Turnplayer Thread #3

[T-hawk]

Simulation complete.

If Mellow Yellow whips its granary on:
turn 113, by T119 it has regrown to 2 with 13F/6H in the box.
turn 114, by T119 it has regrown to 2 with 13F/7H in the box.
turn 115, by T119 it has regrown to 2 with 13F/8H in the box.
turn 116, by T119 it has regrown to 2 with 10F/9H in the box.

So the sweet spot is two turns from now (T115). The key point is that food produced on the same turn as the granary is built does not count towards filling the hidden store, so T116 is too late. After the granary is built, the food bar reads 16/22 on T117 and there is not enough time to fill up the hidden store before growth. (Food produced on the turn of growth does count towards the hidden store and is retained after growth.)

I couldn't exactly replicate the maintenance cost for the second citizen (I was using a somewhat dated War Room save), but it seemed on the order of 0.3 gold / turn, certainly less than the value of each extra hammer.

And that is the most micromanagement I will ever do for 2 hammers.

[regoarrarr]

bravo t-hawk! And a hearty

[Dreylin]

Gosh!

[Swiss Pauli]

Seeing as no-one else posted to suggest other actions, Bernard and Winston have started to improve Green Acres' wines. All moves now complete.

I did not end the turn: following PAL's email there might be a chance that we meet Banana this turn (they haven't ended their turn), so we may as well hang on for a few hours, as Imperio and Templars have also not completed their turns. 23 hours left.

[Swiss Pauli]

We meet at last!

Finally:



Techs:



(The apparent embargo on MC looks even more annoying right now!)

Resources, and me offering OBs:



Sadly for us, their Iron is their sole military resource

I'll send them a quick greetings email, or reply to theirs...

[Sullla]

Hey all, I made it back safely and should be good to play the turn that starts tomorrow, once I have a chance to read through all of what's been going on. (Contact with Rabbits - finally! Yay! ) Looks like we're continuing to move forward. I had time to do some brainstorming while traveling, so I'll see if I can throw out some long-term strategy posts in the near future...

[sunrise089]

Hey all, I made it back safely and should be good to play the turn that starts tomorrow, once I have a chance to read through all of what's been going on. (Contact with Rabbits - finally! Yay! ) Looks like we're continuing to move forward. I had time to do some brainstorming while traveling, so I'll see if I can throw out some long-term strategy posts in the near future...

Here's hoping they involve our UU and the "good noise" in combat

[Swiss Pauli]

Handover notes

Aside from an archer that needs naming, I cancelled (more paused) the worker chops at Pink, so that Sullla can re-start them. HG thread has a plan B for Syme, and also has the due date for the chops on the current tiles. The only workers committed to their actions next turn are Bernard and Winston (winery at Green Acres). Helmholtz and O'Brien are heading to Cape Town to fix the copper, but they're not on go-to.

Other than that, I'd recommend sending Lady G home, and getting sight into another Imperio city with the galley.

There's just under 3 hours on the turn, so it doesn't look like we'll get Iron from Banana this turn. As usual, Imperio hasn't ended their turn, so we're not the only one holding up the game

[mostly-harmless]

I prefer to have Lady G move 1S next turn and then do a step in step out on T115 to get line of sight into Acre. She will be back in time to join the action.

mh

[Sullla]

Well, having read through 4 days worth of threads, that was quite an eye-opener! Busy times as always, it seems. Here are my impressions on what we need to be concentrating on:

- Obviously we want to reconnect our copper (and horses, if their spy goes at it again) ASAP. I am not as freaked out by this as the rest of the team seems to be: I know what units Imperio has, and they are not going to be invading us in the next couple of turns. For the next few turns, we simply have Cape Town crank out a couple of archers, WALL (not sure why this wasn't seized upon with more emphasis), and possibly a galley. The galley is important not just for moving military reinforcements, but also for speeding along our re-connecting workers to the front! Then horse archers as soon as we discover HBR. Anyway, as soon as the wines are connected at Green Acres, we can send two or three (or four, if we want to include O'Brien) workers back to Cape Town. We will have copper reconnected in about 5 turns. Yes, it's bad, BUT it's not as big of a crisis as the threads I'm reading are indicating.

Seriously, WTF is Imperio thinking with their sabotage of our copper? If they are planning an attack, it's one of the clumsiest ones I've ever seen. But then again, they didn't even realize that we couldn't trade them Literature and Aesthetics on the same turn, so... yeah. I think our analysis of "stupid team that caught a fabulously lucky start" is confirmed.

- In terms of trade, the KEY tech is Metal Casting. And unfortunately, the ONLY team that can trade it to us is Templars. I was surprised to see their diplo thread sitting pretty inactive over the past few days. Look, Banana is not the issue here. If we get Metal Casting, we fling them Aesthetics + Literature + Monarchy + Horseback Riding for Machinery... hopefully only three of those techs, but we can send ALL of them if necessary. The problem is the TEMPLARS!

We absolutely must diplo-blitz them right now and get them to trade us that tech. Offer them Aesthetics + Literature + HBR + wines, whatever it takes. Metal Casting is the critical bottleneck tech, which springs us out of the hole we're in. We make it absolutely clear to them that there can be no normal trade relations between us if they refuse to trade us a tech that they sent to everyone else. Let's stop going around in circles and get a deal done!

- The other key diplo move is to get Currency from Imperio. We would get intercontinental trade routes in 8 different cities - enormous! Keep leaning on them and don't let up. We've been doing good work in this area, I feel.

