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  • Alright, four days later we finally get around to T125 again! Quite a lot happened, so please read carefully and make lots of comments suggestions. Unfortunately, we only have ~21 hours remaining on the turn too, so let's get started!

    First, reprising some stuff from the earlier part of the turn:

    - Three cities grew in size (Something Fishy, Green Acres, Mellow Yellow), and two more will grow next turn (China Beach, Cape Town). Some of our whipping penalties are slowly wearing off!

    - Our new city founded, Bluebell Woods:



    It actually only added 7gpt to our costs, because it saved us some money in unit support costs (we're way over the allowed amount). First build is a granary, naturally.

    Now, how do we get the road up here? Helmholtz will be working on this job next, and can get some help from the workers at China/Saxon Beaches when they finish their assignments. I've got two routes outlined, one in brown and one in yellow. Yellow is probably more useful overall, but brown goes through a silk resource, meaning we won't have to move back there later. Helmholtz can reach the start of either path in 2t, so we have fair shot at either.

    Going through the deer tile in the north is not practical, IMO. It doesn't help any units move, and the worker up there (Serious Steve) still needs another 6t to finish camp + road on the deer. It will be much faster to go through the south.

    - New war elephant at Cape Town. I have to respectfully disagree with Swiss, and I assigned us to build a catapult next. We have 2 maces, 2 elephants, and 3 horse archers present at the Cape, plus 3 spears. Our greatest need right now is for more siege, so let's get another 2-3 cats in there before going back to building "top unit" beaters again.

    I think sunrise will agree with me, but would like to hear his expert opinion on this if possible.

    - I moved all the units/workers except for Energetic Erik. Instead of moving him 2N to the grassland hill, however, I now think he should go south. See the next post on "Project Colossus" for details...

    - Imperio finished maces in Mutal and Lakamha, just as we suspected they were building. More importantly, they started moving them around!



    They moved the cat and mace in Lakamha northwest, while the big stack in Mutal moved one tile... east?! This looks like a clumsy attempt to throw us off guard, which naturally failed because our archer simply moved east and followed their stack. I expect all these units to combine on the desert hill gold tile next turn, and then... well, we'll see where they go, won't we?

    Imperio really SHOULD attack Templars, but I still think they want a piece of us. Fat chance though, as we can handle their current stack without serious problems. Honestly, they aren't going to achieve very much if they come after Cape Town, aside from getting some serious smackdown.

    - Buddhism spread at Cape Town, for an extra +1 culture/turn and access to a fourth religion later on, which is cool. The disputed tile is up to 45% RB culture. I was definitely wrong on that one, mh! Forgot that Chichen Itza only gets 1 culture/turn from the monument, which can get pushed back with ease.

    - Stuff in the East:



    PAL's two stacks are cut-and-pasted in, with one of them invisible currently in the black. More importantly, we found a Banana warrior in the desert to the southeast. Does that region connect to the Banana territory in the south (?) Jennifer is investigating and will find out!

    - Our first look into a Banana city:



    Doal is pretty weak, not able to conclude much from this. From the PAL border in the northeast, however, this must be near their border region. The Discovery continued to circle the continent counter-clockwise.

    Alright, now about this Colossus thing... well, it deserves its own post.
    Attached Files

    Comment


    • Project Colossus?

      In short, I think we should go for the Colossus. Here is an outline of the plan, which turns out to be surprisingly easy to pull off. In the picture, Bob is in white, Erik is in yellow, and the John/Parsons pair in red:



      Project Colossus

      T125 Forge (37/120) +8 shields/turn
      Bob chopping (2t), Erik moving, John/Parsons plantation (2t)
      Mellow working clams, two plains forests, plains forest hill (+0 food/+8 shields)

      T126 Forge (45/120) +7 base, +30 chop, +60 double-whip
      Bob chopping (done!), Erik moving, John/Parsons plantation (done!)
      Mellow working clams, three plains forests (+1 food/+7 shields)

