Turnplayer Thread #3

[Krill]

"Pointy end in the other fellow. Rinse and repeat."

[sunrise089]

Thanks goodness Krill was just being friendly. When I was he was the most recent poster I was dreading something like "so remind me what turn you would be able to fend off an attack"

[Sullla]

Alright, T104:

- We've already discussed the big news to death, but I'll also include it here for record-keeping purposes. The key event of the turn was Templars discovering Metal Casting, then trading that and Monotheism to Imperio for Monarchy and Mathematics. Naturally, this raises fears of a Templars/Imperio alliance directed against us, which would be very bad news. It is also frustrating to watch Templars spend 19 turns (!) researching Metal Casting and immediately get trade value out of it, while Imperio rebuffed our efforts to trade with them. But enough of that, we've been discussing this for a while now...

- Sharon found the first of the two Rabbit cities in the east, Digger's Burrow:



Just out of curiosity, why did Rabbits get a copper/cows/pigs city, eh? Not to mention they have iron and horses extremely close by as well. So, uh, were we the only team to get zero strategic resources near the start? Sure looks like it. (The mapmaker probably intended the resources at Cape Town to be ours, forgetting that he put a gulf, mountain, and desert in the way!)

- In other foreign news, the Power ratings of the other teams have been increasing quickly over the past few turns. Now, much of this is due to researching techs; Horseback Riding (10k) and Metal Casting (4k) are both worth decent amounts of points. Nevertheless, Imperio and Templar soldier count ratings ARE climbing, although not nearly at the rate that PAL exploded when they went crazy whipping chariots. Unless we can come to a diplomatic agreement, we need to keep training more and more military units too.

- Domestically, Pink Dot will finish worker next turn thanks to a forest chop. What's the build at Pink next? Much as I would like to go with granary or courthouse, I fear we may need to stick to military.

- Something Fishy whipped its granary this turn; growth back to size 3 in two turns. Next build should be...? I'm still thinking courthouse, but open to debate. Library is probably the other logical choice (unless we want lighthouse... maybe.)

- Cape Town grew to size 4 this turn. Do we want to work the plains hill tile or not?



As currently set up, Heroic Epic finishes in 6 turns. We can also work the plains hill tile, which finishes in 5 turns with no growth. (mostly_harmless had the city set up this way when I logged in.) What's the right call? I think it's worth it to get the 10 extra food from working the grassland forest, but if we are truly worried about our neighbors, we can also go the no growth, max shields path. Tell me what the team wants to do.

- 2 turns to Great Library in Airstrip One, 3 turns (hopefully!) to Monarchy on research, may need a little fiddling to get that one done on time. Hang in there everyone, we're in a rough patch now with regards to our neighbors, we'll find a way to get through it.

Stats to come later today, no time just now.

[mostly-harmless]

Bloody hell. Templars are trading around Metal Casting like mad.

They got Code of Laws (500) and Alphabet (429) from trade with PAL and Banana (!!!)
PAL and Banana both got Metal Casting (643).

So all industrious civs have Metal Casting at the same time. I guess we will see a lot of forges and an interesting race for the Colossus.

Quite a coup for Templars.

EDIT: Sullla, did you offer Aesthetics to PAL in game? If yes they turned it down.


mh

[mostly-harmless]

Cape Town: I am obviously strongly in favor of working the 4h hill tile to get the Heroic Epic out as soon as possible and start building up our military. If this option is overruled I am still not in favor of working the forest tile, but the lake tile, as it will give us 2f & 2commerce to help speed up Monarchy.

Pink Dot: I vote military.

Something Fishy: Undecided. Courthouse would reduce maintenance by 2gpt while also giving us 2 additional espionage points. Library on the other hand would be good for research obviously, can be built in mere 7 turns and will bring about a border pop sooner.
Lighthouse is out for me, since with a granary in place and a fish resource, the city has all the food it needs right now.

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

I'm for Cape Town as military pump, whilst we get basic infrastructure (and right now I see that as a Granary & Barracks) in other cities, so:

Cape: plains hill.
Pink: Granary.
SF: Barracks.

Our new cities may be a long way from Imperio, but they can train our two-move units whilst Cape focuses on melee (until HBR).

[Sullla]

Damn. That is a true technology slingshot there. Templars got 4:1 value on Metal Casting. But again, it shows how poorly constructed the map is; the civs on the far edges of the map (us, Banana, Rabbits) have enormous difficulty contacting one another. The ones in the center (PAL and Imperio, to a lesser extent Templars) get all the early contacts, and are free to trade with any and all partners.

That's not to say Templars didn't do a great job here, because clearly they did. Despite their pathetic GNP, they are now technologically ahead of us!

No, I did not offer Aesthetics to PAL in-game yet, since we didn't hear back from our latest email. We also had some objections in the PAL diplo thread. I am in favor of making the offer, however.

[Swiss Pauli]

Not ones for verbiage, but some good news at last:

PAL agrees to this deal being changed so that HBR is given instead of Drama.

I'll copy this to their diplo thread. They've also replied (at length) about elephants...

[T-hawk]

Cape Town: I'd let it work the grass forest. Civ 4 has production overflow, if we come up just short of Heroic Epic in 5 turns, the overflow on the 6th will smoothly go into military anyway.

Pink: military, since it has a barracks.

SF: library, for MH's reasons. I like making use of cheap-building traits whenever possible.

[sooooo]

At SF, I think library. At EDIT:Cape Town we should work the plains mine. There is no point in stunting our production for 16 turns to grow in order to work just one extra forest. Those extra 3 hammers are doubled at the moment for having marble.

