Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Sullla]

Turn 156 - 920AD

The battle for the German capital.



I needed to play this turn right when we could finally log into the game. (Thanks again German team for not ending turn and making us wait 12 hours for no purpose at all.) Here's what we could see off in the northwest. For some reason, there are four CivPlayers horse archers moving around, including one with Sentry promotion. We have no idea where they are going or what they are doing. Maybe we should ask them in diplomacy (?)

There were some calls to pillage the roads over by the Apolyton border, out of fear that they will poach the opened up terrain over here. I would advise that we don't do this, in part because C&D build tracking suggests that they are not building settlers in any of these cities, but more importantly because we specifically told Apolyton not to pillage tiles in neutral territory when they were doing so against us earlier. We would look incredibly hypocritical if we started pillaging next to their border right now. Only do so as a last resort to stop them from settler. Our own settler will be ready to claim this location on Turn 158.

Here's the main front. The Germans actually pulled units out of their capital this turn, leaving two longbows and an axe inside. They also had two longbows and a spear inside Weil der Stadt. Unfortunately, both cities were located on hills, which is always a giant pain when facing longbows. Even with catapults to drop defensive bonuses, this was going to be a bloodbath. (There's little purpose in suiciding catapults with so few units on defense. Collateral damage would not be that helpful here. Our knights already have much higher base strength than the longbows, we just needed to remove those endless defensive modifiers. Plus, the maces are actually much more sacrificial and easily replaced than the catapults.)



11 catapults dropped the defenses from city walls all the way from 60% down to... 20%. Yes, walls are way too strong in Beyond the Sword. (Castles are even more laughable, -2% per shot with 100% starting bonus. We'll set them up in border cities for T170 and dare teams to attack us.) Then it was time for the poor drafted conscript maces to go over the top:

Battle of Webringen
11 cats drop defense to 20%
Mace vs G2 longbow 1% LOSS
Mace vs G2 longbow 1% LOSS (no damage)
Mace vs G2 longbow 1% LOSS (no damage)
Mace vs G2 longbow 1% LOSS
C2 knight vs G2 longbow 69% WIN
C1/Shock elephant vs G2 longbow 84% WIN
C1/Shock war elephant vs axe 98% WIN
CAPTURE WEBRINGEN

The city capture picture did not take for some reason, I pulled this off the Livestream, so excuse the picture quality. The actual battle results were on the unlucky side. We had two straight maces go in and fail to get a single hit on the Guerilla II longbow - we lost 8 straight rounds of combat in a row. We had 14/40 odds (35%) to win each of those rounds, so losing 8 in a row was a real kick in the rear. Losing 3 maces instead of 4 would have been more in the range of expected odds. But this is the most abstract part of Civ4 gameplay; you can't control the dice, only set things up ahead of time and hope for the best. We did get the key win with a knight at 69% odds, which balanced things out somewhat. It could have been worse.

Webringen had a granary and Academy inside survive capture. Not great, but better than Worms (where nothing survived).



Then it was just as much of a slaughter at Weil der Stadt. Worse, actually, since we didn't have catapults to bombard down the defenses here. 0 XP mace against Guerilla II with a first strike, 75% tile defense, 25% city defense, and 75% hill defense works out to strength 8 versus strength 16.5. Ugh. Well, uh, the bloodletting is good for the economy in unit support costs! Come lads! Time to cross the Somme:

Battle of Weil der Stadt
Mace vs G2 longbow 0.5% LOSS
Mace vs G1 longbow 0.8% LOSS (no damage)
Mace vs G1 longbow 0.8% LOSS
Mace vs G2 longbow 2% LOSS
C2 knight vs G2 longbow 64% WIN
Mace vs G1 longbow 53% LOSS
CR mace vs G1 longbow 85% WIN
CR mace vs spear 95% WIN
CAPTURE WEIL DER STADT

Even though we lost five maces attacking here, I'd say that we were relatively fortunate. The odds were extremely low here, significantly worse than at Webringen. We got 2 hits from the first suicide mace attacking at 0.45% odds, the second mace got 0 hits (which sucked but was understandable), the third mace got 1 hit, and the fourth mace did his job like a pro and managed to get 3 hits. We won the knight vs longbow battle at 64% and then had our only real turn of bad luck when we lost the following 50/50 shot against a damaged mace. So it could have been better, but this was about as expected. We still have not lost a knight yet in this war, which is really nice. Those are by far our best units, and we'll definitely need them as we push to close things out.

Weil der Stadt came with a granary and colosseum inside. We ended up losing 9 maces to kill 6 German units (four longbows, one spear, and one axe) this turn. Far from a great trade, but to take out two of their core cities, and their capital, I'll take it.



