Turnplayer Thread #2.

[Zeviz]

This has made a war with Templars inevitable. So the only question now is whether we fight them on our terms, or their terms. In light of this, I would take Swiss' thought even further: Instead of getting into cultural conflict over Templar borders, I'd suggest settling the best city sites we have, and beelining Maces. If we have to fight them anyway, we might as well do it after getting a much stronger economy, instead of wasting resources on culture conflicts.

The only reason to settle original Twin Peaks is for it to serve as forward base for our troops. However, we first need troops to deploy there, and before we start training troops, we need to found several good cities. So my suggested course of action is:

1. Settle the Marble spot. Templars can waste time clearing the jungle at Stone spot themselves. The stone city would be good in long run, but we want strong economy in the short run.

2. Quickly settle any other good city sites we have. Don't bother with fishing villages, border outposts, etc. Just places that can help economy or train troops.

3. After Monarchy, research towards Machinery, buying CS from PAL. (Or research CS, buying Machinery from PAL.)

4. Upgrade axes to maces and come to get our Iron.

EDIT: The best thing about this situation is that it gives us casus beli(sp?) to attack Templars in the future. We were considering that course of action anyway, and this will help us decrease diplomatic fallout.

[Swiss Pauli]

Hi all,

I've copied Zeviz post into the Strategy thread for discussion there, as I think it's best to keep this thread to topics of short term relevance (e.g. next city sites, trades, updates etc.)

Cheers,

Swiss

[mostly-harmless]

@ Sulla: I assume you moved Gogo out of the city?

Ok, so we lost the Iron and need some Plan B for Iron.
We can live without it for now, but the moment Knights come around I would sleep much better if we had a handful of Pikes.
Templars & Knights & us in Islam = trouble.
So we have three options:
a) War with Templars to raze Jericho and found Pink Peaks instead.
b) Trade for it.
c) Buy units from other civs.

Regarding Templar diplo, see diplo thread.

As for the next steps:
I am also against settling Bad Ass aka. Twin Peaks next.
Currently Jericho gets not culture. If they manage to spread a religion to it, it would get 1cpt. So Twin Peaks can wait for a while.
But it is needed if only to keep the land route to Cape Town open.

I want to echo what was posted a few days ago, that we appear to have lost momentum.
Bot Imperio (since this turn) and Templars have open borders with PAL now and benefit from 3gpt trade routes for every new-found city.
Lets have Pink Peaks on constant settler spamming, so we can settle a new city every 7 turns. Workers can come from Vhina Beach for example while Airstrip One goes for infrastructure and Cape Town for military.

I all in fovor for settling Southern Marble next.
After that there is a Clams & Dye city west of Pink Dot.
PAl has currently 7 cities so we can go to 7 as well without caring much about maintenance. By then we hopefully also have Open Borders with Banana&Rabbits for more interconti trade routes.

For now also stop roading project to Pink Peaks obviously.
Also I would really like to get Constantinople city tile revealed to know what infrastructure (barracks, monastery) they have. Can we devise a double move Chariot scout mission?
I would like the same for the Damaskus. Can we move Sharon onto the hill Ne-NE of the city to get a view on the tile? (If we go for conflict, best to know as much as possible.)

In other news. IMperio got their Great Prophet from Stonehenge.

mh

[Zeviz]

I agree with all of Mh's suggestions.

[mostly-harmless]

Next turn: Sullla, make sure the settler moves to Southern Marble on a western trajectory to avoid being spotted by Templars. If we get the settler a chariot escort, we can settle Southern Marble on T89.

mh

[sooooo]

I agree that our next city should be one of the marble sites. I don't think a city for the rice (linking Airstrip One and Cape Town) will be under threat from templars, so it can probably wait.

