RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Sullla]

OK, first and most importantly I had a chance to get the updated Excel file ready for Speaker. Here's a link:

http://www.cassiopeiathedog.net/Images/P...Sullla.xls

I took the updated worker actions recommended by Speaker and combined it with the city plan from earlier. We should be set up until T65 now. (You know what that means, right? Time to start working on the T65-T70 plan!) I also delayed roading towards Dantski for two turns to add another grassland hill mine at Gettysburg; we clearly have a need for one, since the lack of mines prevented us from following one of Speaker's slightly-improved plans earlier. The extra mine will give us more flexibility between emphasizing food, shields, and commerce.

Secondly, take a look at the current Demographics to see how we're not full of BS when we talk about our start:



- We're #1 in GNP by a good margin, and would be even without the multiplier bonus we get from pre-requisites on Writing. Financial leader + early cottages on rivers will do wonders for the bottom line!

- We are destroying everyone in Food and Production, +8 food and +9 shields over the Rival Best in each category! Wow.

- We have parity in Soldier count with everyone other than the fighting powers.

- We have the most land, despite not being Creative or owning a Holy City.

- We have 11 Total Population, and Dantski is the closest with 8. LiPing/Whosit has 7, Jowy has 6, and no one else has more than 5! Yeah, that's not even close...

So if you were wondering how our growth-oriented start would play out, the answer so far is "very, very well indeed."

Speaker, we received a couple of emails back since yesterday. I'll get to them later, but this one from Jowy had the most interesting information:

Hey Sullla, Speaker,

I'm glad it wasn't the two of us in their place fighting a war that'll slow them down for many turns. I guess diplomacy pays off even if it seems a bit dull at times To my knowledge though, Byzantine had no intention to be peaceful with whoever they would meet over there. Looks like they underestimated their opponent though.

We met Rome at the same exact spot as Mali. You might stumble upon their scout if you have an unit near. Just missing two more contacts atm. I don't feel like going through all our posts, who are you still missing?

It sounds as though Nakor has a city, and Whosit (Rome) has a scout both directly south of Dantski's city of Kumbi Saleh. So why don't we try this: let's have Jubal Early move south around the new city, and hopefully contact both teams. We can have Jowy pass a message on to Whosit to meet our warrior and coordinate the hookup. Meanwhile, we keep our chariot in our territory, and have it temporarily guard Pink when it gets founded. That keeps us safe, and hopefully lets us meet nearly all of the remaining missing teams. Sound good?

When it comes to military, I'll continue to suggest the idea of turning Antietam into a giant military (Heroic Epic?) pump. It has tremendous cottage-friendly land, but we need at least one city on military duty, right? And we could crank a ton of shields there, especially later on with levees and watermills along with the HE...

It's worth thinking about at the very least!

EDIT: Also, Jowy settled city #3 this turn (Corinth). It has to be within 5 tiles of his capital, so fortunately another non-aggressive location.

[Speaker]

This email came through from Regoarrarr. I had forgotten to mention this in my post about my discussion with Sunrise, but apparently they have a worker somewhere out there that we could capture with Chamberlain. I promised Sunrise that we wouldn't touch it. No need to kick them while they are down, and 1 worker captured that far away from our land wouldn't be worth the diplo hit worldwide anyways, especially on Turn 60, when 1 worker isn't so crucial, well, unless you have 3 cities and 1 worker like Dantski, but I digress...

Hey Sullla,

As you have probably already heard, the Ottomans have captured a city of ours. While I find some of the tactics that they used pretty lame, I do not cite them for breaking the rules, and we have decided to carry on.

Obviously it's a big setback for us, but oh well. Life goes on....

Sunrise told me that he had talked with Speaker who had agreed to allow our retreating worker safe passage back to Athens, so that's nice. I'm sure that you both know how useful (or harmful, depending!) a civ that does not really feel like it can win can be to other teams, such as yourselves.

dan.
regoarrarr
Byzantium

[Sullla]

One nice thing about the longer turns at the moment is that they give us (me?) time to work on the diplomacy. I'll be honest, when we were flying through three turns in one day, it was getting a little rough managing the stats, doing the micro plans, AND sending off the diplo messages! I think one turn a day works pretty well. OK, maybe a little bit faster than that...

Let's start with our neighbors. Dantski still hasn't replied, but then again, it hasn't even been two days yet. I posted Jowy's last message above; I'd like to try and coordinate a meeting with Nakor and Whosit:

Dear Jowy,

Yes, diplomacy definitely does pay off! We saw that you founded your third city of Corinth this turn, so congratulations are in order. Thanks for not making it an aggressive spot. I don't think it's a coincidence that we're both two of the teams that were fastest to 3 cities, since we've been able to build up a rapport based on mutual trust. Much better than going through an early game whip-fest like your eastern neighbors have done!

