Turnplayed Thread #4

[Sullla]

City decisions to make:
Something Fishy a lighthouse next turn, china beach another work boat. I was thinking about having Airstrip One start a horse archer, which will get converted into a knight when we get guilds.

Most of sooooo's points above are what I would be doing too. One quick question: do we want/need another Islamic missionary out of Airstrip One? This is not an argument necessarily in favor of one, just pointing out that the capital is currently our only source of spreading Islam, and asking if we want to do more religious spread at the moment for either current Organized Religion building or future Theocracy drafting.

[Dreylin]

@Sullla: We don't have to rely on A1's Monastery since we are in OrgRel. I had been assuming that wherever this first Missionary went would end up pushing out any more Missionaries we needed.

[Zeviz]

HA->Knight looks like a better idea than a missionary, because Knights will be most powerful before Templars start training pikes and elephants. Are there any additional cities where we can start pre-building knights?

Sunnyvale here

I live in Mountain View, right next door.

[mostly-harmless]

This is the turnplayer thread, right?

Templars probed our Longbow on the hill, by attacking with a catapult (at 2.5% odds).
Elizabeth did not even get a scratch. Templars minus one cat.

A bit of worrying news: Imperio researched Guilds.
We will probably see it being gifted to Templars soon. And once more thanks to the mapmaker for providing both civs with iron.

We will get Guilds next turn from Banana iirc. NOw it might seem that we are falling behind in military research, but keep in mind we have a solid lead towards Nationalism and on our side there are two teams with research going on, while Templars more or less shut down their research and feed upon Imperios GNP.

mh

[sooooo]

Just a note that if you decide to settle New Burgundy then Bob the Builder does not need help chopping his forest. The other two workers can work on irrigation or wineries.

[sunrise089]

Turn 143

City report:
*Airstrip 1 - Missionary for Saxon finished. Horse archer (will transform to knight) due in 3.
*Pink Dot - Cat due in 1. Another unit, probably a mace, next.
*China Beach - Work boat for Frozen Clams finished. Another is due in 2.
*Cape Town - Cat finished. Another cat due in 1.
*Something Fishy - Cat finished. Lighthouse started, due in 1. Is this the right build?
*Green Acres - Globe Theater due in 16 before chops.
*Mellow Yellow - Barracks due in 4 turns.
*Saxon the Beach - Moai due in 7 turns.
*Bluebell Woods - Forge due in 8.
*Red Herring - Lighthouse due in 9 turns.

Worker report:
*Energetic Eric began roading the desert tile 1SE 1E of Cape Town. That was a free worker turn.

Domestic Military Composition Report:
*Cape Town garrison - 8 strength-eight units, 2 horse archers, 2 pikes, 4 cats, 1 axe, 4 archers.
*Pink Dot garrison - 5 maces, 2 pikes, 1 longbow, 3 cats, 2 archers.
*Central garrison (units in open) - 1 elephant, 2 maces, 1 pike, 5 horse archers, 2 chariots, 2 cats.

Enemy Military Composition Report:
*Cape Town opposing force - 1 mace, 6 longbows, 1 pike. Other units in fog estimated at 7+ strength-8 units, 1+ horse archers, and 7+ cats plus any new C&D unit discoveries.
*Pink Dot opposing force - 1 mace, 2 crossbows, 1 horse archer, 1 sword, 3(!) cats, 3 chariots, 1 spear.
*Central opposing force - 1 crossbow, 1 horse archer, 1 axeman.

Military Action Report:
*Our longbow on the grassland hill outside of Pink Dot survived a Templar cat attack and took no damage. Templars never got the memo about not using a cat versus a single defender.
*Buttercup the cat is the forest next to Jericho. She began bombarding down Jericho's defenses this turn, from 50% to 46%. Just 11 turns to go!
*Our 2-movers in the middle are still hanging out on the desert tile between the peaks.
*The Imperio stack has now been missing for a long time. Since we've got a spy about to enter Imperio lands I want to begin moving a few of our units from Cape Town south towards the center. The desert tile between the peaks is the key tile - units there can make it inside Cape Town in 2 turns and attack out from Pink Dot in 2 turns. This turn I moved the elephant "guarding" Energetic Eric outside Jericho to the key tile, and also started a mace and a cat from Cape Town on the route.

Spy Report:
*Soooo had the spy take a slightly different route than I had in mind, but the new route will work well. Nikita will be in Imperio land next turn and should spot the Imperio army (if it's still around the north) in 2 turns.

