PBEM3 Spoilers - timmy827 of Khmer

[Rowain]

Good Luck with the Khmer

But if you drink Bourbon you don't drink any whisky at all. :neenernee

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Save sent StM.

I am headed to work. I will be able to check out the save tonight. Do I need to do anything special when loading and then re-saving it?

[Kylearan]

Good Luck with the Khmer

But if you drink Bourbon you don't drink any whisky at all. :neenernee

What he said!

[Shoot the Moon]

Save sent StM.

I am headed to work. I will be able to check out the save tonight. Do I need to do anything special when loading and then re-saving it?

Not really. You just download it wherever and open it. When you hit enter to end turn, the game will automatically make a PBEM 3 folder in your BtS/Saves/pbem folder and will automatically produce the next save for you in there. Usually the game is sent on through PBEMtracker.com, but for the past couple of weeks that website hasn't been working correctly, so for now you can just email the save on to the next person in the turn order.

I can give some thoughts on the save later if you'd like (have to go for now), but I will say that things look rather bleak.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I will say that things look rather bleak.

I assumed as much. Who quits out of a winning position?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

[Shoot the Moon]

Here are some thoughts, in no particular order:

*Scooter, our eastern neighbor, is one tech from infantry and also one tech from State Property. This is not good. We need to make sure he doesn't attack us, as being attacked with infantry by someone with a major production advantage would probably be the end of our game. Timmy's option #2 should be out.

*Along those lines, if scooter (or even our northern neighbor -- SleepingMoogle I think is the one, although might be wrong) attacks us, our NE city is totally lost. That city is EXTREMELY far from the rest of our empire, and if we are attacked has no chance of being held in MP.

*We are last in tech and last or second to last in every significant demog category except power. Perhaps most worrisome is that we are last in # of cities by three or four to second to last place, and 10+ to first place. We will only continue to fall further behind unless we can pick up cities somewhere.

I think it somewhat depends on what you want to try to accomplish with the game. If your goal is to place as high as possible, it would probably be smart to play it safe for now and look to play the diplo game well enough to survive until the end. Another choice is to go all out to win. Most likely we will not win anyway, and could quite possibly die trying to do that. The only way I see to do this would be to make a secret alliance with Sandover where we would split up Rome's lands (hopefully more to us or Sandover will have an unsurmountable position) while at the same time securing a long term NAP with scooter that at least lasts long enough for us to have a realistic chance of recovering our economy after the war and start to catch up to him technologically. We would probably want to just workshop over Rome's land to get a decent production base (SP is sooo powerful). From there, our best bet is probably to make liberal use of nukes (somewhat surprised they aren't banned in this game) to try to conquer scooter (probably with a deal with Sandover that he gets SleepingMoogles land while we get scooters). If we were to be able to accomplish that (which is an absolutely HUGE if) we would probably be at 2/5ths land to Sandover's 3/5ths, and although we would have to then outplay him to win it is still a better chance to win than anything else I see possible. That being said, the probability of getting to that point is ridiculously small, and following the plan is more likely going to see an early end to our game than anything else.

[timmy827]

You aren't last in tech. With NTT you don't auto-see what you have up on the other civs. You are up to Rifling whereas Rome lacks Alpha, PP, RP, Rifling for example.
Vs celts: Moogle has Music and DR (Not like either of those is too important) on you.
You have Alpha, gunpowder, banking, PP, RP, Rifling, Nationalism, and half of Education on him.

[Shoot the Moon]

You aren't last in tech. With NTT you don't auto-see what you have up on the other civs. You are up to Rifling whereas Rome lacks Alpha, PP, RP, Rifling for example.
Vs celts: Moogle has Music and DR (Not like either of those is too important) on you.
You have Alpha, gunpowder, banking, PP, RP, Rifling, Nationalism, and half of Education on him.