We are still missing contact with Nakor (HRE), Whosit (Rome), and Broker (Korea). We have an exploring unit just north of Dantski's city of Kumbi Saleh, and we'd like to send him south along the eastern coastline to meet up with Nakor and Whosit. Would it be possible for you to pass on that information to their scouts? If they move their scouts north along that same inner coastline, we would likely run right into them. In return, we can pass on directions to your borders for the IKZ team, who has a warrior moving in your direction. That way, we would both have contact with everyone except Broker (apparently the mystery team).

Let us know if you'd be willing to go for that idea. Cheers.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

I'm assuming here that we'll send Jubal Early south past Kumbi Saleh, and keep Jeb the chariot at home for local defense. I think both are worth doing; Jowy has been really friendly thus far, so he'll probably pass on the message, and we have a strong chance to meet another two teams. Definitely worth doing, IMO.

Next let's address the brief message from team IKZ. Their message, and then a proposed response:

Hey Killer Angels,

Thank you for the information regarding the placement of Jowy, we look forward to meeting him. As for us, the remains of the unfortunate Mortius lie south of us, with another civ (probably the Romans) west of him the requisite 12 tiles away.

Have you found much in the way of water in your explorations? We have found some, but we're unsure in regards to whether or not it's an ocean or merely a large river.

Till later!
Iamjohn for IKZ

Dear IKZ Triplets,

Thanks for the information about the local teams in your neighborhood. We agree that the more info all of us have about the map, the more informed decisions we can make going forward.

As far as water goes, I'm assuming you mean aside from the coast where our settler began? Well, we've seen another body of water to the east of our position, which would be to the west of your team, so there could be the potential for an inner sea of some kind. Does that square with what you've found this far?

Sullla
The Killer Angels

We know darned well, of course, that this is a Donut-shaped world, but I have no intention of giving that away for free to other teams. Especially ones we just met and don't have any real sense of trust with. That's why this message is left deliberately vague, and I use the term "inner sea" to be deliberately confusing and suggest the Inner Sea map script, rather than the Donut one. Let them keep guessing for a little while longer, eh?

The rest of our email messages consist of a war of words between athlete and regoarrarr, with both sides sending us their spin on events. Speaker posted the version from team sunrise, so here's how kalin sees things:

Dear Sullla/Speaker of the Indians,

The war with the Byzantines is going rather well, but we are still not quite done yet. We were able to take their second city Endor (formerly Paris) that was bordering our capital.

We have received from them a perplexing message in which they are asking us for concessions to get peace. They are also saying that they can make sure that we don't win either. We expect them to try to poison other people against us. We are open and ready to address any questions you may have.

We also want to apologize that because of this war, we seem to be running full 24-hour turns. The Byzantines completely ignored our many requests to split the turn in a reasonable way, and they appear to us to be running the clock on purpose.

We wish you best of luck in your endeavors and we seek friendly and mutually beneficial relations.

Kalin for Team A/K of the Ottomans

P.S.: There is a post in the email/IT where thread where sunrise mentioned agreeing on splitting the turn! Let's hope it happens :)

As a historian who deals with a lot of biased sources, my reading of this whole situation is that there's probably some fault on both sides. There usually is! sunrise did his best to box in athlete with an aggressive city location (which had copper + Holy City culture), and athlete responded by whipping chariots and breaking some kind of agreement that their teams had worked out. So did athlete aggressively attack in bad faith, or were the Ottomans left with no choice due to the Byzantine attempt to box them in? It's all in the eye of the beholder, I'm afraid...

Fortunately, the whole thing continues to be wonderful news for us. We're going to keep standing on the sidelines and egg on both participants. Nothing would be better for us than sunrise throwing his game away to cripple athlete, so let's try to help make sure that happens! Starting with athlete, who we've already gotten off to a good start with:

Dear Rebel Alliance,

We indeed saw your success in the taking of Endor last turn. It seems that the Rebel starships - err, chariots! - have the Empire on the run. Do you think that you'll be able to take their capital as well? sunrise will probably never make peace with you at this point, so you guys may be in this to the finish.

You're also correct that we've been contacted by regoarrarr, and he is indeed trying to poison the other teams against you. But we're keeping an open mind on the subject, and do not intend to be swayed by the Imperial propaganda machine. regoarrarr is quite a good talker, so you're going to have to keep working diplomatically with the other teams - good luck! :)

There's no need to worry about the turn timer. I was posting earlier that the game was moving a little bit too fast earlier in our team thread anyway. Take your time and make sure you come up with the best tactical plan!

Good luck and best wishes,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Despite what the message above sounds like, I still don't trust this team one bit. The goal is to tie them up in useless fighting against sunrise for dozens of turns to come, which is why this message cheers them on in their struggle. sunrise just discovered Archery, and his capital has 40% cultural bonus, so the Byzantines are not going anywhere until catapults appear on the scene, and that is a loooong way away. We just want these teams not to make peace (which, ironically, would probably be the best longterm move for both!) and wasting their builds on early military rather than growth.