      T127 Colossus (44/250) +2 base * +125% = 4 shields/turn
      Bob moving, Erik chopping (3t), John/Parsons road (done!)
      Mellow working clams, grassland forest (+4 food/+2 shields)

      T128 Colossus (48/250) +2 base * +125% = 4 shields/turn
      Bob chopping (3t), Erik chopping (2t), John/Parsons moving
      Mellow working clams, grassland forest (+4 food/+2 shields)

      T129 Colossus (52/250) +2 base, +30 chop = +32 * +125% = 72 shields/turn
      Bob chopping (2t), Erik chopping (done!), John/Parsons chopping (2t)
      Mellow working clams, grassland forest (+4 food/+2 shields)

      T130 Colossus (124/250) +2 base, +60 chop = +62 * +125% = 139 shields/turn
      Bob chopping (done!), Erik moves to dyes, John/Parsons (done!)
      Mellow working clams, grassland forest (+4 food/+2 shields)
      [should actually regrow to size 3 this turn, and can easily pull more shields if needed]

      T131 Colossus (263/250) done

      * * * * * * * * * *

      Obviously, first of all I'd like to see someone check my math to make sure I did this right, although there's actually room to pull a lot more shields at Mellow if desired. (We can't speed up the ETA though, since the big push comes from the forest chops.) Now, I'm fully aware that we don't get all that great of a value from the Colossus. We don't have that many coastal cities, and we'd prefer to be working other tiles in most cases. Nevertheless, let's build the wonder anyway! Here's why:

      - Low opportunity cost. It's easy to build, and costs us little. The only thing we're giving up here is a couple of forests (which we probably would have chopped anyway!) and about 5t of worker labor. I think delaying hooking up extra dyes for a few turns is worth it to get a helpful wonder.
      - Long period of usefulness. Are we planning to get Astronomy anytime soon? No? That's what I thought.
      - Denial value. By building the Colossus, PAL and Imperio don't build the wonder. This is a major factor in and of itself, IMO.
      - Low opportunity cost part two. If we go for the wonder and fail, we'll get a nice cash refund. In fact, wonder-building (with multipliers in place) conversion into gold is one of the best values you can get in this game. Right?

      I've left Erik unmoved so far, because he needs to head south this turn to put the plan in action. (He can even get in a "free" turn of roading while doing so!) Otherwise, everything is set up. What do you think? It seems like a pretty easy call to me, but then again, I did type up the darned plan...
      Attached Files

      Comment


      • Not sure about Granary in BW: it doesn't have any good food tiles (3 from improved sheep being the best) so wouldn't a cheap Library be a better move? That way we can build the brown road then directly improve the roaded silk to chop the Library to completion.

        I'm not convinced by the arguments for Colossus; I think we'd be better off getting the infrastructure and improvements that our cities need in order to make Operation Bloodbath as effective as possible.

        Imperio moving those units 1 tile east is just lame

        Comment


        • Brown vs. Yellow at BW; the way I see it, we're going to want both the (yellow) plains hill and the (brown) silk roaded eventually, but the Silk is more immediately useful, so go brown.

          Comment


          • I don't think that the land south of Rabbits connects to Banana. When we asked Rabbits a while back, they told us to go through PAL lands to meet Banana. I don't think they lied to us. That warrior is the same we made first contact with. He either wandered through PAL lands or (more likely) comes with a galley. But definitely investigate in th next turns.

            Doal was Bananas latest city, so most likely a filler city. We can also see cultural borders of the next city to Doal's east (location NE-3E of Doal).
            I would have moved the galley into Doal actually to get some more land tiles revealed.

            Betty Hur should move to the front line (its a long jog for her, so better get her started. The North is barb-free.) She is a 3.8/4.0, so already helpful as a mop-up unit. And don't units heal better within cultural borders?

