RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Sullla]

Yeah, given that we'd have to spend the equivalent of hundreds and hundreds of beakers, to gain sight on a single opponent out of seven - I don't think that would be a good use of our resources.

Speaker, please end our turn when you've had a chance to look over the game tonight. I won't be around this evening to do it myself. Thanks.

[Speaker]

Military is all moved. Feel free to end the turn whenever you get a chance to play, Sullla. Right now, our units are really stretched keeping our cities happy. Calendar + Forges + Markets (+6 total happiness for us) will make our happy cap skyrocket, and allow us to deploy our units in a much more defensive manner. The forges mostly complete in the next couple turns, then we'll move on to the markets. After that, Code of Laws for some Courthouses in the far flung areas, and then another period of unit building. I'd like to get around 15 Horse Archers and 10 Catapults for general defense, and of course some Triremes in the water.

[Sullla]

Played and ended the turn, Speaker. Some highlights from Turn 135:



Let me talk a little about the song and dance our workers are doing in this central area around Fort Henry. In the past 3 turns, we added the 3 cottages I've marked in white above. One worker also split off and roaded the forested grassland hill tile between Chancellorsville and Fort Henry, allowing three workers to team up and chop it as seen above. Next turn those four workers will move north and add another cottage on the yellow tile indicated. With the extremely rapid growth of Fort Henry and Spartansburg, we are just barely managing to keep adding enough cottages to keep up with demand. Jowy had 0 cottages in this region, and in the span of ten turns we've already planted 5 of them!

The tile sharing between these three cities (Chancellorsville, Fort Henry, Spartansburg) has been a ton of fun to manage. The red dot tile above has passed back and forth between Chancellorsville and Fort Henry so many times... Fort Henry has it this turn, because Spartansburg just grew to size 3 and stole away a cottage that Fort Henry had been working last turn. Fortunately we will whip Fort Henry shortly for its forge, but in the meantime the workers have their hands full keeping it busy!



Inside Chancellorsville, where the forest chop will complete forge next turn. Note that Organized Religion gave us 11 free shields here (44 to 55), which is a pretty significant bonus! We are going to overflow into a missionary so that Fort Henry can finally get the OR bonus as well; that should take 2 turns, and then Chancellorsville goes onto market. The timing of the missionary is such that we can spread Judaism into Fort Henry just in time to get the bonus when whipping a forge, and then Fort Henry will get the full 50% bonus when it whips its library and market next. Under those conditions, Library = 2 pop whip, and Market = 3 pop whip. It shouldn't take too long to have forge, library, market, and courthouse all running in Fort Henry.

There's a reason why we did the renaming. "Thebes" was a terrible city, but "Fort Henry" is turning into an excellent commercial center!

To give you an idea of the happiness crunch Speaker was discussing above, here's our city list (F1):



I've highlighted the happiness indicator; notice how we have 0 or 1 happy surplus in all of our original core cities. We're maintaining this slim margin through large military garrisons in each city - check out the picture of Chancellorsville above, where SEVEN units are necessary to keep the city pacified. All of the core cities are still carrying 2-4 unhappy faces from our earlier whipping. So you see, even though we're not fighting anyone right now, our large military is absolutely critical from an economic perspective just to keep the cities from suffering unhappy faces.

The downside is that we would be in truly bad shape if we had to fight anyone right now, because so much of our military is tied up on Hereditary Rule military police duty. There's a reason why we asked for that long NAP in our peace treaty deal, we knew this was going to happen! Fortunately, forges + markets + three Calendar happiness resources will solve this problem and allow us to get our units back into the field again... just in time should we need to go to war around Turn 150. Pretty nicely timed, eh?

