Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[T-hawk]

Bulbing Liberalism doesn't work well. All of Alphabet, Compass, and Metal Casting are ahead of Liberalism in the Great Scientist tech preference order. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140952

There's no great way to bulb a second scientist towards Liberalism. Philosophy is somewhat of a waste given the double prereqs and devaluation discount. Education gets more than half finished with one bulb. Paper is behind Alphabet and too cheap for full bulb value. So it's much preferable to do it with only a single bulb for Education, if at all possible.

[kjn]

Definitely CivFr that picked up Music - it's only them and Univers who got score increases of 20+, and Univers hasn't started on the Aesthetics line at all.

Even if CivFr are to beeline Nationalism, they're quite a bit away from the tech. As far as I can tell, they don't even have Code of Laws yet, even less Civil Service. And then they need either Philosophy or Diving Right. On the other hand, with marble they can easily build Taj 10t faster than we can.

If we want the very fastest Liberalism, we should probably double-bulb Education. It's more than twice the cost of Paper, and we get a double discount of Philosophy. We can't bulb Liberalism with our GS, since both Compass and Alphabet get in the way. So I favour getting the Academy with our first GS, and then buibing Education with the second.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I think that we should start researching towards Liberalism right now, and then divert to Metal Casting if we discover that Apolyton isn't beelining Liberalism. But we need to go ahead and presume that we are in a race until proven otherwise.

[novice]

We could do that, and skip Drama and Metal Casting and just build wealth in cities needing builds. I have no good feel for what our teching ability and tech position is relative to our opponents though, so I'm not sure what the best play is here.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Drama speeds up Philosophy right, so that one might still make sense even in a Liberalism beeline. Gotta have something to build if we aren't building forges.

[Ceiliazul]

We could do that, and skip Drama and Metal Casting and just build wealth in cities needing builds. I have no good feel for what our teching ability and tech position is relative to our opponents though, so I'm not sure what the best play is here.

We already have ~1/3 of music researched... even without considering the music discount, research drama would cost 154 raw beakers. Lets finish drama, even if the race is on. Doesn't need to be this turn though, we can start on paper and use drama to build up overflow for a sudden burst on philo or education.


Edit: my guess of 50bkr was wrong. Drama will cost 154 raw beakers against the Lib race:

We now know 158/540 of drama. 318 raw beakers will finish the tech. By researching drama, we'll save 164 raw beakers, so the cost of drama. The true cost of drama is the difference of the two: 154 beakers. This assumes no one knows drama, and 1 team knows philosophy.

[kjn]

Well, we're already halfway through Drama, and it saves us close to 200 beakers on Philosophy alone (and another 150 or so beakers for Music later on), so I think getting it first is a no-brainer.

CivFr are up Music on us, and it took them 5t to research the tech (1080b), which means their raw research capability is probably below ours right now (we needed 6t for Civil Service, 1440b). Of course, they have an Academy, while we don't - yet. And we will get Bureaucracy soon, too. No way they will beat us to Liberalism on any decent beeline of ours.

CFC's last tech was Code of Laws (T116), and haven't started on the Aesthetics line. They will have to bulb a lot to catch up, and they're not PHI, and have to clear out Alphabet first before they can bulb Philosophy or Paper.

Apolyton is the real contender. They have CS and Philosophy already, and I think they have two academies up (probably their capital and their second city). Their last tech was Metal Casting, which they researched in 3t.

If Apolyton goes all-out on the Liberalism race, likely by bulbing Paper and Education, or double-bulbing Education, then I think we will be hard-pressed to beat them. They can easily go for such a heavy bulbing strategy by adopting Pacifism or starting a golden age (or both). But they are happiness-limited without Iron Working and Calendar, and hardly militarily secure without Construction or HBR. They have also picked up all the low-hanging fruits for a high research rate (several courthouses, bureaucracy, a very early academy, and low costs), while we are running a very large empire with high costs and little beaker bonuses.

Ie, they can only lower their empire efficiency right now for quite a while, while we can increase ours quite easily from a much larger base.

[novice]

even without considering the music discount, research drama would cost about 50 raw beakers. Lets finish drama, even if the race is on.

Yeah if the 50b estimate is correct that sounds like a no-brainer.

Gotta have something to build if we aren't building forges.

Like I said, we could build wealth. That helps us get Lib sooner, too.

Maybe we can do a 1-turn Lib where we put enough beakers into philo and edu that we can go Philo-Edu (with bulb)-Lib in three consecutive turns, or slide in Archery too if necessary. Thus, if we're beaten we can at least divert towards Nationalism or Guilds.

I guess my current preference is Drama-Paper for our next techs.

[Ceiliazul]

even without considering the music discount, research drama would cost about 50 raw beakers. Lets finish drama, even if the race is on.

Yeah if the 50b estimate is correct that sounds like a no-brainer.

I did the math, the cost is 154 beakers.

Still worth it, I think, especially with integration into Sulla's early Globe plan, which I think is a great idea for border control as well as military production.

[Ceiliazul]

I did some fog sleuthing, came up with very clear evidence for coastal access across the poles. There appear to be multiple islands in the arctic sea, perhaps many over size ~10 tiles.

Flying camera shots in the spoiler tag, there is evidence of a band of at least 8 tiles tall that is primarily islands. You can see in the 2nd shot there that Inca borders are visible in that shot.

Arctic Sea
The land near our Heroic axe 'Lew' was the easiest to scout, and almost certainly ends almost immediately. Still worth scouting for seafood, but I'm not holding out hope for marble there.

edit: in the 2nd picture below, our chariot in German land can actually see the edge of an island in the fog.

The land on the West side of the crab slot is much more extensive. We should prioritize exploration there, not only for marble but also because we are in competition with CivPlayers.

Here's my best guess of our immediate south:



Starfall Sea:
Scouting the Starfall Sea, we have good news. I can say with near-certainty that a land route does not exist around the south side of the that water. Like the fog between us and the Germans, there appears to be a coastal route to CFC in this area.

In the spoilered pics we can see the Starfall Sea is not really any wider than what we've explored, but it does continue pretty far south.

Here's my best guess for this region. Much more difficult to get a read on any islands due to the narrow angle of 'light' to rotate around and resolve the area.



Conclusions:
- We need boats in the water exploring these islands. ASAP.
- Land scouting should focus on the West side of the clam slot. More tiles there, and more competition too.
- Our chariot in German lands should hug the North the coast to find possible access routes. This gives our navy a better chance of exploring discreetly.
- There are enough islands out there for make island barb cities a reasonable shot.

Updated Sandbox
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/42880948/ISDG/I...dSwordSave

Caveats
-In can only really resolve the first line of land. So I can tell approx how many tiles across an island is likely to be, but can't really see how far it extends south
-Fog-gazing shows hills and trees, but not resources or terrain types. Could be ice, or could be flood plains out there, no way to know.