RBP3 - [SPOILERS] - Team DIM (Mehmed of HRE)

[meatbalz]

tough decision to make. the bear prevents a move SE as we'd have preferred.



the way i see it our (realistic) options are
1) Nixon goes SW then SE. advantage is it's a fairly direct path back to the S of our capital. disadvantage is we spend at least 2 more turns on grasslands, more if the bear moves W or SW next turn. i'm very, very concerned about leaving him out in the open like that.
2) Nixon goes W, SW, SE, E/SE. advantage is we scout this river valley very thoroughly. disadvantage is we spend at least 1 turn in the open on the grassland currently S/SW, more if there's no forest 3S of our current position. another disadvantage is it takes 2 extra turns + we really need to be gathering map info.

i get the sense dazed is keen to explore the S of the capital. ilios clearly recommended going SW. i guess that's the preferred course of action?

FYI 1 turn until Cortes is good to go again i'm guessing he goes S then SW? watch him land right next to a bear now

[Ilios]

Man that bear started all the way south of the capital. You'd think Tricky has some sort of homing device on him, because that bear has been steadily moving towards him for the last 6 turns!

I say move him SW, the only dangerous tile would be the one S of the Sheep, if there's an animal on the other side of the river, they'd get the 25% penalty. Depending where the frickin' bear moves, we could then either swing S or SE, or even move SW on the hill for a better view before we move SE again.

Hernan can move either SW SW or S SE. I'm pretty sure the Ottomans are around...

India (rego etc) and Portugal (dantski etc) finally discovered BW.

We have visibility on demographics of Ottomans. They have started with a 3-food-tile, and have recently finished a worker. They're at max growth now.
Total soldier count:

4K (The Wheel)
2K (Warrior)
2K (Animal Husbandry)

Total Soldier count 8K

DIM Soldier count
2K (Hunting)
2K (Warrior)
1K (Population)

Total Soldier count 5K

[meatbalz]

ok done + ended turn. worse that can happen is a wolf comes out of the fog but we'd get good odds on that. let's see if the bear is still visible next turn, if he is we can move SE again, if he's not then

things should really start moving in the next couple of turns. we finally get to resume scouting with our, errr, scout, uncover DIM's immediate surroundings, start improving the capital, and possibly even get some visibility into horses, all in the next 4 turns

[meatbalz]

T19:

i think Hernan Cortes is cursed



the + side is we'll have extremely good odds against the wolf, and will get a woodie1 promotion out of it.

the more pressing question is - where do we move Nixon? unfortunately the bear is not visible. moving SE is a big risk, not worth it in my opinion. i'd prefer to move SW onto the plains. up to you guys...



the fact conan is poking around our capital is a sad indictment of how poor our scouting's been - nothing we could do about bad luck, but still



edited: i caught up with pegasus for an in-game chat (don't know how to get the log). basically they've received our email and are just waiting to sign off on a response - he said tricky dick appearing had made them add a couple of lines not sur whether they didn't even know we'd built a warrior or were just surprised to see him go W. that email will make interesting reading, no doubt.

he also told me (since i asked) there were no barbs to their S or SW and that conan had just been attacked + survived without a scratch. since the turns are flying i went ahead and played since it might be 8+ hours until me or ilios can pick up the game again. sorry but the risk of moving next to the bear, on flatland, just to see the S of our capital 2 turns earlier, didn't seem worth taking. barbs permitting i'd like to move tricky dick SE next turn. hernan should hopefully need very little healing time thanks to good odds + woodie1 promotion.

[Ilios]

Good decision on the "Tricky move", we can now move him either SE to continue exploring, or move W to make the Ottomans nervous...

Speaking of which:

Honourable triumvirate of DIM

So Hernan has "apparently" spent a long time flexing in the mirror? You should see Conan, he rarely ever leaves the mirror. In fact, he managed to get expelled from our glorious capital and was ordered to scout the nearby terrain as punishment for hogging the mirror. Conan also stumbled across Tricky Dick this fine morning, flexing his muscles by the riverside.

