Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Ruff_Hi]

Is there anything in the rules of this game about research and / or build swapping?

Are you serious Ruff (about contacting the admin)?

No - of course not.

Okay you're right, the last sentence indicates that. My bad if so.

No problem.

Incidentally, I found Darrell's post earlier about asking for admin support pretty hilarious.

I think that was my post.

I think morality is a good discussion to have *before* in-game actions are necessary. In another thread.

That might be a good idea ... but it will be impossible for us to discuss all of the grey / gray areas that might come up.

To summarize the teams posts - I think we have a consensus that this is neither a BUG or an EXPLOIT. As such, no need to query it and its ok to use it.

[Ruff_Hi]

First you say that our retarded incompetent baffoon of an admin should have the right to appoint his successor.

Yes I did. Didn't get much traction on the suggestion but I actually think it is a pretty good idea. Normally, Rolo is a pretty decent fellow - he is totally disengaged at the moment, but that doesn't make him an idiot. My suggestion was aimed at us getting an admin and having the old, non-functioning admin appoint a new one (I would bet he would read up on the current options and appoint Plako) is the very best way of circumventing all of the VOTES / non-VOTES that we are currently not getting. I don't see us getting an admin any other way as all changes need a team consensus and that will not happen.

The admin has unlimited power as codified in the rules of this game.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, and by those rules the admin can just sit on his throne and prevent his replacement. If he were reasonable, he would have resigned already.

[Ruff_Hi]

Resigning before installing a replacement would be a stupid move. We have to hope that he does one thing right ... appoint a successor.

[NobleHelium]

I think it's far more likely he appoints his imaginary dog as successor.

[antisocialmunky]

So if I were to recap today:

Simple Concern About Rules

Leading Question About Rules

Reductio ad Parkinum

Frustrated Reaction by Sullla

Replace Sullla Discussion

Someone actually answers the original question

Guys, can we get back to what we are actually competent at and start talking about the game again? The question about the rule has been answered and Sullla didn't actually quit.

Actually I am curious about one thing, why haven't we made our plans or come up with micro to kill the Germans as hard as possible yet? We have less than 20 turns until we are supposed to declare war.

[Lewwyn]

LOL WTF. This is a competitive game. PB7 was supposed to be more casual. Completely different parameters. Game the timer, be sneaky, be shifty, do whatever it takes to win this game.

Everybody needs to chill out.

[Sullla]

Turn 133 - 450AD

CFC can beat us to the Taj Mahal this turn if they whip... but will they whip? They haven't so far. Stay tuned.



I moved our war chariot at the start of this turn, and found a barb archer right next door. We had 96% odds to win, and that was good enough for me. Fortunately we did not get another barbarian streak of bad luck, and cleaned up the archer easily. That left the war chariot with two promotions, and I took a queue from the CivPlayers chariot that we saw to take Flanking I and Sentry promotions:



We found another crab resource in the extreme south after taking Sentry. Unfortunately there is no city placement down there able to claim both the deer tile and the crabs. Ah well. We will split that off into two different tundra iceball cities in time. With State Property civic and Great Lighthouse, these locations will be more than worth settling. Even if everyone closes borders we us, we'll be able to get some 2 commerce trade routes of our own by planting cities on the offshore icy islands down around the pole. A little more exploration down here will give us better info on where to place future cities.



Just a little bit to the east, we have final confirmation: there is no land connection in the deep south between us and CFC. We also spotted a (non-forested) deer tile down here which will serve to feed yet another iceball fishing city. I am really glad right now that we built Great Lighthouse, that will really pay off as we found more and more of these spots.

I'm going to pick up the war chariot in the galley and drop it off on the ice island to our south in a couple of turns. Worth finding out if there's anything of value down there.

We also had map trades go through with WPC and the Spanish this turn. Here's an overview shot, spoilered for size:

We now have full visibility on every city from CFC, WPC, Germans, and the Spanish. We're also getting close to visibility on all Apolyton cities, and we can see about half of UniversCiv territory. Just CivFr and CivPlayers are largely blank spots on the map. That's pretty good, especially since we have full vision on three of our four immediate neighbors. As you would expect, this looks like an excellently balanced plako map, with marble/stone/ivory located in contested areas between teams, and all of the starts mirrored with their immediate terrain. Very nice stuff.

Kjn mentioned this before, but WPC has done a truly terrible job of improving their territory. Southern Shores (buried under the interface in that screenshot) still doesn't have even one improved tile. They should have just let us settle there, we would have put those pigs and rice tiles to good use. Argh. I have no idea if we'll fight these guys later or keep them as a weak vassal, but they have done very little with the resources at their disposal in this game.



More map stuff: check out the city that CFC settled to connect their marble. What a piece of crap. Not even one food bonus here, although I guess with enough farming they could make this viable. Obviously a worthwhile play if it lands them Taj... just disappointed that this was right on their borders and ready to be claimed. The marble is actually exactly halfway between CFC and the Spanish, but sadly they didn't put up much of a fight for it. I will laugh so hard if we end up with Taj and they're stuck with this piece of junk city.

Speaking of Taj, here's the CFC city building it:



CFC chopped both of the forests in Lakshmi last turn for a further 150 production. They are sitting at 554 / 700 shields right now on their Taj build. Last turn, they had 352 shields, so they got 52 shields from natural production and 150 shields from the chop. The math here is pretty simple: if they whip Lakshmi this turn (for 4 pop), they get Taj Mahal, and we can't beat them. If they don't whip it this turn, then we would have a coinflip chance next turn. But! If they don't whip this turn, they won't whip next turn either, as they'll have concluded that they can win the race with natural production. They will finish the wonder in 3t (eot 136) via natural production, which we would beat with our whip at end of turn 134.

