Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[mostly_harmless]

I can see the scout is moving there as well. Do we move him in 1 tile steps to be able to run away from barbs for now? I say yes. Would be stupid to have him killed by a barb before he gets to CFC.

I'm thinking moving the scout SE-NE next turn, and then continue SE from there. Allows us to double-move one turn at least.

We should probably tell CFC that we are sending a scout over to get a trade route, and tell them that we will have a scout 2N of the oasis on T76. We can ask about barbarians then too.

Excellent ideas.

[T-hawk]

The border pop in Mansa's Muse will probably be a a couple of turns sooner since the Stonehenge+Obelisk will double their culture soon.

Stonehenge-created monuments/obelisks do not double in culture. Stonehenge itself will, of course.

[kjn]

I think the most interesting things about the new turn can be summed up in this picture:




That's a nice placement of the iron - it's deep within our core once we manage to settle the western shore and can be worked by both HF and the hammer-starved KC.

[kalin]

Heh, I was just coming here to ask where was the iron Thanks for the screenshot kjn.

Kalin

[Bigger]

thats a great spot for it.. it can be shared between the two cities, and anyway horse feather's is somewhat short of productive tiles.

[Shoot the Moon]

That's an absolutely fantastic spot. Easily flipped between two cities that can use the production, safe, easy to hook up, already in our borders. So great.

[Sullla]

Turn 75 - 1000BC

We have iron in our borders, and in a very nice location. First though, let's look at the scouting information in the southwest.



Unfortunately the only thing we found down here was another barb warrior. At least that's another experience point for our axe. There is another barb warrior just across the river from Gourmet Menu; our axe in there will finish healing this turn, and then whack it when it crosses the river next turn. (Geeze, there are a lot of barbs on this map! Only a matter of time until we get a unit to 10XP at this rate.)

The main thing we want to discuss right now is where to plant the upcoming settler coming out of Adventure One. I think it should be on one of these three spots, each with their pros and cons.

Red: This is the spot I think I favor the most. The placement looks a bit odd at first glance, but it will be able to work both the cows and the dry wheat while picking up nine riverside tiles in the process. The biggest weakness is that it is not on a river for lategame levees, and it wastes the plains tile instead of a desert tile upon settling.

Yellow: This spot also claims both food resources, and it even has both in first-ring to be connected immediately. It eliminates a useless desert tile by founding on top of it. The tradeoff is a lack of access to two riverside grassland tiles on the western river, and the spot will make it very difficult to plant another, later city to the east due to the peaks. This is probably my strongest argument against this spot: if we plant at red or green, we can squeeze in another city in that hilly/forested region later to work the cows. It would be a weakish city, but still probably worth planting. The yellow spot likely rules that location out.

Green: This spot has a nice location on the river, and doesn't overlap much at all with Gourmet Menu. Of course, that's more of a liability than an advantage, as we WANT these cities to have some overlap, so they can swap tiles and make sure the cottages are always being worked. It also loses the grassland cows, which is a major drawback.

I do think an argument can be made for any of these locations, so let's try to find a group consensus. I believe that the red spot is probably the best, followed by yellow, and then green. (Note that we cannot found a city anywhere on the horizontal row a tile north due to closeness with Gourmet Menu, and another row to the south looks to have weaker terrain. It probably needs to be one of these three spots.)



Here is an overview of our civ, with the iron location on the plains tile halfway between Horse Feathers and Gourmet Menu. This is a great spot for iron, since both cities are production weak and can swap it around as needed. We couldn't have done too much better here. (It's even better that a crummy plains tile gets turned into an awesome 1/5 tile. Much better than having iron pop up in a hill.) The workers will have this improved fairly quickly, and mining the iron slots easily into the micro plan. Next turn, one worker down at GM finishes the floodplains cottage, while the other moves NW to the plains tile and cottages. At the same time, a worker is born in HF and moves SW and roads. Then those two workers move onto the iron tile on T77 and mine, finishing the mine on T78. They can then go improve the new city in the southwest as needed.

