Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Sullla]

German team logged in and founded their eighth city, fortunately not in the disputed zone between our civs. This means we're on schedule for our fourteenth city (ha!) to be placed as scheduled in two turns. FYI, German team has furs connected somewhere in their territory, likely in the far north on the other side of the jungle.

German team also moved a scouting chariot into our territory, which I'm pretty sure goes against the treaty we signed with them earlier:

German Team (GWT)

-NAP until T150(!)
-Open Borders
-No-scouting clause on OB agreement

Of course I'm not mad at all about this. What it means is that they can't object when we start moving our own chariot into their territory to explore it and map it out for our impending invasion down the road. Which I'm going to start doing next turn.

[Dp101]

Of course I'm not mad at all about this. What it means is that they can't object when we start moving our own chariot into their territory to explore it and map it out for our impending invasion down the road. Which I'm going to start doing next turn.

Well, they violated it first, so sounds like a plan!

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Well, we're obviously not going to bring it up in diplomacy. What do we do if they withdraw 2 turns later and ask we do the same?

[NobleHelium]

Then we could withdraw. Or provoke an attack and stomp them.

[kalin]

What wonder did CivFr built?
Kalin

[Ceiliazul]

CivFr built the Mausolleum, beating us by ~2t

[kjn]

No wonder notices that I could see. CivFr should get at least 5 land score, and then they've grown some pop as well.

[kalin]

For some reason I was under the impression that they got a large score increase, but on second look it's not that large. That's why I thought about a wonder. If they have marble, they could pursue the GrLib and thus have Aesthetics.

Kalin

[Sullla]

Turn 110 - 125BC

The Spanish continue to go on the warpath, WPC finally agrees to a missionary, and we keep building up peacefully.



Our scout finally made it back down to Spanish territory after getting stuck outside UniversCiv's borders for a long time. I'm going to start moving through their territory until they tell us not to do so. We've never signed any kind of non-scouting agreement with them, and the hope is that they either won't care or have bigger fish to fry in the form of their war against CFC.

We spotted a whole bunch of Spanish units trickling forward around KwaDukuza. I've highlighted the units inside the city (two impis and a catapult) and then drew in the rest of the units. This is pretty much a confirmation of what we already knew: the Spanish are using a swarm of low-tech units that will soon be outdated. They have zero chance to win this game, but in the short run they sure can ruin someone else's game. Fortunately they are ruining CFC's game and not ours. Go get 'em guys.

This does raise the question of why the Spanish didn't simply wait until these units were in place to declare war, instead of walking them up to the front line one at a time afterwards. Perhaps they sniped a worker or settler that CFC left exposed to kick things off? Anyway, there have been no unit trades since the first turn of the war. War weariness on both side is almost down to zero, amusingly enough. CFC spent all of their money last turn though, presumably upgrading units; they have 3 gold in the bank and a negative gold income right now. Let's continue to hope that the Spanish will force CFC to keep whipping, upgrading, and wasting their time.



There's even more good land over in the far west. We spotted three sugars buried under more jungle, and that's one resource that we don't have ourselves. This land is definitely going to have to be in our longterm future plans at some point. It's way too good to ignore. Why is CivPlayers not pushing for Iron Working and settling this awesome land (?)



The barb spearman in the south moved into the forest, allowing it to live for another turn. Our C2/Shock axe will kill it as soon as it moves onto flat ground. The fewer barb units wandering around in the southern wastes, the better.

Gourmet Menu turned its whip overflow into Statue of Zeus failgold this turn:



This 96 production will get converted into 96 gold at a 1:1 ratio when we complete Statue of Zeus in Brick By Brick in a few more turns. Making use of failgold when you have the doubling resource for a wonder (stone, marble, etc.) is a borderline exploit in this game. It's even worse with Industrious trait too. Well, we don't have that, but we're still getting an absurdly good conversion rate on this whip overflow, which will be turned into more teching later.



