Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Ruff_Hi]

Sounds like somebody needs to browse the "Off Topic" forum a bit more...

http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...php?t=6163

Bah - I think just turning on the Wheel (first time in about 8 months that we watched it) to find that I know one of the contestants via their 'all counties in Ohio' comment was absolutely stellar.

[Sullla]

I went ahead and simmed the worker first against settler first cases in the capital, and worker first did seem to come out ahead. In particular, having a fourth worker earlier made it much easier to road towards the fourth city location. The only real downside was the way in which the capital's pop dropped so low for a couple of turns after the whip, but with an instant 1t granary, it did regrow back very quickly. This seems like enough of an improvement that I'll go ahead and make the swap.

If we would land the religion at Polytheism, we may want to slot Writing in next before going after Masonry/Monotheism. I found that after putting out those fast granaries, Adventure One and Mansa's Muse didn't have a whole lot to build while regrowing from whips. Say what you will about early game libraries, but they're still more useful to dump production into while regrowing than early game barracks. Obviously a lot will depend on whether we land a religion at Poly/Hindu. We'll know in a few more turns.

[Shoot the Moon]

What about units for exploring/barb defense/HR happiness? Seeing as we're lacking in map knowledge and are going to get monarchy rather quickly I don't think just building some units would be that terrible while regrowing.

That being said I haven't simmed myself so it's hard to know just how many units that would come out to.

[mostly_harmless]

A mixture of both then.

mh

[SleepingMoogle]

If we would land the religion at Polytheism, we may want to slot Writing in next before going after Masonry/Monotheism.

Is it worth it slotting in Priesthood first to get the maximum possible discount on Writing? It might be worth the tradeoff since it's more beakers saved for a tech we will pick up in the near future regardless.

Other than that, getting more units out for scouting, defense and MP purposes seems like a good idea. Perhaps we can convince WPC to come to us so that we don't have to scout through the jungle. And in the meantime, we can have a better look at the fish and clam sites, and scout more towards the south.

[Sullla]

The posts in our temporary forum seem to have been swallowed up into the abyss. I'm not retyping those posts, but I will post all the pictures for anyone who missed them.

Turn 48 - 2080BC

Our warrior survived the lion attack:



Mining the copper at home:



Focal Point has a copper, ho ho ho:



Demographics:



Turn 49 - 2040BC

Exploring further south and dodging angry bears:



Pasturing the pigs:



Mansa's Muse working three very good tiles:



Demographics flashing some happy #1s back at us:



Moving back to defend Mansa's Muse later in the turn from barbarian hooligans:



And that's where we are now. Just waiting on German team to end their turn, 10 hours to go on the clock.

[kjn]

Visit http://realmsbeyond.org/forumstemp/, there you can find the original posts and cut-and-paste them into the proper threads. It's what I've done with my important PBEM42 and the ISDG C&D posts.

Just a hint: wait a bit between pasting in one post and doing the next. I encountered a bug where the second one appeared as part of the first one. Waiting five minutes, or doing something in another thread, seemed to fix it.

[pling]

Just a hint: wait a bit between pasting in one post and doing the next. I encountered a bug where the second one appeared as part of the first one. Waiting five minutes, or doing something in another thread, seemed to fix it.

I believe that's a feature, not a bug

[kjn]

I believe that's a feature, not a bug

To force people to spam two threads instead of one? :angel:

[novice]

I just used the (multiple) Quote button to gather everything up into one big post. Here is the discussion thread from our temporary forum:

Anything we need to discuss?

Open forum so hopefully not...

I think we can discuss a few minor things if need be despite it being open.

Quick note - I rewrote that draft to CFC from memory as best as I could and sent it, apologizing for the delay. Annoyingly I only had it saved in the diplo thread. They're aware of our forum issues.

I think our T54 plan is good enough. Only issue is the bear close by our scouting warrior. I favour backtracking and avoiding the bear for now. It will go away on its own soon enough.

I need my turn reports!

Open forum so hopefully not...

How was this forum private before? Password, group membership etc...?

Open forum so hopefully not...

How was this forum private before? Password, group membership etc...?

the latter, I think. we had to be approved to get in, and once in we didn't need a password.

we may have to just let sulla use his best judgement for a few turns.

Open forum so hopefully not...

