Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Cyneheard]

lmao at CivFr losing the war to barbs...

Not every day that "Yes, I'd rather have The Great Wall than MoM" is a true statement....

[SevenSpirits]

lmao at CivFr losing the war to barbs...

Not every day that "Yes, I'd rather have The Great Wall than MoM" is a true statement....

Today isn't such a day either.

[Sullla]

Turn 119 - 100AD

T minus 1 turn to Golden Age.



We had a little discussion about this earlier in the thread. Our scout has found a very weird situation around this barb city of Chinook. CivFr took this city on their turn, only to lose it back to the barbarians again on the interturn. Now the Spanish appear to be in the driver's seat to take more permanent possession of the city, as long as it doesn't autoraze. That's a highly preferrable situation for us, as we would much prefer to have the Spanish gaining a city over CivFr. It also means that the CivFr borders are further to the east than we initially thought, and they don't have quite as much territory as we first estimated.

Some people were worried about the imminent demise of the Spanish at the hands of CFC, but I don't see that happening, at least not any time soon. Despite their huge population edge, CFC still can only build axes, spears, chariots, and catapults in terms of military units. They don't even have Iron Working researched or their iron connected. There's really no way to attack and win with axes/cats against an opponent who also has axes/cats, not without massive casualties on both sides. CFC needs to tech up to maces to gain a real edge, which they will do, but not for some time. I expect continued stalemate unless the Spanish are dumb enough to walk a big stack into CFC territory and have it wiped out.



Here's our trapped Woodsman II axeman in a little pocket of CivPlayers/CivFr territory. I moved this guy back onto the tile 2N of the cows, and will get him out to the north on the following turn, but not before snapping this screenshot of a CivPlayers city. Texcoco somehow has a warrior at 1.0 health inside - what the heck?! Was this spot also getting hit by barbarians? Seems like other teams are getting hurt much worse than us so far. Despite some bad dice rolls, we've handled the barb threat pretty well overall.

Texcoco has both a Buddhist temple and monastery along with sacrificial altar. CivPlayers is very clearly running a heavy monk economy / Apostolic Palace strategy. I do think that's a pretty solid choice for this map, but for whatever reason they've done a poor job of expanding and growing pop. Perhaps they've just been squeezed badly by their starting position between us and CivFr.



Here are two more German cities in the extreme north; we've now spotted 11 of their 12 cities. It's all but a certainty at this point that there's a polar ocean along the north/south worldwrap. The Germans actually founded two cities this turn, both size 1 cities visible above. Their poor team is clearly running out of room to expand. The Germans have also run their economy into the ground; they are only making +14 gold/turn at what I believe is 0% research. Ouch. At this point, I'm not at all sure whether they can even reach Feudalism tech by Turn 150, which I kind of assumed that they would easily be able to do. If they can't get to longbows by the end of our NAP, we can easily run over an army of axes/spears/chariots/cats without much difficulty. Wait and see there.



Interesting tidbit here in the south from axeman Lew: we've found a crabs resource down in the extreme south. This will allow us to place at least one semi-decent city down there much later on. Hopefully Lew will be able to uncover the final remaining secrets down there over the next few turns.

Seven Tribes triple-whipped a settler for the "red dot" location two north of the horses. Workers are roading to this spot now and the settler will be able to found the city on T121. Soliciting name suggestions for this spot right now! I didn't see anything jump out at me in the list of past RB games. Fire away.

Great Lighthouse ETA in six more turns. Steady as she goes there.



We've got another missionary en route to WPC which will enter their territory next turn. Feel free to send them another diplo message soonish asking them where they want this missionary to go, I can't remember. The Covenant is going to whip that settler at the start of next turn before we swap out of Slavery civic; it actually needed 2t to get the 10 foodhammers necessary for a triple whip. The Covenant will only grow onto unimproved tiles if we don't whip something, making this a good time to pop out a settler. (Remember too that we'll be swapping out of Slavery civic for the next 7t; this will be our last settler for a little bit.) Plan is for the settler to grab the rice spot in the northwest jungles with this guy. I believe the city itself is founded on T125 for city #17.

We also popped out our Great Person for the Golden Age this turn, and the roulette wheel produced....



Abu Bakr the Great Prophet. So much for any of those convoluted plans to use a Great Scientist or Great Spy here. Prophet makes it easy to follow our Golden Age plan as expected. Abu Bakr is just hanging out for one turn by Shwedagon Paya and taking in the sights. (Anyone remember when Abu Bakr was the Arab leader in Civ3 Play the World? Poor guy got demoted to a Great Prophet.)

