RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

One thing to add to Sullla's comments: with hereditary rule, and proper amount of food (+6 surplus or so), you can pretty much two-pop slave a city over and over and still manage the happiness cap. I'll show you how to do it when we get to that point.

Of course, Heroic Epic removes much of the micro burden, and a unit every turn is better than 3 units every 5 turns (which is more or less possible with two-pop slaving).

[Sullla]

Turn 68 has begun:



- Chamberlain found rice and fish resources in the fog. Maybe we'll think about putting a city here someday... or perhaps better yet, we'll found some cities on that landmass in the center of the Donut that grab the fish!

- Jubal Early spotted the edge of another one of Nakor's city borders as he continued southeast. We'll check it out on the way back after meeting Broker.

- Both Antietam and Chancellorsville grew to size 3 this turn, and both moved on to cottages. They both had granaries in place and full food boxes, so they both hit size 4 in a mere three more turns! The commerce boost was definitely noticeable on our research rate.

- I ran the numbers, and yes, we will indeed finish Math as planned in 3 more turns. We run 100/100/60% over the next three turns and just barely eek it out (3 beakers of runover and 1g left in the bank!)

- Demographics look amazing:

#1 in GNP (50), Average = 28
#1 in Food (39), Next Best = 32, Average = 25
#1 in Land (65 tiles), Average = 43
#1 in Total Population (12), Next Best = 10
#2 in Production

The only place we're weak is in Soldier count, and we only need about 10 more turns before we start taking off there as well. Push growth first, and everything else follows.

* NOTE *
I haven't moved our last two workers (A/C) or ended our turn. I'm going to wait until tomorrow morning and move them then, letting Dantski go first. We don't have to be the last one playing this turn, but it's better to move those workers towards the end of the turn order.

[Sullla]

OK, Dantski having moved and played we were safe to go ahead and complete our last worker action:



Now so long as Dantski doesn't log in again (which should be a fairly safe bet, I hope) our workers are completely safe as they build the last road link to Djenne. Next turn (T69) we wait to be the last ones to play, then move SW and road, then immediately move out of there to safety at the start of T70. As I've said before, I don't like manipulating the turn order that way, but we can't afford to risk our two workers. Dantski could cripple our growth by declaring war and stealing Austerlitz and Ciudad Rodrigo.

We received two emails, finally a response from IKZ:

Greetings Sullla,

As you might have inferred from our playing patterns and the fact that I haven't been able to commit any time to this game, let alone Pitboss 1, I hope you can understand our delay in response. It's not because we don't like you :)

I have not spoken to Iamjohn or Zeviz, but I think we would be in agreeance of a NAP. Perhaps you could get the ball rolling with some details, and we'll do our best to collaborate in a formal agreement.

It is good to hear from you and we look forward to our next conversation!
- Kodii for IKZ

I'll send them back something in a little bit, this team isn't exactly a high priority right now. Nakor gave us some more interesting information:

Dear Sullla,

Pardon me if we already told you (we have been getting volumes of email recently) but we are practically bordering Dantski's culture right now. There is probably one more city spot between us that can be claimed. This is partly because we had to settle towards Dantski to get a source of copper.

Sincerely,

DMOC for the DMOC/Nakor team for HRE

Not sure if this is good or bad for us. Close borders between Dantski and Nakor could lead to conflict, but it also could push Dantski into settling that territory between us sooner. I think we keep taking our friendly/neutral posture for the moment, and wait to see what develops. We can always egg on a Dantski/Nakor war later if those two come into conflict.

We also have confirmation that both Dantski and Nakor have copper, as suspected earlier.

[Sullla]

Turn 69 is underway:



There's not a terrible amount going on this turn, but Chamberlain did spot this barb warrior lurking around northeast of Fredericksburg. I moved us into position to defend and win for experience point #6 between turns. (Then we'll move NW into Jowy's territory and heal up there in safety.)

Speaking of Jowy, we have a trade connection with him this turn, which suggests pretty strongly that the tech Jowy just discovered this turn was Sailing!



Looks like clam and rice at Athens for Jowy, I would guess. (And again, note the importance of workers: we have 7 resources connected, Jowy has 3.) Plus we have confirmation that Jowy has iron; we knew he had Iron Working for some time, but not that he had the actual resource connected.

I think there's a good chance we have iron at the capital (or close by), so we'll wait and see if that guess turns out to be correct!

*DO NOT END OUR TURN!*

This is the turn we have to wait until last to move Workers A/C, building the road connection inside Dantski's territory. I'll be watching the clock and waiting until we're the last ones remaining. Hopefully won't take all that long...

Math due in 2 turns, Antietam/Chancellorsville grow in 2 turns, Great Scientist in 4 turns. Stay tuned!

