[SPOILERS] - scooter's thread

[scooter]

Alright so this war thing. Peeeerhaps I should explain. First of all, as you know Serdoa and I have considered an invasion of Dazed, but we concluded it just wasn't feasible - the time it takes to march everything in he could accumulate 4 axes which would be un-killable all things considered. Then Serdoa hit me up on chat, and floated the idea of a galley invasion. I was hesitant at first, but he made a really convincing case for why it could succeed. We decided to go along with it.

He asked me to not post anything about it in my spoiler thread, which... I thought was kind of dumb at first. I kinda rolled my eyes and agreed, and I was going to post about it here anyways - like he would know. I felt he was being much too paranoid... I actually had started writing up a post about plans, when I talked myself into keeping it quiet, but for entirely different reasons. Here's why I haven't told you anything:

1. I knew I would be busy due to traveling back to school and getting settled in... It's the same reason it's taken this long to even tell you about something that you've already heard about .
2. Dazed has been fairly active, and if he saw my thread exploding in posts, it would tip him off - or at least get him to pay better attention. A build up like this would spike my power graph (which he can see) so I was banking on him being lazy and/or busy (he was busy) and not looking at them, which he didn't.
3. I thought it would be a fun surprise for the lurkers .

Unfortunately the idea was for #3 that I'd post this right as I was moving in, but I barely had time to play the turn, so I'm assuming Serdoa AND Dazed beat me to the punch. I actually sent off an email to Dazed letting him know that I was declaring on him. He seemed mad at first (understandable), but he has cooled off. I've had some messages back and forth with him, and I'm assuming he's posted most of them (if you want me to dump them all here let me know and I will), but this was his most recent message, which made me feel a little better:

I'm not suggesting your diplomacy was unfair. Trust me, I went back and looked! You didn't make any promises or commit to anything. I don't think you should have let me know in advance. I'm just saying, don't be surprised when the reaction to war is frustration!


Dazed

He had made some comment to the effect that it sounded like he implied that my attack was a dirty move - which confused me, but this was reassuring that he didn't feel like I was being cheap. I really don't think I even lied to him.

Anyways, so after I agreed to the plan with Serdoa which was back on August 19th (10 days before the attack), he sent me this message as the initial planning:

Hi scooter,

First: TT told me that he cannot see any horses - I have no clue how much he has scouted, but I assume for now that we do not have any on our landmass, as already thought. He also got his first axeman I think, btw.

The war plan

Techs:

- Techs needed are only Sailing, I will have that at EOT33. You have everything needed.

Units:

- Units needed are 4 axes, 2 galleys each
- I have 4 axes now but at least 2 of them won't be near enough for going with the galley, you have 1
- I have no galley, you too (I guess)

So, my plan is that I will produce till EOT33 2 Axeman. On EOT 34 I start the first galley, I whip on EOT 35, produce one galley and the next EOT 36. EOT 39 they will be 1tile N of my aquired city, not visible to Dazed. EOT 40 I move them (2 tiles) so be still within my borders but visible to Dazed. On turn 41 I move into his borders, declare war and unload the troops. Turn 42 attack on his cap and taking it. Turn 43 - celebrations everywhere.

Now, are you able to provide your troops and galleys also within that timeframe? I guess with your 6 pop city, that shouldn't be an issue for you. Let me know though. And please let us also make sure that we have visibility rules right. I do not want to not be able to take the cap, only because we got seen one turn earlier then planned.

Oh, and let me know any additions you may have.

Kind regards,
Serdoa

A few things I should note about the other plan. First of all, I actually squeezed out 3 galleys and 6 axes. I hate micro, but I did a good bit to squeeze this all out in about a dozen turns with just two cities - neither of which had granaries. I used a forest chop, I heavily micro'd overflow, I roaded a tile so that one axe could load a galley that was already moving forward, and I turned off research for 3-4 turns to upgrade a Quecha to an axe. I already had netted both fish at the northern city, so I was able to whip that a couple times for axes, although the lack of a granary limited that city in particular. All in all, I think I played the build-up near perfectly because I don't think any more units was even possible.

Unfortunately, I didn't do everything perfectly, but that turned out not to matter. I made what could have been a big mistake... I moved in one turn too early, because I was playing the game late at night after a long day and I thought it was turn 40 instead of turn 39. The end result was Serdoa was only able to contribute 2 axes instead of 4, which meant we had 8 axes instead of 10. Fortunately I faced only one axe when I landed. Dazed obviously whipped an axe, but it had no fortify bonus. Two of my axes had City Raider, one had Combat 1 (Quecha upgrade), and the other three were unpromoted. Here's how it went:

CR1 axe vs Dazed axe: 1% - LOSS (damaged to 4.5)
CR1 axe vs (new unfortified) Dazed axe: 3.6% - LOSS (damaged to 2.something)
C1 axe vs Dazed 4.5 axe: 3.8% - LOSS (redlined)
axe vs Dazed: 61.5% - LOSS (redlined)
axe vs Dazed: 79.6% - WIN
axe vs Dazed: 98.9% - WIN

So my last two axes won the last two fights to take the city. Second battle was the pivotal battle, if that had barely scratched him like the first one did, I don't know that I would've won.

So that's the history thus far. Next post will have an update on current plans. Oh yeah, one fun picture:

[scooter]

So what next? Well, I'd like to eliminate Dazed but frankly I'm not sure how soon that can happen. It's something that probably needs to happen... Soonish.

Anyways, my target currently is the Great Lighthouse in my capital, which I can get quite quickly actually. This past turn at end turn, my capital grew to size 7 (supported by religion), and next turn it will begin the Great Lighthouse. In game it says it will take 6 turns, but we're actually looking at around 3 turns, because of this picture:



(Picture was taken at EoT)

The worker on the left is building a mine, due in 3 turns. The worker on the left is the worker I just got from SleepingMoogle (as a part of our trade earlier), so it just landed on that tile. Next turn it will begin chopping, and I imagine (haven't bothered simming it) that it's chop will complete the wonder on that exact turn. So we're looking at 3 turns I think for the Lighthouse. I'm not bothering to sim it out, so if I lose it then you'll have lots of cause to mock me, but I feel good about my chances...

If I land the Great Lighthouse, I believe I instantly become the player with the best position in the game, and from then on it'll be a case of avoiding the dogpile and not screwing up. My understanding with Serdoa is that we will try to push to become the final two in the game, and I'm pretty sure I'm at the point where I trust him to make good on that. My only concern is he seems to be one who can be a bit of a nickel&dime kind of guy - like if he feels like any given deal isn't quite fair to him, then that might be enough to back out of something like that.

For instance, I am mildly concerned about the division of the islands that would've gone to Dazed. If I offer a deal about dividing it up and he doesn't like it, will he get mad and break our agreement? I don't think so, but he seems like the type who might just do that... Though he is hard to read sometimes.

Also, if/when Dazed does die off, I may invite him to join me as a team member/dedicated lurker. I don't think the other teams would mind (obviously he'd keep quite any map spoiler knowledge he might have learned), and I think it'd be a shame if he got completely KO'd from the game he basically started...

Okay so I think I covered just about everything so far... Any questions? Anything I missed? Any screenshot requests? Anything at all? Yes I will get a dotmap of the island eventually - a barb city spawned there! Hopefully it will grow to size two and will just have warriors so I can save myself a settler .

[scooter]

You forgot to post a picture!

Hah. I'll think about it. I don't like posting personal things on a forum like this in general so it'd take quite a bit of votes for that to happen... Figure out my real name and add me on Facebook and you'd see a picture

[Sandover]

You should ask her about it. I ended up scoring bonus points because mine felt flattered.

Anyway, didn't you send me some emails from an address with your name in it when we set up for that sad excuse of a pitboss game? Maybe this will be easy...

[scooter]

Anyway, didn't you send me some emails from an address with your name in it when we set up for that sad excuse of a pitboss game? Maybe this will be easy...

Yup I did - was wondering if you remembered that.

Back to the game, Dazed's city near me just built a... warrior. He suicided his axe against my city, though to be fair for him he had a 27% chance of winning and taking the city so it was worth a gamble. I realize now that he has no archery, so I'm rushing my wounded axe at his city... Only 3.5 health, but if there's still just a warrior when I get there, that city is toast. Serdoa is about to take out his other city to the north, so I'm crossing my fingers in hope that he won't get anything else when I get there...

[scooter]

Okay, here's what things look like:



Inside Dazed's city: two unpromoted warriors
Next to city: 3.3 health unpromoted axe
3 tiles west: combat 1 axe

If he gets no archers before that combat 1 axe gets there, the city is likely dead. Dazed would be dead too, because he lost his northern city to Serdoa I believe. He didn't have archery, but he might have it soon... If he gets an archer on time, it'll be awhile until I can kill him... So fingers crossed.

[scooter]

Oh I forgot... Something significant happened when I hit enter on this turn... I'll give you a a hint: It starts with "G" and ends with "reat Lighthouse"

:2dance:

[athlete4life10]

I'll give you a a hint: It starts with "G" and ends with "reat Lighthouse":2dance:

Congrats...this made me chuckle

[pocketbeetle]

T46? That's pretty damn good Scooter.
for you!

[scooter]

Thanks PB! It only took 4 turns to build - two forest chops + great capital + industrious... This was pretty much essential to the Dazed war, if the war cost me the Great Lighthouse then it was a failure beause tGL is more valuable. If I could get both, then... awesome.

Well I've been corresponding with Serdoa, and a few things of note. I haven't been keeping up well with posting emails, and rather than give you a wall of text of our emails back and forth (let me know if you want an email dump), I'll give you a summary of what all we've discussed:

1. He is sending two axes from his assault on Dazed's northern city to aid me in finishing off the last one. They should arrive around the same time that my second axe arrives, so we'll have four axes at our disposal. Hopefully that's enough and we can get this war over with.

2. He would like to sell Dazed's northern city to me for gold. This seemed odd at first, as I ceded that land to him, but it makes sense, as the two cities would have border tensions which my terraces + better city would likely win. He sent me his proposal, which was mildly confusing, which you'll see below - I'm going to dump the two most recent emails.

Okay, got this from Serdoa an hour ago:

Hi scooter,

first I want to gratulate you on getting TGL. I really did not think that you would go for it right now, though I am glad for you that you did get it. Let me know if you need settlers to offset the time lost. I might be able to provide some of those, as I have already settled my 6th city this turn and therefore don't need them for myself. I would offer them for some gold (see below) or units, depending if you rather would like to spend gold or hammers (if you want them at all, that is).

Speaking of that: The settler for the city costs you 65 hammers, if we double that as everyone seems to do it when they convert hammers to gold, that would give 130. Now, there is some more hammers involved in that city, as it also has a farmed corn but lets leave it at that. For the per turn gold I would think somewhere along the lines of 4 gold per turn till the payment begins, going down to 2 gold as soon as 50% of the payment is done. So basically it goes down to 2 gold as soon as 65 gold + 50% of whatever has to be paid for the turns waiting has been paid. And obviously nothing as soon as 100% are paid.

Now, 4 gold may seem high, but I looked those figure up today when I planted a new city. I get 2 commerce for trade routes + 1 for city center + 1 for the corn. Thats already 4 commerce. Due to the farmed corn, in 5 turns that city is at 5 pop and would have at cottage and another one gold tile. So in 5 turns, it will have 7 commerce. Take away 3 for maintenance and you have the 4 gold + more for more growing.
Completely different topic for the last part: TT lied to me. Be aware that there ARE horses - they are on the island, on the tile you can work with your cap. As always, keep that info confidential (and only for me to be sure, please tell me in your next email that we DO have a deal that we do not share anything we know about the other nor what we got told by him or emails from him and so on). And maybe, if you sometimes think about betraying me, please think twice about it. I do share all those infos with you for two reasons: I want to work with you and you are the only one I trust in that game. And by the actions of all others right now, I think having someone you can trust as well is worth a lot.

Kind regards,
Serdoa

So I had to read his email like 5 times to try to understand his proposal for the city payment. Actually a lot of times when he gets into very detailed calculations he's very hard to follow, although I believe English is not his first language, so if that's the case I 100% understand that - especially having spent some (limited) time attempting to learn a language (Chinese). Anyways, here's what I suspect he means:

1. I give 130 gold, at increments of 4 gold/turn
2. I give 4 gold for every turn between now and when I start paying the 130 gold. So if I get Currency in 10 turns and start paying immediately, I'll owe 170 gold
3. Using that example, once I've paid 85 gold, I pay at 2 gold/turn rather than 4.

Thing is, if that's NOT what he means (if I pay less), well I don't want to be TOO generous . So I sent him a response, including a paragraph asking for a clarification:

Serdoa,

Thanks! I actually was able to get it quite quickly, due to the nature of our nice capitals, some mines, couple forests chops, and industrial. It was only a 4-5 turn investment, and figured it would help me keep pace with expansion going forward. I was able to chop because SleepingMoogle gifted me the worker he owed as part of our land deal, so since it was already on the border, I was able to chop it to completion.

Okay, I think I mostly understood your proposal but a couple parts confused me, so I'm going to try to clarify to see if I understand. I'm a little confused at what you meant when you say "4 gold per turn till the payment begins"... I can't start paying you until Currency, so I'm unsure what that means, also what you mean when you say "paid for the turns waiting"... Sorry for the questions - it was just slightly unclear so I want to make sure I understand completely. I think this is a deal that would work well for both of us (catches me up in cities, helps pay for your city maintenance so you can expand quickly like your traits demand), so I am definitely interested in such a deal.

Hmmmm, Twinkletoes lied. That's definitely interesting. I'll have to research Animal Husbandry and get over there and get those horses. And yes, everything that goes between us is strictly confidential. I'd be nuts to break something like that, as, to be blunt, I'd like you to be a long-term ally and I know I can work with you long-term as our take-down of Dazed has shown. I'll also be extremely liberal with sharing *other* players information with you, as I think intel pooling could go be very beneficial for both of us, if that's something you would also like.

Okay think I covered it all, but my typing this email has been interrupted once or twice, so yell at me if I missed something

scooter

Also of note from Serdoa's message - we have horse, but NOT on our strip - it's on the one tile on the island that our capital can work. Interesting that TT blatantly lied to Serdoa... That doesn't seem to be his style at all... Not a great way to make friends. I mean if you're going to lie, at least make it a lie that can't be proven wrong really quickly! I don't see the gain at all in TT lying. It's almost confusing as to why he even did it..? I can't figure that one out honestly.

One last thing - I need to keep an eye on SleepingMoogle... Serdoa has alerted me that his power crept up over the last few turns, so it's something I need to monitor but not panic about. We do have a NAP, but it can be canceled every 5 turns, and upon cancelation there's only a 5 turn cool down. So it's T47 now, he could theoretically cancel on 50 and declare on 55. I'm not too worried though, because I definitely have a big enough navy to prevent being boated like Dazed, so he'd have to come by land and thus give a pretty good sized warning to me. It would be damaging, but I would probably not lose a city.