Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Fintourist]

I agree with Sullla. The only other option for city 7 would be south of Gourmet Menu and that only if our scouting reveals something magical. But I believe it makes sense to start making plans for the spices spot. That site also has the benefit of our workers reaching it pretty fast after the gems are connected. They can even use their worker turns effectively by putting turns into cottages (for TH & MM) while traveling..

[Sullla]

Turn 71 - 1160BC

The turn that the huggers found their trees.



After convincing the German turnplayer to finally end his darned turn, we got to play and I watched the warrior vs panther fight. Thankfully we did win, but by only a single hit; Boldly Going Nowhere limped out of the battle with 0.2 health. Honestly, I'll take it - we just needed that warrior not to die. He does have to do some serious healing though, so I moved him directly into our new city of Tree Huggers to facilitate his recuperation. I could have then moved the spear along the river to keep defogging it, but that would have left our new city near the barb zone with a single 0.2 health warrior inside. That did not seem wise. Safety first. Our warrior will just have to defog that river after spending a few turns healing.

The good news is that our borders are pushing back the area in which barbarians can spawn. Tree Huggers is planned to expand borders eot 74 and give us even more visibility/warning of incoming threats. I was curious and checked the F9 stats on the barbs: we have killed six barb warriors and four barb animals (two lions + two panthers) so far. That's a lot of barbarians! I wonder if any teams have gotten roughed up a bit. There seems to be a lot of barb activity given the size of the map and the large wilderness expanses.



We found more interesting information in the southwest, with a wines near the stones location and cows to the south of Gourmet Menu. Sadly we just miss out on the cows with our city placement, but we should be able to give them to another city down there eventually. I'm planning to move the axe southwest next turn, then probably southeast onto the plains hill following that. If there's something over on that river to the southwest, it could be a great spot for city #8. (On the desert next to the cows could be a really good location. We just don't know until we explore further.)

A city directly on the stone also seems to be extremely desirable down the road. That would claim stone, horses, wines, and wheat resources. I do not think it should be our next targeted spot, but we definitely want to get there soonish.



In the southeast, there is yet ANOTHER barb warrior incoming. Our axes are earning their salaries down here. My thought is to rest the axe down here this turn (which will fully restore its health) and then hopefully whack the barb next turn. With luck it will move northwest or west on the interturn, where we can kill it and still move back into Focal Point in time for its pop growth to serve as military police. This is probably obvious, but I thought I'd still ask for alternate suggestions.

The red dot is where I think our next city (#7) should go. We have a settler getting whipped out of Adventure One eot 74, and this is the most logical spot to go claim. The red dot redeems an otherwise low-value desert hill tile, it will allow the city to trade for the corn and gold if needed with Mansa's Muse, and the city will pick up some choice terrain. There's a banana resource along with three spices and even one floodplains tile (down by the peaks), worth a total of +8 food together. It also has no less than 11 riverside tiles, nearly all of which can be cottaged. We'll be able to rotate workers over here from the big clump at Tree Huggers, and improve Mansa's Muse on the way over (which needs some cottages on the plains tiles north of the river). We just need to make some slight micro adjustments to speed up the movement of the settler out of Adventure One. Need roads on the corn tile and finish the road on the plains tile to its east. Settler move SE-NE-NE on T75, then NE-E-E-NE on T76, planting the city on T77.

Here's a bit of a wild idea that I had: what if we built a scout in Mansa's Muse right now? It would take 3t to build, and the current library build is not exactly a high priority. The idea would be to send the scout to go investigate CivFanatics in detail. We just signed a no-limits Open Borders deal, right? Scouts aren't useful for exploring the wilderness on this map because they will die to any barb warrior, but we could move up to the oasis in minimum danger, and then we'd be in CFC territory after that. They told us they will be planting a city over there shortly. Why not make the minimal investment in a scout and go reveal all their cities while we have Open Borders? Let me know what you think.



Here is our tile micro, now up to 6 cities and starting to require a zoomed out map. Adventure One works five cottages and the lake. Gourmet Menu uses its only improved tile, still waiting on clams border expansion. Tree Huggers works an unimproved plains cow this turn and next turn. That's not as bad as it seems though - we've chosen to use our workers for massive chopping at that city, and it will get a library + granary over the next two turns. Since improved plains cows aren't all that great anyway, and the gems are crucial for our civ-wide happiness situation, I think we played this one just fine.

Horse Feathers works the corn + fish resources, an undeveloped grassland cottage, and the forested plains hill. This last tile picks up the Expansive bonus for worker productive, for a total of 12 foodhammers (7 food + 5 production with bonus). I take back my earlier comments about city management here - this is a very nicely optimized city at present. The plan is to build one worker over the next 5t, then immediately double-whip another worker and overflow into something useful (library? galley? lighthouse? finish that axe?) We can then regrow and run the exact same configuration at size 5 with the extra gems happiness, while picking up a second grassland cottage. Rinse and repeat, adding more and more grassland cottages as we add more Calendar happiness resources.

Mansa's Muse and Focal Point both regrew to size 4, and will both grow to size 5 in another three turns. They are both working their obvious best tiles, no creative management needed here.



