Turnplayer Thread No. 6

[darrelljs]

Hmm...I think we have to assume Imperio has an indication we are up to No Good. Honestly, if Imperio could be trusted I'd be in favor of a three way pact with them and Banana against PAL (they'd have to drop their ridiculous claim that we cede territory we paid for with blood, sweat and tears). I just don't trust them...I've known too many Spaniards .

Darrell

[sooooo]

I think I've messed up the maths on oxford. I just added up the hammers from the whips and added them to the hpt x the turns to the start of T171.

But I forgot that when the game calculates the pop you whip on T170 it does not anticipate how many hammers you get on T171 so in actual fact we would have to triple-whip bluebell and I think SF too (not double-whip). That's not a disaster since we'll get a lot of overflow into our next builds.

[Compromise]

I don't know how to get this information to the right person asap, so I'll put a link here to the post in the diplo thread:

Draft of Proposed response to Imperio

[sunrise089]

I'm pretty mad at myself for forgetting Ruff's chat room doesn't clear the text and therefore tipping Donovan off. All he saw is "if Imperio moves their galley then we're screwed" but that is still quite a bit.

[mostly-harmless]

Well, look, if Banana is going traitor on us, then it just completes the list of civs that do not cooperate with RB in this game. Against these odds, I think we had a nice game so far.

mh

[sunrise089]

Turn 168

MID-TURN REPORT. URGENT ISSUE TO DISCUSS, BUT I'M POSTING THE BUILDS AND STUFF NOW. ITEMS IN RED ARE LAST TURN'S INFO

City Report:
*Airstrip 1 - University due in 5. Market on hold.
*Pink Dot - University due in 8.
*China Beach - University due in 16. Cat on hold.
*Cape Town - Cat complete. Another cat due in 2.
*Something Fishy - University due in 7.
*Green Acres - Islamic Missionary due in 11.
*Mellow Yellow - Bank due in 173.
*Saxon the Beach - University due in 8.
*Bluebell Fields - University due in 13. Bank on hold.
*Red Herring - Forge due in 10.
*Upper Burgundy - Barracks due in 6.
*Frozen Clams - Library due in 23.
*Jericho - Cat due in 3.
*Jerusalem - Work boat complete. Courthouse due in 8.
*Jungle Fever - Granary due in 23.
*Sweet Tooth - Granary due in 55.
*Constantinople - Theater due in 51.
*San Sebastien - Granary due in 60.

Worker Report:
*Helmholtz started a chop at A1, which I believe was the correct move.
*Our Mutal workers returned to their staging tiles.

Domestic Military Composition Report:
*Cape Town garrison - 1 axe, 2 archers.
*Jericho garrison - 1 archer.
*Jerusalem garrison - empty
*Constantinople garrison - Complicated, see below.
*Naval strike force - 1 trireme, 2 galleys, 4 Oromos.
*Mounted strike force - 4 knights, 5 HAs.

Enemy Military Composition Report:
*Imperio mega-stack: 4 knights, 1 musket, 3 elephants, 6 macemen, 3 pikes, 1 longbows, 9 cats.
*Damascus garrison: 1 musket, 2 maces, 1 longbow, 2 pikes.
*Acre garrison: 1 mace, 1 longbow, 1 spear, 2 quechuas.

Military Action Report:
*I drafted GA, Pink, and China Beach.
*We now own four Cuirassiers, and zero knights.

Spy Report:
*

Questions and notes:
*I kept the cat builds going in Cape Town. A three-turn Curaissair doesn't do us any good really, does it?
*We got border pops in Sweet Tooth, Mellow Yellow, and Green Acres.
*PAL gets Astro in 5 turns.
*Chatted with Rabbits in game for the first time. They received our note. They also expressed concern about Banana.
*New city is named San Sebastian after my favorite literary failed mining project. Much like the mines in the novel, Teplars wasted a lot of effort improving an area that supplied no output to them whatsoever.

[mostly-harmless]

*Chatted with Rabbits in game for the first time. They received our note. They also expressed concern about Banana.

