[Spoilers] Victoria of Korea - Mardoc and SevenSpirits

[NobleHelium]

Sometimes the best strategic move is merely a threat.

[SevenSpirits]

1) Hey, I'm back! Sorry I couldn't even pop in for the discussion.

2) I think we should really try to start whipping Alert less - let it grow to its cap first. What pop is it at right now?

3) We should get some pictures again soon, whoever plays next.

4) I'm dubious about the killing someone plan. I'm really tired now; I'll ponder it more later. But I think if the delays are that annoying to people I would rather just abort the whole thing by agreement than turn it into russian roulette.

[Mardoc]

1) Hey, I'm back! Sorry I couldn't even pop in for the discussion.

It worked out fine, in the end. The only urgent news is, I think anyway, the

2) I think we should really try to start whipping Alert less - let it grow to its cap first. What pop is it at right now?

It's at seven. I certainly agree it shouldn't be whipped into oblivion, but it seemed like seven was enough to take advantage of.

3) We should get some pictures again soon, whoever plays next.

Oops! I seem to have forgotten about the lurkers, just been talking with you pretty much. Are you recovered enough that I should leave the next one for you to get reacquainted with?

4) I'm dubious about the killing someone plan. I'm really tired now; I'll ponder it more later. But I think if the delays are that annoying to people I would rather just abort the whole thing by agreement than turn it into russian roulette.

I can see this perspective quite well; it feels wrong to let out of game considerations affect the game that strongly, and in fact it might drive someone away from RB. I was non-committal instead of arguing against it mainly to wait for your input, and a bit cause I don't want people's irritation focused on me instead.

[SevenSpirits]

Diplo (?)

First a few messages from 2 days ago:

Here's plako's plan of attack. I think everything here seems good. The only thing I would add is that whoever razes a city should send 1/4 the gold to everyone else.

Right now I have hardly any knowledge of Amelia's lands. I know that she has copper though, because I can see her resource list. I just got open borders this turn, so I'll send a unit there now. I don't have iron working yet, so we'd have to delay quite a bit in order to build jaguars. I can get 3 chariots built in about 5 turns, though.
If anyone wants to back out, this is the time to say so.

-Luddite
On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 5:04 AM, plako <plako.plako@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I decided to send this just to you since you seem to be the one collecting this up. Feel free to forward this to others. I hope everyone involved would reveal their info concerning Amelia's doings regularily to all attackers involved. At this point all screenshots you have would be extremely useful. You should send your scouts towards Amelia and, if you've OB try to scout her city positionig and what defenders she has.

I also think we need to sign some kind of a deal that would concern the time frame used for attacking. Here is couple, but we probably need more:
* NAP among the attackers
* We raze all the cities
* We all provide 3 2-movers

If she has copper hooked up, our possibilities to totally kill her with only Chariots are low unless she makes some mistakes. Our 1st priority would be to pillage her copper. Impis (Jaguars) would be ideal for the task. They could travel through the forests and move in her copper without being visible to her until last moment. When could GES get Impis?

We could split our stack so that copper party is smallish and larger would go after some city e.g. capital that we suspect is weakly defended.

Best regards,
Plako

Anyone know where iron pops?

I might not settle copper for a little bit, but if iron pops conveniently, then I could get it hooked up faster.

GES

Unfortunately I don't have knowledge of the positioning of the Iron.

If I've understood correctly, our main goal is just to lessen the number of players to get this running faster. Therefore we should either try full kill or we shouldn't bother at all. The problem is that it is highly likely that 12 Chariots/Impis won't be enough unless we can totally surprise her. So at minimum we need to prepare a 2nd wave ~5T after the 1st one that would need to be of approximately similar power. We should also call off the attack before it starts, if it seems evitable she has enough defenses to keep her capital or copper. So if you could time your scouts so that one of you is close to copper and one close to capital in ~10T that would be perfect. Of course one of you could go checking things in ~5T and other ~10T depending on your scout positionings. I suggest you make it look like you're just passing by. I don't have OB with Amelia, but I'll send my scout on her island from north to check what I can gather from her copper city.

At this point we could all start building 3 Chariots so that they would be finished within next 5 turns. GES could build Impis, if it is likely they're finished soon enough otherwise Chariots. We could split the stack so that 2-3 units go for the Copper and rest of them against capital. How soon would you get your troops in position to be able to enter her box? Please keep us also informed about Amelia's power graph.

Plako

My reply today:

Sup guys, this is Seven this time.

I think ganging up on someone like that just to eliminate them, especially if they are not in the lead or anything, would be kind of cruel. I'd rather be the one ganged up on than to participate, to be honest. Though please note that I'm not speaking for Mardoc here!

If the game is not working well for people (and this appears to be generally the case, if only mildly) then we should just call it. That's a serious suggestion. We can always start new games, maybe with fewer than 7 players, and they'd get caught up to our current state pretty quickly and probably finish earlier than this game would finish, whether we eliminated a player or not.

I would regret losing all our work in this game, and I think Mardoc and I have a strong position in it, and I'm enjoying thinking about how to play the position, but life is too short to spend on mediocre entertainment. (And way too short to spend on trying to salvage mediocre entertainment by lynching someone in a strategy game.)

Seven

I was on board because it seemed like fun.

If we don't have all four on board, I think it loses its appeal.

If people aren't having fun, I am willing to call it, although i can definitely keep playing.

GES

[SevenSpirits]

Played turn 60. Not a bad one. It ended with hanging gardens and a great scientist! (And a work boat and a settler.) Thanks the the HG, we are now tops in food by quite a bit.



Our cities:



I came around to your settler-whipping plan when I realized Alert was going to get the free pop anyway. In just two more turns it will be back to working all its cottages!



Blackwood is finally free of it's scientist-breeding burden, and will be able to go back to working farms and mines, and will finally pump out a barracks and some troops (chariots, I guess). Said scientist will make an academy in Alert. Due to this impending event, I dialed research down to zero percent for this turn and next.



Contract is finally showing its potential, as we added the flood plains cottage last turn and will add the second next turn. Once Contract grows to 6, I think we should whip a worker out, as we don't really have enough.



Doubleton is also finally free to start prospering, having gained its second population in the most arduous possible manner. After the pasture, I think it could use one farm and then lots and lots of cottages. And of course it will start off with a granary.



Entry just got a serious boost by finishing 40h of chops last turn, which built two consecutive workboats. The best part is that the free pop from Hanging Gardens lets it work the second clam just in time! And there will be a cottage completing right when it hits 3 pop. At 4 pop I guess we'll probably whip the granary.



Finesse is still a few turns away from being amazing, but in just a bit it will pop its borders. Two workers are already in position to claim the gold. After that, one of them heads back to hook up the sheep, and the other can connect us to the rails.



Finally, we founded Grand Slam just in time to the HG pop! And while the workers aren't there yet, it's working flood plains which are equivalent to grass farms - pretty good. We're going to have to get at least one defender in here pretty soon, or someone might decide to be a jerk to us and kill it.

Here's an overview of our workers' locations:



I'm thinking the workers finishing the FP cottage can then continue on to grand slam and knock out some cottages there. (I don't think it needs any farms.) The guys by Finesse can road and mine the gold, and then one of them roads NW-N while the other heads back to build the sheep pasture.



Two workers are converging on the sheep pasture to finish that as quickly as possible, and can then make a farm, and then some cottages and/or a road to connect Doubleton to the rest of the empire. One worker is making a farm for Blackwood and should then perhaps make a couple more cottages by Alert. Finally, one worker is making a few Cottages for Entry.

Diplomatically, I just remembered that I'd talked with Luddite about him getting Confucianism. So I sent this...

Uh, so hey, when were you planning to land Confucianism? Because it turns out we may finish Code of Laws in the next few turns...

Seven

[Mardoc]

Things are looking good. I suppose the next question, therefore, is what's our city order coming up? We've pretty much used up all of our great sites, now it's time to go for the good ones. I suppose the next two are probably the wheat/rails to the west and the cows? We're getting close to needing to grab Iron Working for the jungle or else expanding our dotmap onto the rails

[Mardoc]

Played the turn, pretty much exactly as before, except I lent the Blackwood/Alert cottage to Blackwood so that all our cottages in the area are growing. It helps to be able to fire the scientists, of course. Probably that cottage should go back as soon as Alert grows.

Once we have the Academy, we'll apparently need to delay for a couple turns while luddite picks up Confucianism. Maybe this would be a good time to grab Iron Working?

[SevenSpirits]

Cool.

I think the next city should go up north by the cows. And then we need to make workers rather than settlers until we have enough improvements, and the workers are less busy. That's when we need to get iron working going, I think.

My thinking is we should just save gold for 2 more turns or however long it is. We're going to need it anyway on the long stretch to civil service.

[Mardoc]

Cool.

I think the next city should go up north by the cows. And then we need to make workers rather than settlers until we have enough improvements, and the workers are less busy. That's when we need to get iron working going, I think.

My thinking is we should just save gold for 2 more turns or however long it is. We're going to need it anyway on the long stretch to civil service.

The new settler's on his way to the cows, so we were on the same page there. Once we had an alternate route to connect to the rails, the wheat city is much less attractive. And, you've definitely got a point about the workers, there are too many cities either unimproved or nearly so. The Hanging Gardens didn't help any with avoiding outgrowing the workers . So then I agree Iron Working can wait until we're near settling the jungle.

Edit: I still haven't started any military whatsoever. We'd probably lose to 3 chariots at this point. We're going to have to correct that eventually.

[SevenSpirits]

Edit: I still haven't started any military whatsoever. We'd probably lose to 3 chariots at this point. We're going to have to correct that eventually.

Yeah. I hope just pumping units (first chariots, later axes/spears) from blackwood after it finishes the barracks will suffice. If someone does attack us before we are prepared, it's likely that some cash gifts would suffice to turn them away. After all it's not like they can keep the land; protection money is pretty much all you could hope to gain at this point.

Incidentally, I looked in the save and noticed that confucianism was just founded! So the discussions we were having about delaying our research for Luddite are moot. Sent this off:

Er, that wasn't you landing Confucianism was it? Do you know who it was?

Seven