RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Gandhi of Korea (Broker33 & plako)

[plako]

Typical screenshots. For a short moment our demographics looks very good although our golden age ends next turn. Oxford is now ready and it improved quite a bit our research rate. We should be ableto get Rifling+Nationalism within next 7 turns. There is 1 Great Merchant soon finishing a trade mission and another one in production that should be ready in 2T.

I've also lot of settlers under production or ready.

[plako]

Athlete gave us Kirdo III. I had negotiated with India and it was alright for them. India also requsted that we would close borders with HRE, but I didn't want to do it at this point. Depending on how things evolve we might change this opinion. Emails are below.

Niani gives us 1700 gold so it is clearly best city for this purpose we've found so far. Since it seems HRE is focusing on attacking Dantski and we should be safe I think I might do a side step to economics and Free Market.

India:

You probably saw that Nakor declared war on Dantski this turn, moving in a stack of 16 rifles, 8 cannons, 9 cats, 9 maces and some outdated units. We know you said you didn't have the units to become militarily involved, but would you consider Closing Borders with Nakor? He derives a lot of his income from Free Market trade routes, and you could hurt him economically just by shutting down his trade routes. Non-violent resistance! Hope that that's something you would be interested in.

Us:

Thank you for keeping us informed. It seems you've used some pop to
hammers conversion so I guess HRE will have quite hard time claiming
territory from Dantski .

Nevertheless I prefer keeping low profile until we've the techs needed
to defend ourselveves properly. Furthermore most optimal route for our
Great Merchants to Dantski's city of Niani (good city for trade
missions) is through HRE land. We'll keep considering our OB with HRE
and might cancel it a bit later.

[plako]

I've started to spam cities and it really starts to show up in expenses. Meanwhile I researhed Economics and converted to Free Market. At 100% research rate we've best GNP at the moment.

[timmy827]

Any chance you could post where else you are on the tech tree?

What do you see as your next move?

[plako]

Any chance you could post where else you are on the tech tree?

What do you see as your next move?

Please find below the tech situation. Not looking too good. We're way behind the leaders even if we've fueled our research with Merchants.

I don't really have much plans. Both helping out India and HRE would position us either 2nd in score board or get us killed so I think we just play passively to the end and see how India wins this.

[plako]

Decision time. Message from Nakor:

The war is going good for us, Dantski is retreating all his troops into his capital.
The downside is that we are seeing a lot of Indian troops gathering near our border, so we expect India to aid Dantski.

Therefore we'd like to ask you guys to consider in aiding us in this war.
If either of us wants to have a chance of winning, we need to keep India at bay while expanding at the same time.
We can't do that without the other, I sincerely believe.

You guys got a lot of money and we can upgrade your knights to cavalry and other units to riflemen should you be willing to join us.

Please consider this and let me know what you guys think.

and from India:

Hi guys, we haven't talked in a bit so thought we'd say hello. What are your thoughts on the current Nakor vs. Dantski war? We are thinking about trying to hit Nakor's army when it is exposed in Romali territory and destroying the bulk of it (taking advantage of our Open Borders with Dantski). I saw that your team is getting very close to Rifling tech - any chance you would be able to start thinking about attacking Nakor as well? You could probably hit his rear cities while the main force is off elsewhere.

If we're all serious about working together to stop Nakor, these upcoming turns will probably be the best chance to do it.

I'll post my thoughts a bit later.

[novice]

I'll post my thoughts a bit later.

Looking forward to it.

[plako]

Looking forward to it.

pressuring me to write something meaningful instead of dull reports.

I've been thinking about this and there doesn't seem to be clear winner. Basic problem is that India is a bit too strong. Their economy seems to be very functional, even if they've 3 times the power of ours and have been whipping/drafting quite a bit. HRE has done some damage against Mali, but after India has moved their troops against HRE they can't progress much. If they are not careful, their stack/stacks are in serious danger. I really hoped that Ottomans would've put up a proper fight with Janissaries to slow India down. I thought Janissaries would have done some damage even against Cavalries, but apparently athelete did gave up trying.

I've been trying to consider how could we win this and there doesn't seem to be good way to do it. If we help out India we'll probably get few cities from collapsing HRE and then it would be India against us for the win and there really isn't anything we could do to stop them. On the other hand, if we help HRE ther really isn't much we could gain from India. We would be helping out HRE that might be able to fight against India maybe even succesfully when we're helping, but I can't figure how we could get significant benefits out of this. HRE would be the one benefiting and they would be way ahead of us (techwise even further than India). Also there is a fair chance India can't be stopped even with our help. Our relationship to india has been way better in the past that definately has to also be taken into account although I don't feel we owe them much.

So this leaves the 3rd option i.e. trying to be neutral and maybe helping a bit HRE behind the scenes and hope they can keep India occupied while we focus on getting us some benefits from concentrating on teching. Even this doesn't feel a winner and definately not very intresting for the lurkers.

One thing that map makers probably didn't think is that corporations will be huge in this very resource rich map so the one getting the key corps will be way more powerful than state property. One alternative is that we try to beeline Medicine and, if we get there in reasonable time we could obsolete our GLH and research towards Corporation.

[plako]

I sent this to India:

Please keep us informed concerning your progress. We'll have Nationalism next turn and at minimum we'll draft some home defense units. If the situation becomes favourable, we could also try to take advantage from the weakened HRE.

and this to HRE

We're focusing all our gold on research, but next turn we'll have nationalism and Rifling so we can start drafting at minimum some home defense units, but maybe also something to assist you. Please keep us informed about your progress.

India is indeed very strong and you really had to be careful with them.

Basically we won't rush to battle and keep the communication channels open before committing ourselves.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I'm happy that you are trying to do something to win the game; rather than doing nothing.