Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[kjn]

Just to point out the obvious, if we trade away our only ivory we can no longer build war elephants. I guess we're going to prioritize knights anyway though.

Yep. And I guess we will have Engineering (ie pikes) in a not too far future anyway. I think the Spanish will go down anyway, and then we will get back the ivory, and can probably trade silver or gems to WPC for dyes instead.

Ie, we give up a little capability, gain some happiness, and help the Spanish a lot in slowing down CFC. Provided the Spanish has HBR, of course. But I think we should get the trade going as soon as possible - less room for CFC to complain if we start trading before they declare on the Spanish.

[Sullla]

Turn 146 - 720AD

We don't have all that much to do in terms of city micro this turn. However, we have some work ahead of us in the larger strategic and geopolitical context of this game. Prepare for more diplomacy.



The real news from this turn (or technically the very end of last turn) comes from CivFanatics. Their team was clearly holding the turn until they were the last ones to play, which is why I logged into the game and ended our turn, at which time they quadruple revolted into Police State / Nationhood / Slavery / Organized Religion. They then proceeded to whip and draft away 17 population (3 single pop hits, probably maceman drafts, and 7 double pop whips). They then immediately whipped another 7 population away this turn: two double and one triple whip. Obviously these whips are going into knights, and indeed we can even see one knight in the CFC border city near Starfall. The result has been a huge jump upwards in CFC power, along with a drastic fall of their economy. (CFC's economy is strongly tied to working Representation scientists and relying on their Bureacademy size 17 capital.) The writing is therefore on the wall: CFC plans to go to war soon.

I posted the zoomed out map above to show their prospects for war. They are locked into peace with our team by virtue of that Turn 175 NAP we prudently signed much earlier. CFC doesn't share much of a border with WPC or UniversCiv, and is separated from them by a jungle belt. They could be the targets, but are somewhat unlikely. The overwhelmingly most likely subject for an attack is the Spanish, a weak team to the east with whom CFC already has a prior history of fighting. Left alone, the Spanish will almost certainly crumble immediately. The question for us is how to play this situation.

We've had a suggestion to trade our ivory to the Spanish in exchange for their dyes. This would allow them to train war elephants, the one unit that would do a decent job of countering CFC's knights. Of course, we would no longer be able to train elephants ourselves, but we're building knights anyway. The other major downside is that CFC would surely notice our ivory trade and become an enemy down the road... but we may already be in that situation anyways. In any case, it's something we need to discuss, and I'll bring it up in the diplo thread after posting this.

Here are the main diplo objectives I'd like us to work on:

* Contact WPC again, ask them if they have a NAP with CFC, tell them we want our teams to declare in the second half of the timer (after Germans) on Turn 150.

* Contact UniversCiv, poke them about the CFC massive knight fest, ask them if they have an NAP with CivFanatics. Give them a warning of some kind.

* Contact the Spanish, ask about their NAP situation with CFC, ask if they have Horseback Riding tech (we know that they have Construction), offer the proposed ivory for dyes trade.

That's a lot of stuff to do, so we should get moving. Please put any diplo debate and discussion over in that thread for sake of clarity.



There were also three Great People births at the start of this turn. One was a Great Scientist for WPC (not important). One was a Great Engineer in the fog, which could steal a wonder later on. I have no idea what team produced that Engineer; Apolyton, maybe? The last Great Person was a Scientist birthed in the German capital... and which has already been used on an Academy at the start of this turn. What a nice present! Thanks, you guys, we didn't know that you cared.

If the German war goes well, Webringen could potentially be the best place to put Oxford University down the road, since it has that Academy. Probably not, but maybe.



Here is our core of cities again. I did forget to swap Horse Feathers over to a war chariot at the end of last turn, and we ended up building a catapult instead. This means that we can't overflow into and finish a knight at the end of this turn turn, which means that the best course of action is to finish a catapult this turn (eot 146) and then we can finish a 1t knight next turn (eot 147). I apologize for the goofup, but it's not too bad since we did need some extra catapults. Brick By Brick is on a horse archer build which will auto upgrade to a knight.

