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

[Ilios]

I just wanted to add one more thing regarding Monotheïsm. In PB2, Spulla got the tech on turn 84, while not beelining for it, and having the best tech rate in the game at the time. And by going TW and Pottery first, we’ll only get Monarchy by T105, so we’d have to count on our tech partners advancing their techs for a good 15-20 turns.

But let’s just see, maybe we get lucky and copper appears nearby. And you’re on for the chat on Wednesday.

edited to add: wonder why A4 need to wait until the outcome to send us the message?

Yeah, I think that’s weird as well. Let’s ask them. Oh and could you ask them for the location of Carthage? And do we head back to India and try to meet up the other teams?
I’ve already moved Hernan north, so we need to decide if we want to swing back towards the west of India. And confirm to India ofcourse.

on that note, i wanted to negotiate by offering them the marble for the duration of the NAP (with a clause we can use it for 10 turns with a 10 turn notice period), discounts on tech trades, military units, or a combination. any of these you guys think should be off the table?

Hmm, Marble is no use to them when not building a Wonder, so I think it would be better if we coordinate/divide our Wonder builds and make sure we don’t overlap each other. I think tech discounts are negotiable. I’m less inclined to offer military units this early in the game.
But let’s try to have A4 show their cards first, so we can react appropriately.

One thing we haven’t thought of yet is that we’ll be able to make workers in 4 turns in the capital once we mine that plains hill. We could offer to trade them for units once they discover Writing. (1 worker, 60 hammers = 2 chariots, 50 hammers)

i think we need to send cain out to the forested plains hill in preparation for the settler. we have good visibility out of DIM and can't see any bogies incoming, if anyone does approach our capital a warrior can be done in 2 turns. we obviously can't send the settler unescorted, and tricky's doing critical exploraton work. ideal time to move him is when settler is 3 turns away from completion

I agree, regardless of which site we decide to settle first.

tricky goes E, NE, NW the next 3 turns, all along forests. if there's a compelling reason to move city3, we'll know in the next 3 turns.

agree and done

city 5 pig/horse/wheat

Ok here I have to disagree. We’ve all read the posts of experienced MP players. And they all confirm that you need to bunch up your first cities and not overreach. This makes the empire easier to defend and keeps the city upkeep reasonable. (which will be painful on Emperor)

Capital + Horse + Gold + Marble city make for a nice compact empire, and I suggest we found a couple of cities around DIM before we decide to grab the northern horse city.

T46 anarchy

The best moment for switching civics is just after you finish a settler. So I suggest we only switch after finishing the second settler. The turn after, we can start a worker and then single/double whip.

but easily fixed by putting the first chops into a barracks.

Like I said before, barracks are really not necessary yet. Better to start building a worker at size two after finishing the monument. As soon as the worker is finished, we can start on the chariots. (workers = power)

[meatbalz]

thanks for the thoughts ilios, some good points in there. i'll chew it over on the way back (plenty of time to do so).

i'm much more inclined to prefer hammers to beakers early on so i'm in favour of settling the horse first, but we still have a couple of turns' time.

dazed, i never did say congratulations when you're available, would be good to hear your thoughts.

i think we move hernan back towards india, approaching from the W side. india's last message made it clear they're willing to organise a mini-summit and we need to leverage that scout start into as many early contacts as possible.

i shot DJ a quick message saying Hernan will swing back by their capital, hope that's ok with you guys ideally we go N, NE. and then the following turn NE-NE to end up on the grass hill SW of their capital.

[Ilios]

Ok for me to move Hernan towards India. MB, will you be able to handle diplo before you get back, or do you want me to check from time to time?
Yes Dazed if you could chime in, choosing our second city site is pretty important, and I want us to have a lively discussion before we come to a decision.

[meatbalz]

just 1 thing re: tech trades, ilios mentioned earlier monarchy's ETA. it's true, it won't be in for a while. might be best to offer HBR or IW instead and receive monarchy in trade. we'll have a much clearer picture if we manage to make the summit

[Ilios]

A4 have sent their message:

Honorable triumvirate of DIM.

Conan ended last turn next to 2 lions but Conan was intimidating enough for one lion to run away and strong enough to defeat the other. Unfortunately, he had to move away from the intimidated lion for safety reasons and it seems that he has ended his turn next to a bear.

