RBP3 [SPOILERS] Team Nice Shot - Pacal of Carthage

[Mr. Nice Guy]

I like your "Brit here next turn" sign.

Are you sure we don't want to capture A4s 2 unguarded workers? Mighty tempting...

[Shoot the Moon]

By the way, I sent a quick update note to A4 since we hadn't written them in a couple of days.

When I mentioned getting more game-stuff done today, I lied. I didn't expect so much RL stuff to be happening today, and I'm tired tonight, plus tomorrow is a 5am day... so (blah blah blah excuse excuse excuse) looks like some things will be put off until tomorrow. Thank goodness the pace of the game is slowing down a little bit, gives me freedom to be slower too!

No problem. If you'd like, I can take turn-playing duties tomorrow.

It is a tough call at Lakewood between a settler and a library, but I figure with the library we could do a chop (math boosted too) followed by a double whip to complete it easily.

By the way, in our next email to Krill, we should find out who we are getting hunting from and on what turn. (Remember that we need to get gifted writing before alpha. Does the t63 date take that into account?)

[Mr. Nice Guy]

No problem. If you'd like, I can take turn-playing duties tomorrow.

It is a tough call at Lakewood between a settler and a library, but I figure with the library we could do a chop (math boosted too) followed by a double whip to complete it easily.

*Unless the turn is just finally rolling at like 4 in the afternoon, I'd be happy if you played it..

*The point you make about Lakewood & math boosted chop is a big one, and that should be the point that makes the decision easier. Why chop now when we have no major projects needed, and can have math boosted chops soon?
Along the same lines, we also need to look at potential approaches that the enemy could take to our cities (especially Centralia and Boring, and make sure that they are reenforcible and that they don't have any forests along the way.

[Shoot the Moon]

I went ahead and played the turn. Not much to report, except that Brit will take a turn longer as she got bounced the wrong way by A4's expanding borders. Also, Jordan got attacked by a lion, so I stopped to heal as he is at 1.4 health.

[Shoot the Moon]

Just checked our email. The most notable email is from Krill (I'd say we are on different time zones, as he sent it at 3:13 am!)

Hi guys,

sorry to send this email so early on a Saturday, but I just saw your workers, and tbh it wasn't a particularly pleasing sight, roading towards your horse in the NW, which you said you hadn't explored enough to negotiate over. I would like to discuss the border treaty with you asap, because there is some rather funky land on my side of the mountains, which I'll explain in a moment. I would like to point out that if you already have designs on settling to the NW, it isn't friendly of you to try and stall someone that has tried to get you into the Alliance, and enable tech trading with you.

FWIW, I have a complete dearth of food resources to my east, that sheep tile near the horse is my only one, which is why I would like to settle it. Before I met you, I saw the nice city location on the plains hill for both the sheep and the horse, but after I met you and realised the horse was so close to your capital, I decided that it wouldn't be worth antagonising someone who could be a good friend in this game over something so trivial, so I decided to pull back.

So, my proposal is this: You want the horses, and I want the sheep. I settle 1NW of the sheep, you settle 1NE of the horse. That gives you a minimum of 8 grassland tiles, and as an EXP leader you can easily get a granary in the city before size 2. If you irrigate a few grasslands, the city will quickly grow to maximum size, when you cottage over most of the farms, and continue to grow at +2/+3 food per turn, and hey presto, you have a great commerce city and horses.

I'm contactable in the usual methods, Gmail or google chat at this addy,

Krill

He also attached this image of the area:



I've sent him a quick note acknowledging that we received the email and will get back to him later today (I said specifically we would get back to him before we play t61).

Anyway, here are my ideas on responding to it. I think we should start off saying we weren't intending to stall him. I think we should let him know that based off our other exploring, we assumed that he was another 5-6 tiles further West than he actually is. I think we could send him a picture of what we have explored to both our South and East to show him that based off our previous explorations, we had reason to believe he would be further west than he is (we even settled 2S, and there is still tons of room there!). So in terms of saying we hadn't explored enough to negotiate, that was because we assumed that there was substantially more land to the west to be explored. Obviously, that assumption was wrong.

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I think our best bet would be to accept his deal at this point. 1NE of the horses looks like the best city spot to me if we can't have the sheep. It kinda hurts though, as that city won't be a very good hammer city. I think we will have to make it be yet another commerce one. I think getting a settler to blue dot just became a higher priority.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Hmm.

