RBP3 [SPOILERS] - Zara of the Ottomans

[Sockboy]

Turn rolled...

No MC prompt waiting for us at log in... We'll request MC and see whether we can get it, but for now lets assume we can't.

Worker mico done, we're ready to whip granaries in both Brythunia and Ophir next turn. Then we should work out which order to build libraries/hammams. I think that Brythunia should go Library->Hammam as it grows slower and won't have as much whip unhappyness. Ophir should probably go Hammam->Library as it'll grow like a weed and reach the happy cap relatively quickly (especially with upo whipping buildings). We might want to consider building the library first though if we need to run scientists early. We can always put a few more military units in the city to offset the unhappyness.

Diplowise, I like what's been sent out. We should probably also mention (to the lurkers) that we've got a hold of the terms and conditions of PAT membership. Most of it is pretty straightforward (even if it does look like it's been written by a lawyer), but I think the most interesting terms are these...

No obligations for mutual defense. While we want everyone to ensure the mutual safety of all PAT members, England does not believe it's fair to force you to defend your neighbor if it puts yourself at risk. Mutual defense is strongly encouraged.

So the spirit of the rule is help your neighbour, but there's no strict ruling to do so. If we can severely cripple one team they might be left out in the cold.

3) Outside tech trades
Any tech researched after Currency is finished cannot be traded to non-PAT members without at least majority approval.

This at least leaves us with at least a shot of getting some of the remaining techs this round (I'm thinking Calendar is really the only one we've got a realistic shot at, but it's nice to dream). Really though we're going to be in a pretty tough situation with WNA members not all having a level playing field in terms of tech availability.

[WarriorKnight]

This has potential:

Hey guys,

This email is mainly about the tech problem. India and I were talking and I think we have the beginnings of a plan.

Here is a relevant piece of information to understand the plan:

Great Merchant:

Currency
Banking
Economics
Corporation
Metal Casting
Code of Laws
Mining
Constitution
The Wheel
Alphabet (BTS)
Pottery
Sailing
Paper
Railroad
Industrialism
Monarchy
Civil Service
Guilds

That is the tech preference list for bulbing techs with a great merchant. I think you can probably see where this is going, but I'll go through the details.

HRE is due to complete CoL on t90(?). At the moment Babylon has offered to honour the trade of Currency to us, although I'm not sure if it's going to anyone else. If HRE could somehow convince Babylon to do a bilateral trade of CoL for currency that would be perfect. Currency comes in t92 last I heard from Babylon. Does HRE have metal casting and how likely is it that can you get it from Maya if you don't? It's above the techs we need in the tech prefernce list.

T93 both HRE and ourselves whip markets in our largest food surplus city and revolt to caste system and run as many merchants as possible. As neither of us have had a single great person yet eta for our first great merchants would be 17 turns running 2 or less with more. We hope to run at least 6 ourselves but no idea how quickly we can grow our cities at this point. We will starve the city if needs be.

The first tech on that list of tech preferences with us both having monarchy is Civil Service. One of us bulbs Civil Service hopefully around t100. To get everyone powering through techs I think it should be a priority so that everyone at least has the prerequisites for Civil Service for when we bulb it. So those techs need to be made a higher priority than Construction and Calendar. Meanwhile, Byzantium should tech Machinery (I noticed that you must have had MC was that self researched or from Maya?), we will tech feudalism. Aztecs? maybe should tech monarchy and any other tech required to get civil service, feudalism and guilds should be assigned so that they can all come in around t105. I know what you're thinking, why don't we just slow tech Civil Service starting today? But this way we can slow tech something else and still get CS.

After Civil service someone needs to tech paper. It's not an expensive tech. We could also try to arrange a bilateral with any friendly PAT members though this is unlikely. The only reason we need paper is that it becomes available with CS and it's above guilds in the tech preference list. So as soon as paper comes in whoever else ended up running merchants could then bulb Guilds, hopefully around t105-110.

Good aspects of this plan is that we get everything within a few turns of each other so there is very little warning for Byzantium's neighbours. I think Beaurocracy would be best for recovery for all the civs limited by their number of cities. I know some people here are aboslutely sick of war (ourselves included) so while this tech path has a powerful military goal it has very powerful developmental techs on the way for those who just want to build.

Let me know if you think this is feasible. As for ourselves we are now turning everything over to commerce.

Mukha
CBE

That's some solid ideas!

Couple of points:

- We discover CoL T89. Assuming Krill doesn't bulb the tech with a Prophet before that date (he didn't take Monarchy from England for this reason), I suppose, in theory, we could ask for both Currency and Metal Casting from Babylon and Maya respectively. We met each other relatively late, and haven't had the time to establish cordial relations, so I'm not sure how likely it would be (Portugal somehow manages to get all the techs... )

- Does one really need Market/Currency to be able to run Merchant specialists in Caste System? The way I see it, you just need to revolt and you can basically run as many Scientists/Merchants/Artists as you like. (provided you have the food)
If that is the case, then we will probably be able to run 3-4 merchants by T95.

- While looking at the little map Ottomans drew of the teams' locations, I couldn't help but notice Krill's Egypt sits a bit exposed, surrounded by a lot of non-PAT members: India to its north, Ottomans to its north east, Byz to its south and Portugal to its northwest. I suppose a lightning strike is out the question, but I think that a 3-4 pronged attack on Egypt should sufficiently cripple our opponents' prime supplier of gold.

That's all I can think of for now, more to come though...

Ilios - DIM

Of course, our current plan gets eliminated should we follow the plan. For instance, someone needs to give DIM MC so they can follow their part of the plan, and the only other team who could do it in a reasonable timeframe is us. Therefore DO NOT ASK MAYA FOR MC YET!

Otherwise, it's a solid plan, although has several potential points where things go wrong. I'm not sure how we could contribute to the plan, but I would like us to get our UU reasonably early so we can someone. This is still in planning though (which is why I haven't ended turn yet, need to know what we are doing).

Also, I think Natala should return and be a sentry to the S to help us be aware of a possible attack from the south. I don't want to be on the wrong end of an attack without a few turns notice.

[Sockboy]

Of course, our current plan gets eliminated should we follow the plan. For instance, someone needs to give DIM MC so they can follow their part of the plan, and the only other team who could do it in a reasonable timeframe is us. Therefore DO NOT ASK MAYA FOR MC YET!

Is there a reason more civs can't get on board generating Great Merchants once CoL hits? If we get another two great Merchants we (WNA) can bulb both Currency and Metal Casting, so we don't need to duplicate them. In the meantime, we (Ottomans) can still go ahead researching Construction by hand.

My only two issues with the plan is that it takes civs out of slavery which leaves them unable to quickly get units out in an emergency and if we end up running merchants for our first GP then we'll be late getting an academy up, or we give up on the GE from Aquilonia in the near future. TBH though I think these are pretty minor complaints and this is a great way for us to catch up!

- While looking at the little map Ottomans drew of the teams' locations, I couldn't help but notice Krill's Egypt sits a bit exposed, surrounded by a lot of non-PAT members: India to its north, Ottomans to its north east, Byz to its south and Portugal to its northwest. I suppose a lightning strike is out the question, but I think that a 3-4 pronged attack on Egypt should sufficiently cripple our opponents' prime supplier of gold.

Krill has managed to get himself a considerable amount of room by eliminating two direct neighbours (technically France is still in the game I guess). I'd say we're probably closest to Krill of the WNA teams, but India aren't really bordering them at present, and I suspect Portugal aren't all that close to Krill either. We'll really need to co-ordinate if we want to pull this off. I still think we're better off pillaging Carthage.

[WarriorKnight]

Well, seems that Byz may or may not be in but are acting as free agents that work for either side. That sucks. Rome has also been taken temporarily off the mailing list. So we have:

PAT:Egypt/Carthage/England/Babylon/Mali
Anti-PAT:AWTA/Portugal
both:Byz/Maya(?)/Rome/Inca

Ah well, latest message to them:

Well that sucks but anyways... (this is just heading out to those fully on board, I don't think it's wise to discuss tech otherwise). How much is Rome on board? Do you (Portugal) have a NAP with them?

There's little point heading to guilds now since someone needs to research machinery and no-one can do that ATM. We should still probably bulb CS since it's such a worthwhile tech and bulbing philosophy could be a good idea (although someone needs to have a GS soon if they want the religion).

We are ready to research anything since we are still saving gold. I'm leaning towards currency since that tech is valuable, although construction is needed by someone. We do need to try to get the next level of military techs relativly quickly otherwise PAT could get them and crush us. ATM it could go:

Ottoman:Currency
HRE:CoL->Metal Casting
India:Aesthetics->Construction
Portugal:Machinery or Feudalism (?)

Since India will have a monopoly on Aesthetics, is it worth chasing that side of the tree for Lit and Music? Ruff did say he could research Lit since he's saved gold for quite a bit, although he could just supply gold for the rest of us.

