RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Ashain]

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

Best regards,
plako

Does this mean that they've declared on Whosit as well?

EDIT: Nevermind, answered my own question with the public thread.

[antisocialmunky]

Wow, I love your tech snooping magic.

[Sullla]

What do you know, a new turn is up. And all around the world, the feeces are hitting the fan!



That sign marks the Roman city of Alzoc III, or where it used to sit anyway, since plako razed it to the ground after declaring war! Note that we don't get an event notice of this, since we didn't have visibility on the center tile of Alzoc. But we could see the city disappear from Whosit's city list, and of course plako told us where he was going to attack. CivStats confirmed the razed city.

We're still early on Turn 152; we expect slaze to lose a city sometime on this turn. Still watching and waiting there. We offered to trade slaze our stone resource for cheap walls, hopefully he'll take that and get some use out of it. Walls + longbows = lots of dead horse archers.

Things are a little less crazy in our corner of the world. We did find a really nice spot for a city on the inner island:


Silver, dyes, and whales are worth +5 happy faces in our cities! Yeah, this is a pretty important spot... Hopefully it should be pretty secure, with our borders right across the water. We want to plant a city here and one on the outer island at the crabs/marble location as soon as we deal with Jowy.

Speaking of that, we spent some time earlier this evening trying to work out the details of how to execute a short, decisive war with Jowy. We think we can get something like 6-8 maces ready to go by Turn 160, and with Jowy nowhere remotely close to Feudalism, or even Horseback Riding, maces vs. phalanxes and archers should just be a knife through butter. We'll probably try to upgrade one or two of our Shock axes to maces (at a cool 125 gold each); it's kind of a waste of money, but then again the value of having a Shock mace for a top of stack defender can't be undervalued either. Speaker is shuffling some units around and getting ready for the fireworks.

Feudalism is due in 3 turns at break-even rate, and then it looks like Guilds will take 6 turns after that. Along with our Machinery lightbulb, that's quite a lot of military power due to arrive in the next 10 turns.



Demographics looking pretty good at the moment. I'll probably try to do some more with diplomacy tomorrow.

[Sullla]

Despite the wars, turns continue to move surprisingly fast. We're already on to the next turn, T153. I was thinking about this yesterday, wondering why it was possible for us to do so much more statistical analysis during the Apolyton Demogame, and it hit me that the whole thing was the speed of the game. The Apolyton game used a 48-hour turn timer, and two of the teams (Templars/Imperio) would *NEVER* end their turns, so we always had to wait about 60 hours of real-world time for the next turn to roll over. That allowed me to play a turn, type it up, then log in the next day and fool around with numbers, since nothing would have changed in the game. RBPB2 just moves so much faster, by the time I wake up the next day there's nearly always another turn up and ready to go - and that's a very good thing! Kudos to the other players.

Let me provide a shot of our northern cities:



First note that we've got visibility on Nakor's research. Neat, eh? I'm not entirely sure why he's going for Alphabet, guess he wanted to see what techs we had. Or possibly he wants to build Research somewhere (?)

I wanted to illustrate a couple things in the Spartansburg, St. Albans, Fort Henry triangle. After 30 turns of building, we're now done with infrastructure and all of the cities are on military duty now. Oh, doesn't look like that? Well, Spartansburg and Fort Henry are growing their population at the max possible rate for future maceman whips. Spartansburg gets assigned to an axeman (having just finished a barracks) which will magically get converted into a mace after we discover Machinery. Fort Heny puts its minimal shields into a future courthouse for now, then it will swap to mace and double-whip. We think we can get a pair of maces out of both cities via whipping, since they both have some nice food surpluses.

A further expected breakdown of what we can do in terms of maces in the next 5-10 turns:

- St. Albans: 2 maces (T158, T162 - I think)
- Spartansburg: 2 maces (T156, T158 - double whips)
- Fort Henry: 2 maces (T156, T158 - double whips)
- Chancellorsville: 1 mace (T156 or T157, one whip)
- Fredericksville: 1 mace (T156 or T157, one whip)
- Antietam/Hampton Roads: ??? (what do we want to do here?)
- 2 Shock axes upgrades (250g, T157 or T158 )
- 2 Great General axe upgrades (free!)

That gets us close to a dozen maces by Turn 160, unless I miss my count. We're already building horse archers in decent numbers for some mobility, and we have a lot of catapults and axemen left over from the previous round of wars. (The axes with no experience can be left behind as garrisons in our old and safe core cities.) A sudden buildup will give little warning on the Power chart, so hopefully we'll have some success when we move to engage Jowy. Unless he would be gifted a massive amount of units from someone else, I don't think he'll be able to hold out.

Looking at a couple of these cities in a little more detail:


St. Albans quite accidentally is in a beautiful setup for unit micro! It winds up at 49/50 shields next turn on the horse archer build, then overflows 20 full shields into a maceman on the following turn when we lightbulb Machinery! This is one city where we will *NOT* be whipping, because we want to emphasize food and production, growing to a large size ASAP.

