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

[antisocialmunky]

:-p

Dear CHASM:

Prrsha, our warrior-emissary, has spotted your borders at last! There's a peak tile covered in beautiful white. I'm in a rush before my laptop's battery dies, but I have a very important question for your civ:

We've managed to get our hands on some milk, but do you have any cookies?

Or better yet, some mice?

-Ref Eriksson for the Friendly Kittens

P.S. Yeah, we're happy to talk serious stuff when we have more time!

[Cyneheard]

Actually, BR needs to be whipped for the settler this turn. This gets us Gibraltar on T69. BR has 2t of whip anger left, so this whip won't go away until T78, but that's fine. The current whip anger will still disappear long before it becomes an issue.
We're going to have plenty of funds to knock out Monarchy around T80 (we'll have about 200 gold on T70, when we get Mono from Krill, assuming that we've also got Masonry from India). Our expenses will be up to about -17gpt.
Even if we haven't met India, I think we'll still want to start Monarchy on T70.

With Conan, I think we still want to move 1S. Our odds against the warrior in the forest aren't good (78.3% to win, 4.3% to retreat, and then die on the counter-attack). But if we let him attack us, we get 99% odds.

Sleepy has started a road 1S of London on the rice, that road will save us a turn on building Gibraltar.

I offered the Ottomans OBs.

Carthage's 3rd city, Boring, is 9W of AF. Their 2nd city, Lakewood, is NW of Boring. Their 4th city, St. Paul, is somewhere.

I'm going to send off those e-mails, then.

[Cyneheard]

Lots of e-mails sent:

First, to Krill, since I'd mostly written that already:

Are we attempting to do this at all? We can gladly offer our intel in exchange for other teams', similar to India's proposed map trades (we don't have contact with India or Aztec yet. Hopefully want both of them before Mono and HBR finish, respectively. Do you know of any warriors/scouts of either team near Ottoman territory? Richard is at the southern end of Ottoman territory right now.)

(This is T66 graphs, so T65 data). I've got Babylon + Mali power graphs. Babylon has 43k power, and while I've lost track of much of my C&D over the past few turns, I think they should have 21k in pop + tech power, for 22k in units. They do not have copper; it looks like they have 2 chariots plus a collection of warriors. Mali's 36 or 37k should leave them with 14k (36k total) or 16k (37k total) for units, including a new chariot + warrior or new axe.

I don't trust my C&D skills to accurately determine every opponents' unit composition. It would help if we do trade around to all the teams graphs, or just current power levels if teams wish to keep their own power situation private, to include with each team whether we know the strategic resource situation.

*Salutation follows*

The Ottomans:

Note: I did not propose the ROP clause, because frankly it doesn't matter, we don't share a common border, and won't, either. With Carthage, a ROP clause is useful.

Thank you for your directions, what would be the best route through your territory to meet the Aztec and India? We need to contact India first, if possible, as we need Masonry to get Monotheism when Krill finishes it for our research into Monarchy, which wepredict will be around T80.

We have offered OBs in-game, as Richard wishes to enter your territory this turn, and we do not wish to copy your tactics for forced entry into allied territory.

We would like to propose an auto-renewing NAP, with a 10t cooldown, and the earliest it would be canceled is T100. If the NAP is canceled on turn X, then on turn X+10, only the civ which did NOT cancel the NAP may declare war. On turn X+11, either team may attack. Both teams agree not to spend more than 43EP against one another for the duration of the NAP + cooldown phase.

If you have one, an ETA of Iron Working would be appreciated, so that we can manage our workers to be as available as possible at that time, both for our jungled silver and for any iron Sullla decided to bestow upon our humble civ. If you wish to arrange a time to chat, the hours between noon and midnight, EST, usually work best.

That is a great picture. We hope that your team is speaking out on behalf of Conan in http://www.suvudu.com/cagematch.html. Conan survived the first combatant, Harry Dresden, and will face Rand Al'Thor beginning on Monday.

[To the lurkers: The attached picture is Ahnold as Conan saying "Enough Talking".]

To Mali and Babylon:

To Mali and Babylon,

We welcome this new NAP for our peoples as we move forward in this new and different era. We agree that a ROP clause which doesn't cover incoming armies isn't worth a whole lot, but didn't know how exactly to cover those 3rd party armies. Perhaps that we would all agree to a good-faith effort not to allow allied armies to use each team's lands to attack the other? It is highly unlikely that any of our teams' allies would keep us in the dark about the purpose of a stack of chariots or other weapons of war, so this should prevent our territory from being used to attack Mali or Babylon, and vice-versa.

