While we are waiting and it's still weekend (meaning I have a chance to inflate my post count), here are couple of thoughts:
Resource haggling
1. We don't have Bananas, we want Bananas. E.g. Cyneheard has 3 pieces and couple of score leaders have surplus sources as well. However we don't have much to offer for them. Hitanykey and wetbandit have 1 source of bananas each and lack some of our resources, at least ivory, which we have 2 pieces.
2. We don't have Dyes, we want Dyes. E.g. pindicator has multiple sources and once we connect our own source of furs, we could swap our wine-for-furs trade to wine-for-dyes trade.
My suggestions:
1. Cancel our iron gift to Cheater Hater (Zulu), it's not like he really needs them anymore and offer iron-for-banana trade to Cyneheard. Yes, we don't like supporting our neighbor who has Guilds with iron, but Cyneheard is getting it already from BGN. Cyneheard is paying stone+spices for his iron to BGN so here is the hoping that he will cancel that much more expensive trade and "ally" with us.
2. Offer ivory-for-dyes to WilliamLP, wetbandit or TBS. They only have 1 source of dyes, but they all lack ivory and due to the fact that ivory is generally more useful than dyes there is a fair chance that one of them will accept.
Macro:
Have we actually commented that BGN built Taj?
I think we are happy with that as BGN is "only" at 22 cities. It seems that winning Taj race was out of reach for dtay and he did the correct decision by grabbing Economics from Liberalism. Economics and Liberalism are equally expensive and I don't see dtay utilizing Free Religion or Environmentalism in the near future: The price from Liberalism was simply a boost (3600 actual beakers) in race for Communism Great Spy. Of course that will be nice for him later, but not really game-breaking by any means.
After this turn we are Philosophy, Printing Press and Liberalism behind (and Literature ahead) dtay and the gap will get bigger as dtay is enjoying his 2nd GA at the moment. That is obviously a significant lead, but we have FIN trait helping us in the late-game, (while dtay's PRO/EXP will become less valuable) 2-man GA still to spend and rest of Mardoc's and Azza's lands waiting for consolidation.
--> Situation is still in control at least on paper and we remain competitive. However, things can change fast and it will be interesting to see how players will be able to improve their position further. I think there are still 6-10 civs that can claim they have a shot on winning this if things develop well. It is still fairly easy to screw our/dtay's/BGN's game by determined attack. (e.g. dtay's army is not especially big, his western defenses are light --> Razing/Capturing 5+ former cities of CH and then creating a mutually destructive stalemate would be a decent troll strategy from us) :P
Resource haggling
1. We don't have Bananas, we want Bananas. E.g. Cyneheard has 3 pieces and couple of score leaders have surplus sources as well. However we don't have much to offer for them. Hitanykey and wetbandit have 1 source of bananas each and lack some of our resources, at least ivory, which we have 2 pieces.
2. We don't have Dyes, we want Dyes. E.g. pindicator has multiple sources and once we connect our own source of furs, we could swap our wine-for-furs trade to wine-for-dyes trade.
My suggestions:
1. Cancel our iron gift to Cheater Hater (Zulu), it's not like he really needs them anymore and offer iron-for-banana trade to Cyneheard. Yes, we don't like supporting our neighbor who has Guilds with iron, but Cyneheard is getting it already from BGN. Cyneheard is paying stone+spices for his iron to BGN so here is the hoping that he will cancel that much more expensive trade and "ally" with us.
2. Offer ivory-for-dyes to WilliamLP, wetbandit or TBS. They only have 1 source of dyes, but they all lack ivory and due to the fact that ivory is generally more useful than dyes there is a fair chance that one of them will accept.
Macro:
Have we actually commented that BGN built Taj?
I think we are happy with that as BGN is "only" at 22 cities. It seems that winning Taj race was out of reach for dtay and he did the correct decision by grabbing Economics from Liberalism. Economics and Liberalism are equally expensive and I don't see dtay utilizing Free Religion or Environmentalism in the near future: The price from Liberalism was simply a boost (3600 actual beakers) in race for Communism Great Spy. Of course that will be nice for him later, but not really game-breaking by any means. After this turn we are Philosophy, Printing Press and Liberalism behind (and Literature ahead) dtay and the gap will get bigger as dtay is enjoying his 2nd GA at the moment. That is obviously a significant lead, but we have FIN trait helping us in the late-game, (while dtay's PRO/EXP will become less valuable) 2-man GA still to spend and rest of Mardoc's and Azza's lands waiting for consolidation.
--> Situation is still in control at least on paper and we remain competitive. However, things can change fast and it will be interesting to see how players will be able to improve their position further. I think there are still 6-10 civs that can claim they have a shot on winning this if things develop well. It is still fairly easy to screw our/dtay's/BGN's game by determined attack. (e.g. dtay's army is not especially big, his western defenses are light --> Razing/Capturing 5+ former cities of CH and then creating a mutually destructive stalemate would be a decent troll strategy from us) :P