Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Sullla]

I've ended our turn since we don't seem to have anything left to do. We won't get to the next turn for at least another 24 hours, since nearly everyone else has yet to play.

CFC and Spanish both had war weariness rating of 4 when I checked in-game. Not sure how many units that equates to; at least we know that they are indeed exchanging some kills.

[kjn]

In the second cryptic message they mention:

"The more soldiers we can test these weird flatbows with, the better can we make them."

So I'm guessing crossbows. Either they are teching them now or they have machinery teched? Either way that seems to be what they're saying. Whether they already have them or they are teching them and trying to warn the Spanish off (though not sure they would understand anyway) seems to be the question.

No-one we knows has even researched Metal Casting. And as far as I know CFC doesn't have Iron Working either.

So crossbows are a loooong way away. CFC might have researched Archery, though. My GNP check indicated another team knowing it. They might be heading for HBR now, as a decent catapult counter.

[Lewwyn]

Yeah I figured it was a long way off. I think they might actually be trying to psych the Spanish out to make them think crossbows, but obviously this type of psychological warfare only works if your opponent can actually perceive the subtle nuances you're trying to leave behind.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Plus, if you go down that path, need to be correct. Every. God. Damn. Time.

Fuck up and everyone thinks you're full of hot air

[Qgqqqqq]

Mantra is one of their cities, not a player, if that's what you mean.

It says metra in the second post - the one where they discuss the players (Yossarian etc).

[Sciz]

sup guys, been away from RB for quite some time so i had no idea this was going on until a few days ago. Currently catching up on everything, very fun reading

[Sullla]

Turn 108 - 175BC

Big news for the turn was meeting Apolyton. We're only missing contact with CivFr now.



I saw WPC in-game when I logged in and engaged in a short conversation with them. (Read from bottom to top, as always for the Civ4 chat box.) I wanted to know if they had decided on our missionary offer yet; we finished the missionary itself on this current turn. Apparently they are still "debating" the issue and gave some weird answer about a growth spurt that I won't pretend to understand. I guess that's a reference to their team suddenly expanding and planting a bunch of cities in rapid succession? It's a non-issue for us, since our border is pretty much set right now and WPC's economy is beyond terrible at the moment.

I'm going to interpret this as a "no" answer unless they would respond to us later. For our purposes, it doesn't really matter whether WPC wants a free religion spread or not. I've built it into the micro plan that we can easily adapt either way. We'll simply get an extra worker whip instead of a future missionary whip if they refuse, and that might even be a better result. Their loss if they don't want religion.



We also did plant our ivory city this turn, fortunately with no opposition or other problems. Ditchdigger is a very appropriate name. All of its starting tiles are peaks or jungle, so we'll run a Priest specialist here for a couple turns while we hack out a grassland farm for the city to work. (Obelisk + Stonehenge combo for the specialists, score!) The city won't be connected to our trade network until next turn, the road going through the tile southwest of the city. Ditchdigger is a giant drain on the economy right now, costing us about 10 gpt while producing no immediate economic value. However, we're about to turn that ivory resource into Statue of Zeus and about 150 failgold over the next five turns, plus it will give us access to jumbos on demand. Hopefully well worth the investment.

Still more vast tracts of jungle to the west. We'll keep that in mind for the future, since that land would be amazing in the State Property workshop spam era.



There's nothing too exciting going on with our cities this turn, so I'll spend the rest of this report going over what we know of Apolyton as a team. Here's the contact point with their exploring chariot (C1/Shock) across the water from Eastern Dealers. We already had a trade connection with them before even meeting their team, and here's what that looks like:



It must be pretty intimidating when teams meet us and open that diplo screen for the first time. They have 9 cities to our 13, and the last two were planted very recently, just in the past few turns. They were sitting on 7 cities for a very long time. It's not just about cities though; the vast disparity in resources is immediately obvious from looking at this picture. We have 5 happiness resources to their 2, 9 health resources to their 5, and 26 total resources to their 11 total (without even counting the stone + spices we're trading away, which would make 28 resources). We all know that Civilization is a game of working tiles. More tiles worked + more resources worked with their high yields = more power. This huge disparity is exactly why we're so far ahead on the Demographics screens.

