RB Pitboss #1 SPOILER - Hatshepsut / India

[regoarrarr]

And an email from shadyforce. Things are looking a bit better in that direction

Firstly about the shape of the map... There seems to be plenty of snaky land and plenty of snaky water masses. It is hard to tell whether it is the sea or land that is interconnected at this stage, but it could be either. I guess I'm saying that my scouting so far makes that lakes scenario very much plausable but not yet confirmed.

Regarding the Cow tile, It's only 23 tiles away from me if you take a contrary route to get there. It's more like 14 direct. But it's not the cow tile itself, more the city site to the east of it (one that probably wouldn't bother try and wrestle the cow tile from your cultural grasp anyway) at the base of the Eastern Isthmus (needs a name), which incidentally we both take a similar number of turns for each of us to get to. I think 14 for me and 10/11 for you.

You didn't comment on the cities you can found in your north. I assume it's more than one. If you don't want to say then fine, technically it's none of my business since I'll hopefully never have to deal with them. But that's why I hope I can get a decent chunk out of this area between us while you only need part of it and can get a decent empire out of your north as well.

Maybe you're afraid of expanding too much because Imhotep the warmonger is up there? Maybe Sullla really did put a large desert between 2 people's starts? I don't know.

Here are the cities I can found:
1. City with 1 fish and lots of coast just east of Central Command.
2. City with Cow, Corn and Ivory just north east of that, beside the big lake, south-east of the small lake. By far the best city site I've seen so far.
3. City with Cow, Ivory and Dye just north east of my capital, on the same level with little lake.
4. City a little further north from 3 with Rice, which is on the coast, south east of Cape Cow.
Also, Resourceless filler city around the big lake and something to my north east in the as yet unexplored jungle near my capital. There may be a way to reshuffle things around and squeeze another city at the expense of weaking one of the 2 good cities (2 and 3 above). And that's pretty much what I have to make an empire out of and compete with other people on this huge map.

From my perspective, the contentious cities would be:
1. Cape Cow.
2. City near the Banana and Dye on or near the river.
3. City just south of little lake (there are cows there) - might well be contested with Carthage as well.

Regarding your proposel in terms of early settlement, I like the general idea. But the problems are:
1. I need to know where the horsies are. The map maker might be a bollox (:P) and put the horses right on your border as well, and then I'm in trouble.
2. I don't think a horizontal line along with the lake is best. I think a diagonal line would be better. Though I probably don't want to settle the rice one in the north early on so maybe it amounts to the same thing. Perhaps an agreement to not settle the area of any of those 3 contentions cities is best. What do you think? But again, I need to know where the horses first. I'm sure you can understand that.

Anyway, we will soon lose the ability to use "not enough map intel" as an excuse to delay a decision. I have made a proposal, so you should make one. Tell me what you would you be happy with?

[regoarrarr]

Did a few manual simulations for Green Twp - putting in a chop (or two) from Amy the worker to speed up the workboat

This is the plan with one chop at the capital and one chop at Green Twp

Current situation:
T30 settler is whipped. Amy the worker farms rice. Research switched to Fishing (due in 5).
T31 settler moves towards uber spot. Will get there T35 to found T36. Amy moves 3 tiles to the forest 1S of Cincinnati that already has 1 turn of chop into it.
T32 Amy chops
T33 Amy chops - chop comes in.
T34 Amy moves 13.
T35 Amy moves 222 onto the grass river forested hill
T36 Green Twp founded on uber spot, works 1/2/0 grass forest hill. Fishing comes in at start of turn - select workboat. Amy chops
T37 Work the hill, Amy chops
T38 Work the grass forest 2/1/0, Amy chops - chop comes in at end of turn.
T39 Work the forest, at start of turn, 4/22 in box, 8/30 on the workboat. Amy moves 7, roads (hoping Wheel will be in by then)
T40 Work the forest, workboat moves to fish, Amy roads, road done at end of turn, 6/22, 2/50 on Barracks, borders expand at end of turn
T41 Work the fish, 8/22, 3/50, Amy moves to copper hill and mines (love the fast worker!)
T42 Work the fish, 13/22, 4/50, Amy mines
T43 Work the fish, 18/22, 5/50, Amy mines
T44 Work the fish, 1/24, 6/50 in barracks, Amy mines, mine done at the end of turn and swap to copper and Spearman.

Plan with two chops at Green Twp
Current situation:
T30 settler is whipped. Amy the worker farms rice. Research switched to Fishing (due in 5).
T31 settler moves towards uber spot. Will get there T35 to found T36. Amy moves 132
T32 Amy moves 23
T33 Amy moves 31 to the grass forested hill N of uber spot
T34 Amy chops
T35 Amy chops
T36 Green Twp founded on uber spot, works 2/1/0 grass forest Fishing comes in at start of turn - select workboat, 0/22, 0/30 on WB. Amy chops - chop comes in
T37 Work the forest, 2/22, 22/30. Amy moves 3, chops
T38 Work the forest, 4/22, 24/30. Amy chops
T39 Work the grass forested hill (the one we didn't chop), 6/22, 26/30, chop comes in.
T40 Work the hill, 7/22, 19/50 into barracks, workboat moves to fish, borders expand at end of turn, Amy moves 44.
T41 Work the fish, 8/22, 22/50, Amy moves to copper and mines
T42 Work the fish, 13/22, 23/50, Amy mines
T43 Work the fish, 18/22, 24/50, Amy mines
T44 Work the fish, 1/24, 25/50, Amy mines, mine done at end of turn.

[regoarrarr]

Email thread with kalin and sunrise. Then kalin and I chatted for a bit and I sent this as a recap

Sunrise,

kalin and I chatted for a bit and just wanted to keep you in the loop. I again expressed my preference to research Math. We talked about other ways to spin this to Broker to research IW, since being Creative it's also probably in his interest to get to Writing sooner rather than later.