So now I express tender sympathy to regoarrarr, and urge them to continue resisting:

Dear regoarrarr and the rest of Byzantium,

Thanks for the two messages that you sent us since we met. It is indeed under sad auspices that we found your team just as the war against athlete was breaking out. I heard that Speaker was in conversation with sunrise, and we were passed on the details of how athlete and kalin used some shady unit maneuvering to pull off their attack. Very, very underhanded stuff. That information on how the whole conflict went down has been critical for our team already, because we were seriously considering offering a close partnership with athlete. They seemed so friendly in their initial greetings with our team. But in light of what we know now... I don't think that's going to be happening. We can't work with a team that has shown itself to be untrustworthy.

Speaker promised informally not to attack your returning worker, and I'd like to give you our formal word on that same subject in writing. Attacking a team for short term advantage - killing a worker while passing by - is not something we would do in this game. (We are not Krill!)

Obviously there's not a whole lot we can do at this point in time. But if it ever becomes possible to help out in your struggle against Ottoman aggression, we'd be willing to chip in what we can on your side. And yeah, yeah, I know - words are cheap and easy, action is what counts. But give us time, maybe we'll be able to come up with something. :) After all, we aren't really all that far away from your team.

In the meantime, how is your civ holding up militarily? Is there any chance that athlete would be able to capture Athens? We definitely don't want to see a runaway Ottoman team in this game!

Good luck and best wishes,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

We're really only in trouble if athlete and sunrise starting exchanging emails back and forth, but I don't think that will happen anytime soon. Unless this is some super-elaborate hoax, in which case we're screwed!

[antisocialmunky]

nvm

[Sullla]

Turn 59 is up, and has (mostly) been played. Two quick things before we get started:

- We've been asked to vote on whether turn orders should be enforced for 1 vs. 1 wars. I very strongly am in favor of "yes", but I'd like to hear what Speaker thinks before casting our team vote.

- I went ahead and sent the above diplo messages. I expect that Speaker would have come in here and objected if there was something terribly wrong in one of them.

OK, now on to the turn:



I moved Jubal south, hoping to make contact with Nakor and Whosit. We spotted the fish and whale (?) resources in the inner sea. We definitely have room for another jungle city to the south of Pink, probably be about city #7 or #8 for us (hopefully).

I also moved Jeb the chariot towards the future Pink location. He can scout out a bit ahead of time; I stuck a sign where I think he should go next turn.

- We completed a chop into Gettysburg, and switched to max shields (5 food, 10 shields) for one turn. Next turn we get the double-whip into library, which will complete it as we grow instantly back to size 4.

- Writing done, on to Math. I'd like to avoid mentioning Open Borders to the other teams for a little while, because we have no trade route connections to other civs, plus I'd rather not let them know we have Writing already! (If they check F4 they can see, but I dunno how many teams are doing that regularly.) We'll let them know in a little bit.

As for Math, it should take us 12 turns to finish. We need 2 turns of 0% science to fund our research, and then 10 turns of research should get it done. Estimate to finish on T71, within one turn either sooner or later. (I don't know exactly what will happen with our science rate as we whip the capital.)

Because we don't have a library now, and we will have a library in 2 turns, these are the proper two turns to run 0% science, so we can get the 25% bonus afterwards!

- I left Chamberlain unmoved:



Why? Because we never decided to move south or northeast with him. (I also have not ended the turn.) I personally favor south - I don't want to touch that athlete/sunrise war - but let's hear from Speaker before coming to a decision.

And that's all for now. No real movement in the Demographics so far this turn.

[Speaker]

Just checking in here before bed. All looks good. I was thinking to move Chamberlain south and see if we can make contact with the rest of the teams.

I don't know what to say about the turn timer vote Sullla. Just pick whatever you think is best.

[Sullla]

I moved Chamberlain south and ended our turn. Looks like we can keep moving south along forests next turn.

We have two emails in our inbox today, from the two feuding parties. First regoarrarr:

Thanks for the worker escort. Hopefully he will be able to make it back and be useful. As for our military, I think it will be difficult for them to take Athens, at least with the chariot units that they have shown so far. We actually were 1-2 turns from being able to hold Paris - we had just researched Archery and had an archer coming out via whip - an archer on a hill would be tough (though not impossible) for a chariot to beat (initial odds are 2%)

We will keep you in mind for aid. We've had good relations with Jowy of the Greeks, and initial good things from the IKZers, though they seem to have fallen off the face of the earth as we have now sent them *5* messages without a reply. So I'm not sure what's going on there. If you said you were near the Greeks, maybe some sort of tri-partite alliance with the Greeks, us and you, which of course leaves us a nice "Greek sandwich" (a gyro, perhaps? :-P) after we take care of everyone else.

