RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Sullla]

OK, we replayed the second missing turn (T62) early this morning, and now we're ready to move forward again with T63:



- Chamberlain began moving backwards towards our territory, to scout out some of the fogged tiles (and possibly Jowy's cities) along the way. I could have cheated and started moving him back sooner during the reload, but that would have been wrong.

- We did remeet Whosit on the same spot as before. As expected, we also met Nakor by crossing past one of his cities. I will send him a greeting message shortly. (We also got a response from Whosit, but I'll cover that in a separate diplo post.)

- In our territory, we double-whipped Antietam for a settler this turn. Our total population is down to 8 from an earlier high of 11, due to the two double-whips we carried out, but of course we'll start growing back quickly. Especially with granaries completing very shortly in both Antietam and Chancellorsville.

- Jeb the chariot will be completely healed in time to protect our settler next turn. Pink/Frdericksburg gets founded on T65, and we should be the first ones to city #4 (just as we were first to city #2 and city #3).

- Dantski finished an axeman last turn, his first offensive military unit. He has 3 warriors, 1 skirmisher, and 1 axeman by our count. Can't say I'm too worried about that, especially with us inking an extention to our NAP. We are going to continue to run on the light side militarily and play for long-term growth, which is the same strategy we've been following from the beginning.

Of course, if someone would come after us, we can absolutely whip out a credible defense in a hurry!

[Sullla]

This was Whosit's reply to us:

Dear Sullla and Speaker,

Thank you for the heads-up. I have made the same moves with my Scout as accurately as I could recall them. I look forward to "remeeting" you.
To answer your first question, I have indeed adopted a Star Wars theme. Ironically enough, I believe that the Rebel Alliance and myself are hoping for forge friendly relations, though I think that we are both interested to see which one of us will prevail in the end.

There has not been much conflict in my area. There have been two declarations of war between myself and the Koreans, but they each lasted one turn. The first occurred under odd circumstances, and the second arose from a misunderstanding. Is there any interesting news from your region? I was wondering if you know who founded "Hinduism." I have reason to suspect that the Byzantines founded "Buddhism," but I have not yet confirmed that.

As far as the lay of the land is concerned, it is quite round, though I imagine you have picked up on that. To my immediate west are the Koreans, and then the Holy Romans. Far to my east lie the IKZ Interregnum, beyond that, so far as I understand, are the Byzantines and the Rebel Alliance. I have met an envoy of Greece, and the only civilization whose whereabouts I do not know are the Mali. Do you know where they are located?

Please let me know if the Empire can be of further service.

Best regards,
Whosit, Galactic Emperor

And here is my response. Because Speaker is traveling this weekend (and I didn't say anything of real substance here), I just went ahead and sent this:

Dear Galactic Emperor,

First of all, thanks for moving Bib Fortuna back to the previous spot. We were happy to "remeet" again after the reload.

I'm glad to hear that you were able to sort things out with Broker and plako after some very short conflicts. (Movement through borders prior to Open Borders, perhaps?) There was some confusion from the other teams on what had taken place, which is why we asked.

Now with regards to who founded Hinduism, we suspect that it was the IKZ trio, but we don't know for sure. Nakor was our other best guess; however we only just met him this turn. I'm sure that it will become more clear with time.

We can fortunately tell you that Dantski's Mali is located just to the northwest of Bib Fortuna's current position. In fact, you may have already met Dantski by the time that you get this email! :)

For the moment our teams should simply try to stay in touch and chat about what's going on. Good luck with the rest of your exploration!

Sullla
The Killer Angels

And now the greeting for Nakor:

Dear Nakor of Holy Rome,

Greetings from Speaker and Sullla! Our warrior Jubal Early has braved the wilderness of barbarian animals to make contact with your borders. We promise that we are simply passing through at the moment, and have no designs on your territory or units.

As you no doubt know from your discussions with the other teams, we are located to the north beyond Dantski's territory. If you don't mind our asking, how have things proceeded diplomatically with your Romalinese neighbors? We noticed as we were passing through that his third city of Kumbi Saleh was quite close to one of your settlements. Was that a case of Imperialistic Mali rushing to grab a disputed spot (?)

On an unrelated note, I saw from the city names that we have another Raymond Feist fan in this game. :) It's been years since I read the Riftwar cycle, but I still recognize Krondor and Sethanon immediately. Does that make Rolan the capital? (The capital's name doesn't show up on the diplo screen.)

Glad to meet you! Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

I'm not sure to be happy or embarassed that I recognize so many of the geeky naming references the other teams are using...

[Dr. Nomadic]

This is just a minor issue, but in the intro posts Sulla mentioned that all leaders with pairings of the Creative, Financial, Philosophical, and Expansive traits are there except for Suryavarman and FREDERICK. Frederick is Philosophical and ORGANIZED, not Creative! PERICLES is the one who is Philosophical and Creative!

Gee, seems Sulla is stuck in his old Civ4 days.

[Jaxian]

This is just a minor issue, but in the intro posts Sulla mentioned that all leaders with pairings of the Creative, Financial, Philosophical, and Expansive traits are there except for Suryavarman and FREDERICK. Frederick is Philosophical and ORGANIZED, not Creative! PERICLES is the one who is Philosophical and Creative!

Gee, seems Sulla is stuck in his old Civ4 days.

Can you please stop making useless posts that dont relate to the Pitboss game. You are only making yourself look bad.

[Speaker]

I logged in and had a look around, but I didn't touch anything. I feel like I've missed so many turns. I'll try and get caught up tonight and tomorrow and be back to speed with everything tomorrow.

[Sullla]

I'm finishing up dinner and will play in about two hours.

