RB PBEM #1 - Mehmed (SPOILERS!)

[Dreylin]

Couple of replies from him:

Hi there.

Sooooo has a settler heading up to his iron - will prob found in 2 or 3 turns.

Sooooo is also 1 turn away from Education so I should be able to tell what is what next turn. I was planning to dial up research in 2 or 3 turns and knock off gunpowder. Re your other techs, I would also like to knock off Drama so I can get a Globe city up and running.

Re Guilds - My thought is that this would be a good tech for us to steal from the others ... me steal it from sooooo and you from who ever you bomb.

The other option re a Lib delay is to research Nationalism ourselves and take Mil Trad (or is it Mil Science).

Ruff

Update

Sooooo completed Education - will be able to give you info on what tech he selects next round as well as an ETA

I've completed 1 university and I am thinking of dialing up tech next turn, Tech options are:

Drama (2)
Gunpowder (6)
Nationalism (13)
Engineering (5)

[Dreylin]

t91 - OK, start off with the builds:

Ankara completes Worker, starts Market(4t)

Hmmm, mh has completed Chichen Itza - that could make things more complicated.

Spread Confucianism into Istanbul

Hmmmm, Shwed is in Damascus, which is going to cause me problems with that border I feel.

Archer in the SE destroys the Barb Warrior, however Heoric HA cn't quite reach the Barb Archer - which is sitting on my Iron; will have to warn Ruff about that.

OK, time to work out some research plans....

[Dreylin]

OK, have found some time to reflect on the current situation:

Ruff,

Before I forget, there's a Barb Archer sitting on my Iron right now (I couldn't get a unit there in time to kill it this turn), so if it decides to pillage you will use your Iron supply. Sorry about that, I'll get it back up and running ASAP.

Second; Dreylin's Lackey only has a couple more tiles to do on the current plan in the West; is he still available to do some more roadworks in the East after that?

I have enough gold for 4t of max research right now. At 100%, my timings are:

Drama (1.1t)
Gunpowder (5t)
Nationalism (8t)
Enginering (7t - inc. 3t of Mach)

With a drop in research rate to maximise usage of gold reserves, I could have Nationalism at EOT100, then Lib at EOT101.

However, if I used my stored Great Artist to kick off a Golden Age I probably increase my research by 20-25%, which would give me Nationalism approximately EOT98 and Lib at EOT99.

I am leaning towards the GA option, but I would like to be able to spend a chunk of the bonus production towards the first wave of Jannissaries, so would be lobbying for you to grab Gunpowder ASAP. Actually, I think I'm lobbying for that anyway, as I feel somewhat exposed with current Unit balances.

I am sending Foshaug to Arabia, since mh seems to be slipping further behind the curve, while athlete is at least keeping up. That way I'll be able to steal Feudalism and Guilds and whatever else, while keeping an eye on his movements.

Another thought; when your NAP with sooooo expires, you should cancel Open Borders with him. I'm pretty sure that will block off all his foriegn trade routes, which should hurt him significantly. We will both take a hit, but not as much as "TOG". The only way he gets them back is from a second border expansion at Knossos de-fogging the coast to Sarmatian. I'll review our NAP agreement and see if OB are specified, or whether I can cancel them should that occur.

Dreylin II.

[Dreylin]

Guess I forgot to post Ruff's reply and the conversation we had. Ruff has probably already done so, but fo the sake of completeness:

Dreylin,

I'll turn up research on gunpowder next turn.

Dreylin's Lackey is at your disposal - just tell me what you want him to do.

np re iron. Those units will just go into storage and I will swap to maces (only need copper for that - or did I trade that to you?).

I have one spy in sooooo's territory that is sitting still waiting to steal a tech or two - going to build 2 or 3 more and have them fog bust some tiles that I cannot see (like that military holding tile you mentioned).

Lets talk next round when I have details of what sooooo is teching - but I would park your research on Nationalism and dial it down to 0%. Clearing that would open up some very nice techs to bulb with Liberalism. Are you generating many beakers at 0%? If so, then maybe parking on Drama or Engineering / Mach would be better.

Ruff

Ruff.Hi: Hey - welcome back to the land of gmail
just sent you an email in reply to yours

me: Yeah
OK, will read
Not sitting at a computer all day for work means less time hanging around online

Ruff.Hi: yep

me: Read e-mail; you want to chat about, or should I reply?

