Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[kjn]

No, it says "requires: mine" on the tile. And their silk says "requires: plantation".

The tile yield trick only works when you yourself don't know the tech that enables the resource, I believe.

[kalin]

I wasn't sure, thought tile yields were showing the yields as they are for each civ, e.g., you'd see 3c on coasts for FIN civs. So I thought that maybe one would also see. 1F2H for iron if the civ with the iron in culture has IW regardless of whether you have it or not.

Kalin

[kjn]

Good call - it shows 2F only. So they definitely don't know IW.

Wonder what else Raj claims? They already have a silk, Daivagati needs the sheep, and they don't know the iron's there.

[NobleHelium]

The most foolproof way to check whether CFC has IW is to see whether that grassland iron produces 0 or 1 hammer when the yield overlay is enabled. Someone check this please. This is what we mean when we say check tile yields, not whether it says requires mine or whatever.

Edit: Crosspost.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Should we, as a sign of niceness, let them know they have Iron and won't need to settle for it?

As a bonus, if they tech iron working, they'll settle north, instead of northwest.

Edit: ah, it's being discussed elsewhere anyway.

[Sullla]

We're unlikely to get a turn in today, since the German team still has 4 hours + at least 24 hours remaining on their own personal timer, and they basically never played until the final minutes of their turn. As we continue to wait, here are some Demographics charts to think about.

Food


We've had a comfortable lead here over our neighbors for just about all of the previous 50 turns. CivFanatics has gotten close twice when we double or triple whipped cities for settlers without ever managing to catch up. The steep crater shows where the German team had to go on a whipping spree to fight the war against WPC. German team hasn't grown at all in the past 30 or so turns.

Production


We have never been much better than average in Production. We have exactly one non-resource mine in our entire territory, and we almost never work that tile. CFC has had some big spikes on this graph, likely when they were building settlers and working high foodhammer tiles. It's kind of amusing how we are neck and neck with the German team and WPC on this bar graph.

Of course, that's because we're working high commerce tiles instead of production ones, and that shows up on the GNP chart:

GNP


We've been crushing the competition in this metric for essentially the whole game. CFC can't reach us even during their 100% research pushes. Whoever is watching the graphs for their team might have needed a new pair of pants when we went all-in on Calendar a couple of turns ago. That was the combined effects of maximum research, the connection of the gems resource at Tree Huggers, a library finishing in the capital, and international trade routes from Sailing. This bar graph is the reason why I'm thinking we should convert over to break-even steady state research after we discover Currency, in order to disguise how far ahead we are in teching power. We can have that discussion later though.

Germans and WPC are just sad. Neither has made any research progress since their war started. At this rate, we may have knights before they have longbows.

Power


Our Power graph is a slow, steady rise over time. CFC mimics the same thing at a lesser pace. We have not lost a single unit since that barb lion killed our starting warrior (and we've killed almost two dozen barb units in that span, not kidding). On this chart, WPC starts their big buildup of dog soldiers about 30 turns ago, then we see the massive rise of the German army in response as their whipped out a large force from thin air. They clashed and it was WPC who came out on the losing end. We're still ahead of WPC and they don't seem to be in a hurry to add more units despite being significantly behind in the war; I do wonder what exactly is going on between those teams now. Maybe we'll find out if either one ever writes us back diplomatically.

We're fortunate that WPC didn't choose to attack us with their big dog soldier army. I give the credit to our diplo team for getting them to sign the early NAP, and I also think that being Egypt as a civ helped too. War chariots are the worst nightmare for the Native American civ. Of course, we didn't have any horses, but they certainly didn't know that, and we did have the city of "Horse Feathers" to deter aggression.

One unrelated note: I didn't think that the body of water where Alemanni is located was large enough to support ships:



It looks like there's only 14 tiles of water there. I checked in game, and that's correct: we cannot build galleys on this body of water. No ferrying units across to the other side. The rules for water bodies are:

Work Boat: Can build if there is a seafood resource present. Size doesn't matter.
Lighthouse: Can build if the water tiles are "coastal" (1 food) and not "lake" (2 food). This happens when the water body is 10 tiles or larger.
Ships: Can build if the body of water is 20 tiles or larger.

Thus we can build work boats (clams present) and a lighthouse (coastal tiles), but not galleys or any other ships. The rules are pretty arcane here, hopefully this clears up any confusion.

[WilliamLP]

I'm hoping we start emphasizing military more. It's clear that the micro-geniuses here will roll over the field if left alone, so it's time to start optimizing for the worst case - some stacks including 2-movers from 2-4 players suddenly appearing and DOW, maybe with a NAP or two broken.

Sure, the power number is fine, but we all know that this includes techs, population, and city garrison all of which inflate our score more than the other teams, so it's very artificial. In terms of actual usable army I think we're slightly below the pack, particularly with no 2-movers yet. I think we definitely should have more spears in border cities and should strive to be at least tied #1 in power nearly immediately after horses are hooked up. If this puts a slight brake on infrastructure or expansion so be it, we're still clear number one and it simultaneously makes us less of a target while making us more ready to defend if we are.

[Fintourist]

I don't think that we are currently in danger, but William surely has a point. Especially it will be difficult to defend our future stone city plus a possible flood plains site and I consider Civplayers as the most likely team to test us with an opportunistic attack.

Of course we have to prepare us somewhat for the worst case scenario. Maybe the fact that WPC and Germans are not trading units is just a sign that CFC convinced them to form a dogpile against us and at this point war is just a decoy while they are bringing their units to the border..

I recall us building more military in our current microplan so partially these worries are already taken into consideration.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I'm of a mind to continue the direction we've been going. We're only a few turns from being able to churn out War Chariots. The threat from the north will come just as quickly as either melee or mounted units through the jungle, and we have a scout in CFC's lands reporting back on buildings in cities, and we have an idea of which techs we're threatened by. The distance involved getting a stack from CFC to our closest city, Focal Point, is so large that we could whip up a stack of whatever is needed turns before the stack could even get here. As long as the two in the north are at war, and truly at war exchanging units/hammers, we have nothing to fear from them as they'll continue chewing on one another. If the "war" continues and we don't see corresponding losses, but rather increases, perhaps worry then. To our west, we have not made contact and that team seems from their play in the game thus far to be smart enough not to want an early war. They could pull us back relative to their civ, and put both of us far behind everyone else across the map. This is the understanding that WPC lacks, I don't expect the same mistake from our western neighbor. I think it is too soon to worry overmuch about military issues. Keep pressing hard for economic benefits until the diplomatic winds start to change.

--

crosspost: Have WPC/Team Turnholders stopped exchanging units? If so, this bears watching with some scouting units in the jungle, just to be safe. I certainly acknowledge the possibility that the war would provide perfect cover to sneak in a back stab on us, and this would explain the lack of response to scooter's diplo messages. I just don't think these two cooperating is likely. I have a hard time believing that the German team will be in a mood to cooperate much with WPC going forward after the pain that they've had to inflict on their civ from all the whipping.

[kalin]

I think you guys are exaggerating the threat. We have NAPs with the neighbors. WPC can barely play (their forum was/is down), the Germans are in a somewhat similar situation, CFC just let us see all their land and they are miles away, Civplayers are likely to not even know where we are. I think we are doing just fine. We should build some WCs when we can fit them in and that's it imo.

Kalin