RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

The non-exact reason that I prefer Currency to Code of Laws is that generally speaking, your older, more developed cities are the ones that are able to build markets or courthouses right away. In our case, this is Gettysburg, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Fredericksburg. But your older cities generally are closer to your capital and thus have lower maintenance. So a courthouse will only save us a few gold per turn in Gettysburg, Antietam and Chancellorsville, while a market will gain us quite a lot more. In the newer cities, it would be the opposite, since they do not have developed cottages, and have higher maintenance costs, but they aren't ready or able to build a market or courthouse yet. Add in the ability to build wealth and the extra trade routes which kick in right away, and it seems like currency is the better bet.

(Like my rhyming couplet at the end?)

[Dr. Nomadic]

I couldn't spot the rhyming couplet at the end.

[Cyneheard]

Neither could I. Rhyming couplet as the "yet" and "bet" ending successive sentences...there's too much stuff in between to pick up the rhyme. Even if we trim it down to something like this (16 syllables for the 1st sentence, 15 for the second):

They aren't ready or able to build a market or courthouse yet.
With wealth and instant trade routes, currency is the better bet.

I still don't think I'd pick up on the rhyme. Although, thanks for the explanation. Even team Spullla can make (small, unforeseeable) mistakes. It's not like you expected to take 2 cities and claim a third without having to lose a single unit...

[Speaker]

FYI, Sullla, I moved all our military units (I think they are all moved at least!), and microed our cities once I flipped the turn over. 5 of the 6 units should be able to be gifted to Dantski next turn. I was going to wait for the catapult to catch up, but figured we could save 5 gold per turn by gifting the axes and skirmisher a turn early! I think this is the turn to go 50% tech, and bang out most of the rest of Metal Casting? With tech discount and prereq bonuses, we should get most of it done at 50% I think.

[Sullla]

Yes, I saw that and agreed, Speaker. Unfortunately this morning the wireless Internet at my house cut out again; hopefully it will be back on by this afternoon, but in case it's not, here's some quick points for the turn:

- I moved the workers and the missionary and then ended turn.

- I requested Open Borders with slaze and left them a message in-game about it on the diplo screen. We'll need OB with them for when we get Currency.

- Looked over the Metal Casting numbers, and we should indeed be able to finish it next turn by going 50% this turn, 20% next turn. (Might have to switch a few tiles around to make it work, but it's readily doable.)

- Ran some numbers on researching Currency. Long story short, if we can get 250g from Broker/plako on loan or in trade for resources/units, we can knock out Currency very quickly. 250g fuels two turns of 100% research, and that would be enough for us to get about 500 of the 590 beakers that Currency costs. I'll start working on a draft proposal to send Broker/plako about that. Since we've had very good relations and plan to work together against Kathlete/Whosit, I think we can convince them to float us a loan in exchange for payback at a later date.

We're actually in really good position though, because our economy is hurting from expansion and high unit cost. At 100% science, our economy does almost 200 beakers per turn! We simply need the CoL/Currency pairing to control our costs, and then we'll be roaring along in mighty fashion again.

Plus, we get Hanging Gardens in 6 turns if no one else builds it. Cross your fingers....

[Speaker]

Cool. If you have a chance, why don't you write something up about our plans with the workers for the next few turns, so if your internet continues to be an issue, I'll know what you are thinking. What did we end up building in Gettysburg? I had two ideas: either a 4-turn worker, or an Archer which we could slave and put the overflow into the Forge. Remember we get 1 free happiness from the Forge because of our gold (to offset the happiness), so slaving a nearly complete archer gives us 7 free hammers with organized religion.

Or, we could wait until we get Hanging Gardens, and then do a one-pop slave in every city, toward the forge or marketplace (depending on timing). That's my favorite way to use Hanging Gardens. Turn it into 30 free hammers per city! If we put use it to slave almost-complete forges, it actually ends up being 30 * 1.5 = 45 free hammers! And of course +1 health per city for the rest of the game, which is also nice, and 6 culture per turn in our most forward city, along with Great Engineer points.

Or....we could just work an extra cottage per city, if we can find enough workers to build them!

[Ashain]

Here's a quick question, with metal casting finishing in the next two turns, did you guys have any intentions of chasing the Colossus?

[Sullla]

Given our dearth of coastal cities, I don't think that Colossus is on our future. We'd probably rather get some triremes in the water for defensive purposes out of Hampton than build the Colossus. It's one of those things that would be nice, but I don't really see us having the resources to build.

