Dimplo Scholia: - Vox Controli - comments

[nbarclay]

If we want to get started on the Great Library ASAP, we could switch to a temple, eventually reducing our need for the luxury slider a little. The other option, depending on how willing we are to trust Vox, would be to go ahead and finish the barracks so we'd get the option of upgrading warriors to swordsmen sooner. Of course in a worst-case scenario, the same production that makes Hurricane a good wonder city could be shifted to war production (albeit with a potentially horrible loss of shields), but I regard such a situation as extremely unlikely at this point. I think Vox would rather have us as partners.

[DeepO]

City placement plans: I haven't seen them yet, didn't check my mail. Please make sure you indicate each time this is still a proposal, that has to be ratified by GS before it gets final.

Other thing: I still can't see why Vox needs to settle the wheat asap, it will be horribly corrupt, they will be better of picking a grass city closer to their capital. I'm not saying they can't have it, but maybe it's good to bring it to their attention that they will be best off if they focus on gradually progressing towards us, instead of building the border first, and then backfilling. We are not going to settle the North first, but willl aim for the best sites first (after Bolderberg, the gold city, and then most likely another on our South, #4 or so).
This should leave us more time to discuss the details of this plan.

Other things: they want to have all jungle, which I can understand, but I like jungle too. I agree that 11 cramped cities as opposed to 14 nicely placed cities is an ok ratio to me, but if they complain, there is one point that needs to be brought to their attention (it was in the chat, but not very dominant): Yes, they can build 2 more cities in 7 turns, but in 25 turns, we can buil 5 cities more, totally blocking them. If we need to go in a Rexing contest, they will not have 11 cities, nor will they have the same amount of land. This is a gift from us, so that instead of being entirely focused to rexing, we get the chance to spend our superiour growth on something else, hopefully for the benefit of both of us. We can settle our 14 cities in less then 40 turns, while they can, at best, settle their 11 cities in 60 turns or more... they don't seem to realise the difference in speed here, so tell them.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Nathan, a temple could be possible, if it doesn't lose too much shields, otherwise I'd rather build a spear there, losing shields, but being able to start on a prebuild asap. We cannot wait any longer, if I was in e.g. RPG's, legos, or NDs position (RPG quite isolated, legos with on overly powerful UU, ND with a lucky settler from a hut), I would have started on the GL sooner.... we are behind, and need to catch up. We can't risk spending another 5 turns building something, that will be be 2-3 turns later on completion of the wonder.

DeepO

[Shiber]

Originally posted by nbarclay
I sent the city placement plan during the chat with Vox, with the approval of the GS folks (including Sir Ralph) who were there at the time, and the talks went from there. It's not something I initiated unilaterally, and Jon had a clear understanding that anything we came up with would have to be ratified by the team.

I see. As long as the other side realizes that this is how the procedure works, and as long as you're defending our interests well, it's fine with me.

Originally posted by DeepO
Other thing: I still can't see why Vox needs to settle the wheat asap, it will be horribly corrupt, they will be better of picking a grass city closer to their capital.

The reason behind this may be more psychological than rational. They told us that they started in a desert without a river. I suppose it makes sense to see them long so much for a city with food bonuses, that they'd settle their city sites in an illogical order.

[nbarclay]

DeepO, did you catch from the chat how cramped they are on North Estonia? They'll mostly just have one tile between cities there. If they went for the same sort of spacing we do, they could probably eat up the land those 11 city sites fit on with eight cities, and I woudln't be shocked if 2^n is a powerful enough formula to let them pull that off with EotS having been set back by disease as it was. They seem to think they could pull it off, anyhow.

[nbarclay]

As best I can tell from my Sunday-night chat with Jon, they saw the food bonuses and weren't even particularly thinking about corruption. But yes, I think there's a psychological element involved; you see the wheat and the fish on the screen, but not the corruption.

By the way, we found out they do have a lake in North Estonia.

[nbarclay]

I just checked our status on the barracks, and switching to a temple next turn would have it complete the turn after. In other words, we can get a temple as fast as anything else. I'm almost positive the barracks will complete two turns after that if we don't switch (which is one turn faster than is currently indicated) due to population growth. The difference in Great Library completion time between those two possibilities would be a little over half a turn, since our shield production is so much lower than it will be with a bunch of workers added.

If we're going to do the Great Library bit, we need to commit pretty quickly, though, to get EotS switched over from a settler to workers. We need to build a consensus quickly and then do some quick negotiating with Vox to make sure they won't take advantage of the situation. (Or we could wait one more settler to change modes, which would set us back four turns in worker production, but if one of the other teams decided to go for the Great Library, that might make a critical difference.)

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Shiber
Nathan, I understood and in fact supported your actions when you sent Vox proposals that the team hasn't approved yet regarding the tech trade, because that was an ultra urgent issue, but that is not the case with the city placement plans.

I agree with Shiber here. Things are moving so fast (long-term plans are being made with Vox on an hourly basis) that GS is not much of a team anymore (more like: "special envoy Nathan and whoever happens to be around at the time (usually Sir Ralph)". Again I must say this undermines the whole demogame concept. For turn-by-turn decisions, this is acceptable. For city placement and border treaty negotiations, it is not. Next thing you know we've struck an agreement with Vox to build the GL, without a majority of GS's input.

Let's face it: many GS members would rather put up with Vox for now, until game opens up a little (i.e. we meet other civs), at which point Vox is dealt with on new terms. Members who think everlasting peace is 1) possible with Vox, and 2) within our best interests should put forth good arguments of such, instead of simply making the decisions. Are we so sure we're not better off wiping out Vox and becoming parnters with Lux? No, because the information is not available yet.


Dominae

[DeepO]

Yes, I followed the discussion on their city spacing... basically, they have enough space for 4 cities on their part, but because of bad positioning, they can only build 3, 1 of which will not be ideal. I think that is again their problem... it's good that with the discussion on this plan, they are at least considering not to eat up too much space.

I'm not underestimating how many cities they can churn out, but given their bad food situation, or good food and no production cities, there is no way they can speed up to build faster than that. 7 turns to 4, 30 turns to 8, 55 turns to 16 cities, without any hopes of being faster (unless they can gold rush settlers). And I doubt they'll get to that pace. In our case, we have a city that pumps out settlers each 5 turns, while we still keep the eponentional growth as other cities can build settlers too. 22 turns from now, we can have 7 cities built, and an extra 4 or 5 settlers ready... in less then 30 turns can we build 14 cities.

In a realistic scenario, in which also workers are build, this difference will only become more in our advantage, by agreeing to our proposal, Vox gets more cities for the same territory, and we can e.g. spend workers to pump the size of Hurricane.

All I'm saying is that even if they seem to think they can pull it off, it might be good to send them this kind of calculation, to show them the difference.... they will still be settling cities, while we have nothing to do with our settlers. I like the deal, but they have no reason to complain about it, it is a gift from us, and they better realize it.

DeepO

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
If we're going to do the Great Library bit, we need to commit pretty quickly, though

The GL is too much of a gamble. Vox may not be 100% helpful (as helpful as we need), or we might lose the race (Pyramids might be an ok fallback, despite the GA, but the other Wonders would not get us back our initial costs).

We have a sure thing going for us, expansion to ~12 cities, which is also a good goal. Let us play safe like we've done all along.


Dominae

[zeit]

I have no problem with them gaining 2 more tiles of jungle, but nothing beyond that. Although Vox wants more- which is understandable, they can't expect us to give them more out of pity- the original plan by Nathan was more than fair for them, and i just won't except any agreement that would give them what they seem to want. Its a pity Vox didn't put more attention to their city placement on the north, as was implied from what Jon said in the chat, but this doesn't mean we should give them more.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by DeepO
I like the deal, but they have no reason to complain about it, it is a gift from us, and they better realize it.

Why give them this gift? Are we so poor right now that we have to trade away all advantages we have in order to get Vox to like us? Will we be so behind when we finally contact the other civs? Tech trading is one thing; gifting of land is another. At the very least our ability to expand way faster than Vox should be a bargaining tool for us. Let's not squander what we've been given.

Note that my comments have as a foundation that our nice new relationship with Vox will eventually end. I do not know this for a fact, but it seems quite probable. Vox is only making peace with us momentarily to ensure their survival. We can do a lot better than them once we contact other civs.


Dominae

[DeepO]

Settler - worker change in EotS: I would be inclined to have one more settler for the gold city, and after that focus on workers until Hurricane is size 9 or more. None of our other cities can produce settlers now, we'd rather have other things to produce...

What I would want, though, is that all available workers start improving terrain around Hurricane...

But yes, we need to get a concensus on this fast!

Dominae: I agree on your points, but again, nothing is final yet. I don't want to commit to a everlasting peace, and I don't agree on giving them an unlimited 'trade all techs' deal. What I would like, though, is to create a period in which we can peacefully build up, in which case an alliance with Vox (let's say at least until either of us hits the middle age) might work.

If we are going to put all these resources in building the GL, I wouldn't talk about it with Vox now, and I wouldn't give all we can get from it to them without some kind of compensation. But that's not really the issue now, some kind of border treaty will be good for us in the short and middle-long term, once that is fixed, we can discuss how we are going to address research (as it is obvious we will need a partner, and Vox is the only one available). Only after both teams (and not their ambassadors, or envoys or whatever you want to call it) agree on these 2 points, can we begin to discuss what, and if we are going to attack together.

But first, I agree that we need to have a bunch of proposals ready, on which the team can vote.

DeepO

[zeit]

Oh, and regarding the revised map Nathan made- i just can't except it- moving their western city and their central city more than one tile each is giving away too much, when looking at our REXingpotential. They would have to compromise, maybe giving up their wish for 11 cities...

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae


The GL is too much of a gamble. Vox may not be 100% helpful (as helpful as we need), or we might lose the race (Pyramids might be an ok fallback, despite the GA, but the other Wonders would not get us back our initial costs).

We have a sure thing going for us, expansion to ~12 cities, which is also a good goal. Let us play safe like we've done all along.

The Great Lighthouse would be useful for intercontinental invasions until Magnetism (and for establishing contact), and wouild lose us less than 100 shields from a failed shot at the Pyramids. The trickiest part of that would be getting the tech in time, but if we research Map Making while Vox gets us Literature (since Literature is cost 10 vs. Map Making's 12 and wouldn't be needed quite as soon), we should be able to manage it. That would give us two pretty good fallback wonders, one of which can only be built in coastal cities and is thus unlikely to be snatched out from under us.