Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[kjn]

No.

[Qgqqqqq]

Thought not.
Stupid design really.

[Sullla]

Turn 136 - 520AD

This was a pretty quiet turn all things considered. Probably the most eventful thing was getting a map trade with the German team.

Thanks to recent map trades and our own exploration, we have a fairly complete picture of Apolyton's territory. They have 14 cities and this is 12 of them. Our scout is now doubling back to explore that tundra area to the north and then the missing area in the southwest. Apolyton just whipped 8 universities so that they can build Oxford in their capital. They have extremely good infrastructure in their cities: granaries, forges, libraries, universities, courthouses, etc. The tradeoff is that they have on of the lowest population totals in the game, and they didn't secure too much of the expansion pie. Looks like they are crammed into a relatively small space on the north side of the map. We're also pretty sure that they have the weakest military in the game right now.

Although it's premature to make any decisions now, Apolyton may be a good target for attack down the road, after our German war. A team with high infrastructure but low population and territory can sometimes be a tempting target. We'll see where we stand down the road in 50 turns.



Here are the polar islands after trading maps with the German team. We revealed a little bit more territory, nothing all that special. There is another silver resource further to the south across the worldwrap, neither one has any food resources in range that we can see. It will still be worthwhile to place a city down there for the silver... eventually. And island cities also get the offshore trade route bonus too.

There's a war chariot inside the galley which will be dropped off next turn on the southern island. Then we'll pick up the other chariot over in CFC land and use it to scout the islands too. In the west, I moved the Sentry chariot conservatively, not moving onto the tundra hill because there could have been a barb axe nearby. With Sentry promotion, we should never have to face combat if we move carefully. I did not want another barb disaster stopping us from exploring further west.



Here's the one stupid part of the turn. CivPlayers moved up their chariot and put our worker roading expedition in danger. Unfortunately we did not have another unit anywhere nearby to cover these units, so they are woefully exposed right now. I'm pretty sure that we're safe as long as we move first next turn, since I can cover the workers with our war chariot once the new city gets founded, but this is really irritating. That CivPlayers chariot is actually trapped by our borders right now.

Can we send CivPlayers a diplo message asking them to sign Open Borders and move their chariot out to the west? I really want that unit gone. Their insistence on never signing any deals with us is a huge pain in the ass. Sigh.



Here's an overview of our core cities. I was able to do some juggling of tiles and I'm happy with how these cities are currently set up. We have high growth just about everywhere (except for Mansa's Muse, which is going to take back the deer tile from the capital next turn). Brick By Brick picked up a third-ring forest chop to speed along its forge. We are deforesting the border there for future safety if CivPlayers ever does anything. Ditchdigger runs 2 Artists this turn, then 1 Artist next turn, and that will pop its borders.

Here's the only city that I think we should whip this turn:



This one seems pretty straightforward to me. Growth in one turn, we whip off the immature cottages, and the whip unhappiness counter is about to reset anyway. I wanted to get approval from the team before doing anything, but this one did feel like a bit of a slam dunk.

Gourmet Menu was in a similar position of being 1t away from growth and having no whip unhappiness, but we didn't put enough production into the forge there last turn. The forge would be a 4 pop whip this turn. We'll have to whip it later.



Here are the eastern cities. Forbidden Fruit will get its forge whip next turn, when it's a turn away from growing. Eastern Dealers is working away on that National Epic, needs five more turns. The Covenant gets swapped to a settler next turn for a 3 pop whip, when it's about to growth. (Or do we swap it this turn? I know that those settler whips can be a little strange, with the whole "grow after whip while building a settler thing.")

Overview:

We will finish Machinery tech this turn. The science rate can be dropped to 90% if desired, but I don't see any real point to that. First round of drafting to begin next turn. I suggest that we research Horseback Riding next, allowing Horse Feathers and Brick By Brick to construct stables (and a few elephants) after their forges are done. And Horseback Riding is a pre-requisite for knights as well. We might as well get it now and then go Feudalism -> Guilds.



The Demos look surprisingly good with three other teams in Golden Ages. We're second in GNP on a tech with standard 20% prerequisite bonus and no known civ bonus. No team in the game has either Machinery or Feudalism right now, and CivPlayers are still the only ones with Horseback Riding. Not exactly a militaristic world out there. CFC is the team with the 720 GNP when I took this screenshot. The only notable tech discovery this turn was CivFr picking up Paper tech; Apolyton and CFC were both stockpiling gold. We are nearly 100 Food ahead of the second place team (!!!) To have that much of a Food advantage while also being the tech leader and the Land Area leader and the Power leader is fairly disgusting.

We'll need a name for the sheep city to be founded next turn, suggest away. The only really irritating thing this turn is that CivPlayers chariot, so let's see if we can talk to them diplomatically and get them to move it back to their borders.

