RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

A couple shots from Turn 2 of the second Greek "war."

Notice the king and his royal guard are fleeing the burning husk of a city (Jowy loaded the city garrison onto the galley, rather than give us the experience, I guess).




Like Slaze said, Kathlete is defending the cities on our border with single archers. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[Sullla]

Yeah, it would be nice to go romping through those cities. Too bad we can't do so even if we wanted, thanks to the NAP we have with Kathlete until Turn 170. At the time that seemed like a great move... we never imagined that Greece would fold quite so fast! We declared war on Turn 161, and by the end of Turn 163, mainland Greece was completely gone. Take a look:



Out of Jowy's 8 cities, we captured 4, Kathlete was gifted 2, we razed 1, and there remains one last offshore city on the northwest island. Everybody renamed Jowy's cities too with their respective naming themes, so Greece has practically disappeared from the record books. We took a total of eight Greek cities between our two wars:

Spartansburg
Fort Henry (Thebes #1)
St. Albans (Argos #1)
Atlanta (Athens)
Spotslyvania (Corinth)
The Wilderness (Thebes #2)
Chikamauga (Kassite)

Argos #2 was razed, of course...

Jowy whipped down all his cities that he couldn't defend out of spite - thanks a lot, dude! Well, they'll grow back soon enough. I was thinking about it earlier, and I realized that despite all the warring with our team, Jowy barely fought us at all. The early fighting consisted of Jowy's phalanxes walking around in circles pillaging, never trying to capture our cities. We had to attack Jowy, not vice versa. Then the attack with horse archers had extremely little combat either - we razed Sparta and threatened Athens, but Jowy never initiated combat that time either. Then this final war was mostly Jowy gifting away cities and units; outside of the bizarre suicide attack, essentially no combat took place. We lost a total of 1 horse archer to take 8 Greek cities! Yeah, I'm not quite sure how that happened either.

Cleaning up some diplomacy:

Fair enough. I'll dance the border dance with Athlete for now. Just whatever you do, don't set up a NAP with him while him and I are at war.

I'll send marble

Dear slaze of IKZ,

Thanks for understanding. We have already responded to Kathlete's email denying the NAP offer. We're going to run our units around Kathlete's western border, and maybe force him to do some whipping. If there's nothing but archers on defense when Turn 170 arrives, we might go ahead and start razing cities. (We had an NAP from much earlier with Kathlete that runs out in 7 turns. Never thought that Greece would collapse quite so quickly and allow us to potentially attack Ottoman cities.)

I made a request for marble in-game, if you don't mind.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

Here's the very short response to Kathlete:

Dear Rebel Alliance,

While we appreciate the goodwill sentiment contained in your last email, we've decided not to extend our Non-Aggression Pact at this current time. Best wishes.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

Responding to some lurker posts from earlier today,

Axiis and Darkmantle, you can pretty much see the shape of our postwar territory above. Just imagine the borders expanding out from each city! These four are actually planted in pretty good spots. Athens/Atlanta is a former capital, so it has double food resources (irrigated rice + clams) along with furs and some river grassland tiles. Weak production, but very good commerce - probably roughly comparable to Antietam, maybe a little stronger. Corinth/Spotslyvania only has a single sheep for food, but oodles of river grassland tiles and good production with iron + horses. It's pretty similar to Chancellorsville, probably a little weaker.

Thebes/The Wilderness is a dynamite commerce city: sheep + irrigated rice + sugar + grassland tiles everywhere. It has lots of forest tiles to chop too, so we can get it up and running pretty quick. Need to stand up culture though to dominate that border region; I think the first build will actually be a theatre (unfortunately all the food tiles are in the second-ring, so fast culture expansion is imperative). Kassite/Chikamauga is planned to be our Globe Theatre location: we get tons of food from center tile (+2), fish (+4), sugar (+2), and rice (+3) and three grassland farms (+3) = +14 food/turn at size 6. That's almost enough to draft every turn. And with no rivers here, the terrain isn't as strong for cottages.

We wouldn't have kept all these cities if we didn't like them! Should be just two more turns to eliminate Jowy, and then it's back to the Eternal Infrastructure Christmas.

[timmy827]

Chickamagua - I guess it's premature, but I'm looking forward to see the globe theater build plan. Also I should point out that it's the food surplus at size 5 that matters, although the "nearly one draft per turn" still stands.

[Sullla]

Yep, still waiting for our half of the turn timer to roll around to play our turn. Because Kathlete and Whosit insisted on not ending their turn yesterday, we all waited an extra 12 hours for last turn to end, and then another 12 hours before we can play this one. Fun stuff.

Speaker, if you see this, please leave the workers for me to move. Hopefully slaze will log in tonight and we can see if our marble trade went through before chopping any forests for Epic purposes. Thanks!

[Speaker]

Yep, still waiting for our half of the turn timer to roll around to play our turn. Because Kathlete and Whosit insisted on not ending their turn yesterday, we all waited an extra 12 hours for last turn to end, and then another 12 hours before we can play this one. Fun stuff.

Does Kathlete ever end his turn?

Speaker, if you see this, please leave the workers for me to move. Hopefully slaze will log in tonight and we can see if our marble trade went through before chopping any forests for Epic purposes. Thanks!

I set the workers up to both finish their chop this turn to coincide with the first turn of the Epic. You don't trust me?

[T-hawk]

Because Kathlete and Whosit insisted on not ending their turn yesterday, we all waited an extra 12 hours for last turn to end, and then another 12 hours before we can play this one. Fun stuff.