Gourmet Menu and Mansa's Muse are finally about to finish their economic builds; we will probably go for a university in the former and a grocer (shrine city) in the latter. We are also about ready to begin the second round of drafting across our cities, since we began on Turn 137 and it's now Turn 146. I'm keep an eye on this and we will definitely draft the full five units next turn. Here's a city that we can draft this turn:



Focal Point is about to grow onto an unimproved tile (there are workers about to farm the plains tile southwest of the city, but it won't be done in time for next turn) and has a lot of happiness to spare. We can draft the city this turn, then draft it again in 3-4 turns when the first draft penalty wears off. Focal Point is just building 3t catapults endlessly at the moment. Wanted to get approval before drafting, but this one does seem pretty straightforward.



On the northern border, we continue to clear out jungle tiles and road important locations. For example, two workers roaded the tile three east of Wasserburg this turn. There's also a worker roading the jungle hill north of the gems, and a worker roading the tile southwest of their rice near Wipperfuerth. The Germans also have a whole bunch of workers improving tiles along the border, so hopefully this looks fairly innocuous.

In micro notes here, we can draft Ditchdigger again a second time next turn, and we'll be able to double draft Frozen Jungle as well either next turn (T147) or the turn after that (T148). I plan to start a settler in Ditchdigger and triple whip it after it regrows back to size 6 following the draft. That should be roughly T149 or T150, right on time to plant the replacement city for Wolfratshausen. I also intend to send a war chariot to scout out that one missing German city at the end of T147 and the beginning of T148. I'd feel bad about double-moving them across the turn timer to scout, except that they did exactly the same to us with their own scouting chariot. Fair's fair.



The east is fairly quiet as usual, although a number of these cities are getting close to more whips and drafts. Tree Huggers will be very well set up to 3 pop whip its market next turn; I will post a picture next turn and we can discuss it. Simple Life and Cutting Edge will be whipping their respective forges in the next few turns, both are at the happy cap currently. We'll also be getting draftees out of most of these cities in the next couple of turns as well. (I plan to keep a few maces in Simple Life for safety's sake just in case the Germans would move an army down from Wismar. I actually hope that they do that, as it would be easy to kill them in our borders.)

Eastern Dealers also finally has enough happiness to grow to size 11, although we will then immediately draft away that pop point next turn, as the initial draft penalty will wear off. Heh. Poor city! Off screen, Starfall double whipped another catapult with the overflow going into Globe Theatre. It finishes the wonder in just five more turns. We actually have 5 whip penalties stacked up there, which won't matter in a couple more turns.



And the south, where we founded Winter Wasteland as our 20th city this turn. The workers are building a road over there, a missionary is en route, and a work boat is under construction in Catherine for the crabs. In the immediate future, poor WW has the choice of working the 2/0 deer, the 1/1 tundra forest, or the 1/0/3 coastal tile. I picked the deer as the best of terrible options, let me know if you guys prefer the coastal tile instead.

Let It Snow will finish its lighthouse at the end of this turn, and is quietly becoming a pretty decent city. The two workers are going to farm the tile south of the wheat (we need it to hit +6 food surplus) and then cottage the remaining grassland tiles. We'll never get much above size 10 here, but it's a great location to pull in some extra commerce and draft regularly. I hope that Catherine can fulfill a similar function eventually, despite being weaker. French Riviera is going to start a settler and then triple whip it for one of the silver spots in the extreme polar south. We're going to need that silver for happiness...

Overview:

We can finish Guilds research at 50% science, and that seems like the best course for this turn. We cannot finish at 40% science, and I see no reason to run at an odd percentage like 70% (our best sustainable rate this turn). The next tech to research is Engineering; this is not really debatable, as we need the bonus road movement to conduct a successful war. Units take way too long to reach the front lines otherwise. After that, we can discuss between Gunpowder, Banking, and Alphabet/Printing Press.

