Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[kjn]

I've been looking through our empire and it's hard to give suggestions when the plan is to whip every city for units . I'm actually looking forward to this big war, it should be exciting.

Glad someone's looking forward to it!

Here's my draft list:

Should be drafted: Starfall, Catherine, Ditchdigger, and Frozen Jungle

Round out with: French Riviera, Gourmet Menu, Seven Tribes or Eastern Dealers

The only exception I can see is that at Gourmet Menu I think we should overflow into a bank. It's a very high commerce city (close to Adventure One in commerce).

We might also want to do an exception for those cities that will finish their markets or courthouses this turn.

Apart from that then sure let's overflow into knights and muskets in most cities this turn and whip them next turn as per speaker's advice. We have 27 catapults now which is close to being enough, so the ex-german cities that are still on catapults should probably be switched to muskets, knights or courthouses.

I think I'd prefer to keep them on catapults. I imagine we will grow most of them to size 4 or 5 and then whip, and we will need a new slew of catapults after we suicide 30+ of them into Apolyton's stack. Better to get the hammers out instead of having them sitting in the build queues.

[sunrise089]

@Zargon - Correct, depending on how we want to handle civplayers and the size of the Poly stack, 27 cats is either just right for civplayers+Poly or not quite enough. It's definitely too few versus CFC as well.

What that does NOT factor in though is whether we'd rather suicide maces and muskets instead of cats. I know they're more expensive and don't do collateral (two pretty important things) but if it's also important to get cities back on infra builds higher non-cat losses may be acceptable. BSing with darrell in chat today, but using what I think are plausible numbers, I think we need about 50 total cats to take out all three enemy armies. That would essentially remove all the units in play from RB, Poly, CFC, and civplayers, and then we'd plan to rebuilding with drafted rifles if our enemies didn't make peace.

Implicit in all of this is an assumption we're NOT waiting for rifles before engaging a stack. If we want to wait we're talking like T184 until we could get even a small stack together, right? If we're ok with ignoring an enemy attack not just until we've dealt with the higher priority invaders, but until we have rifles, then we need fewer cats in the short term.

EDIT: Cross with KJN. There is a danger in overflowing to just more cats, and it isn't just that our enemies may bring fewer units than I think they will (that would be a good thing of course). The danger is that if we have to detail 20 units to the civplayers front, we may need more than our current units plus the next few turns of drafts to kill the Poly stack. For instance in my middle estimation of Poly's stack size we need basically all 22 units slaved on T169 to be able to attack either the Poly or civplayers stacks.

[NobleHelium]

Okay, some comments.

1) CivPlayers chopped the jungle NE of Costalot, so now it can be directly attacked by knights. It also looks like they're going to chop the forest NE of Xochicalco in the south.
2) We currently have 27 catapults and will be getting a few more over the next few turns, because there are slow catapult builds being completed.
3) Two catapults finish naturally this turn, two can be whipped (plus a third at Doppelganger if we'd like). Three more can be whipped next turn with ones completing naturally at The Gauntlet, Adventure One, and Mano y Mano. Mano's can theoretically get taken out before it can move.
4) I don't think it makes sense to swap the German cities over to muskets or knights because those cannot be 2-pop whipped. We have a couple catapults that can be whipped this turn in those cities and I think we should do so. There are a few cities that are due to get chops next turn so we could theoretically swap them over to muskets/knights and 2-pop whip those post-chop, but that will be t170 when we can whip those. Alternatively we could use those chops to whip more catapults, or even complete some naturally. Doppelganger (German capital) can continue growing on its catapult before being drafted at size 6 (and then possibly having the catapult whipped). We could also grow other German cities to be drafted instead of whipping catapults at size 4, but I don't think we should wait.
5) Our spy in CivPlayers located on a roaded mine cannot afford to do any sabotage missions. So yeah.
6) CivPlayers put about 78 EP into us last turn, so we can't get graphs at our current relative expenditures.
7) UniversCiv now has 309g in the bank and are making 242 gpt.
8) I've drafted Catherine and Starfall.
9) I've set most cities to overflow into units except Seven Tribes (finishes Market), Let it Snow (finishes Courthouse), Forbidden Fruit (finishes Courthouse next turn), French Riviera (finishes Courthouse next turn).
10) According to current tentative build queues, we'd whip three knights and three muskets next turn (and finish one naturally in BB).
11) sunrise is an asshole and needs to be on chat more often.

