[SPOILERS] Team SsS

[Sandover]

I believe Spectre is the Byzantines. Can verify that next time I log in to the game.

[Sandover]

A lot going on on the diplo front today. I won't even be able to catch up with everything tonight, but here's a starter.

DJ's response;

Thanks for your message...it is always best to hear both sidese of the story so we are glad you sought us out. Originally we planned on settling 1W of the Stone. Then we agreed to settle on the Stone itself. That still wasn't enough for Exploit, he now wanted us to move south onto one of the Floodplains. The city lacks a food resource, and we felt we needed the Floodplains badly, so we asked why. Apparently, he plans on founding a city that would overlap with two tiles with our Stone site. So, we said we didn't care about those tiles and would not culturally contest them (i.e. we would let him get his Library up and steal those tiles before we would build our own Library, and we would never build Theaters, etc.). That still wasn't enough, so we offered to time share the wine. That still wasn't enough so we offered to loan him the Stone from time to time. By this point we needed to Settle. You know how Krill gets when a team is last to play :-)

He came back with an e-mail talking about a 200 turn NAP and other things unrelated to the city site that would take days (weeks?) to work out. We felt we had been more than generous so we just decided to settle and deal with the fallout.

If and when we do declare on him it will be in no small part to this entire ordeal. We want neighbors we can work with, and its not clear if this has soured him on us for the remainder of the game. He certainly gave us that vibe. He had talked about offering open borders to facilitate early foreign trade routes, but now all of a sudden he rejected our in-game request.

Anyway, thanks again for checking with us, and if you have any other questions or comments we'd love to hear them.

DJ Civ
PARTY ON!

Good job defending yourelves rego. Just not good enough;

Dear DJ,

While you do a good job defending your honor you also indirectly agree to having breached the negotiations with Tech by taking matters into your own hands. The acts you have described to us can indeed be considered generous, but on the other hand we do not consider you entitled to run shady diplomacy just because you are a generous bunch. Sending a settler to a location that is still under negotiation is optimistic at best and bad conduct at worst. Exploit have been nothing but reasonable in establishing a border agreement with SsS, and while the coin always has two sides, we cannot help but view you as the bad guys of this incident. In the light of what has transpired we hereby declare that we will make no further attempts to join your alliance, as we do not believe that SsS and DJ have a future working closely together. Maybe one day, when our borders meet in what is now Sumeria, we will engage in glorious combat to determine supremacy over the neighbourhood.

Regards,
Sandover
Team SsS

[Sandover]

And here's the (only slightly altered) message I've sent to Cath Bruig;

Dear Cath Bruig,

A diplomatic backstab has occurred to our east. The nation of DJ have betrayed the sanctity of ongoing settlement negotiations with the nation of Tech, by dishonorably sneaking in to found the city of Karaoke Tuesday on a spot that was still under negotiations. We have been in contact with DJ since the incident occurred and while they made a decent attempt at defending their honor, they also indirectly admitted their having breached the negotiations. One of our explorers was even there to witness the dishonorably founding of the city and can confirm that it is a spot that should, in my mind, only be settled under agreement with Tech as it will inevitably form the future DJ/Tech border.

In the light of this event SsS have decided to officially withdraw our desire to join your alliance, despite our already having finished a draft of terms for our membership, as the behaviour displayed by DJ is not one that we wish to be associated with. Should there come a time when DJ is excluded, or their honor restored, SsS will then again be open to discuss a membership. Until then we shall look for trading partners elsewhere, and will make sure to be prepared to put up a fight in case the alliance decides to come after us in the manner you have decided to operate under. We honestly believe that it is a shame that we do not get to work closely with Cath Bruig, as we appreciated your recent change of tone and saw a lot of potential in our relationship as our empires would be able to complement each others nicely, but we simply do not wish to be part of an alliance where the word of senior members cannot be trusted. It does, once again, make us doubt the alliance's true intentions of working with SsS.

Regards,
Sandover
Team SsS

[Sandover]

In addition to this I've also had a chat with Exploit who have bombarded me with forwarded messages and updates since yesterday. Apparently the alliance have been dubbed "The Hydra" (I've no clue by whom) and have caused a strong counter-alliance movement to emerge. Exploit have made a bunch of contacts to the north (Byz, Babylon, Maya) and there is some interesting stuff going on up there for sure. I'll fill you in with more details when I have time, which might be just as good as we can't talk to any of the northern civs in a direct manner yet. Also, our attack plans or what's going on domestically aren't going to change either way.

