Turnplayer Thread #3

[mostly-harmless]

One tiny note:
It seems there was a mix up in order for our chariot.
Betty Hur (xp10) was intended to scout Imperio.
Lady Godiva was supposed to watch and take Saxon to also top out at 10xp. (the maximum you can get against barbs).
In the current scenario we risk, loosing Betty Hur against the odds when fighting the barb axe. Will we be able to finish Heroic Epic in that case, as the requirement might not be around any longer?

I suggest to delaz the attack until we have Heroic Epic finished.

mh

[Sullla]

Even if you lose the Level 4 unit, you can still build Heroic Epic, if I recall correctly.

In other news, I plan on swapping Pink to granary and lowering our research rate to 20%, for the quasi-binary approach. Cross your fingers as well on Imperio accepting our tech offer, because that would make things immensely easier for us. (If they do, we trade for Civil Service next turn, double-swap to HR and Bur, plus use the turn of Anarchy to hook up wines!)

[Zeviz]

...
In other news, I plan on swapping Pink to granary and lowering our research rate to 20%, for the quasi-binary approach. ...

Since everybody has Monarchy, don't we get a pretty good modifier on that research? If so, we should run the slider as high as we can for the last turn to get the highest possible overflow.

[regoarrarr]

I'm pretty sure that bug / exploit / MM tip has been fiixed.

[mostly-harmless]

Hah, the game is waiting for us to finish the turn. Did that ever happen before?
The Imperio turnplayer stayed logged in for 2hours!
Lets check whether we are already at war.

mh

[sunrise089]

Lets check whether we are already at war.

mh

Work isn't supposed to be this suspenseful M_H.

[Swiss Pauli]

Hah, the game is waiting for us to finish the turn. Did that ever happen before?
The Imperio turnplayer stayed logged in for 2hours!
Lets check whether we are already at war.

I hope there's still time left on the turn for us to act if we are at war!

[mostly-harmless]

I got u scared, right?
2hrs left on the clock and I have my boss looking over my shoulder.
I cannot do anything.
Sorry.
But seriously. There was not a single Imperio unit within striking distance. So I think all is fine.


mh

[Sullla]

Umm, we are not at war with Imperio. I left the turn unfinished deliberately to give Imperio more time to see our email, and consider it. I apologize if this caused any stress amongst our fine team members.

I plan to play the current turn (T108) tomorrow. In the meantime, I wanted to explain what I did. Since Imperio can see our research at the moment, I selected Drama as our next tech, and set the rate to an unsustainable 100%. This will make it look like (to them) we have purely peaceful intentions. If we fail to hear anything from them by tomorrow, I'd like to propose the Math trade again in-game, in the hopes that they'll change their minds or even benefit from someone clicking on the "Accept" button by accident.

Also, if anyone sees Imperio in-game, please do bring up the trade and try to get them to agree to it. It would make things so much easier for our team if they would accept!

One other minor nit: China Beach had to drop down to one Scientist for this turn to avoid starvation. It will still easily produce a Great Scientist before Airstrip One, and can feed itself next turn once we get the wines connected. So that's what's going on there.

[sunrise089]

Smart move Sullla. I suggest we expand on Sullla's idea to hope for a misclick by offering some sort of deal to Imperio every turn. Eventually they will have to email us asking us to stop, which will at least open communications again

[Swiss Pauli]

Templars haven't acknowledged our emails, so try to chat to them if anyone sees them in-game.

[Sullla]

Been really quiet on these forums this weekend. Hope everyone is out having a good time. Now, for the details from T108:

- You could call this the turn of growth, or alternately "the turn of unhappy faces". Airstrip One, China Beach, and Green Acres all grew this turn, the first two both into unhappiness. Last turn's event was very helpful indeed! This will be resolved when our wines are connected next turn, and PAL has promised ivory the turn after that. Lot of smoke clouds over our cities this turn though.

- We finally have Monarchy, yay! Holding off on any revolt to Hereditary Rule until we can double-swap to Bureaucracy as well. I have proposed the in-game trade with Imperio for Math, but I am sure they'll reject it again.

