Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[kjn]

One note on our current food lead, is that a lot of it is because CFC hired a lot of scientists last turn. On T115 our food lead was only 27.

[Ceiliazul]

Graph from t114


Good play by CFC, a couple Einsteins can easily catch them up or pass CivFr in tech. If they gain an ally in CivPlayers for espionage missions, they can put a hurt on us.

What is our espionage counts for/against with CivPlayers now? Sulla said over 300... 300/0?

Also: Go Spanish Poly! Don't get digested!

[Sullla]

Turn 118 - 75AD

We finish another wonder and continue preparing for our impending Golden Age.



Scout in the extreme east has cleared Spanish territory and now found the CivFr blue borders on the other side of the world. This gives us a pretty good idea of the general contours of their territory. At the same time - whoa, what the heck is going on here?! Injured Spanish units right next to a CivFr city. This must be the barbarian city that kjn was talking about in the C&D numbers. Looks like CivFr stole this one out from under the noses of the Spanish. Wonder if they'll do anything about it? Could we be seeing even more aggression from the Spanish???



We've also unconvered the CFC city in the southeast corner of their territory, and this is probably also a former barb location that they captured. Abhi has a granary (and Judaism) present, nothing else so far. I saw no military action from CFC or the Spanish along the border as the chariot passed by. I moved our chariot onto the ice tile to the southeast after taking this picture, which revealed more water tiles and no seafood resources. It looks extremely likely now that there's an ocean along the polar worldwrap separating north from south. Getting some port cities and some ships into that body of water down the road could be crucially important. Remember that for circumnavigation purposes later.



More from the Germans in their north. These guys don't have much territory, but they're doing a solid job of making use of what they do have. I think they would probably be roughly around where UniversCiv is located in the game hierarchy or maybe even higher if they hadn't been the recipient of WPC's idiot attack earlier. They have two more cities north of Wien in the northern tundra that we have yet to reveal. There's also another settler guarded by an axe on the tile east of our chariot, which will found city #11 for their team. If they could ever somehow get some research going, they could be a much more dangerous team. Unfortunately they only make +22 gold/turn at 0% science right now, so... yeah.

I haven't moved the Woodsman II axe through the one tile of CivPlayers territory yet. We do have Open Borders in place now to open up that move. I'll scumbag it and move at the end and beginning of this turn roll, just to avoid any diplo complications. We never actually end a turn in their territory, just pass through via Woodsman II forestwalking, but still. Better safe than sorry.



Here's the northwest corner of our territory. I've got two minor issues for discussion here. First up is the build in Ditchdigger: we've finished the granary via forest chop and have quite a bit of overflow to play around with, about 36 shields total. I have no strong feeling about the build, and set the city to courthouse for lack of better choices. The other best option I could think up was to build Wealth for the moment and preserve that overflow for a theatre when we get Drama in a couple turns. More culture for a third-ring border pop would certainly be useful up there. However, we would lose the OR bonus on the overflow because we'll be in Pacifism by that point in time, costing us about 6-7 production. Worth it? Give me your thoughts.

Horse Feathers is still working fish, corn, lake, and 5 Moai coastal tiles. We get a ninth population point this turn though, and we can choose to grab the 1/1/5 silks or the 1/3 grassland hill. I took the hill tile since I figured we wanted to production for Heroic Epic over the extra commerce right now. We're amassing gold, after all, not researching. Good call or not?

I'm going to swap one of our axes with 0 XP over to serve as military police at Tree Huggers and keep the 3 XP war chariot coming out of Brick By Brick over there in the west in case of trouble. That unit shuffle will take a couple of turns to enact.



Seven Tribes swaps to settler this turn, will whip next turn and move to the spot two tiles north of the horses. There are workers up at the top edge of this screenshot roading to the location; we'll have the settler come out T120 and found the city T121 thanks to their nifty roadwork.