Ruff.Hi: it sounded like we are teching at pretty similar rates
my longer turn techs were after adjusting for binary research

me: Ah, OK

Ruff.Hi: anything to chat about? I think we covered most items

me: I didn't do the adjustment

Ruff.Hi: just sent me a screenie of what you want roaded and I send him over

me: OK, will do

Ruff.Hi: hey - what is the benefit of moving your palace?

me: I've only got 2 scientists hired at the moment, so 0% is not many beakers
currently on Mach

Ruff.Hi: I haven't got any academies yet - bulbed education with my last one

me: Palace move: optimsing for Bureaucracy
mostly

Ruff.Hi: I am thinking of moving my capital to LQ and turning my old capital into a hammer heavy city (more military)

me: and also centralising for distance maintenance to some extent

Ruff.Hi: only takes 3 turns
yeah

me: Considering I jumped for Col to enable early cheap courthouses, I still only have 1!

Ruff.Hi: I have 2 or 3

me: Need to find space to slot a few more in

Ruff.Hi: but my next 10 or so turns are about building up my military so that I am not a soft target for sooooo

me: yeah

Ruff.Hi: will have my HE finished in 2 turns

me: cool
mine will take longer, but I chose a marginal city for it
(plus on Western frontlines)

Ruff.Hi: I put mine in a resourceless city
just grassland farms and mines

me: That's what mine is turning into

Ruff.Hi: can run 7 or 8 mines once it has grown full size

me: slowly
If sooooo does go for Liberalism, we might want to count on him slow-playing it
to lure us into making an extra grab

Ruff.Hi: you think he will sandbag it?

me: don't know

Ruff.Hi: that is the only danger of us teching natinoalism

me: I think we'll know next turn

Ruff.Hi: he is low on $ and will have to dial down in 2 or 3 turns
yes - totally
do you have the game up at the moment?

me: just about to do so

Ruff.Hi: me too

me: (if I get the correct save!)

Ruff.Hi: at 0% tech, I generate 65g
at 100% tech, I need 54g and generate 152b (160 next turn and 166 the turn after - universities coming online)

me: For me it's +87/-62g and 188 base beakers

Ruff.Hi: so you are teching faster than I am

me: Lib took me 6-7t

Ruff.Hi: if push comes to shove - I can ship you 65g per turn and you can just keep teching

me: guess that sooooo is at 10-20% faster my research
so theoratically, he could have Lib in 5t
EOT96
Even with GA and cash support, I can't get Nat & finish Lib that fast

Ruff.Hi: just looked at sooooo's cities
he is generating 153 beakers at 50%
at 100%, I calculate that he can generate 238
at 50% tech, he is -25g and he generates 57.5g ... so his 100% tech rate expenses are 82

me: Ouch
that's not really supportable

Ruff.Hi: but if he can get 80g per turn from mh and ath

me: yeah, we should watch that

Ruff.Hi: liberalism is 1238 beakers
at 240 per turn ... that is
4.3 turns (1238 / 240 / 1.2)
does he get the 1.2 multiple?

me: Well, 5t is about right by my reckoning as well

Ruff.Hi: at his break even rate (30%) he should generate 93 beakers
or 11.1 turns

me: hmmmmm
mh is teching atm (prob Eng)

Ruff.Hi: he has a Great Person in 3 turns

me: athlete saving after Guilds

Ruff.Hi: ath is on banking (600) and mh is on Eng (2)

me: So they get Econ
fair enough
We need Eng soon also

Ruff.Hi: well - sooooo will have GPs coming out of his ears soon
Great Eng in 4
and Great S in 7
those last 2 will go up once his GP in 3 is born

me: yeah

Ruff.Hi: can you lightbulb liberalism?

me: nope
we checked
I think Compass is the spanner there
Oh, and PP

Ruff.Hi: well - you can but PP is in the way for a GS
and he will not generate a Priest of Artist
so - if sooooo goes all out tech (and imports 80g) we take Nationalism
if he self researches (11 turns), then we have a chance of taking military tradition

me: Seems good
He may just ignore it

Ruff.Hi: but that is risky as we need to research Nationalism and that is our fall back position
screwed if we get 1/2 thru Nat and then sooooo speeds up

me: Yep

Ruff.Hi: if that happens - fall back is printing press
I'll let you know what I see next turn

me: OK

It's really a shame that mh didn't take one more turn before going away ... then we could have spent all week with the game in hand doing all this analysing!

