RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Sullla]

Update for Turn 169:



Lookee here, one of our triremes found a barb galley way up in the middle of nowhere. Does that indicate another barb city appeared (?) This is the furthest expanse of the map, in the worldwrap "corner" of the minimap, which produces some strange stuff for a Toroidal setup. No one has made much of an attempt to settle these reaches, and with the plains and tundra terrain I can see why. You can actually plant some decent cities here, it's just that the rest of the map is so ridiculously green and fertile, there's little appeal.

Note that with our new courthouses we can now see Nakor's research, with Education due shortly. He will definitely get Liberalism, so the question is what free tech Nakor slingshots. If Nakor is smart, he'll hold off on discovering Liberalism (1 turn away) and wait to see what tech he can get. We probably need to go down the Education path next ourselves, just to force Nakor to cash in his free tech on something relatively inexpensive (Nationalism, Printing Press) instead of an uber Steel or Democracy slingshot.

Personally, I think we go Engineering -> Meditation (1t) -> Alphabet (1t) -> Paper -> Education next unless something comes up.


Managing the theatres in our new cities. Speaker forced an Artist specialist at The Wilderness to pop borders next turn, and I forced two Artists here at Chikamauga to do the same... including going into starvation! That might seem silly, but compare the food situatin of running zero, one, and two artists:

Zero Artists (+3 culture/turn)
T169 +3 food
T170 +3 food [+6 total]
T171 +3 food [+9 total]
T172 +3 food [+12 total]
T173 +8 food [+20 total] (borders expand)

One Artist (+7 culture/turn)
T169 +1 food
T170 +1 food [+2 total]
T171 +8 food [+10 total] (borders expand)
T172 +8 food [+18 total]
T173 +8 food [+26 total]

Two Artists (+11 culture/turn)
T169 -1 food
T170 +8 food [+7 total] (borders expand)
T171 +8 food [+15 total]
T172 +8 food [+23 total]
T173 +8 food [+31 total]

Despite taking the food hit on the first turn, forcing the extra Artist comes out ahead because it pulls in the very strong fish and rice tiles sooner. We will actually get even more food than this, as the workers finish the plantation on the sugar and bring irrigation to the rice (so that it's a 5 food tile instead of 4 food), but it's simpler to do the comparison without these factors.

Kathlete acknowledged our NAP with a short message, and said he'd get back to us during the week. Sounds good. Not much else going on in diplomacy, Nakor hasn't responded to our last email yet. slaze probably won't be sending us much anymore, as we are THE ENEMY apparently...

[timmy827]

What's the rationale for Meditation? (You've been building missionaries with OR civic right?)

Also, what about Alphabet? I thought you were getting the visibility on F4 tech screen through one of your allies?

[Sullla]

Two good reasons for researching Meditation:

- We won't be in Organized Religion civic forever (I see some Theocracy in our future, to say the least!)
- A monastery in our Bureaucracy + Academy + future Oxford capital would be nice to have. Two of them, actually, since we have Buddhism in Chikamauga and could spread it to Gettysburg.

We have been getting great tech info from plako, but I feel bad about bugging him for it frequently, and it would be nice to have that stuff firsthand. Don't depend on the kindness of others in these kind of games! I'd also like to be able to do some close research tracking; by writing down what dates each team discovers each tech, I can work backwards and figure out their beaker rate per turn, which would be invaluable info to have. I can't do that from periodic emails.

Is that worth spending ~400 beakers to research Alphabet? I don't know. Fortunately, I think we're in a position where we can afford that kind of luxury, due to our strong research rate. If we were playing from behind instead of ahead, we would probably have to skip everything optional. Keep in mind that a lot of the "optional" stuff (the early religious techs, Horseback Riding, the Aethetics/Literature/Music branch) has given us very strong value in this game. And for what it's worth, Alphabet also lets you build Research in cities, which we could very well use before all is said and done.

OK, now to get some pictures up:



We had a barb combat between turns, but not the expected galley/trireme encounter. Instead, a barb archer hit our chariot exploring the central island and killed it at 26% odds. Well that stinks. We were just getting to explore the good stuff too, the southern edge where Whosit and Nakor have planted cities.

Note as well that Nakor galley sailing up near our territory. If it's exploring, no problem. If Nakor plans to land a settler across from THREE of our cities - there may be some hostilities. He sent us a diplo message (see next post once I write it) to the effect that he was planning on adding more cities soon on the center island. To put it bluntly, if there's going to be any friendship between our teams, he better not try to grab this area!

Elsewhere, the top edge of the picture shows that Chancellorsville finished its grocer and has started the Mausoleum (11 turns). We're sort of relying on a lack of competition from other teams there, and hoping that slaze doesn't cancel our marble trade before we can get our own marble up and running at the island site. Hopefully he's not paying attention to the F4 trading screen, a lot of the time people forget about that stuff... (Our team, plako, and Dantski have done lots of resource trading. The other teams have traded essentially nothing. Another minor reason why our alliance has done so much better than theirs!)



