Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[NobleHelium]

Obviously his server is traveling at relativistic speeds.

[Tyrmith]

Didn't Caledorn say that he was installing updates or something? Maybe that caused it?

[Ruff_Hi]

I would suggest the use of a 'virtual machine' as the slow time issue.

[kjn]

Well, running the Pitboss in a VM seems to be quite common, so not necessarily the culprit.

However, Sullla ended turn and logged out little more than six hours ago, and the screenshot shows 25 hours remaining. However, right now we have 22:40 hours remaining when I log in six hours later, so the Pitboss timer does seem to run a lot slower than normal.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Is giving the team we are racing to Liberalism against the Colossus really a happy thing?

[spacetyrantxenu]

I think Caledorn said he upgraded the server to Windows 2012 so I assume he's running the game in a hyper-v VM (if he's running it in a VM at all). If the asynchronous clock appeared with the host platform upgrade it seems fair to point the finger at that as the issue. It used to be the case that VMs were not always suitable for running extremely time sensitive software because they could have problems with keeping accurate time...I'm not sure a pitboss game of Civ equates to that, but it is annoying anyway. I haven't tested the version of hyper-v that comes with Server 2012 so I have no idea what would cause the clock problem, if that is the source. Maybe making sure the VM OS has the VM specific hardware drivers. In VMware's ecosystem it's called VMware Tools. I don't know what Microsoft calls it in hyper-v, though.

[antisocialmunky]

https://www.google.com/search?q=hyper+v+...20&bih=965

It could be a multitude of 3rd party things actually.

[kjn]

New turn!

One barb warrior foolishy attacked Lew, and we get the happy news that Apolyton built the Colossus (ie, they're probably out of the GLH race).

And the German chariot died to the barb axe! Lets just hope they saw our message before the turn rolled…

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

New turn!

One barb warrior foolishy attacked Lew, and we get the happy news that Apolyton built the Colossus (ie, they're probably out of the GLH race).

And the German chariot died to the barb axe! Lets just hope they saw our message before the turn rolled…

spoilered for size...

[Sullla]

Turn 123 - 200AD

The water-based wonder that we weren't building (Colossus) gets finished by Apolyton. Keep your fingers crossed for Great Lighthouse, due in three more turns.



First of all, check out the crazy overlap between these two cities of CivFr and Apolyton. "Our Close Borders Spark Tensions" anyone? I sure hope so. Remember too that CivFr is Creative in this game, and their new city will be popping borders shortly and pressing even harder against the Apolyton city of Izmir. I am really hoping that these civs will get into a contest for land later on, which would virtually seal the game for our team.

Note that we have Open Borders with Apolyton and there is no deal to avoid scouting one another's territories, so we'll be moving the scout through their borders starting next turn. We only need a few more turns of movement to complete the east-west circumnavigation requirement. Still some time away from the north-south part, however.



We gained some useful scouting information in WPC territory this turn. First of all, I detoured one tile west to get vision of Huron River before moving on. They planted this one directly on an iron resource, which may or may not have been deliberate, and the local terrain is pretty good with irrigated rice and floodplains nearby. Inside the city, we can spot a barracks and a totem pole... nothing else. "Interesting" city management there.

Then it was on to their next city:



North River was the second city founded by WPC, their version of Mansa's Muse. Inside the city, it also has... a barracks and a totem pole. No library, no granary. Their capital also does not have a granary either. I'm going to drop politeness for a moment here and be honest: this team is full of goddamn idiots. They don't seem to have any clue how to play Civ4 at the competitive level. I mean... not building granaries?! Even the most basic Civ4 neophyte should understand that. It's especially bizarre because WPC has a very active PBEM community. Granted, from what I've seen of those games, the skill level is extremely low (games full of AIs competing alongside players and such), but still, I'd expect better. Watching this team play is just brutal.

I would be very surprised if WPC is still alive at the end of this game.