Speaking of Calendar resources, I fiddled with the sliders and the bonus beakers and saw that one other team has already discovered the tech (we are getting a 1.03 bonus multiplier on beakers). I guessed that that would be Kathlete, and indeed their diplo screen shows silks already connected. That wasn't there two turns ago, so they only just discovered Calendar tech. So we're slightly behind Kathlete here, but only by a couple of turns, and of course we have other techs that Kathlete lacks. It's unquestionable that they're building up to attack someone, as Kathlete continues running high shields and slowly creeping up in military power. My guess would be slaze, since they signed that extended NAP with us. Could also be plako or Dantski, I guess.

Oh, one last bit of good news on Calendar: despite the screens showing 4 turns to discovery, we can almost certainly get the tech in 3 turns by running 30%, 30%, 40% science. Seems like it would probably be worth it to do so, get our plantations started a turn earlier.

I also did a new overall city count:

slaze: 10 cities
Speaker/Sullla: 9 cities
Kathlete: 9 cities
Whosit: 9 cities
Nakor: 9 cities
Dantski: 7 cities
Broker/plako: 7 cities
Jowy: 6 cities

Thus we're basically equal with our main competitors, which is where we'd like to be. (Well we'd like to be ahead, but this is pretty good all things considered!) Remember how we were in a situation during that war where we only had 5 cities, and our rivals were racing out to 7 or 8 cities. That was a very, very dangerous situation for us, because even though we were winning on the battlefield we were starting to fall too far behind to be competitive. Now that we have parity, we're confident that we can out-build and out-fight these other teams. So long as we face no more than a 2 vs 1, we should be fine.

[Sullla]

We have some new messages in from the "enemy" teams. Nakor:

Dear Speaker and Sullla of India,

I am sorry about not responding earlier, as I was plaugued with many PBEM games. I understand about the transferring of units and will not object to that. Furthermore, I also understand your concerns about not lengthening our NAP and am sure I know the reason behind this.

Anyway, I hope the game proceeds smoothly for both of us. Hopefully you have put all the gold HRE gave you to good use in the research department. :) I know it's not a good idea to do this (since a quick look at population shows how much research you have) and I wouldn't have agreed to the gift unless I felt like I wanted to make up for past blunders we made towards you.

Sincerely,
DMOC for the DMOC/Nakor team for HRE

Should we write them back that we aren't going to extend our NAP, because they've already stated they can cancel it whenever they feel like it? Nah, let's just let this one lay at rest. I see no reason to respond back - what would we say?

Jowy apparently sent us a message last week, which I never saw in our inbox. I don't know how I missed it (?) He sent us a followup message today:

Hey Spulla,

Soz for taking a while to answer. Been a lil sick and then lost interest temporarily due to the reload. Anyways I'm back in action now.
I'm definately not an attack dog for Kathlete or anyone else. When we first met with Dantski, we found out that you were playing both sides, especially telling Dantski that you'll settle north while telling me that you'll settle south. We didn't yet know which one of us would you side with, but we agreed to help out eachother to secure both of us.
(Turned out you expanded towards me, which I think is one of the reasons why Dantski pulled out of the war. Good move by you because I wouldn't have betrayed Dantski if it was the other way around :P )

First it was only an agreement to help eachother, but soon Dantski suggested that we should attack you asap. I of course agreed, even though I wasn't sure if Dantski was really on your side and setting me up. It was simply the best shot I'll get to beat you and thus have a chance to win this game. Nothing personal.

Unfortunately Dantski wanted to wait longer with our attack. First plan was to attack at turn 75 if I recall correctly. Not that it matters anymore, but I think we might have had a better shot at that point. There were others who thought you were a threat and sent help. In no way were we attacking you in orders of Kathlete or others. It was our own thing, I'll take responsiblity for that. I know that the parties not involved in the war gain advantage, but so does the winning side of a war.

I have no plans to attack you again. It's not beneficial to me. I want you to understand that the reason for my attack on you is not a grudge or something like that.

My game plan at the moment is to live in peace with my neighbours and let others make the big moves.

