RPB3 SPOILERS Bismarck of India (regoarrarr, darrelljs, sooooo, sunrise089)

[darrelljs]

Should we rethink our GP deal with Krill?

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Did we meet France?

Darrell

Yes - they have an axe (or some unit?) near our southern borders

[sunrise089]

Should we rethink our GP deal with Krill?

Darrell

Does Krill owe us a tech? If he does he needs to pony up. He really wants the prophet to "do sunrise's RBP1 strategy right" but I'm sure he can get one from somewhere else without TOO much trouble.

Perhaps we could tell him we're withholding the prophet so long as he's organizing an alliance against us that is denying us agreed-upon techs.

[darrelljs]

He does not owe us a tech.

Darrell

[sunrise089]

Moved military units and killed a pair of barbs. We now have a 10xp chariot and I have a 5xp one I can promote to Sentry. Babylon could possibly try for our BB city, so I've moved units to cover. For the record our defenses are getting thin and I'd like to request 4 horse archers or so after we whip our forges. That's in addition to the axe+spear combos we should make for our border cities once we get metal online, and which will help protect against opportunistic attacks.

Still lots of time left on the turn, so I didn't move our settler.

[regoarrarr]

Diplo is (still) flying fast and furious. I was seriously in like 7 chats last night at once.

It all went okay to good, once I put darrell in timeout

Where I left it last night (I think?) was that Babylon was going to trade us Currency for Aesthetics and some sort of beaker / gold / unit makeup on the back end.

Maya was real pissed about having to be in PAT, but didn't want to leave without Babs, who didn't seem to want to. Maya also told me they make 74(!) bpt

Byz seemed like they were wanting to join PAT too (they got a late invite), and wanted to know if that would mean that we wouldn't be friends. I said no, and I thought they were going to join.

Portugal and us also came up with a plan to use 2 GMs to bulb CS and Guilds and get that within 20t or so.

[regoarrarr]

3 main diplo threads. First off

Maniac (Maya) to us, krill, mali, carthage, babs, england

OK, I'm trying to get this straight. If I'm understanding what Mali is telling me in an email, the only reason you aren't getting Calendar and Currency (and they intended MC) for Aesthetics is that you're demanding Construction from Carthage or you won't give Carthage Aesthetics? Can you explain what's going on? There really should be a reasonable solution to this.

~Maniac

Here is my reply, which I will send in about 30 minutes if I don't get a response

Well, I wouldn't say that we are DEMANDING Construction from Carthage for Aesthetics. But that was our understanding of the CAN agreements. We were originally going to tech HBR as our contribution to CAN, but then several members of CAN asked us to instead of providing a tech, to attack Sumeria. So instead of whipping (cheap) granaries and workers, we whipped chariots.

Then we were going to research Metal Casting, but Maya asked to do that and woudl trade it to us (which they did). So we moved to Aesthetics.

So our view of the agreement was Math for Sumeria war, Aesthetics for Construction. As we mentioned in our email to Carthage, although many trades are being made regardless of beaker value, we were willing to make up the beaker difference (which I think is 50 beakers) somehow, and we'd also be willing to include something to compensate for the relative times of the trade. Or on their word, to wait until Aesthetics is done (4 or 5 turns I think?). This is similar to the arrangement that Babylon and us worked out.

Now, I understand that different civs were "inducted" into CAN at different times and by different people. I had a long discussion with Kyan last night on this very subject. So I can't speak to what Krill or the Ottomans or whoever told Mali or Babylon or Carthage.

But that is our understanding of things.

DJ Civ

[regoarrarr]

Okay minor one from Maya to us and Byz (I think - having teams named "RB or RB3" in Gmail is a leeeeeetle confusing ) - censoring mine.

Well, being honorable may have gotten us kicked out of PAT regardless of everything else, and I basically just told Swiss to go f*** himself. I'll keep you posted.

~Maniac

Reply from Byz

Okay, thanks for keeping my team informed. Team consensus for us seems to be to go with Anti-PAT anyway, we'll probably send out something official later today (until then, try not to break the news beyond your two civs- I'd rather let PAT know my choice in person). Maniac, don't stress yourself too much out over staying on top of all this diplo shit (too late, right?)- I personally am going to have to take a break from most of it today so I can finish my damned taxes.


-Bobchillingworth

I replied already to that

Well like I told Byz last night, we'd prefer you in Anti-PAT, and I feel like we're THIS close to getting everyone else to smack around say 3 teams (England, Carthage, Egypt).

But it's up to you guys to do what is best for your civs and if we're on opposite sides (again) it won't mean we can't be friends.

PARTY ON!
DJ Civ

[darrelljs]

It all went okay to good, once I put darrell in timeout

He's serious, BTW .

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

And last thread

Ottomans to Portugal, us, Byz, HRE, Rome

WNA,

Sounds good, I'll adress my opinions on the priorities:

1. I'm not good at names, so I'll leave this to someone else. WNA is
good if no-one else can think of anything.

2. I think both Inca and Aztec will join us. Maya is currently unknown
ATM, but Metal Casting will probably tell us if they are/aren't with
us. I'll assume that Inca and Aztec are in and Maya is out for the
rest of this message.

3. This probably fits into the next 2 points so I'll discuss it there.
We aim to be a techer in this new group, while still being able to
contribute units to the cause.

