Turn Discussion Thread

[TheHumanHydra]

HAK and I just had a chat; here is the transcript (real-life stuff redacted):

HAK: Hey you there?
THH: Oui.
Are you still there?
HAK: yeah
Starting a post in the forum from my phone (stupid work now blocks RB) but it's slow going since it's annoying to do all the typing from my phone.
THH: Ah, I see.
HAK: Just wanted to get confirmation from you before I reply to him. Spoke with plako recently, as our NAP is coming to an end at T110.
They'd like to extend it, and we've both talked about doing so until T160.
That sound good to you? I wanted to check, before I agreed to it.
THH: Yeah, we're not ready for war yet, and when we are, we want to fight Gillette, right?
HAK: yup
as for the other stuff you posted about, the only reason I had PigPen doing that building at the time was cuz I couldn't really think of anything else. Not sure why I didn't think to just put it into building a military unit. Duh.
And that city can't do a missionary...as it doesn't have Hinduism yet either.
THH: No problem; like I said, it's not actually that big of a deal.
HAK: I was just thinking that it'd be nice to have the extra 1F.
THH: Missionary - right; I saw a missionary button lit up (Judaism, I think) and got confused.
HAK: yeah, that's the city Judaism was founded in
THH: 1F is nice, but not for the hammers the building costs, methinks, especially since the city has plenty of food already.
Probably something to build in a "slow stretch" when there's not much else to build for whatever reason.
Right now military is far more pressing, I think.
HAK: yeah. sadly I already had the overflow from the whipping of the worker go into it.
I really wish I had more help with the planning stuff. But without LP being active, that leaves just you and me at this point.
HAK: Oh well, building hammers don't decay for a long time, so they won't truly be wasted.
THH: Yeah, I'm sorry I was kind of silent over Christmas - New Years. I just got distracted with the holidays.
HAK: well, you and me both. I didn't have much in the way of detailed updates during that time either.
THH: Hopefully my comments the past couple of days have been helpful - I'll try to keep it up.
We could always run a "recruitment drive" elsewhere on the website, put an "ad" up the general forum.
HAK: If you want to do so, please do. With my now no longer having access to RB at work, I keep forgetting and not having much time to do stuff when I get home.
THH: By the way, if you need me to cover any turns, let me know; I think I've become comfortable enough to do so.
HAK: Actually, I could probably use you to cover the weekend after next ... [Redacted]
THH: Okay, I think I'll go post an "ad" in the general forum; hopefully someone(s) will bite.
HAK: and we really need to start thinking about this next city thing. Since it'll probably be our last city for at least 25 more turns or more. Since after this next settler comes out (which is sitll a little ways away) we need to concentrate on workers and military.
THH: Let's put it at the far eastern location, then, to establish our control there before someone else gets there.
We can backfill later.
HAK: And it's official. Just got a chat back from plako. New NAP is until T160.
THH: Yay!
HAK: And the extended NAP should hopefully give us the "protection" that far eastern city would need.
THH: Good point.
So: mid-term strategy: improve our land with more workers and build up military for an assault on Gillette?
HAK: yeah, I suppose so.
THH: Just making sure we're on the same page.
HAK: yeah
THH: Okay, if all that's settled, I'll go do that post; I can post the transcript of this chat, too (leaving out the personal details).
HAK: ok
THH: All right, good to chat with you again! Signing off,
THH
HAK: l8rs

[HitAnyKey]

Ok, not much going on this turn though I did get the Settler out on his way east.

First up, here's the current Demographics & Top Cities. We're not doing too good overall in comparison anymore.

I've also sadly confirmed that we cannot get the circumnavigate bonus right now, and it'll basically be whoever gets to Optics first and builds a Caravel. That'll be the first team to circumnavigate the globe.


I was really hoping the map builders had set it up so an early circumnavigate could take place. But apparently they decided to make it harder for us in that regard.

I already have one worker over by Hershel's Farm (he just finished improving the deer for that new city), so he's started on making the road to where our Marble city will be. I also have two workers moving along with the Settler. Basically with those 3 workers (and maybe even will send a 4th) over there, that will help get the new city quickly hooked up and also quickly get our Marble hooked up and then start on all the other resources out that way. There's a LOT of them for those two cities to use, so those workers will be busy for a very long time. For the name of it, I think we'll with your African Lion Safari suggestion. It'll be one of our most far reaching cities, and basically right in the center of our shared continent, so it truly is a safari going out there. Not sure if that full name will fit, so may have to shorten it to Lion Safari.
Meant to say this a turn or two ago, but I realized that our next tech will need to be Horseback Riding. We can't make our elephants until we get that tech. Though we can make Catapults in the meantime.

Also, other than the occasional worker, I'm going to stop whipping all the cities. They all need to get in some massive growth at this point. With us getting Monarchy in 3-4 turns, we won't have the happiness issues anymore.