Sorry Sullla, but you don't have a leg to stand on for that complaint. You've intentionally played clock tricks yourself in this game.

Whosit is running the clock because he's currently preoccupied with RL travel and trying to keep the game to a pace that he and his substitutes can deal with. Sorry if that irritates you.

[Speaker]

Sorry Sullla, but you don't have a leg to stand on for that complaint. You've intentionally played clock tricks yourself in this game.

Whosit is running the clock because he's currently preoccupied with RL travel and trying to keep the game to a pace that he and his substitutes can deal with. Sorry if that irritates you.

I note that you are not defending Kathlete...

[Sullla]

With 3 hours left on the turn, slaze still has not logged into the game yet and accepted or denied our marble trade. Since we really need to know about that one way or another before moving our workers, it's quite a pain. I'll bring my laptop today and can play right down to the final minutes, but hopefully he'll log in soon and not make that necessary.

[Sullla]

Well it got down to the final hour of the turn, but slaze did log in and confirm the marble trade, so we were able to finish our own turn. Whew! This is why I don't like having to depend on other teams.

Speaker landed our maces at Jowy's last city earlier in the turn:



One archer on a hill, no cultural defenses, no walls - against a pair of maces. I'll take those odds...

Since Jowy will be gone in 2 turns, we need to ask plako if he wants this city:

Dear plako and Broker,

We have maces approaching Jowy's last city (defended by a single archer, heh) which is located on the island southwest of Pusan. Do you want us to raze the city, or capture and gift it to your team? Mycenae is on the hill tile 4 southwest and 4 west of Pusan, next to 2 wines, fish, and cattle. Let us know whichever you prefer.

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

I would probably raze and replace to get more cities on that island (you could squeeze in three of them by redistributing the food resources, plus a fourth by the crab/copper in the east) but we'll do whatever they prefer.

The marble allows us to do a nifty Heroic Epic:


ONE TURN, BABY!!! Kudos to Speaker for setting up the two forest chops, and getting the timing perfect for this turn. That was all his work. Didn't think our combat engineers would be chopping out wonders while the war was still going on, heh. Now St. Albans has time to squeeze out a Jewish missionary for Chikamauga before starting Forbidden Palace in 3 turns. And yes, we're well aware that both the missionary and FP are a waste of Heroic Epic production! Just bear with it for a couple of turns as we get our new conquests up and running.



Here is the future enemy, Kathlete. All archers in the western cities, just as slaze said. If there are still archers here in a half-dozen turns, we might think about attacking and razing. Probably not - a period of buildup and recovery seems like just the ticket right now - but it's possible.

Speaker, I have swapped us over to Drama research and off of Music temporarily. The short explanation is that by going Drama first, we save about 100 beakers, and we discover Music 1 turn later. Of course, if that one turn costs us the Great Artist, Speaker can and will roast me alive!

Long explanation: we get about 50 beakers of overflow this turn from Literature. Music costs 897 beakers and Drama costs exactly half that, 448 beakers. Our civ produces 252 base beakers right now, so the next few turns look like this:

T164: 253 * 1.2 = 303 + 52 overflow = 355 beakers
T165: 303 beakers + 355 (last turn) = 658 beakers [Drama done, overflow 210]
T166: 253 * 1.4 = 354 + 210 overflow = 564 beakers
T167: 354 beakers + 564 (last turn) = 918 beakers [Music done, overflow 21]
T168: Discover Music

If we research the techs in the opposite order:

T164: 253 * 1.2 = 303 + 52 overflow = 355 beakers
T165: 303 + 355 (last turn) = 658 beakers
T166: 303 + 656 (last turn) = 959 beakers [Music done, overflow 62]
T167: 303 + 62 = 365 beakers
T168: Drama still not finished

We end up coming out a little over 100 beakers ahead by going Drama first. That wouldn't be enough to risk losing the Music Great Artist, except that we also discover Drama 3 turns sooner, and I want to chop out some theatres in the recent Greek cities to get their culture going ASAP, especially those close to the Ottoman border. But even more importantly, plako has updated our tech info, and there's zero chance of anyone beating us to Music:

Hi,

Updates for techs (I hope I got all right):

Ottomans: Feudalism
HRE: Paper
Rome: Machinery+Archery
Mali: Civil Service
Jowy - I didn't bother with this [Sullla editorial: LOL]

For some reason Rome is going for Drama now (5 turns). I can't understand this. Is he going to build theatres and use culture slider for happiness and not bother with Monarchy.

Regards,
plako

So I don't see how anyone's gonna beat us to Music, not unless they pop a Great Artist themselves and use it to discover Music... which seems unlikely. Let it be on my head if we don't get the Great Artist!

Finally, the sour grapes response from Kathlete:

Hello Killer Angels,

While I hope your refusal to extend our peaceful relations does not
lead to war I understand it might so don't mind me while I stock my
cities full of units. I'd just like to remind you of our existing NAP
and that according to our agreement you can not join the Inca against
me until T171. See below for your reference.

Thanks,
Athlete
The Rebel Alliance

Ooooh, we're so scared of your archers! :neenernee Maybe we should forward this email to slaze, he'd probably get a kick out of it. I'll see what Speaker thinks of that.

EDIT: Just realized, if it truly takes Whosit 5 turns to research Drama, he's getting only 75 base beakers per turn. We get 250 base beakers/turn. Wow. That's... good news!

[Speaker]

That email from Kathlete made me chuckle as well. He can feel free to build a bunch of classical era units over the next 10-15 turns. We'll finish building Courthouses, Markets, Grocers, Theatres, and our small wonders.