That's a tough one, and I was really intent on picking up St. Paul as a strong city.

How about it we offer to "compromise" by giving up the sheep (agree to settle 1NE).. and in exchange get settling rights to a city 5S of the sheep in question? That city would net us our western source of copper and stone. Stone would then give us cheap walls, which would make up for losing out on the hill spot, at least in terms of defense.

If need be, Lakewood could always be converted into a production city. Truth be told, though, I would rather use stone city and blue dot for production and use the northern (tactically safer) cities for commerce.

[Shoot the Moon]

Hmm.

That's a tough one, and I was really intent on picking up St. Paul as a strong city.

How about it we offer to "compromise" by giving up the sheep (agree to settle 1NE).. and in exchange get settling rights to a city 5S of the sheep in question? That city would net us our western source of copper and stone. Stone would then give us cheap walls, which would make up for losing out on the hill spot, at least in terms of defense.

If need be, Lakewood could always be converted into a production city. Truth be told, though, I would rather use stone city and blue dot for production and use the northern (tactically safer) cities for commerce.

I don't think we really need to mention settling south yet 5S shouldn't be as much of an issue.

Anyway, what ever you wind up drafting, could you post it here first? This seems like perhaps our most important email to date.

[Shoot the Moon]

Did we ever get back to Krill? If not, we need to ASAP.

EDIT: In a chat with Krill now.

[Shoot the Moon]

By the way, we need to leave our warriors in cities now. We actually blew it near lakewood, and will have a turn of unhappiness because of a lack of military protection.

[Shoot the Moon]

Here is the chat (it is very long!). There is some important info though.

Me: We were actually quite suprised how close together our teams were.
Kril: It's a Teambattleground map
everyone is this close together...
64 tile square

Me: Weird
to our south, we have a lot of open land
If you'd like, I can go log into game and grab a screenshot so you can see
from what we had explored, it seemed to us that there was a lot more open land between teams than there is between us
that was why we had originally said we weren't comfortable negotitating yet -- we assuMed we were further apart than we were and though the half-way mark if you will would still be land we hadn't explored

Kril: OK, sorry for the AFK, changing machines...

Me: np

Kril: OK, caught up now, np. I can certainly see the "late comer" teams not fully understanding hte map layout.

Me: yeah

Me: For example, we've explored 13 tiles south (at the farthest extent) from our capital and have not seen any borders yet (and that's on top of having a capital settled 2S of the starting position)

Kril: Players aren't aligned perfectly into blocks
what with there being 17 teams originally

Me: understandably

Kril: That and Sullla hates identical starts...

Me: yeah
I guess what I am getting at is that we weren't intending any of our actions to come off as hostile or as trying to steal a spot
Until your screenshot showed otherwise, we had assumed those sheep weren't near your borders at all

Kril: ok

Me: in hindsight I can see how our actions seemed hostile. I hope that helps clear it up

Kril: It helps, but tbh, some sort of bilateral (trilateral with Ottomans if you really want) border would make alot of sense. We are going to be neighbours for quite a while, focussing on different fronts, and if one person maybe makes a settlement tht they feel is OK, but another side doesn't, well, it's those actions that cause alliances to fragment

Me: I completely agree
Now that we know how close we actually are, we would be interested in a border agreement

Kril: great
Where would you like to start?
slight aside...

Me: I think your initial proposal would be a good place to start

Kril: have you heard that India are making a world map from the alliance members current world maps?

Me: Yes

Kril: Well, hopefully that gets finished soon, so we can both see the majority of hte land between us

Me: Sounds like it would be very helpful for border planning
yeah
If you'd like, I can send a screenshot of the land a bit south of the horses so we can more accurately discuss the area

Kril: that would be great
I'll grab a screenshot of the area as I see it as well

Me: btw, do you know if there is a quick way to turn off the interface to get a bigger map view?

Kril: alt+i

Me: which email should I send the screenies to?

Kril: send it to *Removed*
that email autoforwards to personal email
keping a record for after the game

Me: btw, I'll be afk for the next couple of minutes

Kril: ok, looking at pics now
actually everything I have discovered, you have seen
and have maps that are btter than mine...