[scooter]

Would you mind if I had access to the email account so I could copy and paste the emails into here, so I can start to process what's going on? No biggie either way, just figured it might make things easier on you so you're not having to spend time filling me in and then waiting for feedback.

I agree on the response to India, that's just too sketchy to deal with at this point. Right now the best way to break up this tech bloc is to destroy/choke as many members as possible. So let's cross our fingers that we have iron nearby...

[Sandover]

Hey, why didn't I think of that?

I'll pm you the details.

[scooter]

Great, I'll check it out after lunch.

[Sandover]

Turn played but I think I'll stick to reporting every second turn from now on. It's not that a turn report takes a lot of time, it's just that "Smash found another forest tile and Stitch is still healing" is starting to get old at this point.

[scooter]

I'm going to go ahead and dump the email here, but this is definitely a big development:

To: Mali, Byzantine, Maya, Inca, Sumeria and Rome
From: Babylon

Ok guys, it's cards on the table time. We face a threat that could potentially overrun all of us. We need to know exactly what we're facing so i'm putting together a dossier to try and coordinate our efforts.

Please forward this on to Sumeria, Rome and Maya.

The Hydra

We suspect The Hydra to consist of:

Egypt, India, HRE, Ottomans, Carthage, Portugal, England and the Aztecs.

The bold and italicised i consider to be 100% definite. Portugal and Aztec is based off logical guess-work. I would be surprised if they aren't included.

The rest of the civ's - those reading this and also France who none of us have contact with- are left out of this bloc. As far as i'm concerned we NEED to work together to mutually ensure our survival. This is a temporary measure as far as i am concerned. We (Babylon) won't be declaring war or attacking any of you in the fore-seable future but we don't expect or want this to last all game. RBPB1 was ruined by this thing and a repeat performance is not what anyone wants.

We would be happy to offer NAP's of reasonable length to anyone who is worried in that regard.

Hydra's Objectives:

Get a super early alphabet and a whole lot of civ's together and tech their way to an irreversible advantage.

How Are They Getting Alphabet?

Currently we do not know 100%. I suspect there are two methods of them getting there a lot faster than us:

a) Beelining it and skipping mining/BW
b) Oracle

I am leaning towards use of the Oracle which points the finger at two, possibly 3 civ's in my eyes:

Aztec - they've had plenty of time to get the necessary techs and would want the prophet for a shrine for buddhism.

Egypt - same as above but for hinduism. And who would put it beyond Krill to organise this?

India - they have mysticism at the least and are industrious.

What to do?

We need to organise and fast. I believe Byz are sending a chariot up to meet France as soon as possible. We all need to get contact. Inca, sumeria and Rome- i appreciate this won't be easy for you guys but we'll do what we can and operate by proxy for now if we have to. I'm relying on some people forwarding replies and the like for now.

Secondly, we need to damage them somehow. We have no idea how France will feel about the whole thing but it's best to work under the assumption that we're currently the under-dog. Our main advantage is the potential for surprise. If we can land a few crippling blows early this could really turn the tide.

War?

Babylon are more than happy to launch a joint attack with Byzantine upon England. They are currently running a pure farmer's gambit and i feel confident of success if we can strike strong and decisively. This would have to be focused on soon though. I would prefer not to delay our alphabet research by getting hunting for spearmen but i will do if necessary.

Inca are attacking Ruff as we speak. I wish them total success and let's hope Ruff was building the Oracle!

Sumeria and Rome. How are you guys faring? I'm aware you're surrounded by the Hydra and could divert forces to you rather than England if that would be preferrable.

Mali and Maya. Where do you stand on the situation? Could you spare forces to attack England or assist in the south? I believe you both have, or will soon have, horses connected.

Babylon have no visible horses anywhere near our lands (an oversight by mapmakers per chance?) but we do have copper connected. The first axeman is already making his way to meet Maya's scout and more will be coming in short order (promoted).

=========

Tech

Mali are currently after Monarchy
We are 5t from writing and then heading for alphabet
Byz are saving gold then going IW
Maya are on writing and then after alphabet
Rome are i PRESUME on IW?
Sumeria i have no idea
Inca are on pottery at moment i believe.