Again, just watch Lakshmi this turn. They have not whipped yet. If we don't see that city drop to size 4, then we will most likely land Taj Mahal. I still expect that they will, but I give us a slight chance to weasel this thing out from them. Keep those fingers crossed. (I have been nervously checking CivStats hourly. Until that whip appears, I'll hold on to hope!)

On our end, we set up our production queue in the capital to overflow into a university, to hide the production going into our own Taj build. If CFC doesn't whip, then we'll swap back to Taj at the very end of the turn. Is this a scumbag move? Oh, absolutely. I make no pretense otherwise. At the same time, CFC won't notice anything unless they are making use of production tracking via the espionage screen (they don't have enough EP to see our cities directly), and that's a bit of a scumbag move itself. They also should be able to see that we whipped the capital last turn, and overflowed into some kind of mystery build. If they aren't smart enough to put the dots together, well, that's not my fault. Call me whatever names you like, I'm the one playing the turns, and I'll take my advantages where I can get them. If CFC chooses not to whip their city, they deserve whatever blame they get for not playing things safe and guaranteeing themselves the wonder.



Here's our capital, where I made some significant tile micro changes from what we were working with originally. (Keep in mind that we are actually "building" a university right now, I swapped back after taking this picture.) So the original plan was to build the wonder naturally, along with the market/settler/temple whip overflow. That's not going to happen now - we will either 6 pop whip the wonder to completion, or we won't get it at all. This means that there's no real reason to work a bunch of high production tiles. We might as well work more cottages and high food tiles, since the whip will finish the wonder anyway (or we won't get the wonder at all and won't bother whipping).

Each whip produces 30 shields * 2.75 (for marble, Bureaucracy, and Organized Religion) = 82 shields. Whipping 6 pop gets us 82 * 3 = 246 production, since the value of whipping gets cut in half for wonders. Therefore, we need to make sure we have at a minimum 700 - 246 production in Adventure One at the end of this turn, or 454 production. I have it set up so that we get 291 + 170 = 461 production, which will leave us with enough production in the box to 6 pop whip the wonder next turn. This lets us work all but the two youngest cottages and get some more food into the capital for extra growth. I am pretty sure that this is correct, but I would appreciate it if someone else double checked things here. Thanks.



Elsewhere, here is where we have decided the new settler is going. It's a weakish spot that will probably be turned into a production city with some farms and mines down the road. The settler is visible near French Riviera, and there is a missionary coming down from the Focal Point area as well. We are going to need to chop out a theatre here after the granary, because this spot badly needs 100 culture for third ring borders. There is no other way to bring over irrigation from French Riviera's wheat tile, and this city will need grassland farms for food. With monument, religion, theatre, and an Artist or two, that shouldn't take too long.

Regarding the earlier point about workers, we actually do have workers in the area ready to road to this city. I just needed to know where the city was going, which was not decided until this very turn. There are four workers around French Riviera, who will road over here starting the turn after next, once they've brought irrigation to the wheat tile pictured.



A lot of cities are building Wealth this turn to preserve overflow into forges next turn. Note that Brick By Brick was 1 food away from growth, so I had it work a coastal tile to grow next turn while building Wealth. It will overflow into forge and work horses plus all three plains hill mines next turn. (Base 20 production/turn = 25/turn with a forge. Nice. Don't whip that city.) Cutting Edge still needs a religious spread; I've been hoping for a free one, since the shrine is all of four tiles away. We'll get a missionary there with overflow from a forge whip somewhere, probably Forbidden Fruit. Mansa's shrine is currently at +27 gold/turn without counting the market.

Overview:

Metal Casting will be finished while stockpiling gold at 10% science. We could use a consensus on what to research next; I think the general opinion is for Machinery next, although I would still love that Alphabet tech. Probably not though, sigh. It's hard to do much in the way of longterm planning until we know if CFC or our team will be getting Taj Mahal. I have not tried to sandbox further ahead until we resolve that one way or another.

The German team and CivFr both popped Golden Ages this turn, CivFr using it to swap into Bureaucracy, Organized Religion, and Buddhism religion. This affected the Demographics:



We're surprisingly competitive in GNP at 10% science and with CivFr in a Golden Age. Helps to have that known civ tech bonus on Metal Casting. Nearly all of the other teams are broke right now, all the treasuries around 100 gold or less. Production of course gets silly in a Golden Age, no worries there. Food/Land/Power all looking very nice.

No movement on espionage points, still slowly creeping towards graphs with CivFr. Is there any chance we can ask UniversCiv to stop spending EP against us, and offer them our heavily explored map in a trade again? They have said almost nothing with us diplomatically, but it sure would be nice to stop spending against them in EP.

Now we play the waiting game at Lakshmi...

[Cornflakes]

We are going to need to chop out a theatre here after the granary, because this spot badly needs 100 culture for third ring borders. There is no other way to bring over irrigation from French Riviera's wheat tile, and this city will need grassland farms for food.

Desert can be farmed, right? If so you could, in theory, get irrigation to the new city at just the 2nd ring borders via two desert farms. Is two essentially wasted desert farms more efficient than building a theater and working an artist or two? I'm not deep enough into micro work to weigh these.

[kalin]

Desert cannot be farmed.

@Sullla: stating the obvious, but if we get to whip next turn we should end turn last.

Kalin