RB Pitboss #3 [SPOILERS]- Suryavarman II of England

[haphazard1]

Cyneheard,

The micro plans look good to me. I agree that we need more units than 1 warrior per city, and we can't build granaries for a little longer. And at this point I think we need quantity of units more than quality (barracks). These guys will be useful later for HR happiness, assuming they don't die fighting barbs or get sent into the wild.

I favor putting more of our worker turns into cottages rather than chops, other than the minimum necessary for our granaries once we finish Pottery. We will need to get our tech rate up, and have enough income to pay for our cities. And regarding maintenance, Animal Farm will grow to size 2 next turn, which should boost our costs there about 0.25 or so. I think we will still be paying 3 gpt total, since we are getting rounded up right now.

But the really big issue is, I believe those purple borders are actually Rome, and not India. The color is not right. And that means praets in the not very distant future. Which means we are going to need metal, sooner rather than later. This also means we are going to need barracks, so we can get some promoted axes.

We need to make contact, and also try to get a look at their lands. Hopefully that is their second city and not their capital. But if we can get a peek at the city center before the borders pop then we can do more with tracking builds and such.

Mali is matching us on EP so far, so either they have met only us or are spending all their EP our way. Once we contact Rome, do we keep our EP on Mali or shift them to the bigger threat?

On C&D, let's try to keep grabbing the demos. We can actually work on them later, as long as we have them. I will try to find some time to put into this as well.

Question: the score list shows Egypt as the Hindu founder even though we have not met them. I thought this info was hidden until contact was made? The Buddhism founder does not show on the list. Any ideas what is up with this?

[Cyneheard]

The barracks was for Animal Farm because it's the only thing that we can double-whip. With our tight happy cap, single whips aren't productive. And AF has such a crazy food surplus that not whipping it seems silly.

I think it'll be 2t until we find out who it is. Maybe we should ask Swiss's team if they've met them?

EP: I think we want to switch our EP to Rome, if it's Rome. If it's India, then I say let's finish getting Demogs off of Mali.

Egypt is Gandhi, who's Spiritual, so he had no reason not to revolt. Napoleon probably hasn't revolted (which seems odd: he should've revolted when he had sent out his first settler).

[haphazard1]

I like the 2-pop whip for barracks at Animal Farm, overflowing to the granary. Should work well, and as you say it makes best use of the big food surplus there.

Another reason to wish we had metal: axes can be 2-pop whipped, chariots can not.

Where to move Gulliver next? A lot depends on the wolf -- if we take damage and the lion moves next to us, we will need to move into forest. If we manage to take no damage, where to go? South for forest cover against the lion? SE to make contact sooner?

What to do with the new warriors from London? We grow in 4 turns, so we should be able to send the first warrior out if we want to. Maybe go SW and try to find Mali? Or do we want to hold him in reserve for barb defense?

[antisocialmunky]

Random question, what's the date for visible graphs with Mali? It might be a good idea to crank out a few units so we appear of reasonable power by then :-p so they can't figure out how weak we were. Also, we should ask them if they have met Rome. That is if its Rome... It should not be too bad if its Rome, it is probably easier for him to hit Mali. We can also buy him off with cheap workers if it comes to that.

Also, the grass hill pig site will be REALLY hard to defend if we settle on the river and we have to fight Aggressive units. Now, we can grab wines but it'll be a pain to lose a critical happiness resource that we will only be able to hook up with a tech past IW... I think we should reconsider that city site or move 1SW off the river... If we want a commerce city, then it might be a good idea to take one of the Western Wheat/Silks sites. There is a lot of river/glassland and grassland hill over there so we can build a slow growing commerce city.

As for Gulliver, S - SW. We know Rome is there, Rome does not know where we are, might be worth not letting them know for a turn or two or come in from a different direction :-p.

One more thing. Did we ever consider founding 2 cities instead of BeaverRock? We can have one share wheat and grab the stone + furs and another sitting on the northern river that can get sheep + corn and probably something in the fog It would be easier to defend. We are going to be a little spread out if we grab Corn/Gold.

[Cyneheard]

Diplo:

Emperor Capac,

A scouting warrior saw pinkish-purple borders to our SE this turn (T46). We are 2t from being able to make contact, and were wondering if you knew who it was. We were concerned that it is Rome. Their borders were seen 9S8E of where we met you. If you haven't met them, we can arrange contact if you're willing.

(If we want to propose a NAP): "As a preliminary NAP proposal, would an ending date of T75, with a 10t cooldown and an agreement not to spend more than 43 EP on each other suffice?"

Signed,
Team CHASM

Graphs:
It'll be T55 when contact comes in. We can have 1 chariot, as well as Gulliver + 3 garrison warriors + 2 spare warriors, for 16k unit power + 16k tech power + 4k pop power = 36k. That should be fairly reasonable for that point in time. I think we should try to have the chariot finish at the same time as a warrior: that's a 6k increase in power, and axemen are 6k. A little misdirection never hurt anybody.

Gulliver:
Straight for contact, stay away from the lion. We're far enough from the lion that it won't be an issue. Even if it chases us, we'll be able to safely get to a forest that borders our SE neighbors.

Dotmapping:
Reevaluate post-confirming that it's Rome. A river is useful, it limits their routes of attacking. But without axes, praets will stomp anybody.

London warriors:
1 warrior needs to stay home. The other can explore (NW? NE? We've found 2 parties to our S, so I think we should find someone in a different direction). We should probably send the first one off into the wild.

Rome finished AH on T37. They haven't discovered a tech since. If they don't get something in the next 2t, we should be really worried that they're going straight for IW. HOWEVER, we can always try for a chariot rush. IW would come in...around T60-65. We can easily put 5 chariots on their doorstep by then.