Carthage logged in while I was writing the e-mail, so I'm chatting with them instead. Will post separately.

[Cyneheard]

Nice long chat with Mr. Nice Guy of Carthage.

Settlement deal:
I did jump the gun on the north, but with two wines being between our food resource and theirs, securing 1 wine for us is as good as we're going to get.
We'll settle 2W of the sheep, and they'll make sure that their city doesn't steal that wine; not hard with us being Creative. They get the corn and the other wine. The south, well, we can worry about that later. One possibility is we let them get cows + sugar, we get our silk + wheat city (marked in-game), and a filler W of AF.

Note: It seems that DIM either can't count, or miscounted, when they said that their new city was "about 10 tiles north of our horses". It's really 6.

Carthage will have math EOT70

Went over the military situation with our southern neighbors. France is likely to get double-teamed. We can intervene against Byzantium, but not Babylon. That...might make for a mess in organizing the turns.

Talked a bit about ideas for the future. I do think that if CAN is as successful as it looks like, we'll be best off working with Carthage + someone else. Krill's easy to work with from a logistical standpoint, but by allying with Krill we're probably saying "our goal isn't to personally win". Pitboss1 certainly has de facto vassals who aren't trying to win directly.

Pacal: Good evening
me: evening. We should respond to some of your questions from your last email
Pacal: what's new in Avalon?
me: We've got NAPs with Mali and Babylon through T110
Pacal: wow 110, not bad at all. was that before the CAN was formed?
me: the negotiations had started before CAN. they're in a good spot to 2v1 us based on map positioning, so we went through with the NAPs
Pacal: that's great you could secure such long NAPs
me: Babylon has horses, but not copper. they tried pretty hard to turn us, but had nothing to offer. Mali has one of the strategic resources, not sure which. Mali jumped 6k in power last turn, could be chariot + warrior, but is probably an axe, and if we've counted correctly 16k in units+buildings
Pacal: C&D hard at work over in England
me: well, C&D from the Demographics table has died, but from graphs + F4 when we get Alpha? That's still at least somewhat functional. whose graphs do you have?
Pacal: but 16k from units+ buildings.. that's not that scary for a 3 city empire.
me: no, not right now, it isn't.
Pacal: I have DIM and A4's graphs, working on Mali
me: oh, so not the most useful graphs, sadly.
Pacal: yep. the score increase is hilarious. but mali is spending ep on us.. so it's tough to predict when we will have them. and besides.. if you already have them, it's not even that useful overall really
me: right, still, it doesn't hurt to have them yourselves
Pacal: right.
me: we're working on Byzantium next. they have horses, but no copper, as well. but are working on IW
Pacal: are they not expanding, or do they not have these resources anywhere?
me: or, were, pre-CAN CANT split. the copper is between Byzantium and babylon and is unclaimed. the two teams had a bit of a border dispute
Pacal: violent?
me: no, but threats of violence. Byz was threatening a chariot rush. France is their easiest target, I bet. They don't scare us, Sury can build infrastructure so cheaply that we can get all the units we need
Pacal: speaking of, where's the best place for us to move george from here for french contact?
me: NE-NE, then onto the roads
Pacal: yeah, sury's a great leader
me: we were shocked Sury was available at 8th.
Pacal: so was I, honestly. He would have been my third choice, and I think Shoot the Moon had him around 4th
me: He was our 3rd after the obvious 2 of yourselves and Willem
Pacal: not Toku? j/k
me: England, well, who knows if that was the right call
Pacal: I love redcoats.. you just have to survive long enough.
me: aye, but the Friendly Kittens (Maya) wanted England. Ragnar of England, THAT would be scary
Pacal: and you'd better... i think our fates are tied closely together.
me: it does look that way. you mentioned discussing a settlement agreement? The north should be pretty easy. There are 2 wines, 1 is 2E1N of the corn, and the other is 3E. A Carthage city that claimed the corn and the 2E1N wine would work; we have a sheep farther east that would allow us to work the wine as well.
Pacal: so perhaps a carthage city on the hill 1 se of the corn? it would have 2nd wine in BFC, but we would agree to settle after you had claimed the wine
me: ok, we can make the sheep + wine our 5th city, probably sometime in the 80s
Pacal: okay, with being cult. you will have no problem keeping that wine for a long, long time as we would be settling in the 90s or 100s in that area
me: right, and we should get a wine to our SE eventually but claiming it would create a double front. our wine would be 2nd ring to us, your wine would be 3rd ring. we'd settle 2E of our wine, so 5E of the corn
Pacal: sounds good.dim's new city is 4 n of your proposed wine spot... so you know...
me: we know. 4n? I thought it was more than that, but, still, not a problem
Pacal: okay, so the north is easy (yay!)
me: yeah, I need to talk to my team about the south
Pacal: okay, we can leave that in the air... we are probably 20+ turns away from settling in your direction
me: and so are we. we're about to whip a settler, and that's going to be our front city to the south, and a 6th city has to wait for some courthouses to be up
Pacal: expenses are starting to creep up, eh?
me: just a little and the 6th city is supposed to be a lot worse than the 5th. as soon as we meet Portugal, we'll be able to get trade routes with DIM, which will help
Pacal: that's huge.
me: Do you know when Math is going to finish? Well, it's 3 commerce since our cities are all connected already. Monarchy's going to be about T80
Pacal: we are at 4t out from maths
me: great, thanks.
Pacal: thank goodness for furs
me: yeah, although we're about to whip our furs away for a turn or 2
Pacal: thank goodness for cheap granaries?
me: agreed. 3 cities, 3 granaries. Pottery discovered T57, I think.
Pacal: i wasn't an exp fan before this game, but i love it now. that's about the same time as us i think
me: Right, and with Fin + a few cottages and some saved gold + furs, a fast Maths
Pacal: well you have us figured out.
me: lol, like it was such a hard thing to figure out
Pacal: yeah yeah
me: I hope the anti-Exploit plans are going well. we're too far to do anything direct
Pacal: same here.
me: but picked up contact with him, which isn't all that helpful. I won't be sad to see him go, though. His PB1 diplo irked me, and a lot of other people.
Pacal: i stopped following before him, but have seen some of the fall-out in the lurker thread
me: he's mad at the RB community, that's why he didn't create a PB3 spoiler thread
Pacal: ::shakes head::
me: agreed. does he have to post like my team (632 posts and counting)? no
Pacal: but at least be a member of the community
me: yeah
Pacal: sorry, i'll start ranting soon
me: we both will. do you know if anything interesting is happening with the India vs. Maya war? The Inca war was watchable via power graphs: Inca are #1 in power, and the Aztec whipped to the bone
Pacal: inca, i know, made some tactical errors that cost them a golden opportunity
me: axes + quechua should be able to crush just archers
Pacal: we're too far removed from the india/maya conflict to know anything yet
me: even though the Maya are your neighbors, I guess it's just the far side of their territory
Pacal: yep and haven't met maya yet ... concentrating too much on the north for CAN contacts
me: wow, we met the Maya last turn, they stumbled across our borders. we're missing 4 contacts at this point: India, Aztec and Portugal for CAN, and Rome
Pacal: wow that's great for you guys
me: one of our exploring warriors has slipped through Babylonian territory, so he'll get some useful scouting on all sorts of things, like Byzantium has stone but not connected at all
Pacal: ah that's exciting. do you not have stone?
me: we do
Pacal: okay, i assumed everyone had stone+marble
me: didn't know how generally available it was. Sullla didn't balance stone/marble, or gold/gems for surroundings. I mean, gold/gems/furs
Pacal: oh - i seem to have missed that nugget
me: well, we only have furs, and Byzantium has gold and gems with flood plains
Pacal: you have no gold?
me: like I said, it isn't balanced.
Pacal: hmmph. i've been making incorrect assumptions
me: our strength is going to be food + hammers, with easy infrastructure for them. Not commerce.
Pacal: we're generally missing the food piece, decent hammers and commerce
me: As much as not being a research hurts flexibility, I think we're going to have to be funders of research. Fortunately, post-Banking, Stock Exchanges will help out some.
Pacal: that's part of why we want to tied to england. do you know who founded buddhism?
me: Aztec, and Krill's going to have 2 religions
Pacal: hmm. we need CANT to found a religion so you can steal their shrine
me: which one? COL is going to be CAN
Pacal: which do you want? lol, that's the bad side of being a dominating research force
me: CANT isn't going to get a religion. Krill will have Hindu and Judaism, whoever's doing COL will have Confucius, and Aztec have Buddhism. unless their team bulbs Philo with a GS or waits for Islam
Pacal: they'll be around until Islam?
me: Assuming CAN sticks together?
Pacal: yeah, there is that.
me: a second round of techs shouldn't be too hard, and with Machinery + CS + Feud coming in those with Construction beforehand CANT teams will be in a world of hurt
Pacal: 2 rounds of techs will be good enough to make each of us significantly stronger than CANT
me: especially if Exploit dies in time. Babylon would be their best Alpha civ after that
Pacal: even if CAN doesn't stick together, the right move will be to elminate CANT
me: Pericles Academy will be up in the early 70s and even if we hadn't signed a NAP, we couldn't get an army that could kill them. Mali and Byz would be too close. still, by the time Babs would get Alpha our group would be done with the first round of techs and on to the next
me: Krill had mentioned that us, you, and him would be a solid research + funding team
what do you think of the idea?
2 religions is the max that we'd have the hammers to pass missionaries around with
Pacal: i think that he's absolutely right
me: and we clearly hadn't committed to anything, but it's definitely attractive
Pacal: it's clearly something to discuss with shoot the moon but i think he'd be on board
me: and my team, as well
Pacal: our empire has had good relations with both egypt and england thus far
me: for future games: Kyan + Twinkletoes are easy players to work with diplomatically. However, the game isn't shaking out that working with them is promising at all. [OOC: It's quite true, Babylon's been good diplomatically. Just, they're on the wrong side this time, and will likely suffer for it.]
Krill's ruthless, but I trust him to do exactly what he says.
Pacal: that's good to know. [Re: Krill] exactly i can speak to the truth of that already, being his neighbor
me: although I will say his choice of naming conventions was a little arrogant
Pacal: refresh my memory
me: Have you read Terry Pratchett at all? By naming himself Lord Vetinari he's saying "No one likes me, but everyone has to work with me" or else. And Havelock is Vetinari's first name.
Pacal: ahhh... i was totally in the dark on that
me: every unit is a Pratchett character and his cities are also from it, Ankh-Morpork is Vetinari's domain. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Discworld
I do highly recommend Pratchett's work [OOC: To lurkers as well] it's hilarious and incredibly well-written
Pacal: lol i have a couple friends who love his work. brings back good college memories
me: my high school friends introduced me to him. one of them told me to backstab Krill entirely because he was arrogant enough to name himself as so. But Krill is indispensable.
Pacal: as a lurker, i'd love to read about it. as a player, he is indispensable
me: yeah, when my team is out of this game I'm going to lose the next week or two in productivity
Pacal: yeah... it'll be fun to read the other perspectives, but it'll take a long time
me: There's 5200 lurker + non-England posts or so
Pacal: and that's through the early "quick" turns with no real controversy
me: well, you should've seen our micro plans for the early game. we hashed out London through T45 before our first worker was done
Pacal: how many versions did you go through?
me: I actually think the posting pace will slow 3 with minor tweaks perfecting the one that we chose like saving 1 worker turn by chopping forests in the correct order
Pacal: it's amazing how much work our micro skills get by playing slowly like this
me: agreed. at any other pace, there's no way I'd have gotten that extra turn which meant the sheep came online T41. AH came in EOT39. And while I see how awesome a FW would be, careful micro allows us to avoid wasted turns moving
Pacal: on another note... have you received a cartel map?
me: no. we haven't made our screenshots
me: we should talk at some point when we have a better idea of what to do militarily to our southern foes
Pacal: absolutely. i think we need more map information before we can strategize too much
me: right. did you get your map yet?
Pacal: no, have only just been in the process of taking and sending
me: yeah, I don't think my monitor has the right resolution
Pacal: so with you guys having your T110 NAPs, do you see Mali declaring war on us when our NAP expires, or waiting to attack both of us?
me: I don't think they'll try to wait until T110 that seems like a really long time when they know that tech is going to be against them. France is probably in trouble, though. Babylon has carte blanche to hit them and France just built their copper city, but there's no way it'll be online for them soon. they need a road network and they don't have the worker labor like we do. We've got 5 workers
Pacal: what timeline would they be looking at?
me: Babylon? Not sure. Right now, they're working on chariots, they have 2 and once we get Sailing, we'll be able to track their strategic resources
Pacal: hopefully france can get spears quickly then
me: yeah. Byzantium's going to be faster on that, though. fortunately, we don't have any deals with Byzantium. well, maybe a NAP through T75, I forget if we signed one with them or not
Pacal: well you could always sign a MDP with France to override the NAP. lol
me: not pulling that trick, that would piss off Babylon and Mali for no reason. they'd break the NAP with us. we don't have copper (France claimed the closest source to us), but will have plenty of chariots and HAs once HBR comes in
Pacal: ahhh wonderful HAs
me: yeah, especially with a chopped stable in at least one city (Thank you math)
Pacal: exactly. tech cartel is a good thing
me: omg, it's been fantastic. Monarchy ~T80? On Huge/Emperor? with everything else...
Pacal: exactly. especially since i'm an epic player in SP, the pace is mindboggling.
me: It's only going to get worse. what happens when 3 techers get to run 100% science, and are trading amongst themselves?
Pacal: Well, all of a sudden it's gotten late... I should be going to bed...
me: yeah, I should run too
Pacal: alright. well, good to chat. talk to you soon.
me: yeah, this was good ttyl

