Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[kjn]

@Ruff - better to use the info in the first post of the turn tracking thread. Sullla has kept it up to date, and it's easy to find.

The Germans has moved a chariot towards Wasserburg, not sure if it intends to enter our borders. I think we can let it see some of our macemen, but our full stack near their borders would probably make them quite nervous.




Apolyton captured the barb city of Khoisan, that we scouted earlier.

City micro: I think AO should switch off the two cottages shared with GM, and work both plains mines. GM drops the coast tiles and picks up the two cottages, losing 1F but gaining 2H.

[Lord Parkin]

LP - can you edit your post and update the IP address - it is out of date.

Game Server: caledorn.no-ip.org (or 178.17.156.44) (Default port 2056)

Done, thanks.

[Sullla]

Turn 143 - 660AD

Still quietly building and planning, getting closer to Turn 150.



Here's a picture of the land to the northwest of Apolyton. This area is pretty fertile considering that they haven't moved to settle it yet. It's one more good city up there at the very least. Our scout will go ahead and move to the south from here to explore the central Apolyton territory that we missed on the last pass through.



Sentry chariot over by CivPlayers continues to dodge barb axes in the tundra. I'm hoping that we'll be able to move two tiles northeast next turn. We have just enough time to get this unit back to the main stack for the T150 attack. The other war chariots in the southeast who have been exploring the ice islands are doing the same thing, and should also make it back to serve on military duty.



Here is our western core from an overview shot. I do not agree with kjn about working multiple plains hill tiles in the capital; we have no burning desire to speed up the forge build (I mentioned before that we have just enough time to get it done in time for the war's start) and we want to keep some growth going here for when we draft the city again in 6 turns. Trading off mature villages and towns for plains hill mines in a commerce city doesn't feel like a good exchange to me.

Elsewhere, Mansa finally has some nice food surplus coming in from the deer tile. Focal Point is building catapults at a 3t rate. Horse Feathers is churning out 1t war elephants while we tech towards Guilds; we'll be able to set up the overflow there to turn out a knight in 1t on the first turn we have Guilds. Brick By Brick is doing more war elephants for the moment to take advantage of the stables; we have 2 elephants on the field right now, and I think we'd like about 5 of them to serve as anti-mounted defense for our main stack, since we won't have access to pikes until after the war starts. Ditchdigger has hit size 6 for the first time, and as such will be drafted this turn for another mace.

Two questions for everyone, the first at Tree Huggers. What does everyone want to build here? The best options seem to be either a barracks or a market, both of which add more happiness to the city (+2 from barracks and +3 from market). As a commercial city, the market would absolutely be helpful for our economy... with the tradeoff being that the market is triple the cost of the barracks. I was thinking that we build the barracks for now and whip the market later. The current happiness cap is size 11, for the curious. Thoughts on this city? I didn't take a picture but can do so if requested.

The other issue deals with Frozen Jungle and Ditchdigger. These cities both have about all of the grassland farms they need for the moment, and I was thinking of laying down some grassland workshops for them with our workers. Yes, the grassland workshop is terrible right now as a 1/1 tile, but we'll have Guilds shortly to make them 1/2 tiles, and what else are we going to build on those tiles? More farms when the cities have plenty of them already? Cottages that we don't plan to work later? (We had earlier decided that both would be production cities, not commercial ones.) There are no cities nearby that could take back the cottages later after a period of incubation. So... I'm thinking we lay down some workshops now, even if we don't work too many of those tiles just yet. Is this a decent plan while we continue to hack down the jungle?



Here's the east, where there's a little bit less going on. The main question surrounds Cutting Edge:



We now have religion in the city, and that means we can whip the forge with the Organized Religion bonus. We probably want to whip this city next turn, right? Cutting Edge is intended to be a production city; the forge whip overflow should finish the barracks (or close to it) and then we simply grow on the grassland farms to size 10 where it works the rice tile, four grassland farms, and the five hill tiles in range for 17 base / 21 forge production. That's not bad for a filler city reclaiming unused tiles, and the cottages can all be given over to commercial cities after being incubated here. Let me know if a forge whip next turn is the correct way to play this.



Here is the deep south; workers finished a pasture on the sheep at Catherine, and will head down to improve the upcoming crabs/deer city next. Settler will found that city in three more turns, sadly the terrain is pretty rough down there. Our two war chariots are in the galley and coming back to the mainland. Work boat will connect the crabs at Let It Snow and finally get some real food going there next turn. I'm assuming that we do want a lighthouse as the next build in LIS to take the crabs up from +4 food to +5 food, which is definitely needed. Other workers in the area are chopping forests. Starfall, off screen to the north, gets double whipped for its catapult this turn in accordance with the micro plan written out by Seven last week.

