RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Sullla]

Jowy's response:

Hello KA

Good to hear from you. That outdated message was not really informative Thanks for passing on my plea. Cover And Duck is atm just east of your second city. He ended up next to a lion this turn. Hopefully this lion won't beat the odds like it's predessors.

Thanks for being honest. I'm not a big fan of border deals either. I was just being a little too paranoid in the start of this game and wanted to have everything in paper. I feel like I can trust your team and that you won't do anything drastic.

I wouldn't say that a city settled right next to a copper would be non-threatening I do get your point though. I wasn't planning to settle aggressively against you anyway. Let me be honest, I have pretty much planned my future city sites. You would have space for some cities north of your capital and the new city, but not for another line after those. What do you think of this, fair enough for you?

I'm sure you wouldn't mind us expanding towards Sunrise, as much as they wouldn't mind us expanding towards you Now that you did mention Sunrise's team (Rego, sunrise, darrel), what do you think of them?

~ Jowy
PS. Yaz will be away for about two months. He is travelling for work.

Thoughts? It sounds pretty good to me. I'm pretty confident we can beat this team to Pink, which is the only location that's possibly disputed.

Jowy double-whipped his capital this turn, which means a settler is likely on the way. Expect the new city to be founded in a couple of turns. They still only have the one worker for their two cities, however...

[Dr. Nomadic]

BTW I'd like to know why everybody has avoided the Charismatic and Industrious traits. I mean, let me understand by looking at some values:

Financial - Essential for self-research
Creative - Half-cost Library and culture from huts
Philosophical - Half-cost University, Double GP Birth Rate
Expansive - +25% worker production, half cost granaries and harbors

Still, I don't get it. The trait gives extra happiness and allows your guys to get woodsman ii with 4 XP instead of 5 XP, so...color me confused.

[Kyan]

BTW I'd like to know why everybody has avoided the Charismatic and Industrious traits. I mean, let me understand by looking at some values:

Financial - Essential for self-research
Creative - Half-cost Library and culture from huts
Philosophical - Half-cost University, Double GP Birth Rate
Expansive - +25% worker production, half cost granaries and harbors

Still, I don't get it. The trait gives extra happiness and allows your guys to get woodsman ii with 4 XP instead of 5 XP, so...color me confused.

I don't entirely see why you are confused. It has it's uses sure, but nowhere near *as* useful as the other traits. That's about all it boils down to.

Since tech trading was turned off in this game it seems to have inclined the majority of teams towards traits that speed research.

[Dr. Nomadic]

I also don't find the financial trait to be particularly useful unless you spam cottages.

Then again, being stuck at 40% science whilst still being #1 in GNP might not be possible otherwise...

EDIT: Also, I was playing on an archipelago map, meaning that every coastal tile was giving three commerce instead of two (and, for a time, four commerce). That might've helped more than I would've expected.

[SleepingMoogle]

Fortunately, cottage cheese spam is exactly what they're planning.

[Sullla]

Dr. Nomadic, if you can't see the value of Financial, you may be playing the wrong game. It has always been considered top-tier, from the very earliest days of testing to the present. (Financial original gave cheap markets and banks, then we stripped away the cheap markets because of the trait's power, then eventually we stripped out the cheap banks too.) It's even better on an archipelago map, where most of the food resources will be seafood ones.

We also started a new turn, T46:



- I left Chamberlain in place to heal. His health went up to 1.2 after promoting to Woody II, but that's still too dicey to go moving around. There's no sense in throwing away one of our best units unnecessarily.

- Domestically, it was a pretty boring turn. Workers A and C did the first half of their roads, Worker B continued chopping, our warriors shuffled positions slightly. We have lots of stuff happening in about 2 more turns.

- sunrise's team founded a city at the very end of T45, which was almost hidden by CivStats. But if you watch the minutes on the clock, it's really impossible to disguise things (plus we could have seen it by the population numbers). The teams that have founded second cities thus far are:

Speaker/Sullla (T35)
Broker/plako (T40)
LiPing/Whosit (T40)
Dantski (T42)
sunrise/regoarrarr (T45)

The other teams are still stuck on their capital alone. Expect to see a number of additional cities go up in the next few turns.