I know you didn't really declare on anyone. You gotta admit though that you had a chance for peace earlier but decided to ignore it and go on offensive instead. So it wasn't exactly set in stone that you still want peace. Still isn't. That longer NAP would make me a believer though. I'm open to suggestions on that NAP.
~ Jowy

Hey Killer Angels,

Just wondering if you got my last message, it's been soon a week since I sent it. Sorry to rush you, but whether you were lying or not about your peaceful intentions is very critical to my game. It'd be good to hear back from you soon about that extended NAP. Lemme know if you didn't receive my last message (07/03/10). I'll re-send it if you didn't.
~ Jowy

OK, for starters, I don't believe anything Jowy said. Especially that line about "My game plan at the moment is to live in peace with my neighbours and let others make the big moves." Uh-huh, I'm sure... Why'd you gift 7 Praetorians to Kathlete then, hmmm?

Anyway, the real question is whether to do anything with these messages, or ignore Jowy further. Do we want to extend our NAP with Jowy, Speaker? I know we talked about that earlier, but it might be useful to be able to bludgeon Jowy and take him out of the game if the world explodes into war down the road. Dantski/plako are going to expect us to do something; I don't think we could just sit around being neutral if our allies are fighting, and if we're going to fight, further expansion against Jowy would be the most appealing option. Let's figure out what we want to do.

[Speaker]

Sullla, will you be around tonight to chat a bit? Write Jowy a short note apologizing for missing his email, and tell him we'll be in touch to answer his message soon.

[Speaker]

I prepared a screenshot of each of our cities, to show you lurkers how we are planning to optimize them for manufacturing purposes. Our first couple forges finish next turn, and most of the rest will be done within the next few turns. Because of the way the game rounds numbers, it is best to optimize your cities in multiples of 4 to take full advantage of the forge's 25% bonus. This is possible in most of our cities.


Gettysburg's optimal is 16. We'll most likely pass the hill E-E to Antietam. In a pinch, we could get 20 until we chop the two remaining forests. After we chop the forests, we could still get 20 if we take the hill back from Antietam. Once we get Civil Service, this city will make a whopping 28 hammers per turn, 32 when constructing a building or wonder.


This city gets a sub-optimal 14 hammers per turn, a better 18 if we take the plains hill from Chancellorsville, but it will probably stay there, since that city has more food with which to use it. Plan on 17 hammers per turn.


Makes a cool 17 hammers per turn base, with the ability to pick up an extra 3 from plains tiles in a pinch. 21 hammers per turn.


Food and hammer poor, this is mostly a commerce city. Still, 12 hammers per turn isn't horrible when it multiplies to 15.


Our mfg king, this city can easily get 20 hammers per turn base, and will still contribute plenty of commerce with 8 coastal tiles, 2 cottages, and a 5gpt Silk plantation. At 25 hammers per turn, this will build a Trireme or Horse Archer every 2 turns or a settler every 4 turns!


This city finishes its forge this turn, and will start working an Engineer specialist next turn. Eventually it will have 17 hammers per turn base, which will be 21 per turn with the forge. We will be able to train a couple 3-turn Horse Archers at 14 hammers per turn before we research Code of Laws and sneak in a Courthouse.


Can only get up to 8 hammers per turn with the two grass hills, but still, 2 free hammers is better than nothing! 10 hammers per turn.

Fort Henry has no manufacturing to speak of, and will need to slave its buildings and then work cottages. Shiloh is too callow to worry about at this point.

[Sullla]

Great post from Speaker above. I certainly wouldn't have thought about building a plains cottage at Fredericksburg, but that's the right play when training units so that the city can go from 11 [13] shields/turn up to 12 [15] shields/turn. Will make a noticeable difference there.

We also talked about how to deal with Jowy's email messages, and decided on this course:

Dear Jowy,

I'm very sorry about not responding to your previous email message. We honestly missed it somehow. I really don't know how that happened (?) We weren't trying to ignore you or give you the cold shoulder.

