Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[kjn]

Also sentry.

[Brian Shanahan]

Also since we have TGW and are planning on killing people in the not too distant future, it would be convenient to have a WC for a medichariot just lying around.

TGW only increases GG chance indife your borders, no?

[Brian Shanahan]

Bah, phone gremlins caused double post

[kjn]

TGW only increases GG chance indife your borders, no?

Correct. Though if we do go on the offensive, 30 XP isn't far off.

[Sullla]

Turn 117 - 50AD

Our lead in food and cities continues to balloon ever upwards.



Here is then fifth and final Spanish city of Nobamba. This one has a surprising amount of infrastructure inside: monument, granary, ikhanda, library, and a colosseum for some reason (?) They must be really hurting for happiness. The Spanish actually have some excellent land, they've simply done a terrible job of making use of it. They even popped copper at the capital from one of the mines. The micromanagement gods shed a tear at the sight of that 5/1 deer tile going completely unused by any city.

From here it's further into the wilds of the east with this scout. CivFr's borders on the opposite side have to be pretty close.



Our war chariot in CFC territory found this little ministack along the border. It certainly looks as though CFC captured a barb city down in the tundra, and that could well be the reason why the Spanish declared war. We still have yet to see any true front line fighting between the two teams, although war weariness and injured units signal that some blood was indeed exchanged. We'll see what's going on in that city to the south next turn.



Despite moving our Woodsman axe at the start of the turn, we were still bounced backwards when CivPlayers founded their own new city. Ah well. This is what I expected to happen, but it was worth a shot. I guess we'll go north and try to circle around the big body of water in that direction. At the very least, making contact with CivFr made this little trip more than worthwhile.

It also looks like CivPlayers is just about out of room to expand to their west, with CivFr very close, so hopefully... popcorn?



Our scout in German territory found the city that was at the heart of the earlier WPC/German war, this location here. Willemshaven was razed by WPC during their war, then apparently refounded on the exact same spot later. The city has a terrace and nothing else in the way of buildings. This is where the bulk of the German army is hanging out, made up entirely of axes and chariots. In fact, pretty much every army that we've seen from everyone is made up of axes, chariots, and catapults. By sitting out the various rounds of early wars, we'll be able to avoid wasting production on these ancient era units, and when we do start to field an army for real, all of these units will be outdated garbage.

Note as well the marble sitting right on the border between the Germans and WPC. It certainly appears as though plako put the stone/marble resources directly on the halfway point between civs, like the stone in the desert to our southwest and the stone at Brick By Brick. Maybe some day this one will be ours, or at the very least become property of WPC and then we can trade for it. In the meantime though, it's literally in no man's land, and not even connected.



Back to our own civ now. We established our 15th city in the northeast part of this picture next to the rice. I named it Cutting Edge after one of our old succession games, since it has to be hacked out of the jungle. I shifted the axe inside Tree Huggers over to the new city, because the Germans don't have visibility into Tree Huggers but will inside Cutting Edge soon if they don't already. I would like to get a unit of some kind into TH soonish, just because I never like having an empty city anywhere near the border. It invites aggression from other players.

Horse Feathers and Brick By Brick both finished barracks at the start of this turn. I have Horse Feathers stuck on Wealth for this turn while running max food; it's about to start Heroic Epic next turn when we discover Literature, and it doesn't seem useful to start building anything right now. Why start a unit now and have it sit in the queue for 10 turns, when we could build a unit post-HE and get the production doubled for free? There are also no city buildings that we want to start in there; we need more tech for forge and stables. Let me know if you want this changed.

Brick By Brick does indeed want to build military, but what unit? We had a suggestion before that catapults will hold their value the longest, which is why I selected one for the moment. However, I'd also like to get some kind of unit for Tree Huggers, and a war chariot would be the cheapest and most useful option there. Which do you want: catapult or war chariot? I think I'm leaning towards the chariot now for military police defender, but let me know what everyone thinks.



Here's the southeast corner of our territory. Shwedagon Paya is due to complete at the end of this current turn, although it's hard to see in this picture. I am going to cry if we would lose this wonder now and force me to redo hours upon hours of planning for our Golden Age. At the very least, we have a coinflip shot at this point. Cautiously optimistic.

