RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Dr. Nomadic]

Not too often that a CHARIOT meets a hostile animal!

Sorry, I just had to comment.

[Rowain]

From Athlete mail in your thread:

It is so close to our capital that our 3rd ring borders their 2nd ring.

One Question now: What would you have done if one of your neighbours settled that close to you?

[Speaker]

From Athlete mail in your thread:

It is so close to our capital that our 3rd ring borders their 2nd ring.

One Question now: What would you have done if one of your neighbours settled that close to you?

Probably about the same thing they did.

- 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!)

Good point.

- 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 didn't ignore it....purposefully at least. I didn't notice it. We do have a lot of signs up at the moment.

- 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'm not worried. These are the types of battles we want, to gain experience points (famous last words part three!).

[Sullla]

OK, enough famous last words! I want to go over a couple of things before we get to the next turn. Let's start with some of what the other teams were doing this turn:

- This was a tough turn to sort out the population figures, because two different teams (Broker/plako and Whosit) both gained land points AND received a population increase. We had to work backwards from the overall Population number in the Demographics to sort it all out, but eventually it all added up correctly.

- Other things were easier. Broker/plako founded their third city. At the moment, five teams have three cities (ourselves, Dantski, Jowy, Broker/plako and athlete/kalin by virtue of capturing a city off sunrise).

- Dantski single-whipped his second city of Djenne. I logged in again to see the shield total (which updates in realtime on the Espionage screen) and he has 65 shields in the city. My guess is that this is a granary; it can't be a worker because the city just grew two turns ago. We'll know next turn! (Hopefully we can get visibility on some other cities soon too. You can really watch what the other teams are doing once you get visibility on that center tile. And again - don't mention this to the other teams unless they bring it up themselves, lurkers!)

- In more Dantski news, we can see from the Soldier count this turn that he gained 2k last turn, which means that the tech he discovered last turn was almost certainly Animal Husbandry or Sailing. I'm guessing the former. In either case, it took him 10 turns to research the tech, which doesn't say good things about his research rate. That's the danger of rushing out settlers with the Imperialistic trait: if you don't have the proper tile improvements in place, or a lack of workers (I think Dantski has 2 at the moment for 3 cities), you just end up running into financial trouble. That's something we'll keep watching as we move forward.

- Jowy posted that he had met all teams earlier today; he hasn't emailed us back yet about contacting IKZ and Broker though. Hmmm. Anyway, even if we do meet all the teams, we're not going to announce it to the whole group! Why give out that info for free?

OK, now let's try to cover diplomacy. First responding to regoarrarr's message from yesterday:

Dear regoarrarr and Team Byzantium,

No problem, we saw your worker (Alexander) on his way back to Byzantine territory. Did he make it back safely? There was a Woodsman I Ottoman warrior (Dice Ibegon) lurking around in the area last we saw.

I like the idea of the "Greek sandwich!" :) We've also been on good terms with Jowy thus far, so maybe we'll indeed be able to make a three-team pact work in the future. You two could potentially partition up the Ottoman lands, while we would go in the other direction with secure backlines. Of course, this is all hypothetical talk - we don't need to forward those emails to any other teams, right? ;)

We sent a couple of greeting emails with IKZ, and then they stopped responding to us too. Maybe they'll respond in time? Or maybe Kodii is just concentrating on the RBPB1 game right now...

One possibility that came to me while I was thinking about the game was your team (which is fighting and presumably getting some promoted units) agreeing to lend us a Level 3 unit for Heroic Epic purposes in exchange for us gifting you some military units. That could be particularly effective if we were to send you some units that you didn't have the techs to build - a nasty surprise for your opponent! Obviously this is a pipe dream at the moment, and we aren't anywhere close to Literature tech, but maybe we could revisit it at a later date. There are tons of ways to work together even in a game without tech trading.

Keep fighting the good fight!
Sullla
The Killer Angels

We can pull back on some of those comments if you want, Speaker. I felt comfortable doing so because a) regoarrarr's not going to pass on emails to athlete, and b) their team doesn't even have contact with Dantski. (They have only the vaguest idea of what lies on the other side of our team.)

