RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[mostly_harmless]

There is one downside to phony wars or misclicked wars, in that you lose the peace bonus for trade routes and it takes a long time to build up again. 3% per turn iirc.
It does not matter much in the early days when you either have no foreign trade routes or the base commerce of the route is small, but it can grow significantly at later stages.

mh

[Sullla]

No new turn just yet, we're waiting on Dantski at the moment (ominous sign, perhaps?) Also no messages back from Jowy or Nakor, although they've both been posting in their spoiler threads so I know they got them. Our one response was from... plako. Heh. It was a very nice message though, and they're granting us Open Borders.

I worked a little bit with the Power numbers this morning, so let's update that:



Our team, Jowy, and Nakor have all been racing upwards in power lately; I think we all expect a war to break out somewhere relatively soon. Whosit and athlete have been sitting on their laurels recently, so thank goodness for small favors. The current estimates of our two neighbors:

Jowy
2 scouts
2 warriors
4 archers
5 phalanxes
2 spears
2 chariots [actually 1, but the Demographics haven't updated to include the dead one yet!]

Dantski
4 warriors
3 skirmishers
1 axe
2 chariots
4 spears

The Power graph suggests that Dantski built 2 spears and a chariot last turn, with no axes. I know - it seems funny, but that's what they are suggesting. Perhaps he really is expecting a defensive struggle... but then why would he decline our NAP? I don't understand what Dantski is doing in this game...

Our military remains:
6 warriors
4 archers
2 chariots
4 axes
3 spears

Full Excel chart, which is (momentarily!) completely up to date: http://www.cassiopeiathedog.net/Images/P.../RBPB2.xls

[Sullla]

Blargh, I hate it when a new turn starts on a Friday evening... No time to get to this before I leave for the night, so it'll have to wait for tomorrow. I did log in to take the Demographics screenshots (and make sure no one declared war on us, heh).

Speaker, if you get a chance, try to check out the game sometime this turn and give us some thoughts on what units to build, where to station the units we do have, etc. Dantski moved up a skirmisher right outside our border, near the capital, so we probably have to do something about that. I checked Djenne with our chariot, and there was only 1 spearman inside, so at least there's no army right outside our borders...

No response back from Jowy or Nakor to our major proposals. Maybe I'm not very good at writing these diplo messages! On the plus side, Dantski took all of six minutes to play *TWO* turns, so he doesn't appear to care too much about this game right now. I think eliminating him would be a mercy at this point.

[Speaker]

Blargh, I hate it when a new turn starts on a Friday evening... No time to get to this before I leave for the night, so it'll have to wait for tomorrow. I did log in to take the Demographics screenshots (and make sure no one declared war on us, heh).

Speaker, if you get a chance, try to check out the game sometime this turn and give us some thoughts on what units to build, where to station the units we do have, etc. Dantski moved up a skirmisher right outside our border, near the capital, so we probably have to do something about that. I checked Djenne with our chariot, and there was only 1 spearman inside, so at least there's no army right outside our borders...

No response back from Jowy or Nakor to our major proposals. Maybe I'm not very good at writing these diplo messages! On the plus side, Dantski took all of six minutes to play *TWO* turns, so he doesn't appear to care too much about this game right now. I think eliminating him would be a mercy at this point.

I'll take a look. It's CCC this weekend so I'll be civing all weekend long!

[Speaker]

Blargh, I hate it when a new turn starts on a Friday evening... No time to get to this before I leave for the night, so it'll have to wait for tomorrow. I did log in to take the Demographics screenshots (and make sure no one declared war on us, heh).

Speaker, if you get a chance, try to check out the game sometime this turn and give us some thoughts on what units to build, where to station the units we do have, etc. Dantski moved up a skirmisher right outside our border, near the capital, so we probably have to do something about that. I checked Djenne with our chariot, and there was only 1 spearman inside, so at least there's no army right outside our borders...

No response back from Jowy or Nakor to our major proposals. Maybe I'm not very good at writing these diplo messages! On the plus side, Dantski took all of six minutes to play *TWO* turns, so he doesn't appear to care too much about this game right now. I think eliminating him would be a mercy at this point.

I'll take a look. It's CCC this weekend so I'll be civing all weekend long!

[Speaker]

I logged in and upon moving Chamberlain, noticed that Athlete has sent a chariot this direction. He is currently on the edge of the barbarian city, headed toward it. I'd like to get a spear in Shiloh and 2 spears in Fredericksburg, to protect us from any two movers on that front. With horseback on the horizon, I'd probably recommend we build more spears until we get horseback, slaving them the turn before the tech completes, so we can overflow into Horse Archers.

My best guess is that Dantski has recognized the importance of that hill tile, and wants to hold it when war is declared.

I'm not really a big fan of all the mines we are building. Hampton roads, at size 3, is already working 2 mines. I'd rather work cottages and slave. That city is way below its happy cap, and being a front city, where we'll be storing a bunch of units, it could be slaving every few turns. Maybe every other turn. Probably the only city that should be working mines is Antietam, since it has so many hammers, it becomes more efficient to build 3-turn horse archers. But we could be growing it now, instead of working all the mines.

