RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[darrelljs]

how much would we lurkers have to bribe you for you to do this?

Save your money...its bound to happen .

Darrell

[antisocialmunky]

I'd personally like to see the original plan of mausoleum + as many golden ages as the game can handle.

[Speaker]

Majorly cathartic moment coming today, and being the nice guy that I am, I decided to allow Sullla the pleasure.

[Sullla]

To be fair, I offered Speaker the same chance and he left it to me. He probably deserved it more, given the military struggle we fought earlier. I really doubt I could have pulled through that...



Our maces were only getting 60% odds to beat the fortified archer in a city on a hill. Since one of them had a promotion to use, I went ahead and took City Raider I, which increased the odds to what you see above. I fully expected to lose this unit, but that's why we brought a second mace! (Makes you stop and consider for a moment: if one archer in a piddly city on a hill could have odds this good against maces, how much tougher would things have been if Jowy actually fought back against us? While I don't think he could have won, it certainly would have been a rough struggle to get through 8 cities of emergency whipped defenders. He just gave up too quickly and too easily.)

Fortunately, the 2/3 odds played in our favor and we won without taking much damage:



Oh boy, a whole 9 gold! The city did have a granary, but we had already decided to raze this spot unless plako asked us to gift it to them (which they did not). So I happily selected the "Burn Baby, Burn!" option and that was the end of that!





Let's give 'em a taste of how we do things around here!



It was fun, Jowy. Good game.

[Speaker]

This was Sparta?

In other good news, now that we are no longer at war, we don't have to worry about 12-hour time periods and can play whenever we like.

[timmy827]

You do realize that you're Liz and plako is Gandhi right?

[Sullla]

Yes, but we're playing as India - and the Gandhi head simply worked better!

OK, getting back to the actual turn. First, a final message off to our departed Greek friends:

Dear Jowy,

This turn marks the end of our competition in the Pitboss #2 game. Thanks for joining and providing some stiff challenge earlier! Now you'll be able to read our thread and see how close things truly were. I hope there are no hard feelings.

If you'd like to exchange some after-action emails back and forth about how and why things went down, we would be happy to oblige. Thanks.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

As they say, it's easy to be magnanimous in victory. And with the passage of time, I'm not angry at Jowy anymore the way I was back in January. I could see myself working with him as an ally in another game down the road - much stranger things have happened!

So let's see what we've got in terms of the spoils of the successful Greek war:



Ahh, lots of new territory to enjoy! Love watching those light purple Indian borders do their Zerg creep across the map. With no icky Greek culture to worry about, St. Albans can expand its borders to their fullest. Hey, remember when Fort Henry and Chancellorsville were the front lines? We've come a long way since then!

Three Greek cities came out of resistance this turn, so let's look at them in more detail:



Chikamauga is the planned Globe Theatre city, which was the only captured one to arrive with a courthouse in place. (Already saving us nearly 6 gpt.) Unfortunately two of its three food bonuses are located in the second ring, and the city will need a border expansion to start working the fish and rice tiles. We're building a theatre to take advantage of that, and a pair of workers are going to time a forest chop on that theatre for the same turn that Judaism is spread with a missionary. The worker plan looks like:

T166 sugar plantation (3t left)
T167 forest chop (1t left)
T168 Judaism, forest chop (done), sugar plantation (2t left)
T169 sugar plantation (done)

Once we get our food tiles up and running, we can whip to our heart's content, because the Globe Theatre city doesn't matter if it gets unhappy. Hopefully those buildings can get us up to 100 culture and third-ring borders fairly quickly, for help in defending against a possible Ottoman attack.

Now the one minor issue here: Buddhism. This is the only city of ours with any religion other than Judaism. In one sense that's good, as we can build more temples/monasteries if we spread it. But it also opens us up to the slight chance of an Apostolic Palace cheese loss. Very small chance - but we can't ignore it completely. I used to think people were ridiculous when they complained that you can't remove a religion from a city. Not anymore. The AP game mechanics are so, so dumb... I would happily suffer some kind of penalty to remove Buddhism from this city, and eliminate any chance of a cheese religious defeat.


The Wilderness has great commerce potential due to the grassland river tiles to the west, and makes a very strong defensive location because of the hill location and peaks to the east. Unfortunately, its three food bonus tiles (sheep, irrigated rice, sugar) are all located in the second ring, and the city can't work any of them immediately! Now we did the best we could here by funneling an (Organized Religion) forest chop into the city on its very first turn of existance, getting 42 shields right away. Along with working the grassland hill mine, that gets us a theatre in 3 turns, and along with the religion present in the city, we'll expand borders in a total of 5 turns. Not great, but not too terribly shabby either.

We do not want to whip here, because the city is only size 2 and it will grow much faster working sheep + rice once borders expand. Plus we need to fill up the granary's food box before whipping becomes effective. That goes for all of the new Greek cities!



