Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Sullla]

Turn 148 - 760AD

All attention is now focused on the German war as we count down the last few turns.



This picture is technically from the previous turn; we were the last to play, and I snuck a chariot up here to get city visibility. Our hope is to raze Wolfratshausen on the first turn of the war, and then hit this city with knights on the second turn. We'll see what the Germans do, but they probably think that this city is fairly safe. It will not have time to expand borders before we send in the attack.

This chariot moved again immediately at the start of T148, and is sitting inside Wolfratshausen. With luck, they won't spot the chariot at all. Either way, it will move back onto the staging tile north of Ditchdigger on T149, ready to move and attack on T150.



Our other exploring chariot spotted the main German army, which has already moved at the start of this current turn. It was two east of Webringen last turn, and moved SW-SW onto the current tile. Note that there are a few more stragglers located on the same tile as our war chariot; this army group has a total of 10 axes, 6 cats, 4 chariots, and 2 spears. It's a lot of units, although all of them fairly outdated.

My best guess is that these units are moving into Wasserburg. They can get in there on Turn 150, but won't have a chance to fortify and stack up the extra defensive bonus. I am actually hoping that they try to use this army at Wasserburg; we'd have a huge battle and clean up their field force right away. Then we could fork cities with knights to our heart's content. If the Germans are smart, they will give up Wasserburg (which is indefensible) and stall for time with this group of units.

I've only used one movement point on this chariot; I'll use the remaining 3 this turn and 4 next turn to scoot this unit into WPC territory. I think we come up one tile short, but the war declaration will teleport our chariot into WPC borders. Feel free to crop this picture and pass it on to WPC. We've completely drawn out the German field army, which means that the invasion route is totally open for them. (Lucky bastards.)



Staging area, northwest front. The units inside Ditchdigger will move one tile north next turn (T149), ready to move out on T150. This current highlighted stack will move NE-NE at the end of this turn (east of Frozen Jungle) and be ready to move onto the staging tile on T149. From there we can threaten Wasserburg or Worms, depending on how the Germans defend.

The worker two tiles north of Frozen Jungle will finish the road on the jungle this turn; I'm going to do that at the end of turn and move again at the start of T149. If we're lucky, the new road will slip the notice of the German team. There is a Woodsman II axe located 3 south of Wipperfuerth. Keep the fingers crossed that they'll leave the city totally defenseless, and we can walk in and auto-raze the sucker. (It's not worth the risk of waiting for the city to hit size 2. We can always get another settler out for that same spot, and our goal is to eliminate the Germans as fast as possible.)



Staging area, main northern front. We moved the main stack from inside the capital to two tiles north of the capital last turn. The plan is to double-move along the turn timer window in scumbag fashion onto the marked T149 staging tile. From there, we can move on Wasserburg or Worms as mentioned above.

I do not favor changing the staging tile that we picked out earlier, as it is still the only spot on the border where the Germans do not have visibility from culture. We have a decent chance to slip past the German chariot sitting on the hill north of our capital (south of the big stack here) by doing the sneaky double move, and I'm also not convinced that the other teams are sharing info the way that some people think. Apolyton's chariot has actually moved out of our territory and into German lands, while CFC's chariot is just moving around scouting out cities that they didn't reveal earlier. Meanwhile, a separate German chariot is moving around in our northeast. I think the Germans are expecting an attack, but they don't know where it's coming yet. We may as well keep our units out of their vision until the past possible moment. Besides, that T149 tile is a useful spot tactically anyway.

By my current estimate, the main stack should have 18 maces, 3 knights, 4 elephants, 3 war chariots, and 8 catapults.



Staging area, northeast front. This area is reasonably quiet and shouldn't see too much action. If for some reason the Germans are foolish enough to try and invade our territory, we will clean up their stack with ease and give them a horrible maiming of Statue of Zeus war weariness. I almost hope that they'll try. Anyway, there are two maces and an axe in Cutting Edge, and four maces and a war chariot in the Simple Life area. That should be plenty to push back against anything short of the main German army, and if that comes over here, we'll simply move our own army over to cover, and then decimate them. The German force is all one-movers, they have little pressure to fork or threaten our own cities. (Well, they have a few chariots, but that is zero threat to maces behind city defenses.) The workers are clearing out the last of the jungle tiles here just in case there would be a fight of some kind.

The cities to be drafted this turn are Gourmet Menu, Tree Huggers, Seven Tribes, Simple Life, and Frozen Jungle. They mostly all drafted 10 turns ago and have had their unhappiness penalty go away. I already drafted FJ in game (drafting off an unimproved grassland, not much to discuss there) and I drafted Tree Huggers to make the discussion of this knight whip simpler:



Here's the city post draft. We can whip the knight for 3 pop, but I would prefer to wait one turn and whip it for 2 pop next turn instead, to minimize the economic impact (we did already draft for 1 pop, remember). That would get the knight out on T150, still in time to be part of the invasion. It's the same deal at Seven Tribes and Forbidden Fruit, where if we wait a turn or two then we can 2 pop whip instead of 3 pop whip those knights. How does that sound? Or do we have to get the knights out this turn?



I'm just going to post the picture of Eastern Dealers and let everyone fight things out in the comments section, since no one ever likes my management of this city. We finished the forge at the end of last turn, and I drafted the city for a mace; I still defend the draft as being too good of a food : shields conversion not to make use of it when it's penalty-free. We need exactly 18 food to grow to size 11, so I would run the configuration seen here and then hire two Scientists after growing. I would also probably go courthouse before market here, since I think we're not going full-blown specialists until we construct both buildings, and the courthouse is cheaper and most useful economically at the moment (with city maintenance of 15 gold/turn). I personally don't think we're in a rush to get another Great Person out of this city right this moment. But go ahead and suggest away, this city's management has been a firestorm the whole game.

