Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Ruff_Hi]

@Sullla - I meant to mention that I dig your wall papers - any chance you can share them?

Another turn down - looks like a big battle next turn.

A couple of comments and discussion points ...

1) Do we want another sentry WC?
We had a WC with no promotions that was due a promotion this turn. It was promoted to Combat 1. Do we want another sentry chariot? If so, I would suggest that we slot one in the build queue in a city with a stables.

2) Re leaving the Eastern medic I chariot out of the city ... it only provides healing additions to units on that tile. Do we want to move it into the city (+ the other healing chariots) so that the knight that is healing in the city is available a turn or two quicker?

3) Road tile one south of main stack (19:13 in vid3)
I think we need some more discussion re tactical moving. As I said above, I will try to log into the game and post some tactical pictures before we move. That way, some of the issues that come up can be reviewed, discussed, weighted, etc prior to playing. We were discussing roading the forest tile but we couldn't cover any workers we put there with units (at the time of the discussion). However, if we had discussed it prior to playing the turn, we could have - stripped 1 or 2 maces off the main stack, cover the workers and then use those forces to garrison the newly captured city.

Edit: I had paused the vid (had to walk the dog) before Sullla mentioned that above - so this was mentioned in the vid. I was also thinking about this during my dog walk - maybe we should make the obvious moves last and start with the optional (or undecided) moves. Thus we can change the obvious moves. Or maybe we don't move anything - we cycle through all units before actually moving anything.

[maybe more to come as I watch more of the turn]

[Sullla]

Turn 152 - 840AD

A quiet turn. There was not a single round of combat on this turn. The next turn will probably be the decisive turn of the war, however.



This was the situation in the northwest when we logged into the game. The German war elephant pillaged a desert road tile, which wasn't particularly threatening. We didn't have too much to do here, we moved the injured units into Mano y Mano to heal (promoting one war chariot to Medic) and moved up our maces:



There are maces on the tiles both north and east of the peak, to prevent any further forward movement by the German war elephant. We get defensive bonuses on both tiles, and have strong odds (75% and 95%) to win if we get attacked. We also have our own war elephant on the tile north of the city. There's a pair of workers on that tile, and another pair on the tile east of the city. We will road them next turn, and be in a position to kill the German war elephant if it does anything other than retreat. I expect that it will move northeast next turn back into their territory.

Mano y Mano is in no danger, and we have a decent chance of being able to push further north or east from here in upcoming turns.



In the center, we scouted out as shown with the Sentry war chariot, revealing almost nothing in the way of German units. There's 1 war elephant, 3 axes, and 2 spears inside Worms at present. They will get another war elephant at the start of next turn from their triple whip, but the garrison doesn't look to be anything all that bad. If there's some big stack sitting two tiles north of the city that moves in to defend, that's also OK: we'll have a giant battle and clear out all of the defenders. In either case, we look to be in a good position to take Worms next turn.



We mostly moved up the big stack next to Worms, and that was the main tactical move for the turn. These are the units next to Worms that can attack next turn, along with 3 more knights a tile further back. In total, it's 7 knights, 3 elephants, 18 maces, 10 cats, and 4 war chariots. I feel pretty confident that we will be able to capture Worms with those units, especially given the lack of German units we've seen thus far.

I made one tactical mistake this turn: I should have split off 2 maces and put them on the jungle tile two south of Worms, which would have allowed us to put 2 workers on that tile, and have it roaded next turn. This would have allowed the three knights a turn behind the rest of the army to push forward against the German capital next turn. Let me show you our dream move for next turn:



At the start of next turn, we move the Sentry chariot a tile northwest, onto the tile west of Worms. That will grant us vision on all of the tiles with the little pink dots, including inside Webringen and Weil der Stadt. If we are lucky, the Germans will not be expecting a fast push on their capital; should we see an empty garrison or one unit inside Webringen, we'll save all of our knights and not have them attack Worms, instead moving on the white arrows to be in position to fork Webringen/Weil.

If I had split off two maces correctly, then we could have had 7 knights and 4 war chariots available for this move. Instead, it will be 4 knights and 4 war chariots. (Half of the war chariots are injured too. I went ahead and moved them up anyway, because they can still clear redlined defenders, and even the small chance of that happening is more useful than having them sit back and heal.) I hope those 3 knights are not enough to make the difference. Getting the capital would be enormous:

I posted that before, showing the cultural borders held by each city in this region. If we can steal a march on the capital and take it with two-movers, it will open everything up, and the rest of the cities will quickly fall like dominos. That's my hope for this campaign, that the Germans will pack everything into Worms and then we'll leapfrog right past the city with our fast movers to snipe down the capital. We have not used our knights aggressively yet, and they may feel that having war elephants makes them safe. And because we play after the Germans, they can't see our mounted stack incoming and do an emergency whip; they wouldn't be able to see it until the start of the next turn, and hopefully by then it would be too late.

