RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Iamjohn, Kodii & Zeviz

[Kodii]

I've finally taken a solid look in game and this is what I think about our current situation.

We should not be settling our "safe" locations. I say we settle our "border" city with athlete near the north, especially if we get Buddhism in our next city.

I put together a quick dotmap with what I think is most ideal. I apologize for not getting this out earlier.

I think we should settle the red dot. Ideally, I would move the red dot 1N, if we're feeling particularly adventurous with athlete/kalin.

What do you think?



Next, we would settle purple, and then towards old-Zulu territory before backfilling.

[Iamjohn]

Looks good.

I'm going to be traveling most of tomarrow, so you might have to take care of the turn Kodii if I'm not able to play it in time.

[Kodii]

Here is a draft of an email to A/K:

Hi athlete & kalin!

We have already discussed as a team where we would like to settle our first city, and it is in a location considered "towards" your fine civilization. Of course, we are excited to embark on friendly relations with you, especially with the aggressive settlement by regoarrarr and his team. We have placed our city so that it will not threaten your copper and immediate areas south of your capital that you may consider settling, but to ensure we do not arise in a conflict, could you please outline where you would like to have our border? We should probably settle this issue sooner rather than later to help us work more closely together.

We are interested in settling south of the four-tile lake south of your capital (so that the BFC lies south of the aforementioned lake).

Kodii of IKZ

Thoughts? I'd like to work closely with athlete/kalin against regoarrarr, as I expect that team to be quite a powerhouse.

[Iamjohn]

Thoughts? I'd like to work closely with athlete/kalin against regoarrarr, as I expect that team to be quite a powerhouse.

I agree, and think we should clearly state so to them, and perhaps ask what regoarrarr has been saying.

[Kodii]

Is that approval for the e-mail?

[Iamjohn]

Yep, send that baby!

[Iamjohn]

regorrarr is pushing athlete/kalin very hard in regards to settling, if Athlete isn't careful he's giong to be backed into a corner, and he'll need to revert to the MOO1 AI mode of fixing the issue (make some space the hard way- war).

[Kodii]

Hey, don't settle our city until we have approval from AK. It should be fine.

[Iamjohn]

Hi Incans,

After discussing with Athlete and reviewing the situation in game a bit more carefully, we think that you are bargaining a little too hard given our relative positions. We only have space for 4 cities, maybe 5 if we get an additional one in the direction of Byzantium, then an additional couple of filler no-resource cities. I think you easily have space for at least twice as many cities. Your proposed second city (2S1W of the rice) would overlap with our copper city.

Therefore, I think that the sites that we proposed to settle as our border (1SE of our copper, 4S of copper city, and a coastal close to our capital) are very reasonable. We'd like to propose those cities as the border between us, and would kindly ask that whatever cities you settle would not overlap the BFC of these cities. I know that you have to make some concessions in this deal and you may be tempted to haggle more for a resource of two, but again given our relative situations I don't think this would be reasonable. To this land partition we would attach a long term NAP and you would have a steady and loyal friend in us.

Between Rego's very aggressive settlement (a hill city) and your settlement, we feel so squeezed that we have little hope for our civilization to matter in this game. If you choose to squeeze us even more, which you probably can, you would leave us in such a weak position that we may have to consider vassalizing to Rego. We'd hate to do that, and we really would hate this basically putting us on auto-pilot, but with almost zero chance to win, it would give us a decent chance at #2.

Also, with us very weak, you'd face a strong Byzantium in the NW (that would lightbulb their way into Guilds) and a strong Shaka/Rome to your S, which also has a good amount of space to expand into. I don't think you'd want that.

Kalin of the Ottomans

I can understand their problem, but we don't have much in the way of amazing sites either.

[Kyan]

I can understand their problem, but we don't have much in the way of amazing sites either.

is the original 'zulu' land not very good then? And maybe he does have a point about the Shaka thing anyway.

You got rid of one early aggresive threat, and left loads of space for an aggresive civ to move into. I'd have thought you'd want a longterm(ish) NAP with at least 1 of your neighbours?