Turn will be streamed tomorrow night as usual.

[Zargon]

What's the argument for spending any of our overflow into unit whip pop on muskets rather than knights? I could see it if we were getting really knight-heavy, but that doesn't seem to be the case to my untrained eyes.

Is it plausible that CP attacks the deep south? (Seven Tribes)

[kjn]

Sorry, I was unclear. I was talking about the former German cities only in my comments on keeping them on catapults, not about our overflow.

I agree with NobleHelium's comments about the management of the former German cities.

[NobleHelium]

We've got about five muskets in the Seven Tribes / Gourmet Menu area. We could assemble several more there if we'd like. We also have four catapults in the area.

I picked muskets for overflow in the cities that were closer to the west, namely Ditchdigger, Frozen Jungle and Gourmet Menu. These builds are all preliminary.

[NobleHelium]

Hmmm, spanner in the works is that we may not be able to whip some of those musket/knight builds if we draft those size 6 cities this turn. I think most of them will be 2-pop whips so we'll be fine, but maybe one is a three and needs to be changed. Someone bring that up tomorrow lest I forget.

[darrelljs]

I can't believe they chopped that jungle. I'd change the overflow to all knights based on that alone (our a catapult to avoid the draft/whip scenario you just described).

Darrell

[Ruff_Hi]

Turn 167 - 1070AD

Update: The Bard city is gone. It was taken down last turn, contry to the slack-ass T166 report.

Right - with that out of the way, what happened in T167? Not much ... except for the results of the AP vote ...



Kjn spent some time reviewing these results and determined that the AP victory is unlikely to be an issue. CivFr couldn't talk their way out of a wet paper bag and CivPlayers are blocked by CivFr. I am unsure how much time Kjn spent reviewing this ... if only Azoth had been quicker off the mark with his observation that WPC aren't included in the voting block yet and so the AP Victory is (further?) blocked.

CFC is teching (burning about 300gpt) and supporting Sunrise's estimate of 2t to go (they have 600g in the bank). Smart work by Sunrise by dividing 600 by 300 and getting 2. Maybe it is right, maybe not. They might find themselves 1 turn of break-even research outstanding ... or 2 turns? We can only hope.

Based on that info, Sunrise thinks that they will need aggressive whipping to have 10 cannons in our lands on T176. That and a DOW. Oh ... wait ... that isn't true - they could still put 10 cannons in our land without the DOW ... assuming we have OBs.

The demand for road pillaging continues unabated. It doesn't matter what Noble says (I told you, we can't pillage roads in our territory). Further bad news for those road haters ...

I did a WB test, and spies cannot pillage roads in neutral territory

There is also extensive discussion / mention of the rally points of our troops as well as our spy incursion into CivPlayers land - what did we find? Good question ... we found pikes. Lots and lots of pikes. And some cats. Not much else.

Nobles thread also contains this cherry ...



... as well as an estimate on us finishing Rifling (eot T181 - sigh). Kjn scoffed at that and proceeded to show how to do it by eot T180. But don't worry, our super supporting friend, Darrellllll (is that 6 'l's or 7?) then pointed out that T181 is on the good side of things.

There was also considerable discussion about 2-pop whipping the cats and then putting the overflow into more cats. You cannot have too many stinking cats.

I was thinking of reporting that Noble and Darrell got into a slagging match ... but that isn't news ... it happens all the time.


Really Big News

UCiv accepted OB and a map swap. We now have much improved visibility into CivFr and CivPlayers. I'll have to update my geo-political map - maybe on the weekend. Eight is a lot of legs, David.

Antisocialmunky (another name that just rolls of the tongue - everyone should be limited to names of 7 letters like me and Soooooo ... or less like Sullla) got right into the spirit of attacking being the best defense and put together some interesting ideas re Apolyton. He finished with 'Also, color me optimistic but I want to get Galleons and burn down Ankara and the Colossus as revenge for this whole war' which is fair enough.

Zargon also joined in with a nice discussion on who to hit, assuming we want to do it.

