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

[Cyneheard]

EDIT: On Pottery research: Leave it @ 50% until we add another commerce from any source (pop growth in London, switching to the horse tile, borders pop @ Beaver Rock). It's weird rounding math (the 1.4 pre-req bonus on Pottery + rounding off beakers and gold earned). Once we do add another commerce, then we should go binary science. 9t until Pottery comes in, not 10.

Prospective message to Mali:

Greetings, Emperor Capac.

We met your Babylonian neighbors to the east, and the Holy Roman Empire, as well. We offered to arrange a meeting between you and the HRE. If the warrior that met us (I forget his name) heads due north from the wheat, he'll meet their exploring warrior. The Babylonians are directing us to a meeting with the Byzantines, which should be in the next few turns.

We are planning on spending no more than 43EP on you, and would appreciate it if you did the same, and will reach 43EP on T55.

-- Team CHASM

Please edit the EP bit to sound more diplomatic.

Demogs time:



No techs were discovered by anybody except us (#1 in score and in crop yield! ). Various population points. I sent the HRE a quick message asking if France had a second city, since my data seems to think they don't, but if they do, then I've fixed my population problem. If they don't, then it's Rome that snuck in a second city by using a turn change to mask it.

[antisocialmunky]

Greetings, Emperor Capac.

We thought it might be good to give an update of our political situation. We met your Babylonian neighbors to the east, and the Holy Roman Empire, as well. We offered to arrange a meeting between you and the HRE. If Keef is healthy and heads due north from the wheat, he'll meet their exploring warrior. The Babylonians are directing us to a meeting with the Byzantines, which should be in the next few turns. We also heard rumors of another civ in the West.

We are planning on spending no more than 43EP on you for graphs we would appreciate it if you did the same, and will reach 43EP on T55. Good luck!

PS. Have you seen any good sites S of the small mountain range? Sullla has been unkind to us resource wise. We'll keep an eye out for sites near you when our scouts get there.

-- Team CHASM

[Cyneheard]

Hap, any thoughts on the message? We should send it tomorrow.

And C&D is back online. Power is still a disaster, and is going to remain that way until we start getting graphs on people. Trying to predict who out of 15 teams is building stuff...it's impossible. Knowing our power rank, and the top and the bottom, basically mean that I can come up with 1 out of 100+ possible solutions, instead of 1 out of 100,000+ possible solutions. Especially if we can trade information, I don't have a problem with talking to other teams about it. According to my data, 1 civ has 3 cities (Mr. Nice Guy, Pacal of Carthage, City #3 founded this turn), and 1 civ has 1 city (either Morgan + DMOC as Elizabeth of France, or SSSandover as Kublai of Rome; hopefully, DIM will get back to us on whether or not France has 1 city).

[antisocialmunky]

Demos:



#1 in Food, #1 in Life Expectancy, #1 in Land Area.

Hi there,


According to our C&D, France does not have a second city yet.

As our warrior is moving along your border, would a short NAP (till around T70-75) put your minds' to rest?

Do you have any news concerning the Mali unit which I think you said is around?


Highest regards,


Ilios for DIM

Quick response I shot off.

Hey guys,

In the interests of getting back quickly, we have lost sight of the Mali warrior Keef, there are a lot of trees obscuring our view. Cyneheard probably knows where he is but I think you'll bump into him if you keep moving south. As for the NAP, that would be wonderful. I'm sure we'll accept but I can't get you an affirmative until I can talk with everyone else.

Thanks for the intel on France, let us know if you need anything.

-ASM @ CHASM

They seem friendly. Whenever we get our chariot, it may be nice to send it towards France to see if there's a good site that's not picked up by them yet. What are they doing I wonder? Are they going for a wonder because they have stone at their start or a religion?...?

[haphazard1]

Thanks for posting the chats with HRE and Babylon, Cyneheard. Looks like we are off to a good start on relations with both, and there was a fair bit of useful info.

The message to Mali in ASM's post (#422 in the thread) looks fine to me.

As for one civ with city #3...actually that is two civs with three cities. Don't forget us. Nice to be looking at favorable score and demo comparisons, at least for a turn or two.

50% breakeven...ouch on the Emperor maintenance costs. Not like we have planted far away from our capital, either. Costs are going to be brutal. City #4 may need to wait a while, so we can get at least the first few cottages online and growing. That gives us a little time to scout further as well. I agree with ASM that we need to check out the south/southwest ASAP, in case we have a good site there that we should claim next. If not, then wines/GH pigs is probably city #4. Not a great site, but we will want that wines resource later and it will produce some commerce from the river.

OK, so far we have contact with 3 teams, solid locations for 2 more, and vague locations for 3 more:

- HRE to our north, and a bit to the east
- Mali to our direct south
- Babylon to our SE
- France to our east, and maybe a bit north (not certain yet)
- Byzantium directly to the east of Babylon
- 1 unknown civ to our NW (or maybe NW of HRE, unclear from transcript) - this may be Ottomans, as HRE offered to set up a meeting
- 2 unknown civs to our west (or maybe W of HRE, unclear again) - one of these is probably Carthage (HRE was planning a meeting with them, maybe we can also arrange to meet them because it sounded like it was going to be very close to our borders)

We should ask HRE to direct Carthage towards us after they meet up with Tricky Dicky; in exchange we can pass along Babylon's request to meet their warrior who is heading NE towards France.