Spotslyvania has another great mixture of grassland river tiles, food bonuses, and the addition of some production bonuses too. Iron plus horses made this Jowy's strategic nexus, although they are more important to us purely for their tile yields. Spotslyvania is fortune to have sheep + horses in the first ring, which allows us to work both tiles immediately. (We have to wait for the iron, sadly.) I'm still going to bring two workers up here next to chop that last grassland forest, and get the theatre done quickly, because the real danger here is from the neighboring Ottoman Cloud City (former Knossus). Against a Creative civ, we need to expand borders quickly and get some defenses up. City walls here are practically a necessity.

Other odds and ends:

- Kathlete did not pillage our clams with their traveling trireme in neutral territory, yay! They could have been real jerks about that.

- Spartansburg is up to 10 shields/turn base, 25/turn with all the multipliers on National Epic. It will finish the wonder in 8 turns, assuming slaze doesn't cut off our marble prematurely.

- Courthouses complete next turn in Hampton Roads and Fort Henry, allowing us to start the Forbidden Palace in St. Albans. Not coincidentally, St. Albans will finish its missionary and overflow a lot of shields into the FP next turn. Should take about 7 turns to finish, and then we go back to cranking out more knights.



The post-Jowy Demographics show us doing quite well; the GNP leader looks to be Nakor (slight chance of being plako) running 100% on deficit towards another tech. If we are that close at 50%, albeit at a deficit ourselves, we're in good shape. Food and Production speak for themselves, and they are even more impressive considering that our new cities contribute basically nothing there yet. Give us 20 turns to get them up and running, and then...

In foreign news, Kathlete finished Civil Service this turn and revolted to Bureaucracy. He got there pretty fast, but mind you, that's due to the fact that Jowy gifted him over 300 gold, which Kathlete burned through at 100% deficit rate. It'll take him a little while to research anything else. plako also finished researching... Horseback Riding! They weren't kidding about going for knights.

Leaving out the cheap Ancient techs that everyone has, here's an overview of the tech situation as we know it:

India 12 Classical techs, 4 Medieval techs
Nakor 9 Classical techs, 5 Medieval techs
plako 9 Classical techs, 3 Medieval techs
Kathlete 9 Classical techs, 2 Medieval techs
Dantski 9 Classical techs, 1 Medieval tech
Whosit 8 Classical techs, 1 Medieval tech
slaze 4 Classical techs, 1 Medieval tech

That's a pretty good ranking of everyone's tech standing. Yes, Whosit and slaze have both fallen behind Dantski. Yes, that's also a sign that they are both in some serious trouble right now!

Since Speaker is on board with the knight request from plako, here's an email to send back to them:

Dear plako and Broker,

Thanks again for the chat last night with Broker. I had a chance to talk with Speaker today, and we are good to supply you with a couple of knights! At the moment, we only have 2 knights, so how about we send you 2 knights at the moment, and a second galley load of 1 knight and 1 horse archer later on? You would be able to upgrade the horse archer once you have Guilds, and that would give you a nice striking force to go along with whatever your own cities are building.

I think Broker said that you had the galleys to provide shipment, which would likely work out better. Let us know where to have our units for pickup. Somewhere around Atlanta or Spotslyvania (former Athens and Corinth) would be a good location, on the north coast of former Greece. You will probably have to gift us the galley, then we load the units and move them back into your territory and gift them back.

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Will wait for Speaker's approval before sending, but I think we're on the same page here. A couple knights is a cheap price to pay to keep an ally on our side, especially one who doesn't care if we win the game.

One last thing: Nakor contacted me in-game after we destroyed Jowy, and wanted to have a chat. He definitely wants to be our friend, and hinted at teaming up to destroy Dantski. That would actually help us a lot in terms of pure tactics - we don't like having all these cities right on our southern border - but I don't think I could turn the tables on someone who saved us earlier, even if Dantski has been a poor ally. And I certainly don't trust Nakor, of all people!

Nakor also wants us to discuss settling the center island, and would like an NAP, Open Borders, blah blah. We probably should send him off a message, however I don't know what it would say. Any thoughts? plako specifically requested we not sign an NAP with Nakor, so no deal there.

slaze has not yet responded to our email from yesterday. He has until the end of today to get back to us, and then I say we start trying to cut an NAP deal with Kathlete. Peace up there in the north would make things a lot easier, as we try to develop that new territory...

[Axiis]

Kathlete did not pillage our clams

I am the most immature person I know.

Anyway, congratulations on defeating Jowy. It certainly was a shockingly triumphant war - I'm really surprised he put up such a weak fight at the end, essentially gifting you most of his territory. An unworthy end to a worthy foe.

[Jowy]

Good game. Fitting that it all ends how it started (pic). Might post some more stuff later, depends on how well I can avoid posting spoilers. Not taking any chances with that.

[Speaker]

I was all but ready to tell Kathlete that he had violated our NAP and start razing his cities. Man, did he push me this turn.


In my opinion, this is crossing the line. He is pillaging the tiles that clearly belong to our cities, simply because of crappy game mechanic allows it. In my opinion, it is outside the spirit of our non-aggression pact, and just a jerk move overall, to pillage the tiles of someone's city just because their borders haven't popped yet right after capture.

Sullla talked me off the edge of the building and made me see rationally. Yes, Kathlete will feel the full brunt of my military...when the time is right. He will get his. Oh yes.