Speaking of Dantski, he still hasn't responded to our last message of 4 days ago. I'll chase him up tomorrow if we don't hear back. Now for athlete and kalin, who had the "NAP/2-turn cancellation" idea:

Dear Rebel Alliance,

We did miss your proposal the first time around; Speaker and I had to stop yesterday and discuss it over, which is why we didn't get back to you sooner. I'm sorry that we missed it, we were caught up in the excitement of the war!

While we both appreciate the goodwill gesture shown in your NAP offer, Speaker and I don't particularly like the terms of the agreement. An indefinite non-aggression pact is too open-ended, and doesn't allow for changing developments within the game. I know that you've tried to alleviate this problem with the cancellation notice, but... there are a lot of problems with the two-turn notice period as well. I mean, two turns is not a lot of time! In theory, one could send off a message of cancellation right before ending turn, and then the other team would have less than 24 hours before facing a potential attack. The two halves of the proposal don't go together: "We'll be friends forever! Except that we might attack at any point in time with two turns of warning."

An indefinite NAP with two turn cancellation notice is virtually the same thing as having no Non-Aggression Pact at all. It does sound nicer though. :)

Of course, we'd be willing to sign a more standard NAP with your team! We could start with an agreement for the next 20 turns, up to Turn 80, and then decide whether or not to re-extend for a longer period at that point. It's probably not critical either way - our teams are pretty far apart - but it would indeed be nice to have a formal NAP between our teams. Let us know what you think, and feel free to counter-offer with your own proposal.

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

And that's as polite of a rejection as I can write. I'll leave this up for a few hours to let Speaker comment, then hopefully send them off tonight.

[Speaker]

I'm not sure we should be so concrete in terms of future war plans with Byzantium. They are in a severely crippled position, and I don't really expect them to accomplish much this game, unless Athlete/Kalin take their boot of Byzantine's throat and allow them to expand. I wouldn't count on them for any sort of support in any event.

Your response to Athlete's team is spot on.

Totally Unrelated: How is Iamjohn's score so low? Just 2 cities, both small?

[Sullla]

OK, sounds right. Let's pare that down to a more neutral tone:

Dear regoarrarr and Team Byzantium,

No problem, we saw your worker (Alexander) on his way back to Byzantine territory. Did he make it back safely? There was a Woodsman I Ottoman warrior (Dice Ibegon) lurking around in the area last we saw.

I like the idea of the "Greek sandwich!" :) We've also been on good terms with Jowy thus far, so maybe we'll indeed be able to make a three-team pact work in the future.

We sent a couple of greeting emails with IKZ, and then they stopped responding to us too. Maybe they'll respond in time? Or maybe Kodii is just concentrating on the RBPB1 game right now...

One possibility that came to me while I was thinking about the game was your team (which is fighting and presumably getting some promoted units) agreeing to lend us a Level 3 unit for Heroic Epic purposes in exchange for us gifting you some military units. Obviously this is a pipe dream at the moment, and we aren't anywhere close to Literature tech, but maybe we could revisit it at a later date. There are tons of ways to work together even in a game without tech trading.

Keep fighting the good fight!
Sullla
The Killer Angels

I left the Heroic Epic mention in, since I did want to float that idea, but took out all of the other more overt references to working against athlete. This should avoid committing us to anything we don't want.

While Speaker's here, and we're sitting around waiting on another turn to begin, let's try to do some early planning for the future. The first issue I'd like to bring up is where we're going to settle next after Pink. Here's another dotmap with some thoughts:



Pink and Black are left unchanged. Since we moved Chancellorsville a tile west of the original location, I think we should consider putting White on the tile indicated (we had it 1 SW before). That cuts down on overlap considerably, and still gets us a very powerful Moai city (8 water tiles, plus 3 hills). And we could also pass the deer back and forth between Chancellorsville and White at need. Pink, White, and Chancellorsville would then form our border with Jowy down the road, with the slight possibility of more cities to the northeast in the fog.



In the south we have room for two more good cities. We don't know exactly what terrain Green would have, so I placed it on the spot which fits best with the rest of the geography in that area. At the very least, it will have a sugar resource for a modest food surplus, and hopefully a water food resource in the fog.

Yellow goes in the middle of the spice patch, and seals off our border with Dantski. After drawing the dot and its borders, I actually decided that I prefer the spot one tile east better, directly on the spices. That gives up one spice, however it grabs a sugar resource in turn to break even, and it gains two river grassland tiles - much better than the plain grassland hills it loses on the other side. We also cut down on overlap with Dantski, so it works for diplo purposes too.

