[SPOILERS] Team EggHeads: DMOC and TeddyKGB (Now Lurker-Friendly!)

[DMOC]

Yeah, sucks about our economies, but ours will be better if we get the gold from razing Antium, and once we get the marble hooked up. As far as cities go, we'll found UC San Diego. Workers will chop into a granary and road the deer tile (I assume we want to keep the forest for extra production). The worker from Washington that was just built, I put that on Caltech's plains hill since Caltech otherwise doesn't have much to grow on. The worker on Illinois can road the hill (lets the spear uses it IIRC) and then improve the deer by the future marble city. Anything else we should discuss before one of us plays the turn? (I can do it in about an hour.) It seems like we know what we're doing.

I will also send messages to SutOxy, DT, and other teams shortly. I'm thinking we hold off on the map trade for now (?) but ask Arki first. He'll probably understand that he can't keep his cities a secret for much longer anyway.

[DMOC]

Teddy -- sorry, an emergency occurred. Can you play this turn?

[TeddyKGB]

Will play in 20-30 min.

[DMOC]

Sorry about being out of commission last night. I had something to attend to and then fell asleep immediately.

I caught up on diplomacy by sending messages to a few teams.

Unfortunately, the bad news for this turn is that Rome attacked out of Antium to our stack (best move for them) and ended up destroying four catapults and several axes. Now they'll have several level 3 praets in the city by the next time we could attack. Teddy, can we chat in roughly 6-8 hours? We have 3 axes and 3 catapults that can still move there, but if we are to attack the city we'll have to suicide some axes this turn.

Lesson learned ... don't do that again. Oh well, it doesn't really make or break our game since SutOxy are likely to win, but at least I'll learn this lesson for future games.

[DMOC]

Looks like there are some additional posts in the lurker thread. They are probably making fun of DMOC.

[DMOC]

Turn 131 - 400 AD

Unfortunately, this wasn't quite a good turn for us.

For some reason, I forgot to consider the case when Rome would attack out. So now we have to retreat. I've put our troops on the silver tile and pillaged the road connection. So we should be safe for a few turns. We founded our sixteenth city (we have the most number of cities now!) which should get the silver tile soon. It's on a granary but a worker is nearby and can chop into a wall (only takes 1 turn for a chop due to our stone). And later, we will get the marble. Our southern galley blockaded Antium, so it also blocks Ravenna, which prevents Rome from working any water tile and getting trade route bonuses. I think we get those bonuses, but I'm not sure when those are applied. Can we see how much we earn from blockading?

As for replenishing our troops, we've got several cities diverting focus away from wealth to building axes/catapults. We will keep research at 0% for probably this turn and the next, and then crank it up to 100% for Civil Service.

Anyway, in better news, we got an updated set of maps from Arkipeller. Here's part of the world map, starting with some of our land.

Here is a random shot at our northwest, away from the battlefront. We've got three coastal cities growing next turn, so at least we're not totally shot in terms of population and production. I'm not sure what Wisconsin will build next -- the courthouse will save up to 5gpt next turn so it's a good build there. Maybe a lighthouse, if it's going to work those tiles? (By the way, we have 2 courthouses and 1 market finishing up, so next turn will at least see some improvement in economy.)

What follows are a set of maps for our opponents. I'll save some analysis for later, but I will say that India is a bit weaker than I thought. Lots of cities but not so much land, it seems. Perfect for two-move knights.

Here's India:

India + Cat/Bandit:

Cat/Bandit:

Cat/Bandit and SutOxy:

SutOxy:

This is the city they will rush the Taj Mahal in.

It's really depressing to know exactly what they're doing, but being unable to stop them. If we hadn't gotten stuck in this Defensive Pact, we could have at least tried to start our own set of Golden Ages to get scientsts so that they wouldn't also get the Liberalism bonus. I wonder what other players would have done in our situation.

Demographics:

[TeddyKGB]

Sad news. My fault is at least equal here.

Well, we are not completely crushed. Maybe its even better if Rome concentrate on DT: we were honnor DPact, we lose a lot of hammers.
At least now -- less expenses.

I just logged in and has AP resolution:

Any action except None?

[DMOC]

I'd do "None." I'll check the game soon. What did Rome do? If they're just healing in Antium (as I think they will) then how much of our military do we want to leave on the silver tile?

[DMOC]

Turn 132 - 425 AD

So, after last turn's military disaster, we had a stack cut in half on the silver tile by Antium, while Barteq promoted his units and spent the turn healing. Teddy and I decided to move the entire stack on the silver back to UM College Park, with the exception of one spear who went with three axes and a chariot to guard a worker who's going to chop the forests there for a walls. My reasoning for moving the stack in the city is because if Barteq has three workers nearby, he could road the tundra tile NW of Antium and attack us on the silver hill. Basically, it would be the same exact situation last turn, except our units are on a hill for 25% defensive bonuses, but many of his soldiers would get an extra Combat promotion. This is not what we want!

