Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[NobleHelium]

I'm under the assumption that we're using your plan through the next turn at least. If we don't come up with a new plan to settle elsewhere we could keep using it until the OR switch.

[SevenSpirits]

Side note, regarding the micro tweak: When getting bonus hammers into workers, as EXP we need to check whether those hammers are retained when the worker build is complete.

In this case, according to the current plan, the 2h in MM are retained, which is good because micro there is pretty inflexible. The 1h in FF is wasted (we get 21h overflow out of the worker instead of 20, but both of them are just divided down to 16), but we may be able to use it still by making some changes later. (In any case, 2b for 2h is a good deal.)

[Sullla]

Turn 92 - 575BC

Another new turn. These 48 hour turns are so much nicer to play. Not too likely that the German team will end turn again though (it was an accident last turn).



We didn't find too much in CFC territory this turn, although knowing the location of their horses has to be somewhat useful. Based on the directions they gave us a couple of turns ago, Spanish Apolyton should be just to the east of that desert hill. I'll probably move the scout east across the river, then southeast onto the desert hill tile. While it's possible that we could run into a barb unit, I'll take our chances given that this area appears to be extremely close to the territory of two teams. We will probably make contact with Spanish Apolyton next turn or the turn afterwards.



I wasn't sure whether to move the Woodsman axe northwest or southwest on our turn. Northwest would reveal more tiles, so I ultimately decided to go in that direction. I thought we would be able to move down to the southwest as the axe moved along. Unfortunately, we found nothing up here and the range of peaks extends quite a long way, cutting off passage to the south. Not a great result, and I'm sure at least one person will second-guess this decision later in this thread.

Where to move the Woodsman axe from here depends on what we do with axeman Wyn, still sitting next to the CivPlayers border unmoved. If we get an Open Borders deal with CivPlayers, I'd like to move Wyn south into their territory and snoop around to see what they have. If we can't get them to agree to Open Borders, or we sign one with a no-scouting agreement, then Wyn can go defog the northern edge of the lake while the Woodsman axe heads even further northwest to search for Apolyton. That's not such a bad result either.

Long story short, we want to try and figure out if CivPlayers is willing to sign Open Borders and/or allow a scouting unit in their territory as soon as possible. I'd like to request that our diplo team make a request along these lines before this turn ends.



The barb spearman moved onto the wheat tile as expected, which means that we'll still need to find one more battle for axeman Lew to hit 10 XP. I don't think that will be much of a problem, given all the barb activity we've seen. Our other axe attacked and killed the spear without issue, gaining 2 XP and a promotion in the process. Obviously we didn't have much of a choice here, we didn't want to see the wheat get pillaged and we wanted to work that tile this turn.



Here's a shot of the eastern part of our territory; it's very quiet, just wanted a closer image for the lurkers. I like how we have workers in production at three different cities in this screenshot alone. We have 12 workers right now, and workers #13 and #14 will be finishing next turn. That's pretty impressive this early in the game, and I've rarely had this many workers to play around with on T92, but then again I've rarely had 10 cities, Stonehenge, and Currency tech all in hand before 500 BC either. I wish we could somehow see how many workers the other teams had at this point, would be interesting information.

In that picture around Focal Point, one worker is roading towards the upcoming pink dot location and another worker moved onto the forested hill tile S-SW of the city to mine/chop it. We should be able to tweak things so that we don't finish the chop (into Mausoleum) until after we're in Organized Religion civic for the bonus. Micro past T96-97 is still up in the air at this point.

Since there's not a ton taking place on this turn, let's look in detail at one city: Horse Feathers.



We're in pretty clear consensus that this will be our Moai city, and we'll be getting started as soon as we have the stone. Amusingly enough, we actually have stone under Brick By Brick, but it is *NOT* connected at the moment because we haven't researched Masonry tech. Anyway, that's getting fixed as soon as we're done Currency. Horse Feathers has 7 tiles that will benefit from Moai (remember the 3 food lake tile gets the bonus as well), and even if some other city would potentially get more benefit 50 turns later, it's better to build the wonder now and have it in place quickly. Horse Feathers with Moai goes from becoming a decent city to a very strong unit producer, one of the best in our territory.

I've drawn in some of the long term tile assignment in this area. We need to run an irrigation chain up to that rice tile, and the tiles marked with "F" are the most logical ones to farm. (That white dot city will be very strong in time, but it will also require a metric ton of worker labor to clear out the jungle. I think 19 of the 21 tiles right now are jungle!) Most of the grassland tiles between Adventure One and Horse Feathers will eventually go over to the capital as cottages, and since there's no river up here, Horse Feathers works best as a production city. Here's what that could look like with some Worldbuilder fun:



Even with leaving the corn tile to the capital, I can get 29 base production here at size 17 with extra food to spare. (Assuming we can manage the requisite health and happiness to go with the pop.) I'd actually like to suggest using Horse Feathers as our Heroic Epic city to go along with Moai; with the iron resource and four hill tiles, the production here is very good. It's the same deal as Moai: even if we could get a better spot later on in the game, we could probably have Moai and Heroic Epic up here together by about T130, and then go all units for the rest of the game. Most of our other cities have too many riverside tiles, which practically demand mass cottages and less production as a result. Horse Feathers fits nicely here, plus it even has the perfect name for a Heroic Epic city. Any thoughts on this?

