Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Remember, it's also as good to trade with someone else who has traded with or scouted CivFr/CivPlayers. Keep our ears open for that.

Not sure on Civ.Fr, but I am confident CivPlayers hasn't let anyone in their territory so far.

[Sullla]

Turn 135 (500AD) City Planning

I normally hate the common reporting tactic of "post a picture of every single city", since 90% of the cities aren't doing anything important and serve to clog up the reporting threads with images. However, in this situation we have to figure out how to best manage a large amount of population in the next few turns, between whipping forges and drafting maces. Let's go ahead and look at our cities in order to figure out the best plan.

A note on forge whips. Most forge whips with Organized Religion civic will take 3 population to complete. Three pop whips produce 90 * 1.25 = 112 production with OR. This means that we need 8 shields in the box to be able to 3 pop whip forges, which is fairly easy to do. In some cases, we'll want to select certain tiles to line this up.

Another note about happiness in cities. Forges are worth +2 happy faces in every city from gems and gold. All cities will gain +1 happiness from the connection of furs in two turns (T137). Cities with markets will gain an additional +1 happy from the furs as well. Drafted units can also temporarily serve as military police in their cities to offset one part of the -3 unhappiness penalty.

I certainly don't agree with the comment we had earlier that we had "enough" happiness. I think that might be impossible in Civ4.

Adventure One

Draft: Yes
Forge: Maybe? Not sure

Here's the capital, no different from any other city now that we're out of Bureaucracy. We have whipped this city fairly heavily in recent turns, note the 34 turn whip duration as part of the failed Taj play. Now out of Bureaucracy, Adventure One will revert back to its traditional role of growing to the happy cap and then working all cottages. We have plenty of food here, which means that drafting the city is no problem. I am honestly uncertain on whether to whip a forge or not in the upcoming turns. A forge whip will cost 3 more population, and we're kind of recovering from three recent whips already. Yes, we want a forge eventually, but couldn't we simply grow back to size 14 or so and then work all the cottages for a little while? I dunno about this one. What does everyone think?

Mansa's Muse

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, but slowbuild, not whip

Mansa's problem has always been the need to work all of those plains cottages and the gold tile, which strictly limits its food surplus. We can speed up growth here by taking back the deer resource, but the capital needs that right now to recover from its own whipping spree. This city seems pretty simple to me: draft for the free mace but don't try to whip the forge. We can slowbuild it and get it done eventually, at this current 8 production -> 10 production via Organized Religion rate. It's not like there's anything else all that compelling to build here either. Keep working all of those cottages and slowly building the forge.

Focal Point

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, but slowbuild, not whip

Focal Point is not a terribly useful city until we get into State Property civic or discover Biology tech down the road. We're using as a military pump, and that gets reflected in our city management. Draft the city of course, since we can easily drop that plains farm tile, and then slowbuild the forge. I'm thinking we'll skip stables here and simply build an endless series of catapults. We have enough food to run a 10t draft cycle here with a few turns dropping the plains hill, and there's enough production with a forge to turn out 2.5 turn catapults. That seems like the best use of this weakish terrain.

Horse Feathers

Draft: Probably
Forge: Yes, but slowbuild, not whipped

This is about the only city where we might want to avoid drafting, but the conversion rate of food into production on a drafted mace is still pretty incredible. I would suggest drafting here anyway, and borrowing the corn tile back from the capital for a little bit to make up the slack. Obviously we do not whip the forge here, and let it finish naturally, which won't take very long at all. Then we build a stable and go for a whole bunch of elephants -> knights.

Gourmet Menu

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it

This city is fairly straightforward as well. It's a commercial city with average to weak production, and we've been accumulating population to whip here for some time. It's just about out of improved tiles as well. We want to whip the forge here and overflow into market, as well as drafting for the free mace.

Tree Huggers

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it

See Gourmet Menu. OK, that's a little bit too brief. Same idea though. We've been stacking up the population here for a bit, and now it's time to use some of it. Whipping/drafting off of the immature cottages won't be particularly painful either. The next tiles that the workers dejungle here will be the ones north of the city; I've been quietly clearing out all of the jungle tiles along our border with the Germans and CivPlayers. The other teams won't have defensive cover next to our cities if a war would break out later.

Seven Tribes

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it

Seven Tribes also looks a lot like these last two cities. It has just enough production to 3 pop whip the forge next turn if we want (I think... might be off on this), and then we'll still be size 6 and able to draft the mace. That will decimate the city's population, but hey, we've got +7 food surplus here from the irrigated wheat and cows, plus we can borrow floodplains tile for even more food. It'll grow back quickly enough.

