Turn 51-100

[Caledorn]

I think it is not at all something to be frowned upon. There are many reasons for this. But as the main reason for city gifting to be banned is to prevent "gift-upgrade-gift back" cycles or "gift-city-repulse-enemy-gift back" tricks or "gift city to prevent capture" or "gift city to keep a nation alive" or "gift city, steal tech, gift back" and so on, I think this "workaround" with leaving a city empty is nothing to be worried about as it have nothing to do with those few scenarios.

Even more, we might not at all take the city from the barbs, but just kill all defenders but one and invite SpAp to come and take it.

Well, I am not willing to risk being accused of being rule breakers over an assumption - possibly even tainting our potential future victory with "Oh sure, CFC won, but they did it by interpreting the rules in the widest sense possible when they felt it was to their benefit". So if we capture the city and then intentionally allow SpAp to declare war upon us so they can capture the city, and then proceed to negotiate peace with them again after they have captured it, let it be known that I am strongly opposed to the idea just for the record.

I have no objection to the second scenario you describe though, as it is only natural that an ally helps another.

 

[Caledorn]

I think it is worth if we send 4 workers to connect with roads our empire to RB. We will get about 8-9 commerce per turn for free (up to 24-27 more commerce per turn in just 6 turns after we get Currency) and we dont need those workers around Astan right now and we will get our axe on the desert hill to have a look at what is the situation with the Stone and to be ready to protect our settler, who will use part of those roads to get to where we can/decide our Isthmus city is going to be.

Could be an idea to also ask RB (in an informal chat on GTalk just to have that clearly defined in advance) if they are interested in helping out with connecting the road to save us a few moves. But I don't know if they have workers in the area. Did I D) spot any workers in that area when I rolled past on my glorious chariot?

 

[YossarianLives]

Even more, we might not at all take the city from the barbs, but just kill all defenders but one and invite SpAp to come and take it.

If we do this, we should ask SpAp for a gold gift, to make up for the capture gold. Maybe 80% of the total they get for capturing? And they would absolutely have to gift us back the barb worker. That's the whole reason we're chasing them down to this second city, anyways.

By the way, this definitely is not a city that SpAp lost to the Barbarians. Besides the fact that it would have shown up on civstats (end of turn score decreases are pretty rare), you can see in this picture from a few turns ago that it is somewhat isolated from the Spaniards, and they have no roads or anything leading towards the area. They probably don't even know what kind of defenses are in the city.

Spoiler :

 

[YossarianLives]

Could be an idea to also ask RB (in an informal chat on GTalk just to have that clearly defined in advance) if they are interested in helping out with connecting the road to save us a few moves. But I don't know if they have workers in the area. Did I D) spot any workers in that area when I rolled past on my glorious chariot?

This could also lead to them potentially revealing where they planted their last cities, without us having to ask outright and give away our intentions.

 

[Caledorn]

This could also lead to them potentially revealing where they planted their last cities, without us having to ask outright and give away our intentions.

Hm, that's a very good point actually

 

[cav scout]

Regarding the barb city:

My understanding is that the mechanic "city gifting" is banned as opposed to the concept of city gifting. The rules clearly state that cities can changes hands via other means such as culture flip, conquest, UN etc.

I understand your concern Cal but I honestly believe we are just fine if we allow or even encourage another team to take one of our cities via conquest. Perhaps we could ask Plako to clarify though?

Also, one side thought- we could capture the city and then tell Spanish Poly we plan to let them capture it from us with a phony way cause we love them so much ...but then right before they claim it we say "oh no, we just realized this would be city gifting which is prohibited... darn, guess we just will have to keep this city even though the only reason we captured it was to give it to you guys"

 

[2metraninja]

Also, one side thought- we could capture the city and then tell Spanish Poly we plan to let them capture it from us with a phony way cause we love them so much ...but then right before they claim it we say "oh no, we just realized this would be city gifting which is prohibited... darn, guess we just will have to keep this city even though the only reason we captured it was to give it to you guys"

LOL, that would be hilarious!

 

[RegentMan]

What I mean by "going around a rule" (I am not familiar with the proper english term for the expression...

"Loophole."

 

[classical_hero]

Is it at all possible that the second city was captured from SpAp? It seems a little too close to have just spawned there, and I have never seen independently spawned barb cities connected to each other before.

I've seen it happen before.

 

[whb]

The barb city is a little distance away. Cut the worker's escape route by sitting a unit on the road, and don't spend effort chasing a city we don't want to keep.

 

[2metraninja]

I fear the worker is already in the Zulu city. I knew there was a worker in Assyrian some 5-6 turns ago and those roads most probably were built by the same worker, so I think it is around the other city and not around Assyrian. There is a chance though that the worker is still in our reach, improving tile/s just south of Assyrian. And one worker will be great asset for us. Even if we spend few turns upkeep for 2-3 axes, go there and if necessary raze the city. In one of my tests the worker we captured turned in to Fast Worker, which was interesting to see...

