Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[scooter]

Yay, good work everyone.

[kjn]

Fun little tidbit: we got a higher score increase this turn than all the other teams combined.

[Ubercannon]

Wow a 12 pop hanging gardens? That's amazing.

[Cyneheard]

Wow a 12 pop hanging gardens? That's amazing.

Yes, someone should've found a way to build it for denial. Then again, no one else has stone, and we have 0 Ind civs (shocking in such a large game. You'd think Bismarck or Huayna would've made sense over many of these choices, especially if you're guaranteed the only Ind civ in the game by taking them 8th or 9th).

[kjn]

Hardly anyone has gone for wonders. CivPlayers planned the Oracle-CoL route, but other than that, nothing. It's not like we have gone for wonders either, but at least we've considered them regularly, and are ready to pick them up.

One of the key things that really broke the game open for us was that we could pick up Stonehenge, it really made our expansion far easier and cheaper. And yes, Huyana would've been a good pick for several teams.

[Sullla]

Turn 105 - 250BC

The turn that the wonders started to fall.



First things first: the Hanging Gardens plan came to fruition as planned. Since we had 12 cities in play, the wonder gave us an additional 12 population, rather absurd for this point in the game. If each pop point is worth 30 production via Slavery, then we gained 360 production from a wonder that cost 300 shields... and effectively half that due to our stone resource. We also gained a permanent +1 health in all cities, and a massive boost to culture in Seven Tribes that will quickly push out borders to third ring (10 turns to go). This was a huge boost for our team, and everyone else has to be kicking themselves for letting the team in first land such a powerful wonder at such a late date.

That was by far the most eventful happening of the turn. Still, let's look at what else is taking place.



This is the northwest, where our settler continues to move towards the ivory without apparent opposition. Unfortunately CFC did see that worker/settler pair moving out when they moved their chariot this turn. We can only hope that this won't lead to diplo shenanigans with CivPlayers. We can't really stop CFC from scouting out the city, which they'll almost certainly see as they keep moving their chariot to the northwest. In any case, the ivory plan continues to proceed as planned.

Regarding wonders: I would love to build Statue of Zeus up here in Brick By Brick. It would be extremely easy to do with the three forests available for chopping, and the +10 culture/turn would allow us to control the border region. However, Statue of Zeus is simply too powerful of a wonder to put in a border city if we can't hammer out some kind of a deal with CivPlayers. If they are just stalling for time before an attack, the wonder has to go somewhere else. I'm hoping that scooter will be able to find their diplo guy in chat and work out some kind of long term deal. Waiting on that to happen before doing any extended planning for this city.



In the south, the barb axe didn't move at all as I expected, and headed northwest onto this plains hill instead of northeast onto the forested hill. That's a fine result for us though, and sets up the axe for easy killing next turn. We have a fortified 4.0 health axe protecting our chopping worker in the forest, and I moved our war chariot onto the same tile. If the barb attacks, we're defending in the forest with a nearly healed axe. If it doesn't attack, we can kill it no matter where it moves with our chariot next turn. Even if we would somehow lose on defense, the worker still won't be captured since we have two units in the forest. Most likely, the war chariot will just kill the barb next turn, and can then go scout in the deep south.

Starfall insta-grew back its whipped pop point, and is now filling up its granary at +7 food/turn. I think I've got a firm understanding of how to manage this city moving forward. We use one forest chop to finish the work boat for the fish, timed as soon as the city's borders expand. The overflow from that and a second chop goes into a library, using the Organized Religion bonus. We work corn/fish/oasis to grow quickly to size 4, then double-whip a worker, with the overflow finishing the library. The new worker plus the worker coming over from Focal Point post-Mausoleum (three workers total) allow us to reconnect stone quickly for our own use in building Moai Statues. We'll get to 4 culture/turn quickly (religion, monument, library) and that should be enough to win the early game culture battle.



I went ahead and drew in what the borders should look like eventually in this disputed region. I'm assuming that we'll be able to win the second-ring battles at both Starfall and Eastern Dealers. We get nearly all of the tiles, except the tile north of the stone is second-ring for them, but third-ring for Starfall and fourth-ring for Eastern Dealers. They should be able to hold that one. CFC spread religion into their city this turn, and so Delhi will pop borders on T115, but they will be hard pressed to get much culture beyond that, with only +4 food from the dry rice and no forests to chop.

That said, this whole region is a mess purely due to the dumb city placement of Delhi. This is seriously one of the stupidest plants I have seen in a long time. It's a low-quality city, essentially impossible to defend, and extremely antagonistic to achieve... uh... nothing? CFC could easily claim all of the resources in this area by putting down cities in vastly more defensible and stronger locations. If I'm dotmapping this region, I place two cities to claim all of the resources here. One goes south of the horses, a location that claims double food resources (grassland cows + dry rice) along with horses and two plains wines. Then I put my second city on the plains hill southwest-south of the cows, where it can share the grassland cows, claim the last wine resource, and also use the offscreen grassland pigs two south of the city. These locations would claim every resource in the area and would both be very difficult to attack, with a clear flatland killing zone that any invading army would have to walk through. Instead, this city of Delhi is completely open to attack, it will be swamped culturally for its entire existence, and they've made a needlessly provacative gesture towards a neighbor who has been very friendly throughout the game. All told, it's one of the dumbest things I've seen in a very long time.

