RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

Wow, great job on the ToC. Sullla and Speaker always get the star treatment lol.

Maybe because we have put a *ton* of effort in to our thread, including close to 500 pictures and 900 combined posts, without the Darrell/Regroarrar "mass spam effect," and this sort of fun and interesting information attracts readers?

Or maybe it's just that Sullla is a huge rockstar. Who knows.

[antisocialmunky]

Maybe, maybe not. I just thought it was amusing .

Its not like you're the only ones that have good info and spend effort on your thread though but you're the only ones that have lurkers volunteering to help you with organizing it. 0_o

[m4gill4]

Or maybe it's just that Sullla is a huge rockstar. Who knows.

Both. The awesome writeups make him a rockstar. I've read more Sullla than Hemingway. And rightly so, a Hemmingway civ writeup would be awful!

Turn 66:

I had an encounter. It was with a quechua.

"There shall be peace in our time," I said.

The quechua moved on. I had another drink. Sighed wistfully. I need a code. A code of laws.

[antisocialmunky]

m4gill4, you are Legendary.

[Speaker]

The game is back up, Sullla. I had a poke around, but didn't really do much besides shuffle some units and move some boats. I don't have time to post anything too substantial right now, though, so I'll just leave it at that.

[Sullla]

I jumped in the game and moved our workers around, took some screenshots, etc. I need to head off to bed though, so I'll have the information up tomorrow. :zzz:

[darrelljs]

without the Darrell/Regroarrar "mass spam effect,"

Hey now...most of our (well, my) posts contain at least a modicum of information! While we're casting stones, your thread could do with a spot of humor ever now and again, just to lighten things up :neenernee.

Darrell

[Sullla]

OK, so we are off and rolling on Turn 151, and there's a lot going on around the world. First our team, then we'll get to the doings elsewhere.

The event log for the turn records that Whosit declared war on slaze... and that Dantski completed the Temple of Artemis?! Say what???



We can see from city viewing that the Temple of Artemis is located in the city of Gao. That's... quite a strange decision, to say the least! Temple of Artemis is widely viewed as one of the weakest wonders in the game, and I find it hard to believe that the trade route income bonus (in a non-coastal city!) and free Priest specialist were worth the build cost of this wonder. Dantski doesn't even have marble, so he received no discount in cost. I guess he wanted the culture in Gao, but that's a lot of shields to spend for just culture. Ummm, based on past comments in this thread I'll try to be polite, but, uh, this wasn't a very good move.

We are now in Bureaucracy civic, which pulled up our economy by a noticeable margin. Last turn, our civ was sitting at 187 beakers/turn (-2gpt) at 50% science. This turn, our civ runs at 205 beakers/turn (+3gpt) at the same 50% science... and we're actually doing a bit better than that, because the old numbers included Spartansburg before we three-pop whipped its market. Research is set to Feudalism due in 4 turns at break-even rate; we can get the tech in 3 turns by running a deficit, but I just don't see the need at present. Rather save that money for something else (Guilds?)

Here's Gettysburg in Bureaucracy civic:



It will hit size 15 next turn; I don't think anyone else has a city larger than size 11 at the moment. (Yay for Hereditary Rule and Calendar!) I'd really like to get this city to size 16, where we can work the cows and wheat tiles, with nine cottage tiles and all five hill tiles [2 + 9 + 5 = 16]. We'd have just enough food surplus to make that work, and with that tile configuration Gettysburg would produce [19 base] 33 shields per turn along with 78 base commerce - that's 70 beakers and 58 gold each turn. Good stuff there! Keep producing 5XP knights every three turns, and be ready to steamroll anyone who gets in our way.

Most importantly, we could go through and update our tech information thanks to plako's discovery of Alphabet. Here's what we can see on the F4 Tech screen:



Now tech trading may be turned off, so we can't directly see what teams have and don't have in the "Wants" column. However, because the game is kind enough to provide the "Can Research" column, we can work backwards and figure out exactly what each team has and doesn't have! I'll start with plako as an example, and work down the tech tree from top to bottom:

- plako "Can Research" Aesthetics, so he lacks anything beyond that at the top of the tree. No Drama, Literature, etc.