I may be out of town the rest of the weekend. My brother's wife is about to go into labor.

[Sullla]

Thanks for the feedback, Speaker - and best wishes to your brother and his wife! As for our military, we have 1 spear completing in Fredericksburg next turn, and we can probably build a second one right after that (possibly whipping to completion - maybe). I think we should send the spear completing in Chancellorsville next turn to Shiloh, since little Shiloh won't be building military for itself any time soon. How does that sound?

I disagree with your characterization of Hampton Roads though. Remember, I kinda explained that whole deal just a little bit up this very page!



Hampton just expanded its borders last turn (T93); before that we had only the inner ring to work with, which consists of the fish, two coastal tiles, two plains tiles, the two hills, and the silks resource. I'm not cottaging over a silks resource that will get a plantation later, so that really left us with just the hills to work - so I mined them!

I totally agree that running 2 food/8 shields per turn is a bad way to go. We were only doing that for two turns, to get the walls done inside (and they did complete this turn), and with them finished, I could whip the granary, which I just did on logging in. We overflow from the whip into a lighthouse, which gets a forest chop to help complete it, and then we can grow rapidly working the coastal tiles and fish for +6 food/turn surplus. Furthermore, the granary whip was perfectly timed, starting to work at 13/24 food right at halfway full!

So... things are running pretty good up at Hampton, methinks. You did read the previous post where I explained what I was going to do, right? It's like one page ago in the thread. :neenernee



Here's the picture of inside Djenne from earlier this turn. Dantski did finish a military unit in there this turn, but he moved it right at the start of the turn, somewhere to the south. I don't really understand what he's doing in this game... Attacking us? Attack Nakor? Trying to turtle? Dantski's in-game actions don't fit with his diplomacy.

For the lurkers, the Dantski skirmisher we've been discussing is sitting underneath our chariot in the picture above. Not a great spot for us!

OK, a little more city micro to go over with Speaker at our capital:



Gettysburg is already running up against the happy cap, thanks to that whipping we did earlier. (City grows like a weed!) I'd like to work that new cottage, but I think we need some extra shields to get another archer in the city for military police. That's why I swapped us from 7 food/4 shields to 6 food/7 shields per turn; we'll get the archer done one turn after growing, and suffer only one turn of an unhappy citizen. If we don't swap off the cottage, it takes 7 turns to build the archer, which is too long.

Alternately, we could move that spear or new axeman playing "zone defense" between Gettysburg and Chancellorsville into the city for military police. Couple of different ways to play this. If you have some thoughts, chime in here Speaker.

Not a whole lot in foreign news this turn. Some standard pop increases from other teams, nothing major. Jowy and Dantski seem to have no intention of ever building cottages or libraries, and continue to churn out Ancient-age military units. (To give you a contrast, we have stronger militaries than each of them, plus have three libraries and an Academy.) They are doomed even if they do attack and beat us. I give Nakor much more credit - at least he's trying to develop his civ a bit. I had an entertaining turn deciphering Jowy's military increase. Get this: loss of chariot (-4k) with loss of one pop from whipping (-1k) with new phalanx (+6k) = +1k total. That's confusing!

I'll end with the Total Population numbers, to give readers a sense of how the game stands:

Speaker/Sullla: 30
Whosit: 25
Nakor: 19
athlete: 17
Dantski: 17
Jowy: 16
IKZ/dsplaisted: 14
Broker: 8

No word back yet from Nakor or Jowy diplomatically...

EDIT: Forgot to mention, since this worked last week, GO RAVENS!

[Cyneheard]

For the lurkers, the Dantski skirmisher we've been discussing is sitting underneath our chariot in the picture above. Not a great spot for us!

Sort of. Tactically, keeping the chariot there is the wise move, and not just for visibility purposes. As long as you're at peace, it doesn't really matter. If Dantski declared war, then the skirm would get booted off the hill, using movement in the process (not sure if it would still have movement if it ended up on the road to the SW, or even where it would end up. I think Ruff's RBPB1 thread has the details of this process from his praet-era war with Imhotep). So as long as your chariot is on the hill, he'd have to kill the chariot in order to claim the hill, and that would be a coin flip.

EDIT: GO RAVENS!

[timmy827]

Gettysburg is already running up against the happy cap, thanks to that whipping we did earlier. (City grows like a weed!) I'd like to work that new cottage, but I think we need some extra shields to get another archer in the city for military police. That's why I swapped us from 7 food/4 shields to 6 food/7 shields per turn; we'll get the archer done one turn after growing, and suffer only one turn of an unhappy citizen. If we don't swap off the cottage, it takes 7 turns to build the archer, which is too long.

How long ago was the whip? Would the unhappiness vanish soon anyways?

[Cyneheard]

Why not use one of your "zone" units in G-burg for 1 turn? It'll spend 2t unable to reach Chancellorsville, but saves the turn of unhappy citizen.