Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[T-hawk]

You're right, Seven. Neither coast nor mines help drafting, because the drafting limiter is not food but happy, which I neglected, probably had the Globe Theater on the brain since that's usually where drafting comes from.

So add me to the list of No Lighthouse, if anyone's keeping score.

[pindicator]

Um, i made a post but it isn't here.

In other news, this beer = amazing

I'm sure the two are not related in any means

Edit: I was agreeing with Ruff and Seven

[kjn]

We have the Great Lighthouse, and the trade routes are fabolous!




One thing we can tell from the trade routes is that CFC is the only team that we have OB with that have cities larger than size 10. Otherwise HF would be filled with +3 trade routes.

Another thing of note:



Note the settler/holkan pair that CivFr has. Might shape up to some culture and land conflict between Apolyton and CivFr.

[NobleHelium]

Uh, did you check the capital's trade routes? It can easily have +3c routes that are from civs other than CFC.

[NobleHelium]

Can we spare a unit to sit in Wismar for a few turns so that we can observe the progress of the marble hookup and project an accurate finish date, regardless of what the Germans say?

[kjn]

Uh, did you check the capital's trade routes? It can easily have +3c routes that are from civs other than CFC.

Yeah, Apolyton has been at size 10+ for quite a while now, that's why I didn't mention it. But right now we have only four trade routes at 3C, three with CFC and one with Apolyton.

[kjn]

No, I remembered incorrectly. It is Tenochtitlan that is size 10+ (13 to be exact). Apolyton has no city larger than size 10 currently.

I'm sure Sullla will mention this in his report, but the Germans settled their new city 1SW, not 1W.




Not sure what they're thinking about that. 1W (ie 1N of where the city is) would lose some riverside tiles, but pick up a grass cow, be more defensible, and would be aggressive but not directly in-your-face, like the current position is.

And still no worker in sight...

[Sullla]

Turn 126 - 275AD

We finished the Great Lighthouse, and there's a new idiot city on our borders.



Here's another picture of the Apolyton/CivFr border region, which is crawling with units of all nationalities. At least we don't have to worry about barbs killing our scout with all these foreign units patrolling the area. CivFr is going to plant their own city somewhere close by this turn or next turn. I have no idea what the politics are like between these teams, but it certainly suggests that there are some tensions over here. Apolyton's city of Izmir is looking more and more like an indefensible idiot plant city.

Speaking of which...



Uh, this is not where I was expecting the Germans to put their city down. They manage to avoid getting any useful tiles in the first-ring, and they also placed it a mere 3 tiles away from Ditchdigger, in a completely indefensible spot. Even if they do get us to clear the jungle on the gems tile, how in the world will they ever get food to this city without being able to dejungle / farm the rice? And that's not even counting how far away this city is from their core, and the total lack of connecting roads. This is one of the more foolish city spots I've seen in some time, and it's like the third or fourth such example in this very game!

A lot of the other teams are just not very smart.

Fortunately, this city is placed quite nicely for our own team, when we remove ownership from the Germans in about two dozen turns. Our post-Worms additional filler city is designed to go W-NW of the rice tile above, where the city will grab the rice and sheep tile just visible at the top of the screenshot. The new idiot city's borders slot in perfectly with that location. More immediately, I plan to have us swap to a theatre in Ditchdigger next turn, and then double-whip it to completion on Turn 128 when the city hits size 4. We can then quickly grow back to size 4 and run double Artist specialists for a few turns, allowing us to reach the 100 culture border expansion by about Turn 135. With third-ring borders, we will hold control of the tile southeast of Wolfrathausen, which makes the city literally impossible to defend. We'll be able to capture the city on the very first turn we declare war. The Germans will pay huge distance maintenance costs for this utterly useless city, and just when it starts to become profitable, it will become ours. I'm very much looking forward to claiming that spot.



To the south, Horse Feathers will finish Heroic Epic next turn (HE in HF) and then begin churning out a bunch of military units. We need the war chariot you see above to serve as military police for one turn until the first catapult gets finished, then it will be able to move into the new Frozen Jungle for garrison duty. After the great lighthouse debate of Turn 125, Brick By Brick went over to Wealth and will remain there for the moment. It sounds like we have a consensus on growing the city to size 9, and then running a 9 -> 8 -> 9 draft cycle there down the road, without a lighthouse.

Oh, and we built something in the water outside Gourmet Menu:



Great Lighthouse did indeed finish on schedule, granting us 10 additional trade routes (20 commerce) for the moment, with our 5 coastal cities. That's roughly equivalent to three gems tiles, or just short of what Printing Press would give us at the moment. In other words, pretty considerable stuff. I much prefer having Great Lighthouse to have Colossus on this map, since we don't really want to work that many coastal tiles in most cases, and the Great Lighthouse benefit is passive, rather than active. We don't have to work any specific tiles, we simply get more commerce for free, including in any new coastal city before it builds anything. I believe that the other teams have seriously undervalued this wonder, and it was a total steal to land it so late. Just hope that the other teams are not smart enough to all cancel Open Borders with us en masse. But given how everyone keeps rolling over to sign NAPs with us and trade us marble, I kind of doubt that will happen.



