RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Ashain]

Trick question. I wouldn't be in their place.

I won't debate the validity of this statement, but I think that Jowy does have a valid, and rather interesting question here if you guys have the time to answer it.

[m4gill4]

So Nakor is again trying to go behind our back and sow as much fear, uncertainty, and doubt amongst the other teams. What a guy, eh?

Can't blame a guy for trying, right? Underhanded or no, I thought it was a smart play, or at least an attempt at one.

I wonder what is your opinion of the contents of Nakor's email to Danski and Plako? Do you dispute any of the assertions?

[Sullla]

If I were in Korea or Mali's place, I would absolutely do what I could to help out teams that I considered friends, especially with a long history of cooperation together. (And... we did that already, sending them money when they asked for it, and gifting away units when requested with no timetable for return or payment.) I'd much rather help a friendly team win the game than switch sides and stab them in the back late in the game. Just not something I would do. Of course I'd still try to win the game, but there are ways to win that don't involve betraying your allies.

On that same note, we've had multiple offers from Nakor to sell out Dantski and divide up his land between our teams. We refused to do so, and will continue to refuse to do so, because we feel grateful to Dantski for assisting us earlier. An alliance of convenience is no true alliance at all.

athlete and Nakor rub us the wrong way because the two of them have constantly been willing to lie in diplomacy and sell out former allies the moment it became convienent to do so. Look, we're not irritated that Nakor is "trying to win the game", we're irritated because he's simultaneously sending us friendly NAP/Open Border emails while secretly telling everyone else to unite against us. It's a two-faced approach to diplomacy, and yes, it's dishonest. Competition and dislike are perfectly OK - we accept that - but don't act like my friend while you try to slit my throat.

Not coincidentally, our three teams that have stuck together are all in good shape (and Dantski and plako are really on the rise), while the other alliance is in the process of falling apart. I'll let that speak for itself.

[Sullla]

OK, enough people in the lurker thread probably want to see us lose already, without me offering up more commentary. Let's get to the new turn:



It looks like we're not the only ones interested in chopping these forest tiles! Kathlete moved 4 workers up to the border this turn, with the same idea in mind. And we spotted Bothawui for the first time (new Ottoman city), which irritated me because Kathlete specifically requested we not plant any cities east of The Wilderness in the empty space there, which we agreed to. True, we didn't ask him not to plant his own city there, but I thought it was sort of implied. Guess we should have been more clear, can't assume anything when dealing with these teams.

Bothawui is pretty much a junk city, but it defends Hoth with its culture. Now we have to go through Cloud City or Bothawui to reach the former Byzantine capital (which is a really, really good city that we'd like to control).


Minor little micro note at Vicksburg, where I held off on cashing in the forest chops for 1t because we have a missionary landing in the city. The workers roaded the incense this turn, and because they are Fast Workers they can still return and chop the forests next turn. I love Fast Workers.

OK, time for what we're all interested in: the race for Taj thing. Here's what we still need:

Philosophy tech (634/1196 beakers)
Nationalism tech (2691 beakers)
Total: 3253 beakers

100% research = 752 beakers/turn @ -342gpt
60% research = 455 beakers/turn @ -61gpt
50% research = 381 beakers/turn @ +9gpt
0% research = 10 beakers/turn @ +360gpt

The funny thing is that 2 turns of 50% science and 2 turns of binary science are exactly the same in base beakers! Each produces 762 beakers with a net of +18 gold. Min science actually does come out ahead after calculating the actual beakers - but only by ONE single beaker, 943 to 942 beakers. Even I wouldn't sweat that one!

So we can pretty much run any slider combination and not worry about losing beakers/gold to waste; it will be mere pennies in any case. I looked at this for a bit, and came up with the following plan:

1t Philosophy @ 60% research [656 beakers, -61g]
3t Nationalism @ 60% research [562 beakers/turn, -61gpt]
1t Nationalism @ 100% research [930 beakers/turn, -342g]
Total: 3272 beakers, -586g

Of course these are approximations, but they'll be close enough for our purposes, and we can build Weath or Research if something comes up a little short. I looked at trying to get Nationalism in 4 turns instead of 5 turns, but that requires us averaging about 670 base beakers each turn, which would take 90% science and almost 1100 gold to pull off. We just don't have those kind of funds! (Unless we're willing to trip a Golden Age, which we hopefully don't have to do.) So 5t total research it will have to be for us.

Therefore we need 391 more gold, less whatever we can pull from our current cities by building some Wealth (which might be worthwhile for a turn or two). I guess we should ask Korea for 400 gold then, which is actually only a single turn's worth of 0% income for us. I'll go ahead and send them an email on that.

As for Nakor's end, building Taj Mahal:

Rolan: 204 shields (+135)
Krondor: 158 shields (+21)

Queg is eliminated because it completed its build. Has to be one of these two cities, and Rolan looks like the much more likely candidate. (Krondor is probably building a university, would be my guess.) I'm unsure where Nakor produced so many shields though! It wasn't build overflow, since there were 69 shields into Taj last turn. I guess it was forest chop(s)? Looking at that terrain:



There's one forest in the starting radius, and two at third-ring, but that's absolutely it. I've tried to count up the base shields for Rolan, and I can't get higher than ~15 even if all the highest production tiles are worked. Even with all production multipliers, that means that the city shouldn't be building Taj faster than 45-50 shields/turn. Since Taj costs 700 shields, Rolan looks to be a long way away still. Nakor probably would have to whip his capital to beat us, and we'll deal with that bridge when we get to it. (Costs double pop to whip wonders, and I don't know if he'd be willing to decimate his capital even to land the wonder.) We can always wait until the end of the turn to decide whether or not to use our Great Engineer, and see what Nakor does first.

That's about all for now. We seem to be in decent shape to land Taj, judging by Nakor's panicked emails to the other teams. :neenernee

[timmy827]

100% research = 752 beakers/turn @ -342gpt
60% research = 455 beakers/turn @ -61gpt
50% research = 381 beakers/turn @ +9gpt
0% research = 10 beakers/turn @ +360gpt

The funny thing is that 2 turns of 50% science and 2 turns of binary science are exactly the same in base beakers! Each produces 762 beakers with a net of +18 gold. Min science actually does come out ahead after calculating the actual beakers - but only by ONE single beaker, 943 to 942 beakers. Even I wouldn't sweat that one!

Except that you just did, by going to the trouble of running the numbers to see :neenernee

[Speaker]

Kathlete is again not ending his turn.

[Adlain]

In his defence (and this is pure speculation as i dont know if this is true) it could be that he is only able to play within a certain period of the day atm and with the war and all it is benificial that the time remains the same for each cycle of the 24hr turn timer.

[Speaker]

Just from this turn (and most turns are like this for him):

5/3/10 9:46 pm athlete4life10 Logged out
5/3/10 9:43 pm athlete4life10 Logged in
5/3/10 9:38 pm athlete4life10 Logged out
5/3/10 9:30 pm athlete4life10 Logged in
5/3/10 6:35 pm athlete4life10 Logged out
5/3/10 6:16 pm athlete4life10 Score increased to 960
5/3/10 6:05 pm athlete4life10 Logged in
5/3/10 12:25 pm athlete4life10 Score increased to 941
5/3/10 12:25 pm A new turn has begun. It is now 1230 AD

It has simply gotten rude at this point, in my opinion.

[Sullla]

To be fair Speaker, athlete plays his turn in the evening US time every day, and he's been consistent about doing that. Now, is it fair for the six other teams to wait 8-12 hours each day just to make playing athlete's turn more convenient? I'm much less certain of that. But I really don't want to fight any more battles over that in the general thread. No question though, it's very irritating for us other teams.

Diplomatically, Korea has agreed that they will gift us the gold that we need, even going so far as to revolt into Caste System to help us out. That's really nice, so I think that we should give them some interest on top if we do successfully land Taj Mahal. (Like, whatever 1 turn of Golden Age income is at 100% gold, we send it over to them.) Have to land the wonder before we can do that though - don't assume anything!

slaze requested our stone resource, and we had to turn him down. He's... not going to be too happy about that. We need stone for Notre Dame and then Oxford, so we can't send it away for 10 turns right now. I sent an apology letter, but I doubt that will help much.

Poor slaze. I'd almost feel sorry for him, if his diplomatic isolation wasn't entirely his own fault. (Since slaze's "return", I've sent him 4 messages and he has replied once. You can't blow off diplomacy in these games!)

[Speaker]

Diplomatically, Korea has agreed that they will gift us the gold that we need, even going so far as to revolt into Caste System to help us out. That's really nice, so I think that we should give them some interest on top if we do successfully land Taj Mahal. (Like, whatever 1 turn of Golden Age income is at 100% gold, we send it over to them.) Have to land the wonder before we can do that though - don't assume anything!

That's going to be well over 400 gold, maybe 500. Were you saying you wanted to give them that much as interest? That's an awful generous gift...

Or are you saying we just give them whatever the 100% rate is, which includes repaying the loan amount?