RB Pitboss #1 [SPOILERS] Willem of Persia

[shadyforce]

T84:

Money is currently being saved for the big push to the next tech, which has not yet been decided. Probably Currency but maybe Calendar or Construction.

Cities:
Central Command and The Bank are both building Libraries, both due in 4. Therefore, in 4 turns, I'll switch on science and configure both cities for commerce. I estimate that with their library boosted beakers and scraps from the other cities, I can get any of the above 3 techs by around T97.

The Harbour is slow building a Galley to trade for 2 Skirmishers. It will grow until the whip anger wears off and then whip the galley. I need a Lighthouse here soon.

The Factory is finishing a settler and it will then go onto a Barracks and finally churn out some units. I have enough troops to keep barbs at bay, bust some fog and within site of ZPV and Rego to maintain the pretense of having a real military.

Military:
- Belkar the Warrior garrison's Central Command.
- Tell the Archer escorts the settler and workers to The Grocer.
- An unnamed Axeman garrisons The Bank.
- Spike the Spearman garrison's The Factory.
- Haley the Archer guards the city location of The Castle.
- Pestilence the Immortal is fogbusting and keeping an eye on the land to my west, from where ZPV's Nunmidian Cavalry might emerge on a bad day.

Settlers:
The Factory's settler will go to the location marked 'The Castle', where 2 workers will improve the surrounding tiles. This will be another military city for the time being and will go Granary -> Barracks -> Units.

There is a settler, along with 2 workers, on the grass/forest/hill tile, on the way over to the location marked 'The Grocer'. Note the Iron just off-screen near the city. This will be a cottage spam town. I have only 2 workers to chop the jungle there for now, but I'll need more soon.

Workers:
I have a respectable 6 workers now.

Apart from the 2 building roads to and improving each of my proposed new cities, I have 1 mining a hill for The Harbour to work at size 2, who will then build some much needed roads from The Harbour to Central Command and The Factory. I also have a worker on his way to Central Command's grass/river tile to build a cottage as it's better to work a 203 cottage that will grow than a 203 coast tile that won't.

I'll give a diplomacy update tomorrow.

[shadyforce]

Diplomatic Update:

UTA:
Still seems to be going strong and the next round of tech trades are likely to be agreed. Questions raised over it's integrity because Members of the alliance seem to be willing to trade some techs outside of it, mainly Rego. But it's even hard to tempt any of them into genuine tech trades because we are all so far behind. For example, Rego has Currency on T87 and I'm not going to something like Calendar or Construction until 10 turns later.

NUTA:
The alliance as a whole is doing ok but we are some way off catching up technologically. We are still cooperating and communication and there are no signs of civil war yet, I've heard very little with regards to tensions with the exception of from Mostly_Kodii, who are concerned that Ruff is not pulling his weight and is using the free techs from others to ignore commerce and focus on expansion. Tbh, while I don't think Ruff is trying his absolute best, I think MH/Kodii are just pissed that Ruff nicked a nice spot from them because they were too busy trying to build allt he wonders.

I sent a bit of a rant-email to the NUTA people trying to rally the troops and see if we can come up with an actual worthwhile plan to take out the NUTA:

It's not going well so far. We're down Feudalism and Monarchy. And we're about 10 turns behind the UTA for several different techs, including the likes of currency, construction, calendar and maybe CoL as well. And we're losing ground.

Everything indicates that the UTA have 5 good researchers so while we have the numbers, we don't have their combined research ability right now. Since we're obviously not prepared to do any fighting and slow them down militarily, we need to improve our economies and try and catch up. That means all of us. Even the guys who will be providing the money rather than doing the research can't just sit back and give whatever they happen to have lying around while land-grabbing happily without concern for commerce. The 2-4 designated researchers have to match the 5 UTA members for pace, which means lots of money needs to come their way.

I completely agree with Imhotep that the way the game has developed is extremely stupid. In my opinion, it would have been a lot more interesting if tech trading had been switched off (I was out-voted), it would have been a better FFA, rather than a defacto 5v5 with added potential mistrust.