Enough Talking!
WarriorKnight of A4

[Sockboy]

Does this mean we should ask Maya for MC? If we're not needed to tech it we may as well ask, the worst they can do is say no... Well technically they could declare on us as well, but that's highly unlikely

Losing Rome/Inca isn't a massive deal, I can't see them teching anywhere very quickly and better they act as free agents than war machines for PAT. But losing Byz and Maya hurt a lot. Hopefully we can still get one(both) of them onside. Who's been in closest contact with them? India? I wonder if it's still worthwhile trying to talk Byz round, with their help we can get to Cataphracts pretty quickly, which I thought would be a major goal for them. Without their help I can't see anyone trading them Guilds...

Do we have any numbers on tech pace from the other teams, or is everything still in too much flux? It really would help knowing how quickly teams can tech the techs we're talking about here as well as the relative tech strength of the other teams.

I don't think we should entirely give up on the GM bulbs, they're the most useful bulb line at the moment, since it's easy to run Merchants and Compass and Optics block a lot of the scientist path. Could we bulb machinery with a GE?

[Sockboy]

Turn 87 rolled.

I've performed the two granary whips, so that's the score decrease for us. It drops us slightly in the demog rankings, but we're still in the top 4 for the important ones. With the exception of soldiers were we are in 6th place. Our soon to be finished HA should help us out there. I'm not sure who's leading GNP but they've got an enormous lead of around 25 on us. From the Graphs it doesn't look like it's DIM I think they've chosen food rich tiles for growth at the moment, maybe it's Babylon?

The Numidian Cavalry has started to move around to Krill's borders, we might be able to shuffle the worker guard axe into Zingara and send Belit over to say hi to Krill. If we don't do it this turn we should probably consider it for next turn. Also, What do we want to do with the HAs which will be produced in the next 10 turns or so, do we scout with them, or replace the chariots and send the chariots out to go look around?

Oh and one barb warrior is threatening our gold tile again. The chariot should probably cover the tile this turn I think, else we'll be attacking across river and uphill...

According to the diplo earlier a few pages back, Calendar is due in next turn. We've got two workers ready to hook up the Spices, assuming we get it. I've worked out what I want the workers to do if for some reason calendar doesn't arrive next turn, so they're still available the turn after, but if we can't get it from the Mayans then I'll have work something else out... And it'll be another tech to add to the list...

Techwise, according to current earnings, if we go for:
Construction : 8 turns of research and 4 turns of saving : Due t99
Currency : 9 turns of research and 6 turns of saving : Due t102
Metal Casting: 10 turns of research and 7 turns of saving : Due t104

I think we can shave a couple of turns off most of these with libraries and growth. But that's the kind of timeline we're looking at. Still not interested in bulbing Currency or MC?

[WarriorKnight]

Could we bulb machinery with a GE?

We could, but by the time we get it, someone probably could have already researched it. A GE probably couldn't help our bulb plan much (which is good, let's us rush a wonder)

I've performed the two granary whips, so that's the score decrease for us. It drops us slightly in the demog rankings, but we're still in the top 4 for the important ones. With the exception of soldiers were we are in 6th place. Our soon to be finished HA should help us out there. I'm not sure who's leading GNP but they've got an enormous lead of around 25 on us. From the Graphs it doesn't look like it's DIM I think they've chosen food rich tiles for growth at the moment, maybe it's Babylon?

You what?!? Now we're 4th place, that's not good enough.

Nah, I think Carthage turned research back on. It's nice to see that DIM are beating us in GNP though (gives us some hope, although Krill got another prophet this turn).

we might be able to shuffle the worker guard axe into Zingara and send Belit over to say hi to Krill.

I wouldn't send our medic unit as a scout. I'm probably going to send Natala who will act as a fogbuster against any enemy units for the next several turns.

Also, What do we want to do with the HAs which will be produced in the next 10 turns or so, do we scout with them, or replace the chariots and send the chariots out to go look around?

Scouting??? We have practically all of the nearby land on the CAN map. I think I would want to keep our precious HA's nearby in case PAT decide to attack.

Oh and one barb warrior is threatening our gold tile again. The chariot should probably cover the tile this turn I think, else we'll be attacking across river and uphill...

Yeah, I've moved it there. Can't risk the gold.

According to the diplo earlier a few pages back, Calendar is due in next turn. We've got two workers ready to hook up the Spices, assuming we get it. I've worked out what I want the workers to do if for some reason calendar doesn't arrive next turn, so they're still available the turn after, but if we can't get it from the Mayans then I'll have work something else out... And it'll be another tech to add to the list...

Well, we should be able to get calendar which is good, since no-one else in our group is going to be researching it for a while.