EDIT: Oh, and Dantski didn't build a lighthouse in Djenne. He built... a worker! Should have seen that coming, to be honest. Dumb of me. Dantski now has one worker improving Kumbi Saleh (built the copper mine there) and one at Djenne. I would guess another one at the capital for three total, so Dantski's doing OK on the whole. We're just doing a little bit better!

[Speaker]

I spoke with Sunrise tonight and he told me that he has cleared the coast to Greece. Can we convince Greece to trade their iron to Byzantine? In addition to keeping Byzantine alive, this will make it so Greece can't build any good units to send at us down the road.

[Sullla]

OK, the other teams finally finished and we pulled a double turn on the end of T69 and the beginning of T70. Workers A/C finished the road connection to Djenne with no problems. However, we only received trade route income from Djenne itself, not the rest of Dantski's cities, so that was kind of a waste, I guess. Looks like Djenne is only connected to Timbuktu by sea, not by a land road. Well in any case, we do get a little extra commerce... Need to research Sailing next for the full deal.

We also have a perfect invasion road into Djenne if Dantski would decide to drop his NAP later on...



- Chamberlain won his battle against the barb warrior without a scratch! Now up to 6 XP, and moving towards Jowy's cities to scout them out.

- Jubal has gone far enough east, now we can turn and head straight south to look for Broker.

- We have barely enough beakers to finish Math next turn, just as we planned. 60% research is slightly less than ideal due to rounding errors, but we get the tech on time exactly as forecast a dozen turns ago. We end up with 2g in the bank, 376/373 beakers - a mere 3 beakers of overrun! (Would have been perfect for Civ3, heh.)

Now that was it for anything interesting within our own territory. I noticed that Jowy had turned down our Open Borders offer, which was troubling. But then he logged into the game as I was getting ready to leave, and we had a fairly long conversation. Here are the highlights:

* Jowy is worried about sunrise and regoarrarr. He turned down Open Borders because he thought we might be able to send them copper. I reassured him that we couldn't do this even if we wanted to, because we lacked the trade route connection.

* I pushed Jowy on the commerce aspect of Open Borders, and he agreed to sign the agreement. We opened up the trade window and signed the deal! This is very good, because Chamberlain is about to move into Greek territory in like 2 turns.

* Jowy told me that he really doesn't want us to support sunrise, because "they are very good players" and "I don't trust them" (said several times). He wants them eliminated from the game.

* I countered by pointing out that their team was crippled, and keeping them in the game benefitted both of our teams. Jowy doesn't really seem to understand what's going on over there; he admitted that he doesn't have a "C & D" department and doesn't follow the Demographics very closely. [Good to know for the future!] Jowy said that he doesn't mind if athlete wins the war, because "at least they are far away". I pointed out that they won't be far away for much longer if they crush sunrise!

* Jowy seemed to be wavering a little bit by the end of our conversation. I told him that we'll trade him our copper if he sends sunrise his iron, but that ultimately the decision was up to him and we would support him either way. As far as I can tell, Jowy seems really trusting of us, which is good news. The funny thing is, Jowy doesn't want to help sunrise because he says their team might become very powerful down the road, yet he's working arm-in-arm with us, and we're much, MUCH stronger than Byzantium.

I'll send him another email today continuing to make the hard sell on sunrise - at the very least, let's get an extention of our NAP in place with Jowy. But then I had another long conversation with Nakor, who messaged me as well in game:

* Nakor mostly wanted to feel me out on Dantski. Apparently there's very little room left between Nakor and Dantski, and they're both feeling a little anxious. Particularly Dantski. (Note: this is a side effect of our decision to move south with the starting settler. More room between us and Jowy, less room for Dantski.)

* Dantski has apparently told Nakor that he feels cramped, and doesn't have room to expand. Nakor told him to "settle some islands" and that displeased Dantski.

* Nakor said he was worried about skirmishers, and I said that swords were the best early-game counter (true). I was trying to push him towards Iron Working, but Nakor seemed aware of what I was suggesting. He then said something like "maybe I'll need Iron Working, but not for another 50 or so turns" which suggests a longterm NAP between Nakor and Dantski. No confirmation of that, but it could bode poorly for us. I think we need to keep a very sharp eye on Dantski when our current NAP starts to wear down (T90).

* Nakor also wanted to know if we had founded a religion, and I said no. It came out in our conversation that they were beaten to Hinduism by a same-turn dice roll, ouch! I let them know it was IKZ who beat them (now we have a confirmation of who founded that religion). We suspected IKZ before, but couldn't prove it.

I think that's basically all. We want to keep working closely with Jowy, and keep an eye on Dantski. I'm not sure we even want to send away our copper at this point - I'd like to get some spears and axes done in preparation for a possible move from the south.

Interesting times!

[Sullla]

Here are some proposed messages to send out, so let me know what you think in terms of feedback. First the most important one with Jowy:

Dear Jowy,

First of all, thanks for accepting Open Borders. It was nice to have a chance to chat with you in-game.