I'd also like for us to start considering the Hanging Gardens. We would have to build a Baray first in which ever city we want it, but I think that's a huge wonder to get at this point if we can beat the other teams to it. First, it'll give us a big population bump and we now have a good number of cities to make it worthwhile. Next, it helps towards getting Great Engineers, which is also a key thing. We have two cities that I think are worthy of getting it. Either Sea World or Animal Farm. SW would be able to do it faster, since it has the most hammers available (at least currently) and putting it there will offset the current 100% likelyhood of Great Merchants out of that city (which aren't as useful as other GPs). Animal Farm has less hammers right now, but if it grows big and we use some of those river plains tiles (which give a hammer) it could eventually have a greater base hammer output than SW. Anyway, just another somewhat long-term plan, but I don't want to wait too long. Most (if not all) of the other teams now have Mathematics and I think others may also want to go for this wonder. We should be able to beat them, but many of them already have Stone. So they have just as much chance of getting it as us. Our only benefit at this point is the added 25% production bonus for religion. So we need to capitalize on that while we can.

[TheHumanHydra]

Demographics: I bet it's mostly because of our paucity of workers. We're not out of this yet, though.

Circumnavigation: Ehn, this isn't what I'd call a water map. We'll be fine without it.

Research: Yep, that's fine; that's what I meant about filling in cheap techs when we need them (well, HBR will be more expensive than Archery, of course).

Whipping: Yeah, maybe whip the workers, if the cities will regrow quickly, because straight building them might slow their growth just as much, and the whipping unhappiness won't matter as much now.

Hanging Gardens: If we're going to do it, we should do it now, so probably in SeaWorld (did we get the ToA there, by the way? I don't remember you saying). I've never really been that much of a fan of it, but I'm okay with tying up one city on it as long as we can get our workers and war elephants out in the others fast enough.

In other news: That "advertisement" I posted doesn't seem to have generated much interest. Le sigh.

[HitAnyKey]

Well when we're at 100% research we are back to #2 in GNP. Heh.

No, we haven't gotten ToA yet. Get that (hopefully) in 4 turns. I'm going to try to do a couple calculations to see which city would be best for Hanging Gardens between either Animal Farm or SeaWorld. I'm starting to lean towards doing it in AF, but we'll see.

And yeah, I didn't expect your advertisement to do much. For some reason, there aren't any new people that want to come over to this game anywhere.

[TheHumanHydra]

Yeah, I didn't really expect it either. Oh well.

[HitAnyKey]

Real quick post while I can do so, since I can't access from work anymore very easily.

We now have Temple of Artemis (I whipped that last turn) and that city is now making a Barracks so that it can start making military. I had chatted briefly with THH and decided that Animal Farm can complete the Baray & Hanging Gardens faster than Sea World could, so that was the better choice.
However, I realized we have another option we need to decide on.



As you can see in the image, PigPen will complete it's Baray in 2 turns (while it'll take 5 for AF). Only reason PP is working on that is so it can grow. Was planning on doing a worker next. But with all those forests, we could chop out the Hanging Gardens pretty quick there. Putting the HG there would also help combat the culture from Gillette (you can see we lost two tiles to them last turn, though it's like 52/48% so as soon as our borders expand in 7 turns we should get those tiles back.
My worry about putting the HG there is that it's a flatland city near our opponents. We would have to fortify that city really good if we want to insure that our wonder doesn't get captured. It's probably not the best idea to have a wonder on the front lines like that. However, it would almost ensure that we beat the other teams to the HG and get the population boost across all our cities.

So....do we take the risk and put the HG over in PigPen? Or do we play it safe (and risk someone beating us to it) and put the HG in Animal Farm? Right now it would take about 15-16 turns to get HG in Animal Farm, and right now it's the same in PP (however, that's before the city grows and works the next mine we make, and not including getting chops). So my guess is we could get HG in half that time by building it in PP.

[TheHumanHydra]

Does it even matter if someone captures the Hanging Gardens (with regard to the wonder's effect, I mean)? The +1 population across the board is immediate - couldn't we lose it the very next turn and still get the most important benefit of it? Let's put it in PigPen and get it out quickly. Have Animal Farm build workers instead.

[HitAnyKey]

Yeah that is true and also kind of what I was starting to think as well. Losing it in a war would basically just lose us culture and GP bonuses. But I suppose it's worth the risk for getting it out earlier.

[HitAnyKey]

THH, this is just a reminder that this is the weekend that I'm going to be away and won't be able to play turns. I should be able to play this next one either tomorrow morning before I leave for work (if everyone else has already played) or tomorrow evening before I leave for the airport. But after that, I won't be able to play at all on Saturday or Sunday. With the exception of Saturday during the day (when I'll be in Canada with my phone off), I'll have access to internet on my phone so any questions about the turn you can sent to me in Gchat or email.
Most everything should be pretty obvious as to what we're doing, and I'll have most things queued up that it shouldn't take much to do the turn. Anything that's not queued or already planned, you can make the decision on what to do. If I have time tonight, I'll log in and try to post the plan for anything that might come up over the next couple days. Or you can log in yourself to take a look around, and ask me any questions while I'm busy packing and other stuff tonight.

[TheHumanHydra]

Okay, thanks for the reminder! Have a good trip!