Of course that's all a bit premature for us right now - we are currently just focusing on staying alive and maybe even getting a 2nd city or some metal....
dan.
regoarrarr
Byzantium

I think I'll send back a polite response that avoids comitting us to anything. On the whole, I do think that if we have to pick a side in this war, it should be the sunrise/regoarrarr one. A couple reasons for that:

* Their team has been crippled, and it's elementary power politics to support the weaker power against the stronger one. I wouldn't have tried to capture their worker even if we had the opportunity; we want to prop up sunrise so that he can keep tying down athlete.

* I have some genuine sympathy for the Byzantine team, who got screwed by an early rush move. (I hate early rushes.) I also think that if we were to support sunrise/regoarrarr and boost them back into contention, they would be unlikely to backstab us. From my past experiences with the two of them, they don't seem like the types to do that.

* I just don't trust athlete. Sorry, but I don't!

We also got this very short message from athlete/kalin:

Dear Indian Team,

Thanks for your kind words.

You may have missed an earlier proposal for a temporary NAP: indefinite time, 2-turn cool-off. We'd like a clarification if: you missed it, you are still considering it, or you don't want it.

Thanks,

Honestly, I think this is nonsense. A two-turn cooldown period? Not worth the paper it's printed on, since you can sneak-attack virtually at will. "Indefinite NAP with two-turn cooldown" basically means "no NAP at all" under friendlier language. It's garbage, designed to trick the other teams. See why I don't trust this group?

I plan to tell them that (using different language) and ask for a real NAP, or none at all. We need clarification one way or another, not phony allies!

Let's hope we can get in another turn tonight. Basically, it comes down to when sunrise plays his turn...

[Speaker]

I am a big Sunrise fan. I've known him for several years, played hundreds of games with him, taught him a ton, learned a bit from him, and just genuinely enjoy his company as a friend. So you can guess which side I would be inclined to support personally. And as you said, propping up the weaker side would be to our best interest. I also echo your comments on the proposed "NAP" by Athlete. Actually, seeing as we are on opposite sides of the map, I don't see any reason to tie ourselves into any sort of formal diplomacy with them. Then again, a NAP doesn't cost us anything since we won't be attacking them anytime soon (if at all) anyways.

With that said....if Athlete's team is smart, they'll send in 4-5 chariots in stacks of 2 and pillage every tile in Byzantine's land and force them to build more Archers to defend their city and worker(s). While Chariots can't kill archers in a city, it takes 2 Archers to kill a Chariot outside the city, so doubling the Chariots ensures you need at least 4, and if the RNG isn't kind, maybe more, to clear the mini stack.

Lurkers, please do not bring up this idea to Athlete's team. I have no idea if they will be able to think of it on their own, but if not, I would rather not just give them the idea. Thanks.

[Speaker]

T60
The most exciting aspect of the turn was two-pop slaving the Library in Gettysburg. Even after losing 2 population, we are still first in crop yield, and first in score! One chop came in for Chancellorsville. Our furs will be hooked up next turn, and we'll complete Workers C+D in two turns. Are we thinking to put our overflow in Gettysburg into a Granary? Or into a second Chariot?

In the east, Chamberlain saw some wounded soldiers limping home from battle, as he continued his long march through the woods.

Jubal snuck around the Mali city and is heading southeast.

Our chariot ended his turn next to a lion, but we are across the river, and strength 4 to his strength 2, so we should be fine (famous last words). We'll probably want to use the Flanking and eventually Sentry promotions with him.

I forgot to take a screenshot of the demographics, so hopefully you can get in before the turn ends, Sullla.

[Sullla]

Yep, I was able to log in and grab a couple of screenshots, including the Demographics. I also ended our turn. Speaker did a great job of moving the units, although I have a couple of quick comments:

- We actually want to keep running 0% science this turn, so I turned it back down from 100%. Remember, our library completes next turn, making this the proper time to run min science. We want to be going 100% after we get the library bonus in capital (and since about 4/5 of our research comes from Gettysburg right now, this does make a big difference!)

- I noticed that Speaker ignored the sign I put up saying "chariot here T60" and moved Jeb in the other direction. Right next to the lion - serves you right! But it's no biggie. I was going to have us clear out the small patch of fog to the south, however we can have Jubal Early move through there on his return journey. Let's have Jeb move SE-E next turn, then onto the gold hill the turn after that. It'll clear out some of the fog in the Pink area for us.

- I wouldn't worry about the lion battle. We get 20% against barb animals, and another 25% for the river crossing penalty. That makes the fight 2 str versus 5.8 str, which is well over 99% odds. (Famous last words part two!)

I'll post more tomorrow, since it's getting late. :zzz: