RBP3 [SPOILERS] - Zara of the Ottomans

[Sockboy]

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

Yup they sent it to us, Sweet! Calendar sent through and spices are starting being hooked. I think AH logged in and did the micro for us, so cheers there AH!

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?

Unfortunate, but it can't be helped. The barbs have moved weirdly a few times already though...

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?

We can build a library there, but I think you're already taking that into account. The good news is that a border pop from Aquilonia will also bring it into our territory and that's due in only 10 turns thanks to the Hanging Gardens (t98)! Workers won't be available to hook it for another handful of turns, but we should still have iron hooked by t105ish (we need to mine the iron and build two roads minimum). Anyway it should be in time to not delay us building knights. Once the tech plan is in we can see if we need to make amendments to worker micro.

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).

Yeah, I agree for the most part. in the short term there's no problem with Sunrise being in charge. Longer term we'll need to start thinking about ourselves in the WNA, but for the moment we just need to bring them back down to our level.

I would maybe ask them (India) to be the first moving team on our side during co-ordinated wars as a show of good faith, so we can all see that they aren't playing favourite and protecting their units above everyone else. Maybe that'll have to be slightly amended according to whomever has the catapults.

[WarriorKnight]

Yup they sent it to us, Sweet! Calendar sent through and spices are starting being hooked. I think AH logged in and did the micro for us, so cheers there AH!

Ummmmmmm........:wink2:

We can build a library there, but I think you're already taking that into account. The good news is that a border pop from Aquilonia will also bring it into our territory and that's due in only 10 turns thanks to the Hanging Gardens (t98)! Workers won't be available to hook it for another handful of turns, but we should still have iron hooked by t105ish (we need to mine the iron and build two roads minimum). Anyway it should be in time to not delay us building knights. Once the tech plan is in we can see if we need to make amendments to worker micro.

OK, if Aquilonia can cover it, that's great.

I would maybe ask them (India) to be the first moving team on our side during co-ordinated wars as a show of good faith, so we can all see that they aren't playing favourite and protecting their units above everyone else. Maybe that'll have to be slightly amended according to whomever has the catapults.

I'm not sure about this. India have one of the safer positions and asking them to lead the charge would kinda strain the relationship. We can question their moves after they suggest them but for now, it's fine.

[WarriorKnight]

Looks like we finally might be getting somewhere:

Hello, all!

It's great to see everyone gathered together so quickly. I apologize for not revealing my civilization's participation in this group earlier. We knew about the PAT (and anti-PAT) almost as soon as it had been formed, and indeed were quickly targeted by PAT's recruiters. Although my civilization had decided to join the anti-PAT rather than betray many of our friends and violate our principles by joining a game-long giant alliance, we asked Portugal to keep our involvement quiet. The rationale was to keep PAT preoccupied with our potential membership long enough to keep them disorganized and limited to 6 members, while our own group was fully established. I'm glad to see that the tactic seems to have been successful

My civilization has a substantial amount of intel relating to the enemy which I think will prove invaluable. Some of my knowlege is protected against sharing by confidentiality agreements outside of our alliance, and I won't break those; still, I have enough information free from the purview of non-disclosure agreements to help shape & inform our group strategy, and I look forward to coordinating tactics and research with all of you.

Before any of us share too much sensitive data or alliance strategy however, it may be prudent for all of us to agree to a general secrecy agreement between us for all alliance strategy and intel. I suggest that the penalties for breaking confidentiality include the automatic cancellation of any NAP agreements between members, all pending technologies transfers to the offending party rendered void, and any gold sums being gifted to the offender immediately ceased. Proof for a breach of secrecy would be the burden of the accuser. Apologies if something like this has already been discussed, btw- I didn't see anything similar in the emails forwarded to my team, but I may have missed a few.

Perhaps most importantly, if we're still searching for an alliance name, how about "TAP"? Totally Annihilate PAT, or if we aren't doing so hot we can downgrade it to Terminally Aggravate (or if it's going really poorly, Timidly Annoy)

Thoughts? My team looks forward to sharing and discussing much more with all of you in the coming days!

For the Spectre Council,

-Bobchillingworth

Hi guys,

India spoke about a tech bulb plan so I thought I would cover that first. Here are the tech prefernence lists for releveant great people.

Great Scientist:

Writing
Mathematics
Scientific Method
Physics
Education
Printing Press
Fiber Optics
Computers
Laser (BTS)
The Wheel
Alphabet (BTS)
Philosophy
Chemistry
Fission
Fusion
Optics
Paper
Astronomy
Biology
Electricity
Flight
Genetics
Compass
Satellites
Aesthetics (BTS)
Sailing
Alphabet (Vanilla & Warlords)
Calendar
Medicine
Ecology
Advanced Flight (BTS)
Iron Working
Metal Casting
Engineering


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


The techs we would like to bulb are: Civil Service (Merchant), Philosophy (Scientist), Paper (Scientist), Guilds (Merchant) and possibly Engineering (Scientist).

As both Machinery and feudalism are requirements for Guilds and both have to be slow teched these two techs will be the greatest limiting factor on when we can get guilds so they will both need to be researched by our best techers. I have yet to gift Sailing to Byz as this allows them once they get Calendar to be able bulb engineering with a scientist. But that bulb needs to be done before CS or else a scientist would need to do education etc first. Engineering would allow us southern civs to reinforce Byz a lot more quickly once a road is complete, it also makes defense within Byz's own territory much easier.

So, Babylon said they were going to give us Currency even after we told them we weren't in PAT. They don't appear willing to give it to anyone else. So that means that we are the only ones that can bulb CS. So next turn when HRE finishes CoL we will revolt to caste and run merchants. ETA for CS would then be t97. There is really no point delaying CS for Engineering so we would need to see if it's possible for Byz to get Calendar by t97 (from either Mali or someone else teching it) so they could bulb engineering. If Byz and someone else also revolts to caste and starts running scientists right away then we should also have an ETA to philosophy and egineering of t97 if they are able to run 4 in one city. The scientists people should be the people who have the most libraries so we get the biggest bonus from them and the other merchant person needs to be our strongest techer as a merchant only get 2/3rds ot the way to guilds.

So that's the tech discussion for today, but would just like to say since Incans mentioned it that CBE (Portugal) will freely give all techs we research to any civs taking part in the Anti-PAT crusade and I hope others will do the same.

Other thing I wanted to find out about is all of our NAP situations.

Portugal has NAPs with:
Maya (15 turn cooldown I think) No gifting, No RoP
Rome
India
England (T130) No gifting, No RoP
Egypt (T130) No gifting, No RoP

HRE has NAs with:
England (auto-renewing? No RoP, unsure on gifting)
Ottomans

Ottomans have NAPs with:
HRE
Carthage (T100, conditions?)
England (conditions?)

Could we hear everyone else's NAP situation so we are aware of our's and PAT's vulnerabilities?

Mukha
CBE

I'm an idiot, disregard the Engineering idea, it isn't possible for a lot of reasons.

Summary of research rates in order of BPT at 100%. I don't have Byz or India's numbers but I think they are the best?

Ottomans - Saving Money
63 bpt at 100% -33 expenses
27 gpt at 0%.

HRE - CoL 1t

60 bpt at 100%

36 beakers at break even
35 gold at 0%


Portugal - saving money
49 bpt at 100% -29 expenses.
20gpt at 0%
248gp in bank


Incans - Priesthood 2t
37 bpt at 100%, -27 gold
6 gpt at 0%

20%, 7 beakers, -1 gold


Aztecs - Construction 11t?
37b, -8g at 100%
24g at 0%
260g in back

Rome - Monotheism 4t

32 bpt at 100% (-14g)
16 beakers at 50% (+2g)
18g at 0%


We will run merchants from next turn and continue saving money. We will swap to scientists or artists after CS. It's probably best we fund someone else.
Ottomans should run scientists (bulbing either philosophy or paper). I think they need to be researching Metal Casting.
HRE should run scientists (bulbing either philosophy or paper). I think they should do currency or construction.
India should do either Machinery or feudalism and then guilds so be running either Scientists or Merchants.
Byz should do either Machinery or feudalism then guilds so be running either Scientists or Merchants.
I think the others should be concentrating on getting the prerequisites for monarchy and CoL and also monarchy itself.

Mukha
CBE

My response:

Greetings all

If we are looking for an alliance name, Ruff suggested CUDDLE a while back and that gets my vote. Onto the more important stuff:

We are happy with Sunrise planning the attack. To confirm our NAP situation, we have one with Carthage until T100 with no other conditions and the one with England is until T100 at least and is auto extending with a 10 turn cooloff, amongst other things.

Re: Confidentiality agreements, I agree that breaking that should create some penalties similar to the ones that Byz suggested. Given that it's kind of an awkward topic, I suggest that we just go with all of the punishments and think no more of it.

We are happy to run either scientists or merchants for the plan. We have a fair number of libraries, so maybe we should head for scientists. We can't start running them as soon as the rest of you guys though, since our canditate is a relatively new city. I will keep you all informed as soon as I get the information.

