RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Sullla]

I sent off the above messages, and also dashed off a quick message to Broker asking how the war was going, if they had any chance of holding out.

spacemanf, of course it's bad news for us that Whosit is curb-stomping his opponent! Our goal is to *WIN* this game, not just to provide an entertaining read. I'd be much happier if he had made a mistake and was getting bogged down in a military quagmire right now. I would always prefer an easy victory in complete control to a daring, edge of the seat ride. That's why I play strategy games and I don't gamble.

Of course, the problem is that our opponents are also skilled at this game, and they won't roll over and die without a fight. Just because I want an easy game doesn't mean that we'll get one!

A new turn has started, and we're actually moving very quickly through them right now:



- Jubal got visibility on the HRE capital of Rolan, which has a Barracks and Granary inside. I think we can uncover the remaining fog in this area with McClellan, so I'd like to send Jubal further afield and start heading towards Whosit (we could really use intel on him). Let me know if you object to this, Speaker.

- Priesthood discovered (for pre-req discount purposes on Monarch, essentially pays for itself), research to 0%. It will take us either 6 or 7 turns to reach Monarchy at the current rate, depending on how our finances hold up. More likely 7, to be honest.

There's no practical difference between min science and steady research at 50% right now, however we'll stick with min science in case we have to crash to HBR or IW for defense purposes. 3 turns of cash, then 3 turns of 100% research should get us very close, then we can finish off with break-even research for the remainder.

We *REALLY* want Monarchy to be our next tech... Most of our cities are right up against the happy limit, and Monarchy will burst us free of that constraint. If we get into HR a dozen turns before anyone else, we can grow grow grow and get an even further population advantage. The other teams are starting to suffer for happiness too, and I'll bet a bunch of them are planning to go for Monarchy as well. Maybe already pushing in that direction as we speak!

- We did a minor tile swap of the cattle between Gettysburg and Antietam to get Worker #8 done a turn sooner.

- Fredericksburg grew to size 4 this turn; we have 23 total population, and Whosit is next closest at 19. (Although 2 of that is from Pyongyang, err newly renamed Nar Shadaa, which is still in resistance right now.) I might as well do the total listing:

Killer Angels: 23
Whosit: 19
Dantski: 14
Nakor: 14
Jowy: 13
IKZ: 12
athlete: 10
Broker: 8

That's a pretty solid listing of where the teams rank in the game, aside from the exception of athlete and kalin (who are still regrowing their cities after a monstrous whipfest earlier). I should point out however that Dantski had his capital working a 2/1 unimproved forest, and a 1/1 unimproved plains tile as we walked past!

- There was virtually no military increase at all this past turn, a good sign. I was getting a little worried watching some huge shield outputs for Jowy, then I realized he was building Granaries and getting the Expansive bonus. Whew! For Jowy:

Athens: looks like it's building a worker or settler right now
Sparta: just finished a granary
Corinth: building a granary
Thebes: who cares? (OK, it's probably slow-building a monument!)

In other words, Jowy doesn't look like he's coming for us anytime soon. If an attack does come, Dantski seems way more likely, based on his recent builds and overall squeezed position.

Much better would be a Dantski attack on Nakor. That would be wonderful for us if it happened!

[timmy827]

Of course, the problem is that our opponents are also skilled at this game, and they won't roll over and die without a fight.
....
I should point out however that Dantski had his capital working a 2/1 unimproved forest, and a 1/1 unimproved plains tile as we walked past!

I know you're thinking about other teams being dangerous, but this incongruity still amused me greatly.

[Sullla]

Well that was pretty quiet 24 hours, almost a relief to see not much going on between turns! Let's move on to the next turn, T86:



- Spiros finished scouting that last little bit of fog-covered jungle, and yes, we do indeed have a fish resource there! Speaker predicted it would be there based on distribution of resources around the inner sea, and he was 100% correct. Now "Green" is all set to be founded, as our workers road to the location.

- We double-whipped Chancellorsville this turn to complete its settler build for that same Green location. Next turn, the settler moves four tiles towards this spot, ending up one east of Antietam. At the same time, our workers finish the road on the Green tile and start chopping the forest north of it. Then on T88, the settler moves SE-E-SE and founds the city the same turn, as the two workers also complete a chop on the forest for an instant work boat the next turn. Now THAT'S how you micromanage a new city!

Because we have a religion now, we can stop chopping out monuments in these new cities. The second build at Green will be a granary, and our first post-Organized Religion missionary out of Chancellorsville will probably go here to expand borders. Either Green or Gettysburg, but the capital doesn't really need the happiness or the extra culture....

