Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[fluffyflyingpig]

Alternatively there should be ivory in a similar location in the other direction if historical Plako maps are anything to go by.

[Qgqqqqq]

If they have designs on the Ivory I think its more of a "how do we get a Settler onto the Ivory with a sufficient garrison to deter opportunism".

DArrell

Thats the first time I've seen you mistype your name.

[NobleHelium]

Alternatively there should be ivory in a similar location in the other direction if historical Plako maps are anything to go by.

I wouldn't be sure that there's an equivalent ivory - the luxuries aren't fully mirrored for sure, and we haven't found marble nearby yet.

[Tyrmith]

Ivory is a pretty big deal though, and every team seems to have sort version of access to copper, horses, and iron, correct?

[NobleHelium]

It's quite possible that plako overlooked the importance of ivory given that we normally ban WEs.

[Sullla]

Turn 98 - 425BC

Two more cities and another new civ met. Now if we could just find some way to get long-term peace with CivPlayers...



This was the easiest part of the turn. We moved the scout northwest and established contact with UniversCiv through their culture. (We also found a random wandering German quechua.) This scout will head east next and see if it can find another team before it runs into a barb and died. We've got contact with everyone other than Apolyton and CivFr at this point.

Time to send UniversCiv a standard greeting message.



Here's the screen of who has met whom. CivPlayers wasn't lying about having few contacts, and they haven't signed Open Borders with anyone that we can see. I'm assuming that they do have them with Apolyton, and that's probably enough to fill up their 7 cities with pre-Currency routes. We could really use a road connection to CFC, as that would be worth another 2 commerce trade route with every single one of our cities. We should be able to get that up sometime in the next ten turns after we finish connecting resources in the east.



Unfortunately we still have not found any food resources in the jungle near the ivory. The region between that row of peaks is completely barren. Still, not all hope is lost for a decent city up here. The northern axe killed a barb warrior this turn, and will promote to Woodsman II next turn. It's sitting at 3.0 health right now, which means the promotion will take it to 4.0 health, and that should be good enough for scouting a jungle region with Woody II. We'll be able to defog the northern river area over the next two turns and find out if there's anything useful up there. We could potentially place a city on the tile north or northeast of the ivory; there's still a chance that a city on either of those spots could have something useful in its radius. Just have to wait a couple more turns to see.

There was some discussion about how fast we could get a settler up to this ivory. The sad truth is that if the settler CivPlayers whipped last turn is heading for the ivory, we definitely cannot beat them to it. Simply not possible. That said, if they would settle two tiles east of the gems, where I expect, then we could settle first-ring to the ivory on the tile northeast of it, and we would win that cultural battle 100%. I'll keep the southern axe in this region to watch and find out what they choose to do. Still crossing fingers that we can plant a not-terrible city somewhere nearby that claims the ivory.

In pure tactical terms, a city north of the ivory is not really all that safe. It could be attacked along both diagonals, SW-SW and NW-NW. On the other hand, a city placed northeast of the ivory would be extremely difficult for anyone to attack, with peaks and hills blocking nearly all approaches. If we have to stick a garbage city here purely for resource control, northeast of the ivory is definitely the way to go. I would dance for joy if there's a pigs resource sitting 3N of that ivory...

Again, we'll re-evaluate here after scouting next turn.



Here's some good news. We've finally found "our" horses down in the south, on one of the few tiles that we didn't scout. If we would somehow lose Brick By Brick, heaven forbid, we will still have the option to build war chariots and knights with a city down here. As we discussed before, a city on the green dot looks like the most efficient way to use the terrain down here. The spot redeems an otherwise wasted floodplains and river grassland tile, claims horses, has a wheat for food, and fills in some weakish space that would otherwise be wasted. I've drawn in the irrigation line to that wheat tile, through a bunch of plains tiles. Not sure exactly when we would want to put a city here, as it's completely safe and not the greatest land. We'd want to make sure to have this backup source of horses connected if we were anticipating war, however.