            I do like the Colossus plan:
            1. The added GNP from the Colossus will help a bit with speeding up the necessary research for "The Bloodbath". Currently we would get additional ~12bpt from water tiles. Say we work some more water tiles in the future, the Colossus wil increase our GNP by 5-10%.
            2. Denial, denial, denial. PAL will get sooner or later.

            EDIT: What really annoys me, is the fact that with all the delays and no more than 16hours on the clock, no team except Rabbits has finished their turn. Whenever I post in the "Away" thread, I come back to see what I missed and the game is where I left it.

            mh

            Comment


            • My thoughts on the issues du jour:

              Road: via brown route.
              Colossus: err, rather not but if we have to then OK
              Betty: agree with mh, move to Pink Dot this turn.
              Bluebell Woods: Granary first, disagree with Swiss Pauli. Having little food is a reason to build a granary, not to ignore it!
              With Imperio we should be very careful that they aren't moving a stack through Incan lands to attack us.

              Oh, and there is a guy asking in the sign-up thread to join our team. We should let him know one way or the other. I don't mind him joining.

              Comment


              • Well again, with Colossus it's not so much that we need the wonder, rather that we can build it at very low cost, so why not? 250 shields is nothing when you get 67 per chop! Essentially, I need our four workers in the south for about 5t. I think that the Colossus is worth that trade off. Or, by city:

                - Green Acres: we lose nothing here. The city is just growing to size 6 at max rate to whip a settler, and it can do that by working coastal tiles.

                - Something Fishy: no real loss here either. My plan outlined above still gets us the dyes tile in play right after growth takes place, and nothing else is too terribly pressing here.

                - Pink Dot: we build the dyes plantation about 3t slower here by having John/Parsons chop a forest first. Again, I don't think that's a terribly large sacrifice.

                - Mellow Yellow: the one place where we make a tradeoff. Essentially, we trade three forest chops that could have gone into lighthouse/library/etc. into Colossus instead. Now we would be chopping these tiles anyway, but it's fair to point out that they could have gone into infrastructure instead. mostly_harmless thinks that Colossus could eventually pull in 5-10% of our economy (think Saxon the Beach with Moai + Colossus!), and if that's true, it's a worthwhile investment.

                Anyway, I think I'm going to move Erik south, because even if we change our minds, we can have him build dyes plantations and chop jungle down there. And there's not much for him to do at Green currently... Other planned moves:

                - Betty will head out, as requested.
                - Bluebell Woods stays on granary; low food surplus definitely makes a granary more needed, not less.
                - Looks like "brown" is the favored route to our new city.
                - Did anyone double-check my math at Mellow for the Colossus? We'd better make sure that's right first.

                Not a whole lot of time left, so I'll have to do these moves before going to sleep tonight.

                Comment


                • General

                  Current Turn:
                  Turn 125 - 250 AD
                  Turn Timer expires at approx (UTC)

                  Active Turn Player:
                  Sullla

                  Tech:
                  Engineering (3t)
                  100% research (215 [259] beakers/turn) @ -64gpt
                  798/1430 beakers overall

                  Gold
                  170g in treasury

                  Cities

                  Airstrip One [size 10] [guarded by Xena and Mariah]:
                  National Epic (8t)
                  Infrastructure: Palace, Granary, Barracks, Library, Forge, Academy, Great Library
                  Great Scientist 152/200, +8 GPP/turn, due in 6t

                  Pink Dot [size 8] [guarded by Britney's Spears and Adria and Athena]:
                  Horse Archer (1t)
                  Infrastructure: Barracks, Granary, Aqueduct, Hanging Gardens
                  Building some insurance military.

                  China Beach [size 5] [guarded by Ms Piggy]:
                  Forge (24t) [anger duration 1t and 11t]
                  Infrastructure: Granary, Library, Barracks, Lighthouse
                  Worker to be started next turn, after growth to size 6

                  Cape Town [size 5] [guarded by Diana and Fyre Errow and Gillian and Jamie Lynn's Spears and Hannah and Christina and Aphrodite and Demeter and Affirmed and Allydar and Akara and Gladys and Nelly and Mrs Jumbo and Kitty]:
                  Catapult (1t)
                  Infrastructure: Barracks, Heroic Epic, Walls

                  Something Fishy [size 5] [guarded by Svava]:
                  Forge (5t) [anger duration 1t and 11t]
                  Infrastructure: Granary, Library, Courthouse

                  Green Acres [size 4] [guarded by Robyn Hood]:
                  Forge (48t) [anger duration 3t and 13t]
                  Infrastructure: Granary, Library, Lighthouse
                  Swap to and whip settler upon hitting size 6

                  Mellow Yellow [size 4] [guarded by Hera]:
                  Forge (11t)
                  Infrastructure: Granary
                  Project Colossus up next (?)

                  Saxon the Beach [size 2] [guarded by no one!]:
                  Lighthouse (2t), Moai Statues (41t) [anger duration 9t]
                  Infrastructure: Granary

                  Bluebell Woods [size 1] [guarded by no one!]:
                  Granary (30t)
                  Infrastructure: none
                  Priorities: connect to road network, connect sheep, start building silk plantations

                  Non-Combat Units

                  Worker [Winston]:
                  Chopping/Mining grassland hill north of China Beach
                  Mining (3t)

                  Worker [Bernard]:
                  Chop/Cottage grassland river tile at Airstrip One
                  Chop (2t)

                  Worker [Mustapha Mond]:
                  Chop/road/plantation silks at Saxon the Beach
                  Building plantation (4t)

                  Worker [O'Brien]:
                  Road between Cape Town and Pink Dot
                  Roading (2t)

                  Worker [Helmholtz]:
                  Complete road between Airstrip One and Cape Town
                  Roading (done!)

                  Worker [Parsons]:
                  Help build dyes plantation at Something Fishy
                  Building Plantation (2t)

                  Worker [Syme]:
                  Road between Pink Dot and Cape Town
                  Roading (2t)

                  Worker [John the Savage]:
                  Chop/plantation/road Something Fishy's dyes
                  Building Plantation (2t)

                  Worker [Bob the Builder]:
                  Chop/mine/road forested plains hill at Mellow Yellow
                  Chopping (2t)

                  Worker [Serious Steve]:
                  Improve deer tile at Saxon the Beach
                  Camping deer (3t)

                  Worker [Energetic Erik]:
                  Moving south to either build dyes planatations or help chop Colossus
                  Moving to tile (2t), getting "free" turn of roading done

                  Military Units

                  Galley [RBS Discovery]:
                  Exploring Banana territory

                  War Elephant [Mrs. Jumbo]:
                  Guard Cape Town

                  War Elephant [Nelly]:
                  Guard Cape Town

                  Maceman [Gladys]:
                  Guard Cape Town

                  Maceman [Akara]:
                  Guard Cape Town

                  Horse Archer [Camilla]:
                  Move to Cape Town

                  Horse Archer [Allydar]:
                  Guard Cape Town

                  Horse Archer [Affirmed]:
                  Guard Cape Town

                  Catapult [Kitty]:
                  Guard Cape Town

                  Axeman [Gillian]:
                  Guarding Cape Town (for now)
                  Heading to Twin Peaks eventually

                  Axeman [Adria]:
                  Guard Pink Dot

                  Spearman [Mariah]:
                  Guard Airstrip One

                  Spearman [Christina]:
                  Guard Cape Town

                  Spearman [Hannah]:
                  Guard Cape Town

                  Spearman [Jamie Lynn's Spears]:
                  Guard Cape Town

                  Spearman [Britney's Spears]:
                  Guard Pink Dot, moved north of the city to watch workers (in case Imperio chariot wanders down south)

                  Chariot [Betty Hur]:
                  Move east towards the projected battlefield
                  10XP - our most heroic unit!

                  Chariot [Lady Godiva]:
                  Get intel on Imperio/Templar cities

                  Archer [Ms Piggy]:
                  Guard China Beach

                  Archer [Diana]:
                  Guard Cape Town

                  Archer [Billy Jean Tell]:
                  Exploring 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 [Hera]:
                  Guard Mellow Yellow

                  Archer [Athena]:
                  Guard Pink Dot

                  Archer [Aphrodite]:
                  Guard Cape Town

                  Archer [Demeter]:
                  Move to Pink Dot, protect workers en route

                  Archer [Persepone]:
                  Bust fog in the north to stop barbs from appearing

                  Warrior [Xena]:
                  Guard Airstrip One

                  Warrior [Jennifer]:
                  Exploring the eastern continent

                  Foreign Builds from C&D

                  Templars 166EP
                  Jerusalem = N/A, zero shields available
                  Infrastructure: Palace, Barracks
                  Damascus = 40 shields (+40)
                  Infrastructure: Terrace, Barracks, Forge
                  Jericho = 7 shields (-36)
                  Infrastructure: Walls
                  Acre = 9 shields (+5)
                  Infrastructure: Monument

                  Jerusalem finishes a 50-shield build. Horse archer or catapult, it seems. Forest chop at Damascus (?) Jericho is a swapped build of some kind, as there were 43 shields there last turn.

                  Imperio 224EP
                  Mutal = N/A, zero shields available
                  Infrastructure: Palace, Barracks, Granary, Monument, Stonehenge, Oracle
                  Lakamha = N/A, zero shields available
                  Infrastructure: Barracks, Monument, Islamic shrine
                  Chichen Itza = 4 shields (+4)
                  Infrastructure: Granary, Monument, Lighthouse, Barracks
                  Uxmal = 21 shields (+21)
                  Infrastructure: Monument
                  Mayapan = 30 shields (+8)
                  Infrastructure: Monument, Barracks
                  Calakmul = 74 shields (+10)
                  Infrastructure: Monument

                  Mutal and Lakamha both build maces; we can see them with our spying units, and we expected them to be built from the build-swapping going on earlier. Still unsure what they're building at Calakmul.

                  PAL 64EP
                  The Warning = N/A, zero shields available
                  Infrastructure: Granary, Barracks, Lighthouse, Library, Forge, Confucian Temple, Academy
                  Heliopolis = 26 shields (+15)
                  Infrastructure: Granary
                  Alexandria = 17 shields (+17)
                  Infrastructure: Granary, Forge
                  Giza = 40 shields (+2)
                  Infrastructure: Granary, Lighthouse
                  Byblos = 4 shields (-)
                  Infrastructure: none

                  The Warning finishes Confucian temple, as mh reported earlier. Other cities are in the middle of builds. PAL seems to be building lots of forges, as their Production stat keeps climbing steadily. Not a bad idea...

                  Rabbits 48EP
                  Caerbannog = 57 shields (+57)
                  Infrastructure: Palace, Barracks, Library, Great Wall
                  Digger's Burrow = 17 shields (+4)
                  Infrastructure: Barracks, Monument, Granary, Walls
                  Phrygian = 18 shields (+12)
                  Infrastructure: none

                  Rabbits swap back to their previous build at the capital, which had 40-something shields previously. Still not sure what it is though! The other two cities don't have any production to speak of.

                  Banana 0EP
                  Doal = 16 shields/turn (-)
                  Infrastructure: none

                  Banana info, yay!

                  Population census:
                  PAL 53 (size 11,8,7,6,5,5,5,5,1)
                  RB 43->44 (10,8,5,5,5,4,4,2,[1])
                  Imp 40 (10,7,7,7,5,4)
                  Ban 28 (9,8,5,4,2)
                  Tem 26 (8,7,6,3,2)
                  Rab 8 (4,3,1)


                  Treasury report:
                  Templars: 124gold (+11gpt)
                  Imperio: 276gold (+1gpt)
                  PAL: 206gold (-91gpt)
                  Rab: 37gold (-1gpt)
                  Banana: 40gold (+3gpt)

                  Comment


                  • Bluebell Wood: Granary first, a thousand times granary. Past the earliest game stages (4-5 cities), every city gets a granary first, period. A city lacking a granary functionally has its food surplus halved. 60 hammers into a granary translates back into 60 food saved very quickly. Way more payoff than a library here. What's that library going to give, 25% of 4 = 1 beaker?

