Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[NobleHelium]

Let's see Darrell.

More helpful. Thanks for taking the time to clarify your questions.

1) If we turn off tech, what do we spend gold on? Upgrading garrison units that we can't move?

Nothing. We save until we are ready to turn tech back on.

2) We're whipping the bank to produce more gold, yes? Why are we in a hurry to do that if we're turning off tech?

We can save more gold, and tech longer when we do turn it back on.

3) Just because we've accepted the fact that we're going to fight the war with a tech disadvantage does not mean that we should not be trying to remove or reduce said disadvantage if it's in any way feasible to do so. And I've already calculated the estimated time to Rifling.

Which neglected to account for our declining population and still showed a date far enough in the future that turning off tech now and stockpiling gold until we have enough saved is a good idea.

4) If we do not have a reliable plan to stem the tide yet, why should we be worrying about things in the far distant future? How do you know we won't lose so many cities that we won't have less pop than we do now?

I don't. I think we should focus everything on stemming the tide. I don't think we can depend on Rifling to do that based on the estimates.

5) Did you know that a Golden Age helps us produce units and potentially get even more military tech?

Yes.

Darrell

Okay so basically we're already doing everything that you want to do. So never mind then.

[Zargon]

Do we really want to delay CP's stack? It seems to me our best shot at this war going well is to smash CP's stack fast and early, giving up Mano to make it happen, if necessary.

Hitting CFC first seems bad because we probably need rifles to take down cannons, since we can't throw the kitchen sink at them. (Attacking C1 cannons with muskets requires ~2.5 muskets per cannon)

Hitting Apolyton first seems suboptimal because they'll have a high-tech 1-mover stack capturing relatively weak cities.

CP, on the other hand, will have a low-tech stack that includes lots of 2-movers, and a possible entry point of BbB, meaning they can do more damage more quickly than Apolyton, but their stack will be the most fragile one.

We need to make sure we don't sit too far back and lose stuff to CP for free, but I think our best strategic move for the early war should be to draw CP in and crush their stack. If we delay their entry by threatening their cities, that would typically be a solid move in a 1-front war, but for the present 3-front war, our priority #1 should be making it a 2-front war asap. The worst thing that could happen to us is for CP to safely threaten us, tying us down but not risking their stack while Apolyton and CFC march through our territory.

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Fake Edit: If we think Apolyton and CP are waiting until turn 175 to go, then I agree that preemptively attacking looks more attractive. I'm not convinced it's definitely the right move, but my objection above doesn't apply. I also think that them waiting until 175 would be a tactical error on their part, but that's neither here nor there.

[Ubercannon]

+1 to everything Zargon said. Except I don't think we should do a preemptive attack under any circumstances. Each turn they delay helps us a lot.

Is there any way we can bait civ players into attacking us? Getting visibility on their stack with a spy would help us a lot, unless universe already has visibility there.

[antisocialmunky]

I like Zargon's overall plan of taking out a CP stack first assuming they jump in on T170. Though... I'm not quite sure what they plan on bringing to the party.

[pindicator]

I like Zargon's overall plan of taking out a CP stack first assuming they jump in on T170. Though... I'm not quite sure what they plan on bringing to the party.

Me too. My plan is only for if CivPlayers doesn't appear ready to attack on t170

[scooter]

Assuming CP will just present us with their stack on T170 seems sort of like wishful thinking. Also, remember, we have spies in their land right now, and there's no sign of any stack at all. They can't draft, they're hardly whipping, their standing army is laughable, etc. I will be genuinely surprised if they move anything in on T170. I don't even think they have serious war plans.

edit: I mean the last couple turns. They did do a wave of whipping recently, but this turn for instance they just ended with 0 whips in response to our 17 whip/drafts last turn.

[antisocialmunky]

Good point, it does seem odd that its T167 and there aren't any signs of units staging.

[Bigger]

lmao. we are crashing our economy to prepare for war and all doom and gloom. It will be hilarious if turn 190 comes around and we still aren't at war.

[Zargon]

What do we plan to do with all the overflow from cat whips?

In cities with respectable production, the answer is pretty obviously overflow into another unit, whether that be a spy, another cat, or a knight. For commerce cities, do we want to overflow into another unit (that we'll need to whip), or into infrastructure?

Do we have or want to have a plan for getting castles up on our western front? The stone trade expires on something like turn 172, right?

If we have a good handle on where CP's army is, both in location and size and they don't walk in at the same time as Apolyton, then going for Apolyton's stack first will be my preferred course of action. Taking out CFC's cannons without rifles will just be a meatgrinder, and so I'm extremely wary of doing that before we've got all other fronts secured, even if they burn down a pair of crown jewels while we're doing that.

I wonder if the best use of the few pikes and elephants we have is on the eastern front, to limit damage by keeping CFC's knights with their 1-mover stack.

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If we get to turn 190 without being at war, even after whipping off something like 15 mature cottages last round, we will be in magnificent shape. The only reason why we're caught with our pants down at the moment is that new north Egypt isn't producing anything for us yet, when we need it most. That won't be true 10 turns from now, let alone 20. Getting all those cities to draftable status will be a turning point for us.

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I wouldn't take a lack of things being staged as anything other than a sign of the competence of our opponents. It's easy to simply say the staging tile for 167 is X, for 168 is Y, and for 169 is Z. We did exactly that for the German war, and then we won't actually see anything coming until the turn before.

[sunrise089]

Which army mix would you go for here, Speaker?

Yes Speaker, you should chime in more and call us idiots to your heart's content.

Speaker was kind enough to chat with me some about this, and at the risk of putting words in his mouth I'll give his outline:

*Current cat whips complete
*Overflow into muskets and knights
*Whip those
*Overflow into buildings

My commentary is this is a sold middle of the road plan that probably deals with the most likely civplayers attack, a CFC attack without too many cannons, and then is in decent shape for the Apolyton attack if it falls on the smaller side of what they may send in, particularly if we slow build some more cats while drafting rifles in 10t or so. In the worse-case scenario of 50+ rifles it will still be too few cats, but we very may well want to run that risk.

lmao. we are crashing our economy to prepare for war and all doom and gloom. It will be hilarious if turn 190 comes around and we still aren't at war.

It would be a little funny, but overall we're watching the enemy buildup particularly via hurried production. Once poly stops drafting we'll have a sense of what we need. We won't keep going all-units just for the heck of it.