Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[SleepingMoogle]

Agree with double-bulbing Education. I'd hate to miss out on another important wonder/tech by a single turn.

I would recommend continuing our exploration of the south though. That we have not yet spotted Marble down there so far doesn't mean that we 100% won't will, and it also seems the south is where we would locate Silver, if there is any on this map.

[kjn]

Pretty much agree with Sullla. Yes, theoretically Apolyton could have two scientists tucked away and another on the way, but that'd have required them to skip two early academies, and a very hard push for early scientists that were saved for 20+ turns.

Ie, I think we will get a double-bulb of Education, and a relatively slow trek to Liberalism.

BTW, CFC's GNP went through the roof, they are the clear GNP leader with 510 (last turn top GNP was 365). They did adopt Bureaucracy last turn, so they researched CS last turn (T121), but I wonder which new tech they picked. I can't find any techs with double prerequisites that they can research right now. Top food also dropped markedly (229->208), so they have likely hired another bunch of scientists right after the turn rolled. Not sure how APTmod works here.

[Ubercannon]

Took another look at the GS bulb order, and depending on how prepared Apolyton are, they might be able to bulb Liberalism with a GS.

The relevant techs they know are Paper, Philosophy, Mathematics, Sailing. The relevant techs they do NOT know are Aesthetics, Calendar, Machinery, and Iron Working.

They can easily double-bulb Education, just like we plan to do. Printing Press requires Machinery, so that's blocked. Optics requires Compass, which requires Iron Working, so by not having IW they block out that line. Ie, they need to research Aesthetics and Calendar (1080 base beakers, with extra discounts from known techs), and can then put in a GS bulb worth circa 1650-1700 beakers into

Actualy iron working is in the scientist list, above liberalism, so this wouldn't work.

[pindicator]

Actualy iron working is in the scientist list, above liberalism, so this wouldn't work.

You need to grab IW and Compass but ignore Machinery. This will block Optics and Printing Press, letting you bulb Liberalism.
If Apolyton needs to tech Alphabet and Compass then that will be far slower than just double bulbing education

[Ubercannon]

Actualy iron working is in the scientist list, above liberalism, so this wouldn't work.

You need to grab IW and Compass but ignore Machinery. This will block Optics and Printing Press, letting you bulb Liberalism.
If Apolyton needs to tech Alphabet and Compass then that will be far slower than just double bulbing education

Yeah. Might be worth it for our team though, if we were very confident that we could delay liberalism a little and still win it, and bulbing edu+lib gives more beakers than double bulbing education.

[Sullla]

Turn 122 - 175AD

Apolyton reveals that they are racing for Liberalism... but we should have the inside track to win that race.



First some scouting pictures. Our scout in the far east has found two different sets of Apolyton borders next to that new CivFr city. They're a bit tough to see, try looking at the very top and right side of the screenshot. This is another indicator that the map in most other parts of the world is quite crowded; the territory of CivFr is pushed up against the borders of CivPlayers, Apolyton, and the Spanish based on what we've been able to see.

Side note: did Apolyton ever request a no-scouting clause for our Open Borders deal? I believe that they did not, and we can start moving the scout through their territory. Someone double-check this when they have a minute by going through our past diplo exchanges. We're pretty close to getting the full east-west circumnavigation bonus, and then we'll only need the north-south component to give our ships the extra movement point. Starfall will be popping out a galley to help in that effort once the Golden Age / Scientist shenanigans are over.



More confirmation of the polar ocean to the south of CFC territory. This is our first picture of a whales resource. If we're lucky, there will be more whales down in our own polar water region. That would give us all four market happiness resources (we have ivory + silks, and we'll settle for furs in the next ten turns).



Poor Sian is once agains stuck by the placement of another CivPlayers city. At this point, we just want to get out of this cul-de-sac and start exploring the region to the north. A Woodsman II unit is far too valuable to sit here and waste its time doing north. I plan to get this unit past their city by playing scumbag double move fashion: move at the end of Turn 123 and then again at the start of Turn 124. That's the only way to get clear of their territory. CivPlayers will know what we've done, but we can avoid having them log into the game and see our unit sitting within their territory.

Before anyone suggests it, no, I'm not deleting this unit. A Woodsman II axe is extremely valuable for scouting and swiping workers. We can and will use this unit later on in our wars.