4. This is the main problem. PAT are about to discover the next round
of techs while we are still behind. Even if they choose to honour CAN,
they won't give it to all of us. It doesn't help that none of us are
that good at research yet (as compared to PAT, who are comprised of
mostly strong researchers). With that in mind, we need to get some
researchers going and for everyone to start supplying GNP in some
form, wether it be gold or research. The most important tech that
someone gets is currency since then we can share our gold around to
everyone. It remains to be seen if Babylon will give the tech to any
of us, but someone needs to start researching it so the rest of us can
get it anyway. We also need to start researching the other techs that
CANT didn't recieve. So I think the important techs ATM are:

Monarchy
Currency
Calendar
Construction
Metal Casting (if Maya aren't in, they have given MC to several PAT
members already)

So, I'm not sure what everyone else is Re:GNP, but I think that HRE,
ourselves, Byzantium and maybe India could be techers now while
everyone else saves gold. Portugal could turn into a techer once they
have started to recover a bit. We are saving gold in preperation to
research one of them (probably Construction)

5. A Mutual Military Defense is good but we will probably have to
attack them before we fall too far behind. While we have the numbers
(10v6 is likely at this point) and therefore have the long term
advantage, we need to prevent them from gaining a big enough tech lead
in the short term. With that in mind, there is a possibility that some
civs that aren't researching could attack someone in PAT. I think this
is a map of PAT and their neighbours:

Ottomans HRE Portugal
(Egypt) (Carthage) (England)
Byzantium (Maya) (Mali) (Babylon)
India Aztec Inca Rome

Byzantium might need to be careful about a PAT attack, since they are
surrounded by PAT members. Otherwise, we all border a PAT member
somewhere, so maybe a co-ordinated strike (i.e. everyone attacks at
once) could be sucessful. We would all have to attack sometime soon,
otherwise they will have the next era of units and it will be too
late.

Anyway, what do you guys think?

Enough Talking!
WarriorKnight of A4

Portugal

Hey guys,

This email is mainly about the tech problem. India and I were talking and I think we have the beginnings of a plan.

Here is a relevant piece of information to understand the plan:

Great Merchant:

Currency
Banking
Economics
Corporation
Metal Casting
Code of Laws
Mining
Constitution
The Wheel
Alphabet (BTS)
Pottery
Sailing
Paper
Railroad
Industrialism
Monarchy
Civil Service
Guilds

That is the tech preference list for bulbing techs with a great merchant. I think you can probably see where this is going, but I'll go through the details.

HRE is due to complete CoL on t90(?). At the moment Babylon has offered to honour the trade of Currency to us, although I'm not sure if it's going to anyone else. If HRE could somehow convince Babylon to do a bilateral trade of CoL for currency that would be perfect. Currency comes in t92 last I heard from Babylon. Does HRE have metal casting and how likely is it that can you get it from Maya if you don't? It's above the techs we need in the tech prefernce list.

T93 both HRE and ourselves whip markets in our largest food surplus city and revolt to caste system and run as many merchants as possible. As neither of us have had a single great person yet eta for our first great merchants would be 17 turns running 2 or less with more. We hope to run at least 6 ourselves but no idea how quickly we can grow our cities at this point. We will starve the city if needs be.

The first tech on that list of tech preferences with us both having monarchy is Civil Service. One of us bulbs Civil Service hopefully around t100. To get everyone powering through techs I think it should be a priority so that everyone at least has the prerequisites for Civil Service for when we bulb it. So those techs need to be made a higher priority than Construction and Calendar. Meanwhile, Byzantium should tech Machinery (I noticed that you must have had MC was that self researched or from Maya?), we will tech feudalism. Aztecs? maybe should tech monarchy and any other tech required to get civil service, feudalism and guilds should be assigned so that they can all come in around t105. I know what you're thinking, why don't we just slow tech Civil Service starting today? But this way we can slow tech something else and still get CS.

After Civil service someone needs to tech paper. It's not an expensive tech. We could also try to arrange a bilateral with any friendly PAT members though this is unlikely. The only reason we need paper is that it becomes available with CS and it's above guilds in the tech preference list. So as soon as paper comes in whoever else ended up running merchants could then bulb Guilds, hopefully around t105-110.

Good aspects of this plan is that we get everything within a few turns of each other so there is very little warning for Byzantium's neighbours. I think Beaurocracy would be best for recovery for all the civs limited by their number of cities. I know some people here are aboslutely sick of war (ourselves included) so while this tech path has a powerful military goal it has very powerful developmental techs on the way for those who just want to build.

Let me know if you think this is feasible. As for ourselves we are now turning everything over to commerce.

Mukha
CBE

HRE

That's some solid ideas!


Couple of points:

- We discover CoL T89. Assuming Krill doesn't bulb the tech with a Prophet before that date (he didn't take Monarchy from England for this reason), I suppose, in theory, we could ask for both Currency and Metal Casting from Babylon and Maya respectively. We met each other relatively late, and haven't had the time to establish cordial relations, so I'm not sure how likely it would be (Portugal somehow manages to get all the techs... )

- Does one really need Market/Currency to be able to run Merchant specialists in Caste System? The way I see it, you just need to revolt and you can basically run as many Scientists/Merchants/Artists as you like. (provided you have the food)
If that is the case, then we will probably be able to run 3-4 merchants by T95.

- While looking at the little map Ottomans drew of the teams' locations, I couldn't help but notice Krill's Egypt sits a bit exposed, surrounded by a lot of non-PAT members: India to its north, Ottomans to its north east, Byz to its south and Portugal to its northwest. I suppose a lightning strike is out the question, but I think that a 3-4 pronged attack on Egypt should sufficiently cripple our opponents' prime supplier of gold.

That's all I can think of for now, more to come though...


Ilios - DIM

Me - took off byz, added ruff

Hi guys - haven't had a chance to review but I took Byz off the list because I'm fairly certain they decided to join PAT. Also added Ruff as he is on board with anti-PAT

HRE

Well that sucks, since they already know about our plans... There's no chance Babylon and Maya are going to trade me Currency and Metal Casting now...

me

Well they might still be in. I think that they are still trying to decide. Regardless, if they are in PAT, I'd say they are lukewarm members and are fairly close to free agents.