[SPOILERS] GeneralKilCavalry and Irismono - Harmony Spawned from Discord

[GeneralKilCavalry]

We managed to beat the above micro plan by one turn! We successfully adopt monarchy on turn 52. Here are some juicy screenies for the lurkers.






DEMOS:
Our GNP was 2nd but we have anarchy this turn. Quite amazed how well we're holding up even with the oracle.







The military/diplomatic situation, however, seems to be grim. Gav surrounds us and there's no way to contact others without sailing most likely. We should train an exploration workboat ASAP. 
Even worse...





Gav's warrior lurks every closer, with another one left behind in the fog. We should have archery by Turn 56 so we'll be fine, but nonetheless his intentions are questionable. Our thoughts drift to fanciful ideas of skirmisher rushes, but the priority right now is taking as much land as possible before we inevitably get boxed in.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Lots of new developments. We've planted two cities since oracle and explored much of Gavagai's lands. Oracle -> monarchy seems to be paying off given our monster size 9 capital and the potential for our first two cities to do the same. However, I have far less confidence about the future.

Our challenges:
1. Low food - our future city spots seem to all be lacking on food and are heavily, heavily jungled.
2. Gavagai  
    a. praets are scary and there's no two ways around it. I'm surprised he isn't militarizing even more.
    b. We're boxed in so he will attack us - it seems to be the only logical choice.
3. Maintenance creep - it's looming, but with cheap courthouses and 10% gold mints, we should be fine. If we survive that long, that is.
4. Demotracking. I have pretty much no clue what's going on at this point. I assume a recent classical era tech was iron working by Gav, but I am unsure. 


Goals:
1. Diplomacy - keep Gav appeased and have him fight his northern/eastern neighbor. Get our warrior north ASAP to find the other players and get their tech bonuses
2. Expand - claim as much land as remains possible and weather the coming storm
3. Attempt to get MC for colossus. Tech path of IW->math->currency->metal casting->Calendar is a possibility. This is also why I've left Dolphinstad a few forests for now, we probably need to chop colossus out. Unlike oracle, however, I have far less confidence in us getting it.

Thoughts:
1. We're eventually getting a great prophet. Do we settle him? Shrine him (we're not really doing anything with our religion as of yet). Maybe an early golden age to keep our momentum?



Our core land is quite decent, but nothing compared to gav's. Can't say I'm very pleased with the map gen and our pig getting removed after seeing our end of the continent.



Barb city - we have to seize the land or I see us having the future of a rump state.



Gav's land. WHERE ARE OUR FLOODPLAINS !!!!



The absolutely desolate, resource devoid north. Gav will have it nonetheless...



Ahead in demographics, with a convincing pop lead and maintaining a GNP close to the GL builder.


The power graph. I'm scared of checking it each turn.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

[GeneralKilCavalry]

LURKER QUESTION

Gavagai invaded us, could someone explain the turn splits?

[naufragar]

LURKER QUESTION

Gavagai invaded us, could someone explain the turn splits?

If he played the turn in which he invaded before you made your moves that turn, you should keep playing after him until peace. If he played after you in the turn timer, you should keep playing before him. This way, someone doesn't move a chariot 2 tiles, end turn, and immediately move the chariot another two tiles, in effect moving that chariot four tiles before their opponent had a chance to react, e.g. Needing to maintain a turnsplit can lead to the turn needing to be paused so the second player still has time to make their moves.

Besides the war, how's the game? ("Of course, besides that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?")

EDIT: It looks like he played after you? Then you play when you can, hopefully with enough time left in the timer so Gavagai can play, otherwise expect a lot of pausing.

EDIT for the EDIT: Nevermind. You and Adler are the same team. I don't have enough info or wisdom. Disregard.

[RefSteel]

LURKER QUESTION

Gavagai invaded us, could someone explain the turn splits?

In a bit more detail, including some of the consequences for planning purposes:

Looks like Gavagai played after you on the turn war was declared, so you play first each turn. Playing first means that Gav isn't allowed to log in after the turn rolls* until after you've ended your turn. You play normally after the turn rolls, but with the understanding that Gav will play after you. This means:

* If Gav was last to play and therefore rolls the turn, he has to log out immediately, but in that case he might notice something as he's logging out that ideally he wouldn't get to see. Reducing the likelihood of this happening is one of the secondary reasons it's best to play soon after the turn rolls when you can if you're first in the split.

1) When you've done everything you plan to do for the turn, ending turn and logging out is your signal to Gav that it's "his turn" to play.

2) If you've already ended turn, but suddenly realize you want to change something, you may log in again and make the changes so long as Gav hasn't yet logged in after you. Once you've ended turn and he's logged in, your moves are set, as though it were a sequential game. (It's also preferable to keep such additional logins to a minimum to avoid delays and misunderstandings.)

3) Be aware that since Pitboss doesn't recognize "turn splits," Gav can mess up your city micro by moving units onto tiles you were working (which will cause your city governor to pick new tiles). You might be able to limit the negative impact somewhat if you're familiar with the city governor options (e.g. "emphasize food" or "emphasize hammers" or etc.) - also you can leave the city governor "off," in which case it will automatically reassign just the citizens that were working tiles Gav blocked, or turn the city governor "on," which causes the governor to reassign all your tiles worked in a given city any time one of the worked tiles gets blocked. Note this means that if Gav's units move from a good tile to a tile the city wasn't working, leaving the good tile free again, your citizens will be reassigned to make use of the good tile again only if that city's governor is turned "on."

4) Similarly, if you're set to complete a build on your turn that requires a resource, Gav can make it go up in smoke if he pillages your last copy of that resource on "his" turn, since your production doesn't happen until after he plays, so plan accordingly.