Questions and notes:
*Should Something Fishy be building a lighthouse?
*Does anyone know why our power charts dropped last turn? The slaving?
*We now have visibility into Banana Split.
*With our rivals now having knights, and with us having no iron of our own, gaining access to elephants would be really nice. Do we think it's worth taking another stab at reminding PAL that we aren't challenging their lead and we're not capturing enemy cities, and asking if they can offer us elephant again?
*Speaking of PAL, I saw gitbliss in game, but he refused to talk to me.
*Frozen Clams and New Burgundy will both be settled next turn. However, there is still time for voters to change their mind. Either spot can be settled next turn, though currently we're heading towards New Burgundy.

[mostly-harmless]

I guess we want to focus more on pike than maces given that we will face Knights soon, have no source of ivory and iron is borrowed from Banana.

Moving more units into neutral territory will use up more military maintenance costs.

If the spy lives long enough to confirm that IMperios army is not in the north, is it worth to assemble a medium sized (defense focused) stack to go on a pillage tour around Chichen Itza and Mutal?

mh

[sooooo]

With the spy last turn, I just hovered the cursor while right-clicking in Mutal and it said the quickest way was via chichen itza. That was fine by me because they could be hiding the stack behind the city.

Lighthouse at SF is the right build.

Since we have to give iron back to banana eventually, I think we should make all military builds from next turn knights. We could have knights coming from Pink Dot, Something Fishy, Airstrip One, Cape Town and China Beach.

[sunrise089]

@Sooooo - Ok, I'll switch all available cities to horse archers/knights next turn. It will be a shame we won't have 2 promotions on the knights though, but I suppose lots of stable builds isn't really worth it.

@M_H - I'll try to figure out the ideal way to keep units parked in New Burgundy's culture....but ultimately we may have to deal with some unit cost in order to cover Pink Dot. If the entire Imperio+Templar stack moved into our land at the end of this turn things would be dicey.

[Sullla]

Templars probed our Longbow on the hill, by attacking with a catapult (at 2.5% odds).
Elizabeth did not even get a scratch. Templars minus one cat.

Unbelievable. Do these guys have any clue what they're doing? Can I send them a link to my Civ4 Walkthrough with the title "Suggested Reading"?

With reference to your dotted points sunrise:

- Yep, we do want the lighthouse at Something Fishy, as already posted.
- The minor drop in on the Power bar was indeed caused by slaving population, because we didn't lose any units interturn (and that's the only other possible explanation).
- Regaining ivory access would be lovely but I don't see it happening, not if PAL won't even talk to us diplomatically.
- Personally, I wouldn't sweat the unit support costs. Tactical placement of units comes first, and saving money by keeping them in our borders is a secondary priority. You have a better idea of where to stick our units to play "zone defense" than anyone else on the team, so use your best judgment. (Can we get Atlas in here to help out? I think he would enjoy the current struggle.)

Two new cities for us next turn, woot! Suck on that, Templars!

[sooooo]

Haha, attacking that longbow with one catapult is priceless. If only we were still taunting templars and not asking them for a peace deal ...

I ended turn BTW. Bluebell was made to work its mine, cutting the time for its forge to 5 turns.

[sunrise089]

Haha, attacking that longbow with one catapult is priceless. If only we were still taunting templars and not asking them for a peace deal ...

I ended turn BTW. Bluebell was made to work its mine, cutting the time for its forge to 5 turns.

The funny thing is Templars should indeed kill the longbow and take the hill, it's a really important tile. But they certainly need to be more effective than a cat that probably didn't even have the first strike promo.

What I expect to see next is for them to attack our units outside Jericho. I actually would prefer them not to since I like having visibility in that area, but with me moving units to the New Burgundy area the panicky Templars will probably expect us to put the new units next to Jericho instead.

Final though: If Templars DON'T ever try to kill our units outside Jericho, and considering our road network, we will eventually want to consider killing or capturing the city. Since we hold the forest we risk nothing by dropping off like 5 maces if we can actually bombard their defenses all the way down.

[ruff_hi]

I wouldn't move additional units against Jericho in the short term - nothing to gain because we still have a lot of turns worth of bombing to go. However, this action is a small annoyance to Templar and, hopefully, we can turn this to our advantage diplomatically.

I'll chase up Aidun who has disappeared again.

[sunrise089]

I wouldn't move additional units against Jericho in the short term ...

Definitely right Ruff. I'm more thinking that if Templars let us bombard Jericho down for another 10 turns, at zero cultural defense we can take the city with like 1-2 units killed. Of course normally I wouldn't want to expose our stack, BUT even if Templars are hiding units in the fog our defenders are protected by the forest. So we'll keep bombarding for a while, but if the war is still going on we'll consider moving units up to take the city around turn 153.

[sooooo]

If I were templars I'd attack the stack with the maceman, crossbow and axeman.