Forbidden Fruit

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it

Same story here, we want to whip and draft this location. Forbidden Fruit doesn't have quite enough production to whip the forge next turn though, which is fine, we'll just whip a turn later. It's not worth the effort to work non-improved tiles here just to get the forge whip in a turn sooner. Side question: does anyone know if there's a benefit to whipping before drafting, or drafting before whipping? We're looking at doing both the same turn here. I'm honestly not sure if either case beats the other in micro.

Eastern Dealers

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it

Similar issue again at Eastern Dealers, the question is how we want to micro the city. I can swap off one or more of those coastal tiles to work mines instead, if we want to get the 8 production in the box to whip the forge faster. The question is whether that's worthwhile to do so; we could also just run max food and whip a little bit later. The city needs exactly 20 food to grow right now to size 10, so swapping off a coastal tile onto a mine will drop the growth ETA to 3t. But maybe that's what we want? I could use more feedback on how to manage this location. After the forge is done, we grow to the happy cap while building National Epic, and then run as many specialists as we can fit. Obviously we are going to draft here as well.

Brick By Brick

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, but slowbuild, not whip

This is the city closest to Focal Point in setup. It's a production city and military pump for our large civ, very little in the way of commerce. We want to build the forge here naturally, then a stables, then work on mounted units. We also do want to draft here as well; I think it takes 6t to grow back, and so that's 5 production less per turn when not working the plains mine (with forge). 30 production lost. But the mace is worth 70 production, so we still come out way ahead by drafting that pop point, and it gets even more lopsided with muskets and rifles later. So as most of your probably already knew, drafting more than worth it.

The Covenant

Draft: Yes
Forge: Maybe? Not sure

This is the only core city where we are working an unimproved tile. (There's one other grassland forest being worked at the size 1 brand new city, and we are 1 worker turn away from finishing a grassland river cottage southeast of the city here. Bah!) We will of course draft here, but we might not want to forge whip. I'm going to suggest we 3 pop whip a settler here instead; we want to keep expanding in the south, and this is the best city I can see for a settler whip. Low production, low infrastructure, no great need for a forge yet. Just work the cottages for now, and that's fine. Decent idea or crazy?

Starfall

Draft: Yes, heavens yes
Forge: Yes, whip it

If there is any city we want to abuse for whips and drafts, this is it. We can 4 pop whip the forge and get excellent overflow into Globe, so I think we should go ahead and do that. Then we can keep whipping catapults until it's done. Until we finish the Globe, we can't go too insane with drafting here, but every 10 turns should be easy.

Ditchdigger

Draft: Yes
Forge: Probably not?

This is a unique city here. We're running Artists right now to pop the borders at 100 culture; we need to run 2/2/1 Artists over the next three turns to make that happen. We also have a nearly completed courthouse. I don't have a great grasp on how to micro this one; grow to size 6 and draft, I guess? Maybe we then whip a barracks and overflow into finishing the courthouse? The forge feels like a ways away here. With the nearby tiles, I've cleared out the jungle from most of the attack paths to Ditchdigger, and there's a worker roading on the tile N-NW right now. We probably need to farm one more tile for +6 food surplus, and then I might watermill the tile on the German border. Watermills are pretty bad right now at 2/1/1 but we may as well lay the groundwork for those awesome 3/2/4 watermills later on. Feel free to make suggestions here.

Simple Life

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it, but after drafting

This city is similar to The Covenant, but since it has a library done, we want to give it a slight priority. That's why I suggest getting a settler out of the other city, and developing this one a bit more. We'll want to draft here first, and then 3 pop whip the forge. Since we need a few turns to build up the production for a forge whip anyway, this works out pretty well.

Cutting Edge

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it, but after drafting

Much like Simple Life, only this is a production city that doesn't need much in the way of commerce. We have a barracks here over halfway done, so we draft this city at size 6, then 3 pop whip the forge, then regrow population and start working the hill tiles as they get cut out of the jungle. This is going to be a very strong military pump in about 15-20 turns (20 shields base / 25 shields with forge once all the hills are mined; more than that in the State Property workshop era).

French Riviera

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it... eventually

This will be a pretty good commercial city down the road. The floodplains and irrigated wheat gets the city to +5 food even with the horses tile; we're going to add three grassland cottages on the green tiles within the city radius. Irrigation line goes through the plains tiles. I am currently planning on growing this city to size 6 so that it took can be drafted. We should probably swap this over to a forge as well, I forgot to do so for whatever reason. Note that French Riviera and Cutting Edge are the only two cities lack state religion. We'll fix that with some production overflow into missionaries from these forge whips.