Here is the scouting information from our own south. We have finally reached the southern shores, and found a non-forest deer tile in the tundra. I will move the axe southwest next turn to reveal the max number of ocean tiles, then head east from there. Our current best suggestion for city placement has us sending our next settler to the tile north of the furs (cows + crabs + furs). This may change depending on what we see in the polar ocean. That city gets founded on roughly Turn 129 or Turn 130; it will depend on the exact spot we pick.

I'm really hoping now that we'll be able to land Great Lighthouse (due eot 126), since it would make any coastal cities down here in the deep south far more profitable. We already have 6 coastal cities, and we could easily get another 3-4 down here if we tried. Remember, this is non-nerfed vanilla Lighthouse with two extra trade routes per city. 10 cities x 4 trade routes x 2 commerce each = 80 commerce. Not too shabby. Keep those fingers crossed.



There really isn't anything all that exciting going on in our civ this turn. I took a picture of our heartland for lack of anything particularly noteworthy. We're halfway through a whole bunch of important builds: Great Lighthouse, Heroic Epic, four theatres for Globe Theatre usage, two markets, etc.

With regards to Adventure One's management: I should be able to incorporate novice's suggestions there to speed up our Taj Mahal finishing date. I much prefer the plans that have us finishing the market on schedule, since the capital produces a *LOT* of commerce, and would also greatly benefit from the extra market happiness. I believe the plan I'm working with has us finishing Taj Mahal at eot 146, which feels like it should be good enough barring a Great Engineer from someone else. CivFr will need to research about 6000 beakers just to get Nationalism tech and start Taj, and that's equal to the sum total of all research they've done up to this point in the game. Hopefully, the German team stupidly sends us marble and turns this into an academic question; we'd be done around roughly T138 in that case, which feels extremely safe.

Since there's not a terrible amount going on with our own civ this turn, let's look at the some Demographics charts. We can now see the bar graphs of everyone other than CivFr, Apolyton, and CivPlayers. Sadly, these are some of the strongest and most important teams. Not much we can do about that though.



Food is about what you would expect. Note the sizable dip downwards when we hired 12 Scientist specialists in Golden Age mode. I won't bother posting the Production graph, which has everyone clumped together and then a huge surge upwards from our team when we started the Golden Age.



We've comfortably led all of these teams in GNP for essentially the whole game, even ignoring the Golden Age spike at the end. The CivFanatics GNP spikes upwards at the same time that their Food goes down, which is a reflection of the times when they hired a bunch of (Representation) Scientist specialists. UniversCiv's GNP has begun to recover in the last dozen turns as a result of their whipped rathauses. This is slowly getting them back to a decent rate, but they are probably too far behind from their awful early game research, and they do not have Financial trait to boot. This is basically what CivPlayers would have looked like if they had missed their Oracle -> Code of Laws play and had had to research the tech manually. It was a long, slow crawl by UniversCiv to their courthouses.

WPC, the Spanish, and the Germans all have pitiful economies and are out of the game completely. It's only a matter of time until stronger, more advanced teams devour them and take their land.



Everyone is pretty clustered together on the Power graph, no one team really standing out in any direction. We are #2 in Power behind CFC, although not by any sizable margin. The war between CFC and the Spanish has clearly entered a stalling phase; I would not be surprised to see them sign peace soonish. Very few units exchanged by either side. When we actually start building units in about 10 turns, I expect us to take a dominant lead in these graphs. Horse Feathers can nearly build 1t catapults outside of Golden Age mode (it actually can hit the one-turn mark once it finishes its forge) and easily does 2t maces/knights. I believe that we can do 2 knights across 3 turns there once all the modifiers are in place, and that will make for a big army in a hurry.

Overview / tile micro:

As I said before, no major changes this turn anywhere. Still running the cadre of Scientists in the east, still building up in Golden Age mode. French Riviera will pop borders next turn from its Artist. There are missionaries in both German and WPC territory, who should be spreading religion soonish.



We are dominant in all of the Demos except for GNP, where our 0% science rate has caused one of the teams to leapfrog us. Kjn has pegged the leading team as CFC running a whole bunch of Representation Scientists; they just finished Civil Service and revolted to Bureaucracy last turn. Much of the "Rival GNP" is rather fictitious this turn though, since all of our major rivals are sitting on 0 gold and running 100% science. They'll all have to swap to lower rates and begin to pile up gold again.