Now the next issue we wanted to bring up was the upcoming expiration of our Non-Aggression Pact, which is due to run out on Turn 75. That's not too far away! We feel that our NAP has been a great contributor to the success of both our teams thus far, and so we'd like to propose an extention for another 25 turns, up through Turn 100. I know that I mentioned this before, but it probably got lost in the shuffle of that large message. Please let us know if you'll accept this offer!

As a separate issue, I know we talked a lot today about the situation involving the Ottoman/Byzantine war to the east. Our official stance is that we won't involve ourselves one way or the other without getting your approval first - for instance, we won't send a metal resource to regoarrarr unless you're OK with it ahead of time. We don't want you to think that we're working behind your back here.

However, we will try to convince you that it's in both of our interests to lend some limited support to regoarrarr's side. :) So here's our best sales pitch:

- The Byzantine team has already been crippled beyond repair. They have only one city, while everyone else has at least three. They have no improved tiles. They've been pillaged back to the stone age. Their team is sitting in their capital right now, doing nothing but building archers as the Ottomans run around at will with chariots.

- That's a pretty good situation for both of us. But eventually, athlete and kalin are going to research up to Construction for catapults, bring down the defenses, and kill off regoarrarr. Once that happens, the Ottomans will have a massive amount of territory to expand into, and they will become extremely powerful.

- However, if the Byzantines were to have some metals on hand, they could whip out some spears and break the Ottoman choke. That would allow them to begin a very belated recovery, and would prolong the war pretty much indefinitely. Essentially, it wouldn't change their eventual defeat, but it would make things a whole lot tougher on athlete and kalin!

We'll go with your decision and support you regardless, but maybe think it over and consider things a bit more. Our offer to supply you with copper to offset the temporary loss of iron still stands.

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Obviously let's wait and see what Speaker thinks before sending off the above message...

Getting back to IKZ:

Dear Iamjohn, Kodii, and Zeviz of IKZ,

How about we simply agree at this point to a Non-Aggression Pact between our teams until the end of Turn 100? (Nice round number.) There should be fairly minimal contact between our teams during this period - we'd just like to rule out a nasty worker steal from either side.

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

And something short to regoarrarr:

Dear regoarrarr and Team Byzantium,

Well, we've made our best sales pitch to Jowy and asked him to supply you temporarily with iron. Your guess is as good as ours on whether it will be successful. We're working on uncovering more of the northern sea coast to open up a trade route ourselves. Good luck holding out a while longer.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

No one is sending us messages right now, which is understandable given the time of year. We'll probably have to chase up Dantski again soon, since he continues to remain quiet.

[Speaker]

I like that message. I would really like to continue to encourage close relations with Greece. Given the distance between us, and their soft eastern border, I think they will make the best long-term allies for us, and Dantski is giving me bad vibes.

[novice]

Sullla, looks like you had some interesting chats with Nakor and Jowy. You said earlier that you dislike chats, but it seems to me that in this case they proved a more informative and effective mode of diplomacy than email?

Also, congratulations on your outstanding demographics and score. What are your research plans after mathematics?

[Sullla]

Messages above sent, with Speaker's approval.

novice, I do prefer email to chats. I see chats as unofficial contacts, useful for exchanging tidbits of information but not much else. Anything important needs to go into writing and be sent as a formal communication. I also don't really mind if someone sends me a message in-game; after all, if I'm playing Civ4 then I'm not working on anything all that important! What I don't like is people from the Pitboss game randomly chatting with me when I'm typing, or doing my real-life job. So I guess you could say that I view in-game chatting a lot more positively than Gmail chat or something like that.

Our next tech goal is Sailing, no question about it. We're actually giving away free commerce to Danski and Jowy right now with these Open Borders without getting the return benefits! Once we get Sailing, we'll get a modest boost in commerce from trade routes, about 5-6 extra per turn. That's worth the value of two cottages right now, and is nothing to sneeze at.

Plus we need Fishing/Sailing for our upcoming coastal cities anyway, and they are both widely know so we'll get a nice tech discount for a change. For this game (not a general rule in Civ4), we get a 3% boost for each other team that we've contacted which already knows the tech. Since everyone else knows Fishing, and we've met 7 other teams, we'd get a 1.21 multiplier on Fishing tech - not too bad! That's on top of pre-req bonuses, so we'll get 1.2 bonus on Sailing (from Fishing), plus about ~1.15 from knowing other teams.

After Fishing/Sailing, I expect that we'll want to pick up Iron Working (and maybe Archery?) before then heading for our next real goal: Calendar. Three Calendar resources + possible early work on the Mausoleum make it a very desirable tech for us. We're going to have 2 sugars, 3 silks, and 4 spices in our territory - the sooner we hook them up, the sooner we start benefitting from those tile yields!