Turnplayer Thread #3

[Swiss Pauli]

Also, someone shoot off a quick email to PAL telling them we will send them HBR this turn, as promised.

Done.

[Sullla]

OK, time for the formal report for T116:

- As mentioned previously, we landed the same beneficial event from before:



What are the odds of getting exactly two events all game long, and having them both be the same? I dunno, but we're not complaining! The extra food means some additional micro in our cities, which I'll get to in a minute. regoarrarr and T-Hawk have already taken a stab at this, and I can provide some further info to help us make decisions.

- We got our long-awaited Great Scientist in China Beach, woot!

- Next up, we discovered Horseback Riding - yay! (I have offered the tech to PAL in-game, as agreed upon earlier). Our goal is to research Construction next, so here are the numbers for that:

Construction tech (0/500 beakers), 56g in treasury
100% science: 162 [214] beakers/turn, @ -44gpt
90% science: 147 [194] beakers/turn, @ -32gpt
80% science: 133 [176] beakers/turn, @ -20gpt
70% science: 118 [156] beakers/turn, @ -7gpt
60% science: 103 [136] beakers/turn, @ +5gpt
50% science: 88 [116] beakers/turn, @ +18gpt
0% science: 15 [20] beakers/turn, @ +80gpt

So essentially one turn at 0% science pays for just slightly short of two turns at 100% science. Now the kicker is that the Academy in Airstrip One that we'll add next turn will give us +30 beakers/turn [base] @100% science, for 192 [254] beakers/turn total! That means we can still get Construction tech in three turns, at essentially break-even science!

T116: 0% science [20/500 beakers] +80g = 136g
T117: 100% science [274/500 beakers] -44g = 92g
T118: 100% science [528/500 beakers] -44g = 48g

Unless someone sees something I'm missing, I think we should do this. (Note that the numbers are only estimates, because stuff will change as we whip/grow population.)

Let's go through our cities one at a time, to make sure we have the new micro stuff correct.

- Airstrip One: Nothing changes here, aside from the city now growing to size 10 much faster. Need to get a worker back here shortly to add more grassland river cottages. (Winston can do it once the winery to the south is finished next turn.)

- Pink: regoarrarr says we should add one food to it next turn, by swapping from grassland hill mine to grassland forest. I actually DON'T think we can do this, but I will check on it next turn. It will be really easy to see then, since we'll either have enough shields to complete the Gardens by doing that, or we won't.

- China Beach: regoarrarr and T-Hawk both agree we should double-whip the worker this turn. Here's a picture:



Where do we want the overflow to go? I would personally favor lighthouse, so we have more more decent commerce tiles to work when China Beach wants to emphasize growth/commerce. And we can finish the lighthouse really fast, thanks to our Organized-ness. The new worker is going to improve Saxon the Beach, starting with the deer resource.

- Cape Town: OK, a couple of things here:



The red forest tile will be chopped THIS turn; I simply haven't given the final command yet to our workers. I wanted to ask the question first of what to build here: horse archer? Spear? Axe? We'll finish whatever we pick instantly with the forest chop. Keep in mind that Imperio's stack seems to consist mostly of mounted units; we've seen 1 elephant and 1 horse archer so far. I would say to build spears, but we already have three spears in Cape Town, so my suggested build is horse archer.

Also, T-Hawk and regoarrarr raised the question of running some food at Cape Town to increase its size; we could maybe get it up to size 6 with Hanging Gardens help, although admittedly we don't have a lot of tiles to work there. Please suggest a plan for doing this, if desired.

- Something Fishy: The former plan was to whip courthouse when the city was one turn away from completion, with overflow going into settler. Now with the extra food, the growth and build completions don't line up anymore:



Suggestions? Lemme know how to play this one.

- Green Acres: Do nothing. It will grow next turn regardless, and keep on building a worker (5t). This worker will probably stay and improve Green itself, maybe after finishing wineries on our other two wines nearby (?)

- Mellow Yellow: Do nothing, it will grow next turn. Unless you want to change the build from library to lighthouse? That call is entirely up to the rest of the team. We had good success going granary/library in several other cities, but I'm open to a lighthouse here as well. Change must be made this turn to get the overflow from last turn's granary whip.