Here is the northeast frontier. After kjn's conversation with WPC, I moved our missionary up to their border where they'll be able to see it incoming. That guy was literally standing in place last turn while waiting for their team to make up their darned minds. I'll move the missionary N-NE next turn, revealing the center tile of their dyes city, and keep moving the unit towards their capital until WPC asks us to gift the unit. No reason not to explore their territory in the process unless we hear otherwise. "It's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission" as they say.

There's also a German chariot very clearly in the middle of our territory scouting us out. I don't really care about that, but we did sign an agreement that neither side would enter each other's borders... at their insistence, by the way. Of course, there's no need to lodge a diplomatic complaint about this, we're simply going to send our own chariot to go explore their territory as well. And if that map information proves to be useful later when we go to war with the Germans, well, golly gee, who would have thought it!

The one irritating this is that their chariot will have full view of our settler in Eastern Dealers, who moves NW-NW-NW-NW this turn, and then settles next turn on the tile W-W-NW of The Covenant. I have left the settler unmoved so far, hoping that the Germans will move their chariot first, but if they play their typical "never end turn" clock games, we'll probably have to move the settler into their sight range. Oh well.

Overview / tile micro:

We had some nifty little things taking place this turn in tile micro. Four workers were in place to put down a river grassland cottage at Forbidden Fruit just as it grew to size 7, a tile that had to be cleared out from under the jungle. That was one place where planning ahead of time really made a difference, lining up those workers 3-4 turns in advance to get that tile roaded, cleared, and then cottaged just in time to line up with city growth. Mansa's Muse would normally be 1 food away from growing to size 9, so we drop one Scientist for this single turn (which does not affect the ETA for our Great Person there) and pick up an extra plains cottage. This results in exactly enough food to grow to the next size. Focal Point then picks up a new plains cottage finished last turn, trading a plains cottage for a plains cottage, and staying at exactly the same food/hammer numbers.

Scouting chariot deployment: I think we've got this figured out. The war chariot that finished in the capital is going to scout out German territory; it's up at Tree Huggers and will pass into their territory shortly. The Combat I war chariot in Starfall needs 2t remaining to heal, and will go down into the southern wastes as soon as that's done. Hopefully, this will finally reveal what's down there, after every previous unit in that area met a terrible death. That C1 chariot will get odds on every possible barb unit other than a spear - pray for no more bad luck. The chariot completing in Eastern Dealers will go off into CFC territory to reveal their new cities where we don't have map info and then watch the fireworks in the CFC/Spanish war. We'll need to name it something like "neutral observer" or "UN peacekeepers" or something like that. There's even another war chariot coming out of The Covenant down the road who will probably stay in that area for garrison duty and to handle any emergencies that crop up.

We nearly finished Code of Laws last turn, and we now sit at 597/630 beakers researched. We'll add 317 base / 471 modified beakers to that this turn, and overflow a large number into Civil Service next turn. This gets reflected in the Demographics:



We almost but not quite hit 400 on the GNP meter. Ah well. We do have the impressive trifecta of first in Food, Production, and GNP at the same time. Other teams have been building a fair amount of military, and we've now dropped to fourth in Power rating. We're behind the Germans and probably CFC and the Spanish. We can add more military extremely easily if we would need to do so; we're kind of coasting at present because we have deals with all neighbors and there's little point in building units that will be outdated by the time we go to war.

We grow another 5 population next turn and plant our 14th city along with discovering Code of Laws. That will be a lot of score points... CFC is up to 397 production now in their Pyramids city. Expect to see them finish the wonder in the next few turns. The Spanish are not spending espionage point against us, and we should have graphs on them in about eight more turns. I doubt that we'll be seeing the graphs of CivPlayers or Apolyton any time soon, with their huge number of courthouses, but we should be able to keep graphs on everyone else.

Turn is basically done now. Fire away with your questions and thoughts.

[kjn]

Nominate our military observer unit be named mostly_harmless