The reason why we wanted to know if Conan survived is whether he could contact India on behalf of our civilization. We also would like to make contact with them ASAP to try to get in the group. Unfortunetly, we can not safely contact them until about T53. Could you inform India of our civilization?

We have penciled in writing for hunting/masonry or hunting/poly. We accept your offer to be able to cancel the deal. It look like this isn't going to be the case though.

About the border agreement, we think that actually deciding city sites will be more likely to avoid tensions between our civilizations. Attached is our first dotmap of border sites in the area in question. Ignore the green/yellow dots since they are not located on the border in question. We have no desire to expand E or S of these sites. They are open to negotiations should you have any concerns about their location.

We appreciate the info on the Aztec's. In return, A Carthaginian warrior (Karen) appeared about 7 tiles south of our capital a few turn ago. We are unsure where they are now but it seems they are hanging around that area for now.

We acknowledge that you switch off EP's on us when you met India. We were meaning to do the same but forgot about it as it was late in the turn. We hope that you can forgive this error on our part.

Enough Talking!

WarriorKnight of A4.

I've sent them a quick reply wishing them luck, and informed them that we'll probably need a couple of days to reply.
A4 has got really rotten luck, because that's the second warrior they are about to lose...

T53? That's in 20 turns! They should be able to squeeze in a warrior between builds, shouldn't they? If they can't make it to India, then we could maybe suggest the meeting takes place between India and Ottoman. Or even better, we could give the location of Ottoman to the other teams. That way our intripid explorer can keep going where no Hernan has gone before.

Here's their dotmap:



Well, looks they want Marble city as well...

Red dot:

I would like us to send A4 the following:
- first stress we do not mind their placement
- but ask why they don't found their city 1 tile W, on the plains hill.
* they'll get an instant hammer bonus
* they're Creative, so no need to found next to the horses
* if they found 1W, the new city will be instantly connected to their capital (two extra commerce)
* A4 is not Expansive, so better to found near fresh water, will allow Levee to be built
* it will be only 4 tiles from the capital, less upkeep
* only 1 tile overlap, hill which can be shared
* wastes less tiles between the cities
- ask them if the reason they found there is because of the Spices
- if that is the case, we can always offer them to trade, as we're bound to have a surplus, and I believe there's more spices to Aquilonia's NW
- This will allow us to squeeze another city on the river between Marble city (theirs or ours) and our Horse city
(but no need to tell them that right away )

Blue Dot/Marble city:

The site they propose is exactly 8 tiles from our respective capitals (allthough they would pay less upkeep). I'm wondering if they took those silly "city" signs I placed into account, because they'd fit exactly in the dotmap...
Well I'm stumped. Guys, if you can come up with something we could offer them so they'd leave the site to us...
Honestly, I wouldn't mind terribly if the site ends up going to A4, as long as we can use the marble from time to time.

[meatbalz]

that marble site would be the perfect military production centre + is very strategic. we should negotiate for it. we could even give them the marble in perpetuity. posting in a hurry, will add more when i'm back home

edit: they plant the horse city there to take spices

edit2: we could suggest they plant in ilios's suggested location and give them another city on nthe plains 1E of the spices

[Ilios]

Moved Hernan towards India, and we have contacted our third team.

Tell me what is wrong with this picture:



"nothing wrong with the picture, they probably have open borders and all that"

Not before discovering Writing that is...
It is confirmed:



Now, this is either a prime example of tribal warfare, or India has agreed to Krill's warrior moving inside their borders to allow it to heal up.
I would like to send a message to Krill to introduce ourselves, and maybe politely ask what is going on. And we should send a WTF? to India as well.

Unit overview:

Brute has survived the lion attack last turn, but got smacked to .2 health. I've healed him last turn, and promoted him to Woody I as well to increase his survival chances. He's healing and will be ready to move in 4 turns.

Tricky has moved NE, nothing particular to report.

C&D

Exploit's capital is the first to grow to size 5.
I had first thought that Dantski/Mukha's capital grew to size 2 on turn 32, but they have had another pop increase this turn (T34). I don't think they could have grown their capital in two turns, and I would have spotted a whip. So the only thing I can think of is that they went worker first, then settler, and chopped out the settler, founding their new city on T32, and growing the capital to size 2 on T34.

[Ilios]

Ok I've had some very interesting chats with Krill and A4. I'll post them tomorrow, because I really need to go to bed.

In other news, Morgan's warrior has popped on our eastern border, and they have sent us a message.