As in "We fear, we will drown in Banana" or "We fear Banana won't survive much longer"?

mh

[sunrise089]

As in "We fear, we will drown in Banana" or "We fear Banana won't survive much longer"?

mh

Latter.

[sooooo]

Logged in and took the following actions:

Took the clams back for Jungle Fever. San Sebastian (our new city) can work the mine for a few turns, letting JF work clams+rice rather than rice+forest.

Rehired the miner at Pink - critical that we don't lose any production here to keep oxford on track.

We can afford to draft Bluebell next turn but we also need to hire an engineer when we do so to get production up to 120 on T170, letting us do a 2-pop whip from 5 to 3.

Our combat engineers in the north had movement points left so I had them farm their tile. May as well - could be useful to spread irrigation down to Jericho.

I reckon we should whip Jerusalem's courthouse next turn.

[sooooo]

What's wrong with a Cuirassier at Cape Town? It's only 3t because we have no overflow. A 2t catapult doesn't seem all that much better.

Not many worker actions. Yojojo should head into A1's other forest. I would sent Nok Tok into Erik's jungle and help chop. It delays the plantation by 1 turn but it lets us have 2 workers start the horse pasture at Constantinople as soon as the city is out of revolt (in 2 turns).

[Compromise]

I'd love to log in to see what's up, but don't want to pull a refugee and misclick. What time will the next turn be played? Should be a good one.

[sunrise089]

I'd log in now then Compromise, only about 5% of our units have any movement points.

Re: Cuirassier - It's a fine build, but operating under the assumption that we'll defeat the Imperio stack in the south we're going to be very limited by cats in the near future.

[T-hawk]

The idea of the Cuirassier is to save more hammers in the long run by conquering an Imperio city so the units that we would need more catapults to kill will instead never be built.

Less convolutedly, we don't need cats for a lightning strike, and it'll be quite a few turns before we actually siege any cities, during which time Cape Town can build more cats.

[sunrise089]

The idea of the Cuirassier is to save more hammers in the long run by conquering an Imperio city so the units that we would need more catapults to kill will instead never be built.

Less convolutedly, we don't need cats for a lightning strike, and it'll be quite a few turns before we actually siege any cities, during which time Cape Town can build more cats.

Cats take several turns to reach the front line.

Is it conceivable that after being sneak attacked any additional cities can be taken by mounted units after the Cuirassier takes three turns to build and then at least one more to move into position? Imperio aren't rocket scientists, but surely they can slave pikes with a four-turn head start.

[Sullla]

sunrise, you said yourself that cuirassiers have odds over any unit Imperio can produce, even pikes. I would definitely start building them out of Cape Town. Any city can build or whip out cats - they're cheap units, and they don't need any promotions to be effective. Cape Town is the only place where we can build cuirassiers rapidly; we get 45 shields/turn there for military, and that's a little short of 2t cuirassiers. Plus, we get 5XP units there thanks to our military instructor, meaning Combat II cuirassiers, which we can't get anywhere else. Strength 14.4 units right out of the gate! I would definitely make that swap, and do so immediately.

Here's another point to consider: as soon as Imperio wipes out Templars this turn, all of the clock rules will go out the door. Imperio could technically end their turn, then immediately play again at the start of the next turn. Obviously, we don't want that to happen! If at all possible, we want sunrise to play the upcoming turn (T169) immediately after the clock rolls over, so we preserve our first-mover advantage and catch Imperio off-guard. (Paradoxically, if Imperio would play first on T169 by doing a double-turn move, then we would want to delay our attack until the last seconds of T169. Again though, we would prefer to avoid that situation entirely!) I will be available to log in and play myself at the very start of next turn, if it's needed. I would prefer not to, however!

Finally - sunrise, we should move the Mounted stack next turn to the iron hill SW-SW of Mutal. We get a chance to split two cities from that spot, if we find that the defense in Mutal is too tight to attack. I'll post screenshots later tonight in the Backstab thread explaining why.