- Oy, just when I think Rabbits CANNOT get any dumber... How are we ever supposed to win this game when the two teams on PAL's continent are dumb as rocks? Banana has been off in AWOL territory most of the game, and Rabbits are off attacking a barb city while their core burns. All I can do is put my head in my hands.

- We should have pressed for a reload at Pink when the automation kicked in. Too late now, but we should have. This happened to one of the teams in CivFanatics Demogame: if Avoid Growth is checked, the AI will do insane crazy stuff in cities, including whipping them (!) when you haven't told it to do so. This is one are where Blake's Improved AI majorly sucks... the Governor certainly never should go around whipping stuff without your approval!

Can someone clarify me on what we're doing at Pink? I think we should finish the wonder (Pink can crank horse archers as soon as we complete it, and can only build maybe one HA by giving up the wonder, which is not worth it) but between the unwanted whip and something like eight different plans, I don't know where we are right now. Thanks.

- Why did we change the build in Airstrip One from spearmen to archer?! Yes, I know copper got disconnected, but archer is a total waste of time. We should be building National Epic to get our second Great Scientist sped up. Spear was probably a wasted build in the first place, looking back on it. We'll complete him when copper or iron gets connected.

- Economically though, we're in vastly better shape from going to Bureaucracy. I'll tell you how much better when I run some numbers in a bit.

Anyway, good to be back. I think everyone handled things well, aside from maybe a bit too much panic at getting copper disconnected. Don't sell out our long-term tech position for temporary discomfiture.

[mostly-harmless]

Some comments on the comments.

At Cape Town we are looking at reconnecting the copper around ~T119?
The threat of Horses being sabotaged at T117 and in need of reconnection and a forest to chop.
And our main worker force is miles away and still busy for a few turns. O'Brien will arrive at the copper in 2 turns. Helmholtz is at least 3 turns away. If you look at a possible invasion date of T121, the timing is a bit tight and a trade to secure either metal or horses or both would be a huge relief.

I don't think we will see MC from Templars any time soon. 1.) they are extremely sluggish to respond. 2.) if they have a deal in place with Imperio to not give us MC, I think there is nothing on our table we can possibly offer to them to change their minds. I believe they are confident IMperio is the future on our continent. I agree we must keep up the diplo pressure.

No way will we see Currency from Imperio until the "T120 Crisis" is resolved.

Forget about Rabbits, they are toast.

At Pink we should be full steam ahead on the HG. But I lost track of regoraars plans a long time ago. Someone else? Dreylin maybe?

A1 will be on full commerce, so even with modifiers National Epic takes 25turns. Cheap military police is needed not only for A1 but for Saxon the Beach as well.

Welcome back.

mh

[sooooo]

Welcome back sullla.

Some random points:

I am against building national epic in Airstrip One. Combining that wonder with the GL just gives me artists . I accept that it is currently our highest GP-producing city, but that city is not a GP farm. It wants to work cottages and mines. We should save NE for a city that just wants to work food resources and farms (haven't checked the game for which city, admittedly). At any rate, a 25 turn national wonder when we have imperio probably gearing up for war is not what we want. I am fine with the archer build here.

Sullla makes a good point about Templars. We have probably been a bit lax about not pressing them for metal casting. We should make them an offer they cannot refuse, with multiple techs from our side.

Abandoning our quest for temporary metal is a risk - we are basically relying on our horses not being pillaged if we adopt this strategy.

[Krill]

We should have pressed for a reload at Pink when the automation kicked in. Too late now, but we should have. This happened to one of the teams in CivFanatics Demogame: if Avoid Growth is checked, the AI will do insane crazy stuff in cities, including whipping them (!) when you haven't told it to do so. This is one are where Blake's Improved AI majorly sucks... the Governor certainly never should go around whipping stuff without your approval!

Really? Just a fyi, but if you know that it does this, and don't do anything to rectify it (like..turn of the sodding governor) then you deserve what you get. And if you don't know...well, that is a lack of game knowledge, and it's still your own damned fault. Best if you don't ask for a reload...

[T-hawk]

- Why did we change the build in Airstrip One from spearmen to archer?! Yes, I know copper got disconnected

This happened automatically. In one of the patches or expansions, the legality of build orders regarding resources is now continually checked every turn.

National Epic plus Great Library is an obvious combo to me. It's going to be approximately twelve light-years until we have any other city that is capable and willing to work more than 2 scientists and has the capacity to build the NE. And now, while Airstrip One doesn't have any really relevant military units available, is a fine time to start it. It can be paused for better military as we wish - there's no chance of losing the NE to a competing civ. And an artist or two just means Golden Ages.

[Sullla]

Really? Just a fyi, but if you know that it does this, and don't do anything to rectify it (like..turn of the sodding governor) then you deserve what you get. And if you don't know...well, that is a lack of game knowledge, and it's still your own damned fault. Best if you don't ask for a reload...

Well I was in Sweden at the time it happened, so don't blame me. No, we're certainly not asking for a reload now, and I agree in general that it's almost always the best policy just to play on. I also wanted to bring this up so that the rest of the team would be aware of it; it doesn't appear to be common knowledge. I wonder how Avoid Growth even got turned on in the first place... maybe a misclick?

Also, I wanted to echo T-Hawk's National Epic logic. We have no good sites for a Great Person farm anwhere in site, and one of the keys to Civ4 is getting the national wonders into play ASAP. Not building National Epic now out of fear of getting Great Artists is cutting off our nose to spite our face. More Great People is always better! And if we get Artists, we just use them for Golden Ages, like T-Hawk said.

Should have time to put the preliminary stuff up for the current turn (T114? I think) in a couple hours...