Here are the start of turn Demos after we played. We have completely closed the Food gap, and nearly reached average status in Production. (We actually added 17 foodhammers since last turn, 6 Food and 11 Production.) Our GNP also went up significantly, even though the value stayed the same. The trickery of the Demographics screen! That's because we swapped from 100% research to 0% research, resulting in a value of 69 GNP both turns. I checked and we were at roughly 78 GNP at break-even research, 85 GNP at 100%, #2 overall for both values. The current #1 is almost certainly Apolyton with their early library + Academy in their capital city. They have played a strong game thus far, and are a definitely rival to our team.

Now, here's the tradeoff: Apolyton has never whipped any of their cities all game. Not even one time! As a result, their infrastructure is probably a lot weaker than ours. I'd bet that they have significantly fewer workers (we have 7 and honestly could use a bunch more), granaries, and monuments than we do. Don't forget that we get free border expansions and have our own religion to play around with. And Apolyton only has 4 cities to our 6. In other words, that GNP number isn't quite as intimidating as it might look.

One other thing: German team finally began spending Espionage Points against us last turn; they spent 2 EP, so they are splitting their 4 EP with another team. I changed our spending to 3 EP (WPC) / 1 EP (Germans) to try and keep visibility on their graphs while also obtaining them with WPC as soon as possible. I will keep an eye on this as the turns pass. German team also passed us in Power rating last turn, and they are now the #2 team in the Power rating. (WPC = 1, Germans = 2, we are #3). All of us are well above the average for the game. In other words, I do not expect either side to make much progress. Too many units and no catapults to bring down the city defenses on either side. This war ranks incredibly high on the stupidity scale, and we should be thanking our lucky stars that our neighbors are such fools.

WPC also ticked up from 3 to 4 war weariness at the start of the turn. We'll see if that changes again during the turn. And... I think that's all for now. Let me know your thoughts and comments as usual.

[kalin]

@Sullla: thanks for the great reports.

Questions:

Can we build a galley on that lake? It has 20 tiles.

A settler from AO could found a city on the stone in 5 turns (in theory). Is it worth building a galley even if we can? It would help ferry reinforcements if needed, but I am not sure overall...

Kalin

[T-hawk]

Here's a bit of a wild idea that I had: what if we built a scout in Mansa's Muse right now?

Go for it, I like that.

One other thing: German team finally began spending Espionage Points against us last turn; they spent 2 EP, so they are splitting their 4 EP with another team. I changed our spending to 3 EP (WPC) / 1 EP (Germans) to try and keep visibility on their graphs while also obtaining them with WPC as soon as possible.

Good, but track it closely with the Germans, don't spend beyond what we need. We only need to spend 30% of whatever they spend on us. More generally, binary EP is smart in similar ways as binary research - go all or nothing whenever possible.

In other words, I do not expect either side to make much progress. Too many units and no catapults to bring down the city defenses on either side. This war ranks incredibly high on the stupidity scale, and we should be thanking our lucky stars that our neighbors are such fools.

Well, let's not assume that either side will play like AIs. Give them some credit! Maybe this was just an opportunistic choke or worker grab or skirmish over a settling spot, minor in the overall picture. DON'T automatically assume that WPC is doing the dumbest thing possible.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

If I haven't said it before, thanks for the detailed and excellent turn reports. I always look forward to them (every 2-3 days).

[Fintourist]

If I haven't said it before, thanks for the detailed and excellent turn reports. I always look forward to them (every 2-3 days).

Agree completely with GES.

Minor detail: Is our WB costing us extra as it is outside our borders? What I'm wondering is whether we can we leave it as a sentry or should we bring it back.

[regoarrarr]

What are the HPs on our axe over there? And does it have any promotions? A 100 HP unpromoted axe will have 100% odds on a warrior, even in a forest, and will thus only get 1XP. If it has say 80HP, it will take 98% odds and 2 XP. I would recommend getting the extra XP as long as it doesn't realistically affect the odds of winning

[Ruff_Hi]

if I am reading civstats correctly, WPC just took a german city ...

Code:

11/26/12 1:02 pm     RealmsBeyond    Logged in
11/26/12 12:53 pm    Inao            Logged in
11/26/12 12:45 pm    JerryDemmings   Score decreased to 122
11/26/12 12:36 pm    WPC             Logged in

... and as their score didn't increase ... does that mean they razed it?

[luddite]

Everything is looking good so far :8

I'm really surprised to see that the land in the west is just the other side of a lake- I thought for sure it was an island. Very deceptive appearances there.

I would like to see what's around the plains hill at the southwest corner of that lake. If there's another food resource there, it would make for a good city site, which could then lead to settling the stone without needing to build a galley. Can we send the sw axe in that direction?

I also like sulla's idea to build a scout. And I think we shouldn't expect a massive war between the germans and WPC- they probably just took an opportunistic stab against a warrior guarding two workers. Edit: and apparently a city too. That must have been a lucky in for them.

[mostly_harmless]

Hmm, had a post typed up, but the forum ate it.

Well:
Desert hill for next city looks like the best spot.
Like the idea of a cheap scout to send to CFC.
Prefer the south western axe to scout SE-SW in order to stick to defensive terrain. Should reveal the same tiles. Even if not we will circle generally SW after that.

mh