[SPOILERS] Don't mention the war

[NobleHelium]

Seems you did lose a tile. Is that a banana?

[plako]

Seems you did lose a tile. Is that a banana?

Yeah. Holy city there was bad news. However I should regain the tile shortly since Kainho will be 40% in few turns.

[plako]

Dogpile alert. I've been discussing with Mackoti and WK and we're giving Serdoa a headache. I'm not too proud of this installement, but I feel that this is only way to fight profitably in this setup. There are no easy targets you could get easy gains with minimal investment. Also if you don't tie majority on your side, there is fair chance you'll be soon in minority. In retrospect this setup would have been way better of played as AI diplo or no diplo at all.

Main reason to arrange a dogpile is that I need a target to keep threat away from my back. You might ask why Serdoa. Well WK was not part of the original dogpile group and I've been since then trying to keep good relations with him so not him. TMIT is not doing it right I think so I signed long NAP with him. He is building farms and mines instead of cottages, but still signing NAPs with pretty much everyone so that he really can't utilise his better production cababilities at this point. He also haven't adopted Hereditary rule and he lost couple of happiness resources to me so his cities are relatively small at the moment. Good for whipping (ig only he would have HR perfect), but economically he is gradually losing ground. Rome definately was initiator of the original dogpile, but also he is the one that paid the biggest price for it. Therefore I've been keeping communicatin lines open and been friendly. I consider Mackoti best player of this group so in that sense he is probably also biggest threat, but earlier I also thought Serdoa would have been able to utilise his wonders to commanding lead by now. That hasn't happened, but things have gone already wrong for him so I had to continue with the chosen path.

There has been some chats here and there and then these emails:

Me to Mackoti and WK:

The game has been a drag lately. Not much going on. What would you say, if we spice it up with a good old dogpile against Serdoa? I'll have NAP until T120 with him and I think you're also NAP free by then so we could act.

Here are some preliminary thoughts about alliance terms:
* We attack about ~T120 and we build hammerwise similar amount of attacking units that should be at least 25 Knights. The actual composition depends on what Serdoa does so this might mean also maces, longbows and cats+trebs, but hammerwise we should bring in equal amount of units in the field
* We try our best to evenly spread the spoils of war and compensate losses. e.g. if the capital is too big to be in the deal it can be razed and if someone loses lot of units others will gift units to compensate
* We negotiate as a group peace and war. No one makes indivicual peace treaties or NAPs
* Open information exchange. We keep others up to date concerning the issues relevant to our cause and sharing the spoils. Detailed plans can change, but then they must be informed to others in timely manner
* NAP until Serdoa is killed +5T. No longer than T140

Mackoti (well I asked him to respond something since WK was thinking what to do ):

Well this sound like a good ideea.Lets bring some fun in game.

WK:

I agree the game has been kinda stale lately and could use some heating up, but there's a couple of problems I see with this:

Firstly, we know how successful most dogpiles in RB are, not very successful. Add to the fact that it'll be the medieval era, the easiest era to defend thanks to walls/castles, and it'll be fairly transparent to Serdoa what's going on if we all have NAP's ending on t120 (which I think we do) and that doesn't exactly make me optimistic.

Also, what about TMIT? True his interest is low and is not really a long term threat but he's Serdoa's best friend and may jump in against one of us. I know I wouldn't want to deal with a surprise attack from him while my army is busy with Serdoa.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to join in with you guys on this and make the game exciting again but I'm not that confident about our chance for success. If you can address these issues then I'd be happy to join in.

Me:

You're right. Full commitment is nescessary to make this work out. However I do think we've a fair chance to go for a full kill despite of the walls and Castles. Serdoa is in full infra mode at the moment. He just got Apostolic palace (probably with Engineer?) he probably is going to be building monasteries and temples next and I wouldn't be suprised if Sistine Chapel lands soon and then probably Sankore. These all makes it more appealing to act sooner rather than later. Also if he puts up a credible defenses we can call off the attack. Those credible defenses would have cost him a lot.

We just need to be prepared also for the possibility that TMIT joins build those walls and castles on border cities and build some defenders. It would be 3vs2 so still favourable to us and no one would be developing in peace.

WK:

Your kinda right on the infra, although there's still 20t which is plenty of time to get an army out.

The main reason I'm hesitant to join in right now is that my original plan was to invade TMIT when my NAP ran out on t110. Given his declining interest and low position in the game it seems more likely, from my perspective, that an attack would work on him than Serdoa. However since TMIT and Serdoa will be pretty much forced to be together if this dogpile goes forward and we may end up fighting TMIT anyway, I hope we can work something out where we can invade or at least threaten both of them. If we can, then consider me on board.

WK again:

Having thought about it, I've decided to forget about TMIT for now and jump in with you guys against Serdoa, so I agree to the basic alliance terms.

If we want to make this work, we'll need to figure out how we will advance tactically around t110-115, as no tactical discussion seems to be the main pitfall these days. Before that, we should get a decent map of Serdoa's territory. Does anyone have complete map info on him?

Me:

Great. I'm also alright with the terms. Mackoti are you also ok?

I think despite of it being blatantly obvious and maybe a bit of a challenge to our poor citizens we should try to have our armies ready on T120. Turn order is such that you go before Serdoa and I afterwards. That might be a bit annoying. Does anybody know when healing occurs? At the end of own or whole turn?

I have not scouted Serdoa territory, but because of the map layout we've very good idea what is where.

I agree that we need to be able to plan our tactics also properly for this to work. There are numerous bad examples including this game .

My correction to above:

Obviovusly I got our turn order wrong Mackoti is before and WK and I after Serdoa.

[NobleHelium]

Healing occurs at the start of a player's turn.

[plako]

Thx NobleHelium.

T99

Miltary advisor for a change. I've too few workers, but not building new onea at the moment. Whip can be used to get rid of excess population .

[plako]

T100

Serdoa fired Golden age and converted to Caste+Pacifism. Gunning for Liberalism maybe? WK got Great Scientist.

[NobleHelium]

How much land does everyone have? Looks like you -> WK -> mackoti -> Serdoa -> TMIT in rankings.

[plako]

How much land does everyone have? Looks like you -> WK -> mackoti -> Serdoa -> TMIT in rankings.

Your list is quite accurate I think WK+Mackoti are pretty even and I think Serdoa isn't far behind. TMIT is clearly smallest. Partially because he doesn't seem to value culture very highly in new cities.

[plako]

T101

This game is moving slow now. TMIT kept the save almost 2 days.

I talked with Mackoti and we decided to go for Liberalism 1st i.e. he funds me there and I pay back half of the value of Liberalism beaker value to him. This will delay our attack probably ~5T.

So I started to use my gold for Paper that will finish next turn. I also got Scientist this turn that will be used to bulb part of the Education.

[plako]

T102

Converted to Pacifism+Caste.

Culture fight + Golden Age in 7T combined:




Serdoa is pressuring heavily Ardo. He probably has to go out of Caste before his GA ends so I might be overdoing culture here.