In order of founding, I would go (Pink), White, Yellow, Green, Black. That would take us to nine cities, plus the possibility of one more on that offshore island, and from there we would have a very solid core to build up and eventually conquer someone else. We should have a pretty good chance of getting these spots so long as we keep expanding rapidly. This analysis is all from a SP perspective, so I'd love to hear Speaker's thoughts on these possible locations.

Now I've also started doing some early work on the T65-T75 plan, and here's the rough outline of what I'd like to do with our cities:

* Gettysburg: Capital runs 2 Scientists from T64-T73, which gets us our first Great Scientist for an Academy. We complete the granary during these turns, also on T73, then cash in a forest chop (post-Math for the full value) into a settler plus a double-whip which knocks it out in 2t. Gettysburg goes from something like 29/30 food [SIZE 5] to 29/26 food [SIZE 3] and then regrows back to size 5 in 3t with granary. This is where I plan to get the settler for our next city (White?) which would be founded around T77.

* Antietam: It grows from size 2 to size 3 in three turns, T65-T68, working the grassland farm for +6 food. This also fills up the food box of its granary, so growth to size 4 only takes 3 more turns. After that I'm a little less clear; I think we have Antietam grow to size 5 (working cottages!) and then double-whip an axeman/spearman pair. If we build a chariot while growing, we can probably get 3 military units out of here in the next 10-12 turns... while growing all the while and working cottages. Military seems like the best use for the city in the immediate future.

* Chancellorsville: Bigtime priority is getting that library done ASAP so we can start working the deer resource. Speaker, do you think it's worth using a forest chop pre-Math to get the library done sooner? I can do the plan either way, of course. My gut instinct was to pre-chop two forests, then cash in both chops immediately after we get Math, completing the library and overflowing into either a worker or another axeman/spearman pair. If Math finishes on T71, that would have us getting the library done on T72, and borders expanding on T77.

* Pink: Ordinarily, I don't like to build monuments this late in the game. However, because Pink's best tiles are all second-ring, I think we should do so here. By borrowing the copper from Antietam (which it won't be working for 3t, as it needs the grassland farm for +6 food) we can chop a forest and complete an early monument on T67, just two turns after founding. Yes, it's pre-Math and a bit of a waste, but worth it here IMO. Then we get border expansion on T77, and cows/gold hooked up shortly thereafter. We really want Pink to reach size 3 and work the sheep + cows + gold tile (3 food/turn) ASAP. Those gold tiles are really powerful!

Ideally, we would therefore add 1 city, 1 Great Scientist, maybe 1 worker, and 3-5 current military units in the next dozen turns. If this all sounds OK, I'll start doing some preliminary planning and find out where the numbers wind up.

EDIT: IKZ's score is low because they only have 5 pop, indeed lower than anyone except sunrise's poor team. They were also very, very late in founding a second city (T51) so they have no land points for that one yet. They double-whipped the capital three turns ago, so if that was a settler, expect another city shortly. I think that they only have 1 worker - at the very most, they have 2 - so they're not off to a fast start. We'll have SIX workers in two more turns!

[Jabah]

I left the Heroic Epic mention in, since I did want to float that idea, but took out all of the other more overt references to working against athlete. This should avoid committing us to anything we don't want.

Wasn't that motion (lending a HE unit) rejected during the initial poll ???

[Cyneheard]

Yes, it was.

Poll 17: Gifting units
*No restrictions
*No gifting on HE-level units until the receiving civ has their own HE-level unit or has built the HE

[dazedroyalty]

I think the limit was on gifting units already high enough level to unlock the HE, whereas this proposal would be one level below. So it'd only be really helpful if they didn't have a unit already promoted themselves.

[Sullla]

Now see, I missed that rule completely earlier. Or if I did see it, I've since forgotten about it. Anyway, I'll cut out that last paragraph to regoarrarr entirely, the rest should be fine to send. This is why I go through the trouble to post messages ahead of time for proofreading - you catch some real errors there!

I'll go ahead and send the messages, and also shoot off something quick to Jowy, who didn't tell us about his meeting the other teams.