Then there's one more piece of micro weirdness for me to explain:



OK, I have not officially lost my mind here. What you're seeing is a Hindu missionary where we're 3 production short of finishing the build. Remember, we can only build this guy because we're in Organized Religion; we don't have a monastery in Tree Huggers. We're about to swap to Pacifism next turn, which means no more missionary build until we swap back 7t later. It's wasteful to have a missionary sitting around in the build queue at 37/40 production for the next 7t, especially when we said that we would send one over to the German team. I would much rather work horrible tiles for one turn and finish the build than have it sit there doing nothing for us (instead of earning shrine income) all throughout the Golden Age. It's just a shame that we don't have one high-production tile here to work. (I tried to get a mine on that grassland tile to avoid this and it simply was not possible.)

Overview / tile micro:

We've finally fired all of the Scientist specialists and Mansa's Muse will grow to size 10 next turn, just in time for the Golden Age. The capital is also going to take back the corn tile and start growing again next turn. The Focal Point chariot is designed to be the military garrison for our new city in the south. Forest chopping in Starfall finished its library in time to benefit from Organized Religion civic and the hiring of mass Scientist specialists next turn.

We'll turn on 100% science next turn and 1t Drama, then follow that up with 1t Music tech, assuming that the Great Artist is still there. It is still there as of this turn. CivFr is currently at 50 gold in the bank, no idea what they are researching. It looks unlikely that they can go 100% research this turn however, so I'm feeling better about the Music Artist. Apolyton has run three straight turns of 0% science; they are now at ~320 gold and have turned their teching back on. We'll be able to see whatever they research via their Alphabet tech. If they go for Paper next, the race for Liberalism is well and truly underway. We'll be watching them very closely.



Our 100% GNP rate tops out at roughly 380 right now. We have the expected dominance in most other categories. We will get bar graphs with the Spanish next turn, and then I'll start spending our EP against CivFr. (They have only run 6 EP against us so far, we're barely behind, fortunately.) Everything in this category will look about 100x better in Golden Age mode next turn.

I've got the worker actions and tile micro into a state that I'm happy with for the upcoming Golden Age turns. I'm actually working on the city builds, of all things, which have been the hardest to figure out. I will try to finish this up and post a group of save files tomorrow when I get a chance.

[Qgqqqqq]

The city can't autoraze because its been captured before.
Can CivPlayers see our cities (through EP)?

Sorry to sound ignorant, but around when are we getting guilds in current plan?

[SevenSpirits]

What would you think of whipping the missionary from Tree Huggers rather than work those bad tiles? It's true that whipping before a golden age is bad, but it would also get us an extra axe/spear/WC the turn after. If we are at all happy about making that sort of trade (1 golden age pop for a spare military unit) this would be the time and place to do it, for sure. Note, I'm not saying I think it's a good idea.

[Cyneheard]

What would you think of whipping the missionary from Tree Huggers rather than work those bad tiles? It's true that whipping before a golden age is bad, but it would also get us an extra axe/spear/WC the turn after. If we are at all happy about making that sort of trade (1 golden age pop for a spare military unit) this would be the time and place to do it, for sure. Note, I'm not saying I think it's a good idea.

I think this is very solid - we get 4f back right away by turning 3 pop working 2f (-4) to 2 pop working 4f (+0), extra commerce, and the pile of hammers.

[Dp101]

Abu Bakr the Great Prophet. So much for any of those convoluted plans to use a Great Scientist or Great Spy here. Prophet makes it easy to follow our Golden Age plan as expected. Abu Bakr is just hanging out for one turn by Shwedagon Paya and taking in the sights. (Anyone remember when Abu Bakr was the Arab leader in Civ3 Play the World? Poor guy got demoted to a Great Prophet.)

I remember a report (maybe adventure 11?) where you killed this prophet with the power of the Civ 4 arabian leader.

[Qgqqqqq]

"Divided we fall"?
I don't think whipping is worth it with no barb problems in the area or diplo problems nearby.

[fluffyflyingpig]

Do not thing whipping is worth it. Current trade is 2 food and 6 commerce for 2 hammers and 7 commerce from shrine income. Not that big of a deal.

[NobleHelium]

We should maybe consider chopping those third ring forests by BB. Not sure if that will piss off CivPlayers though. They agreed not to plant a city in that area so I'm not sure they'd ever get those forests.