February 28th, 2010, 16:10
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Email from Ruff:
Quote:Guys,
I've been walking my dogs and thinking about my future. HRE are suggesting that we might be able to talk Inca off with a carrot (include in tech cartel) and stick (4v1 with shadow puppets at dawn). That might work, but I don't expect it to. Frankly, I don't want to reward such early aggression.
If they do attack, I don't see them capturing my capital with the first wave. If they walk straight past my capital, I expect they will be able to kill my second city just before the Tech Trade turn. Or they just choke my capital. Either way, I am out of the running re winning this game and my goals become KILL INCA and feed you guys money and military to KILL INCA. My civ can be set up to generate money (Shrine Income) and units (whip plus quick recovering time) so that might be my future.
DJCiv mentioned a goal of the initial encounter would be to not tip our hand re Chariots to the Inca - make them feel that they can safely bring wave after wave of axes. Then after Tech Trade day, we roll into my territory with Chariots and kill their units. As such and given that I can probably hold against the Q with 2 warriors in my 2nd city (until they walk an axe over), I don't think the Ottomans should declare on Inca ... just say hello, nice to meet you and send the chariot on a 5 to 8 turn tour - returning to Aztec lands in time for Tech Trade day.
Ruff
February 28th, 2010, 16:27
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Turn has been played:
Francisco made contact with Inca.
Cain moved on forested hill with maximum view. Marx doesn't even need to be covered as there are no possible barb attacks.
Barb Warrior has appeared to our NW.
Tricky, after having met Carthage, is now heading straight NE towards Horse site, to give us another unit if Cain encounters barbs, and to maybe try and get that barb warrior.
February 28th, 2010, 17:35
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by the way, i was playing a 64x64 team battleground huge emperor map yesterday and the barb problem started becoming REAL bad around T80 or so. like, 6 barbs in my territory at the same time bad. not necessarily going to be that bad with 16 human players settling rapidly + keeping sentries, but it's definitely something we should bear in mind.
March 1st, 2010, 02:47
(This post was last modified: March 1st, 2010, 03:09 by meatbalz.)
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the updates haven't come yet but yesterday was the busiest diplo day so far. ilios worked his butt off on diplo, C&D, and micro so he deserves a few of these 
i don't really have time to explain to Dazed and the lurkers (we'll post a full update asap) but ilios i think this is extremely urgent. i don't want to commit to HBR without some sense of security we'll get confucianism. we need to get an email out to each team we've met who's part of the tech cartel, something along the lines of:
Quote:Greetings ____,
As a fellow member of the tech cartel, we wanted to sound out whether you'd be opposed to our team researching CoL as the "expensive" tech once Egypt oracles alphabet and the first round of trades take place.
As you know, we're willing to provide Horseback Riding as the "cheap tech" to every member of the tech cartel the same turn we research it. It's 3x as expensive as many of the other techs that will be traded around but we're willing to make the commitment as it's in everyone's interest to get this researched ASAP.
Basically, we're happy to commit to by far the most expensive early tech, as well as the most expensive second tech - 1080 beakers in total. This will bring huge benefits to the rest of the cartel. It's a clear show, with facts and not words, of our commitment to the alliance. All we ask for in return is that no member of the tech cartel compete with us for CoL.
We plan to start HBR at full research this turn (ETA 15-18 turns), we'd feel much better about the beaker commitment if we could count on your support on this.
Highest Regards
Meatbalz for DIM
essentially i'd like to gather sufficient support from other members of the cartel to paint egypt into a corner on this. his objections yesterday were purest  he's blowing up our arses and he must know we're able to see through it.
i'd be very hesitant to rsch HBR until we get some responses back or a commitment from egypt (ain't going to happen without pushing). let's get emails out, ASAP, we can change the wording etc if you wish.
[note for lurkers: during a multi-team chat yesterday we told egypt we'd happily supply HBR if we're allowed to go for CoL. ilios can post egypt's exact response (i don't have gmail access at work) but of course he's opposed since, as i've been saying from the very first page, he wants to run the table on religion. we need to show him that losing ONE religion is worth it as we can provide a lot in return]
side note: we also need to talk about all those aggressive actions egypt wanted everyone to take. sumeria yes, but it's not in our interests to remove france early - all that achieves is more room for egypt to expand. he has war chariots, he's already said he can't provide any to tackle sumeria, meaning he should have plenty for france - let him remove france himself if he wants to.