In the eastern half of our territory, we're building lots of theatres at present. Mansa will finish its theatre normally, while Eastern Dealers, Starfall, and Forbidden Fruit will all whip theatres next turn (when we revolt back into Slavery). This will let us overflow into Globe Theatre on T128 in Starfall and begin the process of building that national wonder as well. FF will overflow into a missionary, as our three newest cities all lack Hinduism at the moment. Eastern Dealer will overflow into its library, which we need to start the National Epic. The plan there is to build some more pop, triple-whip a forge as soon as we have Metal Casting (T133-134ish), then overflow with marble into National Epic. It only takes about 7 turns to build, and should finish slightly after Turn 140. We'll have Moai, Heroic Epic, National Epic, and Globe Theatre all finished before Turn 150.



Here is another look at our trade route income with everyone else, cut and pasted to get everyone on one screen. We get a total of 92 commerce right now from foreign trade routes, absolutely insane. Why the hell are all these teams trading with such a runaway civ?! We also have plenty of room to spare on trade routes, as we're barely pulling anything from CFC or CivPlayers. We can still found lots more cities and have foreign trade routes to connect to. I still think that we should push for Open Borders with UniversCiv, if only so we have some more leeway for trade routes if other teams start canceling OB. And of course we'll lose our German trade routes when we declare war on them later. Would be nice to have another civ's 13 cities available if we need them.

With the civics, all teams other than the 3 hopelessly backwards musketeers are running Hereditary Rule, along with CFC using their Pyramids for Representation. Four of us have reached Bureaucracy, everyone else is in the default Legal civic. Slavery abounds, except for CFC's Caste System, which they have been running for some time now. I expect them to pop back into Slavery for a bit soon, there has to be some builds that need whipping. Nothing in the Economy column yet of course, and Apolyton/CivPlayers are the only ones in Organized Religion. We are the only team to have used Pacifism at all thus far in this game. We've played the religion game thus far much better than every other team, aside from CivPlayers with their own heavy monk strat. Of course, we've done basically everything else vastly better than CivPlayers.

Overview / tile micro:

Seven Tribes is out of improved tiles to grow onto, and so will prepare a settler for the furs/crabs coastal spot nearby in the deep south. I plan to build this for two turns, and then double whip (not triple whip) on the turn after the Golden Age ends. I don't really want to triple whip away three good tiles while we're in a Golden Age, and there's not a huge rush to get that spot a turn sooner.

We did produce a Great Scientist this turn in Eastern Dealers. I have us working 2 Scientists there because the GPP will not be wasted in our future National Epic city, and we may as well take advantage of Golden Age / Pacifism to get some more GPP. No more than two specialists though, so that next turn we can double whip the theatre and instantly regrow the same turn (size 8 -> 6 -> 7). We don't have enough food to do this if we run more specialists this turn. Workers are moving over to Eastern Dealers to mine the hills and get it ready for its National Epic build.

We can't run even 0% science on Philosophy or Paper tech without finishing them, so a turn of 0% science on Archery tech it is. We've stockpiled over 900 gold over the last few turns, and that along with the two Wealth builds in Focal Point and Brick By Brick should get us to Liberalism after four turns of 100% research. Apolyton ran another turn of 0% science themselves last turn, and presumably made no progress towards Education/Liberalism. Perfect! Five turns left to go, including the current turn.



Our trade route number went up quite a bit with the addition of Great Lighthouse routes. We're still almost last there, which is what always happens when you're a large civ. We get 92 commerce, but pay out 118 commerce, so we have a net of -26. Note that the 118 commerce is what all other teams combined get from us, and we have 6 trading partners, so we give out an average of 20 commerce per civ. That's not trivial, but we're obviously cleaning up enormously on our own end, making the Open Borders more than worthwhile.

Everything else is predictable Golden Age goodness. I'll be interested to see how the numbers look when we come out of the Golden Age and can make a more fair comparison. GNP is over 800 again at max research. We'll be taking over the #1 spot in Power over the next few turns, and my hope is that we'll remain permanently there for the rest of the game. We've got three strong production cities (Focal Point, Horse Feathers, Brick) and aside from needing forges/stables, they can pretty much go pure military for a very long time indeed.

I barely managed to get graphs back with UniversCiv this turn; EP spending remains divided between them and CivFr. We are slowly making progress toward getting CivFr's graphs. CivPlayers has 480 EP invested against us; expect them to try stealing techs once they get Alphabet. We'll build jails and security bureaus later on to counter. No point in worrying about them now, they are not too scary aside from all their espionage points.

Now that we have Great Lighthouse assured, I hope to work some more on sandboxing the upcoming turns. Let me know your suggestions and comments.

[novice]

Having CivPlayers steal a tech would be great, as that would probably make them lose city visibility on us.

Will 10% science have us complete Archery? I'm asking because it's easier to make up for a lack of gold than a lack of beakers, if we find ourselves slightly short on the turn when we want to 1-turn Lib.

[kjn]

Yeah, not worried about CivPlayers (or anyone else) stealing a tech from us. It's a gain for them, but won't have a real impact on us. As long as we can add techs faster than they can steal them, things are fine.

10% science will indeed finish Archery