Well, it may all be a pipe dream and our Sentry chariot could spot a half-dozen units back there protecting the capital. But it's useful to have a plan in place in case they don't. Cross your fingers that it all works...



At the insisting of the team, we pillaged this village three teams and picked up 42 gold in the process, since we were going to bulldoze over it anyway. It was a good decision, since these maces couldn't have reached the front lines anyway in time to fight in the battle for Worms.

CFC is pillaging tiles in neutral territory with their chariot, and we're contacting them by email to tell them to knock it off. It sucks that we're so hated by seemingly everyone in this game. I hate full diplo games.



There's an impending bloodbath on the WPC front, as the Germans and WPC both have big armies full of outdated units about to smash into one another. My best reading of this situation is that WPC will win and take the city of Warendorf, but not without suffering horrendous casualties in the process. They are going to take a pounding when they move onto the cows tile this turn. We are perfectly content to see all kinds of slaughter up here, as it would both kill off much of the German army, while allowing us to achieve most of the spoils of this war.

We have to wait for WPC to move these units before we can end our turn. I don't know with 100% certainty which tile their stack is going onto (I assume the cows), and we're not leaving our chariot out to die until it can be covered by their huge army.



Elsewhere, we finished Globe Theatre in Starfall this turn and drafted the city for another mace, as we will be doing most every turn here for the future. I have the city set to building walls, as we definitely want to have walls + castle here by the time that Turn 175 rolls around. With stone, both are easy to build, and even though CFC will have Gunpowder units by T175, they probably won't have Steel for cannons. That means using catapults to take down the cultural defenses, which takes forever at 2% per shot per catapult against a castle. (We will also need a spy to defend against an enemy spy inciting a city revolt.) Anyway, for now we can certainly slowbuild walls at 2 production/turn while drafting away.

The only other pop action of the turn was a draft at The Covenant, which had no draft unhappiness at all. It will grow back next turn. We'll be throttling back a little bit on the drafting and whipping right now to help our economy recover.

Overview:

I'm glad that we were able to pillage an extra 40 gold this turn, since we sure aren't making much at 0% science. This is effectively the nadir for our economy, with so many units in enemy territory and before we manage to capture enemy cities and flip them around for our own use. Trust me, it will get much better over the next 10-20 turns.

We are researching Alphabet en route to Printing Press to help our poor economy. (PP is worth a LOT, given our very large number of villages and towns. PP becomes much more valuable on larger maps.) With city capture gold from Worms, we should be able to run 100% science next turn (or close to it) and knock out Alphabet.



Our GNP is utter crap this turn, with the combination of 0% science and massive unit costs. Here's the culprit:



We're paying 91 gold/turn just for units, then huge amounts more for cities, civics, and inflation. Distance maintenance is almost 100 gold/turn on its own. Again though, we'll be able to solve this through whipping out some courthouses in our far-flung cities (now that we don't need to whip more knights), by taking over fully mature villages and towns in the German core, and eventually by swapping into State Property civic. You can always recover your economy, while land is priceless.

Recording of the turn below, although there wasn't too much to see. Next turn is going to be the big one, for both us and WPC. http://www.twitch.tv/rbciv/b/417328081

[Sullla]

Ruff, on every turn of the war, I've first posted what I planned to do that turn with our units, then let the team know when I would be playing the turn, then played the turn on Livestream so that people can make comments in real time, then written up and explained everything afterwards. I don't think that the process could be too much more open and transparent. There are always going to be things that we could have done better, and which are clear in retrospect, but we seem to be doing a pretty good job thus far. In total, we've lost 2 units to kill 10 units and take 3 cities.

You're welcome to post away with thoughts/suggestions, and I'll try to accommodate them as best I can. But I can't promise that you'll agree with every decision that I end up making.

[fluffyflyingpig]

@Sullla - I meant to mention that I dig your wall papers - any chance you can share them?

Another turn down - looks like a big battle next turn.

A couple of comments and discussion points ...

1) Do we want another sentry WC?
We had a WC with no promotions that was due a promotion this turn. It was promoted to Combat 1. Do we want another sentry chariot? If so, I would suggest that we slot one in the build queue in a city with a stables.