I think DIM should head to currency instead of Construction after they finish CoL since that is an extremely important tech. Alternatively, we could head to currency since we've been saving some gold for a while now and it's more important than MC for the bulb plan. What I'd like to know is if Ruff should head for Construction or not. If not, he can fund most of the other techs for us but it will delay Construction until one of us can research it. The alternative is to get Construction for safety but that would probably delay the other techs due to lack of gold.

Enough Talking!
WarriorKnight of A4

For Ophir, do we really need to whip the Hammam? I think we might have enough happiness there ATM with gold,silver,HR and soon-to-be spices. Instead, maybe it should finish by chopping the library out while still growing and then build/chop the Hammam while running the scientists. Other than that, when can we start running tons of scientists there?

[Sockboy]

For Ophir, do we really need to whip the Hammam? I think we might have enough happiness there ATM with gold,silver,HR and soon-to-be spices. Instead, maybe it should finish by chopping the library out while still growing and then build/chop the Hammam while running the scientists. Other than that, when can we start running tons of scientists there?

I think we can hold off the whip here if you want. If we need specialists in the short run it's definitely the way to go. We'll need to convert back to slavery once we've got a specialist or two though, since whipping is really the only way to get anything produced here, unless we workshop a couple of plains tiles or something. We might end up needing to station a few more troops here for the happies but we can do that. I'll check how soon we can get 4 specialists up and running there but it should be pretty quick. we're at size 2 for a couple of turns, but then it's close to a turn per growth, it's got a food surplus of +9 @ size 3 I think. Something like t95 we can start running 4. If we want to run 3 we can start earlier but it takes longer... I'll see how quickly we can push one out. When should we convert to Caste Systems? We're going to lose quite a few turns to revolutions in the next 20 turns I think. We should try to pair the Bureaucracy and Slavery revolts, but it'll still be a minimum of 3 turns I think (including one for Ruff's religion).

One question I've got about the bulb plan is the rush for philosophy? Is it just for religion denial purposes? Or is it because of the bulb path? I don't think anyone's in a hurry to be running Pacifism yet are they? Otherwise all looks good. Let's get organised!

Oh and I guess I missed your log-in, I only saw that AH had logged in. Well, good job there WK Good thing I'm not the guy in charge of C&D... haha

Last thing, I like TAP as the team name

[WarriorKnight]

One question I've got about the bulb plan is the rush for philosophy? Is it just for religion denial purposes? Or is it because of the bulb path? I don't think anyone's in a hurry to be running Pacifism yet are they?

Well, originally it was for pasificm. However, Philosophy is otherwise a very important tech since it's a pre-requisite for Nationalism and Liberalism. Both of those techs are very important. The religion would be nice (if DIM could get it, that would make up for losing confu) but I think PAT might steal it before we can get there.

Also, there is no need to convert to any religion ATM since the benefits aren't worth the revolt. When we get in a GA at some point, then we can do it.

[ad hoc]

me, do micro , i leave that to you and WK i just like looking around

If we run into happiness probs in Ophir we could just puts some HA's overthere as MP

[WarriorKnight]

OK, so turn has rolled and we got CoL from DIM. Are we going to be building courthouses in our cities anytime soon?

Also, we are probably going to be researching currency. We do need more gold before we can finish it, so hopefully we can get some from Portugal.

Natala unfortunately didn't survive. Want to build a sentry chariot in Aquilonia? I'd like to have at least some prior knowledge if they do send anything our way.

Also the civic's will be fun to figure out. In addition to converting to caste and back, we need to fit bureocrary in there somewhere since Portugal are going to bulb it sometime around T97. Maybe we should delay bureocracy until we need to switch back to slavery? Or we could delay the GS (Don't think that's ideal). Wish we were SPI.

[Sockboy]

Portugal have currency? If so should we start researching straight away? We need another 80g to finish I think (around 4 turns at current rates, probably drop to 3 once we start reworking the gold tile). Also we've got 4 cottages which will grow in the next 6 turns and another few the turns after, so that should help speed along research.

I've sent the HA up to Cimmeria since there's a barb wandering around up there. If we want we can use the HA to try and get a few more xp on him, it's probably a good idea to try and funnel xp into one unit, and the HA should be quick enough to be able to jump from border to border.

I've put Aquilonia on another HA, I'm not convinced that we need more chariots, but if you really want one (a sentry upgrade is reasonable) feel free to change it. HA is a 5 turn build ATM whilst a chariot is 3. We are getting more mines up so these should start getting produced pretty quickly soon.