But the game is what it is and we just have to take our frustration out on the UTA five who have turned it into this mess. I don't know about you guys but I don't particularly fancy a boring team tech race until someone launches the space ship. I want to "remove their ability to race". But we've missed the early rush window (we didn't know) and we missed the pre-construction window (we chickened out) and now we're now behind in military technology.

And hey, I'm as guilty as anyone. Maybe I could have arranged a rush on rego with Imhotep's help or something but I got scared that I wouldn't have a big enough stack to do much damage. But I don't get how me and Krill seem to be the only ones with any semblence of a border with them. I don't know what the other part of the landmass is like, but if there are vast grasslands seperating you guys from Kalin and Broker, maybe we should be settling aggresively in that direction to provide a platform to invade from later?

The fact is, we need to make a plan for the future. Plodding along is not going to do much in the long run. We need a plan to focus on. Now I'm no civ expert or veteran or ladder player. So you guys tell me: if you are playing a large 5 or 6 a side multiplayer game where one team are technologically ahead, how do you beat them?

In my newbie opinion, there are two reasonable ways:

1. Research the essential near term economic technologies and then beeline the next significant military technology. Maybe that's Guilds (although they are already a tech and a half ahead of us there) or maybe Rifling. then build a monster army and double/treble team and deal a critical blow to 2 or 3 of the UTA members.
2. Amphibious surprise attack. While it's hard this early because galleys are expensive, it should become more viable as we progress up the tech tree since we'll be loading more expensive units per boat. ZPV is particularly vulnerable to an amphibious assault, Lins also has a viable water route into a back line city and Broker told me his south coast is vulnerable to invasion as well (although not in as many words).

Maybe this was not meant to be like a typical multiplayer game but they seem to have turned it into one with their 5-way alliance and all I know, from hearing about what goes on in these team multiplayer games, is that you don't tech to space... you build and army and you hit the other team at their weakpoints.

I think there is general murmer of approval for this plan. Ruff seems sort of willing but I don't know if he's taking it seriously or is just looking to play around with some unique units. Haven't heard from Imhotep yet. I imagine he'll be on board.

With regards to tech plans:
Me: Researching Currency, due ~T96
Dsp: Researching Code Of Laws, due ~T95
MH/Kodii: Plan to research most of Aesthetics and then have a go for Calendar unless someone else shows up with Aesthetics in which case beeling Literature and Grest Library.
Krill is on Construction, due ~T97
Ruff is on Polytheism, due ~T89.
Imhotep is on Monarchy, due on ~T91.

Threesome:
We are chatting frequently, though we're primarily playing our part in the NUTA.

Regoarrarr:
Communicates a lot - I think it's his thing. I don't particularly trust him though and I'm not sure why. I think that he is frequently scheming and talking to people and trying to get the best deal. He's a little paranoid, close to top in power, has his cities defended with at least spear/axe pairs, covers his workers. He has some loyalty to the UTA but I think if it were worth his while, he may be swayed. Seems like the kind of dude who doesn't renage on deals though. I heard an amusing story about how Krill blackmailed a future tech out of rego by threatening to kill his explorer. If true, then brilliant.

ZPV:
Started off friendly and cooperative. Gives the vibe of a guy you could trust as an ally in the way that rego doesn't. But he's been very quiet lately, I've heard nothing from him in the last 5 or so turns. That really pisses me off. TBH, it's probably not something devious like a planned invasion, he is probably just quiet or missed my email, or is busy, or forgot. Still though, if you don't talk to anyone and reply to your messages, you can have no excuses about finding a stack of units on your borders. He should take a leaf from rego's book and talk to people more.

Sunrise:
I sent him an email back when we met and he didn't reply. I haven't heard from him since and I haven't bothered to follow up. Probably the ring leader of the UTA.

Broker:
A nice friendly guy who converses often. Pulled off a nice Oracle coup but traded away Feudalism to the UTA automatically. I hope he fetched a nice price, though I suspect he just gave it to them as part of the deal. Very firmly in the UTA camp. Gives away nothing in conversation and is not in any way open to trades whenever I chat with him.

