RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Sullla]

We did get around to another turn quickly, so here's T33:



Chamberlain moved NE and spotted a lion in the distance. Depending on where it moves, we'll try to slip past or defend in place next turn. Pickett has reached the spot of our next city, and will hold there to protect it. Our settler is on his way, and will arrive at the spot next turn. Workers A and B used their free turn to almost finish a mine on the grassland hill just south of Gettysburg. They'll move to pasture the cows next turn.

Speaker, I think that next turn would be ideal to revolt to Slavery. We'd be able to work the cattle tile the following turn, and we wouldn't lose out on the food/production from the new city while the settler is still moving to found it. What do you think?

Let me also run some diplomacy by you... in a new post following this one.

[Sullla]

We got this from Jowy yesterday, I must have missed it:

Alright. We'll send another scout south soon. Cig is busy dodging lions and bears to the east. It seems that so far the east also follows the donut-style. We'll let you know when we get near your lands, then you can ask Dantski if he wants to set up a meeting.

How far north have you scouted btw? Since we can't exchange maps, we have to set up the borders by landmarks. Or just race for the land. But that probably wouldn't do much good to our relations in the long run :P

That tells us that they sent their scout east; they probably haven't found anyone else because they are moving around the "inside" edge of the donut, when we know that all of the teams started around the outer edge.

Here's what I'd like to send off to them:

Dear Greek friends,

Thanks for your latest message. In response to your question about our scouting to the north, we have a warrior currently moving in that direction. He's right around where we met your scout originally, and you can expect to see him pass by your capital in a half-dozen or so turns. We're letting you know well ahead of time so that you don't need to worry when you see our warrior show up. :) [1]

It's probably a formality at this point, but Speaker and I would like to officially renew our NAP for the second half of its duration. Hopefully you feel the same way!

In terms of settling, your team mentioned earlier that you didn't want to see an "Operation Pink Dot" in the area between us - that is, making an aggressive settling push early on. Speaker and I are prepared to promise that we will refrain from any "Pink Dot" cities, if your team will give us the same promise in return. Can you promise us that you won't send your first settler like 10 tiles south towards us? We will pledge the same in return. We'd like to get some agreement on that before both our teams start building settlers and picking out likely city locations. [2]

Thanks for responding so frequently. We hope that our teams will continue to work together this well in the future. Best wishes.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

[1] This paragraph responds to their question but doesn't really answer it. I'd still like to stall any "border agreement" talk if possible.

[2] That last sentence is beyond disingenous, since we already have a settler built and moving to its desired spot! Heh. But we'd like to get them to pledge not to make an aggressive move with the first settler, i.e. not go for the gold spot.

I'd also like us to send off something short to Dantski:

Dear Romalinese neighbors!

Here's a short message to let you know that we will halt our Espionage point spending against you at 43 EP, which is supposed to be the perfect number for both teams to view one another's bar graphs. If you could do the same, we'd be able to focus our espionage spending on other teams as we talked about in the past.

Stay in touch and let us know how you're doing. Cheers.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

I haven't send either of these. If you have no objections, then just send them off yourself, Speaker. If not, I'll probably send them tomorrow morning.

[Speaker]

Definitely let's swap to slavery next turn after we finish Animal Husbandry. Are you thinking to go worker first in Red Dot and send 1 worker over there to chop into it? We could then build another worker in Gettysburg at size 3, working the Wheat, Cow, and mine, as we research to Pottery, and have 2 workers per city, to get some cottages up after that.

The emails look good. Do you want to mention anything to Dantski about making contact with Greece?

[Sullla]

I was thinking we'd want to go monument first in the new city, so that we could expand borders and get that copper online ASAP. I generally don't like to start with workers in brand new cities... anyway, we need to think it over and plan out the next 10 turns soon. I concur that having Gettysburg build a worker at size 3 is the next move there. Less certain about whether we want/need a fourth worker in the second city.

