Turnplayer Thread #3

[Sullla]

Ruff, you raise a good point. My thinking on this is two-fold:

- It's not just about Airstrip One. All of our original core cities are straining against the happy cap right now: Pink Dot and China Beach are both going to have to halt grow in about 3 turns unless we get some extra happiness. I believe that it's worth it to sacrifice three total turns of production (2 in CT, 1 in Pink) to reach a new happy level one turn faster, and start growing again.

- The Great Library/wines thing isn't as vital, more like a nice coincidence. I saw the opportunity to hook up our wines during the Anarchy interturn, and it seemed like a nice coincidence. Pink especially can grow extremely fast with its cows/rice combo (+7 food/turn!) and get moving along to size 6-7 quickly. I admit that the neatness of lining everything up perfectly with the math also appealed to me.

So no, it's not absolutely critical, but I still support doing things the way I suggested earlier. As far as Airstrip One, I think the best course of action is simply to ride the +4 food surplus from working the cows and all grassland cottages. Not worth it to irrigate a grassland tile just to get from +4 to +5 food, IMO; to go from size 6 to size 7, you need 30 food, so that would make a difference of only two turns (6t to 8t), and less than that with a granary in place (3t to 4t). I'd rather just work the extra cottage and keep pulling in more commerce.

[ruff_hi]

Sullla - Ok. I will take a look at the game tonight to see if I can suggest other methods of getting Monarchy quicker (don't worry - I will leave the game in the same state I found it ).

Re cottages over farms - fine. Maybe we can designate one of the non-river grasslands as a farm (but only once we get CS).

[T-hawk]

All of our original core cities are straining against the happy cap right now: Pink Dot and China Beach are both going to have to halt grow in about 3 turns unless we get some extra happiness.

Don't forget you don't have to halt growth for unhappiness. It's quite OK to grow into unhappiness for a few turns, so that the new citizen is already born and ready to work as soon as he can be made happy. Especially if we're going to gain at least +2 happy, there could be value in growing the first citizen ahead of time and then be ready to grow the second one right when the happy comes. Finally, remember that unhappy citizens do not consume food when training workers or settlers, so we can mitigate temporary anger that way too.

[Zeviz]

Growing into unhappiness for a couple turns is not very bad, considering that we are about to get at least +2 happy, and more if we trade extra wine.

[mostly-harmless]

Depending on what PAL decides on the no-scouting rule, I suggest the scout either goes 1NW-1NE in case we are not allow to trespass. That will leave the scout on the sheep tile, but also reveals one more tile within PALs lands.

If PAL allow for scouting I suggest the scout makes his way straight to Heliopolis.

mh

[regoarrarr]

I took a bit of a look at the save to try and figure out an idea of the increased maintenance costs we'll get by having 2 new cities.

We'll add 4 gpt in numCities maintenance by founding city 7 (including both the numCities maintenance in the new city itself and raised maintenance in all the other cities) and another 3 by founding city 8. Assuming some growth over the next few turns (say 2 points in every city) will add another 1 gpt.

Plus we'll get the distance maintenance for the 2 new cities. For some reason I was not able to get the distance calcs jiving with what was being said in game, but it's easy to estimate from the given distances for cities that are about the same distance from A1. Saxon will be about 1 and the other new city about 2.

Overall we're looking at about 11 gpt over the next 10 turns or so. Civic upkeep doesn't look like any gold or maybe 1 gpt.(Caste System which is Medium says it would be 0 and OR which is High says 1 gpt). Keep in mind that adding those 2 cities and 2 new plots in each current city adds 16 new tiles to work, so we just have to average 1 commerce per plot, which shouldn't be difficult.

[Sullla]

Since Ruff, T-Hawk, and Zeviz all have suggested that we'd be better off letting Monarchy finish in the more natural 6 turns, and simply growing into unhappiness during that span, we'll go with that plan. I'm happy to be outvoted when we come up with a better plan.

In practical terms, this means that Cape Town swaps from Research to Heroic Epic this turn, and Pink doesn't build Research next turn. (I think that we should go for a courthouse in Pink next, but that's a discussion for next turn!) I will go ahead and make the changes in-game.

EDIT: No wait, that was the whole problem in the first place! We can't build Heroic Epic until next turn, because Betty Hur hasn't promoted yet. OK, so I left Cape Town on research, but did swap off the copper tile to the lake tile, in order to pick up an extra food this turn and grow to size 4 one turn sooner. Best I can do.

[Sullla]

Off we go for T102:

- First and most importantly, we have a new city to play around with!



Our "yellow" city is our seventh overall. We are now only one city behind PAL's eight, and if Saxon ever grows to size 2, we will immediately pull level with them. (Of course, PAL has a lot of advantages in other areas, but in this one we're catching up to them!)

Quick question: clams tile or forest grassland tile for Mellow Yellow? It's a straight 1 shield vs. 2 commerce issue. We make 26gpt if we swap to the clams.

