Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[NobleHelium]

I'm not convinced that breakeven research is much better in terms of not scaring people. People like to rationalize. If you alternate between GNP highs and lows, to some extent they will compare their own "typical" performance to your lows, and excuse your highs as being flukes.

A related point is that it's much more difficult to evaluate someone's GNP when it keeps jumping around (and people like to think they're not doing as bad as they are).

There is also the fact that with binary, at a random time we've done more "low" compared to "high" than is actually the case over the course of researching a given tech, because the pattern is low-high-low-high- etc. (the low comes first, and part of the time they will evaluate us pre-high).

And fourthly, there's the benefit of running to final turn of a tech's research at 100%, so that the percent bonuses of the libraries and the tech bonuses themselves don't show up multiplicatively on the graph that turn (since the graphs are calculated after the tech is researched).

I think I favor continuing with binary research because of flexibility. It comes up time and time again, if you are paying as close attention to other teams' progress as we are, and thinking about the game as much as we are, that we want to make a sudden course change. And saving gold makes this much easier.

My rule is: don't let optics get in the way of anything else.

[fluffyflyingpig]

It would really be nice if we had turns to talk about. Did we have any luck getting Plako installed as admin?

[Sullla]

New turn is up. German team played yesterday, never ended turn, never logged back into game again. 30 hours of time completely wasted for no purpose whatsoever. This is really pissing me off... can we please do something about these assholes?

This of course meant that the game rolled at nearly midnight my time, and I'll have to type up a full report tomorrow. Here are the highlights:

* We had a free religion spread into Tree Huggers. City #5 with our religion.

* I ignored CFC's scouting instructions to go defog more of their territory in the opposite direction. I'm not leaving their territory until we have vision on all seven of their cities. If they ask, just tell them the turnplayer acted before reading their email. It's almost true.

* Nothing of interest spotted in the northwest near CivPlayers.

* Barb warrior for XP point #9 incoming in the southwest.

* We are destroying the Demos. We're tops in Food by a wide margin and also first in GNP at 0% science.

As I said, more tomorrow when I have a chance to post.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Why not just cut to the chase.

"Listen assholes, stop being dicks and END YOUR FUCKING TURN."

[Sullla]

Turn 88 - 675BC

This turn was mostly uneventful. We did connect our first Calendar resource though, so yay for that.



I moved the CFC scout first, and uncovered the city of Mantra. This was their third city to be founded (order: Indira, Terasvin, Mantra, Daivagati) and it has granary and monument inside. Note that there is also a Jewish missionary standing inside the city, which will probably be used to spread religion on this current turn. There was also a chariot inside Daivagati at the start of the turn. This tells us that CFC does have horses connected somewhere, and the 4k Power increase that kjn noted in the Demographics must have come from this chariot's construction.

CFC gave us instructions on where to move to meet Spanish Apolyton. Although they did it in those awful keyboard numbers that I hate ("go 3-3-9-9"), the gist of their instructions was that Spanish Apolyton is located to their east and slightly to their north. Of course, we have no intention of leaving their territory until we've mapped out all seven CFC cities, and I knew that there was another city down to the south, so I sent the scout off in the other direction instead:



If they would ask about the scout, tell them that the turnplayer didn't read their message until after moving. It's almost true. Note that there is a German quechua moving around down here as well. There's a road on the hill tile two east of Terasvin which surely leads to another CFC city. I plan to follow that road, reveal whatever city is down there, and then swing to the northeast to go check out the Spanish.

There is a second Jewish missionary inside the city of Terasvin. CFC looks to be dealing with the happiness crunch on this map by spreading their religion around and then building cheap Spiritual temples. They are likely also researching towards Monarchy/Hereditary Rule, given that they have Priesthood and Monotheism techs. It's a good plan, and a good use of their Spiritual trait to lean a bit on religion.

The good news for us is that they don't seem to be in any hurry to settle cities along our border region. Check out that wide-angle map again: not even one city planted to the west of their capital so far. Everything has gone to the east. Note that the stone region is still a good 8 tiles away from any of their other settlements. We look to be in better and better shape to dictate terms in this region if we want to do so. I don't feel that CFC should be able to ignore this area indefinitely and still have claim to all that territory.



Elsewhere, the biggest happening was the free spread of religion into Tree Huggers. Note the tiny little Hinduism symbol up there, it wasn't present last turn. This is pretty nice just for expanding the border of Tree Huggers that much faster, from 3 culture/turn up to 4 per turn. The city will hit the 100 culture mark in 14 more turns. Workers in the area finished the long-awaited banana plantation, and Tree Huggers suddenly has +6 food surplus. This will be an absolute monster city one day with all the jungle chopped down and converted into cottages or workshops (the city has 13 flat grassland tiles).