Techwise, according to current earnings, if we go for:
Construction : 8 turns of research and 4 turns of saving : Due t99
Currency : 9 turns of research and 6 turns of saving : Due t102
Metal Casting: 10 turns of research and 7 turns of saving : Due t104

OK. I think we'll be heading for MC (i've switched to it). The good news is that everyone else already has MC except for Inca, Ruff, DIM and France so we'll get a big discount (for the number of civs that know it anyway).

As for the time it takes, it's to be expected. This game has a much faster tech pace, and therefore your usual teching ability is going to be much slower than usual (since you can research the more expensive techs quicker).

I think we can shave a couple of turns off most of these with libraries and growth. But that's the kind of timeline we're looking at. Still not interested in bulbing Currency or MC?

The problem with bulbing those techs is that:
(a) They waste beakers (since we can get more expensive techs for the same costs)
(b) We don't have the GP necessary ATM to bulb them

ATM we are researching techs and then bulbing the more expensive ones within a few turns of each other. What your suggesting is that we wait around saving gold for some 10 turns, bulb the cheap techs and then research those more expensive techs slowly. Sure bulbing is nice but you got to get as much out of it as possible.

[Sockboy]

Turn 88 in.

I've done most of the worker micro. I haven't requested Calendar yet (forgot to do so before logging off), and so the two workers who are waiting on Calendar to plant the spices haven't been touched yet.

Capital produces our first HA next turn. It'll keep pumping these out for the short term. We've had a slight drop in GNP as we're not working the gold tile at the moment. Once we've got a bit more pop in Brythunia we can go back to working it. I've put both Brythunia and Ophir on Libraries since it looks like we'll be turning research on pretty soon. Both of them have long completion times but both also have chops to go into the libraries, they should be finished quickly enough.

Barbwise, the barb didn't suicide onto our chariot. I think we should attack him this turn as he's on uncovered flatland. Next turn we need to start farming a tile adjacent to him, so it's best if he's no longer an issue.

We've also got a number of other civs with units floating around our borders, the Incans Quecha to our NW has started moving again, Swiss has turned up with a warrior to our E (currently our least defended quarter), Carthage has a Numidian CAv to our SW (but you knew that already) and there might be another one, maybe an Indian unit inside our territory? Don't think there's any English units... Anyway just a heads up that people are around, keep an eye on what they're doing.

Scouting??? We have practically all of the nearby land on the CAN map. I think I would want to keep our precious HA's nearby in case PAT decide to attack.

Sorry, I meant acting as sentries. Really, I was wondering if we wanted to keep them hidden away from prying eyes, or if we wanted them out and about. Not sending Belit sounds fine, although Krill just popped CoL and Confucianism. Chances are decent that the holy city is right on our doorstep (would be nice to know if this is true). That might make his borders pop before we can have a look at the centre city tile if we take too long (although if we've got open borders it's not a big issue).

The problem with bulbing those techs is that:
(a) They waste beakers (since we can get more expensive techs for the same costs)
(b) We don't have the GP necessary ATM to bulb them

ATM we are researching techs and then bulbing the more expensive ones within a few turns of each other. What your suggesting is that we wait around saving gold for some 10 turns, bulb the cheap techs and then research those more expensive techs slowly. Sure bulbing is nice but you got to get as much out of it as possible.

Actually, what I was suggesting is more WNA teams pop merchants (4 merchants rather than 2). Then we can still follow the bulbing path, since they just need to pop the first 3 at around the same time (although Currency earlier is better of course). Research can then be directed between the teching teams to the non-bulbable techs or to saving gold for a run at Paper. I wouldn't have thought it would be much more difficult for us to get another two teams to create merchants?

The argument about them being cheap is still holds, but if they save us cash to research more useful/expensive/non-bulbable techs then it can still be useful. There's not much else bulbable in the near future that's really worthwhile, we're getting towards the end of the techs that can be bulbed with one GP.

Not bulbing Machinery with a GE sounds fine too, I think you're right that the GE would come too late. I was just throwing it out there

[WarriorKnight]

I haven't requested Calendar yet (forgot to do so before logging off), and so the two workers who are waiting on Calendar to plant the spices haven't been touched yet.

I've gone and requested it. Hopefully they stick to the deal and send Calendar our way.

Barbwise, the barb didn't suicide onto our chariot. I think we should attack him this turn as he's on uncovered flatland. Next turn we need to start farming a tile adjacent to him, so it's best if he's no longer an issue.

Yeah, he's gone now.

We've also got a number of other civs with units floating around our borders, the Incans Quecha to our NW has started moving again, Swiss has turned up with a warrior to our E (currently our least defended quarter), Carthage has a Numidian CAv to our SW (but you knew that already) and there might be another one, maybe an Indian unit inside our territory? Don't think there's any English units... Anyway just a heads up that people are around, keep an eye on what they're doing.

