Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[sooooo]

Do we really really want to culturally crush the CFC city on our borders? What does that actually gain us? Seems like there's a desire to do it to punish the city build rather than figuring out the pros and cons of doing so.

I'd rather run merchants or scientists in our national epic city for the economy.

[NobleHelium]

I don't really want to run artists in ED unless we don't have any other specialist slots in the city, no.

I wouldn't mind building Sistine at some point though.

[novice]

Excellent news indeed with the Germans.

Whipping the theatre at a smaller size makes up for some of the inefficiency of whipping without a forge, I suppose.

[sooooo]

Sistine Chapel is probably not worth the hammers IMO.

If I was playing this game solo I'd skip the theatre build in ED (I did mean this city not FF earlier - sorry for the confusion) and start the globe theatre a turn later.

[Old Harry]

Are artist bombs allowed:
a. In the game.
b. In our nap with cfc?
If so getting to 500 culture quickly might be vital. I mean it'd be a bad move to annoy us, but who knows what they'll do after putting the city there in the first place...

[NobleHelium]

Bombing CFC (and them bombing us) would be a NAP violation, I believe. We can bomb in general, sure.

[Cyneheard]

Are artist bombs allowed:
a. In the game.
b. In our nap with cfc?
If so getting to 500 culture quickly might be vital. I mean it'd be a bad move to annoy us, but who knows what they'll do after putting the city there in the first place...

Artist bombs are definitely permitted in the game - very few in-game things were banned.

However, we do have this clause in the CFC NAP:
"3.3. Both teams agree not to use Great Artists to culture bomb in cities touching culture with culture of the other team."

[kjn]

Right now we have a barb axe right where we want to settle our fur-crab city. CivPlayers have a chariot in the area, but it's pretty severely damaged (IIRC it's at 2.3/4).

Horse Feathers need an extra MP unit right now, and we have a war chariot that's due to do that this turn. I think we should do the follwing:

Send the WC to HF this turn. Set HF to build another war chariot (we get to 58/30, so won't lose overflow). Perhaps we should also move Lew westwards to give some more units in the area, but I'd like to finish scouting the area to our south.

Next turn, we can send one of the chariots south to escort the settler and secure the fur-crab location. HF can build a catapult, and use that as MP the turn afterwards, meaning we have a free chariot to send over to Frozen Jungle to act as garrison there.

[Sullla]

Turn 127 - 300AD

Apolyton built University of Sankore and CFC discovered Alphabet tech. That's the main news from the turn.



Here is a picture of our scout about to enter Apolyton territory. Since they denied us a map trade, we're going to manually go through and reveal as much of their territory as possible. We do not have a "no scouting" clause in our Open Borders or anything like that. Until they say something, moving through their territory is fair game.

Konya sits somewhere around city #7 on the Apolyton list of founding, right in the middle. They have a granary and a courthouse inside, along with their religion. I find that to be a bit of an odd choice, going for courthouse as the second build after granary with a civ that's not Organized and doesn't have a courthouse UB. Hard to say if this is a good or bad decision without seeing more of the local terrain though, it could be a smart pick. I plan to move into the city tile next turn to get more information.



Down in the south, that barb axeman is causing some minor problems. I've moved our Heroic axeman Lew closer to help escort our upcoming settler to its destination. We can also move the war chariot inside Horse Feathers down here to assist if needed; that war chariot can move into Gourmet Menu next turn, and be down by Seven Tribes the turn after that. The plan is to double whip the settler next turn, after the Golden Age is over, and hopefully walk down to the tile north of the furs in safety. We'll play it by ear, but I think we have enough units between the scouting axe and a war chariot to cover this settler. No need to build additional war chariots as suggested before.



The Germans have moved a worker down to this area. I'm guessing that they plan to chop the plains forest for a terrace, then gift the worker to us and have us remove the jungle on their gems tile. Assuming that's the case, it will take 3 turns to chop down the forest, and then another 5 turns for the terrace to expand borders. We should be popping the 100 culture ring just about that same time in Ditchdigger, which will allow us to control that tile to the southeast of the idiot city indefinitely.

Workers should have a road connection between Ditchdigger and Seven Tribes completed in about five more turns. That will give us a bit more security against CivPlayers if they would ever try something.



WPC logged into the game and gifted us an archer while I was playing the turn. I guess that we'll use this guy for military police somewhere. Better than nothing!