Here's a little peek at the German evacuation from our Sentry chariot. There are two elephants and a spear on the tile southwest of Wittenberge. All of the white dot tiles are also empty of units, which we could see when the Sentry chariot moved southeast onto the grassland hill tile. Now here's the big overview picture:

Most of our units are concentrated around Webringen, either inside the city or sitting on the tile to the southwest where we attacked. The tile north of the CFC chariot is currently bugged; it is not controlled by any German city, but still remains in their territory. This should get cleaned up next turn when the game rechecks cultural control (we hope). There are two workers on the tile west of Worms, they can move N-NE-N and road the bananas next turn, which will allow the units inside Webringen to move W-NW-NE and start pushing on Wien. Thankfully Wien is the last German city located on a hill. (The armchair quarterbacking about the bugged culture tile is a little silly. None of us had any idea that was going to happen. Let's just move on to more important issues.)

Our knights have shifted over to attack Wismar next turn; we have 10 knights and a war chariot in position. The Germans have surely whipped a longbow on their half of the turn, but there's not nearly enough there to stop knights. (Plus that city is NOT on a friggin hill.) Based on what we know of the German units, there shouldn't be enough to stop us there. Hopefully, we'll take the city and keep pushing north.



And here's an overview of what remains of the Germans. They started with 15 cities and we've taken 8 of them so far, hopefully 9 next turn. It would be really nice if WPC would take a city or something, but don't expect them to give us much of anything. We'll need to see where the Germans are concentrating their units before we can plan out our next advance. Mounted units against Wismar for now, slow movers look to move on Wien, and we'll go from there.

I would not convert everything over to economy stuff yet, we still do have more work to do up here and we will run short if we don't keep replacing units. Don't get complacent and assume that the Germans are finished. Anyway, here's a link to the Livestream of this turn: http://www.twitch.tv/rbciv/b/424000720

We still have quite a bit of economy stuff to work on before this turn is done. I'll be off traveling on vacation for the next two weeks, and scooter is going to be covering the turns. Best of luck, I'm sure everyone will handle things just fine.

[Ruff_Hi]

Here is something that I saw in one of Sullla's streams ... CFC renamed their observer chariot ...

[pindicator]

Have fun on your vacation, Sullla! Two weeks probably means you'll be back in 3 turns gametime

[scooter]

Checking in. Good turn for us . So here's the deal. We have 27 hours left on the clock. Long day for me today, so I'd like to wrap up the turn tomorrow night - in roughly 18 hours. Few good comments/suggestions, so I decided to do a picture dump of all of them, and we can discuss them until its time for me to finish up the turn. First off, I want to address the concerns over Apolyton whipping a settler and sniping the location. They, uh, aren't in slavery.



They revolted into Caste 3 turns ago, so they can't swap back yet either. I think we're in good shape there, so I suggest we don't bother pillaging that road tile or anything. I also went ahead and whipped the settler at Frozen Jungle.



I'd just rather that not get forgotten given that it's the most important whip of the turn.

Next, let's talk domestic stuff. I went through sooooo's suggestions. They all sound pretty good to me, but I'm going to dump city shots for most of them, and you city management whizzes can debate it out and see if there's a more efficient way to handle any of them. I figure it's difficult to follow along with his suggestions without seeing pictures for them.

Simple Life: Cottage over farm here, since it's the last cottage. Keep growing for a while. Market is 1/4 done here, so I wouldn't switch this to a courthouse. Keep growing and whip when run out of good tiles.

Included the food bar to show that working the cottage does not slow growth, so I see no issue with working the cottage over farm here.

Eastern Dealers: Fine, have the 2 workers in the area farm the other grass jungle.

Brick by brick: Before starting a courthouse, I would have BbB pump out at least 3 missionaries for our ex-german cities. It can currently get out 2 missionaries every 3 turns and with the overflow from the previous knight can 1-turn a missionary. I'd go for that this turn.

At the least, 1T'ing the missionary this turn does seem like the right call.

Let it snow: Whip settler this turn, then start courthouse next turn.

There are hammers invested in that forge, but not many. I just slipped the Courthouse into the queue there.

Gourmet Menu: We built a plains cottage a few turns ago - lets work it instead of the coast.

Tree huggers: Lets hand-built its market - keep growing! Will have to watch the effect of war weariness in this city and may have to finish market sooner (for the hapiness) if necessary by working two mines. But for now, full cottages.

Probably should have included in a shot of the draft timer, sorry about that. Regardless, happy situation here is currently stable, even after capturing two more cities and losing units.