Your agreement to share info on other civilizations has been noted. We hope that this is a good start to friendly long term relations. We also have met no-one else in this world apart from yourselves.

Our initial inquiry about NAP's was to find out your opinion on them as some players/teams may not favor them. If we do manage a NAP, we can agree along the lines of no aggressive settlements. However, we might disagree if a location is aggressive or not so we will need more info on our surroundings before we can comply.

Enough Talking!

A4

I'll leave the initial deciphering of their message to our Foreign Office (that's you MB! )

But what they mention about Conan confirms my thoughts. Their capital (let's call it Aquilonia from now on) is somewhere between Hernan and Tricky. Conan is making a large sweeping clockward move around Aquilonia to map the immediate surroundings.


Both Aquilonia and England's capital grew to size 2 this turn.

I'd rather have Hernan fight a wolf and get that woody promotion than move him next to a bear and promote to heaven...
Hopefully he won't get too damaged.

I got this from Dplaisted's (now Slaze's) PB2thread:

I got taken by surprise a little bit with the costs in this game. I think I got used to expanding really quickly in RB Pitboss #1, where the difficulty was only set to Noble (it's Monarch here), and the map was much bigger.
I went for Code of Laws because we are organized so we get cheap courthouses.

We're playing Emperor now, I think some more people are going to be surprised...

[Ilios]

Meatbalz could you send a quick acknowledgment of their message back to A4? And while doing so, I suggest we tell them that, to not make them nervous, we won't move Tricky further west towards their unprotected capital. (make it casual, no "as a gesture of our good intentions, etc" phrases)
We'd already decided to move him SE, but A4 don't know that...

a) they know we know their capital is undefended
b) they might confirm their capital is 6-8 tiles W NW of our warrior's current position (which I suspect)
c) another goodwill gesture that costs us zero to further cement a good working relationship

C&D on Ottomans:

They moved their settler and founded on a plains hill on T1. They have been working a 3/0/1 (has to be rice) tile while building a worker. They finished the worker on T13. Farm on rice was finished on T17 (crop yield +2). They are now working a tech without prereqs (I'm guessing Mining).

The Deal:

They are a couple of turns ahead of us, so I would really like to finish another worker as soon as we finish our settler. That way we can start chopping more workers/settlers.

[meatbalz]

ilios, initially i wasn't sure i wanted to tell them that. the simple reason is, they've told us nothing in their message, absolutely nothing other than the fact they haven't met anyone else which is just common courtesy since we've already told them the same. here's what their message consists of:

paragraph 1) "our initial warrior went scouting and is now next to your warrior"
paragraph 2) "we haven't met anyone else"
paragraph 3) "we want to know more about the land"

while 3) is fair enough - it's our own position after all - i'm disappointed by the message because they haven't been forthcoming at all. all we can read into it is that our warrior is making them nervous.

so ok, i'll take your suggestion on board and tell them Tricky won't move closer, but that's the last info they get for free - friendship is a two-way street after all

we'll know more after the next message exchange - i plan to ask them on their thoughts on the game, if they have chosen a tech path so we can possibly set up a trade down the line, etc.

[meatbalz]

T22 min 02/90; warrior 10/15 food 02/24 pasture 4t
T23 min 13/90; warrior 13/15 food 04/24
T24 min 24/90; warrior 01/15 food 06/24
T25 min 35/90; warrior 04/15 food 08/24 4/1/2 2/1/1 2/1/0
T26 min 47/90; warrior 07/15 food 12/24
T27 min 59/90; warrior 10/15 food 16/24 farm 5t
T28 min 71/90; warrior 13/15 food 20/24
T29 min 83/90; settler 01/100 food 00/26 4/1/2 2/1/1 2/1/0 2/1/0
T30 BW 05/216; settler 09/100
T31 BW 18/216; settler 17/100; 4/1/2 4/1/0 2/1/1 2/1/0
T32 BW 31/216; settler 27/100
T33 BW 44/216; settler 37/100 mine 4t
T34 BW 57/216; settler 47/100
T35 BW 70/216; settler 57/100
T36 BW 83/216; settler 67/100 4/1/2 4/1/0 1/3/1 2/1/1
T37 BW 97/216; settler 78/100 farm 4t (1t put in on T21)
T38 BW 111/216 settler 89/100
T39 BW 125/216 settler done