Anyway... at the top corner of that picture, note that Great Wall is also one turn from completion. We've got at least a coin flip chance of landing it too, and given the lack of interest in wonders thus far, I'm feeling pretty good. Forbidden Fruit did not have enough improved tiles to work in the post-Hanging Garden boom, so it has double-whipped a missionary for Eastern Dealers. Here's a question I'm going to repost in the diplo thread: how about we ask WPC if they'd like a missionary? We can overflow from missionary to a second missionary in the city, and send the second one to WPC's capital. Getting another civ's worth of shrine income can only be a good thing, and WPC would probably jump at the chance for religion. How about it?



City management question for Focal Point. This city is awesome up to about size 6, and then really has nothing much to offer after that. I think that we cap this on growth, either as shown at size 7, or we can grow to size 8 and work two grassland cottages (the tile NE of the pigs and the tile south of the copper). But it might just be better to leave those unimproved and save them for workshops later. The cottages north of the city will pretty much all be going over to Mansa's Muse in the long run.

Here's my question: farm or cottage on the boxed white tile? I'm thinking we cottage this and work this cottage along with the three hills, the two resources, and 0-2 grassland cottages, which caps us at food-neutral status at size 6-8. Alternately, we can farm the tile and that opens up an irrigation chain to the city's center tile. But... what's really the point of irrigating here? I mean, none of the other tiles are particularly useful until much later in the game. Plus we can always bring irrigation over from Starfall's oasis if we need it. Anyway, my thought is therefore cottage here, but I'm wondering what others think. This is one city where growing to a large size doesn't really do that much for us.

Overview / tile micro:

We grew a LOT of population between turns. As such, there are some tiles being worked that aren't strictly optimal due to lack of worker improvement. The capital is losing -1 food this turn and running two Scientist specialists; I'll probably have it take back the corn next turn to start growing towards size 13, to make use of the ivory happiness coming in. We probably need to cottage the plains tiles there soonish (I see a way to do it down the road without wasting worker turns). The cities to the east are mostly pretty good thanks to that whip at Forbidden Fruit, just an unimproved floodplains being worked at Eastern Dealers and a bare grassland tile at The Covenant. TC gets an irrigated rice farm next turn when borders expand, all five workers insta-completing the farm in one turn. That's going to be another awesome city with time.

Tree Huggers has no improved tiles to use, and so works a Scientist while growing to size 8, then changes to worker and double-whips out the worker. Horse Feathers is working +9 food configuration to grow to size 7. We'll swap to barracks and keep growing next turn when the stone gets traded away, let that city just build population for the moment. There's a forest chop on the tile N-NW of the city timed for 8t from now which should finish Moai after we reconnect stone. Gourmet Menu and Seven Tribes are nearly able to cover all tiles, having to work one 1/0/3 coastal tile before a plains cottage completes next turn. I don't want to whip GM while there's a missionary on its way down there (from Tree Huggers), better to wait for the OR bonus. And I value the 1/0/3 coastal tile over working a priest specialist.

With our team being 3 beakers short of Construction tech, the Scientists are easily enough to finish the tech as we run 100% cash for +127 gold. We are almost exactly break-even at 50% science currently, making about 150 beakers/turn at that rate. Next tech is somewhat up in the air; we want some combination of Code of Laws, Aesthetics, and maybe Horseback Riding (for elephants) in upcoming turns. I'm hoping that we'll get an answer from CivPlayers before having to choose.



Demos are as good as we could hope for. Second in GNP at 0% science rate, first in Production, first in Food, first in Land Area, first in Total Pop, second in geometric pop, third in Power despite not making any real efforts to build military. I have nothing further to add, just waiting to hear from CivPlayers. Chase them down, scooter!

[kjn]

Agree with sending our missionaries around, especially if we can tie them to some other deal (like a resource trade).

I'm not sure about getting the SoZ in Brick by Brick. Even if we get a nice deal with CivPlayers (which seems likely right now), Brick by Brick will still be exposed due to being on flatland and with all those hills beside the city. I think Eastern Gem Dealers will be a better location. The culture will be useful there, and so will the GPP.

Otherwise the plans seems solid. We need to get a scouting work boat or galley out of Starfall soon, but it can wait until we get the library finished.

[Ruff_Hi]

Do we know who is south of us? I ask because all of the barbs that have been coming out way out of the southern fog will now be going elsewhere (they won't bother approaching a civ with TGW).

[novice]

Do we know who is south of us? I ask because all of the barbs that have been coming out way out of the southern fog will now be going elsewhere (they won't bother approaching a civ with TGW).

I think we think there's a polar sea? I think the barbs will be funneled west towards CivPlayers or east towards CFC.

[novice]

I'm not sure about getting the SoZ in Brick by Brick. Even if we get a nice deal with CivPlayers (which seems likely right now), Brick by Brick will still be exposed due to being on flatland and with all those hills beside the city. I think Eastern Gem Dealers will be a better location. The culture will be useful there, and so will the GPP.

The main attraction with SoZ is IMO the cheap culture. So BbB makes sense to me. If CivPlayers have promised not to settle the flood plains west of BbB it shouldn't be very antagonizing either, it'll just give us better border control.

Unrelated: With WPC settling east of ED as well, we have two spots we want to grab after the ivory: The city west of TC, and the city in the jungle between HF and the ivory city. Let's grab those ASAP, and the rest of our peaceful expansion should be to uncontested sites in the south.