Apolyton appears to be researching at break-even pace (+1 gold/turn). I have no idea what tech they might be pursuing at the moment. They are in Slavery and Hereditary Rule civics like most other teams, but not Organized Religion (they haven't even researched Monotheism yet). This is understandable since they had no religion until lightbulbing Philosophy tech last turn. Speaking of research, Apolyton had to pick up Alphabet tech in order to clear the Great Scientist route to Philosophy. This means we can see their techs:



I will translate this screen to save all of you the need to get out your tech chart. Here's how we stack up:

Shared Techs (ignoring Ancient Age stuff): Currency, Mathematics, Monarchy
Apolyton: Meditation, Alphabet, Code of Laws, Philosophy
Realms Beyond: Monotheism, Aesthetics, Calendar, Construction, Iron Working

We had one mistake in our numbers, we had them down for Aesthetics instead of Currency. I went ahead and fixed this in the chart. (We also had them down for Archery instead of Priesthood, but that involves Power numbers, and so I'll leave that for kjn.) That's pretty darn accurate seeing as how we had absolutely no contact with Apolyton until this turn!

Overall, Apolyton is ahead about 450 beakers in terms of total research. However, that includes the Philosophy lightbulb that gave them 1440 beakers for free, so please do keep that in mind. Apolyton has a relatively small amount of population and territory, and they have focused heavily on research thus far. They produced the game's first Great Scientist for an early Academy in the capital, and then used the Philosophical trait for a second Scientist for that Philosophy lightbulb. It's not bad play by any means. However... our team is keeping pace on research (really going faster, in all honesty) while also expanding to a vastly bigger size. We turned our first Great Person into a Shrine which will scale ridiculously well on this map as the game continues. We're roughly 20 turns from producing our own Bureacademy capital, at which point in time any research lead that Apolyton had will evaporate and the size of our empire should take over. In other words, I don't see Apolyton as being a major lategame threat, not once their early game Academy power play wears off.



Here's a picture of our religious advisor showing off our investment into Organized Religion. We now have religion in every city other than Ditchdigger (and there's a missionary heading there shortly), providing the OR bonus everywhere and contributing shrine income for Mansa's Muse. It's at 12 gold/turn right now, with dozens of cities still to add religion and no market/grocer/bank/Wall Street income as yet. Because we got the shrine so early, it will end up providing thousands of gold over the course of the full game. Almost nothing scales better in this game than an early shrine with a widely spread religion on a Huge map.

Whoever would have thought that we would get more out of the obelisk than the war chariot when we picked Egypt for this game?

Overview / tile micro:

Nothing too crazy to report this turn from the micro. Focal Point builds Wealth to channel overflow from chopping into Shwedagon Paya next turn. (We hit the overflow cap on its worker build otherwise.) Gourmet Menu has to be careful not to produce too many shields this turn or it won't be able to double-whip the lighthouse next turn; this is why it isn't working the plains hill mine. We have just enough improved tiles to cover everything in the GM/ST area. (Check out the river running through our territory; we are working nearly every single tile that it touches, mostly for cottages. Just the three tiles due south of the capital missing where there's no city present, and some plains hills at Mansa.) Starfall got a forest chop to finish its work boat, and we finished the pasture on the cows at The Covenant, allowing Forbidden Fruit to take back the grassland spice for one turn. Triple whipped settler coming out of poor Eastern Dealers next turn.

We have more than enough overflow to research Meditation tech this turn at 0% science. We're actually quite lucky to meet Apolyton this turn, since they already have researched Meditation tech and Code of Laws, which we'll be going onto next. That's worth another 3% bonus beakers on each tech, putting us slightly ahead of where we were in the sandbox. This will be crazy silly next turn when we go 100% research on Code of Laws with 40% pre-requisite + 6% known civ (Apolyton + CivPlayers) bonuses. Just you wait and see, GNP of 400+ value.



With the recent whipping from other teams, we've opened up a vast gulf in the Food category... while also remaining #1 in GNP for the moment at 0% science. If I'm one of the other teams, these numbers would have me crapping my pants about now. Now add to that the fact that we're locked into peace with all neighbors for the next 35 turns, and we have a Golden Age upcoming in a dozen turns, along with several more wonders under construction, along with at least 150 failgold to further speed research... yeah, it's not pretty. For them.

Comments/suggestions welcome. Specifically, who do we want to put our EP on next: Apolyton or Spanish Apolyton? We just obtained graphs with UniversCiv, now is the time to decide who we want to put our EP on next.

[kjn]

The Spanish graph is probably more interesting right now, with the war with CFC going on, but I think Apolyton's graphs will be more important.

But we will need to run 100% EPs for one turn before T125 I think, if we are to get graphs on CivPlayers before APTmod loses a lot of it usefulness for the graphs. If we do that, we can put "one tick" on the Spanish or Apolyton too (apart from the majority on CivPlayers), to get their graphs as well.

[Qgqqqqq]

Id say apolyton for a more competitive team that's not locked into war.

[kalin]

@kjn: I am not sure a turn of 100% EP is worth, but would like to hear from the others. Why is the APTmod loses usefulness for the graphs?

Kalin