- Saxon the Beach: OK, once and for all, what do we want to build here? Nothing has change from the picture I posted last turn:



I suggested granary or lighthouse here initially, and everyone said to build Moai first. Now people are posting to start with granary - make up your minds! I don't care which, just tell me what improvement to go with first. If I don't hear anything, we'll stay with Moai.

Whew! And the fun part is, we get to do this all again when/if we complete the Gardens in two turns!

Other stuff:

- I moved our units along the first step of the "Grab Barb City" plan, since we were going to make those moves regardless.

- Our workers finish connecting the second wine next turn, which we will trade to PAL for their gems.

- Imperio discovered Compass tech this turn, in case you missed it in the C&D report. What is this team thinking?!?

That should be it. I'll wait to post the stats until we're in agreement on what every city is building.

[mostly-harmless]

I am fine with Sullla's suggestions.
A few comments:

Cape Town should build an HA with the chop. We run the risk of our Horses getting sabotaged next turn, with no clear idea were to get a replacement. So I would like us to field at least 1 HA before that. I think the time for Cape Town to grow is some point after T120. We will have a clearer picture by then what Imperio is up to. We will also have to make the most of the Iron we got from Banana, so no point scarifying production now.

mh

[sooooo]

Right, a big thumbs up for the team for energising our economy. Being able to get construction in just 3 turns from scratch is incredible . Imperio getting compass is strange. Are we sure they didn't trade for it from Banana?

My Micro comments:

Airstrip One: Nothing, complete spearman. I suppose the spearman should stay in the city for the happiness and to guard against cheeky horse archers?

Mellow Yellow: Do nothing. I prefer library over lighthouse, but ideally we want forge. If we are somehow able to trade for MC, change to forge.

Saxon The Beach: Change to granary, granary, a thousand times granary.

Something Fishy: I think we should just naturally finish the courthouse, then double whip a settler.

China Beach: Whip this turn. I've suggested about 3 times as Archer as next build. Dreylin agrees, no one disagreed. Strong preference for Archer. Archer. After whipping move China Beach's archer towards Saxon. The barb axeman has reappeared in the North.

Pink: Agree to keep on mine, at least until next turn.

Cape Town: Build Horse Archer. Growing to the next size could be useful to whip in a forge, so I'm fine to go along with T-Hawk and mh's plan.

Green Acres: I agree, do nothing.

[regoarrarr]

* Definitely 0% science this turn. We'll have to see how things look after the academy is built but to paraphrase what you said with Pink Dot, either we'll be able to research Construction at 100% in 2 turns or we won't. But we definitely want 0% this turn.

* We should be able to tell if Imperio researched compass or not by seeing if it's in the Can't Trade column or not.

* Saxon - Another vote for Granary. I will try and run a few numbers and post something later today

* Cape - I think my vote would be to grow Cape (by swapping from the hill and copper to 2 2-food tiles. It's a free 2 food if we grow the turn of (or before) the HG, and this is a food-poor city.

[Sullla]

- Imperio definitely researched Compass. It shows up in the "Can Trade" column, they don't have contact with Banana, and you can furthermore see the point increase came at the start of the turn on CivStats. (I'll see if I can work backwards from their length of time to research, in order to estimate a current beaker rate for Imperio. I think we very well may have passed them.)

- Roger on changing Saxon the Beach to granary. I'm hearing a clear consensus on that now.

- OK, let's just let Something Fishy complete the courthouse normally, then double-whip the settler. Shame we don't have a lighthouse in there to work the coastal tiles and get +1 food on the fish... probably next build post-settler.

- See, I'm still not a fan of building an archer at China Beach. What exactly is the purpose of that? To garrison Saxon? I mean, think about it this way: what do we gain by freeing up Betty Hur from her current garrison duty? Chariots are fairly useless against Imperio, because they are heavy on horse units and, as far as I can tell, do not have a single axeman in their entire military. Why not just keep Betty up there in the north, ready to kill any barb that might pop up? We'll get a border expansion at Saxon in 3t, and once Betty kills the current axe, she can move to bust the remaining fog by herself. No need to move any other units up there. And as T-Hawk has said, if any enemy gets up there, we've beyond lost the game already.

I think we're much better served by having China Beach build more economic infrastructure, as it doesn't have great shield potential, and is nowhere near the expected front lines. 'Course that's just me talking, and I'll be happy to build an archer there if everyone really wants it.

[mostly-harmless]

* We should be able to tell if Imperio researched compass or not by seeing if it's in the Can't Trade column or not.