Take your time getting acclimated with things, Speaker - everything is going OK, and we're not under any duress at the moment. We're going to need you when war inevitably breaks out in the future.

[Sullla]

Here we go for T64:



- Chamberlain moved west and Jubal Early moved southeast, neither seeing anything of note. Chamberlain has some forests to move through next turn, while Jubal is probably about a half-dozen turns away from Broker's territory.

- We finished our settler in Antietam, which turned its whip overflow into a lot of progress towards a granary. (Both Antietam and Chancellorsville finish granaries next turn, woot!) The settler is hanging out on the copper tile; there was no need to move him outside our territory - possibly facing danger and/or supply costs - so I didn't.

We have to do the following actions next turn, in precise order, to line everything up correctly:

* Worker Borodino move NE into the jungle and finishes the road there
* Settler moves NE-E and founds Fredericksburg
* Worker Friedland moves E-SE into the forest and begins chopping

It has to be done in this order or it won't work! As such, I'd prefer to play the next turn, Speaker...

- Gettysburg grew to size 5 and began running Scientist specialists:


We are sacrificing some food growth here (and cottage growth) to produce a very early Great Scientist. However, the payoff is that we'll have an Academy in the capital as soon as T73, before 1000BC! This is where the Philosophical trait shines the most, as non-Philosophical teams simply can't do this kind of thing. We'll have the Academy bonus dozens of turns before the other teams, and that should make a very real difference in the long run. Plus, this is a good time to run Scientists in the capital, because Gettysburg is recovering from a whipping penalty, and we don't have enough happiness resources to grow much further anyway.

- Our workers finished a road on the wheat tile this turn, which has opened up a trade connection to Dantski (see the highlighted box in the first picture). I'll have more to say on this in a minute...

- Whosit founded city #3, Byss. IKZ and poor sunrise are the only ones lacking three cities now.

I'm going to work on diplomacy tomorrow. But in the meantime, I have three questions for Speaker, which I'll put in the next post.

[Sullla]

Three Questions for Speaker

1) Where do we place our next city? I think are choices are White (in the north) versus Yellow (to seal off the southern border with Dantski). Here are our dotmaps from before:

Sullla's Dotmaps




Speaker's Dotmap


2) If we do decide to go with White for our next city, which location do we pick? I'll continue to argue for my location:

* Less overlap
* Fish tile in first ring for early growth
* Extra silks tile

3) As seen in the picture for this turn:



We have a trade connection with Dantski. I'm going to send him a diplo message tomorrow asking for Open Borders, and request it in-game. So here's the question: do we want to include a "No Scouting" clause along with Open Borders, which doesn't let military units enter each other's territory?

I could go either way on "No Scouting":

+ Hides our cities and military units.
+ We already have visibility on 2 out of 3 Dantski cities.
- We lack visibility on capital, which would be nice.
- Might seem like an unfriendly gesture.

So tell me what you'd prefer, Speaker! I'd like your opinions on all three of these. Once we decide what to do, I can work on improving the current micro plan, which I think could be better.

[Speaker]

Your white dot city is definitely better than mine. But it's also more aggressive, and we don't have much military, and would like to keep Greece on good terms. I would lean toward my Black dot actually. Here's why:

1) It's close, so can be quickly founded without wasting many worker turns roading to it.
2) We can split off cottages from Gettysburg to work ASAP while we chop a monument and then slave a workboat.
3) It is shielded by Chancellorsville, so won't require any military.

After we finish our granaries, we'll be able to slave a few spears and axes, which will allow us to plant more aggressively on Greece and Mali. But for now, while we continue to be vulnerable, let's play nice, and not encourage our neighbors to start arming up!

I am fine with totally open borders with Dantski. I think we'll be able to do more with the information than him, and like you said, a "no scouting" clause doesn't exactly inspire friendly relations.

[Sullla]

Alright, I agree with half of that post and disagree with the other half. I'll do the disagreeable half first:

Black is not where we should be placing our next city. This is a very tight map, and we cannot afford to waste an early settler on a weakish, 100% safe backline city. It's not a good use of our limited resources this early in the game.

Now I can see us not going for White if it's too aggressive, but if that's the case then we should be going for Yellow. Yellow is only one tile outside our current borders - hardly an aggressive move! - and it would lock down our southern front with Dantski. I still prefer White, but if we're going to play it a little more safe, it has to be Yellow.

I'll also point out that we have an NAP to Turn 90 with Dantski, and I'm going to pester Jowy for an extension to Turn 100, which I have every expectation he'll accept. Plus, our current development plan calls for us to have 2 axes and 1 spear by the time our next city is done, and we can increase that if needed. If we were to go for White or Yellow (especially Yellow), and stick an axe and spear in the new city, on a hill, just outside our cultural borders... well, what are our neighbors gonna do about it? Nothing, that's what!

Come on Speaker, we both know that we have to take some chances to win this game, and that means trusting our neighbors to keep their word to some extent. Sitting back and playing for Black is the wussy move here.

Now for the agreement half: we can definitely go with the uninhibited Open Borders with Dantski, so let's send him off this message immediately:

Dear Dantski,

Our intrepid sailors have informed us that they have found a trade connection to the lovely seaside city of Djenne. If our teams agree to sign Open Borders, we will both receive a nice boost in trade income in our capital cities. Would you be willing to sign an Open Borders treaty with our team, as a further sign of cooperation between our teams? More money for both of us, no such luck for the other teams. :)

We have requested Open Borders in-game, in the hopes that you will accept our offer. Cheers,

Sullla
The Killer Angels

I'll also make the request in-game too.