I think maybe inca should get a load of the filler techs- fishing etc. Sumeria i need to know what you're doing so we can coordinate appropropriately.
Byz- maybe you should now go HBR instead?
If Sumeria are after alphabet which Byz have implied then babylon can divert to whatever after writing- aesthetics or something?

I appreciate our initial concern is survival but it's not just about the short-term. We'll need to get something going for at least the first round of trades to maintain competitivity.

The Map

This is how i currently understand it. Please bear in mind this is toroidal. Script is Green Team Battleground. It's huge but with extra tiles added.

???? / Carth / England /France /
Maya / Mali / Babylon / Byz
Desssssssssssssssssssssssert
???? / Inca / Rome / Sumeria
Aztec / India / HRE / Portugal

Two of these rows started with 5 civs i expect. Korea are gone but there's no guarantee they were on a row of 4 to begin with.
Some of this is based off rough descriptions so any help here would be appreciated. ( I expect Rome or Sumeria can help a lot with the southern hemisphere).

That's enough from me for today, if you can improve this or add to it- PLEASE get the info back to me one way or another asap.

Babylon currently has contact with Mali, England (bah), Byz, Inca and are soon to meet Sumeria and Maya. Rome- you can forward your messages thru any of these.

Your friends,

Kyan
Kysit's Periwinkles

We definitely need to get involved in this I think... I'll have more thoughts later, but I've got to run.

[scooter]

I think we need to go whole-hog and commit to this counter-alliance. I read through the chats, and if the other side IS doing something like Oracling alphabet, we will be behind the curve trading-wise. Good news though is they will probably be behind on Iron Working because they've been expecting us to supply it. We should probably see if we can get Byzantines to switch off IW (like was suggested in the email) to avoid duplicate research. For us now it becomes important to establish contact with these northern civs so that we can actually make these trades.

Here's a rough stab at a message, it's long, and very much a commitment and very "sharing" of information, so feel free to scrap a lot of it, but I think at this point it would be best to commit to this, move it along, and contribute as best as we can. Let me know what you think, but I get the impression from the emails and chats that you are roughly on the same page.

To all those NOT involved in the "Hydra", (we are passing this on via Sumeria)

First off, we can 100% confirm that Portugal is a part of the Hydra, and we are very confident that the Aztecs are members as well. So yes, the group is just as big as feared, so we need some sort of action - specifically everyone getting contact so we can make trades, as well as damaging this tech bloc. And yes, we've already started on Iron Working, so if Byzantines could switch to avoid duplicate research then that might be a good idea.

We had a chat with Exploit and we have come to the conclusion that Krill is the most likely player to be working on Oracling alphabet. We don't know this for sure, but the way India talked with us, I get the impression they were fairly confident their bloc would get to alphabet first by a good chunk, which screams Oracle. It's not Aztec, as Exploit has visibility on his research and he is just now working on Priesthood, so he cannot have even started it yet. India seems unlikely as they built stonehenge AND just founded their 4th city, so I can't imagine they have enough production to do all that AND knock out Oracle. And besides all that, Krill makes sense on a lot of levels.

Do any of you guys have contact with Krill? Or are any of you near him? If he IS working on Oracle, then a choke on him would probably be very effective, if not easy. If he's working on Oracle, that's a lot of shields/forests that's NOT going into military/workers/settlers. This is a total shot in the dark since I get the feeling we don't really know where Egypt is located, but if one of you guys are near him and willing to go for a choke, it might just massively pay off.

Any sort of military cooperation within this group of ours would be very helpful. Speaking for ourselves, we have no contact yet with HRE, but if the layout you sent is accurate, then we probably will soon. In our neighborhood, the natural conflicts set up this way:

Inca vs. Aztec
Sumeria vs. India
Rome vs. Portugal

With HRE as a potential problem as an apparently nearby Hydra member. This setup as a whole favors us, both offensively, and defensively. Overall, I think we can be successful if everyone is on board and we can establish contact. So yes, Rome is definitely on board with this, and we need to make contact with the rest of the group. Inca and Sumeria - if either of you can facilitate contact for us that would be very helpful .

Regards,
Team SsS