Krill:

- Krill is located way south from India
- They're not at war with India, just passing through
- Lobo was killed by him (i forgot to ask him whether he managed to nab a worker)
- He has only met Regoarrarr and Dantski so far (and Lobo )
- He is currently heading over to Aztec
- Dantski is SW from India (I'm guessing he started W from Krill's starting position). Krill confirmed what I had gathered from C&D: they have already founded a new city
- Krill will found his second city next turn
- Lobo's starting position is located between Krill and Rego
- I told him A4 was SE
- he agrees with my assuption we're on a toroidal map (which means the poles meet). I'm going to post a small part of our chat, too much is overkill. But this part is interesting:

10:45 PM me: map is toroidal right?
10:46 PM new.mail.storage: Yeah
if it isn;t toroidal it is way taller than it is wide, so the map script itself would have to be hacked, and I don;t think Sullla would waste time doing that
10:47 PM me: nope
ouch re upkeep costs
new.mail.storage: And this is emperor
10:48 PM me: i think some people are going to be mighty surprised once they start spamming settlers
new.mail.storage: Shhh
let them
it'll be entertaing to watch their economies fall to pieces
10:49 PM me: look at the guy who took over IKZ in PB2
and that's on monarch
new.mail.storage: And standard
something for you to consider
me: in what way?
10:50 PM new.mail.storage: You figured out how much more expensive teh techs are in this game, compared to PB1 or PB2? And then compared the cost of expansion in the games?
10:51 PM me: yup

And let’s have another look at how distance upkeep is calculated:

[ ([25*Distance*(Pop+7)/10] * Building_m * WorldSize_m * Handicap_m) / DistanceScale ]

DistanceScale = (MapHeight + MapWidth) {from CvMap.cpp L925}

Height and/or Width are halved if there is wrapping in that direction.

You can see that the first part of the formula (which takes population, courthouse, map size and difficulty into account) needs to be divided by the DistanceScale.
DistanceScale is simply the sum of height and width of the map (in number of tiles)

So on a “flat” map (eg. Highlands Map), there is no wrapping so full height/width is used to calculate the distance upkeep.
But on a “cylindrical” map, where there is an E-W wrapping, full height but only half width is used to calculate the distance upkeep, increasing costs by a third.
And in PB2 and PB3, we’re on a “toroïdal” map, so there’s E-W and N-S wrapping, halving both height and width in calculating distance upkeep, effectively doubling the costs.

Bear in mind that PB2 was on a Standard map, and only on Monarch difficulty.

PB3 is on a Huge map,… and on Emperor…

City upkeep will be absolute bloody murder on this map!

Ad Hoc (A4):

- Conan bit the dust, leaving A4 a second warrior down
- I told him we were around India, and had met Krill, on our way to Ruff
- For some reason, A4 is very wary of Ruff and his Aztecs
- I asked him if he was five turns from BW, and he replied it was about that
- I told him I thought map was toroïdal
- I told him Krill might swing S to meet up with them (seeing A4 don't have a scouting unit)
- We discussed the red dot placement, doesn't seem like they're budging

Ottoman: all points we've thought off, but red dot does get spices, no overlap, horses in first ring, tiles are actually better for red dot

Morgan:

Greetings Team DIM,

How are the HRE this fine day?

Looking forward to your reply.

Morgan

Team MODM

As it has already been 15 hours since they sent this and I got a PM asking if we got the greeting, I've made a short reply.


Current estimation of known positions:

--------------------India----------Aztec------------------------

----------Korea----------Ottomans--------DIM-----------France?

Portugal------------Egypt---------Carthage?----------------------

I think everyone has been placed around 12 tiles apart on roughly the same line. On the line above and below, the civs have been placed somewhere between the ones on the middle line, and then again around apart 12 tiles on the E-W line.

[meatbalz]

nice ilios very nice. priority number 1, absolutely, is to get ottomans to expand into the land "vacated" by korea rather than towards us. this will give us sgnificant leverage to settle marble site, particularly since we've just been contacted on our other border as well. diplo heating up fast. lots to catch up on! will post thoughts shortly. would be helpful to me if you could post the entirety of your chat w/ krill.

[meatbalz]

FYI i've sent france a short message urgently asking for a 10 turn NAP. let's not move tricky dick until we hear back, as if they reply in the affirmative we should move cain out, if they reply in the negative tricky dick doubles back to the gold site and the choice of where to settle is made for us.