It's really a shame that our teams found ourselves on opposite sides for so much of this game. I know you said in your email that you felt we were trying to play both sides of the fence with you and Dantski, but from our perspective, we were trying to work for the possibility of peaceful relations with both teams. Our teams obviously disagreed over some matters, as we didn't think that our city placements were intended to be aggressive, while you evidently did. Still, I'm not sure if it's productive to hash out old disputes between our teams. You had your reasons for doing what you did, as did we. As you said, it's not a personal thing.

Whether you believe us or not, we've always tried to treat with you (and everyone else for that matter) on an honest basis. We're not going to pretend to be friends and then stab you in the back later on. Right now, Speaker and I are having trouble seeing why we should sign an extended Non-Aggression Pact with your team. I'll pass on to you what Speaker asked me, "What do we gain from a longer NAP with Jowy?" So I guess we're curious as to what your thoughts are in that regard. Why should we sign an extended NAP with your team, and lose the flexibility that that entails?

Look, we don't have plans to go charging across the border as soon as Turn 150 arrives. Actually, we're still kind of trying to figure out where we go from here, aside from building and growing. I'm sorry if that's an inconclusive response, but we want to be honest with you and not whisper sweet promises that we don't intend to keep.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

I don't think that we will sign an NAP extension with Jowy at this point, unless he gives us some kind of offer that blows us away. (Like offering to gift us protection money, or gifting us a city for 20 turns or peace, or something like that.) Even though Jowy has been a huge jerk to us in this game, we both agreed that it was better to be honest with him. So we thought we'd ask him why we should sign an NAP, and at least give him a further chance to explain his position before deciding anything.

My only fear is that this message might be a little too "Aidun"-ish with asking the other person to put themselves in your shoes, but ah well. Best I can do for the moment.

[Speaker]

How not to win over an ally:

Originally Posted by Slaze

Athlete is building up some and is leaving the option open to expand through me if I don't mirror him, but we'll see. Whosit seems to be focused on plako, and plako on whosit. If we see the finish of the transfer of 4 galleys of praetorians in the power graphs back to whosit (also requires either the "transfer" of either a city or the galleys in ~2-3 turns). He may time his attack with those on plako, I'll be able to trace the galleys through my coast at least.

Although it would be a great fake-out if they did the appropriate graph switches and kept the prats up there and he and athlete were up to something.

Haven't talked to athlete since his cancellation, I suppose in the most way his eye is on you.

Plako really wants me in on a whosit attack (intriguing ... and he says you sometimes don't return his messages), or I could sit back and befriend these guys, I suppose everyone's really just after you

First he tells us in all caps that he is in expansion mode and will not be helping us. Then he comes begging for "any help you can give, I'm gonna need all I can get for this dogpile." For what dogpile? And how can we really help him? He's on the other side of the world. Then three days later, there is no fear of a dogpile and he expects attacks from others. Then he makes some ridiculous comment about us not returning emails. Sorry, we neglected to return one email to you and took two days to respond to Korea, neither of which were remotely important. Sigh. The diplomacy part of this game is completely uninteresting to me. I would much prefer to just play the game. I really don't care if Inca get wiped out to be honest. They can sit there and build as many cities as they want with no military, and then come begging for our help, and then get pissed when we don't run halfway around the world at their request. Whatever.

Originally Posted by Jowy

Hey Killer Angels,


Good I sent that query then. Never a wise thing to be missing emails, especially mine Let bygones be bygones then. I'll go right to business: Why SHOULD you sign a NAP with me? You should do it if you truly want peace. Let's face the truth: I'm now a small country, squeezed between two powerhouses. You should think about what that means tactically.


Let's talk about if you don't sign a NAP with me. I will be forced to go back to 100% military mode. There's just no way I'm going to sit and hope I don't get invaded by a possibly hostile neighbour. I have to build troops even if ultimately that won't be enough. And if after those 15 turns when our NAP runs out I see an opening, then I will attack you. It's definately NOT what I want, it's the last resolution.


