RBP3 [SPOILERS] Hannibal of Byzantium (Bobchillingworth, ManiaMuse & SleepingMoogle)

[SleepingMoogle]

Good news everyone!

The barb warrior did attack the Citadel and was prompty clubbed over the head. The odds did come through for us this time (and at 99,5%, they had better)

Other major news: Rome and Portugal are now going at it. Team sSs sent a message indicating that Portugal jumped a newly settled town, however their invading army got annihilated in return (unit losses were about 3:1 in Rome's favor). Rome is now counterattacking while borrowing units from the Incans to defend their cities.

Also, not Egypt, but England has declared war on France! Krill may of course always jump in eventually (he switched to Organized religion this turn, adopting Hinduism as his religion), but either way France may be in trouble.



The Citadel finished the Settler this turn and moved back to working cottages, with a notable difference. Currently he is on the iron tile, set to found our fourth city on T78.

Feros reached size 4 this turn and is now working the Stone. The added production means Barracks are only a few turns away.

Eden will grow to size 3, and its third cottage next turn. It's nicely on the way to becoming a solid commerce city.

We currently have one chariot on the Eden Prime tile and another fairly close to Feros. Hopefully the next barb showing up at our border will not generate that much of a scare.. speaking of which, the Normandy started scouting again and revealed that India already have an Aquaduct built at Karaoke Tuesday. It's a fairly sure sign they're making a bid for the Hanging Gardens, and I doubt with Stone and the Industrious trait anyone will be stopping them..

[Bobchillingworth]

Little bit of diplo news:



Portugal called us up, we talked in vague terms about possible future trading. Not surprisingly they wanted to get a NAP with us, which I politely refused. They seem to have confirmed that Krill (well maybe someone else, but I suspect him) is fully dictating their tech path and who they can trade with. I'm trying to spread the seeds of discontent among the Hydra members about how little freedom they really have, and I think I've had some success, but I should start being more careful to require confidentiality for chats, lest everyone see that I'm basically running the same tactic on everyone. My words may be true, but I don't want everyone comparing notes and seeing that I'm trying to convince all of them to ditch Krill and tech with us. Which I am.


If France can hang on and get to Feudalism, then great. If they can't, then less great, but we can always have Maya or ourselves research it. And Neither England or France will be expanding toward us for a while now, which is nice. Also if France dies, we will officially have by far the best and most land to ourselves on the map, which is wonderful except that I'm pretty awful at exploiting that sort of circumstance. So hopefully you two have ideas




Oh yeah and I signed up for PBEM 3 both because, eh why not, and also because most (all?) of us joining are already allies by various degrees in this game. So it'll be interesting to see how everyone acts now that we're all on opposite sides. And probably the less I say about my thoughts for that game in this thread the better I'm considering this game the priority, so if limited RL time forces me to have to delay some diplo correspondence, it'll be for the PBEM.

[Bobchillingworth]

Oh wow, I forget what the Agincourt is doing right now, but France is offering a scheme to gift us 4 workers if it looks like the end is neigh for them, so keep it in their territory, please.

[SleepingMoogle]

I saw that mail, yeah.. more Workers are of course greatly welcomed. Let's hope that France can stay alive first though.. I wouldn't mind having a buffer between ourselves and Egypt/England.

Anyway, we'll need Monarchy before we can start on Feudalism research. Incans are still slated to research Monotheism after they finish Archery, so it'll be a while before anyone can get the tech.

With Rome at war as well now, we may actually want to research Mathematics if they aren't, since it's an important tech that is currently still absent from our list.

[Bobchillingworth]

Yeah we should def. go for maths now, followed by hed rule -> Feudalism if France is dead/doomed & Maya can't take it.

[Bobchillingworth]

Damn, Krill declared on France too. Predictable, but still unfortunate. I offered them OB, I say that we should offer masonry too so that they can get walls, but didn't want to do so without a consensus.

Going to be tricky getting those 4 workers without Krill or England declaring on us to take them back- at least, difficult with France's current worker gifting scheme. It would be much easier for them to just march them to our chariot and declare so we can capture them. I'll gently suggest that to him; I don't want to encourage him to give up, but 4 workers could be a really major break for us.



Portugal is giving us directions to meet aztec and Ottos; sounds like we we can meet them if we keep following India's roads SW.

[Bobchillingworth]

I sent emails to India and France; to India I asked for assistance with meeting Ottos and Aztec, and let them know about France's war with England & Egypt. India had earlier expressed shock that France had even been left out of the CAN and said they found it "troubling"; one can only imagine that word of the present conflict must then be entirely horrifying. As I've noted before, since I have (seemingly) succeeded in my #1 objective of getting someone(s) to help tech us to guilds, I'm now moving on to getting as many potential tech partners lined up as possible (working on Portugal presently, with some success- check our our chats), and on breaking the CAN/Hydra apart by spreading (entirely reasonable) distrust of Krill and to a lesser extent England.

Uh, since I haven't really been consulting you guys about most of our diplomatic strategy let me know if I'm taking us off the deep end somewhere



For France I offered sympathies for their present situation and suggested a more feasible way of getting us those 4 workers that doesn't involve some city-gifting nonsense.



And hey, for the phantom lurkers I've included below the two emails I sent out to France & India so you can see what my usual missives look like! Am I a genius with words or what?


To India

We have a few (confidential) items for you.