Overview / tile micro:

Not too much in the way of change here. Adventure One grew to size 9 and picked up a brand new non-riverside grassland cottage. Seven Tribes grew to size 3 and added another new grassland river cottage. We also double-whipped Forbidden Fruit for a worker, with plans to save the overflow via Wealth build into another worker in a few turns. Three cities grow next turn and we discover Currency tech, which will mean a lot of score points. Not much chance of staying anonymous in this game.

We easily complete Currency this turn at 50% research, with a fair amount of overflow going into Masonry next turn. Note that we are still running a profit at 50% science despite our 10 cities and the Emperor + Toroidal maintenance costs. Looking forward to grabbing another trade route in all 10 cities next turn. Since the Germans have 6 cities and WPC has 5 cities, we should get one more intercontinental trade route followed by nine domestic ones. Connecting to the seven cities of CivPlayers would be very nice indeed.



Early turn Demographics. This is after I whipped at Forbidden Fruits, but before anyone else even logged into the game. Should be good. We are actually still #1 in GNP even at 0% research, and that Food stat has me jumping for joy every turn.

CivFr grew their first city and second city between turns, now sitting at size 11 and size 10. They are either getting a ton out of Hereditary Rule civic or they've already teched Construction and built some ball courts. CivFr has emerged as our clear rival by a wide margin; they are the only ones keeping pace in population and research. The good news is that they are growing vertically and not horizontally; the latter almost always wins out in the end in Civ4, all other things being equal. Having 10 cities to their 7 is a very good sign. CivFr also has barely whipped at all, while we've whipped almost nonstop and still have more total pop than their team. Although I definitely rate them as our top competitor, and I think they're playing a very strong game, I think our position is definitely better.

CivPlayers put up no less than 10 espionage points against us between turns (!) Looks like they have three sacrificial altars finished. Well, we won't be winning the EP battle with them any time soon. An EP spending agreement with them would be nice, since we definitely can't win an espionage battle against them at present.

Most of our to-do list still involves getting another diplo message out to CivPlayers and figuring out where we're settling in the southwest. We can discuss this more in the dotmapping thread, but I think we'll have to settle on the tile southwest of the clams. It sucks, it's a weak city, but planting only 3 tiles away from CivPlayers is not going to be acceptable diplomatically. We can at least use the clams tile to grow and then make the most of the rest of the terrain. Serious overlap in that area, unfortunately, I just don't see an alternative. We don't want Seven Tribes to be on the front lines. Better to have a largely crummy city out beyond it to serve as our border. We can always build our very cheap walls (since we have stone) to discourage aggression.

Over to all of you guys for your thoughts and impressions.

[NobleHelium]

Uhm, can we drop down to 40% or lower and still finish Currency?

[Sullla]

Yes - 40% works, 30% does not. Is there a reason not to run 50% this turn?

[NobleHelium]

Well my general rule is to reduce overflow once we're past the initial stage of the game, to maximize flexibility and potential free beakers. I forget whether we'll have enough commerce to finish Masonry next turn or not.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Wait wait wait. Explain to me again, are we or are we not settling the Pink dot Oasis/Corn/Fish/Stone city? I mean, I'd like it, considering that CFC haven't even bothered expanding that direction, but can we get away with it?

[Qgqqqqq]

We are, T97 IIRC.

[waterbat]

ahh sac alters! i just couldnt fathom how they got 10 EP on us like that.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Ah okay. I'm fine with that.

Besides, Sommer and 2metra are back, fathers, lock up your daughters. I deem our relationship with CFC to be inevitably doomed. O4TE Caledorn can't control the narrative of their team forever.

Since we're going to be the target of EP economies (from both sides), is there any way to accelerate the plan for the Great Wall? One way to do it is:

T94 when Masonry comes in, we switch to the GW. Work Deer, Corn, Gold, plainhill, plaincot. 20/150. Move a worker onto plainhill.
T95, 1-pop whip the Worker. Work Deer, corn, Gold, plainhill. Put turn into plainhillmine. Worker 105/60
T96 revolt to OR. Put 2nd turn into plainhillmine.
T97 36 overflow. Work Deer, plaincot, Gold, plainhill. GW 123/150. Put 3nd turn into plainhillmine.
T98 Finish plainhillmine. Work corn, gold, 2xplainhill. GW 150/150


...So, what you say? Is my micro correct? Can anyone log into the game and track the productions of all of CFC's cities, to see if anyone's been putting alot of hammers into wonders? Easiest way to tell are huge spikes from the stone-doubling bonus.