RB PBEM #2 Sitting Bull of the Native Americans

[Square Leg]

Just sent this to Dreylin... See what he says!

Hi Dreylinian,

I am disclosing this information in confidence that you will not pass on to another party.

The Operation (would need a suitably catchy name...)

My little plan is to boat Ruff with 2 galley's containing 3 Dog soldiers and 1 Chariot.
Ruff has recently been at war with Yaz during which my work boat was in the area - Yaz had at least 2 Immortals and 1 Axe en-route to attack him.
Dogs eat spears and axes (plus a chariot will be taken) which will form Ruffs logical defense.
After the war it would be very logical for Ruff to stop military builds in favour for settlers and workers to try and catch up with the non warring nations.
This attack would drastically change the dynamic of world politics - more on that shortly.
The attack will hopefully secure the Native Americans extra land in the west and allow the Byzantines more room in the east - there is an island I believe to the SE of The Oval that we can discuss - more exploration needed.
With the news you spread in the players thread about 100% back research boost and with tech trading on, I feel military action is more viable in the early game.

World Dynamic

At the moment I believe there are 3 mini alliances forming where all the island buddies are working together. Ruff and Yaz must have realised that the early war was a waste of time and have settled their differences on the negotiating table. If i were in their shoes I would have gone for quite a long NAP to allow for city settling etc, catch up basically. I don't see that either will be gearing for another pop at one another.

Darrell and Krill have co-ordinated their wonder builds. I know the least about this island but I have had quite a lot of diplomacy with both Darrell and Krill. Krill said that relations with Darrell were difficult whereas Darrell said they were getting on like a house on fire... "in cahoots" springs to mind.

Us being the 3rd mini alliance.

The obvious move is to try and recruit one of the other teams to get 4v2 going or try and work a 3v3 but I think that is much less likely considering that it would create massive tensions on one island where the 1on1 was.

Byzantine Involvement

First of all we need to establish if the Byzantine people are interested in entering into this plan? The way I see you involvement is purely by helping to supply boats or troops and what I can give in exchange will be representative of what help you can give. Since my previous mail I have started 1 galley and already have 2 dogs (although I unit is needed for MP atm) so a chariot and a galley are on the shopping list. If we can get 3 galley's loaded with troops - 2 for an initial strike and 1 to mop up then all the better. Troop composition could be 4xDogs, 1xSpear, 1xChariot?? Tactical advice.

Japanese Lands

I do know the location of Japans copper - I need to establish if they have horses and if we would need to take a spear along for the ride too. I know Yaz has access to a horse and he could trade it to Ruff.

Next moves

If you are interested we can start to set the wheels in motion. We can map trade what I know of Ruffs land and co-ordinate the attack - you experience would be very welcome. If you aren't interested then it isn't a problem - I think this is an opportunist strike in the immediate aftermath of Ruff signing peace and don't feel that I have the resources to pull it off without help so will probably shelve the plan.

Cheers,
Sitting Bull of the Native Americans

[Square Leg]

I need to keep on top of the thread a bit more...

To conclude the potential attack on ruff in the last post - Dreylin and I discussed briefly and I decided that it was perhaps a little over-ambitious. Had I already got an army in place then the opportunity would have been great. I might have struggled if he had archers - especially on a hill - although - I don't think he will have that tech. Cannot be sure though yet.

I decided that it would be a better option to secure up my borders via diplomacy then and initiated a chat with ruff that resulted in an NAP intil turn 80 with a 20t cooldown. I means I have NAP's with both neighbours now until T80 at least.

I have chatted to krill a bit over the weekend but mainly about trying to meet in game - his warrior keeps getting moved by Darrell founding cities and popping borders!

More recently though I have finished Alphabet (or will get the splash next turn) I decided to fire off these emails this morning:

Hey Krill,

Alphabet completed when I hit end turn so it should be available for you to request on your next turn. Bit of a mechanics question but will we be able to complete the full trade straight away since you will need writing for a turn before I can send you Alphabet?

Summary:

Krill: HBR (250), IW (200), MC (225)
Me: Writing (120), Alphabet (300) plus IOU 255 beakers somewhere.

Cheers,
Sitting Bull of the Native Americans

and to Darrell:

Hi Darrell,

Alphabet finished when I pressed end turn this time so I think you should be able to request the trade on your turn. I realised that I need Polytheism before you will be able to send be Monotheism. Would you be interested in adding the following trade onto what we already have: The Wheel + Pottery = Polytheism? I have noticed a distinct lack of roads in your empire at the moment ;-)

This would mean that the total deal would be:

Darrell: Poly (80), Mono (120), Masonry (80), Maths (250) = 530
Me: Writing (120), Alphabet (300), The Wheel (50), Pottery (80) = 550

We would need to do Poly + Masonry = Writing + The Wheel and then we can do Mono = Alphabet + Pottery and then you send me Maths as soon as you complete it. I think that is how the mechanics is going to work!

