Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[scooter]

* Scouted out German city in north.

Did we actually enter their borders? We have a no-scouting clause with them.

[kjn]

* Scouted out German city in north.

Did we actually enter their borders? We have a no-scouting clause with them.

No, and we don't have the OB in effect yet, I think, since they haven't replied. The spear is 2SW of Wismar (I think the city was), on a hill with visibility over water. I think I had taken a screen shot of the city (it has a terrace), but apparently not.

[kjn]

Here is a map of the culturally claimed tiles we can see currently:



We can see most of the borders of the WPC capital, and I think the southern borders of their most recent city. Due north we have borders of the two German cities.

FWIW, I think the tile S-SE of Wismar is a hill, so we will get visibility on it no matter which way our scoutspear moves (SW-W-SW or SW-SW-W), and then we might just as well take the least aggressive route.

[mostly_harmless]

Those WPC borders up north were not there when I logged in. So they must be from their brand-new city.

[Sullla]

Turn 66 - 1360BC

I'm not going to lie, I was pretty angry with the German team last night. As usual, everyone else had ended turn, and they were the last ones remaining to play. Someone logs in for their team ("Flunky"), and I figure that we're about to get a new turn. Their guy spends a full hour logged in, settles a new city... and then logs out without ending turn. The timer then ran out the last three hours without them logging in again.

Seriously, that's a total dick move. If the person in question just didn't know how the timer works, then they shouldn't be playing the turns. If it was done deliberately, then it's even worse. Making eight other teams wait for you every single turn, and then not having the decency to click the big "END TURN" button when you're done, that's about the worst manners possible in Civ etiquette. The result was the turn rolling at 1am my time, instead of 10pm my time, so I had to wait until this morning to type up a turn report. Screw that team. I want them dead before this game ends if at all possible.

Moving on...



Here's the German city of Wismar, which is their fourth city. No, I didn't enter their borders, as it's easily visible over the water. I did request Open Borders in-game with the German team; they haven't logged into the game since to accept or deny. The city is size 1, with a Terrace inside as expected. No visibile food resources that we can see.

That seemed like all for this part of the world, but when I logged in to play the rest of the turn today, I saw that We Play Civ had just founded their fourth city. Lo and behold, we can see where it's located:



Unless they dropped a Great Artist culture bomb mid-turn, that's their new city up there. Note that when this city expands its borders, they will be touching the borders of Wismar. A little borders tensions between these teams, perhaps? That would be nice...

Also, We Play Civ renamed all of their cities this turn. I swear, these teams are just trying to screw with us.



I mentioned before that the barbarian warrior on our floodplains stayed in place to pillage the village there down into a hamlet. This cost us about 25 turns worth of development on that tile. As irritating as that might be, it could have been a lot worse. I would say we definitely made the right call on how to play this. Losing a dice roll with one of our warriors would have been very, very bad. And losing some development on a single cottage was not worth sacrificing a worker. Our axeman cleaned up the barbarian without much trouble; he took one hit and is sitting at roughly 4/5 health. Both our axes have 1 XP from their victories so far.

There's another barb warrior coming in from the bottom of the screen; you can see it in a forest under the interface, right next to the pillage button. With two axes already in the south, I don't expect this to be an issue.

We grew three population points this turn, in Adventure One, Mansa's Muse, and Focal Point. The latter two cities both grew into unhappiness though. We need more happiness very, very badly right now. (Should be solved in the next dozen turns, with incoming gems + silks + spices planned.) After growing three pop, we then whipped away four pop in two double whips at Mansa's Muse and Horse Feathers. Mansa needed to whip its worker and overflow into Oracle as part of the micro plan. (Poor Mansa now has 17 turns of whip penalty; it's capped at size 3 for now, unhappy at size 4! Worth it if we Oracle Currency though.) Horse Feathers also double-whipped a worker and overflows into / completes a work boat at the end of next turn.

The awesome news is that these whips will leave us with 7 workers next turn. With only four cities, we're actually a bit in excess on worker supply. We need to expand further to make use of all that worker labor! Fortunately this is also part of the plan; we have planned triple settler whips incoming at Adventure One and Focal Point in the near future. We should be up to six cities in the next half-dozen turns (clams and gems) and our workers will be scrambling to cover everything once again.



Here is the turn's tile micro after the whips were carried out. Horse Feathers has the two food tiles (fish/corn) for maximum overflow from its worker whip. Adventure One takes the deer, the lake tile, and four riverside cottages. Mansa needs the plains hill tile for Oracle production purposes along with its two resource tiles. Focal Point picks up the leftover riverside cottages along with its own pigs/copper duo.

I hope this game has demonstrated the value of placing early cities close to one another for tile sharing. We've gotten maximum value out of these early riverside cottages; one of our cities is working each one every single turn. We've also show why Financial + riverside is so overpowered in the early game. We've gotten 3 commerce or more on every cottage every turn all through the opening turns. You'd better believe that that makes a difference.

Start of turn / pre-whip Demos:


Mid turn / post-whip Demos:


There isn't too much change here, despite losing those four population points. We lost a bit of Food and a bit of GNP, but not too bad. That's largely due to us whipping off our weakest tiles; we've made sure that all of our resources and developed cottages have been perma-worked every turn.

There were quite a few international score increases this turn, including the first Classical tech from Apolyton. Kjn has it marked down as Mathematics, although I think it's a bit more likely to be Iron Working (given the large global Power increase and the widespread amount of jungle on this map). We're just guessing though, since we have no contact with Apolyton. More importantly, CivPlayers again got no score increase this turn. We don't have them down for Writing tech or Bronze Working, so not quite sure what they are doing. It's possible that they aren't trying to build Oracle at all, and that's starting to look more likely. We lose nothing by assuming that we're racing them, and better to assume the worst in any case. We're on T66 right now, and we'll know eot67.

Better get those Open Borders treaties signed right now, BEFORE we potentially slingshot Currency. I don't think the other teams will be smart enough to realize that they should Close Borders with the early Currency civ, and by the time they figure out what's going on, it will hopefully be too late.

[scooter]

I can always ask the German team about ending turn. I've avoided it thus far so as to dodge confrontation, but I think it can be done kindly.

[kalin]

I can always ask the German team about ending turn. I've avoided it thus far so as to dodge confrontation, but I think it can be done kindly.

I would. It's irritating to us and if we ask them nicely they may just ... end turn from now on.

Kalin

[Fintourist]

Is is extremely nice to see WPC expanding towards the Germans. It makes it even more unlikely that we see those 70k in power coming our way in the form of dog soldiers. An early war between our neighbours would be a blessing

Only ~33 hours and turn 67 begins. It would have been a big surprise to see Oracle falling before the current turn, but now at least I am getting a bit nervous.. I would still bet my money on us getting it!

[luddite]

If we just want to get revenge on the German team, we could beeline military tradition and run them over with early cuirassiers/cavalry. Not really "optimal" but it might be the most fun option.

[NobleHelium]

Early MilTrad is definitely an option after Nationalism, but way too far in the future to really discuss right now.

Anyway, what I really want to know is whether that new WPC city is on an island or not.