Lins:
I have chatted to these guys now and then but have no immediate need for negotiating with them. They are negotiating surprisingly aggresively with Krill in regards to terrain and exploration. They are clearly gunning for Krill either pissed off or threatened because of Krill's Spanish worker steal or because they feel they can since Krill is in a 2v1 situation.

Imhotep:
Despite being a good player, as far as I can tell he has done nothing of note in the game except get unsuccesfully attacked by Ruff. His tech rate is poor, he doesn't have a massive military last I checked the power charts, and is fairly quiet diplomatically. He was complaining about his start but it can't be that bad... Sullla would have made sure all the starts are fairly reasonable. I vaguely recall him being unhappy about 'only having 1 pig resource for food' or something like that, which is a lot better than what I got! I reckon he is frustrated with the way the game has turned from a FFA into a de-facto team multiplayer. I don't think his heart is in the game. But maybe we can get him interested with a little Impi warfare.

Ruff:
Isn't taking the game 100% seriously... seems to be role-playing a little. But maybe it's a deliberate facade. I can't really comment on his actual gameplay since I can't see his territory or demogs or anything. Seems to be happy to go along with the NUTA and will hopefully play his part. MH/Kodii are extremely distrustful of him and suspect his intentions are to seek a free ride technologically while expanding and looking out for himself. I'm not so sure. It's hard to know what he's up to.

Dsplaisted:
My ally in the threesome. Seems like a good player. Relations are good. He volunteered his copper for me to build some axes/spears which was good of him. Our culture overlaps a little across the channel but the BFC overlap is mild and nothing to worry about. There was a fish tile that either of us could have gained but I got my city there first. I told him about it and he didn't seem too bothered.

Mostly_Harmless/Kodii:
My other ally in the threesome. Very paranoid about Ruff - they don't trust him at all. They are spamming wonders like mad and are going tor the GLib next. I'm a little annoyed about it because I'd rather they go after the universally useful Calendar but maybe I undervalue the GLib somewhat. I guess they are running representation as well. They unfortunately missed the Oracle though. Broker stunted his early growth in order to pull off the Feudalism slingshot.

Krill/Memphus:
These two (although I think Krill mainly since he is the one doing all the talking) have certainly made an impact in the game. They pulled off a worker steal from Sunrise and allegedly extorted a tech from Rego. Yet despite having 2 neighbours that dislike them, and been fairly isolated from the rest of the world until recently, they have managed to expand out to NINE cities and yet are still pulling their weight in the tech race. The Lins hate them and are negotiating extremely aggresively with them. Even Broker was talking about how devious and untrustworthy they are when he was chatting with me. I like Krill though, I think they are playing a good game, are a massive thorn in the side of the UTA, we've chatted loads and I've got plenty of advice and info out of him.

[scooter]

Thanks for the Diplomatic update, the player-by-player opinions were a very good read- it was extremely interesting to see your thoughts.

[shadyforce]

You're welcome. There is just way too much diplomacy by email, in-game chat, gmail chat and chatzy for me to possibly publish every conversation. I just don't have that kind of time unfortunately. So I hope summaries of my disposition towards people and plans in the works will suffice.

[shadyforce]

T88:
The Castle (T86) and The Grocer (T87) have been founded. Cities 5 and 6 are long overdue. Here they are:


The Castle will be another dedicated military city which will get its granary and barracks chopped and then will go straight on units. The Grocer is another cottage cheese city. Needs a lot of work, and unfortunately I'm a little short, I have only 2 workers there atm. But more are on their way.

Cities:
- Central Command has just finished its Library and will put a 3 turns into a granary before growing to size 6. Once there, it will switch to a worker. It is currently working 2 coast tiles to speed up research for Currency.
- The Factory will finish it's barracks next turn. It's currently at size 4 and growing slowly but it provides 12 hammers/turn which are going towards units from next turn.
- The Bank has just grown to size 4 and has just completed it's library. It is on a worker because it has no more 3-commerce tiles to work if it grows again (in 3 turns) because of a worker shortage.
- The Harbour is slow building a worker while the whip penalty wears off. Due in 6 turns.