First, regarding contacts- the Portuguese have informed us that scouting units from both the Aztec and Ottoman empires are either in or near your borders, apparently trying to make make contact with Babylon and my civ. I'd certainly like to meet both of them, and would greatly appreciate any assistance in this regard. As I understand it I can reach Ruff in a turn or two by sending the Normandy SW along your roads, and then find the Ottomans soon after, but I'm basing that on directions from Mukha which were second or third-hand. On a related note, if you would like assistance in reaching other civs just let us know & we'll be happy to help however we can.


About the first global conflict, Rome vs. Portugal- just a heads-up that we'll be staying out of this one for the most part, but Rome is a friend, and if things take a turn for the worse for them we may end up having to send them some aid. I don't know what your relations are like with Portugal, or what your policies are regarding assisting them / other CANaanites, but it is a possiblity we could find ourselves in the (hopefully very unlikely) situation of both of us gifting troops to help fight each others allies via proxy. We should be honest & upfront with each other about any plans to send troops into that conflict, so that we can avoid or at least mitigate the scenario I've described.


For the second, and more important, global conflict, I'm not sure how much you know about this, but both England and Egypt have declared war on France. The attack is rather predictable, and I had mentioned in chat that I foresaw this coming a while ago. At the time you noted that it would be troubling if Krill & England were so willing to turn on a supposed fellow CAN member, and I can confirm from chats / emails with Morgan of France that the situation is most troubling indeed. It seems that England and Egypt deliberately lead France on with false promises of tech trading and cooperation while never intending to fulfill their pledges; yet at the same time they were all too eager to claim France as a CAN member, presumably for recruiting and morale purposes. As a result France was left technologically weak and befit of NAPs so that their supposed "allies" could most easily pick them apart & split the spoils. I can confirm all of this with my various saved chat logs and other correspondence with France, but while they remain in the game I would need their consent first before I could forward most of it on to you; several of my conversations with Morgan are protected by confidentiality agreements.

As France was my initial go-to guy for tech feudalism, and their situation seems rather dire, I think it would be obviously prudent for either Maya or my civ to research the tech instead; currently we (byz) will be going for maths, but I think we should have our hands free after that. This is one of the subjects that we need to discuss with Maya in group chat, but as noted in that email thread, there's no urgent immediate need.


On a final note, how does a blanket "do not share conversations/chats/emails/correspondence between India and Byzantium with third parties unless explicitly allowed" non-disclosure arrangement sound? I don't like including hectoring secrecy reminders in all my chats / emails, but given the very sensitive nature of most of what our civs have discussed, it's probably necessary for both of us.


For the Specter Council,

-Bobchillingworth

To France

Hey,


I see that Krill has declared on you as well, as expected.

We would much rather your civ survive than be crushed by your craven CAN neighbors, and will do what we can to assist you. As you have surmised yourselves, from what we've gathered by discussing with various other civs, your situation is nothing less than the product of a grand betrayal, long orchestrated by at least Krill and England (and we have heard, but not confirmed, possible HRE involvement as well). It seems that those elements in the CAN sought to lead your civ on with offers of tech cooperation, with no intent of ever following through; at the same time, they used your supposed "membership" in the CAN to make the alliance look strong in recruiting and retaining other civilizations. I'm sorry to say that this ruse seems to have been at least partially successful. One CAN member, India, expressed shock to us that your civ was even ever shut out of the trading loop- they were still under the impression that you belonged to the CAN.

If the situation does appear so dire for you civilization that survival is impossible, then we will gladly accept a gift of workers, rather than they be deleted or, far worse, fall into the hands of the enemy. I have offered OB in-game, but there is one potential issue with your plan to gift the workers- Krill or England could easily attack our chariot after you gift the workers & city, stealing them back. As I think neither England nor Egypt is aware of our chariot's present location, a possible alternative would be for you to march the workers over to our chariot, declare war, and let us capture them. If you do go this route, please avoid noting the war declaration in the tech thread, so that your intent isn't made public. If you declare war on us, we may also be able to move our chariot into your lands to capture your cities and raze them, should you have no hope of holding on to them- however, this would force my civ to move 4 workers through the fog on a long, barb-infested journey back home, so that may not be ideal. If you have a screen cap of the theatre of war I'd appreciate seeing it, if you don't mind sharing, as well as any information on what sort of forces England and Egypt are bringing. Those two civs top our list of targets, and any insight to the current tactical situation would be invaluable.

As I noted before, my civ will keep any shared information entirely confidential; we request that you do the same for our correspondence, including this email.

As you can see, the reason I pretty much never post chats / emails in this thread for lurkers is because they tend to be kind of cumbersome. Plus no lurkers ever seem to comment with any frequency. But if someone does read this, I figure they might appreciate a sample of what a lot of my diplo writing looks like (well my emails anyway, chats tend to be a lot more informal and Mass Effect-related )

[ManiaMuse]

Cool, sounds great to me. The only worrying thing about trying to get hold of the workers is that it may cause Krill to pick us as his next target, do we really thing we can declare war on France without Krill asking questions why? I guess we could just say we were being opportunistic.

[SoV]

:wink2:

Phantom lurker here :D I read your thread from time to time, and I appreciate your updates

It is just so hard to keep track of all threads and comment while still making comments spoiler free, so that's why I am mostly silent.

Just wanted to thank you for the great posts!

[Bobchillingworth]

Thanks for posting, SoV!



Hey the latest emails are already starting to pay off- looks like France will gift us 300 gold, in addition to the workers. That... will help us a great deal.


France, if you do die & then read this post- I, and I think the rest of the Specters as well, really do have every intention right now of burning England & Krill to the ground. How well we succeed, who can say. We've been trying to get together a coalition with the destruction of one or both of those civs as the goal for quite some time now- looks like we have a biter in India, at least.