How was this forum private before? Password, group membership etc...?

Group membership. T-hawk, Sullla and sunrise could add people, that I'm aware of.

we may have to just let sulla use his best judgement for a few turns.

The forum is private now, you can't see it when you're logged out, so I think we're fine to discuss things.

we may have to just let sulla use his best judgement for a few turns.

The forum is private now, you can't see it when you're logged out, so I think we're fine to discuss things.

Also, Krill no longer has access.

Turn 48 - 2080BC

Out of the ashes of forum implosion, the team rises again. I've had these pictures sitting around for the last two days, and no place to post them.



Warrior Xenu won the battle against the lion flawlessly, now up to 3 points of experience. I moved him west a tile, and spotted this bear in the area. Now we're not in any danger from this bear; we'll be able to see exactly where it moves on the interturn thanks to our hill visibility. My plan is to move southwest onto the desert hill tile if we are safe to do so next turn, as that would reveal a lot of tiles. Naturally this all depends on where the bear moves; in any kind of dangerous scenario, I will retreat the warrior back a tile northeast. We'll wait and see what happens.



Two of our workers finished the copper mine this turn, and Focal Point swapped over to working it this turn. The other worker put a turn into the pigs tile, and all three workers will finish it next turn. Mansa's Muse will regrow onto the gold tile next turn, which is why we actually get Polytheism in 3t and not 4t as displayed. Our other warrior is hanging out between MM and FP right now, able to move to either city if something shows up.

Adventure One is building worker before settler, as we discussed last turn before the forums exploded. The idea here is 6t worker (using all of the cottages while Mansa's Muse is on the deer tile), then 3 turns into a settler at 10 foodhammers/turn, followed by a triple whip that completes a granary with the overflow. This knocks us off of cottages for a few turns, but regrowth is very fast and we seem to come out ahead aside from the loss of some commerce.

We need to retype our micro plan, since I lost it in the forum disintegration. I'll see if I can do that today.



Inside our new city of Focal Point, working the copper. We produce a granary here in a couple more turns, producing 4 shields (grassland forest), 12 shields (copper), 2 shields (pigs tile), 2 shields (pigs tile) = 20 + 40 (chop) = 60 for a granary. Then fill up the food box on pigs + copper. This isn't much of a commerce city, but it will be very strong indeer on early game production. We'll probably end up mining some of the surrounding hills and use the city to produce early military + foodhammer settlers/workers.



Our Demos look quite good. We go right back up to a tie for the GNP lead once we work the gold tile next turn, and we should retake the food lead next turn when Focal Point grabs the pigs. We're also average on Production for the first time in ages, having lagged in near last place for most of the game thus far (which is a good thing; we're working floodplains cottages instead of mines).

Several other teams had population growths this turn; hopefully kjn will have time to do a post outlining that in more detail. The main news was CivPlayers founding their third city a turn behind us. The teams still missing a third city are CivFanatics (sure to plant very soon now), and the two extremely backwards teams: We Play Civ and Spanish Apolyton.

Right now the big focus for me is whether we will land Hinduism at Polytheism tech in 3t. I think our odds are pretty good, although it's hard to know for certain. Out of the five Mysticism civs, UniversCiv is out: they just discovered a tech, and their tech rate is awful. Out of the remaining four:

* CivFanatics discovered Bronze Working on T43. If they are researching Polytheism right now, they should beat us to it. They do not have Animal Husbandry yet, so I'm hoping that they are on that tech.

* CivPlayers discovered Pottery on T43, so they will also beat us to Polytheism if they are on it now. However, they have no Bronze Working or Animal Husbandry, so you'd have to think they are on one of those techs! I do not expect them to land the religion.

* CivFr discovered Pottery on T46, the same turn that we landed Mysticism. We might be able to beat them in a tech race; we would win in a straight race, but we burned an Anarchy turn changing to Slavery civic. If they are on Polytheism, they could well beat us to the tech. On the other hand, it took them 6t to get Pottery, which is a cheap tech. Could they actually get Polytheism in just 5t? Somewhat unlikely. As a Creative civ, they also have less motivation to push for early religion for border pops, and they also lack Animal Husbandry tech. I think we are reasonably safe from this team too.

