Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Tyrmith]

We're not looking to be neighborly, we're looking to ransack the house, level it, and then plant a really nice 9 car garage adjoining our mansion where his house once stood. In that case do you look to make trouble with a thug or some infirm broken down annoying old guy?

[Sullla]

Turn 129 - 350AD

One foreign missionary shows up and everyone goes crazy.



Our scout in Apolyton territory found this city, which I believe was the fourth one they planted. It has a lot of infrastructure inside: granary, library, courthouse, forge, hamman, temple. However, as kjn pointed out earlier, it's not working the horses tile for some reason. Not enough food, perhaps? This appears to be along the northern border of Apolyton territory (note the tundra and lack of road heading north), so we'll continue east and see what else turns up next.



We had a request to show the marble area along the WPC/German border, and here it is as our chariot moved past. These guys sent 6 workers over to the marble to get it improved quickly, heh. The German team also still seems to have their military concentrated in the east along the WPC border, which would be really nice for us if it's still true in 30 turns.



Our scouting axeman also found the last German city here in the northwest part of their territory. It's on top of a wines resource and has a terrace alone for its city infrastructure. More importantly, check out the borders to the north: there's an Apolyton city right on top of this one! Apolyton looks to be much closer than we originally thought. We'll have to make sure to get an NAP extension with them in place before committing to war with the Germans. (We have an NAP deal to Turn 150 with Apolyton at present, which neither team thought would be more than a formality.) More info should become apparent as the axe continues further north to keep scouting.



And here is the big controversy from the turn. CivPlayers moved a Buddhist missionary up next to our borders when they played their turn. They also generated a Great Prophet this turn, who will almost certainly be creating the Buddhist shrine next turn or the turn after. It certainly looks like they plan on moving into our territory next turn and trying to spread religion in Ditchdigger. This is an unacceptable move for our team, largely due to the Apostolic Palace that CivPlayers built.

I genuinely would not care about another team spreading religion, but the AP religion is a "poison pill" element that can cause all sorts of problems for our team. The biggest one is the AP diplo victory; although unlikely, CivPlayers has a slim possibility of winning a total cheese victory if they spread religion to every team and get some support from someone else. We have to prevent that from happening, and the only real defense would be spreading Buddhism to many of our other core cities, which we do not want to do either. This would give CivPlayers more shrine income, make it easier for them to spy on us, and make it easier for them to steal technologies with their massive stack of EPs. As I said a minute ago, the AP religion is a total poison pill. We do not want it anywhere in our territory if we can avoid it. We need to spread Hinduism into our religion-free cities quickly and get into Theocracy at the end of our Taj Mahal Golden Age. Do not undestimate just how much of a pain the AP religion can be.

We have already sent off a polite but firm diplo message telling CivPlayers not to spread religion in our territory. If they do not reply, I will have to cancel the Open Borders deal at the end of this current turn. Sorry, but there's not much of a choice. The AP religion is not something we want in our empire, nor do we want CivPlayers to start getting ideas about stealing techs from us with the state religion discount in place. We can always resign Open Borders again once they understand that we won't be permitting missionaries. Remember, it's our territory and our cities. We're within our rights to tell other teams that they can't send missionaries around. Our NAP deal with CivPlayers is also not tied to our Open Borders deal in any way, so please keep that in mind. If they would flip out and get angry, they can't declare war until Turn 170, by which time we should have finished munching on the Germans and be enormously far ahead of them. They're welcome to come bring it on at that point, when we'll have knights/cuirassiers/cavs everywhere and a huge army of drafted maces/muskets/rifles.

Unfortunately, CivPlayers has a unit causing more headaches in the south:



This scouting chariot of theirs is sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's right where we are trying to move some workers and a settler in preparation for our furs/crabs city. The barb axe is no problem; I will move up our own Heroic axeman Lew as arrowed, and we will likely induce a suicide attack between turns. If the barb axe would move north instead onto the flat ground, then our war chariot coming down from the north will be able to whack it on any possible place where it can move. And if it moves south, then it's out of the way for our settler to move up.

The plan for the workers this turn is to move onto the tile where the CivPlayers chariot is sitting and road the tile. Our settler meanwhile moves onto the tile where the war chariot is sitting, and then moves SE-S-S next turn onto the city founding spot, north of the furs. I have not moved any of the units in this area yet this turn (aside from the war chariot), waiting for the CivPlayers chariot to move wherever it's going. If it doesn't move, I will scumbag the turn by double-moving CivPlayers and race our settler and workers past them along the turn roll window. I'm not too proud to abuse clock mechanics if we absolutely need them.