Ah, that makes the situation better. I had realized that at one point, but never quite succeeded in wrapping my head around going backwards from "can research" to where they are at (not made any easier by jumping cold into a save. I am sooo glad I'm not the one turn playing this, as I opened the save and had something like 8 city build popups come up and just went "oh jeez". I'll probably make a couple more of these mistakes in the process of getting adjusted to the game, just as a heads up). I would say though with our lower number of cities that we will have to make use of our tech advantage now or risk losing it later.

Quick question, do we have any in place NAPs or other agreements we should know about?

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Since I just got back from Hawaii, I was quite busy at work today so I didn't get time to read this spoiler thread or really come up with much of a plan. So I tried to do as little to ruin or change things as possible this turn.

I hired a couple of extra scientists and built research in 1-2 cities to speed Education up from 2 turns to 1 turn. Education strikes me as important enough to speed and we are losing 250gpt at 100% research, so shaving one turn off will save some cash.

I see that we have a GArtist and GMerchant. We need to decide how to use these.

I draft 3 more rifles from some cities with excess happiness.

We have an absolute ton of knights and cats. I guess we have to do something with those units while we have a large power rating. Maybe try to round up a coalition and throw a bunch of 2-movers at Sandover since we are at war anyway and he is choking Angkor Wat?

Tomorrow I should have time to spend several hours with the game and come up with a real plan. I just didn't want to continue holding up the game, so I played the turn and passed it on to Sleeping Moogle.

We received the following email from scooter:

Gold,

Thanks for filling in for Timmy for the rest of the game! I'm sure you're hard at work getting up to date on the state of your nation, so I'd like to help you get acquainted to what's going on in this game, as well as give some of my perspective. This will be shorter than I'd like because I have a busy night ahead, but I will do my best, and I will be more than willing to answer any questions.

(Added Later: Y'okay, this got longer than I planned! This email will come across as somewhat bold towards the end, but I'm only doing this as I'd rather lay my cards down now than leave you guessing as to what I'm thinking)

Civ history:

Sandover - he has been the dominant force in this game from the start. He's had a very abrasive style of diplomacy, and he's managed to irritate every single civ in this game at this point. Timmy was the only exception, although that had more to do with the fact that he never talked to anyone, so it was nearly impossible to annoy him . If you'd like, I can detail all the things he's done this game, but suffice it to say that he's annoyed enough people that a huge coalition formed against him with the sole purpose of preventing him from winning the game. He was running away with the game as-is, to the point where I had to talk everyone out of conceding just a month ago! You'll see he still dominates the demographics, so he probably still is the favorite to win. If any wars break out between myself, you, and SleepingMoogle, Sandover will win. More on this in a minute.

Timmy - Timmy played a typical Khmer start - he blew everyone away with expansion that dwarfed all but Sandover, but in the process he annoyed everyone who shared a border with him. He never consulted neighbors about cities, and rarely communicated by email and never by chat. This resulted in a 2v1, where myself and Bobchillingworth had a minor war with him in order to gain land that we felt was rightfully ours. SleepingMoogle kind of joined with a weak force to pick off the northeastern city, but Timmy took it back later on (you have it now). Timmy made peace with us, and united with us to prevent Sandover from running away - as Sandover had a truly scary lead by this point. Bobchillingworth of Rome was about to come under attack, so we assembled all we could in his land, lasting in a long standoff. After that war ended (I'll get to that in the Rome section), Timmy has aided in defending SleepingMoogle from Sandover's possible aggression. He hasn't declared war, but we believe he was about to do so given his buildup of troops in that region. We believe that if Sandover takes Moogle's land, thus gaining control of the Apostolic Palace and many shrines, it could end the game.

SleepingMoogle - started with a very heavy religious start, and got pretty far behind as a result (he also has pretty weak land, so that's hurt him too). His only chance of winning the game is via culture.