This includes Apolyton, who discovered Paper this turn as expected. Let's look at their situation a little more closely. Here are their recent turns:

(Start of) Turn 116: discover Metal Casting, 0 gold, 0% science
Turn 117: 100 gold, 0% science
Turn 118: 200 gold, 0% science
Turn 119: 300 gold, 100% science, start Paper
Turn 120: 200 gold, 100% science
Turn 121: 100 gold, 100% science
Turn 122: 0 gold, discover Paper

In other words, it took them exactly 6 turns of research to discover Paper tech. They have 3 gold in the bank right now, and will have to begin building up their treasury from scratch. That or do break-even research at a lower rate, one or the other. Since Paper tech costs 1080 beakers, we have a pretty good estimate of their research rate, roughly equal to 150 base beakers / 180 modified beakers per turn. Our current beaker rate in Golden Age mode is about 370 base / 450 modified beakers per turn. In other words, we're researching MUCH faster than Apolyton at present. (Of course, we don't know how many beakers Apolyton overflowed from Paper into Education, but these numbers are very much in line with the GNP values we were observing and past techs that they've researched. I'm reasonably sure that Apolyton makes about 300 base beakers / 360 modified beakers at 100% science right now, literally double their break-even rate.)

So Apolyton needs to research Education tech (3240 beakers) and Liberalism tech (2520 beakers) in order to win this race. We need both techs as well as what's left of Philosophy (we have about 1100 out of 1400 beakers) and Paper tech (1080 beakers). Our plan is to research 99% of Philosophy and Paper techs, then chain-overflow research from both of them and Archery into a double Education lightbulb and a 1t Liberalism. It's pretty darn slick to watch in practice, as we go from not even having the pre-requisites for Education on T127 to getting Archery (eot 127), Philosophy (eot 128), Paper (eot 129), and then we instantly bulb Education and one-turn Liberalism for eot 130. Apolyton will likely feel as though they have this thing in the bag, only to be left scratching their heads when we suddenly claim Education and Liberalism in a single turn.

OK then, how does this race shape up? Well, if Apolyton doesn't have a Great Scientist sitting around for a lightbulb, they have zero chance whatsoever to win this race. They would need to get 5700 beakers in the next 8 turns, and that is just not happening (needed: 720 beakers/turn!) Other scenarios:

* One Scientist: It will be extremely difficult for Apolyton to win this race with one Scientist on hand. That would give them about 1650 beakers (we get more beakers from lightbulbs because we have about double their pop), and leave them to research 4100 beakers in 8 turns. That's 514 beakers/turn, more than triple the rate that they just showed on Paper tech. Seems unlikely. This is the case that I think is most likely; I believe that Apolyton has one Scientist available for Education, but not two or more.

* Two Scientists: In this scenario, Apolyton does what we've going to do, and double-lightbulbs Education. Then they just need to get the beakers for Liberalism, 2520 beakers, or needing 315 beakers/turn. This is still more than double the rate that they just showed on Paper, but it's within the realm of possibility. Hopefully the sneaky way that we research Liberalism will catch them off guard and help to rule out this possibility. (Any beakers invested in Education are completely wasted here because the tech gets magically researched by the double lightbulb. Trying to research 1000 beakers and then lightbulb the rest will not work under this scheme.)

* Three or more Scientists: OK this is extremely unlikely, but let's still consider this case. Here Apolyton runs afoul of the lightbulb order. After Education, they must research Iron Working (360 beakers) and Compass (720 beakers) in order to bulb Liberalism itself. In other words, they must invest 1060 beakers into these techs so that they can lightbulb Liberalism for about 1600 beakers. That's still advantageous to them, but remember that you can only discover one tech per turn in Civ4 through normal research. For this to work, Apolyton would have to recognize what we're doing about 5 turns ahead of time, double-bulb Education, research two wildly non-essential techs, and then use a third lightbulb on Liberalism. The odds of all that happening in the next 8 turns are effectively zero.

I believe that Apolyton will have one Scientist ready to use in their Liberalism push. That's a very standard play: one Scientist knocks out 60% of Education as you research towards Liberalism. We know that Apolyton has already gotten two Scientists (one for Academy in the capital, one for Philosophy lightbulb) thus far, and kjn thinks they may have used a third one for an Academy in their second city. I'm less certain of that, but maybe. Apolyton has never run Pacifism or Caste System at any point in time in the game; they are currently in Slavery / Organized Religion. Even for a Philosophical civ, it takes 25 turns of running double Scientists from a library to get a Great Person at the 300 GPP tier, and then 33 turns of the same to get the fourth Great Person at 400 GPP. If they are already on the 500 GPP tier, it takes 42 turns. Unless they have been setting up an elaborate chain of Great Scientists as far back as Turn 80 (when Apolyton only had 5 cities; they did not get city #6 until Turn 91), they simply do not have that many Great Scientists to play around with.

TLDR: Apolyton probably will have one Great Scientist to play around with, at worst two. They are unlikely to spot our plan and will very probably be caught off guard by our sneaky mass overflow / double lightbulb 1t Liberalism play. In the absolute worst case scenario, we don't invest any beakers into Liberalism until Turn 130 itself; we can always redirect all of that into Nationalism tech instead if by some miracle the free tech is already gone before we get there.

I think we'll win this race and win it without too much trouble. But better safe than sorry.

[pindicator]

We'd need to tech Alphabet (300 base beakers), Compass (400b), and Metal Casting (450b) to gain the difference in bulbing the rest of education and a full bulb.

[sooooo]

1N of the furs does indeed look like the correct spot for the settler after next. I share your excitement and hope over the great lighthouse!

[novice]

I've just skimmed Sullla's latest turn report, but I only have time right now to put up this plan for discussion:

t121-t123: Market to near completion
t124-126: Settler to 99/100
t127: Adopt OR and Slavery. AO gets the deer from Mansa's Muse, Mansa's Muse stagnates.
t127-t128: Temple or Monastery to as much as we can get it.
t129: 1-pop whip the Temple or Monastery, micro-managing to get as close to 120/60 or 160/80 as possible.
t130: Double-bulb Edu, overflow from Archery/Philo/Paper to a 1-turn Liberalism
t130: Overflow to market and 1-pop whip the Market and put max hammers into it. Regrow to size 13 at eot?
t131: Overflow a bunch of hammers to Taj Mahal
t132: 1-pop whip settler
t133: Overflow back to Taj Mahal
eot144: Complete Taj Mahal??

Here's a save stack showing that his works for getting the Taj Mahal eot144, as a 14-turn build.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15215428/ISDG1/...ettler.zip

In fact, while simming this I moved around the workers semi-randomly and selected wealth builds in most cities - that was actually enough to get Lib eot129 in the sandbox, thus starting Taj Mahal on t130 and finishing it eot143. I reckon we'll be unwilling to build wealth to the extent that I did in the sandbox though, so we should probably adjust to Lib eot130 and Taj Mahal eot144.

I am delaying the market, it's an integral part of the plan. The cost of delaying the market by 7 turns is, back-of-the-envelope:
AO makes 30 gpt at break-even in a golden age.
AO makes 40 gpt at break-even out of a golden age (paradoxically, because we run a lower slider out of the GA.)
Ok, so let's say 7 turns of 40gpt. The market would then add 10gpt for 7 turns, so delaying the market costs us 70 gold. I say we can afford that.

The happiness hit is irrelevant, we just need to add one more unit to AO for MP.

The sim starts from the t121 sandbox and we're already on t122, so that's why I'm rushing this out.

[SevenSpirits]

This includes Apolyton, who discovered Paper this turn as expected. Let's look at their situation a little more closely. Here are their recent turns:

(Start of) Turn 116: discover Metal Casting, 0 gold, 0% science
Turn 117: 100 gold, 0% science
Turn 118: 200 gold, 0% science
Turn 119: 300 gold, 100% science, start Paper
Turn 120: 200 gold, 100% science
Turn 121: 100 gold, 100% science
Turn 122: 0 gold, discover Paper

In other words, it took them exactly 6 turns of research to discover Paper tech. They have 3 gold in the bank right now, and will have to begin building up their treasury from scratch. That or do break-even research at a lower rate, one or the other. Since Paper tech costs 1080 beakers, we have a pretty good estimate of their research rate, roughly equal to 150 base beakers / 180 modified beakers per turn. Our current beaker rate in Golden Age mode is about 370 base / 450 modified beakers per turn. In other words, we're researching MUCH faster than Apolyton at present. (Of course, we don't know how many beakers Apolyton overflowed from Paper into Education, but these numbers are very much in line with the GNP values we were observing and past techs that they've researched. I'm reasonably sure that Apolyton makes about 300 base beakers / 360 modified beakers at 100% science right now, literally double their break-even rate.)

Looking at the best case scenario like you are here makes me uneasy. If we ignore other information sources like their GNP, the correct analysis is:

* They took somewhere between 2t and 3t of 100% tech to research paper.
* Based on their rate of gold gain/loss their breakeven rate is 50%.
* Therefore researching paper takes between 4 and 6t of 50%, for them.
* Therefore they produce between 150 and 225 beakers per turn at breakeven.

All that said, it's hard to imagine how they could beat us without some all-in choices in terms of building wealth or research, and getting great people.