Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I'd prefer working the merchants (because we need every scrap of commerce we can) and whipping the bank to completion. I think that would be a 2-pop whip, which is okay because there are only 3 tiles we want to grab once we've passed our GPP threshold and gotten our gold multiplier. Well, strictly speaking 4, but we're dropping that grass farm once we stop working specialists.

[regoarrarr]

By swapping from merchants to priests we lost 9 gold per turn. However, it finishes the bank 7 turns sooner. A bank at Mansa's Muse will be worth about 40 gold per turn when it's finished and we reset to the normal tiles, so finishing it 7 turns sooner is worth about 210 gold. Over the 16 turns we take to build it we will be getting a total of 112 gold less due to not having merchants, so we save about 98 gold from doing this. It does affect GP points though. Currently we have a 46% chance of a prophet at MM, so I don't really see the harm in having more prophet points. We currently only have 1 prophet hired at Eastern Dealers, so hopefully we won't get the same type of GP.

What about swapping 1 Priest to the Plains Mine. That will bring in 198h over 11 turns. 1 turn of working a 2h tile will finish the Bank in 11 turns.

Is that worth missing 11 turns of GP points?

Or swapping the grass farm to the plains mine to go into (temporary) starvation? I know that MM doesn't grow very fast, but I don't think we'd actually starve, and 40gpt is (of course) very nice.

[NobleHelium]

We're still planning to use that granary food to speed up the GP by at least one turn to boost the city ahead of ED. And I don't even know what you're saying about whipping the city, when would that be??

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Maybe some pictures will generate some discussion about cities.

Firstly, Mansa's Muse. Here is it's current configuration:



I think we should change to this configuration:



By swapping from merchants to priests we lost 9 gold per turn. However, it finishes the bank 7 turns sooner. A bank at Mansa's Muse will be worth about 40 gold per turn when it's finished and we reset to the normal tiles, so finishing it 7 turns sooner is worth about 210 gold. Over the 16 turns we take to build it we will be getting a total of 112 gold less due to not having merchants, so we save about 98 gold from doing this. It does affect GP points though. Currently we have a 46% chance of a prophet at MM, so I don't really see the harm in having more prophet points. We currently only have 1 prophet hired at Eastern Dealers, so hopefully we won't get the same type of GP.

Next city, Ditchdigger:



We should whip this city for a forge, right? This city is only going to get whipped, so may as well start making the whips more efficient.

Similarly, Frozen Jungle:



It currently has a courthouse selected but hammers put into a forge. Personally, with maintence being only 10 gpt, I'd whip the forge here first and now.

Mano y Mano



We should whip this courthouse. It saves 7 gold and we only temporarily lose 4 gold.

Focal Point:



Here I think we should draft the city, losing the two mines and gaining a farm to regrow in 2 turns.

Right, something slightly more controversial. Here's the state of our 3 cities in the southwest:







These cities can all share cottage tiles between them. At the moment, we're working 4 mediocre tiles (2 coast, 1 plains farm, 1 fresh cottage). They're not bad tiles, but they'll be good to be whipped into buildings. Also, seven tribes will grow in 2 turns and doesn't have a good tile to grow into.

French Riviera and Seven Tribes are probably happy enough growing and finishing their buildings.

What I propose we do is swap gourmet menu to a bank and then quintuple-whip it next turn. That takes away 5 tiles, leaving the city the fish and the 4 flood plains towns. The 3 plains cottages are transferred to seven tribes, which in turn drops the new cottage and the two eastern cottages. Those two eastern cottages are transferred to French riviera, which drops a plains farm and a hamlet. Then we'll get many growths over the next few turns to reshuffle the tiles back towards their present configuration.

A bank in Gourmet Menu will be huge - it's our third best commerce city. Well, it will be neutered after it's whipped down to size 5, but it grows back very quickly.

Drafting: We can draft Catherine finally this turn. Catherine, Starfall and Focal Point look good candidates for the draft.

[Lewwyn]

Noble's right about the GPP and needing the food for that.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

If I understand it, we can have both MM and ED pop their great people on the same turn, but because MM comes earlier in the city order, that city will pop the great person first and ED will have to keep working up another 100gpp or so.

[NobleHelium]

Yes, except MM is currently behind by at least one turn (possibly more) and needs to be boosted.

[Ruff_Hi]

Fuck no. We need that GP.

So ... that is a NO is it?

[Bigger]

i like switching the merchants to priests, sooo made a good argument.

[Sullla]

I don't really like any of these suggestions, but that's largely because I've configured the cities in their current setup.

Mansa: Any of these proposed changes will either screw with our Great Person generation from this city, or it will continue to wreck our short-term economy even further. Sure, go ahead, drop Merchant specialists and drop us down to 200 gold/turn. At that rate, we're barely clearing 20% science rate and the Rifling ETA is roughly 25-30 turns. Longterm is nice and all, but I'm sure not sure how much it matters when the other teams are all coming to gangbang us in the next ten turns. There are no great answers here. I like the proposed changes less than the current config though (Priests are terrible specialists and we desperately need gold generation). Possibly taking back the gold hill mine and running starvation for a while could be the best choice.

Ditchdigger: Do not whip this city. The forge is pointless. The city is on Wealth build to preserve 25 shields of production for an instant walls completion on T169 when we get our stone back. Then we whip out a castle immediately thereafter. It's directly on the front lines, and a forge means nothing.

Frozen Jungle: You could talk me into a forge, but I would still prefer the courthouse for saving 5.5 gold/turn and granting 2 EP/turn. Our economy is still pretty dismal, and it's not getting better any time soon.

Mano: Do not whip the courthouse here. This city is waiting to whip walls and castle for when we get stone back (swap to walls T168, 1 pop whip T169 with overflow, overflow castle T170, whip castle T171). Mano is extremely exposed and needs walls/castle immediately. We would be building them now if WPC hadn't taken our stone at a terrible moment.

Focal Point: Plan is to draft the city next turn, when it instantly regrows the following turn. There is a reason why we have not drafted here already.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

On a larger note, I'm honestly pretty bummed out about this game. I'm sick of getting dogpiled in every game with diplomacy allowed. We've outplayed every other team by a massive margin, and our "reward" is to get gangbanged by everyone else, followed by a bunch of sanctimonious bullshit from the other teams about how we should have "stayed under the radar" or some such nonsense. The upcoming turns are going to take forever to play, and they'll be a massive slog, as we have to fight every other major power on every side of our empire. They can't conquer us outright, or even do that much damage, but it will be long and tedious and extremely time consuming.

In other words, if someone else really wants to play these turns and take over, be my guest. I wanted to have a period of peace and rebuilding after the German war, and the other teams apparently will not let that happen. I'm not sure that I can keep putting in the massive time commitment of this game - playing the turns AND writing up the turn reports AND keeping track of what the other teams are doing AND livestreaming war turns - it's becoming too much. The fun just goes out of the game when I'm getting dogpiled for the umpteenth time in every game I play.