This is the last turn of our Golden Age, and we revolted back into Slavery / Organized Religion as a result. Our costs went up significantly as a result of their "High" upkeep status, but of course we want the benefits of both civics. I did three whips after swapping, all of them for theatres:



Forbidden Fruit did a one pop whip for its theatre, with the overflow going into a missionary. We discussed this last turn, and I still believe that delaying the theatre at half-completed value didn't give us much of a benefit. We might as well finish the thing, make use of the whip overflow, reset the whip timer (there was no prior whip unhappiness in the city), and get started on Globe Theatre a turn sooner. Eastern Dealers did a very similar move, double whipping its theatre to completion. The overflow will almost but not quite complete its library. We'll finish that and then triple whip a forge in Eastern Dealers (once we have Metal Casting), using the overflow and three grassland hill mines to build National Epic.

The last theatre whip was inside Starfall:



Another two pop whip allows us to overflow into Globe Theatre next turn, and start the endless whip/draft cascade. Even though we starved this city down to 5 Food while in Caste Syste / Pacifism, Starfall will rebound extremely quickly with its +13 food surplus. Right now, we need to keep working the maximum allowed 2 Scientist specialists to finish that last Great Scientist. We get 12 GPP this turn from being in a Golden Age, then 6 GPP next turn, and then 6 GPP the final turn, producing the second Great Scientist on Turn 130, the exact turn that we lightbulb Education. As amazing as the timing works out, there was a fair bit of luck in there. (Of course, we could have starved the city further with more Scientists during the Golden Age if absolutely necessary.)

Overview / tile micro:

Adventure One swapped off its 98/100 settler and went back to building its temple for whip overflow purposes later. We also have a market at 149/150 production there. Most everything else is pretty standard. We fired all of the specialists outside of the remaining two Scientists at Starfall. Eastern Dealers immediately regrows one pop from its whip next turn, Forbidden Fruit regrows in 2t. Simple Life is going to double whip the worker next turn, with the overflow being enough to finish its library. I think that's about all that's going on with the tile micro this turn.

We've finally turned on research this turn, going 100% science into Archery tech. Obviously this will give us massive overflow, and we'll do the same thing on the next two turns with Philosophy and Paper techs. After the double Education lightbulb, the overflow will let us finish Liberalism at eot 130. Apolyton ran another turn of 0% science and is now up to 450 gold. That's definitely good news for us, as they are rapidly running out of time to grab Education and win the Liberalism race. Four more turns to go, including this one. (Before anyone raises the issue again, no, we're not saving a Great Scientist for Printing Press or whatever. We essentially have a guaranteed Liberalism here, which turns into a nearly guaranteed Taj Mahal. There is no reason to get greedy and potentially screw that up.)



Demos in Golden Age mode continue to be as expected. I'm looking forward to seeing where we stand when we come out of the GA next turn. We still have to keep running most of our espionage points against UniversCiv right now to keep their bar graphs. I'm very slowly making progress against CivFr, while still maintaining the charts with UniversCiv and their many rathauses.

CFC discovered Alphabet tech this turn, letting us see their techs. They basically have Alphabet and Metal Casting up on us, while we are up Iron Working and the whole Aesthetics line. Beaker count is about even for now, at least until we claim 11,000 beakers in the next five turns. Special congratulations to kjn for correctly predicting every single CFC tech.

Apolyton built University of Sankore, which I think was a good thing for us. It ensures a split of the monk wonders, with Sankore in the hands of Apolyton and Apostolic Palace controlled by CivPlayers. Now no one gets super-temples, just middling good ones for two different civs. If Apolyton wants to research Divine Right and build Spiral Minaret as well, they can be my guest. I don't think that Sankore alone makes temples/monasteries particularly useful builds. I actually hope that Apolyton starts building a bunch of them rather than more useful stuff.

We should be done with the turn now. I plan to use this evening for more planning work to push us forward up to Liberalism. Everything looking solid as usual.

[T-hawk]

Konya sits somewhere around city #7 on the Apolyton list of founding, right in the middle. They have a granary and a courthouse inside, along with their religion. I find that to be a bit of an odd choice, going for courthouse as the second build after granary with a civ that's not Organized and doesn't have a courthouse UB. Hard to say if this is a good or bad decision without seeing more of the local terrain though, it could be a smart pick. I plan to move into the city tile next turn to get more information.

I guess this should go in the nonexistent nitpick-our-opponents thread, but I do courthouse after granary pretty often. What else should it build? In a small or low-commerce city, and when the slider is not at either extreme, the courthouse often produces more economy/hammer than a library or market or any other option. Especially if you have a plan to thieve the EP into economy as well.