Also, we should consider shifting to binary science. With three civs met and hopefully a couple more in the next few turns, we should be reaching the point of getting a bonus beaker or two from the "known civs with tech" factor. Depending on whether our neighbors have reseached what we are working on, of course. We are planning on binary science soon anyway, and every beaker we can squeeze out would be valuable.

[Cyneheard]

Re: Binary science: At the moment, it's more productive to run 50% science than alternating 0 to 100%.

Binary science is purely for rounding effects. There are 2 sources of rounding in the game:
#1 is # of beakers & gold produced by the civ. Right now, our total beakers + gold production is even, so there's no loss there by being at 50% on the slider.

#2 is the multiplier effect on beakers when researching: The pre-req discounts, and the known-civ bonus. We get +40% on Pottery because of Fishing and Agriculture, and @50% research, we're getting 10 base beakers per turn (including the 1 from Sid), so we don't lose any round-off effects there.
4 civs currently know Pottery (Mali, Ottomans, Inca, Sumeria), and 1 will know Pottery soon (Babylon). From the 2 civs that we've met who will know Pottery, we're getting a 2/16*0.30 = just under 4% bonus. Even at max research, we don't get an extra beaker from that.

Right now, at 50% research, we're actually getting 14 bpt, and making 1 gpt.
Over 2t: 28 beakers, +2 gold
At 0%, we get 10gpt, and 1 bpt. At 100%, we get -8 gpt, and 26 bpt.
Over 2t: 27 beakers, +2 gold

The moment we gain an extra commerce, though, switching to 0 & 100% will be better for us.

[Cyneheard]

I sent ASM's message (one edit: replaced "our scouts" with "our scouting warriors": Don't want them to think we have Hunting yet, because we don't).

Demogs:
Team Regorise of India likely discovered Animal Husbandry. This assumes that my previous guess of Hunting is correct; otherwise it's The Wheel + Pottery.
SSSandover of Rome discovered The Wheel.
Krill of Egypt picked up a tech last turn that I missed. He's had 2 5t techs: unlike everyone else, he had a source of gold: Lobo.Thibron's city. So he's been running 100% research ever since he founded city #2. The question is, what techs has he taken? Hunting + Archery is one possibility. It could be Hunting + Mining, or Fishing + Hunting (but Fishing is really silly, unless he did it for the river trading?). I tentatively put down Hunting + Archery, since they make sense together. That would mean his next tech is likely HBR (But why no Mining then???).

Population is now well and truly fixed. Geez, that took long enough.
Everyone has between 4 and 6 pop points, but 12k to 91k in the population demographic. 12k = 2 size 2 cities, 91k = 1 size 5 + 1 size 1. France has 1 city, Carthage 3 cities. Everyone else has 2.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the C&D updates, Cyneheard.

The civs-knowing-a-tech effect may not be big enough yet, but as we meet more civs it will become a possibility. And 4% or 6% is much more likely to matter if we run occasional stretches of 100% science. For now we are good with 50%, but let's watch carefully to make sure we don't lose anything to rounding. One commerce lost is still a painfully large percentage at this point of the game.

[antisocialmunky]

Good work as always, Cyneheard.


New message.

Hail Team Chasm!

Thanks for your email.

We met Ragnar of Maya towards the end of last turn, and directed them east around our lands to meet Babylon & Byzantium, and advised them you that you were located to north from there. From your email, it looks like you'll have a warrior in the east-northeast of our capital as well, so it seems you meet Maya fairly soon. It will take them another 8-10 turns to get around our capital to meet you all.

Thanks for arranging the meeting with HRE. Keef moved to the wheat tile on T49. We'll limit our EPs to 43 towards you as well.

There is a good site south of the mountain range, and we settled Uberfish there Our scouting is by no means complete, but it's generally quite hilly terrain to the east, lacking in food specials, with a river and some FPs to the west. Don't know how far you've scouted to your capital's west, but there's a river sugar 2SW of the wheat. We'd describe the food situation in our hinterland as 'average', and it seems you're also underwhelmed.

We've just started to get the ball rolling on tech trading discussions. Have you got any thoughts on how best to approach this? No-one wants to get left out, of course, but ending up in a UTA/NUTA replay would be a little...unimaginitive at best.

Best Wishes,

Emperor Capac

looks like they sniffed out any good sites down there. I think we should redirect RG through the mountain pass, pick up where Gulliver was, and then look W, NW to Carthago. Also, do they know about the Babylonian GS that they are going for? I think our immediate teching group is going to involve them in some way. If we stick with HRE, that will exclude France... Also there is a blob of Financial civs out west. That would be nice to exploit.

[haphazard1]

We need to explore that area and see what the situation is. Beyond the mountains is beyond first ring from our capital, so it may be equally close to their capital, or closer. We just don't know yet.

Ragnar of the Mayas is apparently south of Mali, if I am reading that message correctly. They are sending them east around their culture to meet Babylon and Byzantium, hopefully we can make contact as well.

Given toroidal wrap, that could mean the Maya would be north of HRE. From our perspective (forgive the poor ASCII layout):

<unknown> -- HRE
|
<Carthage?> -- us -- <France?>
|
<unknown> -- Mali -- Babylon -- Byzantium
|
<unknown> -- Maya
|
<unknown> -- HRE

Might be interesting to ask HRE if they have met the Maya.