RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Sullla]

Speaker and I were chatting as I typed the post above, and we agreed to respond positively to plako's request. After all, they helped us out, and it would be nice to have ONE team that we can actually trust. (If we can keep them alive, heh.) Here's the response:

Dear plako and Broker,

Yes, we are happy to help you out in return for our own gold loan earlier! We will gift you 60g next turn and you can gift us back 66g when you have it in a couple of turns. Fortunately we saw your message before the current turn ended, and were able to dial research down to 0%. I will make the request in-game when the turn rolls over.

While we're exchanging messages, let me make a few short requests of our own:

- Would you mind if we did a little scouting on your island with our horse archers before gifting them? We don't have any map info in your part of the world, and it would help us understand your situation better. If you need the two horse archers immediately, we will of course gift them over right now.

- Would you be interested in trading your wines to us for our sugar resource? Yes, you'd be trading away your only wines, but they are functionally identical to sugar in Civ4 (both provide +1 happy, and a bonus +1 health with a grocer) so you would see no difference and it would help us out a little bit.

- This might be a no-brainer, but let us know if you see any Kathlete, Jowy, Nakor, or Whosit galleys moving around, and we will do the same for you. Thanks!

Sullla
The Killer Angels

Incidentally, we make 77gpt at 0% science. Considering we made 10gpt there fifteen turns ago, I'd say we've made some real progress!

We also wanted to chase up Dantski and see what was going on with him:

Dear Dantski,

We hadn't heard from you in a couple of days, and were wondering how things were going. Would you be willing to share some of your plans moving forward with our team? I only ask because we're approaching Turn 150, and you had previously mentioned that you were thinking about attacking Nakor when that date arrived. It would help us a lot to know what you were planning, so that we can coordinate our own actions better to help out as needed.

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

We heard some rumors from other teams that something was going on with Dantski and Nakor, not to mention Dantski actually posted in his spoiler thread yesterday (!!!!!!!), so it would be very helpful to find out what this enigmatic team was up to. Dantski may be our "ally", but we honestly don't understand him.

Jowy also sent us a message literally minutes ago:

Hey Killer Angels,

10 turns is a good start :) I accept this NAP, which lasts upto turn 160. Now, I have to admit, I was really looking for something a tad longer! While 10 turns is atleast something, in 10 turns I'll be in the same position again. How would you feel about adding another 30 or 40 turns on top of those 10? I could be a valuable friend. While I did betray your trust when I declared on you, unlike Dantski I've always been loyal to my allies.

PS. I'd be willing to open borders with you if we sign a longer NAP.
~ Jowy

Yeah, this is simply not going to happen. Jowy has always been loyal to his allies - who all happen to be our enemies, heh. But we'll let Jowy stew a turn or two before responding negatively.

[Sullla]

Jowy played his turn, and the turn after it, doing both turns in a grand total of 4 minutes. Seems like he's really devoted to the game currently. For our team, the workers finished up a sugar plantation at Shiloh (4/0/3 tile, quite good!) and a silks plantation at Chancellorsville:



Got enough moneybags? The silks plantation is actually one tile south of the city, very difficult to see without the resource indicator turned on. The market here will really do some good when it finishes, should take about 5 more turns after growth. Then we probably need to get a pair of workers out of this city; Chancellorsville should be able to do 3t workers, which is pretty nice.

I'm pretty surprised at home good Chancellorsville looks now given the massive whipping and pillaging it took earlier. At one point in time, we had lost four of the five grassland river cottages, plus the furs and horses tiles. Those were bad times!

We offered 60g to plako in-game, which appears to have gone through already. Research is back on Code of Laws; it looks like 3 other teams already have the tech, judging by the pre-req discount. We know Nakor researched Code of Laws much earlier (he founded Confucianism) and I'd guess Kathlete plus either Whosit or slaze are the other teams. More likely slaze, since Whosit had to go all the way up the top of the tree for Aesthetics and Literature. Anyway, it should take 3 more turns for Code of Laws, and then roughly 8 turns for Civil Service after that. Should have the big Bureaucracy shortly after Turn 150, nicely timed with our Machinery lightbulb.

Silks + sugars means another 2 happy faces in all cities, and along with +1 happy from forge (gold) and another +2 happy from markets (silks and furs), our core cities will be relieved of the need for their huge garrisons. That means Speaker can start playing around with our military again. Central cities like Chancellorsville may soon be down to a single defending unit, something that would have been laughable a half-dozen turns ago. Making progress!

[Adlain]

Jowy played his turn, and the turn after it, doing both turns in a grand total of 4 minutes. Seems like he's really devoted to the game currently. For our team,

Granted 4 minuites isnt enough time to really play 2 turns but isnt that comment abit harsh dont you think, esp if he has had a scare of some kind medicaly recently as posted in the IT/Trubleshooting thread.

[antisocialmunky]

Great Library trade routes.

They must be selling alot of books to be making trade routes from the GreaT Library.

[Sullla]

Oh please folks, lighten up. I'm only kidding around with Jowy, not leveling personal attacks at the man.

New messages back from the other teams, from Dantski:

HI KA's

The HRE war is off from my perspective, they have longbows now as well as a praet or three. They could also get to Xbows before T150 so its not looking good. So my plans are to simplt fill out my land and tech along if things stay the same.