By moving back into the city, we save on upkeep costs and also reunite our stack with our catapults. And there's no way Barteq can attack our stack if it's in UM College Park, unless he wishes to suicide his chariots against our spearman. (We've also got a second spear coming next turn.) Basically, the moral of the story is that we need to be the ones attacking, not defending, and this situation lets us attack if needed. My hunch is that Bartreq will just spend another turn healing. Oh well, that works for me too! Barteq had 426 gold last turn and has 387 now, and he didn't take a city, so he's losing roughly 39 gold per turn. Our blockading is certainly playing a role in that! Note to self: next turn, pillage Antium's crabs, then blockade.

We've also got 5% cultural control on the silver tile already.

By the way, here's the tech screen as usual:

This screenshot is pretty important to us so I'll keep taking it every turn. SutOxy can also research Compass and Machinery, which are not shown in the preceding image.

In foreign news, Bandit/Catwalk finished the Temple of Artemis (good!). They must have some secure NAP with SutOxy if they wonder-build like that, but then again, SutOxy are clearly not attacking them. Suttree did offer to tell catwalk/bandit to contact us when I complained that bandit/catwalk didn't respond to my diplomacy messages, so hopefully they will listen to suttree.

In domestic news, this turn we switched research back to 100%. We will get Civil Service in three turns, assuming we don't go away from our wealth builds. Our break-even right now is almost 50%, though of course building wealth skews that a bit.

Since we will soon get Civil Service, our workers are preparing for chain-irrigation by either farming the necessary tiles or getting in position. For instance, Wisconsin and Berkeley will be able to share two farms east and northeast of the wheat (which will also become a 5 food tile with irrigation). Next turn, the worker 2-2-1 of Wisconsin will probably head over to MIT to assist with chain irrigation.

We are also preparing for our next Great Person from Berkeley, as we've hired more scientists. If we get a Great Engineer, we'll probably bulb Machinery. If we get a Great Scientist, we'll probably start a Golden Age. Either way, this helps power us to Guilds, which we need in order to substantially strengthen our position in this game.

Here is what we are building in our cities:

Other screenshots:

Top 5 cities/wonders and demographics (race to see who gets the first size 14 city in this game?):

With the additional espionage points form courthouses, we should get city visibility into Rome soon. After that, we might consider an espionage split with Yossarian, just so we can see his graphs. He is pretty open to showing them to us but it's nice to see how he's doing without having to ask him all the time.

[DMOC]

Well, well, well ... look who just sent us an email.

Hi

I wanted to play this game without any diplomacy, but after few debates with Haram and after few last turns, I changed my mind and, at least, will try talk to you, that I could have a clear consciousness after this game.
Short explanation of few things - diplomacy and others:
Most importend reason of my behavior - time, but not only one. First of all, when this game was starting, I lost my main teammate - Haram. He doesn't want to play, cause of the map (too large for him - for me as well, cause at the end I was expecting at least 25% smaller), but I talk to my close friend, Geo, and he agree to my terms (in short and in simplify - I will take 65% of a game and he take a rest). We choose our leader and nations (it was rather entertaining than competiting option on this map for us ). I make few turns and was waiting for him to start playing too, but he was prolonging it. Finally, after many turns, he resign. I was sounding few people in my country, but found no interest, so I make simple decision - no diplomacy and most simple strategy - building large army and than choosing an easiest target :P. I decided to completly cut off diplomacy mostly cause of time reasons - didn't want to play second full time dyplo game (we have our national game in Poland - DT's team members are playing too) and most importend thing - writing in foreign language cost me a lot of time (I don't like to make easy errors, so I often use a dictionary - I understand a lot in english, but I don't use it alone, so I have some troubles with creating correct sentences). I was thinking about resigning too, but it's hard to find a replacement, so I stay (didn't want to destroy a game flow) and start too develop my "brilliant strategy" .
2 things occur, that completly delay me a lot - first - iron - few terrible locations, far away from my initial borders; secend - my laziness - I didn't destroy a warrior only because I would must make a war to destroy it and then try to make peace (and to make peace you need a diplomacy... ). Consequences was easy to predict - you made a contact with DT and form a defensive pact (I didn't know for sure, if it is still active - I get a short message from DT in diplomatic window long time age) and I could do only one thing to deal with it - make a much bigger army :D.
Because I'm playing this game much more for fun, than for a victory (but it doesn't mean, that I will play against my nation and don't use an army when I must), I choose to attack DT team. Why? Cause they had the slightest chances for winning from all of my neighbours. I made this decision after long discussion with Haram - he told me that in simplify - "You rather don't fight for winning, so why spoil a game to a player that played well. I agree with him and attack that's why I attack DT.
Why am I writing now? Answer is easy - first I don't want to spoil your game completly - both of you must keep a bigger army thanks to me (higher costs and lost hammers) and at least give a chance for a peace and second thing, after last turns I felt a blood lust in my vains and I thanks to it found a new will to play (other thing is that in future I want to check one strategy that I never use before in practice).

I don't know, if you want to come to an agreement with me, but if so, than I have 2 easy conditions - carte blanche in England and long term agreement (NAP or even a DP).

PS I shyly admit, that I don't even check this account earlier, so I didn't read any messages hear.

Regards
Barteq leader of GG team

I'll try to chat with Yossarian tomorrow.