I have not moved any of our military units yet; I'm waiting for the Apolyton and German chariots to move first and see where they go.



Demos reflect the large lead in Food that we opened up again after CFC's whipping spree. It also shows their dramatic increase in Power; they are up about 80k Power from last turn. I'm a bit surprised that they didn't draft more, given the amazing conversion rate on drafting (as little as 15 food for 70 shield maces). So far, they have mostly whipped out knights, which is obviously a solid play in its own right. Just somewhat surprised that if they were going for Nationhood that they didn't use it more. Our GNP at max science was 660 for the curious. We are definitely not first in research power (that is Apolyton), but not too far behind. In the long run, Apolyton cannot compete with our vast edge in pop and land unless they acquire more territory themselves.

Speaking of Power, here's the bar graphs for this turn:



CFC's whips and drafts will not show up until next turn, of course. I think there are two main points of interest here. First, the German team's power has been completely flat. They don't seem to have any idea whatsoever that we are going to attack them - they have not reacted at all to our huge surge in power. Perhaps they think that we are about to fight CFC? It would be a logical assumption based on how our teams have been acting. Secondly, note that the Spanish have also been flat in Power rating as well, and that's a real problem. They are the lowest on this graph. We need to get in touch with them immediately, so let's get on that and try to get them ivory for their elephants. That needs to happen before the end of this current turn.

Let's get over to the diplo thread and get to work.

[kjn]

As for the Great Engineer, I'm fairly confident it's from CivFr. We have visibility on almost every Apolyton city, CivFr has known MC for quite some time, and they have just finished a 12-turn golden age during which they only generated one GP. CivPlayers might be an outside candidate, given that they have the Hagia Sophia in their capital. May have to do some GP calculations for them, but I believe the results will be inconclusive.

[kjn]

Another thing, Sullla, with the war coming up, do you want to take a break as our turnplayer?

You have done a marvelous job so far, so speaking only for myself you can continue as long as you want, but even the best players can be in need for a break or a breather now and then. Especially when one invests as much effort into the game as you do.

[kalin]

kjn, I'd think that on the contrary Sullla would want to play the turns now more than anything Can't speak for him of course.

Kalin

[darrelljs]

Yeah he's got more MP war experience than any other active player, it would be hard to imagine a worse time to swap turn players.

Darrell

[SevenSpirits]

Why build a catapult in HF when we can start a knight? I thought knights were what we wanted. In fact we were willing to build a WC instead of a cat last turn, just to get more hammers into knights.

Yeah if we do a cat this turn, we can get a knight the turn after. But if we start a knight this turn, we can get a knight for the next TWO turns after. And in general that puts us ahead 50h on knight production for as long as we continue to produce them.

[Ruff_Hi]

The Germans also have a whole bunch of workers improving tiles along the border, so hopefully this looks fairly innocuous.

Maybe ... maybe not ...

Dear Neighbors,

We wanted to express to you how much we value and appreciate our close relationship and the trouble free diplomacy with you!
In light of your recent, dramatic increase in military power, we would just want to be assured that you are not intending to harm the grown trust and respect of our two people.
We would like to extend our current the NAP with you that is about to expire in a few turns. Would you agree to a new NAP until turn 175?

Best wishes from the cold north

[sooooo]

Tree Huggers: I think we should just keep growing this city. It's got some great tiles (grass mines) to grow into so let's hold off the whip until we're about to grow to size 13. I do think we should work those grass mines, even when the cottages are available. It gets us hammers to finish the market quicker and hence raise the happy cap quicker.

Focal Point: Yes, draft it.

Cutting Edge: Shouldn't we whip this forge this turn? If we wait until next turn it will become a 2-pop whip which is not efficient when we are at the happy cap. A 3-pop whip now can overflow into a barracks like you planned to.

Agree with the proposed builds at Gourment Menu and Mansa's Muse. Gourmet Menu's university should probably be quadruple whipped.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I wouldn't ask Sulla for a break he's going to be fucking relishing this shit