[mostly-harmless]

Bad Ass aka. Twin Peaks would not be so much about securing Rice but denying Cows to Jericho. It still can wait, though.

mh

[Sullla]

Lots of helpful suggestions and good discussion floating around in this and the other threads. In defense of our strategy, it's easy to say in retrospect that we should have been more aggressive in expanding over the past dozen or so turns. Keep in mind that we didn't even know where the iron locations were until T77, and we were all horrified and shocked that there was no iron anywhere on our side of the continent. We had a settler ready to go less than 10 turns after finding out about our dearth of iron; it's difficult to plan ahead for crises that you don't even know are there.

The good news is that we seem to have agreed on a new plan for the mid-game, and a determined push for expansion in the short term. Pink can build settlers in a mere 7 turns, so we can squeeze out cities pretty darn fast. Cape Town (nearly done its barracks) will have to supply the military while it does that. Our biggest risk is going to be coming under attack in the immediately future, so we'll need to avoid provoking other teams... unfortunately. In that light, my desire to go after Templars with the current settler build is obviously unfeasible. Have to deal with that area later...

[regoarrarr]

Was there consensus on worker at A1 vs. Monastery?

[Zeviz]

Originally posted by regoarrarr
Was there consensus on worker at A1 vs. Monastery?

If we are planning a war soon, we can't afford to build optional infrastructure such as monasteries.

[mostly-harmless]

Originally posted by Zeviz
If we are planning a war soon, we can't afford to build optional infrastructure such as monasteries.

The war won't be happening soon. How many turns till we research Maces? 30?
And monasteries are not really optional, 10% research is 10% research.

How about setting both Pink Dot and A1 on settlers? We sure can afford the maintenance.

mh

[sooooo]

Monasteries are really efficient in a hammer vs beaker% rate, so I like a monastery. I also like a worker though - we should build both methinks. Worker first, so he can get imroving our cities quicker. With our soon-to-be higher hapiness thanks to monarchy, we will need a lot more tiles improved very quickly.

[Sullla]

We could probably afford two quick cities, but could we defend them both? Maybe if we stuck one in the back lines... I dunno. More input on this would be good.

On worker vs. monastery, it's a clear vote for worker first. We'll want to be growing while building the monastery, and right now Airstrip One will only grow into unhappiness. Worker, followed by monstery (which will finish around the time we get Monarchy) dovetails much better.

To me, the discussion is whether to go with a worker (7t) or right onto a settler (11t). I kind of prefer the worker, with the understanding that Pink Dot will very quickly go back to another 7t settler after finishing the current one.

[mostly-harmless]

It seems with all the war planning going on the agreed actions for next turn have been neglected a bit.
Here are my suggestions:

A1: Continue on Worker

Pink Dot: Start another Settler (for Colored Mollusks =Yellow Dot in Sullla's T85-thread)

China Beach: I am not sure a lighthouse is of much use at the moment. There are plenty of land tiles CB can work. As the only coastal city I would get it started on a workboat for Colored Mollusks.

Cape Town: Keep going on the barracks.

New Settler: Move 1SW from Pink Dot. Heading for Southern Marble.
Betty Hur: Escort New Settler.

Robin Hood: (Archer currently hanging around west of Jericho) Return to Pink Dot and continue to Southern Marble.

Britney Spears: (Spear on a Pink Peaks heading) Divert to Pink Dot to provide cover while Pink Dot is building Settlers.

Syme (Worker planned to road to Pink Peaks): Head down to quarry southern Marble.

Parson (Worker ex-ChinaBeach): Extend Road network to Cape Town to allow faster movement of Cape Town troops into empire.

Sharon the scout: I believe there is time for Sharon to move onto the hill NE-NE of Damaskus to check the city out for C&D. Since Damaskus will be one of the production centers of Templars in the upcoming conflicts, it is important we know about barracks and other buildings there.

Lady Godiva: Move back west to provide general cover empire wide.

mh

[Zeviz]

I agree that China Beach doesn't need lighthouse right now.

One addition: our workboat should go south to build nets, if it hasn't started already.