RBP3 [SPOILERS] Hannibal of Byzantium (Bobchillingworth, ManiaMuse & SleepingMoogle)

[Bobchillingworth]

Recieved this email from Exploit:

Update. India has founded another city since I sent the last message. I am not certain but I strongly suspect it will be near the copper resource. There was only a single inexperienced warrior guarding the spot when I last went through the area which I suspect is the only defender of the new city. I recommend that all units in the area attack the copper city right away before they link it up to their capital. There were no roads in the area 4 turns ago when I passed through. India has produced stonehenge, 3 settlers, at least 3 warriors that I have seen and some unknown number of workers thus far. I do not believe they can have much of a military force at this point. If we wait though and they get copper hooked up then they will be extremely strong.

I'm still opposed to us producing and routing chariots to India when we have better targets closer to home, but how about sending our second chariot to the Indian copper spot ASAP? I know we need someone to gaurd the 3rd city, but it shouldn't take too long to get a warrior, right?

[ManiaMuse]

While I agree attacking England makes more short term sense, India are definitely going to be the bigger threat in the long run. Personally I would support biting the bullet and sending our chariots to India.

For some reason I feel that the alphabet oracle is going to happen much earlier than even Exploit suspects.

[SleepingMoogle]

I'd like all three of us to agree on it before passing it on to the alliance. I haven't quite seen Mania disagree with the plans, but let's make sure we're all on the same page.

Regarding the India proposal: It might actually be an idea for Rome and Sumeria to harass them, while we attack England. They're in a much better position for it than we are right now. Keeping India & allies occupied down south also means England will have littleq help from its allies.

Also, while it is ineffecient to have three different Civs research Alphabet, it may be a good idea to have someone other than Exploit research it as well as a failsafe. But we should recommend that either Babylon of the Mayans go for Mathematics or the various small techs instead.

[Bobchillingworth]

Aren't the Mayan's set to research maths already? I agree that Masonry after Ironworking is a good choice for us. Would be nice if we can get someone else to research HBR and Archery. We need to coordinate this better.... really need those contacts. How long until we reach Mali? Would be nice to have a huge group chat this weekend, when timezones won't matter so much.

My votes, if we are voting on our war plans, are to send the second chariot to India now (with the intention of attacking them with Maya's chariot), with our new forces being sent to assault England. My reasoning is pretty much exactly what I posted before- with extra emphasis on not wanting to alienate Kyan, who along with Maya is our best ally in the game.

We should discuss plans more if we can't reach consensus in this thread- I will be online barring the unforseen at about 5 PM Eastern time, or around 11 PM for you guys. If you guys want to hash out plans yourselves before then , and then have one of you relay your thoughts to me when I can finally log on, go for it.

[Bobchillingworth]

Okay, lots of discussion that has happened in the last several hours regarding techs & troops. I think we have the tech scheme mostly worked out:

[From the discussion between myself, Exploit, Maniac, and Ref who Maniac seemed to channel at random]

Sumeria - Wheel, Agri, Mining, Pottery, AH, Bronze, Writing. Hunting(soon), Alpha T76
Rome - Overlaps with Sumeria and also Iron and Fishing, and Sailing
Maya - overlaps with Sumeria plus Math
Byzantium - overlaps with Sumeria plus Iron and Masonry)
Babylon - overlaps with sumeria
Mali - overlaps with Sumeria plus Poly? Priest, and Monarchy.

The missing techs are Archery, Medi, HBR, Mono, Metal, and Aesthetics.

Apparently the Inca can't research anything because of a war or something. As though the rest of us don't need to build troops either. Bah. I would like to see them grab archery, which is cheap and could well be of benefit for them anyway, but I don't think my suggestion went anywhere.

I'm fairly certain that Babylon will be going HBR, but that needs to be confirmed with Kyan, who wasn't a part of the chat.

Essentially I think we should stay with IW, then move on to Masonry. We are the only team willing to research masonry, it seems. Rome is also going for IW, but is being somewhat coy on how long it will take them to obtain the tech. General consensus is that we should continue with IW because A: we will likely be a few turns quicker than Rome, and B: we won't get screwed that way if Rome leaves. We personally also benefit from being able to get the silver worked ASAP, and reveal any iron in or around our lands.