Does that sound ok?

Cheers,
Sitting Bull of the Native Americans

and seeing as he was online, I chatted with Yaz:

10:42 me: Hey Yaz - You're up late, or is it early?
Yaz: It's early
10:43 me: Crazy!
Yaz: What's up?
10:44 me: Alphabet finished at the end of my turn - I don't think I t will be available to trade until next turn though. Do you have an eta for Monarchy.
10:45 Yaz: Monarchy is about 11T away I think unfortunately. Settling new city though so that may speed things up. Though will need to take a turn to get some money in treasury
10:46 me: Ok - I can wait.
Yaz: Haven't traded it yet to anybody have you?
10:47 Well I guess not bleh
me: No - but will be doing so in a couple of turns.
Yaz: k
met everyone?
10:48 me: Not quite - still need to find Krill
10:49 He has a warrior near darrell but apartently darrell is popping borders and shunting it around!
Yaz:
Well I gotta run and get ready for work. Cya
10:50 me: K - I need to do some work sya!

On the domestic front:

Lords has completed a Settler and then a Scout recently and is looking for something to work on... I am considering another Galley to go and explore what I believe is some land off the coast of The Oval since my other Galley is currently employed with transporting a Settler and Chariot to go and settle the elephants. There are 2 sources! Great for trading to someone - preferably the otherside of the world!

My workers are milling about setting up a decent road network and improving tiles where they can. With NO FRESH WATER I have no idea how we knew to farm since day 1!!!!

Sorry T-Hawk - I am not complaining too much as I realise this happens sometimes but it is frustraiting for a Phi civ to not be able to farm! Generally I am quite happy with the map. I would have liked just a little bit more land on the initial island but I wasn't expecting to have much! I have rolled some achi starts before with enough room for only 1 decent city!

I saw the request for some T50 pics a while back and I did shoot some but they are on my PC at home so I'll load them up shortly. Along with some more up to date pics.

[T-hawk]

Sorry T-Hawk - I am not complaining too much as I realise this happens sometimes but it is frustraiting for a Phi civ to not be able to farm! Generally I am quite happy with the map. I would have liked just a little bit more land on the initial island but I wasn't expecting to have much! I have rolled some achi starts before with enough room for only 1 decent city!

Remind me sometime when you've discovered most of the map and we can discuss this in detail. Gotta clam up for now though.

[Square Leg]

By squareleg at 2010-03-30

Current state of the empire! I am a little light on defense... One note - Currency will be 2t of saving and then 10t research - I think there is enough slack to do this even with founding a new city... We shall see!


By squareleg at 2010-03-30

Here is where city4 will be founded... No food resource at present which is a ballache so hopefully I'll spot somethin next turn. The city is essential though for the fact it will give us phants for +1 happy initially and then acccess to War Elephants once construction comes in. I will move the chariot to the desert hill next turn and hopefully spot some food. The city will then be placed accordingly - ideally on the desert hill itself.


By squareleg at 2010-03-30

These are Dreylin's lands. I'm sure you get a better look in his thread but thought I'd post it here for reference. One thing to note: My warrior has explored all the way to the furthest NE tip of our landmass. This should help with circumnavigation - something that will be really useful on this map - especially in the age of galley's and trireme's! Dreylin has said that there isn't a route to Krill in the north so my wb on the other side of the world is heading south, partly to meet Krill's warrior and partly to see if there is a route there that will get me far enough to meet the route I have done with my warrior in the north! Lets hope so! Oh yeah - how much munch does Dreylins capital have?? 4 food resources! nom nom nom! He even has a little river and a lake for irrigation... but there is a desert between our lands.


By squareleg at 2010-03-30

Last picture for today - now that I have access to alphabet I can see this. It means that I can plagiarise someone else's work and decifer who has what tech's... I'll do that later on.

I'll do a diplo post in a min...

[Rowain]

Strange that you seem to lack Mysticism (Poly + Med as 'can't trade') but it's not on the 'will trade'- column of anyone.

[Square Leg]

I just ran some stats on the threads. by clicking on the number of posts it tells you who has posted in a thread and how many times. I get the following %ages of user posts in the spoiler threads:

Ruff - 57.4%
Darrell - 66.6%
SL - 73.4%
Krill - 82.4%
Yaz - 83.9%
Dreylin - 91.9%

My conclusions are that Dreylin is infact a spambot. Ruff seems to have a really low %age but Kyan did look after his civ for a little while and so has posted quite a bit.