From civstat it is clear that they researched it themselves.

mh

[Dreylin]

- See, I'm still not a fan of building an archer at China Beach. What exactly is the purpose of that? To garrison Saxon? I mean, think about it this way: what do we gain by freeing up Betty Hur from her current garrison duty? Chariots are fairly useless against Imperio, because they are heavy on horse units and, as far as I can tell, do not have a single axeman in their entire military. Why not just keep Betty up there in the north, ready to kill any barb that might pop up? We'll get a border expansion at Saxon in 3t, and once Betty kills the current axe, she can move to bust the remaining fog by herself. No need to move any other units up there. And as T-Hawk has said, if any enemy gets up there, we've beyond lost the game already.

Can one unit bust all ther remaining fog in the North after SoB pops borders? I can't really tell from the screenies, maybe in the forest 1N of the grass hill?

My nervousness about the North is "What if Betty loses?" then we're stuck with our pants down and probably have to whip a unit out of Saxon - which has less hammers than China Beach. What if a Barb Spear pops up out in the fog?

Too many What-ifs for my liking. China Beach seems like the most logical place to get a guard unit from, but we could walk one back from Cape Town if we feel secure there...

Agree that the chances of seeing an Imperio Axe are slim to none, however having Betty at the front gives us another unit which could potentially work on clean-up duty for injured Imperios.

[regoarrarr]

I agree with no archer at CB

[T-hawk]

Imperio must be thinking Optics for a run at the Terra continent. Do we plan to be players in that game?

China Beach overflow: Lighthouse can wait for later. CB has 8 workable land tiles plus the clams. It doesn't need a lighthouse until size 10. And we don't need military here. So how about another worker or settler? If double-whipped this turn, CB will grow at 28/28 food even while finishing the worker, then grow again from the HG. So this is a good time to build the food-consuming units at low opportunity cost for growth.

Something Fishy my instinct says to whip this turn. The overfull food is retained after growth so we still get the advantage of growth on a smaller box. Overflow into settler as agreed.

Saxon, I like granary first. Moai first is correct for a city with total junk for land tiles. Saxon has 4-5 decent land tiles and it'll get Moai done faster by growing first to work some mines.

Cape Town, HA sounds like a fine idea. Getting that growth at Cape is easy, all it needs is +3 food for two turns. Just switch from the plains hill and unmined copper to the two grass forests.

Finally, I think the Academy is right by now. We obviated about a third of the Golden Age benefit by eating the anarchy to go Bur/HR.

[regoarrarr]

I tried to run some spreadsheet simulations for Saxon based on camping the deer first vs. chopping the plains forest first (the idea being to get the granary up faster)

In both sims, I assumed that the worker built in china beach next turn (that we whip this turn) heads up there immediately, and no other workers are involved.

I ran both sims to T134.

Chopping first we are at Size 3, 22/26, and 23 hammers towards our next build (46 if it's a lighthouse)

Camping first we are at Size 3, 19/26 and 25 hammers towards the next build.

Seems like chopping first is the way to go.

[sooooo]

The ideal build for China Beach next turn would be forge

To be honest I see China Beach mainly as a mini-military pump. Working coast for non-financial civs is low value - the 2 commerce is offset by the increased maintenence and civic upkeep. IMO we should farm the river plains and the grassland north of that tile and mine the grass hill and a desert hill. If we assume we won't work the coast, then lighthouse is only +1 food. Now that is OK, but not a priority. I am still for archer/forge and then just pump horse archers from this city.

To supplement Dreylin's comments above: It's not just if Betty loses. But an archer + Betty would bust all the fog. It would allow our worker to work without fear. If an axe approaches Airstrip One, then China Beach is pretty vulnerable even if Betty wins because it is out of her way (and she will need to heal).

[mostly-harmless]

Add me to the faction demanding more military in the north. C&D is still sure that the Imperio warrior Tarzan is up thee somewhere, unless he met the barb axe.
Not that the warrior is a big threat, but he scouts things.

mh

[sunrise089]

HA in Cape, Archer in China Beach, Maoi in Saxon, 0% science.

[Dreylin]

Imperio must be thinking Optics for a run at the Terra continent. Do we plan to be players in that game?

TBH, I was assuming that our plan was to wipe Imperio off the map before the other continent even came into play....