Troop movements are still being hashed out, with constant variations of the same discussions. As noted in our personal chat, there are 3 theatres we can participate in, but we only have the ability to try for two of them. We are confirmed for sending the Normandy for assaulting India, Maya is sending maps to assist us. We should start moving in that direction ASAP. Maniac believes the Normandy to be 10N 2W of the recently settled Indian Copper. Plan is to raze the new Indian city if possible, then pillage. The Mayans should be sending their chariot as well, who as I understand it is only 3 turns away from the Indian copper. I'm worried that they have no guts for war- I understand that their civilization has very little defense at the moment, but it's not like any of us are exactly swimming in soldiers presently. Maniac is very helpful and I enjoy talking to him, but he offers many battle plans for other civs and none for himself. Perhaps something to watch out for in the future.

The decision will be whether to attack England or Egypt; we've discussed this issue to death, but thankfully I think there's a solution. The Maya have a scout north of our borders who can continue on to where we think that either Korea was or Egypt is. While they head in that direction we will finish out settlers for the 3rd and 4th sites and produce a chariot army of yet-to-be determined size. Should the Mayan's find Egypt, and the oracle not have been built yet (or perhaps even if krill did obtain it), then we will play cowboy and ride in with our chariots to launch a bold and daring assault. Ideally we would have Mayan assistance, but they've been entirely non-committal. Because this is an all-or-nothing assault, we will be relying on Babylon to gift us axes for barb & enemy player defense. If the Mayan's don't come across Krill, then we can use our chariot army to strike England in conjunction with Maya and whatever Mali can spare, because at the point to reach Krill we would need to move our chariots halfway across the world, alerting any enemy scouts who happen across our stack, and Krill will almost certainly have the oracle (assuming that it is him) once we arrive. Once Krill has the oracle he's no better or worse a target than any other Hydra member, and England is closer.

Can we agree to the above plan? It's mostly "wait and see what happens, build an army anyway cause' we'll need it". Not sure what to do with the Avingcourt, we can either run north with it to contact France, stay in place to defend the 3rd and 4th cities, or try to scout for Krill along with Maya. I'm sort of tempted just to stay where it is- otherwise we will have to waste time building warriors and may be pillaged.


My latest chat with Maniac features him giving us plenty of directions for reaching India, you all may wish to review it. I was kind of heavy handed in trying to get actual promises of at least one chariot's worth of military assistance our of their team, but there's no way in hell that they're going to get off easy just because they currently have few troops. Still, probably shouldn't push them too hard, lest they grow closer to our other allies than us.

So, what do you all think? If we can reach a general consensus of action then we should probably notify the rest of the alliance. Probably about our turn to send another large broadcast email anyway.


Oh, one other thought / concern- we don't have any agreements with Exploit, as in NAPS or settling arrangements. He's going to be our main competition for the FP south of our capital, which seems to be the richest area in the known world. He's also probably our most valuable ally at the moment. Should we eventually court him as a final member of the "core" group? Should we just sort of "forget" to make any lasting agreement with him, and then run him over later on if he settles too close?

[SleepingMoogle]

The turn rolled over, so I moved our Workers according to the turnplan. The ones at Feros chopped a forest, and the two near the Citadel are building cottages. Our Settler finishes at T61, Feros will expand its borders next turn as will reach size 2 next urn.

I moved Jenkins further west towards Mali, but left the Chariots untouched for now. I haven't had the time to review all chat logs yet, and won't for a few more hours so I'm not sure what we're supposed to be doing with them.

[SleepingMoogle]

Rome is officially in. They contacted Exploit and the Inca and shared some information with them about their situation. The highlights:

*They confirmed that Portugal is part of the Hydra, and the Aztecs are very likely to be part.

*They are currently researching Iron Working, but from the way they worded it it doesn't like like it's anywhere near completion yet.

*They may get into conflict with Portugal soon, but are fairly confident about their chances. Based on Portugal's REX strategy, they're unlikely to have much in the way of defense.