[Dreylin]

Keeping up the dialogue with athlete:

Hey Andy,

Just wanted to touch base seeing as I have some time...though I'm sure the pbem is far from the forefront of your mind at this point. Unfortunately it might take me longer than I'd like to get some CA's out. I can build them now but there just seem too many other things to do right now. I'm way behind the expansion curve and stuck trying to catch up. On a side note I'd like to ask, as you seem to have expanded quite nicely/quickly, do you have any rules/guidelines for your expansion phases? I believe I did pretty well early on but past city #4 I seemed to be way behind planting 5,6,7 etc...Obviously being expansive has helped (and here's where I'm wishing I had put more thought into my civ choice) but it seems to me the mid-expansion phase is where I'm hurting. Maybe I'm getting too caught up on infrastructure? Anyways hard for you to comment on my game I suppose but any tips would be appreciated. From what I've seen so far you and I appear to have similar play tendencies (albeit yours are more refined).

Another question which by no means should you answer if (and you most likely will) feel it gives away too much info but I have your charts as I'm sure you have mine and when I looked at the GNP graph it appears yours took a big fall to come join my lowly self :-). I can only assume 1 of 2 things happened...you either whipped your cities to hell or your on cash right now. My question is what caused the drop in GNP? Again feel free to not answer that if you want, I posted the graph in my thread with the same thoughts but obviously lurkers can't answer me so I figured why not ask you? Doesn't hurt right?

Anyways not a lot else going on, just trying to backfill my cities and get them growing. As you alluded to in a way previous email your pretty content to just tech along and I'd have to echo that. Not that I really have much option to do anything else at the moment anyways. Looking forward to discussing trading options when liberalism comes in. On that note as well, (sorry for the rambling), I was only disinterested in trading for monotheism/philosophy as I was building the Shwedagon Paya. MH gifted me mono at no prompting from me and Soooo gifted me Philo the turn after I got the Shwed Paya (kinda useless to me at that point...unless it's a prereq for something down the road). So while I do have those techs now it was not because I negotiated anything for them. Thought you should know.

Sorry for the lengthy read

Taylor

Hey Taylor,

I don't mind offering my perspective, for what it's worth.

Regarding expansion; I did notice that both you and mh seemed to get a bit stuck after 4-odd cities. For me it was mostly necessity that drove the speed of my expansion; the need to secure four borders simultaneously meant that I had to prioritise expansion early on. My third city location - Ankara - was chosen for the pair of (easily improved) food resources, allowing it to be a perfect Settler/Worker pump. It's only now that there's a lull in my expansion that I've been able to finally get some infrastructure in there! The Expansive trait doesn't so much help you expand faster, but with cheap Granaries & Workers to do the improvements, it does allows the new cities to come online quicker.

As for the GNP numbers, it's really all down to running Binary research with an infrastructure bias towards research boosting buildings and minimal gold-boosters. You can see the same "saw-tooth" effects in the graphs of Ruff, and to and extent mh; it gets more obvious the further through the game you go.

I must admit to have toyed with the idea of building Shwed myself earlier in the game - with three religions, an early jump to Free Religion civic did appeal to me - however I never really found a gap (as you say, so much to build) and without Gold for the multiplier, it was less appealing.

Cheers,

Andy.

[Dreylin]

A chat with Ruff in the lead-up to the current tun:

Ruff.Hi: Dreylin?
I just got the next turn on the RB PBEM game

me: Ooooo
Thought mh wasn't back until Saturday?

Ruff.Hi: haven't got time to play it but opening it up to see what sooooo is doing
he is on gunpowder in 11
at 0% tech rate

me: interesting
guess I'll get started on Nationalism then


<Pause>

Ruff.Hi: you there?
what about we make a run at steel with Nationalism as a fall back?

me: Steel ...
I grab Mach & Eng
Hmmm
You get Gunpowder

Ruff.Hi: actually - that will be tough

me: I save & get Chem

Ruff.Hi: yes re me on Gunpowder

me: while you pick up Eng?
I get Mach & Drama?
while you're getting Gunpowder?

Ruff.Hi: for steel we need gunpowder, machinery, engineering and chemistry
I already have machinery but I cannot trade it to you

me: Oh, here's a question: can you steal a tech from someone who didn't research it?

Ruff.Hi: yes you can
good idea

me: i.e. can we both steal Eng?

Ruff.Hi: so you save, build a spy and steal machinery
then tech Eng and Chem

me: mh is 2t from Eng
will trade it, so then we steal from sooooo & athlete

Ruff.Hi: I cannot steal until T100
but that is ok

me: (actually, probably only 1t now)
Don't need it until after you finish Gunpowder

Ruff.Hi: so - short turn, you tech machinery and I tech gunpowder

me: when will you complete Gunpowder?

Ruff.Hi: 1 sec
5 turns

me: Hmmmm, we'd want Eng by then

Ruff.Hi: mh shows Eng in 1

me: Well I can have Mach in 3t

Ruff.Hi: you will need a spy in place as soon as possible

me: have-finished

Ruff.Hi: and then 5 turns in one of their cities for max discount

me: I'll need to look at the game, but I can always delay a build here or there it make it faster
Hmmm

Ruff.Hi: ok - going to play my set and send it on

me: I'd need to grab Eng the same turn you discovered Gunpowder at the latest
so I could start Chem turn after

Ruff.Hi: yeah

me: I'd probably want subsidising

Ruff.Hi: np

me: & you could tech Drama

Ruff.Hi: yes - my thinking too

me: OK, sounds like a plan

Ruff.Hi: check
will play and send it on

me: OK, cool

<Pause>

Ruff.Hi: game sent on - gunpowder in 4

me: ok

Ruff.Hi: I swapped back to Conf - I will also be swapping to Caste and the religious civic that is +100% GPs
then dialing up my scientists

me: Pacifism
OK

Ruff.Hi: can never remember that name
oh - and Dreylin's Lackey is running out of things to do

me: Right, I'll send a new list.

Ruff.Hi: ok

<Editted>

Ruff.Hi: just completed my HEpic
so my power should be starting to address itself pretty quickly

me: Excellent

Ruff.Hi: will be building some 1 turn maces for a few turns

me: Until you move onto Muskets?

Ruff.Hi: true - but you can still build maces when you have muskets available

me: sure

Ruff.Hi: but muskets will be nice - maces don't get +50% against them :D

me: yep indeedy

Ruff.Hi: anyway - have a good game of Vanilla civ going on at the moment - going to play a few turns
catch you later

me: Oooo
See you!

[Dreylin]

t92 - Right with that chat from Ruff, here goes the turn:

Istanbul completes Forge - starts University (3t)
Edirne completes Conf Missionary - starts another (3t)
Gaziantep completes Spy - starts another (lots of overflow, so only 1t)

Hmmm, Spy will take 7t to get to Zapotec from Gaziantep ... too long. Switch Gaziantep to a Forge, and whip Library in Samsun - overflow will complete a 1t Spy afterwards.

Sarmatian switches to Culture to ensure border expansion by the time the Workboat arrives.

Barb Archer did not Pillage Iron (phew), so Heroic HA kills him on flat ground.

Switch research to 100% on Machinery

Assign all EPs to sooooo, since I'll have plenty on athlete soon.

And make a nice picture for Ruff to set Dreylin's Lackey to work:

[Cyneheard]

he [sooooo] is on gunpowder in 11 at 0% tech rate

That's 1/3 of Ruff's teching at 100% (or is Ruff currently break-even?) science.

Going for Steel, nice. Ruff must be very, very, very happy with his GSpy Bomb from way back when.
Are you 1t from finishing liberalism to give DeTOG extra time for engineering/ being ready for the moment chemistry's done/if sooooo doubles back to lib?

[Jabah]

One thing I am not completely sure, but you better check that because of its consequences : I though I read somewhere that you CAN trade techs that you stole (even with no tech brokering option...).

[Dreylin]

That's 1/3 of Ruff's teching at 100% (or is Ruff currently break-even?) science.?

Remember though that sooooo is running a Specialist economy, so the Science slider is contributing a lesser portion of his research than it is for Ruff or I.

Going for Steel, nice. Ruff must be very, very, very happy with his GSpy Bomb from way back when.
Are you 1t from finishing liberalism to give DeTOG extra time for engineering/ being ready for the moment chemistry's done/if sooooo doubles back to lib?

Yep, 1t from Lib; and I will be ensuring that I have the gold in the bank to support that single turn.

One thing I am not completely sure, but you better check that because of its consequences : I though I read somewhere that you CAN trade techs that you stole (even with no tech brokering option...).

I believe that I've also seen that; it sounds like I will be grabbing Eng long before Ruff is ready to, so we'll see what th situation is after that....