Depending on what the CivPlayers chariot does, I can also move up the spear in Seven Tribes, which has enough happiness to avoid a military police unit. Despite the sentry promotion, CivPlayers cannot see into Seven Tribes or French Riviera (the latter city's visibility is blocked by the forest tile) so they have no idea how few units are down here. I expect them to move off to the east without further issue. Hopefully.

One last thing for this picture: I put the overflow in Seven Tribes into a Hindu missionary while awaiting Metal Casting tech and forges. This can be changed if desired. I didn't see anything else too compelling (market/courthouse too expensive, barracks not useful) in light of the fact that our next big whip will surely be a forge here. Let me know what you think.



Here is our core territory, not anything too terribly important going on at the moment. We could potentially cancel those Wealth builds, I guess, but I wanted to err on the side of caution in our Liberalism pursuit. I don't think there's anything too important to build in either Focal Point or Brick By Brick right now either, just catapults. Horse Feathers is trying to get up to size 14, where we'll have it capped for quite some time. We've already finished two catapults and are working on the third one there. Once it grows a couple more sizes, we can easily do 1t catapults there, or more likely elephants and then knights.



The capital was whipped this turn in accordance with the Taj Mahal plan, funneling more overflow into this otherwise fairly useless Hindu temple. I asked everyone last turn, and you all seemed to want to whip the market next turn as well, so I will go ahead and do so. We are on track for a Taj finishing date at the end of turn 138 with this whip, the market whip, and the settler whip a bit later on.

Side note: we might want to try and set things up so that we have Machinery and Engineering techs done or nearly done when that Golden Age begins. It would be the perfect time to build Notre Dame here in the capital, while we have Golden Age production along with Bureaucracy and Organized Religion (we are probably dropping both for Nationhood and Theocracy around T145 when the Golden Age ends). Alternately, we could regrow the capital and use the Golden Age to build its forge and university, then do Notre Dame elsewhere, in Focal Point or something. Let me know your thoughts on this. Notre Dame (+2 happiness all cities) is extremely important to control on this map, it's the last crucial wonder until we hit Kremlin and Statue of Liberty another era down the road.



I forgot to take the overview picture of the turn, I'll see if I can do so later today. We're finishing Paper research this turn with absolutely massive overflow (well over 1000 beakers), and should be in perfect position to take Liberalism at the end of next turn. No one else even has Education as yet, so we look to be very safe indeed. I really, really wish that I could read some of the other team's forums when they see what happens. In fact, I'm planning on double-bulbing Education at the end of next turn just to give them even more of a surprise. We're going to get a humongous influx of score points from Education/Liberalism/Nationalism hitting all at the same time, so sign any last-minute diplo arrangements now before we place an even bigger target on our backs.

I am rather impressed that another team managed to top us in GNP for the turn, even if it is someone likely getting double pre-reqs on a tech. Good reason not to get complacent in this game, even as well as we are doing. We still retain the top spots in Food and Production, and took over the Power lead as well this turn. Hopefully we'll be able to keep it.

We still have another full day before we have to end our turn, and I'm hoping some of these concerns with CivPlayers will be straightened out by then.

[novice]

I suggest switching HF from a 2t catapult to a 1t WC. We could use another WC, and it lets us keep one-turning units in HF.

[sooooo]

In general I'd like to see a few more military builds out there in addition to Horse Feathers. If we're losing 209 gpt, have 533 gold in the bank and will finish liberalism at the end of next turn, we can afford to take Focal Point off wealth. I know we're in the top 2 in power, but it's still a threadbare military and we don't have enough units to scout south of Seven Tribes or defend against NAPstabbing to the CivPlayers chariot. BTW, barracks in Seven Tribes will be useful to get because of the extra happiness from nationhood, and with theocracy it's worth a promotion.

[kjn]

Agree with more military. We can put either Focal Point or Brick by Brick to get some more cheap units.

I think a missionary from Seven Tribes is fine. Getting religion into our new cities quickly is good.

[NobleHelium]

I would be extremely hesitant to re-open borders with CivPlayers if we close them. We will not be able to cancel them again for ten turns without declaring war, which would sort of break the NAP. So yeah.

[kjn]

BTW, CivPlayers still haven't moved their chariot down in the south, despite having finished turn. Not sure what they're thinking there, or what they plan to do.

[SleepingMoogle]

Sulla mentioned he would double-move our units in that area if the chariot didn't move. So I guess that we will employ that plan B.

[Ichabod]

I guess they want to kill the barb axe for XP. Probably eyeing a HE unit.

[kjn]

Understandable, but their chariot is at only 2.3/4 - hardly in shape to go up against a healthy axe. It also risks being trapped between the axe and our borders.

Also, given the way the barbs has been swarming, I expect most teams to have a heroic unit already.