[antisocialmunky]

My take on the Krill question is to stay on friendly terms and not be his number one rival. Keep him close and take him out at an opportune time. We know what everyone else knows: that Krill is playing to win the game, nothing less, and that he can be quite dangerous if you threaten him. In a very general description, I think that Krill will try to slowly put himself in the number one position throughout the game and make a final run mid/late-game to an unassailable position rather than try and pull ahead before that period like PB1. There are too many factions for anyone to win a fast game. I think that if we keep close to Krill and those close to him and watch him, we'll be able to figure out his plan and preempt him.

As for France, we should tell them to post sentries in the south and scout for the attack. HRE will probably have us help dispose of them eventually so I rather not invest anything I don't have to in France.

[haphazard1]

Lots of good info in the Carthage chat. I agree that working with them looks very promising.

On the HRE bring that close to our horses, I am not at all surprised. They talked about their dot map being disrupted by pushing the city we were negotiating (back before France took the copper site) 1 tile north. That only made sense if they were placing their cities at minimal 3 tile intervals.

Making a "mistake" about how far north their city actually is...I do not really trust the HRE. They keep "forgetting" to pass along messages, or "mis-state" where their cities are, or not knowing (supposedly) how close France was -- after telling us they had an early dispute with France. They are neighbors and in the cartel, so we have to work with them somewhat. But I do not trust them.

We need to get a city to that sheep/wine spot fairly soon, as we will be fighting culture against their city to the north. Don't want to let them get too much culture built up before we get our city down. Need an early library there as well to push back.

[haphazard1]

Question for the team: Is there a reason we have not been ending our turn recently?

There have been various wars going on (Maya and India at the moment), but we are not (for now) directly involved. We have NAP with our most likely opponents. Do we actually have any moves we could make, even if something did happen late in the turn?

[Cyneheard]

EDIT: Re: Ending turn: I needed OBs with the Ottomans this turn, so that had to wait. Until we'd heard back from Mali/Babylon, patience was needed, as well. And I need feedback on Conan.

Agreed, Hap. When CAN falls apart, I do not want to be on HRE's side. France might be an opportune target, or they might not be.

Still, why did they try to get us into their group? That's what I don't understand. If they didn't want to work with us, they didn't have to.

I whipped BR for the settler, and moved Richard into Ottoman territory (they signed OBs) to head towards Aztec and India. We see copper, mined and roaded.

Conan the Antibarbarian:
3 options:
1) Attack the barb warrior. 78.3% odds to win, 4.3% to retreat. I don't like that one.
2) Move south as originally planned, expecting the warrior to attack over the IT. We'll have 99% odds to win. I think this one makes sense.
3) Move west, and stay away.

[haphazard1]

OK, thanks for clarifying, Cyneheard.

On Conan, I definitely do not like those odds. So the question is really where to move.

I am not sure a barb warrior will attack a chariot in this situation. Maybe we move west, and see if he will emerge from the forest onto some nice flat ground? If he stays in the forest or heads further east, ignore him and keep exploring.

Edit: OK, just noticed you said south was originally planned. So moving south is good. If he doesn't attack, then he doesn't. Leave him for someone else to fight.

[antisocialmunky]

I think that HRE is just being paranoid and hedging their bets by being non-committal. Either that or they are just really sloppy.

I think that they see this is a short term alliance for them and getting us and France into the alliance helps them by giving them more techs. There was also the Roman question and getting allies against Rome(which they didn't tell us about until after France was part of the alliance). So I think we both are allies of convenience to them and that they aren't necessarily forging term allies. If this is indeed true(we need to ask people what they think about HRE and see if this is a pattern or what), we can leverage this against them diplomatically.

I'll be curious if they submit to the world map.

I rather stick with Carthage + South anyway