This also leaves the southern plains cows for another city down in the southern tundra. I'll be moving the war chariot onto that tundra hill in the south next turn, and that should give us a great deal more vision of what's down there.



Now we get to the new cities. Starfall seemed to be the most popular name for this spot in the desert, and that's what I went with. We were able to found the city on schedule because the barb axe moved onto the plains hill tile, as I was hoping it would do. Unfortunately I made a micro mistake here; I did not chop the forest tile that the workers are standing on before founding Starfall. That would have funneled the chop into the Mausoleum in Focal Point; now that same forest goes to Starfall. This was not written into the micro plan, but I still should have remembered it from our discussions earlier. Mea culpa, mea culpa. Now we need a new job for these two workers on this turn, as they still can't move onto the corn and start farming it due to the barb axe. Suggestions?

With regards to the barb axe... My plan is to move our own Shock axe southeast onto the forest next to that barb. This should induce the barb to suicide itself against our own axe, which is at 3.8 health but would be getting +85% bonus from forest + Combat I + Shock promotions. We would have very high odds to win that battle, and if we lost, our war chariot would be able to clean up the wounded barb. If the barb axe didn't take the bait, by moving onto the corn or grassland tile next to Starfall, then our axe would still be able to attack it if needed next turn. If the barb axe moved the other way, to the west, then we'd be buying more time for the chariot to heal. Any other thoughts on this plan?



This is our other city in the northeast, where people seemed to favor The Covenant for the name. Hope people don't misinterpret that as a Halo reference. Anyway, this takes us to 12 cities; UniversCiv has 10 cities and no one else has more than 8. If we're trying to stay inconspicuous, then we're failing.

Micro note: our worker that moved onto the grassland spice 2N of Forbidden Fruit has orders to chop that jungle tile. Are we sure we don't want to road that tile first instead? Feels like that would give us a lot more flexibility instead of slowing chopping the jungle over 4 turns. Am I crazy for thinking this? Think that roading the tile first so other workers can help chop/plantation would be better.

Overview / tile micro:

We only grew one pop point this turn, and we lost than in a whip at Horse Feathers which will overflow into an Organized Religion missionary for Seven Tribes. Actually, nearly all of these Wealth builds are production overflow being saved for OR purposes or missionary builds. Our economy is not quite as good as it looks at present, since we're getting about 15gpt from Wealth. We can easily dump this into military if we would need it.

Anyway, we easily finish Monarchy tech with gold in the bank at 80% research. We're fairly close to being able to finish it at 70% research, although this number sets up really nicely to avoid rounding errors on the pre-requisite beaker multiplier. We're getting 174 base / 259 modified beakers from research this turn. The old plan was to tech Code of Laws -> Civil Service next; we may have to re-evaluate this depending on what CivPlayers does in upcoming turns. In any case, a revolt to Hereditary Rule and Organized Religion will be taking place next turn.



Demos still looking strong. Whoever was running the 200+ GNP last turn has dialed down research or swapped to a tech with fewer pre-requisite bonuses. We continue to lead comfortably in the key categories. I think we were still in first at 0% research when I checked, although that depends on what rate other teams are running.

We're going to grow SIX population points next turn and also discover Monarchy tech, so, uh, if we want to push a diplomatic agenda, now might be a good time before more flashing "RUNAWAY CIV" lights go off around the world.

[Merovech]

We could always settle on the ivory if we don't find any food. 2H city plant, gets the +25% defense bonus, can't be razed, and still has some riverside grassland.

[NobleHelium]

Can we swap to a unit (like a chariot) in TH? We don't need the gold to finish Monarchy since the sandbox was conservative, and we'll finish the unit there relatively quickly. If we already have a partially built unit then we should resume it.

[scooter]

Guys, stop being so good at civ. You're going to make my job really freaking hard.

[Tyrmith]

We're going to grow SIX population points next turn and also discover Monarchy tech, so, uh, if we want to push a diplomatic agenda, now might be a good time before more flashing "RUNAWAY CIV" lights go off around the world.

From how CivPlayers are acting, you're a few turns late with that warning. :P