Turnplayer Thread #3

[Dreylin]

@Sullla; I think (hope) I'm up to speed with (most) things, but it was quicker with the opponents as all the relevant information is nestled in a single post in a single thread rather than spread out over multiple. I'm not so sure I'm brave enough to try and digest the excels just yet!

Anyway, I wondered about China Beach - why a Scientist rather than working the plains cottage, wouldn't that be more beneficial in the mid-long term?

(Unless there's a plan to pop a Scientist out of CB that I've missed ... but wouldn't that get overrun by the GL GPPs in A1?)

Dreylin (trying not to make a fool of himself)

[sunrise089]

Dreylin - Yes, the plan is to get a Great Scientist ASAP. GL isn't guaranteed, so hence CB scientist specialist.

[Dreylin]

Gotcha, Thanks!

[Sullla]

Made a few minor changes at Airstrip One, based on the Oracle discussion in the War Games thread. Long story short, I swapped our newest river grassland cottage to the grassland mine on the river. This decreased overall beakers by 2, and decreased the worker build from 4 turns to 3:



I also swapped research to Priesthood. That minor decrease in beakers means that it now takes 2 turns to research, so we can get tremendous beaker overflow (at a higher multiplier) by researching it and letting the excess go into Aesthetics. Someone please double-check this to make sure I'm correct!

[regoarrarr]

I think that Ruff found out in the war games thread that we did not get any kind of overflow. So it doesn't hurt but it doesn't help either.

It may be that we don't really get a double multiplier for Priesthood since although there are 2 optional pre-reqs, in reality there is only 1 optional pre-req since we HAVE to research one of them - I think I saw that was how it worked.

[Sullla]

T90 is underway:

- Islam spread of its own accord in Something Fishy, our new city. This will cause the borders to spread (and pick up the fish) in 3 turns instead of 4.

- Sharon pinpointed the location of the one missing Imperio city, Uxmal. We haven't actually spotted it, but it has to be one the tile marked with a sign. I'll post a picture next turn when we have a full visual. The location has three fish and two furs.

- PAL discovered Code of Laws, as they stated. What they will do with it right now is unknown.

- Most of the rest of this turn was quiet. We are continuing to try for the Oracle with the low-risk version that gets us the wonder on T95. If PAL trades Code of Laws to Imperio, we assuredly will not land this wonder. The current Oracle-related actions, from the War Games thread:

Turn 90 (0):
2 worker turns into quarry (4 turns to go) - check

Turn 91 (1):
2 worker turns into quarry (2 turns to go)

Turn 92 (2):
quarry finished
worker at A1 1 turn away from forest chop
A1 finishes worker - worker moves to pre chopped forest
A1 starts Oracle (15 hammers)
Oracle Status (150 start of turn / 135 end of turn)

Turn 93 (3):
road finished - marble connected
A1 -> Oracle (15)
Oracle Status (135 / 105)

Turn 94 (4):
A1 -> Oracle (15)
2 x forest chop (20 raw hammers)
Total hammer production 110
Oracle Status (105, finishes)

Turn 95 (5):
Oracle completes

As part of this plan, we will knock out our one turn of research on Priesthood this turn. (Aesthetics still has 5 turns to go.)

- From C&D, PAL's research plummeted last turn. I suspect they were running out of money, and reduced science on the last turn of Code of Laws research to raise some cash. They'll probably need to raise some money over the next turn or two, and have a lower GNP as a result.

- Also from C&D: PAL's production is way up. I suspect they are building military, because their power rating is also increasing rapidly. Having our horses for 10 turns won't exactly hurt them either.

- An overview shot:



Not much to do at the moment, other than keep working the diplomatic phones and see if we can stop PAL from giving Imperio a Civil Service slingshot.

[Swiss Pauli]

Did PAL get a religion from CoL?

Our only hope to deny Imperio is that Rabbits get the Oracle before T92 I don't see any way that PAL can back of the trade without suffering huge damage to their reputation.