Speaker, to answer your question, I had Gettysburg build a 4t worker:



The logic is that we can grow the city while building either a forge or a marketplace, but we can't grow the city while building a worker. So we should do the worker now, before either Metal Casting or Currency techs arrive. And there's certainly a great need for workers; we have our 7 old ones, and could use 12 or more easily right now.

Let's save our slaving in Gettysburg for a forge or market, both of which we're probably going to do here in the next dozen turns. As for my Internet, it's already working just fine again from home, so I'm guessing that was a temporary glitch. Our workers are on a pretty tight schedule, since 6 of them have to be chopping at St. Albans (former Argos) in a mere 4 turns. We have just enough time to get a cottage on the sugar tile at Fort Henry and throw in a couple of roads, and then they need to head east. All except for our seventh worker, who's adding a very badly needed cottage at Antietam. The eighth worker in production can join him in fixing up our old core cities as needed.

If we do land Hanging Gardens, the extra pop will undoubtedly go towards whipping forges or marketplaces in several cities. Fred is the one city where we might want to hold off, because it has such slow population growth.


We look good on the Demographics this turn, because of running a turn of unsustainable 50% science. But leaving aside our shoddy GNP, all of the other numbers look awesome. (Food is the big winner - we are dominant here, and will continue pulling further ahead as our new cities grow!) You have to keep in mind that new aquisitions like Fort Henry and Spartansburg are still contributing almost nothing to our empire. They both need about 5 more turns to finish filling up the food box, and then they can growth very rapidly onto lots of grassland river cottages. Mark my word, we won't stay in GNP hell for very long.

Speaker, here's what I'm thinking of sending to Broker/plako. Give me some feedback so I can send it off later tonight:

Dear Broker and plako,

Thanks for letting us know a little more about some of your upcoming tech plans. It helps us understand what you guys are thinking about, and what sort of things to emphasize. We are finishing up Metal Casting (it's about 80% researched) at the moment, and need to backtrack for the economic techs of Currency and Code of Laws after that. As you can imagine, we have an excess of military technology at the moment!

We actually wanted to come asking for some economic assistance from your team. Because the end of the war with Jowy left us with three new cities simultaneously, we're hurting right now on maintenance costs. Our research capacity is quite high - we can do just shy of 200 beakers/turn at 100% research - but we also have very high costs from supporting a large army. Currency is the key economic gateway tech; once we get there, we can add a trade route in every city, construct markets, and even build Wealth in cities if need be. We need to get to Currency ASAP to get our economy humming along smoothly again.

Now since you guys just finished researching Currency, we'd like to know if you could help us out with some temporary cash. We need right around 250 gold to drive our research through to completion on Currency. We don't expect you to give that to us (although it would really be nice, haha!) but we would like to "buy" some gold from you to get us past this bottleneck spot. We'd be open to any of the following:

- Return payment at a later date, with some interest (say 300 gold later for 250 gold now)
- Return payment in gold per turn (10gpt for 30 turns maybe?)
- Trading resources in exchange for gold; we'd be happy to send your our stone, iron, horses, etc. for a while
- Selling units for gold; we have horse archers, for example, since your team probably doesn't have much interest in researching HBR tech

If something attracts your interest, please let us know! We're happy to discuss things with you guys and make whatever arragements benefit your team. You can really, really help us out in this matter, and we'd greatly appreciate it.

Humbly requesting a bank loan,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Remember, I didn't send the above message to allow time for comments.

We also got some messages from Jowy and Nakor today, trying to "clear the waters" a bit. Thoughts on how to respond, Speaker? My initial impression was polite non-commital answers... and certainly NOT telling Jowy any deals we negotiated with Dantski. Keep 'em guessing on that.

[Speaker]

Sullla, let's get together in a bit and chat on TS and work out a diplomatic plan going forward. The mail to Plako looks fine to me, so feel free to send it. One other option, since I can't imagine they have 250 gold lying around right now....they give us 25 or 30 or 50 or whatever amount of gold per turn until we get currency, and then we return the favor, plus an extra turn or two as thanks.

[Sullla]

Sent. And their team has over 100 gold lying around right now, plus they can generate about 75gpt at 0% science. They could probably get us the gold relatively fast. And if not, they'll tell us and we can suggest your plan too. (We want to slam Currency ASAP at 2 turns of 100% science, not slowly research it with an extra 20 or 30gpt).

I won't be around this evening though, I'm afraid. Maybe sometime tomorrow in the early evening, before this little shindig gets started?