Economy:
I decided last turn to switch on science even before the libraries were done reasoning that I could probably get Currency done a turn earlier which would pay back for the innefficient commerce use. (Currency is worth 12 commerce / turn empire-wide.) And here is the result as of this turn:

Currency is now due in 6 turns (which is 7 total turns of 100% research). I'll have it on T94, three whole turns faster than my original estimate! My financial trait is serving me well. Not least in the demographics:

I'm also doing well in MFG and Food, but not so well in power. I need a few more units for floating around. Even a barb axe of two might pose problems if they struck at a weak point. Also note my import/export score. A lower score can be a good thing because it means that many people are dependent on me for their international trades. I also note that not much people are actually spending EPs on me at the moment. Maybe I'm just the friendly non-threatening guy in the game or something.

Anyway, things are going ok but there is much more work to do. I'm going to push for Ruff and Imhotep to proceed with the invasion of Rego if it seems doable. Otherwise, I'll just expand and build more cities. I need to explore to my north-east more though. I'm told there's copper up there and probably a good few nice city sites once the jungle is chopped. I also need about double my existing number of workers (6 currently).

Rego is finished Currency and is probably saving cash now. ZPV has also just completed Compass, a fairly marginal tech imo (although one unlikely to be duplicated so he'll certainly get trade value out of it.) None of the rest of the UTA have yet turned up with a next generation tech (Calendar, Construction, Code of Laws, etc), which is a good sign because it means Rego is probably their best researcher and maybe the UTA don't have as big a lead over us as I thought.

[shadyforce]

T93:
The turns are going by quickly now. Not much change in the overall state of the world and my empire is slowly growing.

Currency is due next turn. Kalin just researched Calendar this turn. That leaves Sunrise and Broker who between them are presumably researching CoL and Construction. I think ZPV is on Metal Casting though despite his monstrous GNP and MFG, I reckon dsplaisted will surely land the Colossus.

- Central Command is working on a Settler, due in 2 with a chop. This city will probably continue Workers and Settlers for the near future. The Settler is going to my lighthouse spot shown here:

I need to settle here before dsp's culture gobbles up that clam. Also, my guess as to the location of Leptin (dsp can see the actual city) which is currently undefended. And I have just built a Galley and gifted it to dsp. Hmmmmm.
- The Factory has finished the axe and sent it to The Castle. A chop has just gone into the stable and I've also applied the whip to stop it growing into an unworked tile which means I'll build a Horse Archer the turn after. This is my military pump city and I doubt I'll take it off military any time soon.
- The Bank has just whipped a worker to cottage some tiles for it to work as it grows but I stupidly whipped a turn too early and lost some beakers. Innefficient. The Bank will slow build unpromoted units as it grows to work its cottages. It has just finished an Famine,the Immortal who will head east and explore in that direction to find some nice city sites.
- The Harbour has whipped the Galley for dsp, it will now finish 2 turns of a Worker and then build something like an Archer maybe while it regrows.
- The Castle and The Grocer are still on their Granaries and are still on size 1 though both will grow soon.

I have 7 Workers for my 6 cities with a Settler on the way shortly. Still need more workers. Loads of trees to chop, especially for The Lighthouse. I also have room for a filler city right in the middle of my cities which will get 4 grass, 4 lakes and 2 grass hills. I may build that city soon enough since it doesn't need much defence or much worker turns. It's free commerce.

My military now consists of 2 Axes. 2 Immortals, 2 Archers, 1 Spear, 1 Warrior. Also only The Factory has a Barracks though it will soon have a Stable as well. That's still really light. I need more.

Finally a zoomed out globe shot of cultural borders in my part of the world, along with proposed city sites marked with flags. This image also shows where Sunrise is in, and the vast area of land that ZPV is ignoring to his north-east in order to aggresively grab land from territory near myself and Rego.:

[shadyforce]

The diplomacy happenings of T94:

Part 1: Paranoia becomes self-fulfilling...

Things were looking bad for the NUTA. Myself, dsp and MH/Kodii were already worried about the way Ruff and Imhotep seemed to be free-riding and disinterested. MH/Kodii in particular have been paranoid about him for the whole game.

Things seemed to be going ok though for ages, we thought that Ruff and Imhotep would play along once Currency came in and they could contribute gold if not research and maybe we could make plans and arrange a large organised invasion. I sent round an email with provisional plans for a T125 attack:

So since the distances are probably too great to do rush, we might as well plan something bigger a little later on. We need cats, we need to be close enough to military tech parity and we need overwhelming numbers.

So here is a suggestion:

- Ruff and Imhotep start building road networks and massive armies now and start marching what you have over to me and/or Krill. Praets are great since they are almost maces already. Imhotep should probably focus on Impis and Horse Archers?
- Once the current round of techs are done, myself, dsp and MH/Kodii will research Civil Service, Feudalism and Machinery at 100%, funded by the other three. These will be done somewhere in the T115-120 timeframe.
- Once construction is in, myself and/or Krill will start building some cats.
- Once CS and Machinery are in, we can build some maces too and whatever money we have in our combined coffers can do some upgrading as well.
- Then somewhere around the T125 mark, we attack with what should surely be overwhelming numbers and deal serious damage to, or hopefully kill, Rego and/or the Lins.

We can do the Rego invasion, the Lins invasion or both simultaniously depending on how we feel. Also, last I checked, the UTA don't have Metal Casting yet so while they have longbows, they can't easily get to Crossbows, maces and knights and we might just be able to exploit that window.

What do you guys think?

The response (or lack of) was underwhelming.

But then things really started to deteriorate. Krill got in touch and told me how Ruff admitted to him his great frustration at the game and said how he wanted to attack MH/Kodii in spite of the UTA threat. Krill told me and I told dsp and MHK.

Then on T94, I log into the game to see dsp and MHK asking for my currency but then I see another request for MH asking for my only horse which seemed strange. I rejected it so I could look around and see what was going on. I had a city about to complete a HA with a big overflow and I didn't know whether MHK's request was urgent or hopeful, or accidental, or anything. The guys were online so we went to the chatroom to talk.

It turns out that Ruff had some units near an undefended MHK city such that he wasn't going to be able to defend it in time unless he gets horse and whips a chariot from scratch right now in a nearby city. We talked about the threat and what course of action. (If you want the text of the chatroom discussion, ask. But it may already be in the threads of one of the other guys.)

Towards the end of the 3some alliance discussion, we decided to hold off trading techs to Ruff to give MHK time to send a message to Ruff and ask what's going on. If it turned out Ruff was going to invade, we didn't want to trade him anything even, even if it meant researching Monotheism for ourselves.

During that chat, I was still logged into the game and I heared the diplo screen request. It was ffrom Ruff. So because we hadn't decided what to do, I decided to ignore Ruff and pretend I was away from the laptop. This means leaving myself logged in for a while too to keep up the pretence.

A little later in the day, after I had logged out, and presumably the other guys did too, Ruff logged in, played his turn and hit finish turn. Presumably, he also sent off trade requests to myself, dsp and MHK who he could see had not yet finished our turns but I couldn't log in to check or be forced to make a decision there and then.

It was not long after that regoarrarr had his weird problem with accidentally revolting to Caste System and requested a reload. But when Ruff logged in and saw what he presumed to be the next turn with no Currency, CoL or Aesthetics, he assumed we had all rejected his trade deals because of a mass MHK email or something, so he declared and nicked Ruff's 'decoy' worker (it was placed to sacrafice a worker but keep the city).

It was only then that Ruff realised there was a reload and that he hadn't necessarily been excluded from the NUTA trading loop after all...

(rest later)

[sooooo]

Interesting! Thanks.

[shadyforce]

Part 2: The aggressor recants even though the 'misinformation' was sort of true...

Ruff has just declared war on MHK based on the assumption that he is being excluded from the tech trades. It is only then that he realises that there has been a turn reload at regoarrarr's request and that the "mass-rejection of his tech trades" might be because the turn was reloaded to before he requested them!

So he recants and sends this email around (there was other filler email in between, this is just the highlights):

I've been talking to Dsp and it does seem that the reload has screwed with my head. During the start of T94 (the first version), I sent around mono to everyone and requested techs that they had just discovered). When I logged this evening (thinking it was the turn) - I found that all of those tech trades had (apparently) not gone through. I thought you guys were freezing me out and so I declared on mh and captured 1 worker.

Well - it seems that I might have been mistaken - sorry about that. I've asked for a reload based on this misunderstanding. However, the other option is that I just return the worker I captured and we play as if it never happened (if I can get mh to believe me).

My thoughts when this game started was that I would rush to Preats and start rolling over people. The development of two large blocks and my location in the middle of my allies obviously frustrated these initial thoughts. I did approach the UTA to see if I could join them and that would free me up to attack people close to me. They (sort of) said yes and I have been thinking about if I will execute that plan.

I've decided not to pursue that line. I guess this game is frustrating me and I was looking for some way of shaking it up. Anyway (and I know this paints me as flaky and untrustworth in this game), I just want to let you know that I have decided to retire the Borg theme (perfect when I was planning on just ignoring everyone and taking their cities - not so hot with how the game is playing out) and play the following:

United Federation of Plodders - dullards who just want to build and research stuff.

I'll leave 2 or 3 cities on permanent military builds (at the moment) and send these units to whoever in the NUTA ones them but my other cities will be very much focused on tech.

Ruff

The irony is that myself, dsp and MHK had discussed withholding techs from ruff given the threat. And had rego not requested the reload, Ruff may well have logged in later in the day and found that none of his tech deals had gone through and his declaration would have been justified!

As it happened though, not only has Ruff withdrawn his war declaration, but the revolution within Ruff's empire overthrowing the oppresive Borg regime looks like he might finally be fully on board the NUTA.

He has promised to return MHK's worker and gift them a praet, and then send the rest of his non-garrison praets up to Imhotep. I was wondering what Imhotep was going to do with them so I sent an email and got back this response:

I have shut down research completely and am stacking up both gold and units. I’d like to launch an attack on regoarrar soon. If Ruff could march some Praets to my southern city I would take the way through dsplaisted’s and shady’s land – much faster, and possibly picking up a unit or two from both to have a massive SoD. That said, could shady focus on Catapults when it’s available? We need at least 10 to break LBs in the cities. More are always better. I have a NAP with regoarrar that allows me attacking on T119 – that should be enough time to get enough Catapults and move a significant amount of units. Btw. Some Ele would be nice too – I got a spare ele resource if someone needs it.

YEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!

If this actually goes ahead then it's brilliant news. Finally a invasion plan I can work towards. T119 is very late but surely I can get loads of cats and a mini-stack of my own by then.

There is more news. After some discussion between myself and dsp (with MHK kept in the loop) dsp is planning on loading the Galley I gave him with a spear and a skirmisher in the hopes of razing Laptis, ZPV's city in the 2xcrab and wine location south of Hippo (you can see if on the map in a previous post). Around about the same time, I am going to try and sneak into Hippo with a HA and 2 Immortals that I have in the area and try to raze it as well. ZPV has only a single warrior in each of his cities according to intelligence reports. So hopefully that keeps up until T99 where he will be minus 2 cities.

Now these plans could change, for example if ZPV starts putting Longbows in his border cities. But we'll keep an eye on it and try to exploit any opportunity we get.

Exciting times and hopefully there will FINALLY be some bloodshed in the near future.

[sooooo]

That city of Hippo does indeed need to be punished.

Thanks for detailing your thoughts/plans. I hope the NUTA sticks together and I'm looking forward to a big world war!

Can you recap what trades have just gone through in the NUTA? I assume you supplied currency to everyone? What other techs do you have?