Seven Tribes: This city wants whipping because it will grow into crappy tiles next turn. Here, a courthouse looks significantly better than a market. Since there is only about 20 hammers invested in the market, I would swap to a CH this turn and whip it next turn. Have the 2 workers down here cottage the remaining bare grassland.

Ditchdigger: Whip forge on T158 I guess. This city is a candidate for another settler whip (instead of the forge) if we decide we want another settler for a new southern city.

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Finally, this:

One thought I had with workers is to road the tile NE of Weil der Stadt (if we have 3 workers available). That would allow units from there to join the main stack moving northwards

Here's a shot of the area with workers that we could potentially move up if this is worthwhile:



And here is a shot of all our units with details showing, so you can see the health/xp status of everyone.



Apologies for placing the right-hand side boxes kind of awkwardly. It's late, and I was rushing.

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Alright that's a lot. This post is long enough, so I'm going to leave my opinions out of this and just post this. I'll check in tomorrow.

[NobleHelium]

Well there's a couple issues. One, we need three, not two, workers to road the flood plains. Two, we don't really need that road - it would only be an issue if someone pillaged the road on the plains hill 1E of it. The units that are actually healthy to move on Wien are 1E of Weil der Stadt, and those units can move NE-N-NE onto the rendezvous tile (which is 2N1W of Webringen) next turn. So given that the Germans are highly unlikely to pillage that plains hill road (and they would need two 2-movers in the fog to do that), I don't think there's a need to road the flood plains next turn. We do want it roaded, but we can do that with the workers 1W of Worms on t158 (turn after next), after they've roaded the banana next turn. We'll need a third worker obviously, we can get that from the four guys southwest of Weil der Stadt.

All of sooooo's suggestions look fine. We should count how many missionaries we need total in the near term and plan out where to build them.

[regoarrarr]

Agree with Noble - when I made that suggestion (or had that thought),that was before Sullla moved all the guys out of Weil der Stadt and further east, so I think for now we don't particularly need that road on the FP

[NobleHelium]

By the way, we will get more war weariness unhappy at end of turn. So there may be some unhappy issues in cities we drafted a lot.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Seven Tribes: we can draft a mace here and regrow immediately and keep working all of these tiles. Alternatively, it looks like either market or courthouse would need to be a triple whip. If we go that route, we should spare the whip in Gourmet Menu for a few turns and swap plains cottages for flood plains cottages to regrow ASAP. At the moment, the only difference between the market and courthouse is our breakeven tech rate, it's pretty close unless I'm missing something. I'm posting from my phone, so I could be missing some finer details. I like sooo's other suggestions.

[Zargon]

Simple life: I like the cottage, and I think courthouse is very slightly better than market. Market has 108 hammers remaining, so the courthouse costs only slightly more, and it's currently running with 32 commerce, so the market is 8gpt at 0% science. But we're at 30% science, and as we shift gears into econ mode, that number will go up. At 30% science, the market is only 5.6 gpt, and the courthouse is currently 6.5 gpt. We don't need the happiness unless we're planning to draft this some more, even with the incoming war weariness, unless we're expecting a lot. The market is a little close to a 2 pop whip, though, so I guess a lot depends on whether we need to angle for a 2 pop whip or if a 3 pop whip is fine.

Brick by Brick: Are we good on military builds? If so, I like the missionary, if not, another knight might be best?

Ditchdigger: Are we good on military builds? If not, drafting this city before the forge whip, maybe even drafting it twice so our commerce cities can do their commerce thing might be better. After whatever (if any) drafts we need here, whip forge and then whip settlers seems good. We're on the conqueror's plateau, might as well backfill things sooner rather than later.

All other suggestions look good to me, except for the FP road, as previously mentioned.

[sooooo]

I like the suggestion to draft Seven Tribes - that's definitely a good idea. That would let us hold off the whip for a few more turns. I don't think it makes too much of a difference whether this city builds a market or courthouse right now, they are both of similar gold value.

War weariness does indeed apply at the end of the turn, so the units we lost this turn won't apply to our cities until next turn. We should still be OK at Tree Huggers because IIRC in 2 turns time one of the draft penalties wears off.

Regarding drafting Ditchdigger: That city already has -6 draft anger - I didn't suggest it because going to -9 anger is rather extreme. Whipping a forge or settler seems the best plan here.

Regarding more units, then we still have a fairly steady supply even with the courthouse builds in the queues. Horse feathers makes a knight most turns, and starfall a mace most turns. We will draft French Riviera, Seven Tribes and Brick by Brick in the next few turns.

Cutting Edge will swap over to production soon and then probably get started on military once its courthouse is finished.

I don't mind slipping one more knight in at Brick by Brick, but I think my preference would be for a missionary this turn at least. It's close to german lines and gets the ex-german cities building culture quicker.