In the south, I'm sending axeman Lew to explore down by the furs. If there's anything that can survive down there, it's a C2/Shock axeman walking around on defensive terrain. Thank goodness there are no barb chariots. There's an axe and warrior circling around our borders and heading over to CivPlayers territory - I wasn't going to initiate an unnecessary axe vs axe battle for no reason. Let them go bother our neighbors instead. We are of course safe thanks to Great Wall.

Gourmet Menu's Great Lighthouse is actually due eot 125 after we due some micromanagement during the upcoming Golden Age. Seven more turns total. Given the vast stretches of land on this map, and every capital being landlocked, I think we've got pretty good odds to land this one, and it'll be more valuable than most teams probably think. (It's fairly easy for us to get 7-8 cities on coast, and more than that if we take over German territory.)



This is an overview of the east. Forbidden Fruit is producing one final missionary for WPC; does anyone remember which city they want us to send this one to? I lost it in all of their in-game messages. Starfall and Eastern Dealers are frantically building population for Scientist usage during the Golden Age. Starfall will finish its library at the end of next turn with the help of two forest chops. I really want to start pushing back against the CFC culture on that stone tile; they are in Caste System and could hire a bunch of Artists in there if they really wanted to screw us over. We need to get library and then theatre in there ASAP, which fortunately is very easy to do.

Let's look then more closely at two of our core cities in this area:



Focal Point just finished Swedagon Paya and will overflow/complete a barracks this turn. This wonder allows us to run our Golden Age + Caste System + Pacifism strategy without researching Philosophy tech ahead of time. It also allows us to skip researching Theology tech, ever, and still lets us make use of Theocracy civic later on. That's 1000 beakers saved forever right there.

Focal Point the city has worked a lot of cottages so far this game, but is actually a terrible commerce city longterm and won't ever bother building much in the way of commercial infrastructure. We'll even be giving that grassland cottage north of the city over to Mansa's Muse in time. It's pretty much all military here from now on. What we really need is State Property for workshop spam here, but in the absence of that, I'm going to chain irrigation along the indicated line of blue "F" signs to get a little more food going here. The city currently has 17 base production, and I would dearly love to grow onto a few more plains farms to hit 20 base production / 25 production with forge for 2t catapults. That's a longterm project, not a priority, but we should have the worker labor to improve it.



Mansa's Muse is the exact opposite, an extremely strong commercial city where we're unlikely to build much in the way of military. We've been crippling the growth here for quite some time running specialists, which will finally produce our second Great Person next turn. The type doesn't matter at all, since it's going to be used for a Golden Age. Feel free to lay your bets anyway.

We'll finally be able to grow this city further once it can drop the specialists. Sadly, the need to work 3 plains cottages and a gold tile (-5 food) means that growth will never be that awesome here. Mansa needs to steal the deer tile from the capital and work the corn tile just to get any growth going most of the time. Because of that, I'm very hesitant to whip this city. The Golden Age will let us knock out the rest of that market fairly quickly (worth a lot of gold with the Shrine in here), and then start making progress on a forge. We definitely want a grocer and bank in here ASAP.

Overview / tile micro:

The main thing I'll discuss here is research plans. We were discussing that in the C&D thread, and it's better placed here. So right now we've finished Literature tech and overflowed about 145 beakers into Drama. The plan is to run 0% science for the next two turns to stockpile gold, and then go 100% research on T120 when we pop the Golden Age and revolt into Bureaucracy / Pacifism / Caste System. (Note that this produces about 560 beakers/turn. Not bad.) The preferred tech route would look like this:

Drama -> Music -> Metal Casting -> Horseback Riding -> Philosophy -> Liberalism beeline

* Drama makes Music/Philosophy cheaper to research and unlocks theatres
* Music gets us Great Artist
* Metal Casting for forges, which we need really badly
* Horseback Riding lets us build some "real units" in the form of elephants and get stables
* Philosophy is a prerequisite for Liberalism, and then on to Paper/Education/Liberalism

Now that said, this might not be possible. CivFr has Literature tech and they are currently researching something at 100% rate, which could very well be Music tech. We don't know what they're up to. I'm hoping that they are just trying to pick up Civil Service, which would be the most logical choice. They have no idea what techs we have and no idea how close we are to Music. We also don't have to invest any beakers into Music until we 1-turn it on T121, so if CivFr would take the Artist, we lose absolutely nothing. We'll just drop it out of the tech path. While that would be a shame, it would also effectively lock CivFr out of the Liberalism race, because there's no way they can beat us to the tech if they invest that much into the top of the tree.

Alternately, how many of these techs depends on how aggressive Apolyton gets at pursuing Liberalism themselves. We can see their research thanks to their Alphabet tech, and we'll know if they start pushing for Education. Right now, they have about 200 gold and have been stockpiling it for the last two turns at 0% science (they make just over 100 gold/turn at min science). If we see them piling up like 1000 gold, that's an obvious sign they are preparing for a Liberalism run. Or if they grab Paper as their next tech, that means the same thing. Depending on how aggressive they get, we can do this path instead:

Drama -> Music -> Metal Casting -> Philosophy -> Liberalism beeline

Or if we're really worried:

Drama -> Music -> Philosophy -> Liberalism beeline

Since we have both an upcoming Golden Age and another Scientist ready to lightbulb Education, I'm fairly confident that we can beat them in a straight race. We could even use TWO Scientists on lightbulbs if we really wanted to get desperate, and simply not use one of them on an Academy as planned in the capital. I do not think they can beat us if we really try. Anyway, we're going to try and pick up the Music free Great Artist first, and then we'll play it by ear from there. Cross your fingers and hope that Apolyton diverts some research into the Aesthetics line, or feels the need to get Machinery tech for maces, or some such alternate path. They also have literally nothing in the way of military stuff (no Iron Working, Construction, or Horseback Riding); maybe they'll feel the need for some of that too.



Start of turn Demos. I'm pretty happy with our GNP at 0% science, especially given that both CivFr and CFC are at 100% science right now. Our value was 375 at max rate, for the curious. Everything else looks pretty solid.

We're a couple turns away from graphs with the Spanish, getting close though. Should be all for the moment.

[NobleHelium]

I like the courthouse build in DD. There's no real urgent need for a theatre there, and the courthouse would save us a lot even if it will take quite a while to build.

Silk tile is likely better than the mine at HF. It doesn't matter whether we have research turned on or not.

[Lewwyn]

forestwalking

Unblockable!

Also, courthouse.

[Bigger]

I like the courthouse build in DD. There's no real urgent need for a theatre there, and the courthouse would save us a lot even if it will take quite a while to build.

Silk tile is likely better than the mine at HF. It doesn't matter whether we have research turned on or not.

agree on both points. doesnt seem like there is an urgent need to complete the heroic epic, better to save up more gold.

also no urgent need for third ring borders in DD.

[Ruff_Hi]

I'm putting my money on the short odds GSpy.

[novice]

What's the timing on those great scientists? Does getting paper before philo allow us to bulb philo and edu if we're getting raced? Or isn't bulbing philo any less wasteful than bulbing paper or double-bulbing edu? Philo is a double-prereq tech, after all, so bulbing it is less efficient.

Minor tile swapping suggestion: Work the river plains farm over a plains cottage in ST, work plains cottage over coast in GM.

[novice]

Okay, caught up on the C&D thread - yeah so we should handresearch philo since we'd need Alpha otherwise, and bulb or double-bulb Edu depending on the situation. Get Philo before Edu if we need to wait for our GScis or if we need to gauge the situation before choosing between single and double bulb. Get Edu before Philo otherwise, for faster Oxford.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I agree. Hand research for Philosophy. Discount double-check from CoL + Drama, plus the bonus from known civs. We'll get at least one of those as well. So, bulbs for Education. We'll know our tech path for certain after Music, one way or the other.