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I will post something soon, MB, could we maybe sound out the "Inner Alliance" first? Three out of four members are Organized, so it should be in their interest we get CoL asap and not have it assigned to another member of the "Outer Cartel". Once we get their backing, I'd be more comfortable demanding we head for CoL to the other members.
Although I think we shouldn't do that and instead focus on teching HBR, getting Alpha and then doing whatever the hell we want.
The way I see most people will start researching on T63. We'll finish HBR around T66-68. That still gives us a head start if we decide we want to go for CoL.
But I think sounding our close friends could do us no harm.
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sounds good re: sounding out the others. let's perhaps ask england as well...
the only problem i have with going for HBR "and then doing whatever we want" is that unless we negotiate otherwise, krill will start CoL as soon as he gets writing on T62 and we won't beat him to it 1) because we're tied up until T66-67 on HBR 2) because we'll run through all our gold by then w/ city 3 (and 4) going up
we have 3 options, in order of preference.
1) we tech HBR but get our choice of techs (CoL)
2) we DO NOT tech HBR, provide the cartel with cheap techs just like everyone else, and THEN we'd be willing to tech whatever expensive tech egypt wants
3) we tech HBR and get to tech the cheapest "expensive" tech + get further concessions because of our greater beaker investment, in the form of units or gold once currency is discovered
honestly, we are MORE than pulling our weight here. we brought in ottomans, england, and through ottomans carthage. that's half the tech alliance coming through us. look at the beaker investment for HBR - how is that a "cheap" tech? egypt thinks we're fully on board with attacking france ASAP (not in our interest, at all).
if egypt wants us to provide all the above fine, but we need to extract concessions, serious concessions, as at the moment we are getting screwed. it's all give and no take. the only 2 civs making SIGNIFICANT investments are egypt (oracle) and HRE (early beakers). egypt is getting huge benefit - where's our upside???
we cannot let the situation linger as otherwise we're just wasting beakers. we need to get some form of support for us teching CoL using an email similar to the above, we need answers before the turn is up, and then we go to egypt with something along the lines of that same email but saying india aztec ottomans carthage england are all ok with us going for CoL, we're bringing in 1080 beakers etc, yes or no and if not we're not teching HBR as it's way too expensive. well, not that harsh but definitely putting our case forward diplomatically. we can tell egypt we know they want to run the table on religions, giving up one is not a big deal if you get so much benefit out of it.
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The Cartel expects us to finish HBR in around 20 turns. So I suggest we keep going max gold for the next couple of turns, giving us time to come up with a plan, and preventing us doing things rashly.
I agree Krill is pushing it here, but I'm not sure that his reason is wanting CoL for himself. What I suspect is he wants both Hindu and Judaism to spread as much naturally as possible, lowering the number of missionaries he has to build.
But Krill holds the cards at the moment, as we do not want to risk him not trading us Alphabet. We need to approach this with care, because as you've seen in the chat, Krill doesn't react well to demands...
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that's fine (egypt not reacting well to demands). but likewise we don't have to tech HBR.
let's immediately build up some support from our closer allies, using a turn or two of max gold to give us some time like you said if we need it. the sooner the better. honestly i don't see why everyone gives pottery, archery, sailing, etc, and we give.... HBR????
just because egypt is pushing doesn't mean we can't push back. it's unreasonable to expect us to provide 450 beakers when everyone else is providing 100-200 and not expect something in return. that's a lopsided commitment to begin with, even moreso at this very early stage. it makes ZERO sense for us to do it if it gets us the same end result as only trading 100-200 beaker techs ourselves (that result being, we tech an expensive tech of egypt's choice).
i partly disagree w/ you regarding egypt's motivations by the way. yes they want hindu + judaism to spread naturally. they also want all the other religions to control their spread. i'm sure egypt is quite happy the buddhist capital is under threat. we need to convince egypt that he can afford to let ONE religion get away as the +ves outweigh the -ves.
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HBR is not a cheap tech and we will be using as trade with the other teams (for example HBR - Maths with Ottomans, HBR - Alphabet with Egypt). The way I see it, we'll be the ones coming out ahead because the other teams will be forced to trade us their more expensive techs.
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what i mean is, what's our contribution to the cartel?
HBR (450 beakers)
CoL (540 beakers)
what's india bringing to the table? aztec? england? carthage? portugal? answer: cheap techs and one expensive one.
we're providing 2 expensive ones, even if the second comes a few turns later than the others. or do we get all the expensive techs for free because we teched HBR early? if that's the case then obviously the deal's a good one for us.
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