Otherwise not much to report, everything seems to be running pretty smoothly. Courthoues can be next build in Zingara, Nemedia(slow) and Brythunia. Ophir probably needs the happies from a Hammam before the courthouse I think and Cimmeria I think should stay on military for the moment.

[WarriorKnight]

OK, so now we are all on the same page:

Okay, here is everyone's current tech info:

http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/1766/antipat.jpg

We currently have three opportunities to get Currency from Babylon, so this plan assumes we will have the ability to gold fund our best tech teams. The bulb plan from Portugal gets us Civil Service, Philosophy, Paper and Guilds. It requires us to slow research Feudalism and Machinery. We further need to consider the need for CAN techs some members were unable to acquire, specifically Currency, Metal Casting, Construction, Monarchy and Calender. Currently our teams are doing the following:

Ottomans - Saving gold
HRE - Code of Laws due next turn
Portugal - Saving gold

Incans - Priesthood in 2 turns

Aztecs - Saving gold
Rome - Monotheism due in 4 turns
India - Aesthetics due in 6 turns
Byzantium - Saving gold

Portugal has already invested a turn into Feudalsim, plans on running multiple scientists under caste system, and can get to 59 beakers/turn in a pinch. So they get Feudalism. Machinery needs to go to a civ that has Metal Casting, which is either India or Byzantium. Byzantium is in better near term shape for this task. The two critical CAN techs that need spreading around are Metal Casting and Currency. Those go to the Ottomans and HRE, respectively. We have four teams teching, with a total expense (at 100% research) of 95 gold/turn. The remaining four teams can contribute (at 0% research) a surplus of 55 gold/turn. Currency and the Buddhist Shrine will help out quite a bit and we'll just have to manage in the meantime.

I recognize that Construction, Monarchy and Calendar are left out of the first round, we'll have to put Ottomans and HRE on two of them when they finish round 1. We also need to start saving up gold for a Guilds push once the bulbs come in, so I don't anticipate moving a funding civ to a teching civ to pick up that third tech.

Comments?

Darrell

Rest of the responses are just Ruff organising some missionaries to everyone. Nonetheless, DIM and I agreed that currency is probably a tech that we should go for, so this is our response:

Greetings all

Tech plan sounds good. However, would like to suggest that we head for
currency and HRE heads for MC instead. We can probably get currency
with an ETA of T96-98, which is a bit earlier than HRE, but the real
reason is if, for some reason, none of us get currency, we are in much
better shape to get it since we've been saving gold for a while now.
Regardless of the tech we head for, we will need more gold to finish
it so if someone does get currency, could someone send us some $?
(Probably Ruff, although he would have to pay through someone else).

Ruff, we can get a 2 mover into your lands in around 7-10 turns. We're
in no rush to get it though so we can be a lower priority on the list
of civs to get it. If you intend to send one to HRE, might I suggest
you head through our lands since heading through India will be a much
longer route.

I 2nd HRE's question about Portugal running Merchants instead of
scientists. We can also run scientists, and can probably do so around
T95ish.

Enough Talking!
WarriorKnight of A4

I've turned research 100% on currency, since we can get the remaining gold we need from Ruff otherwise.

[WarriorKnight]

Portugal have currency? If so should we start researching straight away? We need another 80g to finish I think (around 4 turns at current rates, probably drop to 3 once we start reworking the gold tile). Also we've got 4 cottages which will grow in the next 6 turns and another few the turns after, so that should help speed along research.

Portugal are supposed to get currency from Babylon on T92. With that, Ruff can send us some gold through them to help finish currency.

I've sent the HA up to Cimmeria since there's a barb wandering around up there. If we want we can use the HA to try and get a few more xp on him, it's probably a good idea to try and funnel xp into one unit, and the HA should be quick enough to be able to jump from border to border.

Yeah, barb killers sounds good ATM, although the real reason is that it should probably head S in case of an attack.

I've put Aquilonia on another HA, I'm not convinced that we need more chariots, but if you really want one (a sentry upgrade is reasonable) feel free to change it. HA is a 5 turn build ATM whilst a chariot is 3. We are getting more mines up so these should start getting produced pretty quickly soon.

More HA's is fine, a sentry chariot probably isn't worth it ATM. We can get one when the ETA is down to 1 turn.

Otherwise not much to report, everything seems to be running pretty smoothly. Courthoues can be next build in Zingara, Nemedia(slow) and Brythunia. Ophir probably needs the happies from a Hammam before the courthouse I think and Cimmeria I think should stay on military for the moment.

Are you saying that we are going to whip the one in Brythunia? When are we going to start working the gold again?