[haphazard1]

Good idea on coming at Rome from a slightly different direction. How far can they see, though? 1S of Gulliver is 2 diagonally from the tile 1S of the desert hill. That does not look like a hill, so maybe they can only see the one tile diagonally? I am not sure.

On 2 cities for Beaver Rock, there really is not a good other site to grab the furs and stone and still have food without stealing the wheat from Animal Farm. I think it is better to use the eastern food, and then those tiles can be shared with a city further east. Beaver Rock should spend most of its time once it grows to the happy cap working grassland cottages, with just enough food to work the furs and stone and stagnate at the happy cap. The eastern food can then be used by another city, and occasionally shared when we need Beaver Rock to grow.

I agree that the GH pigs site is not real attractive right now. Wines are nice but will not be useful until quite a while from now. The problem is that Rome may grab the wines and that flood plain as a commerce city, costing us a happy resource later. I am very seriously concerned that the sizable region there without any visible resources could contain our iron -- certainly do not want Rome taking that!

I think we need to see how much our maintenance goes up with Beaver Rock before we decide on another settler. Although we could push for the northen gold site -- it would certainly be able to pay for itself, and we could use the happiness.

When do we try to fit Hunting into the tech plan? With Beaver Rock founded, the furs will boost our happy cap which we badly need. And Hunting is pretty cheap. We probably do not want to leave it until Alpha is available and we can trade -- that would cost us happiness for quite some time. Of course, IW would also give silver at London, and reveal if there is any metal around. Or Writing for cheap CRE libraries....

Starting to get to the tough choices.

[haphazard1]

I am not sure about the message -- we would be giving away a lot of useful info. This could be positive and build better relations, but it might also just get nothing in return.

Mali has skirms, so they are far less likely to be a target of Roman aggression than we would be. Praets can beat skirms, but odds against us will be far easier.

A chariot rush...well. High risk high reward choice, that one. But it is very true that if Rome gets praets while we have warriors and chariots, then we are dead if Rome chooses to kill us. And picking Rome sort of implies an aggressive game plan.

But how much could we really do with chariots? If Rome has only warriors, then we could probably hit them hard and certainly could pillage them badly. But with Kublai they are creative so the capital at least will have 40% culture and other cities would have 20% at least. OK odds against fortified aggressive warriors, but not great. And if they have horses (or far worse copper) then we would be very unlikely to see much success.

Not liking this very much. My initial assessment of the draft labelled Rome as the "#1 please not next to me" civ. And there it is, next door.

[antisocialmunky]

We can just sit there and choke him. We don't need to kill him, just cut his strategic resources since they are at one city. It would be nice to kill them so we don't have to pay for the chariots. Also, a capitol location for city #4 would be pretty nice. That and no barbs... Better deal than Krill got for his trouble.

To our Malinese Friends,

One of our scouting warriors in the south noticed some ominous dark-purplish borders and you know what that means. You said that we were your 'northern' neighbors so we were curious if you knew who this team is as he may be closer to you. If not we can direct Keef towards them if you guys so desire.

As for a NAP, we were thinking one until around T75, with a 10t cooldown and an agreement spend no more than 43 EP.

Signed,
Team CHASM

[haphazard1]

Interesting email from Mali -- looks like the purple borders may be Babylon, with Byzantium somewhere beyond them. Much better than Rome, if correct, and the color would be about right. It is too dark for India, but maybe (hopefully!) I was wrong about it being Rome.

[Cyneheard]

It's Babylon! Gulliver didn't take a scratch against the wolf, but I also saw a bear (and the lion: the bear was 2 tiles away), so I had Gulliver move SE, and we now have official contact with Babylon.





We met a new team to our north:

Mehmed of Holy Rome. "Tricky Dicky" is a Woody I warrior. I have NOT moved Grumpy yet. We still need to move Grumpy, but I'm not sure how to play it. Covering him with our warrior means that they could take a 50-50 shot to steal our worker and threaten Animal Farm (which can whip the warrior if really needed...would waste some overflow). I really, really, really don't want to put off hooking up our horses. We need them. I think we should move Richard 1N with Grumpy this turn, and if Tricky Dicky stays, we move Grumpy to the wheat. If not, then we can work the horse. The HRE does have AH, so they know the horse is there.



Their second city is Midas' Folly. I sent them a greeting message (Same as Babylon's, without the "will send a formal greeting later" bit).

Also, I didn't do anything with our new warrior ("Royal Guard") in London. Maybe we should send him NW to help cover AF?



Demogs:
Still can't figure out what's going with population.
Techs discovered:
Dantski + Mukha (Willem): Hunting? (Or Fishing, so probably Hunting. They just finished AH, so going AH->Hunting is kind of weird)
KANJ (Joao): Pottery. Time to get those Terraces, I guess
ManiCatMarshall (Ragnar): The Wheel. Pottery's next for them.
Team DIM (Mehmed/HRE): Bronze Working.
Sockboy's team (Zara): Pottery

HRE dossier:
Founded T0
Starting techs: Mysticism, Hunting
Agriculture T10
Animal Husbandry T22
Mining T30
Midas' Folly Founded, T41
Bronze Working T47
Current pop seems to be 3 pop in their capital, 1 pop in Midas

Babylon dossier:
Founded T1
Starting techs: Agriculture, The Wheel
Animal Husbandry T15
Mining T23
City #2 founded T36
Bronze T38
Population: 3 pop in capital, 1 pop in Exodus. I assume their capital is named Genesis.