worker 1 T21
AH T22
warrior2 T24
warrior3 T29
mining T30
settler1 T39


edited to add: the next 8 turns also work out beautifully,

T39 BW 125/216 warrior 00/15 4/1/2 4/1/0 1/3/1 2/1/1

T40 BW 139/216 warrior 06/15 food 05/26 4/1/2 4/1/0 3/0/1 2/1/1
T41 BW 153/216 warrior 09/15 food 12/26 go to city 2
T42 BW 167/216 warrior 12/15 food 19/26
T43 BW 181/216 warrior 00/15 food 00/28 4/1/2 4/1/0 2/1/0 3/0/1 2/1/1 (the other option is to go straight to worker or settler here)

T44 BW 195/216 warrior 04/15 food 07/28
T45 BW 209/216 warrior 08/15 food 14/28
T46 TW 07/108 warrior 12/15 food 21/28
T47 warrior done, size 5 hit.

T39 onwards can be modified as follows.
T40 BW 139/216 worker 12/60
T41 BW 153/216 worker 24/60
T42 BW 167/216 worker 36/60
T43 BW 181/216 worker 48/60
T44 BW 195/216 warrior 00/15 4/1/2 4/1/0 3/0/1 2/1/1
T45 BW 209/216 warrior 03/15 food 07/26
T46 anarchy
T47 TW 07/108 warrior 06/15 food 14/26 chop 3t
T48 TW 20/108 warrior 09/15 food 21/26 4/1/2 4/1/0 1/3/1 2/1/1
T49 TW 33/108 warrior done, settler 00/100 food 00/28 4/1/2 4/1/0 1/3/1 3/0/1 2/1/1
T50 TW 47/108 settler 32/100
T51 TW 61/108 settler 44/100 2x-whipped

capital can grow size 2->5 in 12 turns

so we'd have (assuming no horses or copper)
worker2 T44
warrior4 T49
settler2 T52

[Ilios]

they've told us nothing in their message, absolutely nothing other than the fact they haven't met anyone else which is just common courtesy since we've already told them the same.

Well, we haven't told them anything yet as well! They took one look at our message, and saw that it consisted of nothing new. I can't blame them for answering in the same way.

so ok, i'll take your suggestion on board and tell them Tricky won't move closer, but that's the last info they get for free - friendship is a two-way street after all

It's not free information. You don't have to tell them we were planning on moving Tricky away anyhow. But they need to think we are being courteous in moving him away from their unprotected capital. Where's the harm in sending them: "Incidently, we're not going move our warrior further west towards your unprotected capital. No need to unecessarily make you guys nervous (this needs some re-working )"

we'll know more after the next message exchange - i plan to ask them on their thoughts on the game, if they have chosen a tech path so we can possibly set up a trade down the line, etc.

good idea

[meatbalz]

Well, we haven't told them anything yet as well! They took one look at our message, and saw that it consisted of nothing new. I can't blame them for answering in the same way.

i don't agree with this. if you go back and read our message to them, it contained several things

1) we established a concrete agreement - we'd exchange info on meeting other civs
2) we gave them a good deal on the info exchange and made it clear this was designed to improve relations
3) we gave them info, telling them we hadn't met anyone
4) we not only told them an NAP was "something we're willing to start working towards" but also told them what we needed to make it happen
5) we repeatedly indicated a strong desire for peaceful relationships, even using the word ally
6) last but not least, remember i had specifically decided not to put any questions/ask any info in our message to see how forthcoming they'd be.

our 2 messages to each other were worlds apart. their tone is non-committal while ours is friendly. we give info, establish concrete agreements, and say what we need for future agreements to happen - their reply is light on information and again totally non-committal. we signed ours off asking if they were doing ok and making friendly overtures, they ended theirs with a (misquoted) conan line.

i'm not going to read too much into it at this stage, early diplo is delicate, but i don't agree their reply is a natural consequence of our message.