So whats up in the Killer Angelian Palace?

That doesn't sound good at all... Is Dantski going to stab us in the back again? Are we ever going to feel secure with this guy? Argh.

Better stuff from plako:

Dear Killer Angels,

Great news concerning the gold.

You can check the island. It is quite small one barely room for 3 cities so it doesn't take long to reveal it all and we've roads between the cities.

Wines for sugar is alright to me. We've also couple of unhooked wines in the other island. However our worker force is fully booked, so it takes some time to get them online. btw If you see any Iron resources on our territory please let us know.

So far we've seen only lone galleys. There has been 1 Kathlete galley coming from the west that probably had chariot in it and checked the island near Jowy. We've also seen Whosit galley a turn or 2 ago far east where our other island is located.
plako

They actually already traded wines for sugar with us. We're overflowing with happiness now! Speaker almost didn't know what to do.

[Sullla]

Another day, another new turn:



We've mostly revealed plako's main offshore island with our two horse archers. Next turn we can probably gift them one of the two units... but let's move the second one over to that smaller eastern island before gifting it! We might as well explore their second island in the process, right?

There wasn't a great deal going on with our own cities this turn. St. Albans finished a horse archer (with stables, so 5XP) and started a second one, after which it will be able to build its courthouse. Gettysburg will grow to size 14 next turn, and a cottage is completing just in time to coincide with growth. We are nearly finished with the markets in Gettysburg and Chancellorsville, which will help a lot with our finances. Workers completed a forest chop into Fort Henry, knocking out 45 shields towards a market. More crazy juggling/swapping of tiles in the Chancellorsville - Fort Henry - Spartansburg region, as our workers desperately try to keep up with growths from each city. Speaker, I'd advise not messing with the tiles here!

Here's the biggest international development taking place:



Kathlete's power continues to spike upwards, possibly fueled by gifts from other teams. Whosit may have gifted some units to Kathlete; Rome's power went down, and the Ottomans went up, so it's very possible. We know that Kathlete has been running max shields for quite a while now (they are the 96 to our 91 in the Production category, and it's clear how both of us are *FAR* beyond the average!) That leaves us with two major questions:

1) What units is Kathlete building?
2) Who is Kathlete planning on attacking?

#1 is a bit difficult to guess, since we don't have visibility on any Kathlete cities or territory. (Just by seeing into what city and tile improvements a team has, you can determine mostly what techs they have!) We do know that they have Calendar, and they had Horseback Riding ages ago, so it seems safe to guess that they've got Construction by now. But even with their strong research rate, I doubt that they've managed to reach Machinery by now, and since Kathlete hasn't adopted Bureaucracy civic, we can assume that they don't have Civil Service tech. And if they're planning on attacking, Feudalism and longbows wouldn't seem to hold as much value, although I guess we couldn't totally rule it out.

So what does that leave us with? Some mixture of horse archers, axes/spears, and catapults? Of course we know that Kathlete also has those gifted Praetorians too... It all makes for a credible force, but so long as Kathlete isn't at the next tier of units (crossbows/maces/pikes/knights), there's nothing that looks super-scary. And yes, I did check and they don't have any ivory, so no elephants either!

#2 makes for a more interesting point. All of the evidence suggests that Kathlete will be attacking slaze when their NAP cooldown ends (on Turn 155, I think). Kathlete has been trying to buddy up with us, they extended an NAP with us, slaze has the lowest power in the game, and these two teams share an extended border where it would be possible to make major gains. Logically speaking, Kathlete should be going after slaze, possibly with support from Whosit.

But... we can't totally rule it out that Kathlete wants another piece of us. They could always run their units through Jowy's land, or build a crapload of boats and invade from our west across the worldwrap. Speaker is somewhat paranoid over this, and rightly so - better to be a little crazy and safe than sorry! I don't know what we can do about this, other than keep our eyes open and make sure to have some sentry units in the water when our NAP runs out.

A long, inconclusive war between Kathlete and slaze would be just about the best thing possible for us. Let's cross our fingers that it happens!

Finally, I wanted to get back a response to Dantski, so here's a fairly unimportant status update message:

Dear Dantski,

Thanks for the information. If you think that you're going to come under attack, please let us know so that we can send some military assistance to help out!

We've been doing pretty much the same thing as you, teching Currency and building a lot of markets to help the economy. We are planning to go for Code of Laws next and then possibly on to Civil Service after that, depending on how things look. Things have been blessedly quiet in recent turns, and hopefully they will stay that way!

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Tomorrow I'll send another message back to plako, and get around to responding to Jowy.

[MWIN]

Sullla,
Regarding this, you will have fun reading Lurker thread after the game...

Oh please folks, lighten up. I'm only kidding around with Jowy, not leveling personal attacks at the man.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

If you think that you're going to come under attack, please let us know so that we can send some military assistance to help out!

I trust the ambiguity of whom you would be helping is deliberate?

[Speaker]

I trust the ambiguity of whom you would be helping is deliberate?

Err, no. We would like Dantski to be an ally, and would help him defend.

[Speaker]

Here is a picture of two possible settlement plans for our western island. Sullla and I arg....er....discussed the merits of both plans for quite a while this evening. There is a 4-city, all island plan signified by the red dots, and a 3-city, island/mainland split signified by the purple "CITY" signs.