As such, I drew in the future tile output here once the city is fully developed. Yes, the main reason we're going to Guilds is for knights and grocers, however the value of that extra shield for workshops shouldn't be entirely overlooked either! Ultimately, we'll want to add six more farms and six more workshops for St. Albans, and our workers can get started right now thanks to having Civil Service to spread irrigation. At size 21, St. Albans could produce 30 base shields: that's 37/turn with forge, 67/turn with Heroic Epic, and 90/turn with factory and power plant. With Biology tech for better farms, we could add more workshops and go well over 100 shields per turn. That would be getting the most out of a location that doesn't really have particularly great terrain!



Meanwhile, Fort Henry looks nothing like the former Thebes. +6 food surplus, working five cottages, 16 beakers and 16 gold per turn. Best of all, we can abuse this city for a pair of free maces and regrow back onto more cottages in relative ease. I'm really, really happy with how this junk city has turned out.

Last, I'll post the GNP graph from the current turn:



We still don't "look" dominant in the GNP rankings, because Nakor and slaze and Kathlete keep spiking up with their single turns of 100% research to speed along to particular techs. But the India purple line represents 40% or 50% research, always self-sustainable, and it's starting to nudge up against the tops of those 100% spikes. Hopefully we can conceal our research strength again by overrunning Jowy (increasing our costs, and lowering our GNP number temporarily down into the pack) and eventually reach a lead too great for anyone else to catch up, before they know what's happened. Well, that's the goal, anyway!

Also, check out poor Jowy. Remember when I said that accepting peace with us before was simply equal to signing his own longterm death warrant? The proof is in the GNP graph...

[Sullla]

Wow, what's up with this forum? There's always like 12 people viewing, but hardly any of the other teams seem to be posting right now. Either the other teams are too busy with war and war preparations, or we're about to get hit by some massive sneak attack and no one can talk to Speaker and me about it.

slaze looks like he lost his city of Tiwanaku lost turn on CivStats, as was predicted in our email correspondance. Then slaze popped off another 5 whips on his turn (!), this time possibly for catapults since we understand that he just discovered Construction tech. I'd love to post some pictures on this, but we have no map knowledge on anything over in that theatre of war, nothing on Kathlete or slaze cities. Too bad our early exploring warriors were killed moving through Whosit's territory, before they could reach the eastern side of the Donut!

Speaker, I'm done with my end of things for this turn. I'll leave the rest of the unit moves to you, so keep on shuffling stuff around in terms of preparing for war. I did notice one thing: we've got a 7XP Shock axe in Hampton Roads, and two 5XP Shock axes over near Spartansburg. If we're going to upgrade two of them to maces, let's upgrade the 7XP one. Probably should do a quick unit shuffle reversing the position of those two units.

I wanted to check in with plako, and then send off a group email:

Dear plako and Broker,

We saw that you were successful in razing Whosit's city of Alzoc III, so congratulations! How are things looking near your capital now that Nakor has also declared war?

This might be a good time to lean on Dantski for some support against Nakor. With Whosit and Kathlete fighting slaze, our team going to war shortly against Jowy, and you fighting Whosit and Nakor, he's never going to get a better chance than this to try and gain some territory. We've tried to make the same sales pitch before, but maybe you will have better luck!

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

And a short message on Espionage to the group:

Dear plako and Broker of Korea, Dantski of Romali, and slaze of IKZ,

Hey guys. There's been a distinct lack of group emails between all of us recently, so I thought we'd send something out to everyone. We had floated the idea separately with some of your teams of focusing espionage points on teams in the opposing alliance: plako and Broker against Whosit, slaze against Kathlete, and our own team against Nakor. (Dantski, I don't know what your espionage situation is, maybe you could let us know what works for you?) That way, so long as we were willing to pass emails back and forth, we'd always know what techs these teams were researching, and have a good picture of what to expect out of them.

Anyway, to make a long story short, our team has visibility on Nakor's research starting this turn, and wanted to let everyone know that he's researching... Alphabet, due in 1 turn. Interesting. If the rest of you have similar info, and would be willing to pass it around to our group, we'd certainly appreciate it.

Good luck in everyone's various military endeavors!
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Guess that's it for me until next turn. Later!

[timmy827]

I was thinking about this yesterday, wondering why it was possible for us to do so much more statistical analysis during the Apolyton Demogame, and it hit me that the whole thing was the speed of the game. The Apolyton game used a 48-hour turn timer, and two of the teams (Templars/Imperio) would *NEVER* end their turns, so we always had to wait about 60 hours of real-world time for the next turn to roll over. That allowed me to play a turn, type it up, then log in the next day and fool around with numbers, since nothing would have changed in the game.

Probably it also had something to do with the huge team size, especially with micro fanatics like T-Hawk and mostly-harmless...

Again I'm reminded of how odd this map is. St. Alban's is not exactly swimming in food, but its nearly all grassland which makes it better than quite a bit of places you see on a normal map script.

