Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Ichabod]

We're already fighting an uphill battle against multiple teams on EP spending. Why in the world would we want to pick an espionage fight with CFC? The agreement we have not to spend EP against one another is among the best deals we have active.

Well, my take on it is the following:

1. CFC hates us.
2. CFC will do everything on their power to:
a. Win the game, if possible
b. Make us lose the game, if "a" is not possible.

That is a given, I think. So, what about EPs?

1. CFC is spiritual. The only other spiritual civ will be destroyed by us soon. Spiritual gives a big boost for using and defending against the most damaging espionage missions, so I think that's relevant. The civic and religious swapping missions are on, right? Feel free to ignore this post if they are not.
2. CFC has a history of using espionage missions.
3. CFC has a Judaism as state religion. I'm pretty sure we have judaism in one of our cities, right? Civplayers is buddhist (religion not present in our cities) and has the AP, so they won't be switching from it to switch us into a different religion. CFC, on the other hand, can majorly screw us with a religious civic mission.

I think it's fair to expect EP agression from CFC at one point in this game. As Sullla said, we are losing the EP battle against a lot of teams. So, I think using our EPs against CFC is the best use for them. So what if other teams get our research, graphs, steal a tech and so on. They aren't in a position to actually hurt us with their EPs. CFC will be in such a position in due time.

I'm not that big of an idiot to propose we violate our EP agreement with CFC. that was not what I was suggesting. I'm just saying that it's better to start planning for defenses against CFC spies now, rather than when we realize they are going for it. If we start planning this now, we can maybe make it very difficult for them later. Maybe CFC play to get Nationalism also means they will switch to a Espionage Economy with Nationhood? It's possible. They can start stealing techs from other teams and dump a lot of EPs on us after turn 175. How would we counter that with our current plans?

[scooter]

Well, my take on it is the following:

1. CFC hates us.
2. CFC will do everything on their power to:
a. Win the game, if possible
b. Make us lose the game, if "a" is not possible.

I think #1 and letter B are faulty assumptions. I've said "CFC is not our friend, they are strictly business partners," but going further from that to "CFC hates us" us an unsubstantiated claim. 2A is accurate IMO. 2B is also an assumption I don't see much evidence for. Their behavior towards the extremely obvious leader of the game is completely rational to me given a win-oriented mindset.

I don't have many comments on the other EP comments because that's not my thing, just wanted to point out that your foundational assumptions are questionable IMO.

[Ichabod]

Well, my take on it is the following:

1. CFC hates us.
2. CFC will do everything on their power to:
a. Win the game, if possible
b. Make us lose the game, if "a" is not possible.

I think #1 and letter B are faulty assumptions. I've said "CFC is not our friend, they are strictly business partners," but going further from that to "CFC hates us" us an unsubstantiated claim. 2A is accurate IMO. 2B is also an assumption I don't see much evidence for. Their behavior towards the extremely obvious leader of the game is completely rational to me given a win-oriented mindset.

I don't have many comments on the other EP comments because that's not my thing, just wanted to point out that your foundational assumptions are questionable IMO.

My comments is based on the position I see a lot of our players taking towards CFC. I'd expect a lot of the CFC members to have a similar position towards our team. And, obviously, it's a "hate-in-game" thing, not a personal issue.

Anyway, they don't need to hate us to use spy missions against us. They'll need to do it to try to win the game, most likely. Spy missions are one of the biggest threats towards our empire in this game, aren't them? So, it's important to prepare against them.

[Ichabod]

I concede the point to you, though, Scooter. What i'm claiming is mostly based on my take on human nature than substantial evidence. I still think my other points stand, even if only based on the fact that CFC will do whatever they can to win the game.

[kjn]

Anyway, they don't need to hate us to use spy missions against us. They'll need to do it to try to win the game, most likely. Spy missions are one of the biggest threats towards our empire in this game, aren't them? So, it's important to prepare against them.

I'd only be worried about the civics- and religion-switching missions.

We don't have Judaism in any of our cities, so not sure if they can force a religious revolt. As for the civics revolts, we are running a CE, so we are relatively resilient to the civics for our research. I think the best antidote against that would be to get the Cristo Redentor.

And if they run a civics change mission on us, then we declare war on them. Simple as that. And we're safe against that until T175, and we should be able to see any EP buildup against us from them way ahead of time.

[Ichabod]

Anyway, they don't need to hate us to use spy missions against us. They'll need to do it to try to win the game, most likely. Spy missions are one of the biggest threats towards our empire in this game, aren't them? So, it's important to prepare against them.

I'd only be worried about the civics- and religion-switching missions.

We don't have Judaism in any of our cities, so not sure if they can force a religious revolt. As for the civics revolts, we are running a CE, so we are relatively resilient to the civics for our research. I think the best antidote against that would be to get the Cristo Redentor.

And if they run a civics change mission on us, then we declare war on them. Simple as that. And we're safe against that until T175, and we should be able to see any EP buildup against us from them way ahead of time.

Well, no Judaism is pretty good news. What religions do we have in our cities besides Hinduism?