We talked about possibly voiding some of his beaker credits (since IW is the cheapest tech) or maybe having him research a few filler techs. Possible techs are Masonry, Priesthood, Sailing, etc.

We weren't sure if you were planning on going towards Monarchy by way of Mono or P'hood though, so you'll have either Phood or Masonry.

Anything I missed?

[T-hawk]

Okay - I checked T-hawk's analysis.

Glad to help, but caution on the cut & paste quoting - my quote there mentions a couple details of Ruff's area in the PBEM.

[regoarrarr]

Thanks T-hawk. I thought I had checked for that but you are right - post edited.

[regoarrarr]

Some more confirmations of the 4-way trade

Well spoken. I agree with what you said and pass that along to Broker.
I would also like Dreylin to have a look at all of our communications
but I don't expect him to have objections.

So the basic 4-way plan would be as follows:

The League of Lin: Alphabet
Sunrise: Monarchy
Regoarrarr: Mathematics
Broker: IW (+ Sailing or something else reasonable)

We would also agree in principle to swap with each other some of the
cheaper techs to make up for prereqs or whatever, but those deals
would be on a case by case basis. We, the league, are certainly
interested in a path to priesthood.

Kalin of the League

My reply

So it's come to my realization that it might not be the GREATEST of plans for me to engage in something that intentionally excludes ALL of my neighbors. Kind of gives them a pretty good incentive to start collaborating with themselves and without me, which can lead to some not great things, right? :-)

I know that we talked about having a 5th person in this plan, possibly researching HBR (Which is about the same beaker count as the other techs in the plan). How would you guys feel about adding one of ZPV, Imhotep and shadyforce to the plan, researching HBR?

If that's okay, I would ask your permission to nominate which one of the 3 we include. My reasoning is that I'd rather work with the civ that is in general most easy to get along with on all accounts, for obvious reasons. I have not yet met ZPV but probably should in the next little bit. I would hope to have a handle on things within the next 10-15 turns or so and will happily conduct a summit meeting so everyone meets.

How does that sound? Other than that I like what I am seeing.

Yeah, while it does behoove me to weaken my neighbors by locking them out of trading, as I said in the email it doesn't really behoove me to exclude ALL my neighbors, since then they'll just start cooperating together to research techs, and that closeness will lead them to start cooperating together militarily against me.

(Which is bad)

I would lean towards including shadyforce in this, at least for this first round of trading, but I didn't want to commit to this without having met ZPV. Imhotep is probably right out given the distance to his capital and his relative lack of communication.

One other good reason I thought of for researching Math is to set up the 2nd round of trading (which I assume will happen shortly after). When you start looking at what techs might be around, Math is a pre-req for many of them (Currency, Calendar, Construction), and with no tech brokering, if anyone else wants to get in on those techs, they have to come by me. Plus, of the 5, I'd say Math is the most important, followed by IW, Monarchy, HBR and Alpha (since it only takes one civ with Alpha to trade)

[Dantski]

Well I'm pleased that we're going to Maths first!

I'm thinking to throw some caution to the wind and just settle the 3 obvious spots south + east of our capital, we really need them if we want to be strong later.

You kinda want to let on to shadyforce that our reluctance to settle north is more because of inferior land rather than the potential threat of Imhotep


As for who to include in the trade

Imhotep is the strongest of the players and I'm not sure it would be a good idea to do something that would benefit him in such a way.

ZPV I know very little about and we haven't met yet, he would obviously want HBR though for his UU.

shady is a relatively inexperienced player AFAIK and I personally don't see him as a useful long-term friend in this game, in fact I'm feeling more like his land would be very nice split between ourselves and ZPV later on

[regoarrarr]

@Dantski - Yeah I'm happy that things are lining up for us to take Math in this trade.

As for those SE spots, I am fairly (75%?) confident that through negotiation or settler racing, that I can get those spots we want (from my dotmap a few pages ago)

Because I have copper, I can afford to be a little more generous in giving him the spots with the horses or iron. Also, if I have to, I can use the leverage of getting in on this 5-way tech deal, though that would certainly take some finesse.

[regoarrarr]

T30 and T31 played.

I decided to go with the first plan outlined up in post #132 above (1 chop at the capital and 1 at Green Twp). I also verified that the Wheel should come in on T39, just when I need it to!

As such, Settler moved 2S, Amy moved to the tile 1S of Cincinnati and will finish the chop with 2 turns (T32 and T33) before moving down to Green Twp.

I have to say that I am scared out of my mind that I will somehow screw up and lose either Amy or the settler to a barb. I have Charlie in the area - he moved on to the copper this turn and should be able to fogbust appropriately, unless I am missing something, but I am still scared. Bob the Warrior is heading NW and will be available in the area around T35.

Score increases have slowed down. No techs on either turn and only Krill went to size 3, as well as Shadyforce back to size 2 after a whip (and of course my whip from 3->2). Soldier counts are becoming very hard to track, what with more warriors on the scene as well as barrackses and what not. I am 99% sure that nobody has yet founded a 2nd city. It seems odd that I will be the first, but I'll certainly be up there - 5 turns to go (T36).

I will try to get some screenies tomorrow.

[regoarrarr]

Played T32. @Dantski - just as a note - if you do ever play a turn for me, please make sure to take a screenshot of the Demographics page - I am keeping track of those.

Amy chopped and thanks to the chop that she did way back before camping the ivory, it will be done next turn. Dan the warrior will also be born next turn. Probably another warrior next before moving to another worker - waiting to grow back to size 3.

Settler moving to the south - check out the blue circle