- Research - what rate do we want to go after Math with? Here are some options:

Mathematics, 357 beakers, 31g in treasury
100%: 85 [117] beakers/turn, -33gpt
90%: 77 [106] beakers/turn, -27gpt
80%: 70 [97] beakers/turn, -20gpt
70%: 63 [87] beakers/turn, -14gpt
60%: 55 [76] beakers/turn, -7gpt
50%: 48 [66] beakers/turn, -1gpt
40%: 40 [56] beakers/turn, +6gpt
0%: 11 [15] beakers/turn, +32gpt

Keep in mind that these numbers will change significantly next turn, when we have a lot of citizens that are unhappy now go back to work. For the moment, I am still doing the phony 100% research on Drama (I will log in late tonight and change this!)

- Granary double-whipped at Green Acres. We'll go on to library next the following turn (unless someone wants lighthouse... but I think that can wait a bit).

- Heroic Epic due next turn in Cape Town. Woot!

- Offered PAL Literature, as promised. I'm sure they'll accept when they log in.

- The last couple turns have seen so many trades flying around, it was almost impossible to keep track of all of them. Here's a quick summary (also known as, "RB has gotten locked out of the trading loop, and that's Very Bad News):

T104
Templars trade Metal Casting for Monarchy and Mathematics with Imperio
Templars trade Metal Casting for Code of Laws with PAL
Templars trade Metal Casting for Alphabet with Banana
PAL receives Aesthetics from Realms Beyond, and Construction from Imperio (suspected down payment for Civil Service from both)

T106
Rabbits trade an unknown Classical tech to Banana for Polytheism

T107
Templars trade an unknown Classical tech to Banana for Machinery

T108
PAL trades an unknown Classical tech (Code of Laws?) to Banana for Machinery

Needless to say, we have gotten nothing back as yet from any of these deals, although we are owed Civil Service from PAL. We really need to do something to remedy this, I'm just not sure what. Templars and Imperio are absolutely refusing to work with us, Rabbits are too weak, and Banana we haven't met as yet. PAL is the only one helping us, and we all know why working with them is a bad idea long term...

We are really going to be screwed when Banana trades Machinery to Imperio, and PAL sends them Civil Service, which I can practically guarantee is going to happen soon.

Nothing interesting to screenshot this turn, so I didn't take any! Stats to follow this post.

[Sullla]

Stats:

General

Current Turn:
Turn 108 - 175 BC
Turn Timer expires at approx (UTC)

Active Turn Player:
Sullla

Tech:
Mathematics (?t)
???% research
0/357 beakers overall

Gold
31g in treasury

Cities

Airstrip One [size 6] [guarded by Xena]:
Spearman (10t)
Infrastructure: Palace, Granary, Barracks, Library, Great Library
Emphasizing food and commerce

Pink Dot [size 5] [guarded by Britney's Spears and Adria and Athena]:
Granary (5t)
Infrastructure: Barracks

China Beach [size 5] [guarded by Ms Piggy]:
Barracks (7t)
Infrastructure: Granary, Library
Great Scientist 66/100, +3 GPP/turn, due in 12t [7t]

Cape Town [size 4] [guarded by Diana and Gillian and Jamie Lynn's Spears and Fyre Errow]:
Heroic Epic (1t)
Infrastructure: Barracks

Something Fishy [size 3] [guarded by Svava]:
Library (4t) [anger duration 6t]
Infrastructure: Granary

Green Acres [size 2] [guarded by Robyn Hood]:
Granary (1t) [anger duration 10t]
Infrastructure: none

Mellow Yellow [size 1] [guarded by Hera]:
Granary (9t)
Infrastructure: none

Non-Combat Units

Scout [Sharon]:
Scouting out the eastern continent

Worker [Winston]:
Build winery (2t)

Worker [O'Brien]:
Building road connection to Twin Peaks
Current tile (done!)

Worker [Bernard]:
Build winery (2t)

Worker [Helmholtz]:
Build winery (2t)

Worker [Parsons]:
Clear/cottage jungle tile east of Something Fishy
Clearing (4t)

Worker [Syme]:
Chop/mine/road grassland hill near Pink Dot
Roading (done!)

Worker [John the Savage]:
Chop/cottage river forest tile SE of Pink Dot
Moving to tile (done!)

Work Boat:
Returning to Mellow Yellow (1t)

Military Units

Galley [RBS Discovery]:
Exploring the eastern continent

Axeman [Gillian]:
Guarding Cape Town (for now)
Heading to Twin Peaks eventually

Axeman [Adria]:
Guard Pink Dot

Spearman [Jamie Lynn's Spears]:
Guarding Cape Town (for now)
Heading to Twin Peaks eventually

Spearman [Britney's Spears]:
Guard Pink Dot

Chariot [Betty Hur]:
Waiting to capture barb city of Saxon at size 2
10XP - our most heroic unit!

