RB PBEM #1 - Mehmed (SPOILERS!)

[Dreylin]

So in the secrecy of your own private thread, which direction are you leaning? To ally with ruff vs. soooo, the reverse, or hoping to stay out of it?

Well there's actually a whole load more info to dump, but I had to run to a meeting after finishing the last post ... my productivity today is not going to be significant!

I'll answer the question first, and then work on dumping the rest of the info:

I think I've already hinted at my preferences to ally with one of my immediate neighbours, thus securing one border and allowing concentrated expansion in the other direction. TBH though, letting them antagonise each other at this stage of the game serves my purposes well - it has them more concerned with each other than with me!

BTW: thanks for the spam post Fenton, always appreciated in the ongoing post-race with Ruff!

[Fenton Denton Smith]

BTW: thanks for the spam post Fenton, always appreciated in the ongoing post-race with Ruff!

Nice answer...









Can't quite leave it at that so:

I agree with your summation here - do you imagine that because of your "agreement" with ruff that you next expansion phase is going to be directly towards athlete?

I also noted earlier that you were contemplating what tech to go for next so as not to duplicate too much - I would have thought that IW would be fairly high on your list of priorities with all that jungle? It opens up some nice city site also...

[Dreylin]

So while I was composing my reply to sooooo, Ruff dropped by for a chat:

Ruff.Hi: Dreylin?

me: Yeah
composing a reply to sooooo
don't want to wait too long and look like we're colluding
(even though we are to an extent)

Ruff.Hi: ok- sorry for dumping you in it
you ok with my draft to sooooo?

me: np, I have wiggle room
couple of bits
I'd tweak

Ruff.Hi: I'll probably send this in about 3 hrs - just to separate our communications

me: sure

Ruff.Hi: feel free to make suggestions - but this is MY email to Soooo

me: Oh, of course
btw, it's cede, not seed
</anal retentive>

Ruff.Hi: oh well - very good point

me:

Ruff.Hi: spelling isn't my strong point .. nor is using the right word

me: Although seeding the Corn does sound a bit like a pun

Ruff.Hi: true
and we are back tied on post counts

me: OK, sent message both to him and to you.

Ruff.Hi: got it

me: Trying to play down our relationship as you see

Ruff.Hi: np
I am pretty sure he will ask me to pull DV 1 tile South
that is what I would do
oh - can you send me a pic (or description) of the north of that valley - it is fog for me

me: (trying to find my map)

Ruff.Hi: you mention a nice coastal river city

me: Yeah

Ruff.Hi: maybe I can agree that sooooo takes that site (even though it sounds nice) and no one settles the mountains with the copper (this last argument will be harder to make once he has that river site)

me: Nofood resources

Ruff.Hi: that is the story of this map

me: but river grassland
& coast

Ruff.Hi: ok
I'm going to see if sooooo is online for IMing

me: Best positioned, it would be 4N, 1W from DV

Ruff.Hi: share 2 tiles with DV
and he is creative - blast him

me: Or it could go 1W, but that's a worse site

Ruff.Hi: maybe I can hook up DV toyour civ and get a religion spread

me: (& trade routes)

Ruff.Hi: oh yes!

me: Only need one road
between the two rivers

Ruff.Hi: great!

me: since we'll both have Sailing

Ruff.Hi: then I will leave you to road that tile

me: it's the Northern Spices....
your territory.

Ruff.Hi: feel free to drop in
it is your spice anyway

me: I'd though the Southern one was mine

Ruff.Hi: nitpicker!

me: Yup!

Ruff.Hi: anyway - I have work - talk to you later

me: Me too
bye

So that's all very well. He has since sent me both of the e-mails that went to sooooo:

Dreylin,

I probably should have sent you a copy of my first email to sooooo.

Ruff


Email 1 - the nasty one from last night that was probably too heavy but I needed to set a tone (I think) ...