The spear and axeman in this region are still healing, both about halfway there. A new axe was born in Tree Huggers and began moving to Horse Feathers to board the galley there next turn. HF completed a galley and overflowed into a settler, which it will complete with no overflow whatsoever:



37 foodhammers needed, 37 foodhammers produced. This is what simming and planning will do for you.



In the northwest we did not find anything of interest with Wyn. I plan to move northwest again next turn, which will reveal at least five more tiles. We are three turns away from founding the stone city.



Down in the southwest, we have vision of another barb warrior trickling in to provide us with XP #9 on axeman Lew. Still a couple of turns away. I have not moved our axeman so far this turn, and I'm not sure that we should move Lew. It might be best just to heal in place until that barb warrior arrives, because a turn moving into our territory is a turn spent not healing. We heal 10% of max health (0.5 health) in neutral territory, 15% (0.75 health) inside our borders, and 20% (1.0 health) inside one of our cities. Also bear in mind that the borders of Seven Tribes will expand eot 89, which will then place Lew inside our own territory. I am leaning towards keeping him in place right now, although we would be in a slightly awkward position if there is a barb warrior on the tile NW-W of the wheat this turn. Alternately, we can always move onto the wheat, which is now roaded. Thoughts?

The other axe had to move into Gourmet Menu to serve as military police. Upon hitting size 6, it went up to +2 unhappiness from lacking a unit (instead of the initial +1 unhappiness), which meant that even connecting spices wasn't enough to pacify the city. The workers in this area finished the wheat road and finished the floodplains cottage, just in time for Gourmet Menu to work the tile. GM is now working 5 riverside Financial cottages and the clams. Quite a city after its slow start.

Overview:

Tile micro is largely straightforward. The capital grew to size 7, which meant that it took over the non-river grassland cottage from Horse Feathers, which picked up a coastal tile in exchange. The 2/0/3 coastal tile is still a pretty good one to work. Horse Feathers also needs the iron resource in order to complete its settler. Forbidden Fruit has the choice of floodplains tile (3/0/1) or plains spices (2/1/5) to go along with its corn resource, but the city stil grows to size 4 on the same turn regardless of which one it works, so we are taking the superior overall yield of the spices tile. Forbidden Fruit expands borders next turn to pick up the banana tile and the second jungle spice in the north. Alemanni comes out of revolt the turn after that. Our borders continue to zerg their way across the map.

The only thing I don't like in our micro plan is the idea to hold Mansa's Muse at size 5 and slow-build another worker at 10 foodhammers/turn over the next 6t. I feel like there has to be a more efficient use of the city than that, given how we can simply grow two sizes and double-whip a worker as Expansive. I might try to take another look at this before the next turn rolls.



The Demos are very, very dominant. We are far ahead in Food and leading the game in GNP at 0% research. Our 100% research rate on Currency gives us GNP value of 175. We're equal to or above the Rival Best in nearly every category; the "Population" stat looks bad only because CivFr has two size 9 cities. In the more accurate Total Pop stat, we are comfortably in front:

RB: 36
UniCiv: 33
CivFr: 31
CFC: 29
Apol: 24
CivPl: 23
WPC: 20
SpAp: 19
Ger: 16

We grow 2 pop next turn and 3 more pop the turn after that. We settle our 10th city in three turns; currently, UniversCiv has 8, CFC has 7, and no one else has more than 6. We're the only team to research three Classical techs. We are significantly ahead of everyone else in score, and there's not much we can do to hide this. Our team is continuing to move towards a dominant position.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Yeah, I hate to see Mansa's stagnate, but I seem to remember the micro team trying to avoid it and deciding that ultimately that was the best option.

We are going to add roughly 10-12 pop in the next three turns if you count Alemanni. If we don't whip anything, we might have a 40 point lead in food by then.

Then the following turn, I think we land Currency, and our 100% GNP probably goes way over 200.

We might want to take a deep breath for posterity on T100, because it is probably just about impossible to play much better than this.

[novice]

I would move the axe onto the wheat, since it will still reach 4.7/5 health in 3 turns that way.

Also, we can move the spear into Tree Huggers now and fortify there.

[kjn]

Agree with Novice.

[SevenSpirits]

Mansa's is stagnating because we are growing the two cities it shares food with instead. AO is our most important city to grow, and FF is a very efficient city to whip since it's so small. And we do need the workers.

[Sullla]

I moved the axeman onto the wheat as requested and ended turn. WPC played quickly today, and we should get a relatively fast turn as a result. They founded their fifth city (Great Plains) before ending turn, no idea where it's located. Still no end to the WPC/German war in sight right now.