Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

That file confirms that jungle and forest can both have a banana.

To clarify, only jungle can have banana, not forests. Not sure if that was a typo or misreading the XML.

I think he meant grass and jungle? Forest is not mentioned in that section of code.

[NobleHelium]

I'm pretty sure T-hawk misread the TERRAIN_GRASS and thought it meant a forest when it means grassland.

[kalin]

If there's a road on the banana, can jungle grow on it?
Kalin

[NobleHelium]

Yes. It did in the sandbox. Just move the axe onto the banana if we're not farming it, it's not a big issue. We'll have two axes in the area once TH finishes the one it's building.

[T-hawk]

I apparently cannot read. I swear the XML said FOREST when I looked at it.

kalin, presence of a road halves forest/jungle spread chance but does not prevent it.

[NobleHelium]

Oh interesting. A railroad is the same halving or a larger reduction?

[novice]

I posted my suggestion for a t80-t92 micro plan in the Micromanagement thread:
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid319500

[Sullla]

Turn 80 - 875BC

Trade routes are in and they are fabulous.



I noticed right away at the start of our turn that we had more commerce than before: every one of our cities has a 2 commerce trade route to a foreign city of some kind, either WPC or the German team. This increased our research rate - err, gold stockpiling - by a noticeable amount. Anyway, more on this in a minute.

Moving the spearman in the northwest revealed a second jungle rice tile just outside German borders. Either they didn't scout this when they planted Worms or they just didn't care. We may want to plant our own city in the jungle later to try and claim this resource; the red dot is one possible location where we could do so. Keep in mind that it would be tough to win the cultural battle with the terrace that has been sitting in Worms for quite some time. Tough, not impossible (second ring beats third ring). Let's keep this on the backburner for now and come back to it later. Any city in this area would be an extreme long term project: every single tile at present is covered in jungle!



The scout in the east found more wines, lots of wines, and finally spotted CFC borders. It's impossible to see in this picture, but zooming out and checking the cultural overlay revealed purple borders on the tile SE of that hill as marked. We should try to chat with our CFC contact and ask if it's safe to move our scout onto that hill tile next turn. This would get us into their territory safely and allow the C&D team to start mapping out their cities.

We now also have a clear grasp of the distance between our civs. If we could get a city on the tile south of the oasis, and leave the weaker wines region to CFC... well, that would be an ideal split of land from our perspective. Again, let's wait and see what happens here. We have a planned settler being born T92 for this region from Mansa's Muse which could plant south of the oasis on T93 with road preparation. If CivFanatics still isn't there... we'll see.



Biggest action for this turn was in the southwest. We completed the roads southwest and south-south of Gourmet Menu to found our seventh city on the desert tile, appropriately named Seven Tribes. (Full name of that competition was Seven Tribes of Egypt, but that won't fit.) Settling the city revealed a plains cow off to the east and a water barrier down to the south. We do not appear to have narrowly missed out on any resources, thankfully. Seven Tribes appear to be in a very good spot, considering how we didn't have all of that land explored. There is also another barb down there - of course!

Gourmet Menu expanded its borders via Stonehenge this turn and picked up the long awaited clams tile. It will grow to size 3 next turn, where it produces +6 food/turn for very rapid growth. That will very quickly become one of our best cities; the micro plan has it racing to size 7 and working six Financial riverside cottages in the next ten turns. Not too shabby. There is an axe coming down from the north to garrison Gourmet Menu, although it should be reasonably safe at this point.

I've left our two axes in the area unmoved for now. Lew is on the left, Wyn is on the right. Both have 5 XP, and one of them needs to stick around to defend the new city. Tell me where to send the other one. We can go check out the stone area in the northwest, or fogbust the wheat/cows area to the east. Let me know what the team wants.



Here is the tile micro for the turn. It's mostly the same as last turn, with the addition of regrown population points at Adventure One and Horse Feathers. We also finished a plains riverside cottage at Mansa's Muse, so the city fired a Priest specialist and is working that tile. We have 26 total pop points working 11 resources, 13 cottages, one specialist, and one unimproved tile (floodplains at the new city). Fairly tight city micro.

We are still running minimum science towards a Calendar grab in a few more turns. The foreign trade route income is going to throw off our past sims quite a bit, as the bonus 7 commerce we get from them this turn is not at all trivial. Our whole civ only gets about 95 commerce; those trade routes increased our total economy by 7-8%. Not bad for something completely passive beyond building a road on a river tile.

I'll also point out that we were making +54 gold last turn at 0% science. This turn we added a seventh city, and now we're making +61 gold at 0% science. If anything, we can push expansion even harder: our economy is awesome! We're still the second team to seven cities, so I think we're doing fine.



The Demographics are looking very, very good. Two pop point growths and a new city founding have placed us back into the Food lead, albeit by the narrowest of margins. We'll likely lose it next turn when we double-whip the settler in Focal Point, then regain the lead upon founding our eighth city on T83. GNP has also been magnified by our trade route income, as we now sit at #2 despite running 0% science. Last turn we had a rating of 84 at the same 0% science. I checked our break-even rate (60% science) and we were #1 with a rating of 109. Max science put us ahead by a wide margin, around 120 or something. Food and GNP are the two most important stats in Civ4, generally speaking, which means this is all excellent news.

Elsewhere, we remain thoroughly average in Production as usual. I get the impression that many of these teams are working mines over working cottages, which almost never works out well in this game. We are still third in Power (with another axe completing next turn), ahead of everyone except the two warring teams. Our lead in Land Area has only gone up with the border expansion at Gourmet Menu and a new city. The rest of the stats don't matter too much, although I will point out that another team grew their capital to size 8, which is inflating their Population score. (It's a 4000BC capital, and thus almost certainly CivFr with the size 8 city.)

Note also our trade route income, highlighted above. We are getting 14 commerce from other teams: 2 commerce * 7 cities. At least I'm pretty sure that's where this number comes from; someone else may want to explain in more detail. The Rival Best has a score of 0, which leads me to believe that we are the only ones getting any trade route income at all. (We Play Civ and Germans both lack Sailing, and thus are getting exactly squat from Open Borders while we soak up income from both of them.) The whole situation couldn't be too much more perfect; these silly teams are stagnating and wasting their early game production on a meaningless war, while we sit on the fence zooming past them and stealing EVEN MORE commerce from them via Open Borders trade. Delicious.

Here's that war in one chart:



The German team has whipped extremely aggressively and they have a sizable army. WPC had better sign peace quickly, as their military adventure is about to come to a crashing halt. I have zero worries of further German cities getting taken; the question at this point is how many WPC cities will be taken in the counter attack. The diplo team might want to consider leaning on WPC and suggesting they make peace ASAP. I predict a very messy end if they don't get out immediately.

Whew, turns getting busier all the time. This is a fun point for us in the game. I can hardly wait for each new turn.

[spacetyrantxenu]

That jungle...just begging for state property work shops if we get that far. Until then I guess we could do with another cottage sprawl.

I don't suppose we had any kind of time limit on our settling agreement with CFC? If they don't want the land I don't see why we should let it go unspoiled forever.

And @Trade route income: I'm newbtastic but even I know better. I wonder if either of our "trade partners" will have someone look at F9 and notice how badly we're robbing them right now. Ouch.

[antisocialmunky]

Why advise them to sign peace? Let them do it on their own. If the Germans do anything successfully, then RB gets an even more crippled Northern Neighbor and the Germans don't have an economy to do anything with all the territory.