[mostly-harmless]

PAL has not logged in yet for this turn. The religion will only show up in the in-game log once PAl has chosen after log in.

mh

[mostly-harmless]

Ok, since we have established that we wont beat Imperio to the Oracle (see C&D) I strongly suggest we go back to the GreatLib plan.
Changing A1 back to max commerce, changing research back to Aesthetics. I know we need Priesthood for the CoL trade, but we don't need CoL that urgently right now.

mh

[sooooo]

I think we should finish priesthood in order to make the trade that we agreed with PAL. We said we would do the trade in a couple of turns, right?

[ruff_hi]

I think we should finish priesthood on order to put pressure on Imperio to finish the thing before CS becomes available. I also think that we should hook up marble ASAP for similar reasons. If they see us with Marble and the ability to build the Oracle AND chopping trees they might panic and just take a lesser tech.

Remember, they have a unit in our territory a few tiles away from our capital. We should at least try to scare them into finishing it early.

[Zeviz]

I also agree that we need to finish Priesthood to make the trade. Even if we don't really need CoL, we promised to trade in next couple of turns, so that's what we should do.

EDIT: Another reason to go for Priesthood is that we heavily implied to PAL that we are going for Oracle ourselves. So if we don't even get Priesthood, that might raise questions.

[regoarrarr]

Agreed that if we're not going to go for the Oracle we should at least make it look like we are to goad Imperio into finishing it early.

[Sullla]

Hey, remember when we used to play turns in this game? As we sit through yet another lengthy delay, let me post some more C&D numbers. Using T-Hawk's formula to determine shields in an enemy city, we can deduce that:

Hammers = (SabotageCost * (TheirEP + 100)) / (3 * InvestigateCost)

T89 (last turn)
Mutal = (556 * (112 + 100)) / (3 * 491) = 80
Lakamha = (385 * (112 + 100)) / (3 * 504) = 54
Chichen Itza = (162 * (112 + 100)) / (3 * 478) = 24

T90 (this turn)
Mutal = (723 * (114 + 100)) / (3 * 496) = 104 (+24)
Lakamha = (642 * (114 + 100)) / (3 * 509) = 90 (+36)
Chichen Itza = (203 * (114 + 100)) / (3 * 483) = 30 (+6)

We know that Mutal is building something big, quite possibly the Oracle. But Lakamha is building something big too - another wonder? It's impossible to get 36 shields naturally at this stage of the game, so either the city benefitted from a forest chop, or from a marble-enhanced wonder. Could Imperio be going for the Temple of Artemis in one city, and Oracle in the other (?) Another turn's worth of data will help clear things up.

Chichen Itza looks like it's building something small, granary would be my guess. (They are working center tile [1] + plains wheat [1] + grassland hill gold tile [1] = 3 shields * 2 for Expansive bonus.)

For the Templars, I don't have enough info to calcuate last turn's numbers. For this turn:

Jerusalem = N/A
Jericho = (39 * (148 + 100)) / (3 * 550) = 6

We can't sabotage production at Jerusalem at all, so there's no data available there. Either Jerusalem finished something last turn with no shield overflow, or Jerusalem finished something last turn and the team hasn't selected its next project yet. Jericho is still starting out and thus not that interesting yet.

We need to have spotted the city to be able to run these numbers, which gives us more impetus to get a line of sight at Constantinople and Damascus. Perhaps we could build a spy at some point expressly for this purpose (?) Future project, maybe.

Now back to waiting on Banana to sort itself out...

[T-hawk]

But Lakamha is building something big too - another wonder? It's impossible to get 36 shields naturally at this stage of the game

36 shields hammers is too much for that city even with a resource doubler. 18 base hammers needs 5-6 hills plus food to work them all and I don't think Lakamha has that. My guess is settler, at 16 food+hammers plus a forest chop.

BTW, a bit of evidence that my formula is right is its observed accuracy with regard to rounding. All the major calculations work out within 0.02 of an integer number of hammers.

BTW2, *we* are the ones that insisted on this delay