Turnplayer Thread #3

[mostly-harmless]

Soooo has a good point. Cape Town was never intended for anything else than military pump. It also has good short and mid term hammer potential. What else will be produce there apart from units?
Pink Dot could be a mirror of A1 with plenty of cottages but also with good production in case we need to get a wonder quickly (or national wonders). And Pink Dot will need all the fancy stuff like libs, marketplaces and such. Cape Town does not.

As for settling the west coast. I suggest getting another settler out of Pink Dot for yellow dot. We will be able to settle yellow dot around T101 I think.

As for the location of green dot. I prefer the variant 1 as it will leave a tile for the gap filler city claiming the two other wines.

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by sooooo
Green is a terrible city - why settle that one first? It has a handful of good tiles. Yellow is a very nice city with lots of grassland to cottage. Settling green and turning it into a "worker pump" by working two clams is very short-termist. Working two clams and maybe a mine does not produce fast workers at all. It produces workers at a very average pace. We should definitely settle yellow and get it started early on a granary, barracks etc. We need productive cities in this empire sharpish, not cities working two clams and maybe a grass mine in the future. I'd leave green till near the end of our plan. After yellow we should build military and then settle one of the dots near the templars.

Are we talking about the same cities here? Yellow has a total of 4 grass tiles (including one with dyes) and Green 2 (and a plains wine). Two of Yellow's grasslands are under jungle.

With so much food my plan would be to whip workers at Green at size four, having first whipped a granary. These workers will ease the burden of developing Yellow.

And Green should go on the Marble, as we'll never work the 0/2/2 Marble tile, which will give us another resource to trade after Great Library.

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by sooooo
Another thing: I think heroic epic should go in Cape Town. I'm a big fan of "bad" cities with poor food and commerce but high production getting heroic epic and building nothing but military. With Pink Dot, it's such a great site (and has dyes!) that it would be criminal not to build libraries and cottages here. That's not the city you want heroic epic in because you'll always be tempted by those markets and universities. Pink Dot should be a commerce city. Cape town is pure military and should get heroic epic. Let's specialise.

I agree with this assessment. The only concern I'd have is that Cape Town is quite vulnerable to attack, but we don't have a suitable alternative, high-hammer, low-food site.

[mostly-harmless]

We have to make sure that Cape Town is not vulnerable. Not just because of the Heroic Epic, but because of the strategic resources it controls. If that means an above average garrison, then fine.

mh

[sooooo]

Originally posted by Swiss Pauli

Are we talking about the same cities here? Yellow has a total of 4 grass tiles (including one with dyes) and Green 2 (and a plains wine). Two of Yellow's grasslands are under jungle.

With so much food my plan would be to whip workers at Green at size four, having first whipped a granary. These workers will ease the burden of developing Yellow

I can see your point, on reflection green looks better than it first seemed because of those 3 (I think it is 3?) grasslands.

Originally posted by Swiss Pauli

No one is saying not to settle Yellow, merely to settle it in 12 turns or so. Settler Green now, use work boats to create improved tiles, and then make 2 more settlers for the other spots we want. Isn't that better than Yellow with no improvements?

It is better, but I don't think we should settle two backwater cities before we settle something in between aistrip 1 and cape town. I think we should settle one of the cities, then build some military and settle the connecting city. Templars or Imperio may wish to settle in that area.

[sooooo]

Originally posted by mostly-harmless
We have to make sure that Cape Town is not vulnerable. Not just because of the Heroic Epic, but because of the strategic resources it controls. If that means an above average garrison, then fine.

mh

Exactly, we are lost anyway if cape town falls so why not add a few more eggs into the basket.

[Sullla]

Quick note: Imperio went ahead and finished the Oracle this turn (T92). They haven't logged in yet, so no way to know what they will take. But at least they won't get Civil Service out of it.

Turn report coming shortly.

[ruff_hi]

so - how much money did we get from missing the Oracle?

[Sullla]

None, because we hadn't started it yet. OK, on to some of the highlights from T92.

- Big news is that Imperio finished the Oracle. We're still waiting to see what technology they take, although Feudalism would probably do them the most good. The one plus is that we successfully prevented them from taking Civil Service by interceding with PAL. Yay for small victories!

- Since we're not building the Oracle, we need to discuss our plans for Airstrip One, which just completed a worker:



I don't have a clear feeling on this, so let's put our heads together and figure it out. Airstrip One is essentially maxed out on food; we can't grow right now until we get an additional source of happiness. (Of course we can always check the "prevent growth" option, but this is inefficient IMO). I think there are three options here at the moment:

a) Build worker, to take advantage of our food surplus + inability to grow.
b) Build military (archer), to compensate for Pink cranking out the settlers.
c) Build monastery/temple while waiting for research to continue in Aesthetics.

I'm leaning towards option a), if only because that's probably the best way to make use of our current happiness crunch. I'm very willing to be persuaded otherwise though. Keep in mind that we MUST stay in a commerce-heavy configuration to continue our Great Library gambit, so anything shield-heavy is going to be a lengthy task. With the tiles in their current configuration, we get 4t archer, 6t axe, 10t monastery, and 12t temple.

- Pulling back the focus from the city to the region, we also need to discuss the best course of action for our two workers at Airstrip One:



Since it will take us roughly 8-9 turns to reach Literature, we probably only need one of these two workers to go on pre-chopping duty. If so, what does the other one do in that time interval? We will need both in the vicinity of the capital right after discovering Literature, so that we can immediately cash in those forest chops. Or do we indeed want both workers to pre-chop, for the maximum possible number of shields? Please weigh in.

The new worker has not moved yet. I can't think of good (male) names remaining from 1984, so he's been dubbed "Bernard", paying homage to Brave New World. Might as well stick with the dystopian theme, eh?

- Referencing the same screenshot above, Lady Godiva has given us a sight window into the barb city. As predicted, here on Prince difficulty there are only two warriors on guard. Godiva will kill one of them next turn, then wait for the city to grow to size 2 (to avoid auto-razing) before taking out the other. I believe that happens around T96 or so, giving us some time to heal Godiva after the first fight. That is, assuming we don't lose at 90+% odds...

- Barb update in the south:



Our chariot (Betty Hur) is in good position to take out the barb axe if it moves onto the flat ground E or N next turn. If it moves onto the forest S or SE, Betty will heal in place and prepare to defend. We should be OK regardless.

The settler at Pink will finish next turn and proceed along the route marked in red (1st turn) and yellow (2nd turn). The general agreement seemed to be to settle ON the marble, which I think sounds good. Pink starts another settler next turn, for Yellow dot most likely (or Twin Peaks/"Bad Ass" if the situation changes).

- What do we want to do with Parsons and Syme, the workers connecting the marble, after they finish the road next turn? I would probably have them move N and mine/chop/road the grassland hill there. Feel free to make suggestions here.

- Cape Town grew to size 3, and is now working the plains copper: 12 shields/turn! That's a lot! It finishes axe next turn, and should continue cranking military for quite some time to come. I would suggest a second axe next. Cape Town is essentially building the military right now that we'll use to defend Twin Peaks when we found it in ~10-15 turns.

- Only two more turns to reach the eastern continent with the RBS Discovery! Plus we get two major border expansions next turn, at Pink and Something Fishy. Neat!

Long turn update. So, to summarize, we need input on:

+ what to build at capital
+ worker actions at capital
+ workers at Something Fishy

Stats post to follow shortly.

[Sullla]

Here was the data from T92:

General

Active Turn Player:
Sullla

Status:
Played

Tech:
Aesthetics (4t)
100% research (53 [64] beakers/turn) @ -17gpt

Gold
90g in treasury

Cities

Airstrip One [guarded by Xena]:
Undecided - discuss in main thread!
Emphasizing commerce and research

Pink Dot [guarded by Britney's Spears]:
Settler (1t)
Intended for a safe spot on the marble

China Beach [guarded by Ms Piggy]:
Work Boat (2t) for to-be-founded city
Anger duration for 2t, city grows in 2t

Cape Town [guarded by Diana and Billy Jean Tell]:
Axeman (1t)

Something Fishy [guarded by Svava]:
Granary (18t)

Non-Combat Units

Scout [Sharon]:
Conducting the "Grand Tour"
Will soon board galley to head overseas

Worker [Winston]:
Prechopping forest tiles at Airstrip One
Current tile (done building road!)

Worker [O'Brien]:
Building road connection to future Twin Peaks
Current tile (2t, desert)

Worker [Parsons]:
Quarrying marble at Something Fishy (done!)

Worker [Syme]:
Quarrying marble at Something Fishy (done!)

Worker [Bernard]:
Needs a mission - prechop forests at the capital?

Work Boat [RBS Terror of the Seas]:
Moving to fish spot in the far south (done!)
Waiting for border pop to improve fish (1t)

Military Units

Galley [RBS Discovery]:
Heading to the eastern continent (2t)

Spearman [Britney's Spears]:
Guard Pink Dot

Chariot [Betty Hur]:
Moving to intercept barb axeman
8XP - need 2 more!

Chariot [Lady Godiva]:
Preparing to attack barb city of Saxon

Archer [Ms Piggy]:
Guard China Beach

Archer [Diana]:
Guard Cape Town

Archer [Billy Jean Tell]:
Guard Cape Town

Archer [Robyn Hood]:
Moving to guard new marble city

Archer [Svava]:
Guard Something Fishy

Warrior [Xena]:
Guard Airstrip One

Warrior [Jennifer]:
Moving to the eastern continent on board the RBS Discovery

Foreign Builds from C&D

Templars
Jerusalem = (222 * (148 + 100)) / (3 * 575) = 32 shields (+16)
Jericho = (53 * (148 + 100)) / (3 * 550) = 8 shields (+1)

(What do you think Templars are building in the capital. Settler/worker?)

Imperio
Mutal = (229 * (116 + 100)) / (3 * 501) = 33 shields after finishing Oracle (+33, with forest chop help)
Lakamha = (121 * (116 + 100)) / (3 * 514) = 17 shields (+17)
Chichen Itza = (284 * (116 + 100)) / (3 * 488) = 42 shields (+6)
Uxmal = N/A, 0 shields invested. Just completed work boat (confirmed by Sharon).

[Swiss Pauli]

My comments:

A1 - I'd build a temple by growing into unhappiness at size 6 and whipping it for two pop. The extra will allow us to get straight back to size 5 then onto size 6 within 10 turns (or less if we can afford 1 )

Green Dot - wouldn't we get optimum fogbusting by moving the archer onto the desert hill 1W of its current position?

Cape Town - axe.

Parsons & Syme - chop-mine the hill at Fishy.

Templars - hard to say what they're up to a Jerusalem, but they need workers and settlers, though I'd favour the former seeing as Jericho is fairly new.

[mostly-harmless]

I want to make a another proposal for A1.
Hire two scientists and work the three hamlets.
That will only leave us with 1hpt which we can put into an archer (in case we have to whip at some point).
It will also leave us with -2fpt starvation, which A1 can sustain for quite a while.
BUT, it will reduce the research time to Literature by one turn (currently 4+6, then 4+5). And we will get a head start on that Great Scientist.

As for the worker at A1. One should road towards Bad Ass/Cape Town.

Hold back on Lady Godiva killing both warrior until we are sure we get to 10XP with Betty Hur obviously.

The plan for both workers at Something Fishy to move 1N next and improve sounds good.

Worker O'Brien (at Cape Town)should make sure the plains hill mine 2N of Cape Town is finished when CT grows to size 4 in 13 turns. 16hpt by then. Not bad. 7 turns for the Heroic Epic.

Re: Templars built. If they don't line up a settler to claim their south they are really really stupid.

mh

[regoarrarr]

I like the scientist plan - but I would try and make it so that we get our first scientist out of China Beach, since otherwise it will never catch up with the GL scis from A1.

What are the stats on that?

[Dreylin]

From what I can tell, China Beach has 2t of Scientist GPP invested at the moment. Once it grows in 2t, it'd be able to run 2 at zero growth.

Would we have time to push a Settler out of A1 before needing to start the GL? If so, with Green working on the second Settler, we could devote Pink Dot to Military.

Work on the road network seems like a good idea at this point.

[Sullla]

Running scientists at the capital sounds like a good idea. Since that would more or less kill any chance of producing a worker, archer would be a good way to go if we went that route. Remember, researching speed is our primary goal at the moment. Swiss, I like the idea but I just don't think it's the right moment to be whipping the capital. We really can't afford to pull away from those cottages even for a couple turns right now.

regoarrarr, I had the same initial thought, but it looks very unlikely now. We need China Beach to keep pumping out work boats for our upcoming yellow/green cities. It makes more sense to do that than push for a Great Scientist there, IMO.

Dreylin, we definitely do not have time to produce a settler at Airstrip One, sadly. I think the ETA was 12 turns, and that's simply too long.

I won't make any changes until tonight, so we can discuss this a little longer.