And that's really it. This was a very slow turn, no techs discovered and only the IKZ team gaining one pop. Later on I'll try to address the diplo with Jowy and Dantski.

[ej801]

are you worried that jowy might be picking up on your well written replies.

[Sullla]

Picking up on what, exactly? I'm sorry, I don't understand that comment.

Let's start with Dantski. If you remember, he asked what we'd like to propose. I'm essentially going to reword our previous message, where we did exactly that!

Dear Romalinese Friends,

What we'd like to propose, if you'll recall our email message of a few days ago, is some sort of agreement not to settle aggressively on one another's borders for a little while. Your city of Djenne was fairly aggressive from our perspective, and although we understand that you need to expand and claim land for yourself, we'd have to view the situation negatively if your next two or three cities were also beelined in our direction. Since we'd like to work together with you on a long-term basis, it's in the best interests of both of our teams to avoid that situation.

Of course, we don't expect you to give us concessions for nothing! If you will pledge not to push your next couple of settlers north to our border, then we'll promise in return not to push our own next couple of settlers south towards you. That's a solid deal that benefits us both. It frees you to push in the direction of Nakor, and it frees us to do the same towards Jowy and Yaz.

We're willing to listen to any counter-offers or proposals you might have, so let us know what's on your mind. I also should tell you that Jowy has expressed a desire to meet with you, and he has a scout moving south towards you at the moment. It will probably take some time still for him to arrive though.

Best wishes,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

We told Jowy we would inform Dantski of his desire to meet, so that's the reason for the message above. Of course, I also waited two extra turns and was extremely vague about where Jowy's scout was, but we can let that be our little secret, lurkers. Otherwise, it's a pretty standard message asking Dantski not to go for our borders in the near future, in exchange for the same promise. I would expect him to accept, not least because the land to the east of Djenne isn't all that good in the pre-Calendar period.

Now let's respond to Jowy, who fortunately needs a shorter answer. We're pretty much just agreeing to his message.

Dear Greek Friends,

Well what can I say, the copper was there a half-dozen tiles from our capital, it was pretty much begging for an accompanying city. :)

I'm glad to hear that you have no plans to settle aggressively against us. As we said before, we feel the same way, and have no plans to do the same to your team either. That's an excellent basis for future cooperation between our teams. We really appreciate your statement of trust in our team, and feel the same way about you guys as well.

As far as sunrise's team, well, we don't know that much about them having not made contact yet. We did see them sneak in the founding of their second city right before the last turn rolled over. (regoarrarr almost managed to disguise it on CivStats.) You probably know more than we do at this point. If we do meet them, and get Demographics bar graph visibility, we'd be happy to share whatever info we find with you. We think that sunrise will likely be a difficult military tactician to contend with, should we ever have to cross swords with them.

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Note that I never responded to Jowy's line where he stated: "You would have space for some cities north of your capital and the new city, but not for another line after those. What do you think of this, fair enough for you?" Let's leave those future borders nice and vague for now, since our team is expanding much faster at the moment than they are. That last paragraph about sunrise is also a whole lot of hooey; we know tons about their team, but we're not giving that out for nothing! For the curious,

- sunrise's team founded on the starting tile.
- Started with a worker, researching Agriculture, then Fishing.
- After the worker, they built a work boat, then likely a warrior, maybe two warriors, then a settler.
- They were the last team to research BW (T39), so they couldn't chop out their first settler. That's why it doesn't complete until around T40-41, and the second city doesn't get founded until T45.

Speaker, I haven't sent any messages as usual to leave a little while for feedback. Let me know if these are not OK. I think they get what we want out of our neighbors.

[antisocialmunky]

Picking up on what, exactly? I'm sorry, I don't understand that comment.

I think he just doesn't like how formal and 'fluffed' with extraneous language your letter writing is.

Great for game reports but might make your neighbors think they are forced. Really not that big of a deal. You're not Aiden yet.

[Dr. Nomadic]

Yeah, about the financial trait...I'd probably have to play on an archipelago map as a non-financial leader to understand the trait's worth. However, I WAS teching quite quickly.