* German team discovered Bronze Working on T42, so again, they will likely beat us to Polytheism if they are pushing for it now. On the other hand, they are playing as Inca and they still don't have Pottery tech yet (or AH tech), so one would have to think they would go for Pottery/terraces next. If they don't do that, they are wasting their early BW tech and their Expansive trait, and their Inca pick. In other words, if this team is playing logically, they shouldn't be racing us.

The other teams don't have Mysticism and can't compete. Keep in mind as well that even if someone is going for a religion, there's about a 50/50 shot they push for Meditation/Buddhism anyway.

Right now, I would rate our chances as being pretty good. The teams to watch right now are CivFanatics, CivPlayers, and German team. If anyone of them discover a non-Polytheism tech in the next couple of turns, they are out of the running. We'll know in three turns.

Thanks for the turn update Sullla. I have been pretty psyched to see our demos once we can get pigs, copper, and gold all worked simultaneously.

I think if we land Polytheism and 'Henge, then we will be in a ludicrously good position.

Assuming we get 'Henge, I guess we plan to use the GPPs to get an early shrine?

Yes, but let's get there first.

I think our odds of getting Hinduism are better than Stonehenge. All a team has to do there is work a bunch of mines for 10 turns. CivFanatics could be building the wonder now instead of another settler, for all we know. And we have more turns to go (T55 instead of T51) as well. More uncertainty.

I give us about 60-70% chance right now to land Hinduism, and roughly half that to get Stonehenge. Pure guesswork.

If you want, I can always try to feel CFC out by nagging Caledorn re: Stonehenge. I assume it may be better to just sit tight on that for the moment, but it's not unreasonable to think we could potentially get some useful info out of it.

I'd probably approach it as an attempt to "coordinate early wonders" or something. Say we'd like to not bump into each other on wonder races, see if I can get a read on any designs they have on Henge/Oracle/etc. If you guys want me to try, let me know. Otherwise, I'll leave it be for the time being since we don't actually need to know given our plan.

If you want, I can always try to feel CFC out by nagging Caledorn re: Stonehenge. I assume it may be better to just sit tight on that for the moment, but it's not unreasonable to think we could potentially get some useful info out of it.

I'd probably approach it as an attempt to "coordinate early wonders" or something. Say we'd like to not bump into each other on wonder races, see if I can get a read on any designs they have on Henge/Oracle/etc. If you guys want me to try, let me know. Otherwise, I'll leave it be for the time being since we don't actually need to know given our plan.

Speaking of CFC, it might not be a terrible idea to let them know about the forum stuff and let them know our diplo could potentially get a bit disrupted because of it. (That also provides a nice excuse for the slow down of diplo that is inevitable at this point in the game as there just isn't much going on)

I've been doing that. I told Caledorn via chat, then I mentioned it in the email I sent. Here, now that we've got this locked down, here's the message I sent to CFC:

Caledorn/CFC,

First off, sorry for the delay! Our forums at RB are having some major technical difficulties right now. I had a draft response to you saved on our internal forums, and I was about to send it when the forums went down, and they've been down close to 2 days now. The problem is pretty significant, so we're still trying to export the forums right now. Today someone created a temporary forum for us, and we're in the process of setting up a place for us to discuss. Hopefully we can restore our old forums sometime soon. In the meantime, I'll try to rewrite the draft I had for you guys as best as I can.

Thanks so much for the notification of meeting WPC. If you could give them directions on how to reach us too, that would be wonderful. Do you have much of a read on these guys? I personally don't really know them at all, but I believe a few members of my team have at least heard of their forums before.

Thanks!
scooter

Turn 49 - 2040BC

The timer was about to run out, and when I checked we were the only team who had yet to play. I looked at this forum again, and saw no further instructions to change anything. So I ended our turn, and we moved on to Turn 49.



I was actually logged into the game as the turn rolled, and I was able to see which direction that bear moved. When it headed off to the west, I knew we were clear to move our warrior onto the desert hill. The picture is posted above. There's a dry wheat and some grassland tiles down there, enough for a solid city even if we see nothing else. I plan to bring our warrior back home now, freeing up a unit to go explore the fish region. We need to get something over there so that we can make an informed decision on where best to place our fourth city.