Bobchillingworth/Amelia - Had a long stalemate war with Sandover under Bobchillingworth's control, as Timmy and I defended Rome from Sandover. Neither side launched any real attacks, as both sides had enough defenses to slaughter anything the other sent. Amelia took over, and sold everyone out by cutting a deal with Sandover without telling anyone. As a result, I no longer trust her, which is disappointing because I was extremely close to Bob when he was running the show. Amelia more or less scrapped all the previous relations for her civ, which was disappointing since it hurt everyone else.

Twinkletoes - his lands have been absorbed by Sandover - he started in the central north of the map.


I know this all probably comes across as slightly disconnected, but I'm going to try to sum it all up as to where we are now. I'll be completely honest with you and give you what I think are the odds of winning for each player:

Sandover - 50%: The definite favorite. He'd been previously struggling to keep up with me in tech, but he seems to have had quite the GNP boost lately, and I have no doubt he'll be able to leverage his land into making him the slim favorite to win by space. His land is inferior to both yours and mine, but he has more of it.

scooter - 29.9%: I'll be blunt and honest, as that's my preferred way of dealing with people. I'm in a better position than you are for a direct run for space. I have more cities and equally good land, as well as a slight tech advantage. My chances are slightly better.

Gold - 20%: You still have fantastic land and a weak neighbor next to you who nobody cares about anymore.

SleepingMoogle - 0.1%: I'm sure he's got tons of culture cranking, but he's a whole era behind, so I can't see him getting there on time.

Amelia - 0%: No possible way.

So where does that leave us? You could very well try to take me out, as my land is better than Amelia's. Your power ranking is also quite a bit higher than mine, but this is deceiving for a couple of reasons:

1. SleepingMoogle has a large chunk of my Knights, which I would get back from him if you declared on me. I would then shut off science and upgrade them all to Cavalry.
2. I'm just about at Assembly Line, so I'd be able to draft out a large amount of infantry, which would mean we'd hit stalemate awfully quickly.

In the end, if you decide you want to declare on me, Sandover wins and that's that. So I'm going to propose that we avoid that route at all costs. I would like to propose a game-long NAP to commit to us racing to a peaceful finish. I'm trying to be as transparent as possible in acknowledging that I have a better shot at winning (though yours is still very real), but if we don't do this, then odds are high that neither one of us will win, which isn't very ideal!

Sorry for the long length, and thanks for reading the whole thing if you made it this far! I'm not normally this long-winded, but given the point in the game that we're at and how high the stakes are, this seemed like something I needed to do. I'd be happy to catch you on chat sometime if you wanted to ask some questions, in fact I'll add you to my contact list as soon as I send this.

Thanks!
scooter

Any thoughts on a response? I sent this brief response:

Scooter,

Message received.

I will get back to you with more extensive answers once I've had time to really look over the save.

I went ahead and played the most recent turn in a fairly banal manner since I just got back from vacation and really didn't have time to get in depth today. I just didn't want the game held up any longer on account of this team.

I have ShoottheMoon following me as a Dedlurker (perhaps even a fellow turnplayer sometimes if I am out of town). I want to run things by him and Timmy and formulate a plan before committing to anything.

Thanks,
GES

I will put together a basic introductory email tomorrow and send to the other parties.

[Shoot the Moon]

My sense from Timmy's "hire spy" sign was that we were probably saving them for a golden age, as the city in question did not have any of those specialists running so was evidently trying to get a third different GP. At this point in the game, Golden Ages (and maybe a corp or two) are usually the most productive use of great people.

My first thoughts on the email: I'm not sure making a decision on a game long treaty is that great of an idea on the second turn of us playing. That being said, I also certainly would not want the email to come off as us looking to declare on him, as we certainly won't be doing that stupidly. Perhaps we could offer something like a NAP with a 10-turn cancellation window with a minimum of 20-30 turns? That would give us time to get a better handle on the situation and then come back to the game-long NAP proposal, which we might very well accept.

Oh, and take his % chance to win with a grain of salt. I suspect he is intentionally boosting our percent to try to convince us not to do something drastic.