[kjn]

Getting OBs with CivPlayers and Univers should be our main diplomatic goals right now.

You lose 2H overflow when you whip a foodhammer unit (ie worker or settler) and grow on the same turn. Apparently, the new civizen is created and requires food, which is taken from the overflow, but without producing anything. I had that in PBEM 42, and I think Seven and Novice had the issue in PBEM 23 as well.

So I think it's best to whip The Covenant this turn, so we grow eot 137. But where should we send the settler? Offshore? West of Let It Snow? The deer-crab spot on the southeastern tip of our backline?

If we can get some food by the silver south of us (note that have two lighthousable freshwater tiles on the island) I think that would be the best location, unless our sentry chariot can spot something juicy to our southest.

[T-hawk]

You lose 2H overflow when you whip a foodhammer unit (ie worker or settler) and grow on the same turn. Apparently, the new civizen is created and requires food, which is taken from the overflow, but without producing anything. I had that in PBEM 42, and I think Seven and Novice had the issue in PBEM 23 as well.

Correct. The effect was discovered by ManiacMarshall back in Pitboss 3, and I did the code reading to lay out the full explanation.

On whipping Tree Huggers... I'm not sure the forge is worthwhile at all here? It adds a whopping 1 hammer to the city's base production of 5. The forge won't recover its cost until after 16 more population worth of whips. That's huge and a long way away, especially if drafting will be consuming population as well. Yeah the whip cost is immature cottages, but they're only going to mature some day if they're worked.

[Twinkletoes89]

On whipping Tree Huggers... I'm not sure the forge is worthwhile at all here? It adds a whopping 1 hammer to the city's base production of 5. The forge won't recover its cost until after 16 more population worth of whips. That's huge and a long way away, especially if drafting will be consuming population as well. Yeah the whip cost is immature cottages, but they're only going to mature some day if they're worked.

Only thing I can think of is that this city later on could have the cottages turned to state property workshops and then a forge would be very much useful.

Other than that, I agree that its probably not worthwhile to build the forge.

[kjn]

The value of the forge isn't only in the bonus hammers, but in the +2 happy as well, and Seven Tribes is butting up against our happy cap right now. Yeah, we could built a barracks instead, or whip the market later on, but the forge makes those easier to build too.

Especially when we begin drafting, we're going to need every happy face we can get.

Another thing I thought about when logged into the game: should we make a push for windmills at some of our cities? Especially on cities with riverside hills, where we get instant 2-1-3 and 1-2-3 tiles.

Candidate cities and hills I'm thinking about:

* The two bare hills by Mansa's Muse. We're never going to have enough food to work mines there, so why not windmill them? At least we get a chance of working them then. Obviously low priority.

* Tree Huggers has two grass hills, that I think make good candidates, once we're approaching get Electricity.

* Seven Tribes, with two plains hills. The same as Tree Huggers.

* The Covenant has a riverside plains hill, which is a very good candidate.

[Sullla]

I also would suggest that we want to be careful not to overthink a case like Tree Huggers. Yeah, we don't have a lot of production there now, but we will down the road when we workshop a bunch of those grassland tiles currently under the jungle. We also have two grassland hills as well, and a worker is mining the southern one as we speak. Even if we never worked any of those production tiles, the forge should be worthwhile for the future whipping benefits and bonus happiness alone in this city. We have a high food surplus here (+6 food/turn normally, can go to +7 food/turn with the other grassland farm) and currently low production. It felt to me like this was an ideal time to whip the forge. We'll grow back one pop point immediately, and then I think it takes 5 turns to grow back the other two. I mean, what else are we going to do here if we don't whip the forge? Sit at the happiness cap and work Scientist specialists or something? There aren't any key tiles to grow onto here right now, and the worker micro has been done with the assumption that we'd be whipping Tree Huggers for the forge.

I'm not trying to be a pushy jerk, I just thought that this was clearly the best play. We run high food in Tree Huggers, use the whip overflow for another missionary, and in about 5 turns we're back to the same size again, with a forge in hand for the rest of the game. Am I missing something here (?)

[SevenSpirits]

Getting OBs with CivPlayers and Univers should be our main diplomatic goals right now.

You lose 2H overflow when you whip a foodhammer unit (ie worker or settler) and grow on the same turn. Apparently, the new civizen is created and requires food, which is taken from the overflow, but without producing anything. I had that in PBEM 42, and I think Seven and Novice had the issue in PBEM 23 as well.

It's worth pointing out that you only lose the foodhammers if you are net positive in food. If you're producing 0 food, you won't lose any production, and if you are producing 1f you'll just lose that.

Also, this effect comes up not just when whipping - avoid growth is another way you can be working on a fh unit while at a growth threshold.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I agree with the plan to whip the forge. Tree Huggers is high food, high commerce and will continue to want buildings for multipliers. The whip benefits from a forge too, as well as the raised happy cap.