[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Old Harry]

I hope you get invaded and die (and vice versa).

Love you too Krill. I'm sure we will eventually. I challenge you not to be delighted when Mackoti offers you something like this when you next play him...

But yeah, I'm no sure what to think about this. I assume that technically it's ok to send such messages, but I would not like communication like this becoming a habit in AI Diplo games, because NAPs suck hard. For future AI Diplo games I think it would be good to set some kind of rules about coded messages, I think Iron for Iron trades to signal friendship are fine, but I think that you should not be allowed to discuss NAPs via messages.

That said, I'm not sure how real NAP that is. We certainly do not close our eyes and just trust mack, we'll send our sentries inside his borders anyways and I'm sure that mack does not trust us either.

Agree totally - we can't consider this to be the kind of cast-iron NAP that Krill hates, we need to build military and have enough defensive units on our borders not to be a target, while keeping an eye on where Mack's stacks of doom are and probing for weakness ourselves. I'm still going to assume that we need to defend our coastal cities in eight turns, but if Mack is sending the message "I don't want to attack you in the near future" that gives us a great chance to dust ourselves down and jockey for a position in the second rank of civs, in the hope that the leaders trip themselves up and give us a chance to get back in the game.

I don't see it as much different from the fish for fish deals earlier in the game - it's no more guarenteed, and after people read this thread (if they can wade through the whole thing) with all the thoughts about back-stabbing TBS, Dtay, Ichabod, Mack and Suttree, no-one is going to particularly trust us with a pretend-NAP in future...

Anyways, implications for coming turns, let's play along with this until we can make up our minds and see how our suttree adventure succeeds. Taking Ichabod's island cities sounds like a reasonable plan (Astro bulb coming?),

I've been thinking that, but just realised that Gunpowder means we can't bulb Astro anymore (I'll switch those scientists in Om over to be merchants instead...)

I was thinking something similar to your 2-galleon plan, we can get Amphibious promo on muskets and maces with 5XP and on knights with 10XP , so even after the initial strike we can threaten the whole of Ichabod's coast (which currently has one unit per city). We need to figure out how quick we can get galleons, but if Ichabod doesn't get a little paranoid we could really roll over him. In my wildest imagination he'll get trashed by William's stack of cats and have no answer to our Cuir army sweeping through his mainland cities (his backlines all have one unit per city and we might even be able to drop off enough units to threaten his capital), but in reality he'll probably get Nationalism soon and draft muskets everywhere.

That's really really nice! The fact that suttree did not send his lbows minimizes our losses here. Although he will still have a chance to do it this turn I guess? I believe that those two knights are the only units we have lost to suttree in this game so far, kind of crazy when you remember how long this conflict has been.

Are our knights going to have enough health next turn to attack with good odds or do we want to heal longer?

It's probably bad that they didn't attack, as they are all CGII, so we will lose 5-10 units attacking anyway. Good news is that only a couple of our units won't be fully healed next turn. The question is: do we sacrifice ancient trash, drafted muskets or highly-promoted 2-movers to break through the top defenders. I'm assuming we'll lose 7/9 catapults, but might do some simming this afternoon to see what works best.

On espionage

I again just state the obvious, we would like to have graphs from our all neighbors, but if that goal can't be met denying visibilities from dtay/ichabod/mack is a good secondary target. Sentries inside dtay's and mack's land is probably a must regardless.

Tech visibility on Mack and graphs from Dtay are our priority. I don't like that Dtay is spending so many EPs on us...

I don't think I'd settle a one-tile island city just to gain extra visibility - what you really need is just to remove suttree's culture (in the works) and expand your own (way less costly than a crappy city, unless ICTRs or something).

Edit: Nevermind, Fintourist commented on this, said it would be profitable. Any other settlement (along the border) in the works?

At the moment we've got a decent amount of hammers, but we need tech for them to be used effectively, so spending 130 hammers for ~25 commerce per turn seems a good deal to me. I dunno about other settlement on the Mack-border. Creating tension seems like a bad move, at least until we have frigates of our own to use. So perhaps just settling site 1 to give us some protection in our core - again not a great city, but it'll pay for itself from the start. And like Midway could be a decent draft camp later on...

[Krill]

I don't see it as much different from the fish for fish deals earlier in the game - it's no more guarenteed, and after people read this thread (if they can wade through the whole thing) with all the thoughts about back-stabbing TBS, Dtay, Ichabod, Mack and Suttree, no-one is going to particularly trust us with a pretend-NAP in future...

Fish for fish is fine, because it doesn't attempt to put an expiry date on an "agreement", but using gold like this does.

[Fintourist]

I've been thinking that, but just realised that Gunpowder means we can't bulb Astro anymore (I'll switch those scientists in Om over to be merchants instead...)

Aaah, right, did not think this through. Let's get Astronomy with plain research then.

It's probably bad that they didn't attack, as they are all CGII, so we will lose 5-10 units attacking anyway. Good news is that only a couple of our units won't be fully healed next turn. The question is: do we sacrifice ancient trash, drafted muskets or highly-promoted 2-movers to break through the top defenders. I'm assuming we'll lose 7/9 catapults, but might do some simming this afternoon to see what works best.

