RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Beamup]

So how would you manage a mutual defense pact? NAP takes precedence?

In my view, NAPs signed before the MDP take precedence over it; NAPs signed after the MDP have an implicit clause "unless you declare war on my MDP partner." (Only applies when the MDP is publicly announced, as here.)

[Ashain]

Wow, it's great to see that so many of you lurkers would have no problem breaking an agreed upon Non-Aggression Pact.

Just my thoughts, I agree with you in that thats not how I would play personally, but half the fun of the diplomacy is the deals you make are only as good as how much you trust the other person you made them with. If WWII Germany said they were "only" going to invade Poland, who is at fault for taking them at their word?

[Reagan]

I just want to admit I have absolutely no clue what you're talking about, but if you want to discuss it, this is maybe not the best place.

What VoU said makes perfect sense and is applicable to the ongoing discussion. Try reading it again (repeating as necessary).

[Sullla]

Alright, let's get back to the actual turnplaying. Speaker accidentally logged in this morning with a very funny alt-account name. I won't post it here, but I hope he will later on.



Jowy is back out to 5 cities again, having planted right at the end of the last turn. You can see all five of them above, and he has chosen to rename his new cities Thebes and Argos. (Looks like someone holds a grudge!) I don't think it could be any more obvious that these city spots are designed to wall us off from moving further east.

The land isn't terrible, however I'm not really sure how Jowy plans on defending these spots. A basic tenet of MP is to limit how many cities are on the front lines, and yet all three of Jowy's cities in the south are easily attackable from St. Alban's! Even better for us, these cities have virtually no hills, and very little productive capability (aside from whipping). Guess we'll see how this plays out, but I doubt this will end well for him.



Our horse archers play tag with a Kathlete chariot in the far north. I'm reminded of British and French agents clashing with one another in the far east back in the 18th century, carrying their rivalry to the furthest corners of the globe...

One of the side effects of this map being so symmetrical is that we can deduce a lot of information from the overall design. For example, we can infer that any team which has wines pop up on their resource overlay has at least one city on an offshore island (there doesn't appear to be any wines on the main continent). Ditto for incense once teams discover Calendar tech. (The lack of any Calendar resources on the trading screen indicates that no one has that tech yet... or they only just discovered it and haven't hooked them up.)


I whipped the granary at Spartansburg, which fulfilled two goals: grant us a sweet 75 shields and also remove excess population that didn't have improved tiles to work. Forge next here - which we should be able to whip in about ten turns due to the massive population growth - and then Spartansburg will really be rolling.

* * * * *

Speaker, we should try to jump on TS tonight to do some planning and make sure we're on the same page. There are basically two ways we can play this from an economic standpoint:

- Run max food/commerce and whip markets/forges to completion.
- Run max shields, finish forge first, and then build or whip markets.

Based on the city micro Speaker did, we seem to be on the second path - and I sort of tend to agree, because our core cities already have such significant whipping penalties. It would be nice to get out from under them. But we need to be clear on this, so that we can get all our ducks in a row. Let's say we build (not whip) forges to completion in our core cities, which will take something like 5t (Gettysburg), 5t (Chancellorsville), and 7t (Fredericksburg). Then we could whip markets afterwards, getting the full 50% shield bonus. Here's the pop comparison for market whips:

150 shields
- 5 pop (no bonus)
- 4 pop (Organized Religion +25%)
- 3.3 pop (Organized Religion and Forge +50%)

Makes a huge difference... basically with both religion and forge in place, it only costs 3 pop to get a market, which isn't bad at all.

HOWEVER, we also are running up against the happy cap in a lot of cities. Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, and Hampton Road will all go unhappy with their next pop point. If we are going to build forges over the next half-dozen turns, we have to pull back some of those cats near the front lines and stick them in our core cities for HR happiness purposes. This should be possible due to our NAPs with all those other teams... but you never know what they'll do, I guess. Speaker and I need to plan this out and coordinate here.

We also still have no defenders assigned to Shiloh, and the plan there is to whip Antietam this turn (putting the overflow into missionary) and refound the city on Turn 134. I didn't do this yet to confirm with Speaker.

So... yeah, a lot to go over! Hopefully we'll have time for it tonight.

[Sullla]

Emails in from Dantski and Broker/plako since yesterday. We'll start with Dantski:

HI KA's,

I will be getting currency in 4 turns so we can trade then if you like.

I don't think I'm interested in catapults from an aggressive viewpoint now. Whosit recently informed me that HRE is heading towards Feudalism and also that Rome and HRE have signed a 'defence' pact. The reason given for this pact was apparentely Whosit's concerns about fighting Korean Hwacha's. However that seems a pretty flimsy reason to me.

As for the Shiloh area. I think I can agree to settle 3S of where Shiloh was. It's not exactly ideal but I think its a reasonable compromise.

-Dantski

Pretty good stuff there... We should politely say that we're not interested in buying anything from him with gold. I'll try this as a draft:

Dear Dantski,

No problem if you're not interested in going for catapults, we understand. Similarly I think we'll have to refrain from trading with gold, which is a little tight over here. I wish we had some excess gold lying around, but it seems to be in scant supply!

We were displeased to hear the announcement from Nakor and Whosit as well, and agree that their claim sounds pretty bogus. Our feeling is that they simply want to weasel out of NAPs that have become inconvenient. We don't trust either team at all, and view their actions with extreme suspicion.

Thanks for understanding about Shiloh - it sounds like we can compromise along those lines.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

I want Antietam's overflow to go into a missionary for Shiloh so that we can immediately start producing culture there. If we can get a fast border expansion, I think it's pretty doubtful if Dantski will settle in that area at all. I wouldn't plant a city that couldn't even control its first-ring tiles!

A more interesting message from plako, who's equally unhappy about the Nakor/Whosit pact:

Hi Killer Angels,

I'm quite annoyed about the HRE+Rome defensive pact announcement. Just few days ago Nakor bothered to send yet another message that stated they've nothing to do with Whosit actually their message was total opposite:

We heard that Rome was talking to Romali, so we don't know what to expect from him. We're going to build a lot of military to try and stay safe.

Now both HRE and Rome are unilaterally ignoring their previous engaments.

I'm seriously considering to do something stupid around T150-160. i.e. whip an army and, if possible attack Whosit. We should have X-bows by then and if Whosit relys too much on Praets that could open up opportunity to us to do some damage. If I'm doing some wishful taking maybe we could raze offending city that Whosit has just planted and maybe take some of the former Korean cities. Alone this won't work. Do you think you could free some units to assist Dantski to keep HRE at least busy so that they can't attack against my backyard without a big risk? I'll try to also get Slaze on board, even if he hasn't shown much intrest to our cause so far.

Best regards,
plako

That's quite a message! I think it would be our interest to encourage this, even if it doesn't succeed; if all the other teams get involved in warfare, while we're still teching ahead to knights and towards the Renaissance era, we'd have a huge edge on the competition. My initial thoughts:

Dear Broker and plako,

We had the exact same impressions as you about the announcement from Whosit and Nakor, that they were essentially tearing up their previous treaties. Pretty distateful! We really don't like the notion of teams signing NAPs that they have no intention of honoring. Nakor lied to us earlier in the game and said that he was worried about an attack from Whosit. That was totally false; I think it's clear that they are working very closely together. Don't believe anything they say otherwise!

Our first impression is that your idea sounds good, but you don't want to get carried away and make a terrible mistake either. I'd recommend you talk with Dantski and make sure that you have him onboard before comitting to an attack. We can make sure they you don't have to deal with Jowy and probably Kathlete, if a large war to break out. That would leave you and Dantski to deal with Nakor and Whosit, which hopefully would be a winnable conflict.

I'd also definitely get in touch with slaze. He emailed us yesterday and believes that he is going to be attacked by Whosit and Kathlete in the near future. It sounds like he would love some assistance on your end, and could make a very easy ally!

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Will hold until tonight to leave time for feedback before sending.

[m4gill4]

which hopefully would be a winnable conflict.

do you really believe this or are you just being polite?

[SevenSpirits]

What VoU said makes perfect sense and is applicable to the ongoing discussion. Try reading it again (repeating as necessary).

I tried 7 times yesterday and 3 times just now, but still no luck. Thanks anyway though.

[Axiis]

Out of curiosity, would you step in and help Plako/Dantski if they did go to war with Nakor/Whosit? Or would you just sit back and keep teching?

[Sullla]

Had a chance to go over some things with Speaker tonight. We're going to go ahead and push forges before markets as explained earlier. There's only one other team running Organized Religion (slaze), and we think we're either the first or one of the first to discover Metal Casting. If we can get a 50% bonus on building production that no one else is getting... well, it would be a pretty huge edge! Also did some unit micro for HR purposes, slaved the settler in Antietam, yadda yadda. Small details blah blah blah.

Axiis, we'd definitely like to work together with Dantski and Nakor. I don't know if that means sending a ton of units off to fight over cities that we don't care about though... We'd rather assist them by beating up further on Jowy, and/or keeping Kathlete out of the battle. Keep in mind that there's only such much we can do to influence events a third of the way around the globe. We've got our own enemies on our northern and western borders (across the sea). We can't and won't pull a Whosit and send a huge amount of our military to fight far far away.

What we can do is offer some better advice than what I typed up in that draft earlier. Speaker had some good ideas about what Broker/plako should do:

Dear Broker and plako,

We had the exact same impressions as you about the announcement from Whosit and Nakor, that they were essentially tearing up their previous treaties. Pretty distateful! We really don't like the notion of teams signing NAPs that they have no intention of honoring. Nakor lied to us earlier in the game and said that he was worried about an attack from Whosit. That was totally false; I think it's clear that they are working very closely together. Don't believe anything they say otherwise!

To get back to your very important topic on attacking Whosit... Speaker's advice is that you should try to team up with Dantski to attack Nakor (hopefully splitting up Holy Rome and each taking some cities) but that it would not be a good idea to attack Whosit right now. You can't really attack Aggressive Rome successfully without having maces. However, you guys should be able to defend your capital from attack using a mixture of hwachas and crossbows.

Basically, go aggressive against Nakor and try to stand on the defensive against Whosit. Just make sure that you and Dantski are in agreement and have a clear plan before doing anything, because either of you will probably lose singly if you don't work together!

I'd also definitely get in touch with slaze. He emailed us yesterday and believes that he is going to be attacked by Whosit and Kathlete in the near future. It sounds like he would love some assistance on your end, and could make a very easy ally!

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

New text highlighted obviously above. I sent off the previous Dantski email and the new Broker/plako one above. And... that should be it until the next turn!

[Beamup]

we'd definitely like to work together with Dantski and Nakor.

I assume this was a typo and you really meant Broker/Plako?