Well, they could revolt us to Pacifism, for example. That'd be a major pain, no matter what. Besides, declaring war is not solving the problem. I wouldn't expect us to be in peace with CFC after turn 175, no matter what. They can use spies to hurt us while we are at war, in a very open way. Just imagine being converted to Pacifism while being dogpiled by 2/3 players. That's big.

To be fair, there isn't that much to do about it right now. What are the cities that civfanatics could get the biggest EP discount against us? Does someone know the math for that? Are we planning on getting courthouses in our cities, I think the value of the building gets a little higher considering possible EP agression.

I expect to see CFC going for Constitution soon for their UB. That'd be a hint of a possible EP plan.

[Azoth]

Well, no Judaism is pretty good news. What religions do we have in our cities besides Hinduism?

Just Confucianism in Seven Tribes.

[Ubercannon]

There you go, pictures of all of our cities at the moment. Note that I suggested drafting every city - that wasn't an accident. It's an insanely good conversion of food into production, the best in the entire game when you get to the rifleman. (At size 6, that's 15 food with a granary for 110 production. Crazy.) By my count, we can draft out 12 maces in the first wave, a few more following after that as cities grow, and then another 12 maces ten turns later on T137-139. Add in a bunch of catapults with some elephants for anti-mounted and later knights as soon as we can build them, and I think we'll be in good shape to take down the Germans. It will be hard for them to fight back if they don't have medieval units of their own, and there's no much you can do to stop an endless wave of drafted units when you don't have the draft yourself. If the war prolongs, well, we should have muskets on the third wave of draftees, and cuirassiers soonish after that.

Any estimate on when guilds will be done? Also, how many catapults do you think there will be?

[SevenSpirits]

In general there is no need to whip a forge unless we are in a hurry to whip the next thing after the forge, or we are growing into unhappiness.

AO: Definitely don't whip the forge. But yes let's build one, if you were asking that.

MM: Not sure we should draft here. I think this might reduce our ability to whip a bank ASAP. Definitely don't whip the forge.

FP: Slowbuild forge. Also, I think we should work the plains farm over the plains mine. Even if we only use that extra food for whipping it converts 2:3.33, which is 0.33h more than the plains hill gives, in exchange for losing 1c. But we will do better than that: the extra pop we grow can produce 1h/t until we spend it, and when we spend it, it can be via draft, because we have the happiness to stack a couple sets of draft unhappy here.

HF: Actually, I'm not convinced we should build a forge here at all. With OR, the Forge takes 96 base hammers to construct. Those 96h could have been 192h worth of units. After it's built, the forge gives +25% production for units, which is worth 5h per turns towards units. That will take almost 40 turns just to break even in production, and during that whole time we will be down units compared to where we could be. And we are planning a war. And the happiness from the forge doesn't look necessary in that city.

GM: First of all, why are we working a plains mine over a FIN coast? Let's switch that over immediately and prioritize working that mine lower from here on out. Second, let's whip the forge when we need to for unhappiness reasons. Probably that means in 2t after we grow, because we need the happiness for drafting.

TH: I guess we should probably be working the grass farm over grass cottages here, right? Since it's already built I mean? I'm basing this off the classic observation that when ignoring worker labor, it's optimal to grow cottage cities on farms first and then gradually switch to cottages.

ST: Painful but I guess we should whip the forge so we can draft? Maybe it's better to draft here first, and then whip the forge after growing into unhappiness?

FF: Whipping/drafting in either order is the same, as long as doing one doesn't drop your pop too low to do the other.

ED: Er, are we sure it's not better to just build the National Epic first? That seems like the completely obvious choice to me. National Epic is an amazing building. Forge isn't.

BbB: I agree!

TC: Yeah, no need to whip the forge until we grow into unhappiness.

SF: I haven't looked closely at the details, but I believe someone (sooooo?) said we should skip the useless forge and just whip axes/spears, and I agree with this.

DD: grow to 6 to draft ASAP. No forge.

SL: Don't whip the forge until we grow into unhappiness.

FR: I would prefer to switch to a forge, build farms instead of cottages, and consider the library to just be wasted hammers. It's not worth developing this into a commerce city because it can't grow very large. Whip forge and barracks in quick succession, later.

[sooooo]

OK, my responses to Sullla's micro plans:

Most of the plans seem sensible.

I support the plan to get a settler out of The Covenant instead of a forge.
At Ditchdigger then I agree let's build one more farm and then I guess a watermill seems fun.
At Eastern Dealers I'm fairly sure it's more efficient (i.e. will get us the national epic quicker) to just to work the mines. Then in 4 turns time we can 2-pop whip and 1-pop draft away the 3 workers on unimproved coast, always working the mines.
At Adventure One I think we shouldn't whip the forge. Just keep growing here.

How about the following tile shuffle: Switch Simple Life from cottage to farm. That cottage gets picked up by Cutting Edge, away from farm. Then Mansa's Muse picks up Cutting Edge's farm, away from the plains cottage. It gets more growth into Mansa's Muse and doesn't delay any other growths. I know it stops us working a plains cottage here for a few turns but food into Mansa's Muse will be good if we want to use it to get a great person out of it down the line, plus it has good tiles to work when it is at higher pop (and we'll draft it down a size too).