[sunrise089]

Cape - Plains Hill
Pink - Unit
Fishy - Courthouse (also a double-speed building for us, right?)

[Zeviz]

Cape Town working forest produces 3hpt less than working hill. It will take 14 turns to grow. After that, it will stop growth by working that same hill. So working hill generates extra 42 hammers, which will take 42 turns to compensate for while working an extra grassland forest after growth.

This means that production lost by not working the mine will be recovered only 56 turns later. And we need that production in the next 20 turns, so we should be working the mine.

Pink Dot can build either Granary (to help with future whips) or should start on units right away.

Sothern city should build either library or Corthouse (if C&D says we aren't getting enough espionage points).

PS Please offer Aestetics to PAL as soon as you log in. I am getting worried about losing even that deal.

[mostly-harmless]

I will mention it here as well. Can we move a Cape Twon archer into Imperio lands to scout this turn, and not wait for another 6 turns before Betty HUr arrives?

mh

[Sullla]

- Swapped Cape Town to the plains hill/zero food config, as that seemed to be the clear consensus.

- Sent out an unpromoted archer (Billy Jean Tell) towards Imperio, as requested.

- Would have offered Aesthetics to PAL, but mostly_harmless had already done so. Never be afraid to log in and make a critical move if the timer is ticking down, and we've agreed as a team to do so. I check the boards frequently, about three times a day, but I could always miss something, or be unable to log in.

- Hopefully that takes care of everything. Oh wait, we have another turn in 10 hours and get to do it all over again!

Now for the stats:

Here was the data from T104:

General

Current Turn:
Turn 104 - 275 BC
Turn Timer expires at approx (UTC)

Active Turn Player:
Sullla

Status:
Played

Tech:
Monarchy (3t)
100% research (63 [96] beakers/turn) @ -28gpt
146/429 beakers overall

Gold
51g in treasury

Cities

Airstrip One [size 5] [guarded by Xena]:
Great Library (4t) [true: 2t]
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]:
Worker (1t)
Infrastructure: Barracks

China Beach [size 4] [guarded by Ms Piggy]:
Barracks (11t)
Infrastructure: Granary, Library
Great Scientist 42/100, +6 GPP/turn, due in 10t

Cape Town [size 4] [guarded by Diana and Gillian and Jamie Lynn's Spears and Fyre Errow]:
Heroic Epic (5t)
Infrastructure: Barracks

Something Fishy [size 2] [guarded by Svava]:
Granary (1t) (whipped)
Infrastructure: none

Green Acres [size 2] [guarded by Robyn Hood]:
Granary (51t)
Infrastructure: none

Mellow Yellow [size 1] [unguarded!]:
Gramary (13t)
Infrastructure: none

Non-Combat Units

Scout [Sharon]:
Scouting out the eastern continent

Worker [Winston]:
Mining the plains hill at Airstrip One (3t)

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

Worker [Parsons]:
Mine grassland hill NW of Something Fishy
Mining (done!)

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

Worker [Bernard]:
Building additional cottages at Airstrip One
Cottaging (done!)

Worker [Helmholtz]:
Building additional cottages at Airstrip One
Cottagin (done!)

Work Boat:
Returning to Mellow Yellow (5t)

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]:
Moving east to get intel on Imperio/Templar cities

Archer [Ms Piggy]:
Guard China Beach

Archer [Diana]:
Guard Cape Town

Archer [Billy Jean Tell]:
Move to explore 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 [Bowazon]:
Move to guard Mellow Yellow

Warrior [Xena]:
Guard Airstrip One

Warrior [Jennifer]:
Exploring the eastern continent

Foreign Builds from C&D

Templars
Jerusalem = (69 * (148 + 100)) / (3 * 575) = 10 shields (+10)
Jericho = N/A, zero shields invested

Jericho finished walls, we can see them clearly on the map. Based on the fact that Jerusalem produced exactly 10 shields again this turn, we know that they build something costing exactly 30 shields last turn - this can only be a chariot. (I have made a slight correction to their military stats as a result.)

Imperio
Mutal = (215 * (138 + 100)) / (3 * 552) = 31 shields (+11)
Lakamha = N/A, zero shields invested
Chichen Itza = N/A, zero shields invested
Uxmal = N/A, zero shields invested

Chichen Itza is easy, as we can see it built a lighthouse. Uxmal is easy; it built something costing 30 shields, ie a work boat for its many fish resources.

Lakamha build something costing between 41 and 57 shields; likely either a longbow or catapult, both 50 shields cost. It could even be a horse archer (also 50 shields), although less likely there. Lakamha appears to be a military pump for them at the moment.

PAL
Heliopolis = (94 * (38 + 100)) / (3 * 289) = 15 shields (+15)

Too early to make a call here. Probably still getting 9 or 10 shields/turn with some overrun from the last build.

Rabbits
Digger's Burrow = (236 * (20 + 100)) / (3 * 338) = 28 shields (-)

Our first look at a Rabbit city!

Treasuries
Templars: 99gold (-7gpt)
Imperio: 177gold (+8gpt)
PAL: 279gold (-47gpt) clearly switched to 100% research, which they can run for another 5 turns.
Rab: 16gold

Population census
PAL 34 (size 8,7,4,4,3,3,3,2)
RB 23 (5,4,4,4,3,2,1)
Imp 22 (8,6,3,2,2,1)
Ban 18 (7,6,3,2)
Tem 15 (5,4,4,2)
Rab 7 (4,3)

[Swiss Pauli]

Do we think there's any chance to squeeze a unit through Imperio and past Templars eastern border (see bottom left edge of screenie below) to either see Banana's borders, or, to make a rendez-vous with a Banana boat (arf!) that we arrange via PAL?