5) You also have some advantages that derive from playing first; for instance, you'll have a chance to promote your newly-produced units (and/or units that won fights on "Gav's" side of the turn split) without waiting for Gav to play first, and you get to make use of any gold or tech you produced over the interturn (e.g. for unit upgrades, including upgrades-in-queue from the previous turn with tech) before Gav can react to your newfound wealth and/or technology.

6) For even more detail and discussion, see OH's Pitboss Ettiquette thread.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Thanks so much for the quick replies, I've played my turn.

Here's the update:
Pre-War:



Captured a barb city a few turns ago, giving us a lot of gold to further our research. In retrospect, we should've probably burned it and retreated. We finished iron working and were planning to go agriculture to farm our only agri food resource, but mathematics prevailed.

This turn:

It seems that Quine's thesis falters in the case of civ 4 war declarations - the war trumpets have a universal translation into every language.


Only 2 praets on the northern front, but I expect this is where most reinforcements will come.

Another 2 praets but with a chariot.


In the short run, we will probably lose Sakae and Timbuktu. Long run, I expect a reduction to a pain-in-the-rump state with 5-6 cities at most. We hope to do much better than Regentman/Chumchu have in their failed wars, mostly by power of our early hereditary rule. The main issue is a lack of workers to chop the forests and jungles out in time to obtain a defensive perimeter near Landlubber Crab. Hopefully, masonry will make this attack difficult enough for Gavagai to lay off and by us time for catapults. If he wants a war, he'll get one.


I have also been thinking why Gavagai invaded so soon. He has not built up a large military force yet to defeat us totally. It does make sense he'd go for us, but what about his neighbors? If, unluckily for us, it is Chumchu/Regentman, Gavagai has made an excellent move in trying to secure us given a buffer state to his north. If his neighbor is Commodore, I don't think invading us is the best option, as GL makes for a far more valuable prize than Oracle, but this is somewhat sound nonetheless. If his neighbor is Donovan or superdeath, I totally fail to understand the logic, as he will only be asking to get invaded himself. Since Gavagai is probably sensible enough, That somewhat whittles down who our neighbors across from him could be. We really need to get a galley out and start exploring for known tech bonuses.

Overall, any slim chance we had of winning this game has vanished, but the fun is only beginning...  

[Mardoc]

LURKER QUESTION

Gavagai invaded us, could someone explain the turn splits?

In a bit more detail, including some of the consequences for planning purposes:

And philosophically:  the main point of turn splits is to prevent double-moves.  The premise is both that the double mobility is super powerful, more than intended in the design, and that it's unfun.  

It's powerful enough that optimal play would require you to try to 'camp the timer' to make sure you're always playing last in war, with the option to double-move (but not taking that option all the time, only when useful).  In turn that means games slow down, and if you want to play optimally you need to pay a lot of attention to the turn timer, what everyone else is doing, and being close to a civ computer so you can log in at whatever time of the day or night the turn happens to be scheduled to roll.  That, in turn, causes a risk of missed turns and reloads - and eventually arguments about reloading (that was your fault for camping the timer...no, it wasn't, I was on a vacation...sure but you camp the timer all the time so no one could have known to pause for you...etc and additional tedium).

Also, if double-moves are permitted, the time you're likely most vulnerable is the first turn of war.  Which in turn means the above clock watching is a constant affair, not just in wartime, won by whoever is most willing to spend an unreasonable amount of time but not necessarily any additional strategy.  That, in turn, means that even people who aren't playing clock games and whose neighbors aren't either, still have a Pitboss that goes as slowly as the turn timer permits.  And there is no consistent way to say who 'should' get to go last, it comes down to stubbornness and time availability.  If you see references to PB7 ('the game that didn't exist') this was when the consensus that we needed the rule came into being, because it turned out to be not much fun for anyone involved.

So RB has generally banned the double move to prevent clock games as much as possible.  The goal is to keep the game moving steadily, and to prevent people from needing to pay attention to the game more than once a day. This is also the reason why small games often become PBEM - sequential play is slower than Pitboss but it also means you never have to worry about double moves.

Most of the detail around the rule is to fill in loopholes, or to help make it obvious and enforceable that you're following the turn split.  For instance, the prohibition on logging in on the opponents' split is entirely about enforceability, not really due to the benefits you can get, and hence occasionally waived by mutual agreement.

Discussing logistics around who logs in when, if anyone is permitted to log in just to observe, etc, is pretty much the one generally accepted exception to the prohibition on out-of-game communication.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

We’ve lost 2 cities, the barb one and one we founded only a turn or so before the war dec. unfortunate, but we had to evacuate the units to depefend other places.

The surprising part here is that Gav wants peace. To be fair, there is no way he can take some of our cities without absolutely crashing his Econ through unit spam. Cities + skirmishers + walls + culture bonus + hill make it difficult before catapults. We should have catapults of our own in due time, we are working on math. If I were him, I would keep marching around with shock praets and pillaging the lands, but I’m not complaining.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Ok, so we've finished math, popped a golden age, working on construction. some math so I have it saved.
117 BPT *1.2 = 140 floored.
Construction = 546 - 9 = 537
Gold in bank = 138
GPT = -38
3*140=420 -> We'll have 117 beakers to go, and at best 24 gold in the bank. Last turn we'll need to micro to get an additional 3 BPT to run at 80% gold netting a loss (currently, before cities grow) of 20 gold. Not sure how that being the last turn of the golden age will factor in.

We used our priest on a golden age because survival is a priority over long term economic development. The economic net plus of the golden age would only be made equivalent by 40-45 turns of running the shrine and we need construction NOW in order to counter Gavagai. Next tech to research will most likely be currency, metal casting, or horseback riding.

Some pics: