RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Sullla]

Wow. That's really, really nice of them to tell us where their capital is located. I'll have to send them a buddy-buddy message expressing lots of thanks later today. I certainly would NOT tell my neighbor where my capital was located, especially not if they didn't know the location themselves. Jowy just gave away their one advantage they had over us, superior map knowledge! And he really got nothing in return for it!

That lets us plot their location on a map:



Now bear in mind this is just my best guess, but it should be reasonably close to the actual terrain up there. We know from the land points that Jowy has a lot of water tiles at their start: either 4 or 5 water tiles in the first ring, and then 4 more in the second ring. This had me stumped for a while (you can easily get 6 land tiles in the second ring, but how do you get up to 8?) until I realized that their team almost certainly has an offshore island - just like we do at the start - which accounts for 2 land tiles in the second ring. They really don't have many land tiles, so probably not likely to see much forest chopping early on from this team.

In terms of settling locations, the key race will be getting to the gold/cows/sheep spot. Speaker, we need to make sure that city #3 goes here, and we'll need to get out that second settler relatively quickly to make sure we nab the spot. There's no possible way Jowy can get his first settler done before us, so the only danger is if they pull a Pink Dot move and try to stick their first city all that way down there. That would be foolish, and I'll try to hint at that with some diplomacy messages. We want to be friendly, while also letting them know that if they stick their necks out that far, that fast, we WILL cut their heads off.

Our own T27 was very boring by comparison. We put another turn into two forest chops, yay. Next turn though gets a lot more interesting, as Gettsyburg grows to size 2 and we pull off the chop-swap into a settler (for one turn).

As for the other teams, LiPing finally gained her belated land points for moving in the early game, and two teams gained population points. Nakor to size 3, and athlete to size 4! Yeah, size 4. Evidently they haven't started a worker yet; for their sake, I hope they double-whip one! Their capital officially gets listed in the Demographics as having 48k population, to Gettsyburg's 1k. Oh no, their capital is 48x better than ours!

One team also had a huge jump in GNP this turn; best GNP went from 22 to 27. What's this mean? Someone connected their furs at the start and began working them. The only teams with Hunting are Jowy, Dantski, Nakor, and LiPing... but the first two of those teams don't have workers, so it's very likely Nakor or LiPing (both of whom grew this turn too, and logically picked up the furs). The only downside is that fur tiles only yield 1 food/1 shield, so it's not really a good tile to work in the very early game, where food and shields are vastly more valuable than commerce....

Will get to the Jowy diplo message a little later. Thanks for the comments on Excel - the calculations are so minimal for this game, I generally just prefer to do them by hand.

EDIT: Updated the development plan on the first page, Speaker.

[Speaker]

I am really not sold that they will be settling that far from their capital. That would be like us running a settler way up above the fish. I know you love that spot, Sullla, but being so far from their capital (12 tiles due south!), and only 4 tiles from our 2nd city (Red dot), there is no way Greece will rush to settle there. If they do, it will be easy for us to take from them. With the location of their capital, settling Pink as #3 would give us the worst possible three-city front. Sorry, but Blue followed by Pink is a much stronger order.

[Sullla]

We're going to have to disagree on that issue for the moment then. Let's revisit the subject after we plant our second city.

First draft at responding to Jowy's latest offer:

Dear Greek friends,

Thank you very much for your extra information exchange! :) We greatly appreciate your sign of goodwill, and we will remember your kindness and generosity in the upcoming turns. I wish that we had comparable information to share with you, but as you mentioned, you already know the location of our capital! [1]

We also speculated that the map probably has a donut shape. In fact, we even drew up a possible map configuration, which we are happy to pass on to you:



We're also happy to tell you that we met Dantski to the south of our capital, running into one of his scouting units. We saw that unit again once as it passed by, but it's been moving around each turn, so unfortunately we can't give you exact directions to find it. As far as Dantski's capital, our best guess is that it is located somewhere to the south of Gettysburg. Unfortunately we are still uncovering all of the fog down there; maybe your scout Cigarettes can help us blaze a path there? [2]

We don't mind passing you some information to help you meet up with Dantski. It's the least we can do in return for the information you gave our team. And if you find another team to the east, you can then help us find them later on.

As always, stay in touch and let us know if there's anything we can do for you. Thanks!

Sullla
The Killer Angels

[1] Well, there's a ton of information we could tell them about what the other teams are doing, but I see no need to do so.

[2] This paragraph leaves a lot of information out. I see no reason to tell Jowy that Dantski's capital is "due south" of ours, nor do I want to tell them the exact location where we met Dantski's warrior, or even what unit it was that we met. I also don't say anything about Nakor, and I edited the above image to remove that info. Hey, we never promised to tell them about other teams we just heard about!

It would especially be nice if they found Dantski's capital for us. Ha!

Anyway, this is designed to be a "buddy-buddy" message, keeping Jowy close to us and thanking them for the trust they've shown thus far. It sounds like it reveals a lot of information, but it actually gives away little; we basically just tell Jowy that Dantski is to the south of us, and he probably knew that already. However, how you say something matters almost as much as the content of that message. The tone of this message is all about friendliness, and that's the main goal here.

Will send later tonight assuming Speaker approves. (Still waiting to get a "no" answer on one of these!)

[Speaker]

Maybe put in something about discussing a "border" in the near future? once we bust some more fog, we can draw the line above that nice spot?

[Sullla]

Honestly, I don't think we want to go drawing border lines on a map just yet. For one thing, I think we can out-settle Jowy, in which case we may be giving away land unnecessarily. For another, we have way too many tiles still in the fog to know just where we want the final borders to be! That's a subject I'd rather not raise with this team at the moment.

What I think would be a stronger move would be to send off this message, then follow it up in a couple of days with another one asking, "hey we told you we weren't going to make a Pink Dot move with our first settler, can you reassure us you aren't going to do the same thing?" That should pressure them to keep their first settler near home, and then we can beat their second one with ease. (Yes, we'll revisit the merits of that gold spot later!)

I thought we'd get a second turn in today, but apparently not. Boring. :zzz:

[Speaker]

Honestly, I don't think we want to go drawing border lines on a map just yet. For one thing, I think we can out-settle Jowy, in which case we may be giving away land unnecessarily. For another, we have way too many tiles still in the fog to know just where we want the final borders to be! That's a subject I'd rather not raise with this team at the moment.

What I think would be a stronger move would be to send off this message, then follow it up in a couple of days with another one asking, "hey we told you we weren't going to make a Pink Dot move with our first settler, can you reassure us you aren't going to do the same thing?" That should pressure them to keep their first settler near home, and then we can beat their second one with ease. (Yes, we'll revisit the merits of that gold spot later!)

I thought we'd get a second turn in today, but apparently not. Boring. :zzz:

Good points. And yes, booooring. Time for bed for me, I think.

[spacemanmf]

I'm amused by the way you are engaging in constant subterfuge, like you're taking no chances whatsoever. Presumably, given your experience and attention to detail, you stand a very good chance of winning this, unless other teams gang up against you. But you're still trying to squeeze out every advantage possible by keeping your cards very close to your chest, getting other teams to trust you as much as possible, etc, etc. You really want to win this, eh?

[Sareln]

I'm amused by the way you are engaging in constant subterfuge, like you're taking no chances whatsoever. Presumably, given your experience and attention to detail, you stand a very good chance of winning this, unless other teams gang up against you. But you're still trying to squeeze out every advantage possible by keeping your cards very close to your chest, getting other teams to trust you as much as possible, etc, etc. You really want to win this, eh?

One could argue that such techniques and strategems are a way of life, not something that one can turn on and off with the flick of a switch. Besides, what good is it for us Lurkers if Sullla and Speaker don't bring their "A" game? Personally, their implementation of the worker push has lead me to think rather hard about my own openings both in standard CIV and Fall From Heaven.

[Speaker]

I finished T28. Both workers finished their chops, and I switched Gettysburg's production into a Settler. I moved Chamberlain E out of the city, in case we wanted to start sending him toward Red Dot. We will complete a new Warrior to defend Gettysburg in 2 turns.

Animal Husbandry Completes in 6 turns.

[Dr. Nomadic]

Wow at the double worker opening. Usually I build something else until size 2 (unless I chase worker techs, or am playing as China/France/Sumer/Babylon/Egypt/Turkey) and only then, start training a worker. Then I of course traing a settler at size 3. Also, I don't usually chop forests unless a city doesn't have much production potential, in which case they get replaced with farms. Jungle tiles though, are BAD!!!

I hope this was not too off topic, but this was a new and cool opening, and I wanted to comment.