2) Re leaving the Eastern medic I chariot out of the city ... it only provides healing additions to units on that tile. Do we want to move it into the city (+ the other healing chariots) so that the knight that is healing in the city is available a turn or two quicker?

3) Road tile one south of main stack (19:13 in vid3)
I think we need some more discussion re tactical moving. As I said above, I will try to log into the game and post some tactical pictures before we move. That way, some of the issues that come up can be reviewed, discussed, weighted, etc prior to playing. We were discussing roading the forest tile but we couldn't cover any workers we put there with units (at the time of the discussion). However, if we had discussed it prior to playing the turn, we could have - stripped 1 or 2 maces off the main stack, cover the workers and then use those forces to garrison the newly captured city.

Edit: I had paused the vid (had to walk the dog) before Sullla mentioned that above - so this was mentioned in the vid. I was also thinking about this during my dog walk - maybe we should make the obvious moves last and start with the optional (or undecided) moves. Thus we can change the obvious moves. Or maybe we don't move anything - we cycle through all units before actually moving anything.

[maybe more to come as I watch more of the turn]

I'm pretty sure it is the same time or faster to heal the chariots by moving them all into the city and healing there. Healing the knight faster is a bonus. We should move all the chariots into the city.

Also the suggestion to post pictures in the thread whenever we can log in to the game prior to the turn for discussion is a great idea.

[Sullla]

I already post pictures in this thread as soon as we can log into the game, and have been doing so for every turn of this war. See posts 4425, 4526, and 4617 in this thread. I'm writing a pre-turn report and a turn report on each war turn. You guys screwed around and discussed nothing important today before I played the turn, but that's not my fault.

Again, I'm not sure what more you guys want me to do here. Feels like some people are literally never happy, ever.

[fluffyflyingpig]

Base Healing Rate
Eligible units will heal:
5HP per turn in enemy territory.
10HP per turn in neutral/friendly territory.
15HP per turn in home/allied territory, OR, in any city which is in resistance.
20HP per turn in any city which is not in resistance.

Additive Modifiers
+10HP per turn in city with Hospital
+10HP per turn for Combat IV in friendly/neutral territory
+10HP per turn for Combat V in enemy territory

Medics
+10HP per turn for Medic I on tile OR Medic II on adjacent tile
+15HP per turn for Medic III on tile OR tile
+15HP per turn for Woodsman III on tile
Largest bonus from friendly Medic promotions applies

Promotion Healing
Taking a promotion heals half of a unit's missing health, rounded down

Eligibility
Units that took the following actions are eligible for healing:
Fortify
Sleep
Sentry
Defending against an attacker
Sitting in the cargo of a ship while it moves
Accepting a promotion
Intercept Mission (air units)
Have the March promotion

[fluffyflyingpig]

The chariots in our territory take 4 turns to heal. They heal 15+10=25 HP per turn for 4 turns for a total of 100 HP

The city has a total of 2 turns of resistance left, this turn and next turn

In the city they will heal 15+10 HP next turn and 20+10 HP per turn the following 2 turns once the city is out of resistance for a total of 85HP

If the chariots have more than 15 HP (.75 Str) we should move them to the city to heal. This will heal the knight in the city faster, increasing healing from 15HP/turn to 25 HP/turn, without increasing the chariot healing time.




This simplifies things slightly, as we may want to move chariots with 95HP out after just 3 turns and one chariot may have more HP than the others. However, I think keeping a group of 2 movers together and moving them when they are all healed would be more useful.

[BRickAstley]

I already post pictures in this thread as soon as we can log into the game, and have been doing so for every turn of this war. See posts 4425, 4526, and 4617 in this thread. I'm writing a pre-turn report and a turn report on each war turn. You guys screwed around and discussed nothing important today before I played the turn, but that's not my fault.

Again, I'm not sure what more you guys want me to do here. Feels like some people are literally never happy, ever.

I just wanted to say that I feel you have been doing a thorough job with the setup for turns and making the actions clear. I know I haven't been very active in the game, just wanted to give my support.

[Ceiliazul]

I just wanted to say that I feel you have been doing a thorough job with the setup for turns and making the actions clear. I know I haven't been very active in the game, just wanted to give my support.

I got to see the livestream in progress this morning, it was quite interactive. I couldn't ask for more.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

I just wanted to say that I feel you have been doing a thorough job with the setup for turns and making the actions clear. I know I haven't been very active in the game, just wanted to give my support.

I got to see the livestream in progress this morning, it was quite interactive. I couldn't ask for more.

+1

I think a lot of people are just trying to do their best to contribute the game, but sometimes don't read all of the turn reports or whatever. But don't think you're going unappreciated Sullla.