Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Good discussion. Now someone go kick the Germans in the teeth so we can finish our worker and grow two additional pop this turn.

[xenin]

Tech path: If we lose a single beaker, I don't want to mess with the slider rate. We have vast distances between nations, so anyone who is gunning for us will have to waste a lot of time and resources. If someone wants to ruin their game and send some units our way, let them

I appreciate that on this map anyone playing aggressive early is probably screwing up their game. But I think it's important to bear in mind that we already know not every team is making good long-term decisions for their civ, and that what matters is whether someone gunning for us can ruin our game. There's only so much you can invest in military without handicapping yourself, especially early game, but in the medium term I lean towards having a bit of a larger stick to back up our talk.

[kjn]

I appreciate that on this map anyone playing aggressive early is probably screwing up their game. But I think it's important to bear in mind that we already know not every team is making good long-term decisions for their civ, and that what matters is whether someone gunning for us can ruin our game. There's only so much you can invest in military without handicapping yourself, especially early game, but in the medium term I lean towards having a bit of a larger stick to back up our talk.

We will need a reasonably large stick to back us up, but at the same time building and maintaining that big stick is going to be a tremendous drag on the economy. We need scouts to get in touch with other teams and get the lay of the land; sentries and C&D to warn of incoming danger, but not much else than a small core to deal with barbs or to buy us time to whip and build a modern army.

[Sullla]

C&D suggests that the largest army in the world has something like 2 axes right now. It's a Huge map, all of the teams started roughly 20 tiles apart, and we've met exactly one neighbor so far. I'm not trying to trivialize the notion of military, but there is seriously ZERO danger right now. We have copper connected and we're in Slavery civic. We can respond to danger even if it would appear. Heck, half the teams in the game don't even have Bronze Working. We've got one axe in production, and another one likely to follow in Adventure One after its settler whip/granary overflow.

Seriously, no need to get worried folks. We're very safe.

[mostly_harmless]

I have faith that logical decision-making will prevent anyone from marching a large army 20-25+ tiles in our direction and I trust in Scooter's ability to talk someone off the ledge long enough for us to get a superior army in place, if needed.

Just to keep the discussion on an even footing and since the argument of long distances preventing attacks is coming up regularly here.
The distance between CFC capital and Focal Point is 13 tiles! Their second ring will further reduce that distance to 9-10 tiles. Some of those tiles will have roads on them. As far as we know from the CFC info, the civ spacing is probably the same in all directions.

I let everyone decide on its own, whether marching an army for 8 turns is a "long distance". For me its more on the close side.

mh

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I have faith that logical decision-making will prevent anyone from marching a large army 20-25+ tiles in our direction and I trust in Scooter's ability to talk someone off the ledge long enough for us to get a superior army in place, if needed.

Just to keep the discussion on an even footing and since the argument of long distances preventing attacks is coming up regularly here.
The distance between CFC capital and Focal Point is 13 tiles! Their second ring will further reduce that distance to 9-10 tiles. Some of those tiles will have roads on them. As far as we know from the CFC info, the civ spacing is probably the same in all directions.

I let everyone decide on its own, whether marching an army for 8 turns is a "long distance". For me its more on the close side.

mh

I wasn't referring to just our immediate neighbors. WPC may be just fine delaying action against us (or not), and CFC we have a NAP with. I'm thinking more along the lines of one of the competitive teams (maybe Civ Fr?) not immediately bordering us who have perhaps not had their initial scouting unit die and thus have more diplomatic contacts than we do, who may try to organize a Coalition of the Willing type dogpile to cut the head of the RB snake, so to speak, before we become unassailable down the road. IF our demos cause fear, a rational dogpile threat could form, but they MAY have to wander far afield to get to us, making any gains counterproductive to winning, and thus, to me, irrational play. All they could do in that scenario is slow us down, but the cost to that team would be high and ultimately counterproductive to that team's chance of winning. Unless they could convince CoW members to contribute more than they do, ye old Dogpile Prisoner's Dilemma, which ultimately dooms the dogpile to failure.

Yeah, that's a lot of words for me to say I'm not really worried about it either. :D

[SevenSpirits]

* I don't think that banking gold is a good idea at all. Gold in the bank does nothing for us until it's converted into techs. Sitting on a big pile of gold just wastes our investment in commerce, and robs us of our advantages.

As has been pointed out multiple times now, we don't gain any advantages from getting fishing and priesthood 2t earlier either! No advantages are being "robbed".

What it does do is allow us to change our minds.

I also saw a question asking about forges and Organized Religion civic. I thought it was pretty obvious why that was a nice combination: 50% bonus on all infrastructure whips and chops. 45 production per pop instead of 30 production. Maybe we'd rather chop workers/settlers instead of the Oracle, that's an argument worth having, but I thought it would be self-evident why Metal Casting would be a desirable tech to slingshot (forges, Colossus, etc.)

Oh come on, I expect a real argument from you. I could just as well say, let's get Astronomy and Writing, since it's self-evident that having +50% science everywhere will help us tech faster, and therefore they are synergistic.

[Ichabod]

Regarding the Oracle -> MC subject, I think it should be taken into account that this map is a high maintanance one. In this scenario, doing more infrastructure in each city can end up being better than just mass expanding (normally, it's the other way around). So, having the option of building forges and the forges benefit to cities can be pretty good.

Regarding Organized Religion, it's worth taking into account that we'll need at least another civic before making the revolt (most likely HR) to make it worthy - that's my opinion, at least. Besides, we'll need to switch to our religion. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it'll take a long time before we meet this conditions. So maybe we can get a more significant boost by Oracling another tech and only normally researching MC after we already have HR/OR. Currency comes to mind here.

Are we allowed to build War Elephants? If so, let's Oracle construction and make everyone afraid (just kidding :P). Or Oracle alphabet and go poison CFC's cities water supplies. Oh, the irony! :D

[mostly_harmless]

I wasn't referring to just our immediate neighbors. WPC may be just fine delaying action against us (or not), and CFC we have a NAP with. I'm thinking more along the lines of one of the competitive teams (maybe Civ Fr?) not immediately bordering us ...

Going by the apparent civ placement pattern, there are two more civs one to our NW and one to our SW that could be just as near. So we still have two unknown neighbors just as close.
I am not saying we should wet our pants about it, just telling people that its around 10 turns or tiles not some long distance away. I agree that we should not fear an attack from a second ring of neighbors.

mh

[luddite]

This might be a crazy idea, but what about using the oracle for mathematics? I know it's super cheap compared to metal casting, but it would be helpful immediately for more chop hammers, and it would get us currency, calendar, and the HG all faster.

Actually, what about not math but currency? It's only very slightly less beakers than MC but I would give us a bigger boost I think. Between HR and Currency we'd be able to expand at a rate that no other team could keep up with without crashing their economy. The downside is we have to wait a bit longer to build the Oracle while we research mathematics, but we could always get it close to completion and then let our C&D department tell us whether to cash it in for say MC or wait while we finish off mathematics.

I actually think oracling currency would be ideal, except I wouldn't expect the oracle to last that long. If we wanted to do that, I think we'd have to delay monarchy and monotheism, and go for it immediately. Or we could just oracle monarchy.