Most are not really a problem. We don't have OB with Mali and Inca/India are on our side. The NC is the main problem but I think it's just passing through.

The argument about them being cheap is still holds, but if they save us cash to research more useful/expensive/non-bulbable techs then it can still be useful.

Well, instead of saving cash for the more expensive techs, why not bulb the more expensive techs and research the cheaper techs? Yes most of the techs aren't bulbable, but most bulbs beeline through the tech tree a particular way anyway.

There's not much else bulbable in the near future that's really worthwhile,

Well, we could bulb Philo/Education. If there is nothing to bulb then we should do something else with the GP (or not push them out via caste system)

we're getting towards the end of the techs that can be bulbed with one GP.

It's not bad if we can't bulb an entire tech with 1 GP since we can just manually research the rest. (For instance, the CS and Guilds bulbs won't fully complete, but both will make a significant contribution)


Anyway, I moved Natala back home, only to end next to a barb axe . I don't think he'll be with us for much longer. Maybe build a chariot out of Aquilonia and promote to sentry?

Valeria is having no luck finding the supposed Babylon unit. However, finding Babylon is not really a priority ATM and we can probably wait for a while. In the meantime, Valeria should defog trade routes with India now.

To build knights, we will need the iron in our borders relatively soon. 1 border pop in Ophir will do it but it probably won't occur until T110 (about the same time as guilds). Any way we can speed this up?

Random observation: Krill doesn't appear to have founded any new cities recently (he's been on 4 for a while) so I'm guessing the border we can see is a 3rd ring.

Most of the recent diplo messages are kinda boring with each civ just giving their research rate. The most important one is here though:

We are:

*athlete4life10 + Jowy + Kalin + Nakor - Joao of Inca
*Sandover + scooter + Square Leg - Kublai Khan of Rome
*Dantski + Mukha - Willem of Portugal
*meatbalz + dazedroyalty + Ilios - Mehmed of HRE
*Sockboy + ad hoc + WarriorKnight + Pegasus - Zara of Ottomans
*Ruff_Hi - Napoleon of Aztec
*SleepingMoogle + Bobchillingsworth + ManiaMuse - Hannibal of Byzantium
*darrelljs + regoarrarr + sunrise089 + sooooo - Bismarck of India

Everyone is confirmed, and on this mail list. We think we need to play really tight on this one...we've got 8 civs to their 6 but they have a tech lead and most of the better techers in the game. Thanks Ottomans for those numbers, once we get them from everyone we can figure out how to best distribute research (priority has to be Currency). Several of us need to work on getting a great person to bulb if we want to keep up, Portugal put a great plan together on that, and once they've got it buttoned down we can combine the research and bulbing plans to prevent the gap from widening catastrophically.

We nominate we put sunrise089 in charge of coming up with a plan of attack, and give him decision making over the troops once everyone is on board with it. We realize this is a lot to ask for a hastily formed counter alliance, and its likely some of you were just thinking of this thing as a tech sharing arrangement. Unfortunately right now our only edge is production. Its inevitable short term we fall further behind in tech, which makes that less useful. We need to identify a key target and concentrate our efforts on taking it out. Candidates are Egypt (remove shrine income) and Carthage (their best techer). If we want to avoid a PB2 type debacle we need to coordinate MUCH better, hence the need to have a single person in charge. Its our only chance to beat these guys. The reason for sunrise089 isn't that he is on our team, its that he has by far the most MP experience in our alliance, and his speciality IS military. We expect this to be a contoversial proposal, and no team is obliged to sign on, but we're hoping at least some teams are willing to take this next step to improve our collective chances in this game.

As a final point, we plan on gifting our Great Prophet to Ruff for the Buddhist Shrine, and he plans on Missionary spamming to everyone. Getting this income will be a great boost to our tech efforts, as he can fund hopefully one and eventually many of our best beaker generators.

PARTY ON!
DJ Civ
India

Well, we have to start somewhere, and this is a good start. I don't really mind giving sunrise control over the tactical situation (as long as he doesn't screw everything up, but I think not) simply because the suggested targets are our 2 neighbours. If this works then we'll have lot's more room to expand into (of course, if it doesn't work then we'll be first on the firing line but hey, gotta take some risks).

I'll think of a reply and respond appropriately.

[ad hoc]

i think that a co-ordinated effort with sunrise in charge would be acceptable. i guess knowing an overall plan before hand would be a requisite.

My vote would be for attacking Krill at the moment, we have no NAP with him and the way his cities are laid out in a long line SW to NE would make an attack a lot easier.