Me: except of knowing where your borders are
that was the big piece we were missing

Kril: fwiw, that area is desolate, south and west of the stone
no food resources

Me: dang

Kril: yeah
complete junk land

Me: most of our south is, as I suspect you say
either no food or absolutely no hammers

Kril: Well...
you can deal with zero hammers if you have no food
sorry
you can deal with zero hammers if you have food

Me: yeah

Kril: but if you have no food, no option but to farm and grow, then cottage

Me: the combination isn't any good though

Kril: ok, grabbing screenshot now...
fwiw, I'm willing to negoitiate you getting the plains hill city with sheep and stone
but I'd need something in return.

Me: so 1SE of sheep?

Kril: yeah

Me: Ok, we'd be interested in arranging something that could work for us

Kril: specifically, I'd want workers and pretty soon

Me: Was just about to suggest exp. workers

Kril: Makes sense

Me: I agree

Kril: specifically, I'd want to settle a city for that corn in the NW of your screenshot. I'd settle to the west of it, obviously...
your workers would make that doable
without it, I'm not sure if I'd manage to get that spot.
sent you the screenshot

Me: that sounds fine, as it would leave us room to grab those sheep with a city say SW-W of those other sheep
obviously as long as that sounds alright to you

Kril: fine by me...
though tbh a city to the N of the sheep looks nice
but I don't know what that terrain looks like
so that is just ideal speculation

Me: I agree it looks nice, but I have a feeling A4 might veiw a city there as pretty agressive

Kril: Not like the fat crosses overlap

Me: true
I'm going to log in game and have a look at that area

Kril: I'm just looking at how I'd plant for that corn as well

Me: do you have a screenshot of that area?

Kril: not on me

Me: where were you thinking of planting?

Kril: I'm not sure
the maps are screwing with my head a litle
the corn would likely be outer ring...but if you were to settle W SW of those sheep, I'd have to settle north of the corn in an absolute sense

Me: what do you mean by in an absolute sense?

Kril: ie on a row of tiles north of hte row of tiles the corn is on

Me: why?

Kril: to remove any overlap between your sheep city and my corn city

Me: I see
trying to dot map in the fog is a bit annoying

Me: By the way, you said earlier that the other two have made their moves, right?

Kril: yeah
Maya have a chariot next to an Indian city guarded by a warrior

Me: I'm just thinking it might be easier to talk about this if the turn rolls over and I move that warrior SW

Kril: ok

Me: oh

Kril: I'm likely to settle about 2W of that corn
maybe 2W1S
maximum overlap is 2 tiles
but I'm not sure
also, brb

Me: Looking at it in game, 1N is more viable than I though at first
(1N of the sheep, btw)

Kril: back
ok
depends what you want

Me: Would you like to wait until the turn rolls over to finalize these plans?
that way we could both have more info on what the terrain around the corn is liike

Kril: you planning on moving that northern warrior 1SW?

Me: yes

Kril: sure, I'm ok with that

Me: and then most likely 1sw again
before we go, I'd just like to clarify what the timing with the tech trading is
you get alpha on t63, correct?

Kril: end of t62

Me: but the first turn you could trade is 63?

Kril: yes

Me: I'm mostly asking to try to figure out what turn we will be getting hunting on (for worker micro but also in terms of researching math)
I assuMe you don't have hunting, right?

Kril: no, but HRE do

Me: ok, so the timeline would be t63 we get writing from you, t64 get alpha and then can get hunting from HRE
is that right? (or in pitboss can you gift more than 1 tech in the line per turn, ie able to gift both writing and alpha same turn)

Kril: I'm not sure on the mechanics

Me: ok, well it isn't a huge deal (we can always just pre-road if it is a turn later)

Me: Anyway, I've gotta go somewhat soon
How would it sound if I were to relay this chat onto Mr. nice guy, and we could make a formal proposal to email you?

Kril: sounds good. I'f you could also forward a screenshot of the scouting warrior and hte lands it would uncover, that would help me do a bit of forward planning as well.
the turn should roll sometime this evening for you

Me: No problem

Kril: Thanks mate

Me: Cya later

Kril: cy

You can check out the screenshots we sent back and forth in our gmail.

I think we actually got a pretty great deal out of that. We got the sheep () and another city somewhere westward depending on what we agree to settling with the sheep. We never got to discussing the south beyond how barren it was, and I don't think it is worth bringing up at this point. I think we should send Krill an email confirming the deal, and perhaps suggest in terms of the workers to give him that we could gift him one after it pastures the horse (I'd like to get that pastured fast with both workers) and then a second roughly 10 turns later.

What do you think.