Chariot [Lady Godiva]:
Moving east to get intel on Imperio/Templar cities

Archer [Ms Piggy]:
Guard China Beach

Archer [Diana]:
Guard Cape Town

Archer [Billy Jean Tell]:
Exploring Imperio territory

Archer [Robyn Hood]:
Guard Green Acres

Archer [Svava]:
Guard Something Fishy

Archer [Fyre Errow]:
Guarding Cape Town (for now)
Heading to Twin Peaks eventually

Archer [Hera]:
Guard Mellow Yellow

Archer [Athena]:
Guard Pink Dot

Warrior [Xena]:
Guard Airstrip One

Warrior [Jennifer]:
Exploring the eastern continent

Screenshots from T108

none!


Foreign Builds from C&D

Templars
Jerusalem = (225 * (148 + 100)) / (3 * 565) = 33 shields (+11)
Infrastructure: Palace, Barracks
Jericho = (98 * (148 + 100)) / (3 * 540) = 15 shields (+5)
Infrastructure: Walls

Little of note here at the moment - still.

Imperio
Mutal = (92 * (175 + 100)) / (3 * 649) = 13 shields (-)
Infrastructure: Palace, Barracks, Granary, Monument, Stonehenge, Oracle
Lakamha = (108 * (175 + 100)) / (3 * 665) = 15 shields (-39)
Infrastructure: Barracks, Monument, Islamic shrine
Chichen Itza = (317 * (175 + 100)) / (3 * 632) = 46 shields (+4)
Infrastructure: Granary, Monument, Lighthouse
Uxmal = (59 * (175 + 100)) / (3 * 682) = 8 shields (+8)
Infrastructure: Monument

After a turn of normal Espionage spending, Imperio upped it to the full 11 points again this turn. They REALLY want to know what we're researching, if they're willing to spend 10% of their commerce turn after turn investigating us. Not a particularly good sign...

Meanwhile, what is going on with Mutal and Lakamha? We never got a "build finished" message at either city. I believe that Imperio completed a forest chop at both locations (they certainly did at Mutal, as we could see it with our scouting archer) to explain the weirdness. Mutal likely built the chariot (Cuauhtli) we see inside, although it makes you wonder why Imperio would be building chariots given the elephants, cats, and horse archers at their disposal. Lakamha could have built just about anything, as our exploring units will discover shortly...


PAL
Heliopolis = N/A, zero shields invested
Infrastructure: Granary

PAL built something here, tough to say what though. It was cheap and it wasn't a building, so some kind of unit.

Rabbits
Caerbannog = (88 * (35 + 100)) / (3 * 399) = 10 shields (+10)
Infrastructure: Palace, Barracks, Library
Digger's Burrow = N/A, zero shields invested
Infrastructure: Barracks, Monument

Digger's Burrow built something costing 25-37 shields. Looks like more military. That PAL conflict is definitely wasting a lot of production on both sides - one of our few saving graces right now.

Waiting for mh to give us the treasury/population census numbers. (They are very helpful, please keep doing so!)

[T-hawk]

Meanwhile, what is going on with Mutal and Lakamha? We never got a "build finished" message at either city. I believe that Imperio completed a forest chop at both locations (they certainly did at Mutal, as we could see it with our scouting archer) to explain the weirdness.

Forest chops only credit the hammers once the turn advances, so that isn't it. For a chop, we either see the hammers in the box the next turn, or we see the sabotage number drop back to 0 when the city completes a build.

What we see here can only be accounted for by a build swap. There are two scenarios. More likely, Mutal swapped off its current build to whatever we see now that has 13 hammers in the box. The other scenario is that Mutal had previously paused a build on 13 hammers, and now swapped back to it (perhaps after finishing a different build last turn.)

If two cities are swapping builds in midstream, there's definitely something going on over there. Either the team is disorganized, or they're getting organized and making a major military push.

We really need to do something to remedy this, I'm just not sure what.

What we need to do is research techs that other teams actually want in trade, not airy-fairy arty stuff.

[ruff_hi]

Mutal likely built the chariot (Cuauhtli) we see inside, although it makes you wonder why Imperio would be building chariots given the elephants, cats, and horse archers at their disposal.

One explaination of a chariot is if you have barracks and stables, you can give a chariot the SENTRY promotion which is a really good forward scout unit.