Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I certainly agree we should protect our investments. Though I would argue that Horse Feathers is safer with a warrior fortified 3N of the city than with a warrior inside the city. The only reason to put the warrior inside the actual city would be for military police.

Yes, please station the warrior there. We need to be specific and precise when thinking about these things. "HF is more important than 1t sooner on the new city, so the warrior should be in charge of protecting HF" is very vague and leads to intuitive jumps like "the best way to protect HF with the warrior would be to send it back to the city ASAP."

(I was guilty of some of this earlier when I vastly underestimated how quickly we'd be ready to settle a jungle city.)

My only concern would be the tile 1W of the peak that a barb unit could come through before we see it. We would only be able to see it once it is on either the jungle or forest/hill just outside our borders, and after that we'd just have to shadow it back to our territory and hope it took a shot at us while we're on the jungle silk. We would have a couple of turns to whip without penalty, even in this worst case. How soon until borders pop? This will alleviate some of my concern if it is within the next couple turns. Actually, thinking about this some more, this seems like a low-risk and fairly unlikely scenario that a barb would show up in this one or two tile position... Consider me converted.

Turn 59 - 1640BC

[Sullla]

Turn 63 - 1480BC

This turn showed again why it sucks to have barbarians turned on for these games.



Nothing too interesting in the north this turn. I moved the spear northwest along the coast, and will move it again southwest next turn to keep defogging the river. I'm moving the warrior to that jungle hill tile 3 north of Horse Feathers. We can decide whether to keep him there as a fogbuster or move back to the area around the gems site from there. I don't want to push further north in light of the barbs wandering around, and our spear will explore much of that area anyway.

Speaking of barbs:



Another barb showed up down by the clams location in addition to the one in the east. I'm not too worried about the one over here, since the axe coming out of Focal Point and going to protect the clams spot should be able to whack it pretty easily. I'm more concerned about the barb in the east messing up our Oracle micro plans. We can always move the axe out of Focal Point, but that will lead to unhappiness in the city.

Suggestions here are appreciated. I have left Workers B and D (the ones in the west) unmoved this turn in case we want to do something different with them. They are both supposed to road this turn towards the clams spot.



Here is the turn's tile micro. Adventure One has swapped temporarily to a settler for whipping purposes later, grabbing the deer tile to put 10 foodhammers into the settler. Mansa's Muse does the same thing with a worker, and uses the brand new plains hill mine for the Expansive bonus production. We will whip this worker and overflow into Oracle in a couple of turns. Focal Point works the two resources and three grassland cottages, the non-river one also completed this turn. It will grow and produce axeman next turn, growing into unhappiness so that we can triple-whip a settler. Horse Feather grows like a weed with its +9 food using the corn and fish tiles.



Here are the early turn Demos. German team whipped at the very end of last turn and did not regrow any pop this turn. (I'm still not sure they quite know when and how to whip effectively.) We are joined in top GNP by another team, almost certainly someone researching Writing at max pre-requisite discount. Still tops in Food by a hair, and our Production ticks above average thanks to working the 0/4 plains hill at Mansa's Muse. No sizable changes in the other stats, no one running espionage points against us still. We will have graphs on the German team next turn.

That's all for the initial turn report. Plenty of time now to figure out what (if anything) we change due to the incoming barbarian warriors. Makes me wonder what the teams who have no Bronze Working are doing right now.

[NobleHelium]

Uh...I think we need to move the FP axe to MM, and the MM warrior out onto the corn or gold or the plains SE. If the barb warrior moves NE or N next turn we need to cover the worker on the forest and the only fool-proof way to do that is with a warrior on the forest. (If we move the axe out of FP northeast, that would cover the NW barb warrior move but not straight N. Of course if someone is really up to scratch on their barb AI knowledge they might be able to predict whether the warrior will move that way.)

Obviously this will mean unhappiness in FP - will that affect us materially in the Oracle run? We are cutting it very close on commerce...can we finish the axe in FP without working the copper? We should definitely sim before moving anything.

Never mind, that doesn't work since the axe can't move three tiles. I'm retarded. Well I don't know then...

[NobleHelium]

Okay, I'm not totally sure about this but I think what we can do is move the axe NE out of FP this turn. If next turn the barb warrior moves straight N blocking the worker move onto the forest, we will delay that move for one turn while moving the axe NE again. To compensate for the lost chop turn we can have worker B move 9399 on t65, then onto the plains forest on t66, helping to finish the chop on t67. So we would get one chop turn on t66 and two on t67.

That still leaves the question of how much the unhappiness in FP will affect getting enough commerce for Mathematics of course.

[kjn]

Shows why I wasn't a fan of sending our spear away - we are playing without any reserves at all, and with all our forces tied down.

[SevenSpirits]

Shows why I wasn't a fan of sending our spear away - we are playing without any reserves at all, and with all our forces tied down.

Yeah... at the very least I find it in poor taste to complain about barbarian luck. We did have several people who wanted to keep the spear home for this very reason, and also, we've actually been really lucky with barbs so far.

[kjn]

Okay, I'm not totally sure about this but I think what we can do is move the axe NE out of FP this turn. If next turn the barb warrior moves straight N blocking the worker move onto the forest, we will delay that move for one turn while moving the axe NE again. To compensate for the lost chop turn we can have worker B move 9399 on t65, then onto the plains forest on t66, helping to finish the chop on t67. So we would get one chop turn on t66 and two on t67.
That still leaves the question of how much the unhappiness in FP will affect getting enough commerce for Mathematics of course.

Haven't simmed things, but we will lose 1 beaker (and if we're unlucky 2 due to rounding of the 1.2 bonus) this turn. That's manageable.

But then we probably can't move the next axe out of the city on T65, since that would cause 2 unhappiness in the city that turn.

[mostly_harmless]

Tell the German Quechua that there is something interesting to see for him, if he continues south along out borders!

This is actually an option. Sign open borders with the Germans and have their Quechua protect us from that eastern barb.
What better way to build up trust and friendship!?

That way the Quechua can protect the MM approach, which leaves Focal Point. There we would ideally want the pigs roaded for protection and unhappiness management.

EDIT: Can we leave AO without MP for the time being? And use that unit to police FP. Frees the axe.

mh

[kjn]

Tell the German Quechua that there is something interesting to see for him, if he continues south along out borders!

This is actually an option. Sign open borders with the Germans and have their Quechua protect us from that eastern barb.
What better way to build up trust and friendship!?

Intriguing idea, basically asking them to move SW-SW next, right? We'll have to wait for Scooter to chime in on it, but it'd leave us with a pretty big IOU to the Germans.

EDIT: Can we leave AO without MP for the time being? And use that unit to police FP. Frees the axe.

No. Not without losing too much commerce to finish Math on T67. We have a margin of 4b currently, and 3t of whip unhappiness remaining.

[mostly_harmless]

Yes moving SW next, then waiting to see where the barb moves to and if necessary move SW next as well for an intercept.
I just fear that they are too slow to reply to any urgent diplomatic messages.

Or we just take the risk for this turn, hoping the warrior does not enter our borders. I don't recommend that, taking the risk.

mh