Turnplayer Thread #3

[Sullla]

I had to leave before the timer reached zero, so Lady Godiva simply moved back into Imperio territory. They are continuing to build a stack south of Mutal, I'll post pictures next turn.

Swiss, I specifically asked for opinions on whether our new horse archer in Pink should move to Cape Town, or remain in place. I didn't hear anyone answer, so I left it in place. As a compromise measure, I moved it 2 tiles north at the last minute, so the unit can cover both cities - sort of. You guys have to let me know what you want me to do!

I have no idea where the Demeter archer is going, so I left it in place. Where is this archer going? Pink? It doesn't make any sense to walk an archer 5t across the map when Pink can build its own archers in 2t. Twin Peaks? Why move an archer there now? I really think we should just keep this unit in Cape Town, which remains by far the most likely target to be attacked.

[Swiss Pauli]

@Sullla

I think everyone missed your question about the HA from Pink in amongst the turn report. We'd decided a long time ago to train HAs in the backlines and send them to Cape, so people probably weren't even looking out for this question. I certainly wasn't expecting it, seeing as it's clearly better to send it to Cape Town (Templars have no cats, Imperio do, another HA started in Pink).

I re-iterated the reasons why we decided Demeter to head to Pink a couple of days back, and you didn't question it, so I asumed you agreed.

Both points are minor quibbles, but going forward, I think it's best if the turnplayer suggests positive actions to be taken (to which people can object), rather than offering open questions, as the former also makes the turnplayer's thinking clear for all to see, as well as avoiding nothing being done if no reply is forthcoming.


EDIT: I just logged in, and discovered that Jennifer has indeed gone to explore Heaven As I was first to log in this turn, I set Green Acres to a Forge. I also offered Banana Construction for Calendar. No other actions taken.

[mostly-harmless]

T123:
We love Team RB celebration in A1! No maintenance. Yay.
Sharon died.
Rabbits got a Great General last turn. I am surprised they still hold on.
Another good thing is that The Warning being size 11 apparently raises the base trade value to 1.1, so we get an additional gold in trade at A1. Unfortunately there are no other cities growing to size 11 any time soon.

mh

[sunrise089]

Did Templars adopt Judaism as their state religion? If not, and if they adopted another religion, then the monument isn't wasted (holy cities only give culture if the civ has no state religion or the same religion as the holy city, right?).

EDIT: On the Pink vs Cape Town military balance, I think it's fine to either keep the new horse archer at Pink or move the archer down. I suppose we don't want to rely to highly on whipping emergency defenders in a demogame, so I'm cool with keeping a pair of horse archers down by Pink in case anyone tries something silly with chariots in a war.

[mostly-harmless]

Yes, Templars are Christians at heart, so not a single culture from the Jewish holy city. The monument provides Acre with the 1cpt.

Calendar is in from Banana and the world map centered. All the terra maps I played had the old world and new world in eastern-western hemispheres, never in northern-southern. So I am wondering if there is any old world land still south of us.

mh

[T-hawk]

Both points are minor quibbles, but going forward, I think it's best if the turnplayer suggests positive actions to be taken (to which people can object), rather than offering open questions, as the former also makes the turnplayer's thinking clear for all to see, as well as avoiding nothing being done if no reply is forthcoming.

Risking thread derailment here, but I disagree with this. Too risky for groupthink where we just nod to Sullla's suggestions and miss the critical analysis. I tend to get more involved when Sullla poses an open question. If a question slides by without response, then it just wasn't important enough for any discussion.

I'm pretty sure that Terra is always east-west hemispheres. Can't really say anything about more land south of us, since we don't know how much land was generated by the map script versus how much was edited for 8 teams versus how much was later removed.

[sooooo]

How about we simply put Green Acres onto a settler now. We got 21 overflow hammers from the previous whip and it is working its only 3 improved tiles. Settler will take 8 turns. Plus it will give the city time to recover from its double whip unhappy.

Also, Cape Town will be getting some serious overflow next turn (78 hammers if it's used on a unit). Does overflow spread over 2 turns or will the excess be wasted? It it is wasted, we should build our most expensive unit next turn (maceman, 70 hammers).

[regoarrarr]

Anything over the cost of the unit that we build (so if a maceman then 8 hammers) is converted to gold at a 1-1 ratio.

I think?

That's what I remember from my HG testing anyways...