Thats it - no other conclusions drawn! A worthwile exercise no?

Ok Diplo:

When I got to the game this morning I was expecting a diplo window from Darrell proposing Hunting+Writing=Masonry+Mysticism. Tick and accepted. Next turn there should be Poly=Alphabet and the turn after that he will send me Mono. It a few turns after that he will send me Maths.

I also saw a window from Ruff asking for open borders. where did that come from? We had discussed open borders briefly but I didn't expect to just receive an offer! I accepted and mused over it for a moment... Ruff is clearly role-playing a bit here. I followed PBEM 1 and this isn't his normal style. So I fired this email off to him:

Hi Luff hi,

I accepted open borders in game and hope you are enjoying the world of 3g trade routes! I must admit, I was a little surprised by the request as I had figured you were role playing Tokugawa and he never opens borders!

I didn't notice a scout near my lands but when you approach, I'd recommend the southern route to find Dreylin.

So, have you had time to consider any tech trades we could make? I note you have Archery and I have Animal Husbandry...

Cheers,
Sitting Bull of the Native Americans

I just checked and I have a response!

Sitting Bull,

I am playing Tokugawa with set rules of international engagement. Not signing OBs is not one of those rules.

I already have a trade in place for AH. and a few of the religious techs. What else do you have on offer?

Regards,

Ruff

Ah - so not a typical Tokugawa game but one that makes it a little easier! Well - I don't think I have anything else to trade apart from alphabet - which will be dirt cheap for him to research once I have traded it around thanks to the NoScore mod. Maybe I could offer that for Archery!

In the meantime I received a note from Dreylin:

Hey Sitting Bull,

Congrats on landing Alphabet; now the real fun starts with trying to arrange all the tech trades!

I am going to be relying heavily on you to be a middle-man for me over the next few turns; I have found no way of making contact to my East, only dead-ends. Your Warrior is closing in on the NE extreme, and though I have "border-jumped" to a new landmass SE of Constantinople, that has proven to have no onwards connections either. I see that once The Oval pops borders you will have similar access, so that may tie back down into Krill & Darrell; but that is one-way access as well, so all my contacts will have to be made past you to the West, and I'm a bit behind on that. I have a Galley now exploring round an island NE of the Ivory and hoping it will make a connection down to Ruff.

Anyway, to sum up; I will need to trade via you to get techs from the others.

My best guess for CoL is that it's due t60, so I'm going to start finalising trades with yourself and others. I note that you don't have Mysticism yet and will need it to pick up before grabbing later religious techs; I'm happy to front this to you immediately either for a small credit later, or simply as a "brokerage fee" to be my middle-man going forward.

I would like to trade CoL to you for Currency rather than Alphabet, though I realise that I would be waiting a while to receive your part of that deal. Perhaps my fronting CoL and Mysticism to you will offset the beaker difference between the two techs?

I'll also be contacting the others and trying to finalise trades now that I have a firm ETA for CoL; I'll pass on any info I get on their tech ETAs.


Oh, final thing; I've just started the build on my first Missionary, due to complete in a couple of turns. If you are still OK with our previous agreement regarding my settling the Copper site, I will dispatch him down to you ASAP. It would be useful if you could station a unit North of The Oval to make certain there are no Barbs in the region - I can see through the Desert, but the plains forest hill is still fogged from my side.

Cheers,

Dreylinian I.

My reply:

Hey Dreylinian,

I think the "real fun" hurts my head but lets go for it!

I am happy to act as a middle man for you however, I am getting Myst from Darrell in a staged trade for some techs down the religious line however, I appreciate the offer to front me the tech. I will happily enter into a Currency - CoL trade and am happy to waive the beaker difference if you are to front me CoL before I send you Currency. On the subject of a brokerage fee - I would say Priesthood in a few turns time? That tech is going to be very cheap considering the 100% bonus for known civs (2 at least). Does that sound reasonable? Of course Ruff will be able to do the same job but I'm not sure that he has so many trades lined up.

You should be able to tell from the map I sent a few turns ago where ruff's lands are in relation to the Ivory island.

I have just completed a scout who will be heading to the island near The Oval you mentioned but he will be waiting on a galley to complete and so will fog bust the area between our lands - I have a dog soldier to munch on that warrior who killed your scout but rather irritatingly, might leave The Oval unhappy for a turn to do so... hey ho - better than being pillaged.

Cheers,
Sitting Bull of the Native Americans

And his reply:

Sitting Bull,

That all sounds good to me; CoL-Currency confirmed (both with no-trade, I assume?) and I'll send you Priesthood as soon as you've got the pre-req. BTW, I still need to pick up Poly myself, where are you getting that from?