I'll go ahead and send out the emails when I get a chance tonight or tomorrow. Dantski knows about contact with Greece from our original email exchange, when he told us he had met Nakor.

[Speaker]

Good point, monument. I forgot about that part.

[Sullla]

OK, there's tons of stuff going on at the moment. Let's try to go through them one step at a time. Here's the current turn (T34):



We discovered Animal Husbandry, did the first half of a pasture on our cattle tile, and revolted to Slavery. Next turn we found our second city, which I think we should call Antietam, after a reader suggestion from earlier in this thread. (It also fits well with the "Red" dot.) Here's how I would sim out the next few turns. Please give some feedback on this if you get a chance, Speaker.

(T34) AH complete (150/149), Wheel 8t (1/89)
Gettysburg 14/24 food, Warrior 14/15
Worker A move SE-NE and pasture (4t), Worker B move SE-NE and pasture (3t)
Revolt to Slavery

(T35) Wheel 8t (1/89)
Gettysburg 14/24 food, Warrior 14/15 [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows]
Antietam 0/22 food, Monument 0/30 [2/1/0 grassland forest]
Worker A pasture (2t), Worker B pasture (done)

(T36) Wheel 7t (?)
Gettysburg 21/24 food, Warrior 3/15 [Warrior done] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows]
Antietam 2/22 food, Monument 2/30 [2/1/0 grassland forest]
Worker A move N and mine (3t), Worker B move N and mine (2t)

(T37) Wheel 6t (?)
Gettysburg 4/26 food [SIZE 3], Worker 0/60 [Warrior 7/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 4/22 food, Monument 4/30 [2/1/0 grassland forest]
Worker A mine (done), Worker B move E-SE

(T38 ) Wheel 5t (?)
Gettysburg 4/26 food, Worker 13/60 [Warrior 7/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 6/22 food, Monument 6/30 [2/1/0 grassland forest]
Worker A move E-SE, Worker B chop (3t)

(T39) Wheel 4t (?)
Gettysburg 4/26 food, Worker 26/60 [Warrior 7/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 8/22 food, Monument 28/30 [chop] [2/1/0 grassland forest]
Worker A chop (2t), Worker B chop (done)

(T40) Wheel 3t (?)
Gettysburg 4/26 food, Worker 39/60 [Warrior 7/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 10/22 food, Warrior 0/15 [Monument 30/30] [3/0/1 rice]
Worker A move E and farm (5t), Worker B move E and farm (4t)

(T41) Wheel 2t (?)
Gettysburg 4/26 food, Worker 52/60 [Warrior 7/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 13/22 food, Warrior 1/15 [3/0/1 rice]
Worker A farm (3t), Worker B farm (2t)

(T42) Wheel 1t (?)
Gettysburg 4/26 food, Worker 52/60 [Warrior 7/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 16/22 food, Warrior 2/15 [5/0/1 rice]
Worker A farm (done), Worker B chop or build road

The big disadvantage is not knowing exactly when Wheel research will finish, because our finances and research will change when we found the second city next turn. Still, it should be "around" 8 turns, and I base the estimate off of that.

I think that we will probably want to go worker -> settler at Gettysburg, still build them at size 3. (Hear me out on this, Speaker!) Now, we want to grow the capital up to the happy cap ASAP, yes, but we want to grow the capital while it works cottages. It will take us about 8t to research Wheel, and about 8 more turns after that to research Pottery. While we are waiting for those techs to come in, we don't want to grow Gettysburg into working unimproved tiles. Why not build a worker (5t) and then follow that with a settler (8t) which will occupy our time while researching? We can probably chop out a fourth worker at Antietam using those forests after it grows to size 2.

Anyway, we can sim it more accurately as we get closer to the actual turns. For the moment, let's concentrate on that T34 to T41 period outlined above.

[Sullla]

Internationally, there have been some techs discovered in the past few turns, but it's been hard to determine which ones they were. I have some educated guesses written down, not enough certainty for my liking though... Jowy discovered a tech last turn, and I really don't know what it was! My best guess is Sailing or Animal Husbandry, however that's still little more than an educated guess. Eventually we'll get Alphabet and can know these things with more certainty.