- Gettysburg grew to size 8 this turn, which meant that it now has an unhappy citizen. We're going to keep right on growing it though; we should reach Monarchy tech in 6 more turns, and that way we can immediately add 3 extra happy faces and work more tiles. With HR in the imminent future, there's no reason to stop growing, even into unhappiness. Even if an attack would be coming against us, which is uncertain right now, it would still give us more population to whip.

- Antietam finished a worker this turn, Worker Hougoumont (#8 ). Now it can start growing again too, as the previous whip duration just ran out.

- Pretty active turn for Foreign builds, although nothing too threatening. Jowy finished a worker in Athens and a granary in Corinth, both as predicted. Dantski finished a chariot in his capital, which we confirmed with our wandering warrior McClellan. He would need a whole lot of chariots to pose a serious threat to Gettysburg - like, 10+ to take down two spears and at least one archer in a 40% defense on a hill capital - but we'll be watching just to be safe. (Green would be a much softer target for him to hit than Gettysburg or Antietam, for example.)

Only one email, but it was significant, a reply back from Broker/plako:

Dear Sullla

Things will be very hard for us now. Whosit killed 6 units (3 archers and 3 axes) without a kill for us. I had misplaced the city. I should have taken a more secure spot on the hill close by. Now there are only 2 cities on the mainland and island city that is quite far and it will take long time for Whosit to reach there.

If you're willing there might be a way to assist. This map seems to be toroidial so if you're located on the northest part of the ring. You wouldn't be that far from us and possibly reachable with Galleys in ~10 turns.

Best regards,
plako

I highlighted the key part. Yeah, we already knew that Broker suffered big losses and took out zero Whosit units (remember how I predicted that from the Demographics?) But this being a Toroidal map has major consequences! That means all of the teams can reach one another not just through the center island, but also across the worldwrap along the outside as well.

Now we know the purpose of those outer islands: so that the "corners" of the map can be reached by galley! Let's update our sketch of the world again:



Ignore the islands for the most part, they're pretty rough looking... The key thing is how the map connects across the two International Date lines. I color-coded the arrows to show how I think everything is put together. The pairings across the water appear to be:

Speaker/Sullla: Mortius
Jowy/Yaz: Whosit (Have fun with that, guys! )
sunrise/regoarrarr: Broker/plako (the star-crossed ends of the map!)
athlete/kalin: DMOC/Nakor
Dantski/IKZ (the least-updated spoiler threads!)

So it's a relief that we're not directly opposed from Whosit, although we're actually not far away either. It's more important than ever to get some eyes out in the water in those outer islands; we'll probably put city #7 out there by the clams. Either there or at the "Yellow" spices location in the south, depending on our military situation and how quickly we reach Calendar tech.

This also reveals why our maintenance costs are so high: because we're on a Toroidal map! There's an article explaining this in more detail at CivFanatics, but basically maps with fewer "edges" have higher costs, because the max distance possible from the capital is smaller. Flat maps like Inland Sea or Highlands have the lowest, normal Cylindrical maps are medium, and Toroidal maps are the worst.

This is partially why all of the teching has been so slow in this game; seriously, hardly anyone has been discovering anything lately. (It also gives a boost to Ancient Age teams like Whosit's Rome!) The other reason is likely due to few cottages - we've yet to spot a single cottage in the lands of Jowy, Dantski, or Nakor! I am not making that up!

[m4gill4]

based on what you have learned about the map, I wonder what is your opinion of it so far? Do you find it stimulating or do you have some qualms?

[antisocialmunky]

That's not going to be fun to hold if Dantski does decide to say 'HI.' :-\

[SevenSpirits]

Hey guys, I am partially spoiled on other teams and will thus stay out of making suggestions or saying anything based on that.

However, I became curious when reading your thread about Construction. You went for Math pretty early and have stated the importance of Catapults at least once. What is the thinking behind getting other military techs, such as Horseback Riding and/or Ironworking as you have considered doing, over Construction? Is it just the high cost? Do you think it's overkill? Are catapults just not that good for defense, and that is your main concern right now? I'm curious how soon in this game, and under what general circumstances, you'd expect to research it.

This has been a great read. Thank you!

[Sullla]

Let me cover those excellent comments in turn.

m4gill4: My overall opinion of this map is that it is excellent, a first-rate job. All teams have equal opportunity for contact, two neighbors on each side, and multiple tactical possibilities for attack (around the rim, through the center, or across the worldwrap). The map is exceedingly well balanced too, with perfectly equal resource distribution for all teams. I see Krill's hand in a lot of the work.

