeeds in its goals...and then what? We can't make significant land gains from a rival we largely don't border. We can take his island cities, great. They aren't well developed. Dazed and Slowcheetah have access to developed core cities, and wonders if they capture instead of razing (and why would they raze? They could make a separate, private agreement between them to keep their gains and cut me out, then come after me later).

So it looks to me like we're going to lose any way we go about it. What are the alternatives? I still don't support this war effort, but I don't support conceding the game either. Sian hasn't played spectacularly well in this game, he has made a lot of questionable decisions, in my opinion. But he hasn't played badly, either. He took a beneficial start, worked diplomacy well enough to abuse the only other team competing for wonders, and leveraged it into a lead. Well played. But he has not done anything on the diplomatic front to warrant the free hand he's had. He hasn't played a good diplomacy game, in my opinion. He hasn't had to. But even given his lead I don't think it is inevitable that he wins this game, even if we don't all fight him now. He'll continue to have a lead and will continue to be ahead in technology, but on its own that does not make a victory condition. He has to build a spaceship, which can be stopped by a Rego. He has to conquer/dominate all of his opponents, which can be stopped by us fighting back. He has to get three legendary cultural cities, which can be stopped by us razing them. We have options to drag this game out to the point that we can achieve effective tech parity over the long run, so why concede now? This isn't over yet. I'm not about to quit just because I don't think I can win. Sian has to earn it. If he wants the win, he has to take it.

So anyway we are where we are. Number One, thoughts?

Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
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Took the afternoon off from work and I need a civ fix. Save is taking its time getting back around. Hopefully that means economies are being retooled for war and borders are closing.

As for our contribution, I'd like to participate some, but again, we stand to gain very little other than letting Sian run away. We won't hold any cities, except perhaps on our island colonies.

I think the best course of action is to deny Sian the use of his glorious trade routes by razing GLH. We can blockade/pillage his coastal cities. I suppose that means a navy. Man, my tech priorities are all over the place these last few turns. rolleye
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