- More of the usual stuff at the capital. I cashed in another pre-chop for Great Library, but left the last one for the moment because we need the forest hill there to maintain 15 shields/turn. We'll chop that spot on the final turn of the Library build, when it won't matter anymore. The workers in the area are mining the plains hill tile (so we can run 16 shields/turn if needed, even though we shouldn't) and adding another grassland river cottage for Airstrip One to work when it grows to size 6.

Great Library still on track to be built in four turns, T106.

- Exploring work boat in the south continues to reveal interesting tiles along the Templar border:



Red would be a seriously sweet spot for a city in the post-Templars world. Three food tiles plus stone, plus tons of grassland tiles... wow! Would love to get there someday. One west, on the stone, wouldn't be bad either. They are idiots for not making any attempt to go after this rich jungle region. (Remember that one email they sent, where they claimed jungle areas were worthless?!?)

The work boat needs 6 turns to make it back to Mellow Yellow's clams. I'll probably send him the one additional tile east before turning back around. We've slowed that city's growth plenty already, might as well let it wait a little longer.

- Something Fishy can whip its granary next turn. Yay or nay? I say we should, and get started on courthouse (badly needed!) next, with the granary helping it grow even faster. Thoughts? Some of you are better with the whipping math than I am.

- Another question for all of you: what do we build right now in Pink Dot? The two choices are granary or courthouse. (We have courthouse selected at the moment, as you can see above.) Both cost exactly the same, 60 shields vs. 60 x 2 shields. Both are needed (we should either go courthouse/granary or granary/courthouse). We can complete either one in 4 turns, with a forest chop from our worker giving us 20 free shields. So what should it be first? Optimum growth dictates a granary first... but we may also want to help our struggling finances...

- Cape Town starts Heroic Epic! Due in 9 turns, will drop slightly as the city grows. Nice work everyone to get it in play so early. This city should be able to provide something like 80% of our military all by itself once we get the national wonder built.

- Sharon has not moved yet, waiting to see what we hear from PAL.

- In terms of Demographics, the most interesting thing is PAL's drastic fall in the Power rankings. (Go check it out on F9, if you haven't already.) They are now significantly lower than us in power! We may want to pass that on to Rabbits in our next email to them. PAL isn't going to be capturing any more Rabbit cities any time soon, not unless they start a major whipping storm. I'm sure PAL wants peace now - we should encourage Rabbits to keep up the fight against them, and maybe even sneak a city off them! (OK, probably not, but the important thing is that they keep fighting and wasting their production rather than growing.)

Stats to follow in a little bit.

[mostly-harmless]

A few comments:
- definitely go one more east with the workboat
- the clams in the south are amazing, I can't understand why Templars have not settled that spot ages ago. Even without jungle chops, they could get the clams and the stone tile plus a couple of forest tiles!
- For Mellow Yellow, I would even suggest to use the 3hammer tile to speed the Granary up, as long as we don't have the workboat in place.
- Something fishy was supposed to provide settlers and workers for a while iirc. I would neither whip, nor chop (pre-math) but let the city grow, finish the granary and then swap over to a worker.
- C&D is strongly in favor of a courthouse for the extra +2ept in Pink Dot.
- No more whipping for PAL, as they have swapped civics (being spiritual they can swap back easily though.)

mh

[sunrise089]

Clams in the new city. Courthouses in Pink and Something Fishy via whip - we need to leverage our bonus building as much as possible. I would definitely settle on the stone in the south - I've never felt I needed 3 food tiles in a commerce city that wasn't going to emphasize specialists. That way we could also plant for the clams a bit east.

[mostly-harmless]

I don't know if it slipped your attention, Sullla, but our galley ran into a dead end it seems.
There is a ice field blocking the way further east. (Somehow my pic uploads always fail.)
Now we can really complain about the map design.
To have our whole discovery mission thwarted like this is disgusting!
It will take another 11 turn just to backtrack to the inlet of The Channel. An another 12 turns to travel down The Channel to reach uncharted waters. That is assuming we decide to pass through PALs waters.

Another point I noticed, is that the IMperio worker 2NE of Cape Town is not actually chopping that forest but roading it!!! Now why would they do that, if not as a direct threat to Cape Town. No double move needed to attack the city straight away after a DOW. And we have not heard from them about the continuation of the NAP. Worrying.

mh

[sunrise089]

Since we're only protected by a piece of paper, how many turns are left on the NAP M_H?

[Sullla]

No, mostly_harmless, I didn't see that ice. What a bummer.

Anyway, here is the Stats post. I added a little more info for each city, since it was requested.

General

Current Turn:
Turn 100 - 325 BC
Turn Timer expires at approx (UTC)

Active Turn Player:
Sullla

Status:
Played

Tech:
Monarchy (33t)
100% research (7 [11] beakers/turn) @ +24gpt
40/429 beakers overall

Gold
55g in treasury

Cities

Airstrip One [size 5] [guarded by Xena]:
Great Library (6t) [true: 4t]
Infrastructure: Palace, Granary, Barracks, Library
Pushing max shields at food deficit to get wonder!