Dantski responded with a "message received, thanks" brief response. But Jowy had a much more interesting reply (our text in gold):

Dear Greek friends,
Thanks for your latest message. In response to your question about our
scouting to the north, we have a warrior currently moving in that direction. He's right around where we met your scout originally, and you can expect to see him pass by your capital in a half-dozen or so turns. We're letting you know well ahead of time so that you don't need to worry when you see our warrior show up.

OK. In a related note, we have met the team of Regoarrar, Darreljs and Sunrise in the east. Actually it was more them finding us than us finding them, due to both of our scouting units dying to wild animals just a turn or two away of their units or lands. Anyway, I sent them southwest to find you. Hope you don't mind. They wouldn't really have much else to go anyway.

It's probably a formality at this point, but Speaker and I would like to
officially renew our NAP for the second half of its duration. Hopefully you
feel the same way!

Yes we accept.

In terms of settling, your team mentioned earlier that you didn't want to
see an "Operation Pink Dot" in the area between us - that is, making an
aggressive settling push early on. Speaker and I are prepared to promise
that we will refrain from any "Pink Dot" cities, if your team will give us
the same promise in return. Can you promise us that you won't send your first settler like 10 tiles south towards us? We will pledge the same in return. We'd like to get some agreement on that before both our teams start building settlers and picking out likely city locations.

Yes we promise this to you. Not that I'm afraid that you would settle near us, now that I've seen your awesome lands compared to ours. Still as a friendly gesture from us we still accept and won't settle aggressively against you. I wouldn't mind some defined border once you've scouted more. Because of this donut-land it shouldn't be too hard to divide.. Just a vertical line in middle of the lands between us, maybe a tile or two south since south has better lands.

Thanks for responding so frequently. We hope that our teams will continue to work together this well in the future. Best wishes.

Likewise.
~ Jowy

Important details in there:

- Jowy told us that he lost his warrior (which we already knew) and also his scout, which was unknown due to scouts not having Soldier points. Now look at their opening: they spent 6 turns building a warrior earlier, and even slowed growth to do it, only to have that unit get killed already. What a waste of production in the early game!

- Jowy found sunrise's team! They are our next neighbor to the northeast around the doughnut. It's a good thing that we have Chamberlain moving in that direction, because we want to meet them ASAP. They are one of our big rivals to win this game longterm, so perhaps if we could work out some kind of agreement it would be to our mutual benefit. Gotta keep exploring east...

- Good news that they also agreed to all of our proposals. Even better, Jowy seems to think that our land is better than his, which may simply be "grass is greener" thinking, but if true would be very nice.

I'll send them back a short message expressing thanks. Wonder what they'll think when they see our second city appear next turn! (Because Jowy has zero military units, he'll have to build at least one more warrior before he can even start a settler. And Dantski doesn't appear to be off to a quick start either. We look to be in really good shape here so far.)

[novice]

Internationally, there have been some techs discovered in the past few turns, but it's been hard to determine which ones they were. I have some educated guesses written down, not enough certainty for my liking though... Jowy discovered a tech last turn, and I really don't know what it was! My best guess is Sailing or Animal Husbandry, however that's still little more than an educated guess. Eventually we'll get Alphabet and can know these things with more certainty.

With tech trading disabled, will alphabet tell you anything about your opponents' techs? I know at always war you can see their techs on the F4 screen (which I think is a shame), but with tech trading disabled this screen just says "Technology trading not possible" or something to that effect.

We look to be in really good shape here so far.

Indeed, but you know what happens when lurkers say that.
Also, yay, horses in your capital's third ring.