Anyone knows how exactly barbs react on enemy units? In sight, in their culture, in direct touch with their cities or units? Do barbs whip? (I know the AI whips (if they are able) when they see your units near their cities - not sure if when standing on their culture or just 1 tile to their culture or 2 tiles near their city.

 

[2metraninja]

Just checked. 5 turns ago (t94) the worker was in Assirian, so he could not be responsible for all those 4-5 tiles of roads built. This means that there is a second worker too. If those 2 are near Assyrian and in our reach, or they are both in the Zulu city, we dont know. But 2 workers for almost free can easily be the best thing we ever had in this game as a present

 

[YossarianLives]

Just logged into the game. Great news, the barb worker is 1S of the city and 2metra has blocked off it's escape route, so it will go hide in the city that we'll capture next turn. At this point I don't see a great need to go take out SpAp's barb city. Maybe just send an axe over to farm experience until it starts spawning units stronger than warriors, and leave it to the Spaniard's to take care of at that point.

We can finish the road to RB next turn, netting us a very nice commerce boost. Alternatively, there are other things for those workers to do (like road the B1 city tile so it can settle 1 turn earlier, and then immediately farming the rice), so we could delay the trade route until Currency comes in (or force RB to expend their own worker labor to finish the route for us).

 

[2metraninja]

Great news, the barb worker is 1S of the city and 2metra has blocked off it's escape route, so it will go hide in the city that we'll capture next turn.

Indeed. And just as in real life, when a door is closing for us there is another door which is opening. We lost the A spots to RB, but we gain a barb city and worker for basically free. To even further sweeten the gift, there is a cow just beside the city and on top of it it is even improved!

At this point I don't see a great need to go take out SpAp's barb city. Maybe just send an axe over to farm experience until it starts spawning units stronger than warriors, and leave it to the Spaniard's to take care of at that point.

About this, I think this is the next door opening for us. I think that we must take the Zulu barb city. We get a city (and even no need to reserve it as we are capturing it), we secure the surroundings of it and we secure the green land between Zulu barb city and Lakshmi. Which can have 1 more great city. The green land starts to finish. We will need that land.

Another door, or better to describe it as a window (of possibly great opportunity) is that we will meet Team CivPlayers the next turn. I am looking for very special cooperation with these guys.



We need to see who is going to be our diplomat with them.

Also, Yossa, can you please take the screenshots and make the turn report, I must go to work and turn might be flipped when I get back.

 

[YossarianLives]

Also, Yossa, can you please take the screenshots and make the turn report, I must go to work and turn might be flipped when I get back.

Sorry, I had checked out by the time you wrote this, and am now at work myself. Fortunately, the connection problems and subsequent reload have given us some extra time to pop in and get pictures for the turn report. I'll be able to do this in about 8 hours (assuming both Poly and the Germans don't end turn before then)

 

[YossarianLives]

Argh, the Germans actually ended their turn a couple hours before I had a chance to go in and take pictures for the turn report. Sorry guys.

I see that 2metra has already logged into T100 and saved some pictures to TheFastWorker. Some good news (barb city is now in our hands! RB trade route finished, and it automatically connected us to the Germans, too!), and also some bad news (RB has a ton of resources, including plenty of Happy resources). I'll let him post the pictures and go into more detail.

 

[SilentConfusion]

I logged into the game before the end of of T99 and took all kinds of screenshots. (I have 15+ screenshots with good resolution, but I don't know how to upload them to The Fast Worker. If someone can post how I do that I'll upload them. I can host them in my photobucket account or I can email them to someone who does have uploading permissions.

 

[YossarianLives]

I just "shared" the dropbox application with you. I'm not sure if this will work since it was Tobiasn's creation so I don't know if I have proper permission to share it. Also my apologies if I've crossed the line here, Tobiasn, it's just such an amazing tool I want everyone to have it!

Once you have TheFastWorker in your Dropbox, then just save your pictures under TheFasterWorker->turns->099 or TheFastWorker->demographics->099. You can create the folders if they don't already exist.

Once you save them into the correct folder, they will appear on the website http://tfw.tobiasn.net/tfw/. Go there and enter

Username: cfc
Password: ftw

Anyone on the team can access this website at any time to view all our screenshots, by the way!

At any rate, the screenshots you just saved in Dropbox will appear in the corresponding folder. When you're viewing the screenshots, there's a dropdown box on the top right that lets you copy all their image codes at the same time to post in here.

 

[Bowsling]

Awesome with the barb city!

I take it we are using the usual tactic of waiting until CP finishes their turn until we make contact with them?

 

[SilentConfusion]

Yossarian or someone with their dropbox set up correctly, I sent the screenshots I took of T99 to the team email. Could someone upload them to The Fast Worker for us?

Of note (not sure if the team already knew it), I noticed a mine on a flatland inside RB territory. It has to be an iron mine because we'd see the resource if it were Copper. That means RB definitely has Iron Working.