Pink Dot [size 4] [guarded by Britney's Spears and Adria]:
Courthouse or Granary (6t)
Infrastructure: Barracks

China Beach [size 4] [guarded by Ms Piggy]:
Barracks (46t)
Infrastructure: Granary, Library
Great Scientist 30/100, +6 GPP/turn, due in 12t

Cape Town [size 3] [guarded by Diana and Billy Jean Tell and Gillian and Jamie Lynn's Spears and Fyre Errow]:
Heroic Epic (9t)
Infrastructure: Barracks

Something Fishy [size 3] [guarded by Svava]:
Granary (7t)
Infrastructure: none

Green Acres [size 2] [guarded by Robyn Hood]:
Granary (53t)
Infrastructure: none

Mellow Yellow [size 1] [unguarded!]:
Gramary (30t)
Infrastructure: none

Non-Combat Units

Scout [Sharon]:
Scouting out the eastern continent

Worker [Winston]:
Mining plains hill tile at Airstrip One (4t)

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

Worker [Parsons]:
Mine grassland hill NW of Something Fishy
Mining (3t)

Worker [Syme]:
Chop/mine/road grassland hill W of Pink Dot
Chop (3t)

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

Worker [Helmholtz]:
Building additional cottages at Airstrip One
Current turn moving to tile

Work Boat:
Exploring unrevealed tiles in south near Templar border

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]:
Healing and waiting to capture barb city of Saxon at size 2
10XP - our most heroic unit!

Chariot [Lady Godiva]:
Waiting to capture barb city of Saxon at size 2

Archer [Ms Piggy]:
Guard China Beach

Archer [Diana]:
Guard Cape Town

Archer [Billy Jean Tell]:
Guard Cape Town

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 [Bowazon]:
Move to guard Mellow Yellow

Warrior [Xena]:
Guard Airstrip One

Warrior [Jennifer]:
Exploring the eastern continent

Foreign Builds from C&D

Templars
Jerusalem = (139 * (148 + 100)) / (3 * 575) = 20 shields (+10)
Jericho = (253 * (148 + 100)) / (3 * 550) = 43 shields (+5)

Not much to report here. Jericho is probably building a granary.

Imperio
Mutal = N/A, zero shields invested
Lakamha = (164 * (132 + 100)) / (3 * 552) = 23 shields (+23)
Chichen Itza = (352 * (132 + 100)) / (3 * 524) = 52 shields (+4)
Uxmal = (161 * (132 + 100)) / (3 * 566) = 22 shields (+4)

Mutal built something costing 50 or 55 shields. Did they have a barracks in there before, mh? (They do now.) The build looks to be either barracks, catapult, or longbow. My guess is that it's a longbow. I can confirm next turn using the Demographics power stat.

Lakamha is either building another settler (unlikely), or a worker (my best guess). Or the city had a forest chop or tons of overflow (less likely).

PAL
Heliopolis = (176 * (38 + 100)) / (3 * 289) = 28 shields (+7)

Treasuries
Templars: 112gold (-7gpt)
Imperio: 155gold (+3gpt)
PAL: 264gold (+64gpt) clearly running 0% science Jeesh!

[T-hawk]

Re ice - why are we complaining? Isn't it more annoying to Rabbits (and perhaps eventually PAL) that they can't sail around their OWN continent?

Re PAL 0% research - perhaps they are saving money for wartime upgrades? I recall they had nothing but warriors for quite a long time - does C&D see any warrior -> axeman upgrades?

Mutal built a barracks before, yes. The last time it had a 50-hammer build, I guessed longbow, then MH spotted the barracks in the city graphics. So I guess longbow this time too.

BTW, the "Foreign Builds from C&D" department is hereby notified that Civ 4 uses hammers, not shields

[sooooo]

Right, looked at the game. My thoughts:

Pink Dot should not build a courthouse just to save 2 gpt. I don't think that's hammer-efficient until the maintenence increases, and that won't happen until it grows. Which leads me onto: It has no good spare tiles to work, so a granary is also not needed yet. This city has great land, and seriously needs some work doing to it. I would build an axeman (3 turns), then put the chop (also due in 3) into a worker. We seriously lack workers, especially in the south. We only have 6 workers! Our economic issues won't be saved with courthouses, they will be saved by quickly getting cottages running at our fertile southern city sites of Pink Dot, Mellow Yellow and Something Fishy.

Speaking of Something Fishy, the last thing that city wants to work on is settlers or workers at the moment. It is a great site and needs infrastructure, so granary, library etc. This city is whippable, but I would let the granary complete naturally and whip the next project. A courthouse can wait, since again it would only save 2 gpt.

Green Acres needs to whip a granary and lighthouse, I think the plan is clear for this city.