Turnplayer Thread No. 5

[ruff_hi]

capturing a worker sometimes auto-kills it. Thus we will not be in a position to give it back. I think we email them about it quick.

[darrelljs]

I think any sane risk/reward analysis would argue against killing the worker .

Sunrise, if we take the worker but don't delete it, can't they just take it back the next turn and we are down one unit? If not, we can hold the worker "hostage" and follow up with a diplomatic e-mail to this effect:

Apologies for taking your Worker hostage, but we cannot allow that road to complete until peace is secured. Once we have concluded our negotiations your Worker will be returned unharmed.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

capturing a worker sometimes auto-kills it. Thus we will not be in a position to give it back. I think we email them about it quick.

Really? I've never seen a worker killed by capturing it...

Darrell

[ruff_hi]

happened to me all the time in a game I was playing. But that was a mod so it might be mod specific. Anyway - it was very annoying.

[sooooo]

Question: do we want to whip the library at Red Herring? It has no whip penalty as yet, and it we're pulling a lot more food than shields there. Or do we need to save population for an emergency unit whip? It seems like we have that covered with the trireme and archer though...

No, we don't want to whip anything before we draft the city. A library isn't very urgent since we are running 0% science, possibly we can even quadruple-whip a forge and build a library before we need to dial up research again.

My city build recommendations were/are:

Missionary from Something Fishy (for Pink Dot)
I suppose a courthouse from Green Acres is OK.
Forge from Cape Town
Switch to settler at Mellow Yellow
Confucian Missionary from China Beach (to get another monastery into Airstrip One)

[sunrise089]

Ruff - that's the AI, right? Normal worker captures in MP or SP definitely do not auto-kill the worker. The AI does though since they capture and delete it at AI-speed.

I'm totally fine with leaving the worker be as a political gesture. I'll concede that point to Soooo and Darrell. But for informational purposes only a chariot is worth next to nothing compared to delaying an enemy attack. If, for example, Imperio moves in this turn, a single-turn delay would mean the difference between our mounted units in the south being in the fight or not.

[Dreylin]

Imperio are teetering on the edge of whether to side with us or with PAL. If we kill their worker it could tip them over to PAL's side.

I agree completely.

[T-hawk]

Apologies for taking your Worker hostage, but we cannot allow that road to complete until peace is secured. Once we have concluded our negotiations your Worker will be returned unharmed.

I like this approach and this message. I do not trust the sincerity of Imperio's peace talks - all their bluster about peace may just be delay and smokescreen tactics.

Ruff, workers are not auto-killed on capture in the standard game. It can look like so in SP because the AI immediately deletes any captured workers in enemy or most neutral territory.

[ruff_hi]

It was definitely workers that I was capturing that were killed (ie deleted) but I am pretty sure it might have been while I was playing a mod.

[Swiss Pauli]

My city build recommendations were/are:

Missionary from Something Fishy (for Pink Dot)
I suppose a courthouse from Green Acres is OK.
Forge from Cape Town
Switch to settler at Mellow Yellow
Confucian Missionary from China Beach (to get another monastery into Airstrip One)

I'd keep Cape Town on units as we need to replace the half dozen cats we've sacrificed lately, so I'd go for a treb as we'll now be fighting Templars inside their cities. If we want to press home our advantage against Templars we should first get our Stack o Doom together, and then go for a Forge in Cape.

Can't log in to check, but I'd go for a cat at CB if it can get to the front by the time our units at Pink/SF have healed.

If we're going to draft Green Acres down, will we really need a CH there?

[dsplaisted]

We are chopping two forests near cape town which means the forge won't take long to build.

The courthouse in Green Acres will also give us spy points which we need against PAL (they are spending their points on us I believe).

[sooooo]

I'd keep Cape Town on units as we need to replace the half dozen cats we've sacrificed lately, so I'd go for a treb as we'll now be fighting Templars inside their cities. If we want to press home our advantage against Templars we should first get our Stack o Doom together, and then go for a Forge in Cape.

Well, we just put a chop in at Cape Town for a forge. I think forge is fine - I have not given up hope of peace with Imperio (in fact I predict we'll get it this turn) and if we do get it then we can free up our big stack. With 2 chops it shouldn't take too long. Even if we don't get peace, we need time to heal our mounted units, wipe out the stack on the hill, draft about 6 macemen and get them to the front line. We can probably spare some cats from the big stack in the north too.

If we're going to draft Green Acres down, will we really need a CH there?

Well, no. I would only save 2-3 gold per turn. But it's a cheap build that does something. Other option is a missionary.

Can't log in to check, but I'd go for a cat at CB if it can get to the front by the time our units at Pink/SF have healed.

Yeah we should definitely have time. If we get peace then we don't need the cat but if we don't get peace then we'll need draftees to hit the templars, and that takes time. Catapult at CB is fine by me.

[mostly-harmless]

I like this approach and this message. I do not trust the sincerity of Imperio's peace talks - all their bluster about peace may just be delay and smokescreen tactics.

I am with darell and T-Hawk here.
That worker can also be used to do some "reparations" from the damaged we suffered during peace time sabotage by Imperios spies.

EDIT: I think sunrise argument for needing more time to bring in our knights is the most crucial one.

mh

[sooooo]

BTW - who's been messing with the tiles? I logged in and we have some extremely weedy tiles at MY - an engineer and an unimproved plains? I set them back to the correct tiles (the coast!). Settler is still just a triple-whip even at 100 hammers because we have a forge.

I also noticed that someone changed from working 2 mines at Airstrip One to a new cottage and a grass forest. Now maybe working the cottages could be argued for, because the timing of the bank is rather unfortunate what with us going to put the slider up at around the same time. But the grass forest doesn't make that much sense to me. Maybe cottage+grass mine is the best combination after we switch out of bureaucracy, but for this turn I think we should stick to the mines.

I put SF and CB onto catapults, but think we should change them to missionaries if Imperio sign peace. Maybe SF should be missionary even if Imperio don't sign peace. At GA I'm more sure that missionary is better than courthouse. Courthouse is pretty rubbish here. It only saves 3 GPT while the city is size 9 (!). When it is size 5 it'll be saving peanuts.

[sunrise089]

I did change the tile assignments in three cities Sooooo:

1) I took Pink Dot off of the mines since we don't need the cat in 1t.

2) I took Something Fishy off of an engineer.

3) I turned on the governor at Jericho so the city didn't starve - it was on all specialists.