RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

Double post.

[Sullla]

Well, it took us all of about 5 seconds to agree that Kathlete's proposed deal is awesome for us. Remember, we don't actually want to fight a war with anyone at present. (Even though we've sort of been bluffing the opposite to look strong.) We've got four new cities in former Greek territory, plus two island locations to be planted soon on the inner and outer rims, which are effectively taking us from 10 to 15/16 cities in size. Major increase in territory and economy. 25 to 30 turns to consolidate those gains and tech upwards would be just about perfect... and we'll be hitting cuirassiers right around that time, and can go kick some serious ass against a target of our choosing. Awesome.

My first thought was that Kathlete could be lying to us here, and has no intentions of fighting slaze. But if that's the case... so what? Do we even care? We aren't interested in pushing into Ottoman territory at the moment. That's, umm, why slaze got mad at us in the first place. If there's even a slight chance that Kathlete might go after slaze again, it's a deal we want to be taking. I have absolutely *NO* idea why Kathlete would want to do that, as he's not likely to have much more success than he did on the previous attempt, but whatever. Let's go for it and see what happens.

Speaker's one excellent comment was that we should make sure this isn't a pretext to dogpile on Korea. So here's our response:

Dear Rebel Alliance,

Wow, that's quite a message there. The funny thing is that we didn't have any real desire to attack your civ either, which is why slaze got so angry at us in the first place. Seems like slaze is awful eager to see our teams fight each other, huh? We like your proposed course of action a lot better!

We will accept your Non-Aggression Pact lasting until Turn 205 on one condition: that you will also extend the same courtesy to our friends in Korea. I don't believe that you're planning some kind of misdirection attack north across the worldwrap, but we need to be certain. As long as you're willing to grant Korea the same NAP protection, it's a deal.

As far as our border goes, we have no plans to settle additional cities further east. I'm not really sure where we would place them! I suppose there's a small gap between Cloud City and Corulag, but that spot would have no food bonuses and be choked by your culture. Our current border cities all have nice defensive locations (across rivers, blocked by peaks, etc.) and we're happy with the current spots.

Let's sign the NAP for now, and proceed on to further arrangements (Open Borders, resource trades, etc.) if we're both happy with the initial steps. You might also not want to get too chummy with us until you spring whatever surprise you have planned for slaze.

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Written tonight, but we decided we'd send the message back tomorrow morning, not wanting to look too eager in accepting. Hard to imagine a better outcome for us than slaze and Kathlete, with the two largest territorial empires, fighting it out in pointless combat!

I did send off a short email to plako, explaining the offer we received and what we were planning on doing.

[Speaker]

Please don't send that message. Way too many exclamation points sound ingenuous, and I don't like how you gave him so much information about our cities defensibility. I'd rather he not know all that, if he doesn't figure it out on his own. You can just say that we have no plans to settle east and leave it at that.

[Sullla]

Alright then:

Dear Rebel Alliance,

Thanks for that extended message. We will accept your Non-Aggression Pact lasting until Turn 205 on one condition: that you will also extend the same courtesy to our friends in Korea. I don't believe that you're planning some kind of misdirection attack north across the worldwrap, but we need to be certain. As long as you're willing to grant Korea the same NAP protection, it's a deal.

As far as our border goes, we have no plans to settle additional cities further east; we are happy with our current border cities. Let's sign the NAP for now, and proceed on to further arrangements (Open Borders, resource trades, etc.) if we're both happy with the initial steps. You might also not want to reveal your hand with us until you spring whatever surprise you have planned for slaze.

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Any better? You're welcome to write diplo messages too if you want.

[Speaker]

That sounds pretty good to me.(!)

[Sullla]

We're almost around to another new turn, so let's cover Turn 171 while I still have a moment:



The highlight of this turn was Speaker mis-clicking and sending our new settler (intended for the outer island spot) four tiles straight south, in precisely the wrong direction. Just make sure it doesn't happen during hot warfare!

Fortunately, we are able to remedy this situation with no turns lost in founding our island city. Engineering tech was a mere 8 beakers short of completion, so I did some slight city management and tweaked it so that we'll discover the tech next turn. Then we can move the settler 5 tiles north, 1 tile northwest (next to the wheat) on Turn 172, hop into the galley at the start of Turn 173, unload on Turn 174, and plant our new city on Turn 175. Since the limiting factor is the galley's movement, and not the settler, the little gaffe fortunately doesn't cost us.

Elsewhere you can see a nice picture of our developing core. The ex-Greek cities have finally started to grow and pick up some highly developed cottages (villages and towns) which is boosting our economy further ahead. Our loss is already down to just 25gpt (it was over 50gpt when the cities first came out of resistance) and beakers have topped 300/turn. Another 10-15 turns and the northeast will be rocking.


We need to make a decision about the next Great Person, which will either come out of St. Albans (as I outlined yesterday) or from Hampton Roads. At the moment, we're forcing an Engineer at slight starvation penalty in Hampton, which will produce a Great Person in 12 turns. But St. Albans will actually produce a Great Person in 11 turns, because it will get some Great Merchant points from completing the Forbidden Palace shortly. We can easily make it so that either city is the one to produce the Great Person, therefore the question is which city do we want to have pop a Great Person? The odds will look something like this:

Hampton Roads
45% Prophet
45% Merchant
10% Engineer

St. Albans
80% Engineer
15% Artist
5% Merchant

I guess it comes down to which Great Person we value the most right now... Prophet or Engineer would both be very strong choices, Merchant good, and Artist undesirable. How do we want to play this? Keep in mind that getting a Great Person from *BOTH* cities (one at 300 GPP, one at 400 GPP) is also a possibility. That may be the best course, nabbing the first Great Person from Hampton and the second from St. Albans about 8 turns later.



The Demographics, where we kick major behind. Pretty clear who's on top in this game at the moment. The only two issues I see are Kathlete's edge in Production (he seems to be working a lot of mines, and much fewer cottages) and our slim edge in Soldier count. NAP deals notwithstanding, we really need more units to be secure with our huge stretches of territory. A reserve of a dozen knights, getting the Engineering movement bonus and able to reinforce any part of our territory quickly, seems like a prudent force to assemble.

The only thing that came in diplomatically last night was a confirmation from plako to go ahead with our Kathlete deal, so I sent the (revised!) message posted above. We should be set for this turn.

[Speaker]

I suppose I deserve that, after my complaints about your diplo message.

[Sullla]

Hey Speaker, a couple quick questions:



- I just don't see Fredericksburg as a miliary city, the one turn we put into a knight there notwithstanding. (It has no stable, remember.) I'd rather we built missionaries here: we need one for Chikamauga, and our island cities will need them too. As a commerce city with middling shield potential, Fred is a good candiate for that role, in between building economic stuff.

- Umm, do we really need another trireme in Shiloh? We've already got one, and the ages of triremes isn't going to last much longer. We'll probably have Optics for caravels pretty soon, which will hold a longer shelflife. More importantly, we would really benefit from building a work boat in Shiloh now, so that the new inner rim city could connect clams immediately on founding. If we start the work boat right now, and work the grassland mines as the city grows, the timing should line up very nicely with the city's founding.

- Next turn looks like the right time to whip Chikamauga's lighthouse, just before growth.

- We should probably decide on what we're going to do with Great People at Hampton Roads and St. Albans. I think we threw out some ideas without reaching a clear consensus.

- Can any lurker (T-Hawk?) confirm that there's no limit on beaker overflow? I'd hate to see us lose anything to waste on Meditation. Maybe I should just dial down research to like 20% for this turn, hmmm...

Confirmation email from Kathlete:

Hello KA,

I'm glad we could come to an arrangement. I'm happy to include Korea
in our NAP until T205. I will e-mail them shortly to let them know. I
believe we shall need to wait on any further arrangements until as
you've said "I've sprung my surprise on Slaze".

Until next time,
Athlete
The Rebel Alliance

Guess we'll still have to wait and see what ultimately happens there.

plako and Dantski and our team have been exchanging more emails, mostly small stuff; this was the most interesting one:

Ok HRE units not moved so got a screen with info this time on the stack.

6 Praets
2 Maces
4 Cats
4 Axes
2 Chariots
1 LBow

HRE ETA on engineering is in the hundreds so expect them to be upgrading their melee.

Not inconsiderable, but nothing we couldn't handle if it came after us. I personally doubt that Nakor's running cash for upgrades, I'm sure he's saving up for another 100% run at the next tech. It took us 5 turns for Engineering; we'll be able to watch and see how many turns it takes him to research the same thing.

No response back from Nakor in a few days. Wonder if we'll hear back from him? I hope he's not foolish enough to try and plant a city right across from our cities in the central ring...

[Speaker]

- I just don't see Fredericksburg as a miliary city, the one turn we put into a knight there notwithstanding. (It has no stable, remember.) I'd rather we built missionaries here: we need one for Chikamauga, and our island cities will need them too. As a commerce city with middling shield potential, Fred is a good candiate for that role, in between building economic stuff.

We need to build one knight from every city that is capable, and supplement the rest from Gettysburg, Hampton, and St. Albans. Sorry, Sullla, but I insist. These knights won't build themselves.

- Umm, do we really need another trireme in Shiloh? We've already got one, and the ages of triremes isn't going to last much longer.

We can't even sentry with the 1 trireme we have, so I'd like another, yes.

We'll probably have Optics for caravels pretty soon, which will hold a longer shelflife.

No, we won't. We have way too many techs we need, and are already wasting turns on Meditation and Alphabet.

- We should probably decide on what we're going to do with Great People at Hampton Roads and St. Albans. I think we threw out some ideas without reaching a clear consensus.

I thought we had decided?

- Can any lurker (T-Hawk?) confirm that there's no limit on beaker overflow? I'd hate to see us lose anything to waste on Meditation. Maybe I should just dial down research to like 20% for this turn, hmmm...

There is no limit.

[T-hawk]

There is no limit.

I've never specifically tested, but I've never seen a limit on beaker overflow. The limit on unit hammer overflow is necessary to prevent storing up massive overflow by repeatedly building cheap units, then crash-completing a wonder. You can't repeatedly research cheap techs so there's no need for a limitation there.