I wanted to highlight how well the border city of Bull Run has developed, sped along by lots of forest chops. With four spices and the iron resource, it's up to a very respectable 6 food/5 shields per turn (the latter boosted to 7/turn with forge and Organized Religion). Bull Run is actually growing faster than the workers can keep up right now - the cottage will be 1 turn late - but that's OK because the city can borrow an unworked cottage from Antietam in the meantime. We are finishing up theatre/walls for a strong defensive combination, then the city can continue its infrastructure push with library, market, courthouse, grocer, etc.

This will never be a major military producer, but it's getting maximum value out of cities like Bull Run and Fort Henry that win you games.


Chikamauga looks infinitely better this turn now that its borders have expanded. The granary's food box will be full in 2 more turns, and then the city will grow VERY fast indeed, the same way that Spartansburg did earlier. Like Spartansburg, we can and will do an orgy of whipping here - only there's even less consequence of doing so at Chikamauga, since this is our planned Globe Theatre city. I think we'll probably do something like lighthouse -> forge -> library -> grocer [no need for a market!] -> walls -> barracks -> Globe -> infinite whip/draft camp. We'll figure out the details as we go along.

Spartansburg is close to finishing National Epic (3t), but even afterwards it will have to grow up to size 12 (to work 6 specialists) so it will take a little bit before it produces its first Great Person. We should be able to get one more Great Person out of St. Albans before the Great Person faucet at Spartansburg gets up and spitting them out. That Great Person will have very high odds to be a Great Engineer (currently 91%, but falling slowly due to Heroic Epic); we will produce a Great Person there in 12 turns, which should have roughly 75% odds to be an Engineer.

Now assuming we would get a Great Engineer - and here's hoping! - we would have free run on a wonder of our choice. The obvious play would be to save for Taj Mahal, but I think I have a better idea. If we get a Great Engineer, we should research Theology and rush the Apostolic Palace. Then we could eliminate any small chance of a silly AP diplo loss, become the resident, and start cranking out cheap Jewish monasteries and temples for the free shields. That would also make Spiral Minaret and Sankore appealing wonders, either or both of which we could probably build if we chose. Obviously a lot depends on what other teams do, and if we are forced into a war of some kind, but I see a lot of potential here that we could exploit.

OK, let me split off some diplomacy into another post.

[Sullla]

Some inter-group messages, now going between ourselves and plako and Dantski:

Hi,

Whosit is going for Engineering. It showed 6 turns, but it must close to 100% research and probably not sustainable, but he might get help somewhere.
plako

Useful info for us to know. I also don't believe that Whosit can research Engineering in 6 turns, since it took us 5 turns to do it! If Kathlete and/or Nakor want to feed gold to backwards Whosit to pay for his teching, umm, awesome! Don't think that would happen though.

Hi guys

Got some news for plako especially

HRE Praets have disappeared from border cities with me and my chariot stumbled upon their stack this turn.

It consists of...

damnit! screenshot failed and I moved chariot after taking it!

It was around 10 Praets and a half dozen cats on the hill 1SW of La Mur, this is only a hazy recollection and is likely a bit inaccurate.

HRE also gets education next turn

Asked my lurkers (hah!) about who has research visibility on me (hardly spoilerish since I can ask you guys too) since HRE knew I got construction a couple of turns ago. Possible that slaze shared the info with them which suggests he's well bedded in at their camp now. Slaze has 76/30 EP on me and athlete had 96/64 I believe.

-Dantski

I actually saw that there was a Dantski post in his thread right before I read this message, and scared me pretty bad. A Dantski post in the forums?!? Did he just declare war on us??? Fortunately it appears to be him just asking a question. (At least I hope so! Obviously I can't see the post itself.)

It definitely sounds like slaze has decided to work arm in arm with Kathlete and crew. On the Power graph, it appears that slaze just gifted a bunch of units to - get this - Kathlete! Come on, man! What a reversal in just a few turns. I'm pretty convinced by now that slaze never had any intention of working with our team, and was just waiting for any excuse to switch sides. Guess we'll find out after the game. The only real issue is what's going on with the slaze/Whosit war, and I confess I don't know or understand that one. Are they allies or enemies?

You'll note that as soon as we killed Jowy to break up a four-team alliance, slaze immediately became hostile to us and took us back up to four hostile teams. I guess the lesson is that we need more killing.

More importantly, here's the message we got from Nakor:

Dear India,

We accept your team's Non-Aggression Pact policy and will not take it as a sign of hostility. After all, Dantski of Romali wanted to attack us, yet signed a Non-Aggression Pact while allowing us to tech Feudalism! A classic example of when you shouldn't sign a NAP (although that may or may not be a similar case here).

We are interested in open borders along with a no-scouting clause. What turn would you like to make arrangements ingame - if you are willing to do so?

Lastly, let us know when you have concluded your exploration of Centralia. We already have several cities placed as a result of earlier agreements so space is going to be at a premium within the next dozen turns or so.

Thank you again for attempting to rebuild relations.

Sincerely,
DMOC of HRE

Here's my initial draft response. Speaker, please vet this when you get a chance:

Dear Nakor and DMOC of Holy Rome,

We're happy to hear of your response, and glad to see there are no hard feelings about the NAP subject. We've kind of been surprised that everyone in this game seems to expect perpetual NAPs, and regard any other state with hostility. Obviously NAPs have their place, but you can really screw yourself over if you sign them willy-nilly, Dantski indeed being a classic such example!

We would be fine with opening up borders any turn now, as long as we're both agreed on not scouting one another's territory. The trade routes should be profitable on both sides by now. As part of that deal, I've noticed that we're both spending Espionage Points against each other. If you're willing to do the same, we'd be happy to switch all EP spending to other teams at the same time that we sign Open Borders. How does that strike you?

Our chariot was just killed at low odds this turn by a barbarian archer. As such, I guess we might as well discuss the center island now... Our only real goal is to secure the territory directly across from our current cities, so we regard the land across from Shiloh, Fredericksburg, etc. as falling within our sphere of interest. We would look on any cities placed in that region with very serious hostility - if you want an equitable distribution of the center island, please do not settle anywhere in the northwest corner. If your team can agree to that, then we can agree to leave your own settlements in the south undisturbed. Wherever our borders might meet in the center of the island, we can let natural settling patterns decide.

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

The Espionage thing would work great for us - it sounds friendly, but we just gained visibility on Nakor's research, and if we both stop spending points, we'll keep that at no cost and can start going for Kathlete's research visibility. Pretty nice, eh?

Our main goal with Nakor should be ensuring our control of the dyes/silver/whales portion of the center island. If they want to plant a city there, he can forget about any kind of deal - and expect us to be landing some knights there in the near future.

[Selrahc]

If we get a Great Engineer, we should research Theology and rush the Apostolic Palace. Then we could eliminate any small chance of a silly AP diplo loss,

I assume you won't be trying for a silly AP win then?

[Speaker]

Just have a minute to post, but I changed Antietam to a Settler, from a Fast Worker. I think we had better grab that central island spot ASAP, unless Nakor steals it from us, of course. I am going to insist that Gettysburg starts on Knights now, though, so we can't get a second Settler from there, and our other major producers are all tied up on other projects, so Antietam is our best bet.

[Sullla]

We wouldn't go for an Apostolic Palace win unless we were about to get killed and it was the only possible way to avoid defeat. Judaism is not a widely-spread religion, so the odds of the diplo victory even appearing are slim. I'm much more concerned about another civ with another religion building the AP and defeating us with a religious win. Right now, the AP is a very, very low priority for our civ.

Antietam onto settler is fine with me, and I agree that getting that city spot on the center island ASAP seems prudent. Was that post approval to send off the proposed draft to Nakor? Let me know.

[Speaker]

Yeah, go ahead. I just got a chance to read it, and it looks fine.

[regoarrarr]

We wouldn't go for an Apostolic Palace win unless we were about to get killed and it was the only possible way to avoid defeat.

Hmmmmmmmmmm

[Speaker]

Big email came through from Kathlete. I responded and told them that we had received it and would discuss and reply. I'm getting sick of people complaining about slow responses, so I said it might take a day or two.

Hello KA,

How's everything today?

So you've seen I've accepted peace with Slaze and for atleast the next
few turns will remain out of any potential conflicts. I can now take
my civ in several directions and would like to pursue one with KA that
I believe can be mutually beneficial.

Let me first acknowledge my (accidental) post in that there was a
potential to attack you in the future. While the potential was there
the idea was all Slaze's (I have proof of chats and e-mails) and
obviously was never realized. However unless I can feel secure that we
can work together going forward do not be surprised by a larger then
normal garrison on my western border.

Slaze still believes that I am going to pursue an attack against you.
Personally I don't wish to and I didn't wish to when Slaze brought up
the proposition but it was my way out of facing a war on both fronts.
Now that you're aware of basically what Slaze proposed I wish to
(re-)attack Slaze. It's nothing personal against him, just how the
Inca have dealt with the rebels in the past. However I can not do so
if I can not secure my border with you. And clearly Slaze is not
willing to be your friend.

We don't exactly have a long past of working together but why not
start now? Neither of us has broken any deals with the other that I'm
aware of. We can start with agreeing to an NAP. Ideally I would like
something to about the T210 range and you've voiced your request to
stay within the 190 - 200 range. Can we reach an agreement to get to
T205?

I'd also like to discuss any potential settling you might do of the
land between us. I'd prefer not to see another city placed more
eastwardly then the ones you already have. If you do have plans for
that though, can we please discuss it prior to your settling it? I
don't believe it would be great for either of us to have a city
directly on our borders. This was a major downfall of the Byzantine
Empire and a large part of the aggravation the Incan's have caused me.

These dealings can also set the stage for even further dealings.
Perhaps if/when (preferrably when) I rejoin the war against the Inca
and one of us have paper you'd be able to offer some tactical advise?
Perhaps open borders and/or resource trades? Any friendly workings we
can have would obviously not only allow you to tech better (without
threat) but devote any military strategies you might have more
efficiently.

I know this may be a heap to take in and I'm sorry for overloading you
in one go but the weekends just tends to be too busy for me to devote
more time than I'd like without a teammate.

Eagerly awaiting your response,

Athlete
The Rebel Alliance