The Mayans strongly believe that Egypt is building the Oracle, and based on some C&D they run, Krill could be very close to completing it already. As we still don't know where Egypt is located on the map, I would strongly urge not to try and go after him. There's a fairly strong chance that we'd be too late before we even find him.

That leaves defending Sumeria by way of harassing India and their recently settled city next to a copper resource. Based on what Exploit told them, Mayan sent us this map. India's copper should be SW-SW-SW-S of theirs:



Which means it is to the SE of where the Normandy is right now. We can send it towards India and team up with Mayan's chariot to go after them. In the mean time the Agincourt can head south to support Sumeria if needed.

We'll probably have to ensure the Citadel's safety by sending it's Warrior south. It's a gamble, but no one can see the city, so no one can be sure it's undefended, and there's no enemy units in sight right now.

[SleepingMoogle]

Alrighty, I spoke with Kyan and Exploit for a while. The chat logs are saved on the team address.

Babylon is currently pretending to want into the Hydra alliance to gather information on them. They've been in contact with England about this, who said that they'd have to speak to one of the alliance leaders about that. Kyan felt it meant they didn't want Babylon to be part of the alliance.

At the same time, Babylon is continuing to generate the impression the teams not part of the Hydra are disorganized. They actually told England that the original 'group of 4' has fallen apart, and that we are actually going to chariot rush Babylon because of a settling dispute. In how far England believes this remains to be seen (they have very good C&D), but on paper it should be believable at least. We are probably going to create chariots.. they just won't be sent against Babylon.
England also wanted to sign a NAP with Babylon, but Kyan has stalled with wanting to attach a border agreement to it. Hopefully England will send over some maps we can use to plan an attack route. I also suggested they should make joining the Hydra a prerequisite of the NAP as well, to stall them even further.
In any case, if England contacts any of us, we should for now play along with Babylon's ploy that we don't like them at all, and are planning to attack them. It should be more believable that way.

We eventually agreed to send the Normandy south to join up with Maya's chariot to harass India. The Agincourt in the meantime will turn north to scout for Egypt. Even if we're too late to stop the Oracle, we'll still be able to join Babylon's attack on England with it afterwards.

I also briefly spoke with Exploit about the area between our Civs. Our capitals are 15 tiles apart, and we have provisionally agreed to split the area in half, with specific borders to be established at a later point.

We should also swap our research to Masonry. I confirmed with Exploit that Rome will finish it before us, and it doesn't sound like they're in nearly as much danger as Exploit right now.

[Bobchillingworth]

Here's something we may not see again for a while:

[img][/img]



Enjoy our turn in the sun while it lasts! I guess lots of whipping going on in capitals across the world.


I talked with Moogle regarding our plans, will post a brief summary here later if he doesn't first.

[Bobchillingworth]

Brief summary of our plans, from the chat with Moogle:

okay. So I think we finally have everything resolved: Civ builds units in preperation for war with England barring some sort of insane discover by the northern maya warrior. Normandy meets with Mayan chariot in about 5 turns, attacks india. Other chariot meets france. Research is masonry, then... who knows. May try for mono, but would like to trade for poly first

Also talked for a little while with Maniac and Ref. They mostly complained about how poorly their civ is defended and how they're wasting so much time playing the game, and if only they were able to spend more time turtling up and building cottages. I'm starting to get a little sick of their carping, and I'm worried that they're already getting fatigued with the game. Nothing much we can do about it if they want to waste all their free time pouring over micro plans for their three cities, but I would rather one of our most important allies not already be falling apart. I'm not sure why they think that they're the only civilization that is forced to place military before pure builder play at the moment. I know you'll read this eventually Maya, and I'm sorry if this seems harsh, but balancing military over tech is one of the fundamentals of the civilization series, and has been since its inception. I'm not sure that our alliance is going to be able to count on them for much besides the attack on India with a single chariot, which they're already wavering between reluctance and fatalism about. Thankfully Kyan and just about everyone else seems to be made of sterner stuff.

Speaking of which, we need to start coordinating closely with Babylon regarding war plans against England, and confirm what, if anything, Mali will supply.



Oh and a few more tiles revealed by the Maya: