Turn Discussion Thread

[Azza]

Count the tiles. Corn is 7 from our capital, 5 from theirs. Everything else is closer to us.

[HitAnyKey]

I think this is going to be a pretty important turn for us as we need to decide whether we go meet the Pirates or not, and whether to tell Gillette about the Pirates. As I mentioned in the other thread, I think if we do one then we kind of have to/should do the other. So it's probably time we take our first vote.
Is it better to start a new thread with an actual poll? I'll do that if anyone else thinks so. Otherwise, we can just take a tally within this thread.

Here are the two options IMHO:


[SIZE="3"]A.[/SIZE] If we want to tell Gillette that the Pirates are to our north, then we should move our scout NE-NE to that hill and meet them.

[SIZE="3"]B.[/SIZE] If we want to keep our secret knowledge to ourselves for a bit longer, then we move the scout SE-SE and do not meet the Pirates yet and don't tell Gillette where they are.

My vote is for B, since I do not want to meet the Pirates yet and I do not want to let Gillette know that we know where the Pirates are yet. Even if it just delays meeting the Pirates by a few turns, that is just fine for me. When we do meet them, then we can discuss telling Gillette about them. But for now, telling Gillette that we have not met them is not a lie, since we haven't. We know where they are, but we haven't "met" them.

[Mortius]

We need to summarize all pros and cons of both options before the poll:

Like HitAnyKey said, we have only two options:

[SIZE="3"]1. Move the scout 2 SE and do not tell Gillette about Pirates.

2. Move the scout 2 NE, contact Pirates, and tell Gillette about them.[/SIZE]


[SIZE="3"]Option 1: Move the scout 2 SE and do not tell Gillette about Pirates.[/SIZE]

Pros:
- We know about the contested gold spot, Pirates don't. It gives us an advantage, because we know we should hurry there. They don't know it and can settle other spot first. Giving us an even greater advantage.
- Settling the Gold spot before the contact is easier to swallow for Pirates, in contrary to situation we pink doting them just before their eyes.
- It gives us an advantage in contact with Gillette too, because we can pretend we have a scout in the south, preventing early chokes or rushes.
- We have an advantage in discussing the fair borders with Gillette, because they will know we aren't so pressed by the other neighbour as they are by Sury of India.
- We save two turns of scouting

Cons:
???


[SIZE="3"]Option 2: Move the scout 2 NE, contact Pirates, and tell Gillette about them.[/SIZE]

Pros:
I don't know of any besides being able to chit-chat a little earlier.

Cons:
- Throwing away the advantage of being the only team knowing about the contested Gold spot. Giving Pirates time to react. It could end with us loosing that spot, or being diplomaticaly forced to plant a suboptimal city (without the Corn, which we need to work the Gold)
- If we tell Gillette team about our second neighbor, they may be less eager to agree a fair border agreements, knowing we can be as much pressed as they are.
- Telling the Gillette about Pirates, makes it absolutely clear that our scout is to the North, giving them oportunity to send a warrior or two to choke us early (they didn't hide from us without a reason )


Any other ideas?

[kjn]

I think we should gain contact ASAP.

Opening communication early is important, and knowing where a team is but not getting in touch makes it far too easy to play damaging mind games (like we had with Gillette, before we contacted them).

Getting in touch with the Pirates now means we can initiate contact with them on our terms. Delaying means we might have to get contact on their terms instead.

You're making the assumption that the Pirates don't know about a contested gold spot and we don't. But that's not a necessarily true assumption - they might not know about the gold spot at all. I don't expect us to talk about any gold spots with them, just as I don't expect them to talk about it with us.

If the Pirates sent their scout towards the south and found the gold, then it's also likely they don't know where any other team is. Since our scout appears straight south of them, they might not know that we are to their southeast.

I also just read some of the early comments on the Apolyton demo game, on diplomacy, and that the most important part of diplomacy was to always keep in touch with everyone else, in a friendly manner. If we start playing he-knows-I-knows-he knows that makes it so much harder to do well.

[kjn]

To continue with another thing, I did some fog-gazing. I think the two 1SW and 1SE of the gold are both peaks!

I also think the southern-most tiles in the Pirate BFC are a standard plains tile and a forested plains hill, ie I think there is a low probability of units stationed there.

[stonaq]

I would choose to not meet the Pirates, for the reasons stated before

[Herandar]

Since Barbs are off, might we want to send our warrior SE of Animal Farm and help scout a bit? Yes, it's a risk, but a calculated one. I'd like to know more of what's between us and Gillette. With a site that is so good that most of us feel that we have to have it smack dab between us and the Pirates, what are the odds that there is another loaded region smack dab between us and Gillette that Team Gillette has already scouted?? I'd imagine that there are ideal spots between each pair of neighboring teams, since the map is man-made. This serves to make the game more interesting.

I still vote to avoid Pirates. Nothing has been said to sway my mind. I don't think we will be able to avoid them for a very long time if they are scouting around their homeland logically, unless they become obsessed with obtaining a second city in different location, and even then, I still think they'll end up scouting the gold.

[Mortius]

Opening communication early is important, ...

Could you summarize your post so that it could be written as a pro or con? Like describing in one sentence why opening comunication earlier is important.

I want to put it into the post above, so we would have all the cons and pros in one place.

[Elkad]

I vote to not contact Pirates as well.
And I like the idea of just presenting them with our new Ivory city.

If the map guess is right and there is a similar city spot between us and India, then securing the northern gold will allow us to give up the southern one if we desire. (for some other concession from India of course). Or we could double-pink-dot both teams

[kjn]

Seems like I'm outvoted.

And we've got a new turn rolled in. Logged in and took a demo screen shot:

No changes since T10. I think we can confirm that everyone goes worker first with this.