The only minor complaint about this map is that the equalization/balancing work means that the script is a little bit boring and predictable. Once we saw two capitals, we could predict exactly what they all looked like. Speaker was able to predict where seafood resources would be placed, and I think I have a very good idea of what the whole map looks like, despite having scouted less than half of it. The whole thing reminds me of a Starcraft MP map, perfectly equal yet somewhat artificial because everything is mirrored.

Again, that's not a knock on this map, which is fantastic. All I'm saying is that I personally like to design more "natural" maps, with the tradeoff that they end up being not as well balanced. It's a design decision - there's no right or wrong answer here. I'm willing to accept some variability in overall starting position to create a more interesting map, rather than the "one land food + one seafood + one plains fur + river of exactly two tiles length + horses in the third ring" [etc.] mirrored starts we have in this game.

Krill and I have butted heads to some extent because I know he prefers this kind of start. It's just a difference of opinion.

antisocialmunky: You're right that the Green spot is one of the weaker spots in our defense. But things aren't as bad as they seem either; don't forget that we haven't even planted the city yet! Here's how we're going to play this:

- Spiros is going to move W-SW to the grassland hill, giving us visibility of anything coming our way. (Since a warrior isn't going to stop anything on the defense, better to be out in front giving advance warning of incoming units. We will get an archer in here soon for some real defense, probably out of Fredericksburg.) Antietam also expands borders in 10 turns to third-ring, grabbing the forested grassland hill three tiles to its south, which will give us even more line of sight.

- Secondly, I'm going to assign two of our workers to jungle-clearing duty in our upcoming micro plan; we have enough workers that we can spare them for a little while on this. A pair of Fast Workers (who don't waste movement) can bushwack jungle pretty darn fast; the goal will be to clear out the jungle tiles W, SW, and S of the city center, making sure that attackers can't hide inside.

Of course, we need to have Iron Working first before we can do any of that!

- Third, Antietam and Fredericksburg are both nearly finished their infrastructure. Antietam had to pause to build a worker and now a barracks, after which it will produce a steady stream of axes. Fredericksburg really has nothing to build after its library, so we'll get some much-needed archers out of there. (Not having a barracks is less important for the archers, who hopefully will not ever have to defend.)

Antietam gets 11 shield/turn while growing (essentially 3t axes) while Fredericksburg gets 8 shields/turn (essentially 3t archers). That's pretty good shield output, and we can crash those cities up to 18 shields/turn and 11 shields/turn in a true emergency... not to mention whipping. So we can stand up military pretty fast if we get in a bad situation!

- Fourth, Dantski has no road network in this area, so his attack over here would be slow if it came. Even chariots don't move quickly through jungle. We've focused more on Gettysburg not just because its our capital, but also because chariots could double-move it quickly.

- Fifth and finally, even if the worst happens and we would somehow lose this city, it would be virtually impossible for Dantski to hold, surrounded on two sides by our culture and a third side by water. And if Dantski's attacking over here at Green, he's NOT attacking at Gettysburg or Antietam, which are far more valuable to our overall effort.

Overall, we don't plan on losing this city, and if we would, it wouldn't be game-crippling.

SevenSpirits: Very good question! I think the reasons are threefold:

* We need Iron Working to cut down jungle and reveal the location of that critical resource. Plus it's the cheapest of the military techs and several teams already have it, so we can research IW much faster (only 5 turns as opposed to about 12 for Construction).

* Horseback Riding is a desired tech because horse archers the unit that best counters phalanxes. None of the Ancient age units can fight phalanxes effectively; axes would do best, but they would only get even odds. Horse archers would own phalanxes, plus give us counter-attacking mobility; we could hit either Sparta or Djenne instantly with two-movers and raze the cities before Jowy/Dantski could even do anything about it. We could even get a stables going in our best military city (likely Antietam) for double-promoted HAs. All those are reasons why Speaker has been emphasizing this military tech.

* Construction is great, yes, but it's definitely the most expensive of the three, and it does nothing to benefit us economically. (Well, aside from the river-crossing addition to roads.) Since what can wait, should wait, we'll go to this tech a little later.

Well that was pretty long... Now let me get to our actual news for this morning.

[Sullla]

There was a lot of whipping during the rest of the turn. Let me summarize again:

* We double-whipped Chancellorsville from size 5 to size 3 to produce the Green settler.

* Dantski single-whipped Gao (his newest city) from size 2 to size 1. We don't have visibility on this city yet, but we should have it next turn; we can see its borders with McClellan. Now we don't know what Dantski whipped, however his city took 11 turns to grow to size 2, so it was only working a 2-food tile. Dropping immediately back down to size 1, with no food in the box, and apparently no high-food tiles in play... well, it's rather poor city management. Unless Dantski really needed something ASAP in this city, that probably wasn't a good whip.

* athlete double-whipped his capital (Coruscant) from size 4 to size 2. Their team only has 9 total population, lowest in the game (we have 22 even after the whip). I guess this is a settler or worker whip (?) Their team really needs to start growing vertically rather than just horizontally, as cities of size 2-3-3-1 just don't compete well with the size 5, 6, 7+ that the other teams are starting to field.

* dsplaisted of IKZ triple-whipped his capital from size 6 to size 3, then single-whipped anoter city! Dunno what was going on there... A triple-whip implies a settler, but that's a LOT of population to be whipping away, especially in the capital. We have very little info on this team, so it's hard to say if this was a good or bad move.

All in all, 9 total pop was whipped this turn and Broker/plako (the team most in need of whipping defenders) still hasn't played yet! Bit of a slaughter, as about 8% of the global population died this turn in whippings. Oops! Guess it sucks to be a little Civ person!

Nakor replied to our diplo message in very positive fashion:

Dear Sullla,

We agree with your assesmant of the war between The Empire and Korea. We are preparing some defense in the case that we're the next target and will recall some of our scouting units.

Indeed, in the light of these new developments, an NAP untill turn 105 sounds most prudent. That leaves us with only Whosit and Dantski to worry about in the near future. What a nice game this is... so consider the NAP a deal.

Our scouting warrior will be coming from the north, now that we're recalling our southern scouts home. So it might take some more time before we get sight on your cities.

Congratulatiuns on founding Judaism! We understand the problems with missionary's, so maybe it will spread indeed. We're looking into other means to find a religion as well.

Hope to hear from you soon!
Nakor of HRE

Great! I don't seriously think that Nakor was planning a war against us, but this should ensure that he stays out of our hair. I imagine he has enough on his plate right now, between Whosit and Dantski.

Should Dantski declare war on Nakor (and let's pray that that happens!) we would potentially be in a position to intervene and play kingmaker. I hope that doesn't sound harsh; I just think that Dantski is in an increasingly poor position, he's not really interested in this game, and so he's more likely to try some crazy aggressive gambit against either ourselves or Nakor. Either get back in the game or go out in a blaze of glory... I don't trust him right now, especially since he's been very quiet diplomatically with us!

Short response I sent back to Nakor (no need to bother Speaker with this):

Dear Nakor and DMOC of Holy Rome,

Great, we're very pleased to hear your acceptance. I hope that our teams can stay on good terms and continue to cooperation together. Best of luck down there in the south with Dantski and Whosit.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

[antisocialmunky]

Appreciate the responses, looking forward to you guys crushing something in the near future hopefully. Building is only half the fun.

[Sullla]

Talk about a busy turn! No chit-chat, we're going to jump right into Turn 87:



- Chamberlain finds a barb city to the northeast of Fredericksburg! And it's in a strong location, with fish + rice + sugar tiles. So, umm, what do we want to do about this, Speaker? Try to capture and keep? Capture and raze? Ignore? Milk for unit XP and try to get Heroic Epic?

I like the spot a lot but I really question our ability to defend there currently. Really would like to get Speaker's MP perspective on how he would play this.



- We spotted Gao and gained visiblity; looks like it whipped out a granary last turn. It's a little hard to see in the screenshot, but Nakor's borders are located to the east and south; based on what we've heard from Nakor, this was a very aggressive "Thebes" like city founding. Yet it's also undefended right now...

Dantski actually has an axe on the same tile as McClellan, which is racing south to garrison Gao. This is really good news for us, as his first "real" unit is actually going south and not north! Helps relieve us that Dantski's not planning to attack once our current NAP runs out.

- I had a long and friendly chat with Nakor in-game while playing. He's very happy with the NAP that our teams just signed, and more than a little worried about Whosit. I kind of encouraged that suspicion, although in truth I think Whosit is done fighting and will be consolidating for a while.

- Whosit and Broker have signed peace!



The terms were the city of Wonson (Broker's #2 city) in exchange for peace and an NAP until Turn 150. I'll address this more in diplomacy in a little bit.

- "Green" settler done, and will found the city next turn.

- 5 turns to Monarchy.

Speaker and I are going to discuss some of these issues, then I'll post more here.