                    I like the Colossus plan. In large part for denial. But we do get some payoff just from working the seafood resources that we have anyway. I end up disagreeing with your numbers, though. The big miss is that chop hammers (not shields! ) don't get credited until the next turn. We can't chop then double-whip both on T126. I'll go over it in detail a bit later.

                    Comment


                    • I started to do math on Colossus, but then I realized there was no need. Three chops gets close enough at 30 x 3 x 2.25 = 202 hammers, and overflow from the forge whip easily finishes it.

                      On that note, I took the liberty while logged in to reassign Mellow from the 3H plains forest to the 2F 1H grass forest. The hammers have no effect on Colossus date, and the food puts the city in better shape to regrow after the forge whip.

                      Comment


                      • Colossus - PAL is running a partial trade-route economy, and we both know the strength of that (we played together in a no-cottages SG didn't we?). The way I see it, Colossus is a cheap wonder which is of some value to us (in the Maoi city for example) and is very useful for denial purposes. Useful for us because WE don't plan to head for Astronomy for 40 turns (until after we kill one of our neighbors), but also useful because PAL would DEFINITELY make good use of the wonder. PAL has absolutely no reason to prioritize Astronomy or trade for it - they're going to keep the lead in numbers of cities, and then kill their neighbors. Plus most of their cities are coastal, so they have nice Great Lighthouse+Colossus synergy. The civs that can benefit the most from Astronomy are Imperio and Banana, and both might be dead in 60 turns.

                        Units in the Cape - I think Sullla is right - we need to get up to 3-4 cats now. It's a tough balancing act, but the basic question is what leaves us in a better position to kill units outside the city? Obviously all cats doesn't, but all Jumbos and Maces just results in 50/50 results as well. 4 cats is probably good for now, though of course more is ideal.
                        Last edited by sunrise089; March 30, 2009, 01:02.

                        Comment


                        • Colossus: Plan B(anana)

                          It seems that the main reason for building Colossus is to deny it to our rivals, so how about the following idea: we trade Copper to Banana for Iron and ask them to build it. They should already have a cheap forge in Banoplis which should be able to churn the wonder in handful of turns, and we get the Iron we want for Pike upgrades.

                          Thoughts?

                          Comment


                          • That is only useful if they can get it done before us.
                            I doubt Bananapolis has a forge in place. They just finished Moai there a couple of turns back. Also keep in mind that they have only 5 land tiles to work there. Say something like 13hpt from that (assuming three mines!). With stone (do they have stone?) and Bureaucracy they needed 8 turns for Moai. Say now (at size 8) they pull in 18hpt, that will see a forge maybe next turn. From then on (with copper) they would need ~5 turns for Colossus.
                            That estimate is standing and falling with the amount of hills in Bananapolis BFC.
                            So even then we can finish the thing in the same time.
                            I say we go for it. Even if we lose out we get lots of cash to fuel our research.

                            mh

                            Comment


                            • Hi,

                              first I thought it would be better to spend hammers in preparation for Operation Bloodbath, but after reading all the posts and thinking about it, I'm for building the Colossus ourselves now as well.

                              -Kylearan

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by T-hawk View Post
                                I started to do math on Colossus, but then I realized there was no need. Three chops gets close enough at 30 x 3 x 2.25 = 202 hammers, and overflow from the forge whip easily finishes it.

                                Alrighty then. This is pretty much the argument for Colossus: three chops + whip overflow = wonder. You can't really beat that. Heck, I'd build the wonder even if it didn't help us at all, to deny it to the other teams.

                                Comment

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