Missionary will be on his way soon; I'll confirm when he's on the way.

Dreylinian I

No comment really apart from the relationship with Dreylin is better than the one with Krill - I am really tempted to think up some sort of formal agreement with Dreylin to really solidify things on our island.

Oh and just chatted with Yaz:

11:03 Yaz: Hey SL
11:04 me: hey - how's it going?
Yaz: Good Tired (early morning) but good :P
Don't happen to have the game near you or remember what techs people have do you?
11:07 me: I have a nice little post in my spoiler thread as of about 10 mins ago!
How can i help
Yaz: Oh so you're saying I can read it ? :D
me: you'll be lucky!
Yaz: hehe
11:08 I'm wondering about whether darrell has the wheel or archery
me: Whats in it for me?
11:09 If it is you burning the GLH then I'm in!!
Yaz: Isn't having one of, if not THE, top players in the game knocked down a peg or two worthwhile?
11:10 me: Fair cop - He has The Wheel but not archery - he can research it though.
Yaz: sweet
me: you razing the GLH then?
Yaz: razing it or taking it, haven't decided. Will know in two turns probably when my units are at his door
11:11 me: cool! good luck!
Yaz: As far as I know he only has warriors so may just take a few cities :P
He built a bunch of galleys to try and stop me apparently but I snuck past and landed
me: He does have sailing though so watch out for galley's - I have only seen 1 or 2 maybe though.
11:12 Yaz: I can see 5, I suspect there may be more
me: My WB is in the hood still looking for an ellusive Krill Warrior
Yaz: http://i.imgur.com/AQLpo.png
me: Thats a lot of galleys...
Yaz: Yeah. I told my plan to ruff unfortunately, I'm suspecting he let it slip to darrell since darrell's power started spiking right after
me: oooo... What is in that stack apart from axe?
11:13 Yaz: 3 axe 1 immortal
2 axe have promotions waiting as well
11:14 me: cool - with only warriors he is toast! The march must be about 4 squares from there though?
Yaz: You weren't planning anything against Ruff were you?
Yeah 4 squares, immortal can do it in 2
me: Nah - we have a nap till t80
Yaz: bah :P
11:15 me: I did plan something earlier but it wasn't going to work so decided to go diplo route. I have other priorities at the moment! ;-)
11:16 Yaz: haha fair enough. Yeah my econ sucks, hence my lateness on monarchy (apparently units cost a lot to ship to another continent :P ). But I figure it's worth it for this.
Even if it failed it would have been a fun way to screw up.
11:17 me: If you fail your econ picks up - if you succeeed then it picks up too - win win!
eeeeee
Yaz: :D
11:18 Time for me to head to work. Thanks for the info
me: no probs
cya

check the picture link in there! Ha ah! Sitting Bull is a naughty man for leaking this intel but if tgl is razed then it will have been worth it!

[Square Leg]

Strange that you seem to lack Mysticism (Poly + Med as 'can't trade') but it's not on the 'will trade'- column of anyone.

This is becuase Darrell only traded me Myst this turn - only next turn will they swap over to "can trade"

The same is true in SP. You have to wait a turn before trading the next tech down the line. It's annoying!

[Rowain]

Ah I missed the myst trade. Thanks for clarifying

[Square Leg]

I haven't had another turn since yesterday although I did receive this in my inbox when I logged in just now:

00:16 Darrelljs: SL<
I have huge need of your Horse
I have asked for it in trade
yaz did indeed launch an attack
my galleys were too late to blockade him
please accept my offer

Guess that Yaz stack has him worried!

So - I have played both sides here a little bit and I feel a little silly. This is a big deal. If I send my horse to help America then Yaz will be pissed and Darrell will be really happy.

It also strengthens an already strong player and weakens one in a weker position (not ability wise but Persia is realing a little economically whereas America is about to take off). What to do?!?!?

Ok - America have been very kind to the Native Americans with favourable tech trades and general helpfulness. Persia hasn't really done anything like that although I will say that relations have been very pleasant and could develop to be more fruitful in the future.

My moral choice would be to help Darrell in this situation and leave Yaz out to dry - a bunch of chariots are going to destroy Yaz's stack easily. Darrell should be able to get copper or horse from someone else though - maybe Ruff or Krill?

My head would say to help Yaz by not sending the horses because there is a chance that the GLH will be destroyed. That would even things up a bit!

Question for the lurkers: If I lend my horses, will it be for a minimum of 10t or can the deal be shorter?

Fortunately I don't have to decide until it is my turn to play!

[Rowain]

AFAIK it would be for 10 turns and include enforced peace (at least if it is a demand)