[Dr. Nomadic]

Sorry for the earlier spam, Sullla. I just couldn't resist sharing it.

As I commented earlier...wait did you guys already take Machinery with the free Great Engineer? Gotta love how great people can make or break your game sometimes, seriously. And it seems like war is breaking out everywhere again, nuts.

[Sullla]

There's one hour remaining on the current turn; Whosit posted that he needed to run the timer all the way down this turn, and that's in the process of taking place. We got quite a few emails in during the last 12 hours:

Dear Killer Angels,

We'd like to ask if the situation regarding a possible NAP or other pact has changed since last time we spoke.
We hope to hear from you soon.

Nakor for HRE

Any thoughts on this message, Speaker? I still think we're better off not signing an NAP here, so that their alliance at least has to consider the possibility of us attacking Nakor. (We might also think about razing that HRE city on the center island, if the opportunity presents itself.) Nor would Dantski look too favorably on us signing an agreement with Nakor, after we encouraged him not to do so.

No title or writer identified, but this came from slaze:

I can see his [Kathlete's] border hindu cities anyway. Lotta units, 4 prats 6+ cats 5+ axe 5-10 HA, 3 3 move galleys at my east coast. I've sent you this email before, but I'm going down. I don't think it was wise of you to sign a NAP with jowy. I may be able to hold of whosit, but in the first five turms I could easily lose 2-3 cities and maybe my northern army against athlete. Not lookin good but I'll keep you posted.

Actually, slaze didn't send us this message before; I checked the past couple email exchanges. Anyway, it certainly sounds like Kathlete's army is sitting on the border, ready to invade when Turn 155 arrives. It'll be nice to get confirmation that they aren't going for us in some crazy fashion.

As for slaze, well, obviously we don't want to see him go down, but I really have to wonder what he was thinking when he expanded out to 13 cities with very minimal defenses. Remember when he told us, "I am relying on NAPs to protect myself" or something like that? Not the greatest idea... Something like this was pretty inevitable, especially given that slaze had no Construction, no HBR, and no Feudalism until the last 5 turns.

A quick response:

Dear slaze of IKZ,

Very sorry to hear that your situation is looking rough. Just remember all the advantages that the defender has in this game, and how tough it is for horse archers, axes, and catapults to dig out entrenched longbows behind city defenses. Those cats will take *AGES* to drop the defenses of any city with walls - I think they only take away 4% per shot - so we hope you can get some good use out of that stone resource. And as we said before, feel free to request any of our excess happy resources that you need to combat slaving unhappiness.

We had more than 50 units in our territory earlier in the game and managed to survive. Here's hoping you can do the same. Once we finish cutting through the Jowy meat shield on our border, hopefully we can get Kathlete off your back.

Best wishes,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Honestly, it shouldn't be THAT tough for slaze to hold out, given that he has longbows and catapults. One longbow can kill any number of Ancient Age trash - those axes are meaningless, and even the Praetorians have losing odds. If he could turn this war into a brutal slog on both sides, what a boon it would be for us!

plako sent us this:

Dear Killer Angels,

There aren't much happening yet. We're on defensive poistion. HRE has only Longbow visible in a forest close by and Romans have ~10 Praets+ 1 cat + 4HAs that we pretty much know are in the area. Furthermore we've 2 triremes pillaging sea food, but Whosit gets MC in 2 turns so we had to retreat soon. Whosit could also try to kill our Triremes with Galleys sooner.

If I see Dantski online I'll talk with him.

Best regards,
plako

I don't see any need to respond yet, we'll reply when there's something interesting to say. The whole thing about pillaging seafood resources with triremes is pretty awesome - nice work, guys!

Finally, there were some more emails going around to the group of "Non-Rebels", ourselves and plako and Dantski. Mostly all about what techs the other teams are researching:

Kathlete was Feud in 68 last turn, t151 (slaze)

Kathlete has Feud in 67 turns. Whosit has held up some what. His foot soldiers are stopped in the hills and only some catapults moved into the hills this turn after curiously not moving last turn. Whosit threat can be stopped in cuzco, unless he threatens other cities. Will report later. Visibility into hindu Kath cities show buildup in most SEastern city, arranging forces to counter, will report later, (slaze)

Hi all,

I'll be focusing most of my espionage towards Whosit. Currently he is researching Metal Casting and gets it in 2 turns.
Nakor is probably going to bulb towards Liberalism. Philosophy seems the most natural 1st bulb that requires him to research Alphabet.

Best regards,
plako

It was cool to see some information cooperation going back and forth. Nakor should discover Alphabet this turn, and give us some insight into what's on deck next. New turn coming later this afternoon.

[Axiis]

Have you guys considered getting a catchier name for your power bloc than "non-rebels"? Because you should.

[Reagan]

Have you guys considered getting a catchier name for your power bloc than "non-rebels"? Because you should.

I propose "The Dream Team." Will they be:



or