What I really want is peace in form of a longer NAP with you. If you truly want peace, then it doesn't really make a difference to you if you have a NAP or not.

I hope you see the light now :P

~ Jowy

And then there's Jowy, trying to be intimidating. Too bad we should have Maces by Turn 153 and have like 5 times his power already. With the current state of his economy, we estimate he cannot get either Feudalism or Machinery before we have Maces. So his threats carry little weight. We may agree to a NAP, but it will be for our own reasons, not fear of him going to "100% military mode." By not agreeing to his proposed NAP, we would not be saying we don't want peace. We would be saying we don't want to tie our hands. I'm not sure if he's just posturing, or really believes what he is saying.

I actually wouldn't have a problem agreeing to a NAP with him if he also agrees to a NAP with Korea. We don't want to sign a NAP with Greece and Ottomans, and then have our hands tied where they can go invade Korea while we sit idly by. That's the main reason why we don't want to sign one.

[Dr. Nomadic]

Wow, it sure seems like that 5-on-1 dogpile has hurt the other teams more than it's hurt you. They likely got 5 teams against you to guarantee success of the dogpile, but their coordination was poor and it was really a 4-on-1 at best, which is certainly manageable (spelling?). Instead, they either destroyed their economy and effectively became a failed kamikaze victim (Dantski, Whosit to some extent), actually ended up losing core cities (Jowy/Yaz), or, at the very least, completely severed diplomatic relations with your team (Nakor/DMOC, athlete/kalin). The goal of that offensive seems to have been to take out a team that was starting to look like a huge threat to win, and instead ended up ending two other teams' chances of winning, and possibly a third team's chance of winning as well, whilst probably making a dent in your chance of winning at worst. Definetely not worth it for the other side, though I have to wonder what would've happened if that Legion came earlier...

What do you think would've happened if that Legion came just 5 turns earlier?

[Sullla]

Yeah, really disappointing message back from slaze. If we were to send a response, I'd probably want to write something like this:

So to summarize, you expect us to come to your aid if attacked, but have no intention of doing the same for anyone else. Yeah, that really sounds like the basis for a solid partnership...

But that wouldn't achieve anything other than making us feel better. I'm tempted not to respond at all. Still, we should probably say something. How about:

Dear slaze of IKZ,

We were a little disappointed to hear your latest message back to us. We would really like to work together with your team - since we appear to share common rivals in Kathlete and Whosit - but we'd like to hear more of a commitment from your end. At the moment, it doesn't sound like you plan on doing much of anything to assist either my team or plako if it were to come to war. However, you expected us to come to your aid when you were the one facing a potential attack. I hope you can see how that would be a little irritating from our end!

We'd be happy to hear your thoughts on potential courses of action if Kathlete or Whosit break the peace and declare war. Since Kathlete, Whosit, Nakor, and Jowy still appear to be playing together as a team, the best chance for the rest of us remains to work together.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

I don't know if that message is any good or not. Took me over 20 minutes to write that little bit, I really struggled with it. This guy just rubs me the wrong way - I honestly kind of hope he gets attacked by Kathlete. Well, let me know what you think, Speaker.

Jowy's message is easy, we just say that we don't cave to threats:

Dear Jowy,

I'm afraid that last message wasn't exactly worded to calm our fears...

We appreciate the gestures you made towards reconciliation earlier, but our team obviously isn't going to give in to threats. "Give me peace or I will build units and attack" isn't the basis for a working relationship. We can't have peace resting on demands from either side.

I think we have to say no to your NAP. By not agreeing to this proposed NAP, we aren't saying we don't want peace. We're saying we don't want to tie our hands and leave peace as the only option. If you feel the need to build up your military, we understand. You have to do what's best for your team.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

Should we change anything there? Jowy is going to get the impression that we will attack him, but I'm struggling to find any way we can turn down his NAP and not give off that thought.

On the plus side, if Jowy builds a ton of Ancient Age units and we don't attack, think how silly his position will be longterm!