- plako does not have Calendar. However, this does mean that he has Mathematics, otherwise Calendar couldn't appear as a tech to be researched. And since he has Math, and Construction doesn't appear, plako must have Construction tech as well.

- Paper appears as a tech that can be researched. We can work backwards from this, and deduce that plako has Currency (which we knew due to our gold trades), Code of Laws, and Civil Service. They told us before that they were going to be lightbulbing CS with a Great Merchant, which they evidently did successfully.

- In the central Monk part of the tree, plako is still missing Meditation and Monotheism. This means that he took the Polytheism -> Priesthood -> Monarchy -> Feudalism path through this part of the tree, which makes sense because it's the cheapest route.

- On the bottom of the tree, plako has Metal Casting, but not Machinery or Iron Working. And of course they skipped Horseback Riding tech as well, the dead-end tech that so many players pass up on. (In a MP game, that's probably an oversight!)

That allowed me to enter all this info into an Excel table, and update my ancient spreadsheet from early in the game with the correct info. But before I get into posting that, plako emailed me this morning the tech info for ALL of the teams:

Dear Killer angels,

I hastly collected the techs and hopefully I didn't miss many, but here they are:

Athlete - Can't trade: Meditation, HBR, IW, Calendar, Monotheism Can research: Monarchy, Theo, CS, Aesthe, alpha, Philo, Compass, machinery
Jowy - Can't trade: Meditation, IW Can research: Poly, Monarchy, CS, Aesthe, Alpha, Calendar, curency. philo, HBR, MC, Compass
Nakor -Can't trade: Medi, Mono, IW Can research: Theo, Aesthe, Alpha, calendar, Philo, paper, HBR, compass, Machinery
slaze -Can't trade: Mono Can research: Medi, Theo, CS, Aesthe, Alpha, Calendar, Currency, HBR, IW, MC, Construction
Speaker/Sullla - Can't trade: Mono, Calendar, HBR, IW Can research: Medi, Feud, Theo, Aesth, alpha, paper, compass, machinery
Dantski - Can't trade: Aest, HBR, IW Can research: Medi, Literacy, Dram, Feud, CS, Alpha, Calendar, Masonry, MC, Compass
Whosit - Can't trade: Medi, Mono, Aesth, IW Can research: Monarchy, Drama, theo, Music, CS, alpha, Calendar, philo, archery, HBR, MC, Compass

I also discussed with slaze and he is going to lose important city next turn. Whosit has a stack of 11 Praets+4 cats+1 axe at the gates of the Tiwanaku. He has better chances to stop Whosit before 2nd city is taken, but he was very worried about Kathlete joining the war. He also mentioned that he'll get Construction next turn.

We're almost certain to raze Alzoc III (Roman city) this turn.

Best regards,
plako

Wow, we'll get to the Whosit/slaze stuff in a minute. After 20 minutes of fiddling around with this knowledge, I produced this table:



Here's the Excel file if you want to download and check it out: http://www.cassiopeiathedog.net/Images/P...2techs.xls

Observations:

- Jowy is in just as much trouble as we expected. No Horseback Riding, no Metal Casting, no Monarchy. He's still forced to field an army of phalanxes, chariots, and catapults. That's not going to be enough (unless he gets gifted a ton of units from someone else).

- Dantski has made some weird tech choices. He never researched Masonry, but he did go for Aesthetics - not sure what that tech really does to help him. Maybe he wants one of the wonders there (???) He does have Code of Laws, Currency, and a surprising HBR tech, but he doesn't have Calendar or Metal Casting. Dantski is still a little ways away from hitting the Medieval era.

- Kathlete has surprisingly less tech than I expected! All of the Ancient age techs, and most of the Classical ones that we've been researching, but with some critical tech gaps. No Civil Service yet (although they're probably going after it now) and no Monarchy tech?!?! Seriously, huh? That's a huge mistake, they should have been running Hereditary Rule for ages with their large territorial empire.