[Swiss Pauli]

How about we simply put Green Acres onto a settler now. We got 21 overflow hammers from the previous whip and it is working its only 3 improved tiles. Settler will take 8 turns. Plus it will give the city time to recover from its double whip unhappy.

Had a look at the game, and I think we can do with (yet) another worker from Green Acres. Those 3 workable Dyes down south take 5 turns each, and in addition to these taks we need to (in no particluar order): chain irrigation and add mines at Green, improve 4 forest/jungle tiles at Mellow, add a mine and cottages at Fishy, and even Pink will soon outgrow its improved tiles.

Blue dot will be a worker sink: 8 turns to improve each forest silk (including the turn 'lost' on movement), so we're not going to be able to move workers from north to south any time soon.

That said, we should probably keep settling anyway, and I think China Beach could start the Settler next turn (once the HA completes). It'll have overflow from the chop and only has 4 good (and 1 OK) tiles to work anyway (and has whip anger to work off as well).

[Sullla]

Here is the preliminary info from T123:

- This was largely a quiet turn for us, building up towards larger things down the road. The biggest news was completing three forest chops:



We also cleared a jungle tile at Something Fishy, in addition to the above. Taking each in order, Saxon the Beach got half of its granary knocked out (the forest chop was on its silk tile, where we'll start a plantation next turn). I presume that we'll want to whip the granary to completion and let the overflow go into a lighthouse next turn, right?

- The forest chop at Cape Town cleared out the last grassland forest. I have the city working the tile to grow quickly to the next size, where it will pick up a plains forest:



Can someone double-check to make sure that we don't lose shields here from too much overflow? I believe we had about ~50 shields invested in the war elephant from the previous turn, so we very well could be looking at 70+ shields of overflow, which would get truncated down to 60, right? Please, someone who's better with this stuff look at the math.

I think the logical thing to do would be a swap to maceman if we're going to lose shields to overflow, then swapping back to (and completing) the elephant on the following turn.

- China Beach's forest chop went to complete a horse archer, with much overflow. I am going to again suggest that we slip in a (1t!) lighthouse using the overflow, but I expect you guys to overrule me... again. What do we want to build at China Beach next turn? Worker or settler make a lot of sense, but then the city can't grow either...

- Our double-whip from last turn completed a worker (Energetic Erik) at Green Acres, who is connecting the city to our road network as his first job. You can see him on the left side of the top picture, actually. I think the logical move for him next is to mine the grassland hill 2 tiles north of his current position, to help in popping out workers/settlers, yes?

Major question here: what do we build at Green Acres? The default build right now is Forge, but as our future draft abuse city, we probably don't really need a forge here at all. I've heard worker (4t) and settler (8t) suggested here by people. I'd also like to have the city grow to a larger size though, which it won't do by building either of those...

One thing we could do is have Green build Research/Wealth for 2t, preserving the whip overflow, then start a worker or settler when it hits size 4. Maybe that's a stupid idea, but I thought I'd throw it out there. So tell me, before the next ~25 hourse are up, what's the plan here?

- Worker micro notes... Bernard finished moving to the next cottagable tile at Airstrip One, Bob the Builder reached the forested plains hill tile at Mellow and starts chopping next turn, Parsons finished the third cottage at Pink, and will head south to Something Fishy to double-team the dyes planatation there with John. Then both head back to Pink to double-build the dyes plantation there. Makes more sense to combine their actions than have each build (6t) plantations separately.

- Sharon died to the barb on the interturn. RIP, our beloved starting scout.

- Foreign news... There were some important tech moves made this turn:

1) RB trades Construction to Banana for Calendar (yay!)
2) Imperio trades Currency to Banana for Calendar
3) Imperio researches Machinery

While it is good to see that Imperio had to waste 7t of research on Machinery, a tech everyone else traded for, it's not so good that they can now train maces. Yes, it's possible that some of the build swapping we observed in Imperio was them pre-building maces with axes, which would have been auto-upgraded in the build queues. Maybe not, but it is possible.

More seriously, Imperio still seems hell-bent on coming after us. Our Power rating and military has been steadily climbing for a dozen straight turns, and yet they continue to match us every step of the way. Their main stack now has 5 elephants and 6 cats, and if they start adding maces to that, it will be a genuinely dangerous affair. Now, can we stop them? Almost certainly, yes. But having to face down Imperio is a lose-lose situation, as PAL will only get that much further ahead. (And their population is really starting to pull away from the rest of the field now, with PAL no longer needing to whip military.)

I would strongly recommend that we send another email to Imperio, telling them that we will both lose if they declare war on us, and asking AGAIN for a non-agression pact so we can both stop this insane military buildup. Imperio has done nothing but build units nonstop for the past dozen turns in their major cities. It's like they're willfully sabotaging their chances of winning the game just to screw us over...

And on that happy note, let the turn discussion begin.

[T-hawk]

Saxon, whip the granary and overflow to lighthouse, yes. Lighthouse should come before Moai because the former can be marginally useful without the latter (2-0-2 coast is adequate if Saxon runs out of land tiles) but not the other way around (1-1-2 is pretty blah.)

We will lose some overflow hammers at Cape Town. It looks like it's at about 56/60 on the elephant right now, so will have 56+84 = 140 hammers, or 80 of overflow. First the overflow is truncated to the cost of the item being produced, so 60. Then the truncation converts to gold at 1:1, so we gain 20 gold. Then the overflow is reduced by the inverse of the production multipliers (60 / 1+100% = 30), although this step washes out to null since that 30 hammers will re-receive the Heroic Epic multiplier next turn.

So which is more valuable, one-third of a unit, or 20 gold? Probably the unit slice. I'd do a crossbow, since it requires iron which we may lose soon, and Imperio just learned macemen. A mace of our own is fine too.

China Beach, I like forge. The lighthouse is still only +1 food until the city actually wants to work water tiles. Forge is considerably more than +1 hammers.

Green Acres should build something while regrowing to size 6, then triple-whip a settler. Since it can regrow so fast, it should take care to whip the biggest items possible, which is a settler. Forge sounds like a good option for the moment - remember it increases whip yield too! Or a barracks if it doesn't have one yet.

(Energetic Erik)

[mostly-harmless]

Crossbow in Cape, now that we face Maces. We should extend the Iron from Banana for cash, as they offered (or a happy resource). We can get quick cross bows from cape until we hit Engineering for Pikes (which also require Iron iirc).

mh

[sunrise089]

I think a Mace in Cape Town, and T-Hawk's suggestions seem good for the domestic builds. My general thought is if backline cities aren't building military the emphasis should be on expanding the empire and filling in city spots. But I understand infrastructure builds often are necessary to let the cities re-grow.

EDIT:

Crossbow in Cape, now that we face Maces. We should extend the Iron from Banana for cash, as they offered (or a happy resource). We can get quick cross bows from cape until we hit Engineering for Pikes (which also require Iron iirc).

mh

Crossbows don't do us any good. Imperio will stack their units, and crossbows will have terrible odds on combat 1 or combat 2 elephants. Crossbows are only really beneficial if we assume we have to defend in Cape Town, and if we're assuming that (and hence zero cultural defense) we've already lost the battle.

We must think in terms of hitting the enemy stack. That means collateral, highest available strength, and flanking. Elephants are good for this because there is nothing Imperio can build that will have odds on elephants while defending on flat ground after even 2 catapult attacks.

[sooooo]

Green Acres: I wanted a settler, but if whip-maestro T-Hawk thinks it's better to whip one then I'll go along with that. So set to a barracks and grow.

Cape Town: Are you suggesting change to mace this turn to avoid wasting hammers? That's fine by me.

China Beach: I like another horse archer. If Imperio have 5 catapults we'll need a fair few of them. Also templars have construction now.

Imperio are just going rather mad I think. PAL will probably win this game but we can definitely have fun wiping these two uncooperative, uncommunicative civs off the map.

[T-hawk]

Green Acres: I wanted a settler, but if whip-maestro T-Hawk thinks it's better to whip one then I'll go along with that.

We actually are. We're invisibly starting the settler now, in the form of food. It'll get whipped in about six or seven turns -- or just about what it would take to build normally. And in the meantime, those population points can work tiles before getting whipped, getting us a barracks out of the deal too. QED.

Working food to grow and whipping the settler gives a food:hammer conversion ratio of 2:1 or better (assuming granary), compared to the 1:1 of a straight build. If the anger isn't a limiting factor, whipping settlers is almost always correct.


However, on China Beach, I had a change of heart. I forgot we weren't Industrious and the forge isn't half price. (Both of the last two RBCiv games, which comprised about five games worth of playing, had Industrious civs. ) I do think the cheap lighthouse will be a quicker payoff - and then we can double or triple whip the forge later.