Our tile micro is exactly the same as last turn, so I won't draw it in. Workers are getting ready to connect the gems in the north, and Tree Huggers will expand borders next turn. This will give us a lot of extra visibility up in the jungle, eight extra tiles. We need to keep pushing back the fog for barb spawn busting purposes. The axe in Adventure One is on the way up to Tree Huggers for extra safety, and the spear will shortly be able to head out again to finish defogging the river connection to German team. Hopefully will be done just as we finish Sailing research.

We can run 60% exact break-even research on Sailing, or go back to the 100% / 0% min and max cycle. I don't think it matters at this point in time. Either way, we get Sailing tech in four more turns, eot 79.

On the eastern edge of the picture above, our scout is about to leave our borders and head over to CivFanatics. (I have named the scout CFC Welcome Wagon for the time being.) As suggested, we'll move the scout one tile each turn to make sure it arrives safely. It will be good to know some more info on their setup.



Demographics are mostly the same, except for a major tick upwards in global GNP. Rival Average went from 55 to 62, so at least one team swapped over to 100% research. The Rival Best in Power also went up a lot, from 105k to 117k. Since we are still in third place (and got a big jump from Iron Working's 10k Power rating), we know that the #1 and #2 remain WPC and German team. Their war appears to be going strong, as best I can tell. Lots of units being built on both sides.

Anyway, so let's determine where to place this next city, and then we can go from there. We'll also need to update the sandbox with the iron and new terrain when someone gets a chance. Thanks.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I would tentatively favor red, but want to scout from the hill W, SW of the clam, as that hill could also be a decent location if we can find anything else there. But, that's getting ahead.

The yellow location, as Sullla mentioned, doesn't have to wait the 10t for a border expansion. Also, it appears that it will have 3 forests to chop, whereas red will have just one, and green 2, all after borders pop. Early on, this is a good food surplus and whip city, going 4/2 repeatedly while growing on GM's cottage FPs for +8 (?) at size 4. Yellow could eventually be a hammer city and could help build cottages for GM until that city is ready to take them over, then work mines. Possibly this could be used to build wealth in support of the rest of our empire/expansion, because once GM takes all of it's river cottages there just won't be much else for this location but hammers. If this were made into a hammer city, then another city could be founded west of the river, on the river, and focus on cottages. That would have to take the wheat, and would otherwise be cottages and nothing else. In practice, I'm not sure how effective that would be.

Red can do much of this, but has one less forest and, as Sullla said, may strand tiles adjacent to the peaks. On the plus side, it would have 3 PHs for production and additional river cottages west of the river. This wouldn't eliminate a possible defensive anchor city on the hill by the lake, but would crowd it more. This is the best combination of short term development and long term use of this area, in my opinion.

Green is not a very viable option, to me, as it misses out on the extra food. Maybe if slavery weren't an option, but we aren't giving that up anytime soon.

[T-hawk]

The main thing we want to discuss right now is where to plant the upcoming settler coming out of Adventure One. I think it should be on one of these three spots, each with their pros and cons.

I think we need visibility on the two fogged tiles that yellow would pick up over red (E-SE and S-SE of yellow, or 6-3 and 2-3 for those who like that notation.) If there's a resource in either, take yellow, else take red.

We can run 60% exact break-even research on Sailing, or go back to the 100% / 0% min and max cycle. I don't think it matters at this point in time. Either way, we get Sailing tech in four more turns, eot 79.

The usual reasons for running 0% first apply. We could get devaluation bonus beakers if we wait and somebody else researches it. Or at least we preserve the ability to switch to another tech instead if we change our minds.

[kalin]

I favor the yellow city. Resources in first ring, then 3 forests after expansion. We may later found a city SW of the clams to claim those river tiles.
Kalin