I'm bringing workers down to remove the jungle and farm the last two grassland tiles. We had to clear out the jungle in the north first in case the Germans would actually invade.



In the south, the plan is to triple whip French Riviera for its settler this turn, and head for the silvers location on the polar islands. (Note that we are also drafting Gourmet Menu and Seven Tribes this turn, I haven't actually popped them yet.) That leads us to this picture:



Directly on the western silver still looks like the best spot. The war chariot is poking around for any seafood down there, but don't get your hopes up.

Overview:

We will run 0% science this turn and go for 100% next turn or the turn after. That's not enough to get Engineering tech, but if we get some city capture gold, it might take us through. End of turn 151 is the optimistic projection, end of turn 152 looks more likely.

This is also the 1000th screenshot that I've uploaded to Dropbox for the Intersite game.



Demos are basically the same as usual. When we go over to 100% science, our GNP shoots up to just under 700, into 3rd place. It's the expenses that are killing our science rate, tons of cities and tons of units. Our beaker capacity is quite high.

The Germans discovered Monarchy tech this turn; we'll see if they use their Spiritual trait to pop into Hereditary Rule. They are surely going for Feudalism next, but that tech is effectively about triple the cost of Monarchy. They burned through 210 gold last turn and have 350 left remaining in the bank. Hopefully they are still a bit short of getting Feudalism, but it's hard to tell. I've been watching to see if anyone gifted them gold (the one thing that would allow them to race to the tech), and so far, that has not happened, thank goodness. If we could get even 5 more turns before they reach longbows, we should be pretty deep into their core and in the process of taking down their cities. Speed is going to be crucial in this war.

That's all for now, obviously we'll be the last to end our turn again this time, etc.

[pindicator]

What risk is there of letting Wipperfuerth grow to size 2?

Actually, I don't see any first ring food in that city so likely it will take 22 turns of working a 1f2h tile to grow, so it may not be quicker to wait for it to grow/pop borders than to build our own settler.

[SevenSpirits]

Woodsman 2 + road doesn't allow the axe to move 3 tiles. We don't have engineering yet.

[kjn]

Well, the pillage gold from Wipperfürth might help us get Engineering sooner.

I think we should 3-pop whip Tree Huggers this turn. If we get a pitched battle and take Wasserburg T151, then we want to have all the knights as far north as possible to threaten Worms. We can drop one cottage, the farm, and the mine and grow back in 3t, or drop two cottages and work the farm and grow in 2t.

I think we should hold off the 3-pop whip of the knight in The Covenant for 2t - the city has no production but via the whip right now, but that allows us to grow back to size 6 immediately.

Frozen Jungle should be 3-pop whipped next turn, as should Gourmet Menu.

Forbidden Fruit and Seven Tribes can probably wait until they can do 2-pop whips - it will take some time until their knights can reach the front anyway.

I think Simple Life should switch over to a knight as well, and 3-pop whip it with overflow to the forge, but that whip can probably wait a bit.

Another thing is that I think Gourmet Menu should pick up the two shared cottages with Adventure One, so AO can finish its forge this turn.

And I'll have to think and sim for Eastern Dealers. That's one tricky city to manage.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Can we track how much gold CFC has/generates per turn? In my estimation, they would be the team most likely to try to prop the Germans up through teching Fedualism, for the same reason that we kicked around the idea of financing the Spanish to Construction.

[kjn]

I have the data, but I haven't done any systematic gold tracking for a while now. But here goes, for the last 10 turns:

Turn	Germans	CFC
139	332	604
140	494	415
141	309	226
142	370	3
143	449	227
144	525	173
145	598	60
146	558	190
147	563	349
148	352	561

So assuming both teams have run at least one turn at max gold and one turn at max science, then the Germans has costs of 221gpt modulo if they run any merchant specialists, and an income of 162gpt at max gold. That implies they can put circa 383 commerce into beakers each turn, and if we assume a 1.2:1 relation of beakers to gold we hit close to 460 raw beakers per turn, and with the known tech bonuses that means they can get circa 600 beakers per turn into Feudalism.

So worst case (with good overflow from Monarchy), they can get Feudalism in 2t, ie just as we invade. T141 will be quite realistic. Good luck to WPC.

CFC has max costs of 190gpt, and max income of 224. OTOH, they probably run lots of specialists, so it's hard to work out their real research strength based on those numbers.

ETA: Forgot to include the table.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Or, if CFC were to want to be charitable, they have gold in the bank now and could finance the Germans to hinder our efforts. At 1260b (someone please correct if this is not accurate), Feudalism will take them 3t at 100% (that seems fast for them, to me), and they'd need ~310g donated to run full research to complete the tech if they started right now. Lacking a donation from another team, they need to save gold two more turns before beginning. Upgrading existing archers to LBs is going to be difficult for them without some outside help due to lack of funds.

At the end of the day, though, I'm guessing CFC will decline to donate for precisely the same reason we aren't helping the Spanish.

Thanks for the data, kjn.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Knows where.....

1T....

[novice]

So I still think the correct way to manage ED is to:



Start with what you see here, switch to a courthouse, hire two scientists and two priests, work the gems but not the other mines and not the coast. This city's task is to produce GPPs. There's nothing stopping it from doing that now, so let's do it. Growing to size 12 just to add a sixth specialist is not worth it, we can do that once we have two more farms in place.

[NobleHelium]

Yes, that.