Our scouting axe in the deep south didn't find anything of note this turn in the water. Just another icy island (?) further beyond the sea. Well, our galley will be down there soon enough. Definitely looks like our upcoming city in this region will be placed on the tile north of the furs. Lew will start heading east and try to map out the remaining southern coast to see if anything interesting turns up.

Oh, and the German scouting chariot did die to the barb axe down here, in case anyone missed the earlier posts on that subject. They either didn't read our warning message to them or didn't care.



Here's the southern half of our territory. Not too much going on here. Continued builds into Great Lighthouse (3t) and Heroic Epic (4t) are nearing completion. Focal Point is popping out a quick worker for use at the capital and in the south. The new city of French Riviera finished popping borders with an Artist specialist, will get a granary forest chop next turn, started working a newly finished floodplains cottage until we farm the wheat. Starfall reached 12/50 production into a theatre, the perfect time to swap over to a galley so that we can double-whip the theatre later, on Turn 127 to be exact.

Meanwhile, in the capital:



novice's plan had us take the market to 149/150 production last turn. Now we spend one turn growing to size 14, then begin production on a settler. These builds will all be whipped in the turns leading up to T130, eventually producing a cascade overflow into Taj Mahal. For now, everything looks fairly normal before it gets complex later. (Anyone else amused by how little infrastructure we actually have in the capital? It's been super-low production working mass cottages for nearly the entire game to this point.)



Here is the northern half of our territory, where again there's relatively little of great interest taking place. More workers cottaging, clearing jungle, and farming most everywhere. We will finish a market in Mansa's Muse at the end of this turn, which is why I have us running 100% science this turn and then 0% science next turn. May as well take advantage of the little commerce boosters.

Overview / tile micro:

We're getting ready to found city #17 on Turn 125 on the tile two west of the northern rice. Workers are roading to the spot, and the rice will be cleared / farmed / chain irrigated in short order. It bears noting that no other team has more than 12 cities, and we are about to plant our 17th city. Not bad.

The research plan is 100% on Paper tech this turn, then as close to 99% completion next turn as we can get, which I believe is about 40% science. Then we run max gold on Turns 125 and 126, before going 100% science on Turn 127 (Archery), Turn 128 (Philosophy), Turn 129 (Paper), and Turn 130 (Education double bulb / Liberalism). We'll be running Wealth builds in Focal Point and Brick By Brick on a lot of these turns to avoid running out of cash. The shortfall is actually gold and not beakers to make this work; we can get Liberalism with only 90% science on the final turn, which means there's plenty of headroom to spare on the research end. In the worst scenario, we can always run Wealth builds in every city for a single turn and pull 100 gold out of the ether to make sure we land Liberalism.



GNP retakes the familiar top spot after turning on research at 100%. I believe that the top rival GNP is either Apolyton or CivFr for this turn; it is not CFC because they ran 0% research and gained +100 gold between turns. Apolyton is sitting on exactly 0 gold in the bank, we'll see if they start building up gold again by running 0% science for a few turns. That would be ideal for us, since every turn they aren't researching brings us closer to Liberalism. I really hope than no one is gifting them gold in an attempt to deny us the free Liberalism tech in scumbag fashion. We may want to watch their gold totals at end of turn and just make sure there are no such shenanigans taking place. Probably not, but a healthy dose of paranoia can be good.

Everything else in the Demos looks about as expected during a Golden Age. I'm particularly pleased at our edge in the Food category, since we are 60 Food ahead of the next-closest team (CFC) and that's while running 12 Scientists. Remember, Food gets no multipliers from a Golden Age whatsoever. We are also likely to take over the #1 spot in Power soonish when we finish Heroic Epic and get into the military game for real.

CivPlayers discovered Civil Service tech and has already revolted into Bureaucracy civic, eating a turn of Anarchy in the process. Apolyton built Colossus but did not discover any new techs that I could see. They will need to discover Education in the next few turns to have any shot at Liberalism whatsoever. Remember, they cannot lightbulb Liberalism itself, so if they are still sitting there with Education undiscovered on Turn 127 or whatever, it will be nearly impossible for them to beat us. Stay tuned.