Best of all, Kathlete has to have a huge army of outdated units. No longbows (Feudalism), no crossbows (Machinery), no maces. I expect that they probably have a huge horse archer and catapult swarm. Makes me feel better about slaze's chances if they attack, because longbows will do a good job of stopping that, or at least slowing down the horse archers to a crawl.

- At least, I *WAS* feeling good about slaze until I saw his own tech list. Holy moley, what a mess! Yeah, he's got Feudalism, so nice work there. But otherwise... urp. No Calendar, no Currency, no Metal Casting, no Horseback Riding, no Iron Working, no Construction!!! Jeez man, how were you planning on defending again?!? We always suspected that slaze was a bit of a paper tiger, all cities/expansion and nothing to back it up. Well - it kind of looks like that's true. Umm, I really hope he's able to survive and drag out this war.

The fact that 11 Praetorians and 4 catapults pose a major threat just reinforce this suspicion. Speaker and I would laugh that one off, unless we had two or three other enemy armies invading simultaneously. We're only four turns away from MACES, after all...

- Whosit is doing about average so far, albeit with some bizarre tech holes. No Archery tech is really weird at this stage of the game - huh? He's got a lot of upper-tree techs (Aesthetics and Literature) for Great Library purposes, which means some holes elsewhere on the tree: no Calendar, no Horseback Riding, no Metal Casting... and no Monarchy??? Man, what's with these other teams! Don't they all know how incredible Hereditary Rule is in this style of game? At least now we know why so few teams are running HR civic - they don't have Monarchy tech researched!

- Nakor, on the other hand, is doing just as well as we expected on tech. He really is the GNP kingpin of their team; we kind of guesstimated that from the bar graphs, but it's nice to have confirmation. He's missing Calendar and Horseback Riding, but he's up Feudalism on us. We'll have to keep an eye on his tech, I expect him to be the leader in the other alliance going forward, especially since Kathlete and Whosit look like they're about to tie themselves up in warfare.

- plako is doing surprisingly well himself! He skipped the stuff he didn't need (Calendar, Iron Working, Horseback Riding) and grabbed the stuff he did. All the way up to Civil Service and Feudalism, thanks to that well-played Merchant lightbulb. Unfortunately plako's economy has a limit to it moving forward, since it's all based around Great Lighthouse trade routes. Without more cottages, it's unlikely he can keep this going forever. But in the short run, great work dude!

Now Speaker and I need to process this information and decide how it changes our strategy, if at all. But now we know, and knowing is half the battle, eh?

[Sullla]

Speaker, do we need to do anything else on our turn? We should probably end it if not. I wasn't sure if you still wanted to do anything else, I'm finished.

Wanted to send this back to plako:

Dear plako and Broker,

Thanks again for passing along that tech information to us! I'm attaching an Excel spreadsheet with the results, which should let you know exactly what every team has and doesn't have. (Let me know if you don't have Excel and can't open the file.) You can see whether we got your team right as a test for accuracy!

Maybe once a week we can update the chart, something like every 5 or so turns, and keep sharing the information back and forth. How would that sound?

You can see that Whosit does not have Horseback Riding, Metal Casting, or Monarchy - so no longbows, no crossbows, and no maces. Looks like Praetorians and catapults are the worst you'll have to face for the time being. Good luck, let us know how it goes!

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

And a quick message to slaze:

Dear slaze of IKZ,

We saw the war declaration from Rome, and heard from plako that Whosit has a large force near Tiwanaku. As far as Kathlete goes, we know from looking at what techs they have that their attack force doesn't have any longbows (no Feudalism), no crossbows (no Machinery), and no maces. Our guess is that Kathlete has lots of horse archers and catapults, so be aware of what they may be bringing! Perhaps some spears (along with those longbows) might be helpful.

We are gearing up to hit the Jowy/Kathlete front in the next 10-12 turns. If we can help you by trading any extra happy/health resources (we have some extra Calendar ones), please don't hesitate to ask.

Good luck!
Sullla
The Killer Angels

slaze did another half-dozen whippings on his turn, so he's going to have longbows everywhere. This is looking pretty good for us, if Whosit and Kathlete slow down slaze, at the cost of heavy slogging with major losses.

[Speaker]

I managed to log in and end our turn on my laptop at work.