Hi Sooooo,

Sorry about blowing you off today ... bbq, run to movies ("The Taking of Pelham 123" - totally worth seeing, language a little strong, a bit of death but good performances).

Anyway, you wanted to discuss the valley ...

"sooooo: the problem as i see it is that there's a big valley equidistant between our capitals"

... is that the valley with the copper and all of the hills / mountains or the valley with the corn and spices? I'm not sure how far West you have mapped, but the corn / spices valley is much closer to Dreylin that to either of us. Dreylin and I are currently negotiating about that valley to see who gets to settle there. To be honest, I really need this valley to just hold my own in this game - don't tell Dreylin!

I haven't been up North into your area, but you have visited my capital. As such, you should know that I have no city locations to the North of my capital. No city locations to the East of my capital (end of map) and one, maybe two with squeezy city locations to the direct South of my capital. I have to go West. Just so that I am clear ... I not Templars to just meeking accept being boxed in.

For good or for bad, Sullla put us as neighbours. Maybe there is meta-gaming involved, maybe not. I am pretty sure that any war between the two of us would be long, bloody and probably a stalemate - it would certainly cost us the game. Also, an early war would make it very difficult for you to contact mh and athlete, so you wouldn't get any tech from them. You also wouldn't get any tech from me. I am pretty sure I can talk Dreylin into not trading with you either.

<I've just re-read the above. Am I being too heavy? Maybe, but I want to be very clear about this so that there is no surprises down the track>

Now, this is not how I want to play this game. I have a client that is a very tough client to work for. He is very firm and will not take any sloppy work. However, he is extremely fair. That is how I want to play this game - firm but fair. That said, and so we don't end up just killing ourselves for other the other players protection, I would much prefer for us to work together as neighbours - and to give us both a chance of winning this game.

As such, I would like to propose a Non-Aggression Pact (terms unclear but up for discussion - but they will include free Westward passage for your units). I would further like to propose that the hills between your worker and the corn / spices location be declared a De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) - an area where neither of us will plant a city on any of those hills. That isn't much of a loss given the food situation there.

FYI - I've also attached my understanding of the map layout (v1) and Dreylin's update (v2) that show the various general locations of all of us.

Regards,

Email 2 about 10 minutes ago. Soooo and I are chatting at 12:30 my time via IM.

sooooo,

Thank you for your email. It certainly wasn't as heavy as mine was (after reading it again today - gee written word is hard to get the tone right with) - sorry about that.

For your information, Dreylin and I have reached an agreement regarding the corn / spice valley (btw, Dreylin has dubbed this valley 'Death Valley' and I am using it for ease of communication) in question - to be honest, we reached this agreement over the week end and I didn't want to tip this information to you too soon without knowing more of your plans regarding this valley (sorry about the white lie :D).

He has agreed to cede (or seed if you like the farmer's pun) me the corn site in return for me ceding him the incense land (South of a double row of peaks that is the Southern border of Death Valley) plus a perma-trade of the spice. The actual city location Dreylin and I have agreed on is 1NE of the Northern Spice.

From reading your message above - I take it that you are suggesting I also take the spices / corn site. Maybe not the exact tile that Dreylin and I have agreed on, but in that general location.

As you said, there isn't much room in this valley for another city. Are you talking about settling in the NW or the NE of this valley. From what I know of that region, there isn't much (any?) food there. In fact, this whole map is food deprived. I only have 4 food tiles and one of those is sugar (which is a bit of a stretch to count as food).

If we can get this agreement inked, then I would be happy with a NAP and a free passage deal through the valley.

I agree with him that the first post seems a bit heavy-handed, but of course I haven't seen sooooo's e-mails to know what tone was being set.

That's where it stands with Ruff right now, he and sooooo are due to be chatting right now, and I need to put together some sort of response to Ruff.

Because this post is getting pretty long, I'm going to move to another to discuss sooooo's response to me....

[Dreylin]

Right, with the Ruff situation up to date, I can turn back to sooooo. He actually responded pretty quickly to my message with the following:

Alright, that's cool.

I realised that I didn't answer your question about monarchy. m-h contacted me about it since he figured that Ruff's 5-way tech proposal meant that we weren't worrying about waiting to meet in-game before starting diplomatic contact. I wasn't sure about this but wasn't exactly going to rebuff him when he's offering a tech trade that I benefit from, so I said yes.

I'll stop bugging you about a tech deal but once you've decided what you're doing then send me an email.

Phew, managed to diffuse that situation successfully!

So now we know about Monarchy, and that opens up some things to consider:

Duplication of research between mh & athlete is a definite bonus for the rest of us, as they'll be getting at maximum half-value for their tech in trades. As such, it's probably important for me to get a Monarchy deal firmed up with athlete to keep him on that path, and guarantee that mh can't get even three trades from his research.

Secondly, given that I beat everyone to Monotheism, it's probably safe to assume that both athlete & mh have gone through Priesthood to start on Monarchy. This further implies that one or both of them is going for the Oracle, and that winning that race is going to be important. One thing I have on my side in this is that I preceed them in the turn order, but I don't actually think there's much I can do to speed my completion time. I will have to sim it out before mh is back and see what it would take to accelerate my build time.

I need to reply to sooooo in the near future, but can wait until I have worked out a deal with athlete.

[kalin]

BTW: thanks for the spam post Fenton, always appreciated in the ongoing post-race with Ruff!

Are you sure you really want to have the thread with most posts? Some people may assume you are plotting against them

Also, when you have time, pls update us with the plans in the east.

K

[Dreylin]

Can't quite leave it at that so:

I agree with your summation here - do you imagine that because of your "agreement" with ruff that you next expansion phase is going to be directly towards athlete?

Directly? No, but certainly Westward. I still think that going for the NW coastal spot is my next priority - though I want to get a Chariot out that way to see whether either mh or athlete has settled that way yet.

I can't imagine that at this stage of the game he would try to put a city past Banana Lake into my core. assuming he went for the Gold with his second city, I could see him going south for the Gems with his third - assuming he's scouted that far. I do think that Banana Lake will form our border, though I'm not sure how we'll settle around the pinch-points at the North and South.

I also noted earlier that you were contemplating what tech to go for next so as not to duplicate too much - I would have thought that IW would be fairly high on your list of priorities with all that jungle? It opens up some nice city site also...

I agree that IW is high on my list of priorities, but it only has an immediate return if Iron shows up within my existing borders. My current settling plan takes me away from the Jungle (though I acknowledge a degree of cause & effect there), and I'm not going to be in a position to send out a second settler for 5t+. It also has less trade value than some of the other techs on the table, and I'm less afraid of having HA's running around than Swords at this point.

Having realised that we are actually on sooooo's 10t alphabet timetable - not athlete's 8t Monarchy one - I should be able to complete Archery, HBR & Med by that point to fulfill all my existing obligations and give me the immediate security I need. I definitely expect IW to be next after that, unless someone else has researched it already.

[Dreylin]

Are you sure you really want to have the thread with most posts? Some people may assume you are plotting against them

Also, when you have time, pls update us with the plans in the east.

K

I actually considered that post-count increases could be used to correllate diplomacy - infact I mentioned it directly to sooooo with an explanation for just that reason. TBH, if I can maintain a steady accumulation of posts it actually is less suspicious than a more sporadic level, by making it more difficult to tell when large-scale diplomacy is ongoing.

Plus I like the sound of my own voice.

[Dreylin]

Oh, and athlete must have sensed it was time to get back in on the fun and sent me an e-mail this morning:

Hey Dreylin,

Sorry it's taken me a while to get back to you. I'm not sure if I understand the latter part of your message. Are you trying to add those techs to the trade & make it a multi-tech deal? Or is this a separate deal we're discussing? As well are you suggesting I research Metal Casting?

Let me know,

Athlete

For reference, I had suggested IW or MC as additional potential trades for Monarchy.

My reply took a while to get to in the Ruff/sooooo situation, but since I now know about mh going for Monarchy and I'm leaning towards HBR anyway, I figured I may as well try and firm up our deal:

Athlete,

I was actually suggesting them as alternative options for me to trade you for Monarchy if you were interested. I'm actually leaning towards researching HBR next myself if you're still interested. If you are, let me know what you'd want as an additional tech, and we can ink the deal ready for when sooooo delivers Alphabet to the masses! 8-)

Dreylin II.

[Dreylin]

I sent the following to Ruff around the time his chat with sooooo was going on:

Hey Ruff,

Thanks for sending those over. I got a short reply from sooooo earlier that basically implied he accepted my version of events (from the e-mail I sent you), and moved swiftly on to other matters. I hope your chat with him was fruitful this afternoon...?

Maybe after our collusion on this we should start discussing some degree of formalisation of our relationship ... though of course we still want to keep it behind the scenes at the moment.

One other thing sooooo mentioned was that his existing Monarchy deal had been negotiated with mh. (Apparently after your public suggestion of the 5-way deal there was some confusion about their having to wait before initiating direct contact.)

Anyway, as I've mentioned, I have been negotiating with athlete to swing a Monarchy trade, so it appears they both are pretty committed to that tech. I don't know what the obligations are of your MFP with mh, but it's probably in both our interests to make sure they continue to duplicate research. That gets them less trade value, and also
causes tensions between them.

Anyway, off to meeting.

Dreylin II.

In reply, Ruff sent an e-mail with a (very) brief summary of the conclusions of his chat with sooooo:

Dreylin,

Here is a summary.

ruff_hi: I settle 1E of Northern Spice
ruff_hi: you settle 4N, 1W (desert hill?) of Corn
ruff_hi: we share / culturally fight for 1 farmed (!) floodplain - expect this to be yours 75% of the time
ruff_hi: oh - and NW of DV is clear land

I know that this is 1 tile off what we agreed, but I still think it fits in with your dot mapping. And we agreed to a NAP.

We also discussed the following:

sooooo: yes. free right of passage for us both through death valley
sooooo: or DEATH valley as we should call it
ruff_hi: more like BLOODY valley in an aussie accent!
ruff_hi: stupid game
sooooo: i won't settle anything else in your lands
sooooo: FLAMING MONGREL valley?
ruff_hi: sure
sooooo: yep
ruff_hi: Bastard Sullla Valley?
sooooo: BS DEATH valley

Regards,

Ruff

With a postscript:

oh - 1 more thing ...

I don't know what the obligations are of your MFP with mh

No - just talking. Nothing firm at all.

Ruff

Which clearly skips over a lot of the stuff I'd asked, but serves to summarise what's been put in place. Maybe I'm being over-eager in discussing alliances, but it certainly seems like we're cooperating ... perhaps I'm just being lulled into a false sense of security until I'm ripe for a backstab, but as long as I keep Edirne effectively garrisoned, there's not really a good way around to strike at my territory.

Anyway, I just sent the following and we'll see if anything comes of it:

Hey Ruff,

I see you reached an agreement with sooooo. Moving DV south 1tile is no problem for me, you just grab that river-bend Plains tile which doesn't figure in my dotmap. Looks like the city is significantly worse as a result though which is unfortunate, but I guess you had to make some concessions to him. Would you be prepared to divulge the duration of your NAP?

I have absolutely no problem with you & sooooo renaming the valley however you want ... after all it's your valley!

Any thoughts about the tech situation; about mh & athlete's duplication of research?

Dreylin II.

[Dreylin]

OK, for those keeping score the answer to the "Krill question" is t47, (that's 4t from now) and there ain't a thing I can do about it.