We finally turned on research this turn at 100%, and we'll run that for the next three turns. We caught a bit of a break here, as both CFC and Apolyton discovered Feudalism while we were accumulating gold towards our Guilds run. This dropped the cost of Feudalism nicely, giving us 6% bonus beakers. I'll certainly take that. Three turns of 100% science should leave us roughly 500 beakers short of Guilds with about 150 gold in the bank, and we'll run rough 70% science on T147, possibly with a Wealth build squeezed out somewhere, to finish Guilds at eot 147.

Overview:

One thing that we do need to decide is whether we want to play in the first or second half of the turn timer for our upcoming war. We need to figure this out and then communicate to WPC so that we're on the same page. It's probably easier and more fair to the German team to play in the first half of the timer; I've always thought that this is a more natural arrangement, and it would be easier to synchronize this with WPC. Just attack and move in at the start of T150. It could also be helpful diplomatically, as when the timer runs down it will look like the Germans are the ones holding up the game, the same way that it happened in their last war. On the other hand, it's tactically more advantageous to have the second half of the timer, as the Germans would have no chance to react with unit moves or whip on the first turn of the invasion. It's a bit of a scumbag play, but I'm absolutely willing to pull clock shenanigans if we think it offers a significant enough advantage. What does everyone think? How do we want to set this up?

If anyone has time to experiment with what exactly this mod does with turn timer splits in war, that would also be hugely helpful. What happens in a 3 way war? Can we play around with this and test it so we know what's going to happen ahead of time?



Demos for the turn. GNP at 100% sadly only occupies the 4th spot, although we are within shouting distance of the leaders. We are back to #2 in Production now that all of the Golden Ages other than CivFr have ended. (In other words, we are actually first in Production.) Our Power continues to climb without too much in the way of a buildup from anyone else. Imagine if our production were going into all economic stuff instead of units, or if we weren't sitting on a -3 unhappiness penalty from drafting in every city. Our GNP would probably look a lot better too. The difference is that you can always improve your economy later, while obtaining more land once all the empty stuff has been claimed is a lot tougher. Even with a conservative estimate of success, we should be able to get about 10 extra cities from the Germans, cities with highly developed infrastructure and tile improvements, and then another 5 cities down in the tundra/ice to the deep south. That would put us at 35 cities, and no one is getting much beyond 20 cities without going to war on this map. I like those odds.

Apolyton discovered Feudalism this turn (dropping the cost for us to research) and CFC discovered Horseback Riding. As kjn wrote in the C&D thread, it's looking more likely that CFC used their Great Engineer for an Engineering lightbulb, given the number of techs they researched in such a short time. Even in Golden Age mode, we're pretty sure they didn't have that much research power. We are kind of treading water here on research, keeping pace with the other game leaders or losing a little ground to them. Apolyton, CivFr, and CFC are likely all researching faster than us at present, due to us investing so heavily in military while none of them are investing in it at all. The results of the German war will tell the success of our larger strategic plan.

We now have graphs on CivFr, but they aren't too useful since they're still in a Golden Age. Need to wait until that ends to see much of anything. We should be able to keep graphs on everyone other than Apolyton, CivPlayers, and UniversCiv - the teams who have heavily emphasized courthouses.

[regoarrarr]

Looking good Sullla My only thought is that I feel it's worthwhile to take 2 turns to move the northern scout to the deer tile to unfog the rest of the coast (just in case there's anything out there), unless there is a pressing need to uncover Apolyton territory sooner.

I agree with the grass workshop builds

[Gold Ergo Sum]

If we want the second half of the turn timer, I would suggest involving plako. When I was admin, if someone was going to declare war, they asked me a lot of questions. I would just tell plako that we and WPC plan on taking the second half the turn timer in the war on T150 (as the rules appear to allow) and that if necessary, we would request a late pause to allow us both to declare if the Germans hold the turn until late.

[Old Harry]

At Tree Huggers I'd build a market first - you only get a benefit from a barracks once you're building (or I suppose drafting) units, whereas you get benefit from a market as soon as you're saving cash. So if you're building them consecutively market first is slightly better.

Building workshops now will save time later, you might as well if there is nothing better for the workers to do...

[kalin]

I don't have a strong opinion on building workshops, but since we don't need them right now and I don't think we'd want to work 1/2/0 tiles, chopping jungle will probably be a better choice. That is, rather than build a workshop I'd keep chopping jungle if we can.

Kalin

[mostly_harmless]

With the "threat" of a scouting German chariot, I suggest scattering the stack. There is no reason to have our forces concentrated like this at the moment, right? There should be plenty of space left to distribute the army in, and still making sure it arrives at the staging spot at T149.

mh

[Merovech]

Are we supposed to be working an unimproved riverside plain tile?

[kjn]

Well, we can invest minimal worker turns into the chopping and workshopping (no roads, just chop and workshop). But it helps us in giving an excuse for keeping a few workers up north near the German borders (to have combat engineers on hand once we capture each city), and helps us in getting a few more tiles improved with little investment.