[Speaker]

Interesting location for that horse. It's the one tile that was not included in any city in our dotmap. Do we want to move our Red dot up one tile? Or blue dot down one tile? Moving Red dot up a tile will gain us a forest, while moving Blue dot down a tile will lose us a forest. It sucks to waste a turn, and not found Red dot this turn, but do we have another choice? We can't waste that 2f 3h horse tile, and it would *really* help us in the early going, for both production, and scouting.

The more I look at it, the more I think moving Red Dot N is the best play. This would allow us to chop both forest/hills (NW + S of the new Red dot), and not waste any worker turns getting into position, like your proposal does. The two cons are that we won't be able to split off the Cow (though I think we'll need the cow in Gettysburg for quite a while), and we can't work the Rice until a border pop. But we'll likely be chopping a bit before we work the rice anyways, and we'll need to farm at least one other tile in Antietem, to get a +6 food surplus, which seems to be the magic number in my experience, so we can do that while we wait for the border to pop.

[Speaker]

This is my best attempt at the next 10 turns. I made this assuming we decide to move the settler N this turn (T34) and found Antietam next turn (T35).

(T35) Wheel 8t (1/89)
Gettysburg 14/24 food, Warrior 14/15 [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows]
Settler/Pickett move N
Worker A pasture (2t), Worker B pasture (done)

(T36) Wheel 7t (?)
Gettysburg 21/24 food, Warrior 3/15 [Warrior done] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows]
Antietam 0/22 food, Monument 0/30 [0/3/0 forest/plains hill]

(T37) Wheel 6t (?)
Gettysburg 4/26 food [SIZE 3], Worker 0/60 [Warrior 7/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 0/22 food, Monument 4/30 [2/1/0 forest river grassland]
Worker A mine (done), Worker B move E-E

(T38) Wheel 5t (?)
Gettysburg 4/26 food, Worker 13/60 [Warrior 7/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 2/22 food, Monument 6/30 [2/1/0 forest river grassland]
Worker A move NE-N, Worker B chop (3t)

(T39) Wheel 4t (?)
Gettysburg 4/26 food, Worker 26/60 [Warrior 7/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 4/22 food, Monument 8/30 [chop] [2/1/0 grassland forest]
Worker A chop (3t), Worker B chop (2t)

(T40) Wheel 3t (?)
Gettysburg 4/26 food, Worker 39/60 [Warrior 7/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 6/22 food, Monument 30/30 [chop] [2/1/0 grassland forest] Need to have at least 10 hammers into the monument including production from this turn, so the chop will finish it.
Worker A chop (2t), Worker B chop (Done)

(T41) Wheel 2t (?)
Gettysburg 4/26 food, Worker 52/60 [Warrior 7/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 8/22 food,[Monument Done], Worker 20/60 [chop] [2/1/0 grassland forest]
Worker A chop (Done), Worker B move NE, chop (3t)

(T42) Wheel 1t (?)
Gettysburg 4/26 food, Settler 5/100 [Warrior 7/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 8/22 food, Worker 24/60 [2/1/0 grassland forest]
Worker A move NE chop (3t), Worker B chop (2t)

(T43) Pottery ?t
Gettysburg 4/26 food, Settler 18/100 [Warrior 7/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 8/22 food, Worker 48/60 [chop] [2/1/0 grassland forest]
Worker A move SE chop (Done), Worker B move S Chop (3t)

(T44) Pottery ?t
Gettysburg 4/26 food, Settler 31/100 [Warrior 7/15] [5/1/1 wheat + 4/2/1 cows + 1/3/1 grassland hill]
Antietam 8/22 food, Worker 72/60 [chop] [2/1/0 grassland forest]
Worker A move S chop (2t), Worker Chop (Done)

Antietam's borders pop on turn 51, and then we hook up the Rice, followed by Horse, and cottage 2 tiles around our capital. We'll have 2 workers per city, and once we found our third city (Pink Dot?), can move 1 worker over from the capital, so we'll have 1 at the capital, 1 at Antietam, and 2 at Pink Dot.

EDIT- I totally agree with you, Sullla, that the 8) smiley face needs to be removed.