Back at home, our three workers all improved the pigs at Focal Point and finished the tile improvement. Adventure One keeps working the corn tile and all five of its cottages, on its worker build. Focal Point shifted over to the new pigs improvement and its +6 food yield. Mansa's Muse grew and picked up the gold tile:



Thanks to the granary, it will grow again very quickly to size 4. We actually don't have a fourth improved tile, so unfortunately we will have to work a grassland forest tile. (Is anyone willing to double-check the math on this to make sure it lines up for Stonehenge? I will try to do so tomorrow.) We swap from warrior to Stonehenge with 4/15 production in the box. This allows us to double-whip the warrior after it gets auto-upgraded to a spearman, 4/35 production -> 64/35 production, and then overflow with chops into a 1t Stonehenge.

Micro experts, let me know if I have done this incorrectly. I've left our turn unended to give us time to double check everything.



Demographics look pretty awesome for us now that we've picked up the gold and pigs tiles. We are first in Food and first in GNP, significantly ahead of the average mark in each. The tradeoff is that we're low in Production, but we aren't terribly bad in that either, slightly below average. Since food and commerce are generally much more important in Civ4 than production, we're sitting just where we want to be. We have 10 total population and we are working 10 improved tiles: five resource tiles and five riverside Financial cottages. Very nice work so far everyone.

We also cracked the (meaningless) 100 point mark in score this turn with our pop growth in Mansa's Muse. Apolyton joined us there, researching a fairly cheap tech. (I believe that it's Mysticism but will let kjn take his shot at identifying it.) We Play Civ also got a cheap tech, German team got land points from their second city 20 turns ago, and CivPlayers picked up a pop point.

Extra side note: German team double-whipped their capital on T42, and double-whipped their second city on T45. That was a settler in the capital and a worker in the second city, almost assuredly. Now we all know how useful whips can be in Civ4, not doubting that. But you need to be able to regrow that pop, and that's what correct whip management is all about. In the last seven turns, German team has regrown 1 of those 4 whipped pop points. They don't have Pottery and they don't have granaries/terraces. They whipped immediately AFTER growth, not right BEFORE growth. I would argue that that was some questionable civ management. I guess we'll know more after the game.

We now have two more turns for Polytheism/Hinduism. Don't want to get hopes up, but it's starting to look pretty good.

I logged in to check on CivFr's new city, and noted that we have a barb warrior 3NE of MM, on the northern spice. I think we should send Goldilocks to MM at once and then the gold.

I also assigned the two forests 1N and 1NE of FP to MM (the pre-chopped forest 1NW is still with FP), so their hammers can go to Stonehenge.

The land to our south is mostly flat. There are two hills in the fog south of Xenu, but the rest of the area is mostly open flatland from my fog-gazing and flying camera checking.

And for those who doubt my E/W skills, here's a picture:

And for those who doubt my E/W skills, here's a picture:

I agree; we need to be able to protect the gold mine for sure. This seems critically important.

It's good we will be getting a couple copper units soon.

With the barb there, I think we might want to move up the spear whip too, and do it once we reach size 4. I don't have access to the micro plan right now, so I don't know which turn we planned to do it on originally, and if that will change the Stonehenge ETA.

won't we be in very bad shape if the barb warrior suicides into Goldilocks and happens to win?

Can we move the AO warrior 2E next turn just in case? I suppose that will generate an unhappy in AO

Played through the micro quickly, and we can whip the spear T51.

The good news is that by working the deer and corn, MM will grow back to size 3 on T52. The bad news is that if we still want the T54 Stonehenge, we will get it, but it will require us to work gold, deer, and two plains hills on T54.

But we can still follow our established micro plan up to a T51 emergency whip.

What happens with the barb turn on simultaneous Pitboss? Do they still move after players, or at the same time as players? Not sure if whipping on T51 actually gets the spear in the city before the warrior can attack (in the unlikely scenario that it goes straight SW and kills Goldilocks).

I'm about 95% sure that the player production phases happen, then the barbs move. So the spear would appear before the warrior can attack.

I moved the warrior as requested:



Goldilocks will be on the gold tile next turn. If we're lucky, maybe the barb warrior will wander off in a different direction. In a worst case scenario, we'll be able to double-whip a spear and save the city.

I also ended our turn. We have 30+ hours for more discussion, and there's no more units that we can move this turn.