[SPOILERS] Margarita and the Lurkers

[Catwalk]

This looks like a terrible deal, as far as dealing with suttree goes. We already have the espionage points on Yuufo, which makes a huge difference.

[B4ndit]

I have asked DT how is he holding on. He responded, that he is losing the war. Already lost 3 cities and going to lose more and is asking for our help. He would love us to declare war on Rome (GG). Another option is for selling him macemans. What do you think about it? Macemans for 160 gold (70 hammers)?

classical_hero is building road towards our future new city, very nice of him I have sent him kindly warning about asking not to settle there, but I think we should still settle there before him (i will do it in 2 turns, when and where does he want to settle? I have no idea...)

[B4ndit]

Bisons/Yuufo is asking for 50-100 turns NAP.

My previous calculations about stealing tech from suttree were not quite accurate. I have assumed ~77% chances stealing success, which was true with non-stationary spy. With 1 turn stationary spy, success chances improved to 97% and I have "re calibrated my formula" (there was small error because of rounding real numbers to integer). My current estimates of stealing technology from suttree, from his city WITHOUT Buddhism is ~72 gold with 5 turns stationary spy. WITH Buddhism it might drop to ~62 gold. With 97% chances of success, Expected Value wouldn't be much greater (~74 without and ~64 with Buddhism).

That's much better then previous calculations. In such case Stealing would save us something between 26% and 36% costs of the researching given technology (including 1.25 bonus for hypothetical libraries in every city)

[B4ndit]

3rd post in the row:

DT is certain of close total defeat. Maybe he is trying to make pressure on me for faster reaction, but he wrote:

Jeżeli za kilka tur doslesz te unity to już będzie po grze...wiec może po prostu wypowiadaj wojne i wchodz od tylu żeby Rzym nie zabral wszystkiego. My i tak jesteśmy skończeni...

If you send me those units in a couple of turns it will be already too late and over for us... so maybe just declare war on attack us from east and try to grab as much land as you can before Rome. Whatever happens we are already done...

What do you think? Our options:
- do nothing and probably welcome our new neighbor GG of Rome
- send every possible unit to DT for help (maybe trade for one of his cities?)
- backstab DT and lets try to grab couple of his cities (although we have NAP with him until t150, but maybe we could mutually agree to cancel it?)

I don't want him to give away his cities for free (which I guess he is willing to do, if his only choice is full Roman conquest) and I don't know what are the practices here on this board in such cases. Nevertheless Possible outcomes of our actions:

1. Rome's conquest stopped. Leaving crippled DT.
2. DT fully conquered by Rome.
3. Rome and us conquering/splitting DT's territory.

To be honest I very don't like option 2. First would be the best for us, DT wouldn't be any threat for us or would be easier target for the future Third option is difficult because we almost don't have any army. I have 2 macemans and 1 longbowman and maybe one or two chariots. Ready right away for expedition (or for selling)... Maybe selling to DT couple of units for city (cities?) would be best?

EDIT:

This outcome

1. Rome's conquest stopped. Leaving crippled DT.

is certainly not going to happen. DT is doomed. He will loose the capital in 2, max 3 turns and there is nothing he (or we) can do to prevent that:

He officially canceled our NAP (which in normal conditions would last 8 more turns). The question is, what should we do with it?

At the moment I'm moving every available unit toward DT. My enormous army contains 2 macemans, 1 longbowman, 2 war charriots In next 4-5 turns I will produce 2 crossbowmans and one more longbowman, but we should make some decisions now. Do we want to involve in this conflict? Do we want to conquer some of the DT's cities BEFORE Rome will grab them?

Regardless that, we should agree to very long NAP with Yuufo/Bison. Maybe even full military cooperation/defensive pact?

[Catwalk]

As I mentioned in our chat, taking cities from DT would be seen as poor form. One option would negotiating a division with GG, though. Have you talked to him yet?

[Catwalk]

That's a ridiculous post Raptorous made in the chronicle thread Did you make any kind of promise to assist him?

[WilliamLP]

That's a ridiculous post

in the chronicle thread

You don't say?

[B4ndit]

Did he edit his post in Chronicle? I can not see the part regarding me (maybe I'm blind). I'm supplying him two happiness resources and cooper. Thanks to that (especially cooper), DT was able to destroy ~10 GG's units, which is great. 10 units less for me to worry In diplo correspondence we I was discussing selling one or two of my maceman for 160 gold each. Economically that would be great deal and it would help DT a lot. However...

I'm in the contact with GG. We have some tensions between us (especially because of my help for DT), but GG would like very long NAP. I'm not going to agree for that, but I offered 20t NAP for two DT's cities. Aston Vile and Everton (I pointed out that they are very close to my cities):

I was planning to raze Aston Vile and keeping Everton, but GG doesn't want to agree for keeping me Everton. He has no problems about Aston Vile, but Everton is too close to Manchester and because I have creative leader he wouldn't have chances in cultural fight. Nevertheless GG has no problem with razing Everton and I could place another city further east.

To further complicate this whole thing, classical_hero has some city south east from Everton and maybe he is planning to settle near pigs. I have marked all cities and potential cities locations on the attached screenshot (do you think I should settle 1N from spices?).

So the question is: should I sell two my very precious military units (I have very few of them) for very good amount of gold? I very doubt that those two units will change anything in the war (DT has already lost the capital). However they could slow down GG, cost him more units and delay his economical rebuild. I don't think it would be possible to sign a peace between GG and DT and that would be the best "pro" argument for selling or even gifting those units for free. Cons of gifting those units is very simple: I would make my relations with GG worse and I would risk loosing quite nice agreement about Aston Vile and Everton. To sum up:

Selling two units to DT (probably maceman and longbowman):
pros:
+ nice ~2.25 hammers to gold ratio
+ slowing down GG
cons:
- endangering my deal with GG considering Aston Vile and Everton

[B4ndit]

Hmmm, I feel like nobody is reading this thread Nevertheless...

I have agreed with Bisons/Yuufo for full cooperation (military and science/espionage). In 3 turns I will probably stop producing any science. Generally I have agreed to the initial Yuufo's proposal. My EP to science ratio for stealing from Bisons is ~0.3, so for 300 EP I'm able to steal 1000 science. The deal is following:

Bisons will produce X science per turn, while loosing Y gold per turn.
I will produce X * 0.3 espionage points, while sending to Bisons Y gold per turn.
My remaining gold we split evenly.

We have to calculate which X and Y our economies can handle. At the moment Bisons is producing gold in couple of cities and I could support his 90% science slider. This would result with the following stats:

Bisons produce: 528 science per turn while loosing 80 gpt
B4ndit produce: 0 science, +80 gpt, +155 EP/t

Compared to my current break event:
~250 science per turn with ~0 gpt.

So currently I would more then doubled my science output. However next turn bisons will stop producing gold in the cities, so probably we will have to decrease his science slider. That are calculations with the assumption that I'm not burning down EP points from, but in 7 turns I will have second great spy, which I will use for another +3000EP points towards Bisons, so I will be able to decrease my EP/t increasing my gpt output.

Of course that means that I have reject suttree's counter offer for co-op espionage. Despite that his deal would be better for me in the short term it is unacceptable for me in the long term. He is the main threat in this game and I can not boost his economy!

[Catwalk]

I'm still reading it I agree that it's a priority for us to not help suttree in any way, we already have a long NAP with him which both means he can't punish us for refusing to cooperate and we have no other means of hindering his progress.

The deal with Bisons and Yuufo still confuses me, I hope it works out for you. I have never played an MP game with espionage on, so I have little to offer you here.