Starfall and Eastern Dealers are growing in preparation for their Great Scientist Starvation play during the impending Golden Age. Both will hit size 8 by the beginning of Turn 120, albeit just barely in the case of Starfall. I'm also having the workers chop the remaining two forests at Starfall, including the one outside our borders, for the following reasons:

* Worker labor in the area and not needed for another more important job.
* Borders will take a long time to grab that forest tile, another 15-20 turns at the least.
* No new cities planned for that corner of the map anytime soon.
* We need the extra forest chop to finish the library in Starfall, which has three purposes: 1) culture to push back CFC city 2) finish library in time to benefit from working 6 Scientist specialists 3) finish chop to benefit from OR civic before swapping out

So while we do lose out on some production by chopping third-ring outside our borders, I think the benefits outweigh the costs here. It's very important that we hold onto the cultural lead in this area to hold the stone tile; I'm willing to lose a future forest chop to get library up sooner. (And we'll be getting theatre here very soon as well once we tech Drama.)



Meanwhile, Mansa's Muse is two turns away from finishing its Great Person. We are at 181/200 GPP right now, which allows me to drop a Scientist for this one turn and work the gold tile without delaying the Great Person. This lines up the production very nicely (8 base production = 10 production with Organized Religion for the turn), get some extra food into Forbidden Fruit since it doesn't have to work the gold, and use the gold tile here in a city with a library on a turn where we're doing research. The micro worked out pretty nicely here.

Mansa's shrine is all the way up to 21 gold/turn now, which is fairly incredibly for a competitive MP game at this early date. We only have 14 cities with our religion, and we only spread religion to 2 WPC cities, which means there are another 5 cities out there where we have no vision that are sporting the Hindu banner. I'm guessing they are located somewhere in WPC or UniversCiv territory. Our religion is by far the world's most spread faith, and it's been doing wonders in the background to keep our teching going. We have 15 cities on an Emperor / Toroidal map, and we are almost breaking even at 50% science. With zero courthouses. That's fairly incredible.

Overview / tile micro:

Relatively modest changes this turn in the tile micro. The Covenant borrowed the cows from Simple Life for one turn to grow to size 6 faster. We'll pass the tile back next turn as a cottage complete at TC. Forbidden Fruit is sadly one food away from growing (31/32) but there's no way to get that extra food in there without forcing other cities off improved tiles. Sad face, it just could not be done. Most other cities are doing their typical thing, growing and working cottages. I drew in the colored dots for our planned next two cities, #16 and #17, in the northwest and the south. Please note that no other team has more than 12 cities right now, and many of our biggest rivals have less. City count:

RB = 15
Apolyton = 12
CFC = 12
UniversCiv = 11
CivFr = 10
Germans = 10
WPC = 10
CivPlayers = 9
Spanish = 5

"One of these things is not like the others!"



This is naturally reflected in our disgusting 75 point lead in Food, and the 79 more tiles that we have under our control compared to the next best team. CFC is second in Food and CivFr is second in Land, for the curious. The GNP leader this turn appears to be CivFr, as Apolyton still had their science at 0% when I checked their diplo screen. We're running 50% science this turn, because it will allow us to finish Literature tech and then prepare for our Golden Age thusly:

T117: 50% science, finish Literature
T118-119: 0% science, stockpile gold, overflow into Drama
T120: 100% science, pop Golden Age, finish Drama
T121: 100% science, overflow and finish Music

Four more turns to go. Let's hope that CivFr isn't racing for this tech and the free Great Artist as we speak. (If they do, we'll skip Music for now and speed up our research on Metal Casting instead.)

Let me know what you think on the military builds and we should otherwise be good to end turn.

[Cyneheard]

I'd say a WC, since we have an obvious need for one as an MP unit, and it'll do a better job of that than a catapult thanks to both a lower cost and better mobility. Nor are WC useless in later wars - they're still expendable scouts.

[kjn]

Another vote for a WC.

The chariot is a far better unit when we are at peace - the catapult is only useful while at war.

[sooooo]

Yes, WC seems like the choice too for a cheap, flexible unit that can serve as military police.

[SleepingMoogle]

Agreed on the WC. We don't need Catapults yet, and they aren't as mobile for MP purposes.

[kalin]

In this situation I agree too with a WC.

Kalin