And that was that for T166. Oh wait, Noble also played the turn, discussed a bunch of things and streamed some. I haven't been able to chase down the link to the stream ... so it mustn't exist.

Now, on the Diplo front ...

CFC turned down our NAP for GP offer (was that previously reported?) and Scooter caught Yossarian on chat. Two or three major things to note ...

Scooter let it rip!
It wasn't as good as Sullla's because it was typed. The counter argument is that Sullla's was a monolog.

YossarianLives
Your economy is not lacking, you have the most beakers of anyone

Wrong (I think). Scooter, you should have corrected him here. Doesn't Apolyton have more beakers than we do?

YossarianLives
Ok, I understand what you're saying. Well, we do need to hold some cards close to our chest, so I don't know how much more I can say
Anyways, I have to walk the dog, so I should get going

Walk the dog? OF COURSE YOU GOTTA WALK THE DOG BEFORE THE DOGPILE.

... and ...

YossarianLives
Well, a GP would have been great for us, but you have enough land so that if you can develop peacefully then we lose no matter what. At least, that's what our mathematicians have convinced the team of.

Now why am I pulling out this little line of chat?

Because of another chat that Scooter had later with CivPlayers. I think this is actually a T168 chat but I am including it here because I can.

OT4E
I already mentioned that I see no problem in keeping some military. Otherwise your economic will be too strong for us. I dont want you to get it wrong or offended by this. It is just maths.

I find it very interesting that OT4E (another stupid name) mentioned maths in exactly the same way as CFC did. They have obviously been talking and talking about how far ahead we are and using maths to prove it. Ok, that last part is crap ... CFC have been talking about the maths of Civ4 (snowball effect) and leading the other teams by the nose. IT IS EVIDENCE, I TELL YOU ... EVIDENCE!


Scooter also floated the worthless suggestion of talking to CivFr. Are they still playing? They are? Oh. You learn something new everyday. Reading the diplo thread I also noticed this ...

A stab at contact with CivFr.

Hey guys, just wanted to check in with you guys. As far as we can tell, CFC is headed for Cannons. Our western neighbors are also gearing up for war, and I'm pretty sure they'll aim at us. We figure CFC is going to do one of two things. 1) Use the cannons on us or 2) Take advantage of our western neighbor's build-up to hit you guys with cannons when we can't keep them honest.

Not sure exactly what will happen, but it seems we have a mutual enemy, so I wanted to see how things were on your front. I've noticed the war is pretty quiet, but I also saw the attempted AP resolution. Any big updates over there?

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

Thoughts?

Sent that CivFr draft by the way.

I didn't think that got sent. Guess I missed it. Ok, so we wait 10 days for nothing and then find out that while they speak perfect English, they claim that they don't ... just like every French person in France.

A few people also tried to twist an agreement around so that we could NAPstab and not trash our name (too much). That was another bit of worthlessness while it lasted.

I haven't shown a picture for a while ... here you go ...



... and another one ...



On the C&D front ...

Hm. CP just did 9 2-pop whips. I would have expected them to either be saving the pop for musket drafts after gunpowder, or cur whips after military tradition. Maybe they just noticed they need a bunch of cats.

Definitely knight whips, at least most of them. The following cities are in the 90-122 hammer range:

Texcoco, Tlaxcala, Xochicalco, Tlacopan, Atzcapotzalco, Tzintzuntzen, Malinalco, Tamuin

Tenochtitlan is at 140 hammers, and Tlatelolco at 78. Of interest is that their Heroic Epic city (Calixtlahuaca) is at 0 invested hammers, so they're probably one-turning stuff like crazy there. Also, remember that CivPlayers have plenty of stables, so their knights will be highly promoted.

... so we will see pikes and knights from CivPlayers.


Finally, the topic that I just know everyone has been waiting for me to cover ...

THE Mustache Incident of T167! As mentioned by Commodore (I wonder if he knows that he has the same name as a car?).



And just to round things off nicely ...

This forum is the Mutara Nebula of the internet, and my sarcasm sensor is non-functional .

Darrell

[darrelljs]

When you can make me laugh after getting up at 4 to catch a flight, you've won . The only bit that might not be obvious is that we did indeed send the note to the Frenchies.

Darrelll