Hmm, send me a message when you know when you have time to play the next turn. If my schedule matches it would be nice to organize a chat session during the Madrid fight. We'll need the RNG luck that my presence brings :P (If you're busy or we can't make it happen that's ok too.)

Tech visibility on Mack and graphs from Dtay are our priority. I don't like that Dtay is spending so many EPs on us...

Yeah, our friendly relationship is turning into tension as dtay has now swallowed TBS and as for mack, we are his most natural direction for future land gains.. Middle part of the burger is always the most delicious.. Let's get those sentries in place in order to keep him honest.

[Krill]

Er...you guys going to stream that?

[Fintourist]

What do you think Krill (other lurkers) that should be done?

I think we all agree that:
- These messages are not technically against the rules (only thing that I know that is not allowed is using city letters to send messages)
- This should not become a habit in RB AI Diplo games, nobody wants that these games transform into NAP-fests
- The harm is already done, mack has sent the message and we have understood it
- The harm is limited since I consider both us and mack players who might just play opportunistically regardless of iron-for-iron NAPs, thus there won't be unprotected border cities on either side. If I've understood correctly, breaking NAP in considered a classless act in diplo games. This is now somehow different, but I don't know how different. I think neither me nor Harry yet know what to think about this and obviously we have no idea how mack sees the situation

[Fintourist]

Er...you guys going to stream that?

If Harry has time and equipment for that.. why not?

[flugauto]

Maybe Mackoti's message is that he will attack you with 40 tanks. Or 39. You do not know.

[Fintourist]

Yeah, we were considering sending a similar 10,9,8,7.. countdown earlier in the game to mack as an indication that we could attack suttree together.. And we also considered back-stabbing and attacking him when we reach 4 in countdown or something similar.. It never happened or was even close to happening for various reasons

[Old Harry]

Ah, the numbers. Hmmm. I see what you're getting at. The damage is done now though, what do we do next? Make sure to NAP-stab so as not to encourage these in future? Ask for a public pronouncement from Brick?

Next turn will probably be about 8-9am (GMT) tomorrow (if we don't get any pauses). I've tried to do a Google hangout watching Seven play and my machine (or connection) wasn't up to it - so I doubt it will cope with streaming itself. Is Twitch less processor- or connection-heavy than a hangout?

Back on the topic of winning this game - here is the tech screen, I think we'll lose Azza, TBS, Suttree and Dhal in the next few turns, leaving us as one of the back-markers...


- Bacchus is too far away for us to worry about.
- William doesn't have Banking, Nationalism or Music (and so Military Tradition), but does have Gunpowder and is likely to be on the way to Astronomy.
- Commodore has Astronomy and Chemistry but not engineering or Nationalism. He hasn't got anything on the Aesthetics line yet... I think we can ignore him for now.
- Ichabod doesn't have Banking, Nationalism, Music (and so Military Tradition) and Compass, but has Gunpowder and Printing Press so might be heading towards Rifling. This would be great for us as we'd wreck him long before he got there. Better to assume he's going for Nationalism though.
- Plako must be close to Astronomy, and if we take over Ichabod's part of the island we'll need to be on good terms with him. Otherwise I don't see us as a problem for him, after he's finished off Dhal Bacchus or Mack make more sensible targets. We should keep an eye on him though.
- Dtay could be heading for Astro and Chemistry, but he might be going for rifling? He has Mil Trad already so Cavalry are only two techs away. But no, on this map control of the water seems more important, so lets assume the former. I think he's unlikely to attack us since Commodore and Ichabod present more apetising targets in terms of power and he needs to defend against an attack from Commodore's direction...
- Mack is getting Corporation next turn, so he'll stay ahead of the pack on tech rate. After that I'd expect him to get Mil Trad, but maybe Rifling or Democracy will appeal?
- Lewger are too far away to worry about.
- Pindicooter wouldn't be dumb enough to attack us - even if they take all of TBS' island (which they started doing last night) weakening Mackoti's neighbour is just a terrible move for them. They have Astro and Chemistry and are presumably in an espionage war with Mack (given how many EPs he's spent while spending barely any on us) so we can only hope they come to blows again once their enforced peace runs out.

(BTW - It's strange to play a game where no-one is rushing to rifling... Did it get over-nerfed?)

A very rough estimate for our tech rate is: we can make ~500 gold a turn or ~1000 beakers a turn at -400 gpt, Optics is 800 beakers (with arrow discount), Astro is 3500 beakers, so if we save up to 1500 gold then go 100% research:
EOT185: 530 + 500
EOT186: 1030 + 500
EOT187: 1530 - 400, 1000 beakers
EOT188: 1130 - 400, 2000 beakers
EOT189: 730 - 400, 3000 beakers
EOT190: 330 - 400, 4000 beakers
We can aim to complete galleons eot190, load them t191 and attack t192. Alternatively we can produce Galleys, get them over to the west and upgrade them on t191.

Oh, but our golden age runs out in three turns, so the second half of that is going to take a bit longer .

[Krill]

I am not Brick, so I'm not speaking ex cathedra here, but I think in future games it's just going to have to be one of those "Don't do it or we'll shame you and shadow ban you from any future games". But yes, attacking mackoti now would also help with this "problem" :cute: