RBP4 [SPOILERS] - Shaka of Zulu (sunrise089, regoarrarr, and friends)

[regoarrarr]

What the heck - I don't post in awhile and all of a sudden both plako and Lord Parkin are ahead of us?

Locke sent us a quick reply

We will have Writing tech pretty soon. Have no problem with signing OB then with your team.

Locke

I also sent a chaseup to Adlain as his warrior is moving further west than I'd like.

No problem. I saw your warrior again this turn (1W of the fur). Sunrise asked me to ask you if you would not scout to the west and north. It's a dead end, and he didn't want anyone stumbling across our expanses of double gold and floodplain corns :-)

If you head straight south for 6 tiles you will reach the fork that we talked about earler

Anything else exciting going on?

[regoarrarr]

We got a response back from Mackoti

hi there,
We still have a while to writing, about open border well we will consider that after we have sayiling and had unfog a road to your cities(well rememberr you didn't alowed to scout aroud so it will take a while)
Regards,
Mackoti

I replied with

Okay that sounds good. As for open borders, all you need is to defog the coast between our city of Reading (where we met) and SleepingMoogle's lands. And then connect your city with his. I think, since your city of Dudu Georgescu is on the river, all Moogle would need to do is road the one tile from his city to the river.

As I understand it, if you have Sailing (which I think you said you did), you just need to defog the coast or have the tiles owned by a non-hostile power.

Anyway we can talk more about that later if you want. Anything else interesting going on?

[fire&ice]

What the heck - I don't post in awhile and all of a sudden both plako and Lord Parkin are ahead of us?

Well I did ask for a turn report awhile back that you never responded to. Fork it over buddy post spam that is validated. *Looks away and says (Like you need it buddy) turns back with a smile on his face.*

[regoarrarr]

Email from plako

Hi Rego,

Ok. I'll turn 8=) around to check other places. I doubt our borders will touch in the near future, but I'm definately going to be very flexible when negotiating a border agreement with a friend.

The dogpile aspect of the game is a bit frustrating indeed, when you manage to play well or get lucky. I'm really glad that you've signed out from dogpiling bandwagon. I'm sure we could find a ways to co-operate that would be beneficial to you. Care to share the names of biggest agitators or the least hostile ones ;-). I'll definately pay back when opportunity arises such a big favor.

Best regards,
Plako

And my reply

Sounds good on 8=) - is there anywhere / anyone you'd like to meet? We may be able to help with directions if that is the case.

As for the grand anti-plako conspiracy, I don't want to make this out to be anything bigger than it is. It's not like I have a ton of people contacting me all the time talking about how you're a huge runaway. It's more like just something to talk about as we shoot the breeze - hey did you see plako founded his 6th city?!?!

Now let's take Lord Parkin for an example. I certainly understand that he (who is in what I'd call 3rd place) has a vested interest in trying to make the person or persons in front of him into this monster runaway. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't at least share SOME of those concerns about you being tops in food and production (especially as we sit here in 10th and 10th!!!). Again, please don't take this as my saying that LP is some sort of giant anti-plako agitator.

But like you said, I'm sure that we can and will find ways to cooperate that work out for both of us. I know that if I were in your position, I'd certainly be looking for ways!

Anything else going on?

[regoarrarr]

Well I did ask for a turn report awhile back that you never responded to. Fork it over buddy post spam that is validated. *Looks away and says (Like you need it buddy) turns back with a smile on his face.*

Right, right.

Okay here's the Turn 68 report, as lesson 1 of "How to use Expansive granaries"

First, here's the capital of Vine. We just triple whipped the settler



You can see that there's 30 hammers overflow, which will be enough to complete the granary in 1 turn. We'll grow and then get another settler or worker out. I haven't decided if I'll do it at size 4 or go all the way back up to size 6.

Here's Reading



Like I mentioned last turn, we spent one turn working the grass hill mine over the corn. So in 3 turns, we'll complete the granary at 12/24 food. Perfect!

And finally, Montgomery.



We're working the 1/2/0 tile as the rice is getting farmed (2 more turns). So in 2 turns, on Turn 70, we'll have 18/60 in the box and 6/22 in the food box. Then we'll swap over to the 5/0/1 rice for 1 turn (producing 1->2 hammers to make it 20/60 in the box) and at the end of T71 that forest will get chopped for 20->40 hammers, completing the granary with 11/22 in the box. Brilliant!

In other unit news, folks are just out scouting about.

[darrelljs]

What's so special about having the box half full again?

Darrell

[Nicolae Carpathia]

The way I understand it, only food that enters the 2nd half of the food bar is "stored" for the next level of growth. Because the interturn order effectively goes:

1) Granary comes online.
2) Giant loaves of bread are hoovered out of the ground, are added to the food bar as the brown segment.

Therefore, you want the blue-bar of the granary build filled in *before* the orange food bar hits the half-way point. Otherwise, that growth cycle is wasted. There's nothing like miscalculating, whipping your city to finish the granary, and realise your food bar is something like 16/30. Boom, 16 points of food wasted.

[Profane]

Boom, 16 points of food wasted.

I thought it would just mean 1 point of food wasted?

[Krill]

I thought it would just mean 1 point of food wasted?

Correct.

[regoarrarr]

Email from plako

That's our line. We've already met everyone and started the UN thread. ;-)

Thanks for the info on Parkin. It sounds like he is just trying to plant the seeds of an anti-China coalition for later. I guess you really can't start too early on things like that. And of course, since we are playing to win, we would probably do something similar if we were in his shoes though.

We're definitely warming up to the idea of 'cooperation' in the near future to counter that sort of influence. What did you have in mind?

Thanks,
ASM and Plako