Let It Snow and Frozen Jungle are both size 1 and don't need to factor into this discussion yet.

There you go, pictures of all of our cities at the moment. Note that I suggested drafting every city - that wasn't an accident. It's an insanely good conversion of food into production, the best in the entire game when you get to the rifleman. (At size 6, that's 15 food with a granary for 110 production. Crazy.) By my count, we can draft out 12 maces in the first wave, a few more following after that as cities grow, and then another 12 maces ten turns later on T137-139. Add in a bunch of catapults with some elephants for anti-mounted and later knights as soon as we can build them, and I think we'll be in good shape to take down the Germans. It will be hard for them to fight back if they don't have medieval units of their own, and there's no much you can do to stop an endless wave of drafted units when you don't have the draft yourself. If the war prolongs, well, we should have muskets on the third wave of draftees, and cuirassiers soonish after that.

That took quite a while to type, so let me know about your own thoughts on how to play this era of the game.

[waterbat]

Thanks much Sullla! We can draft 5 cities per turn with this map size? and each draft is worth -3 happy for 10t?

[novice]

We should offset the whips a bit, so that one city is working shared tiles while another city is regrowing - e.g. whip Seven Tribes while Gourmet Menu works the shared tiles, then whip GM as ST regrows. Or vice versa.

Also, Apolyton asked us not to move any closer to the barb city, and we agreed to that - and then moved closer anyway. Might require a followup diplo message.

[Azoth]

I think we need to start planning to get some defenses against espionage attacks coming from CFC. There's probably not that much to be done right now, but that should be a goal to keep in mind.

Build a few spies to station in cities/strategic resources. Keep a counter-espionage mission active. Nationhood will help with EP production too. But, I don't think they're going to be trying a whole lot right now, not with their guilty conscience over the handling of the Taj/marble issue.

Well, we do have an EP spending agreement with CFC, so unless we see them break it, we can rest easy.
(They only have about 60EP invested right now, not enough for anything.)
CivPlayers have a lot more EP invested, but our NAP rules out offensive spy missions, and I don't see them violating it.

We'll need to worry about espionage eventually, but not just yet.

[kjn]

Yeah, I did a double-take when I saw how the war chariot had moved too. It's not like getting visibility on a barb city is that important anyway - we could've moved the scout over there within 5t or so.

CFC's stupid city of Lokapara has two units in it right now: an unpromoted archer and a wounded (2.9/4) chariot with C1/Shock.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

If we have the pop to do so, doesn't it make sense to whip before drafting, just because of the slight increase in maintenance savings by having reduced population?

[Ichabod]

I think we need to start planning to get some defenses against espionage attacks coming from CFC. There's probably not that much to be done right now, but that should be a goal to keep in mind.

Build a few spies to station in cities/strategic resources. Keep a counter-espionage mission active. Nationhood will help with EP production too. But, I don't think they're going to be trying a whole lot right now, not with their guilty conscience over the handling of the Taj/marble issue.

Well, we do have an EP spending agreement with CFC, so unless we see them break it, we can rest easy.
(They only have about 60EP invested right now, not enough for anything.)
CivPlayers have a lot more EP invested, but our NAP rules out offensive spy missions, and I don't see them violating it.

We'll need to worry about espionage eventually, but not just yet.

Well, my logic is: the sooner we start planning for something, the lesser it'll cost us later. EPs also work considering the investment over time, right? So I think we should start spending more EPs against CFC as soon as it's allowed by our NAP, for starters.

[Sullla]

We're already fighting an uphill battle against multiple teams on EP spending. Why in the world would we want to pick an espionage fight with CFC? The agreement we have not to spend EP against one another is among the best deals we have active.

[kjn]

Some maps and other stuff:




CFC's stupid city. Currently garrisoned by a wounded C1/Shock chariot and an unpromoted archer. Has a granary and a jewish monastery. I don't think they're running artists right now, and our time of cultural vulnerability in Starfall is about to end anyway.




The land to the south of CFC, and where they have a safe backline. Not too strong land, except for the area directly south of Terasvin, though they might have more resources to their southeast. I'm somewhat concerned about their city of Abhi. It has Moai, so will have strong production. So even if we can get our cities down there, we might actually be outproduced in a naval race.




The contested area between WPC, the Spanish, CFC, and Univers. Not many resources, though a nice river valley to the east. Note also the source of ivory. We have one, CivFr has one within their backline (but not connected yet), and so this one, in an even more worthless location than Ditchdigger.