Well since there's not much going on in the game tonight and we've reached 1000AD (no really, check the last screenshot!) I think I'll type up something on the current standings in this game as I see things, from my admittedly limited and biased perspective. Purely for fun so we can look back later and see how these predictions stack up. Right now, I'd rate the eight remaining teams in the following order:
1) Speaker and Sullla: Because we're awesome, of course!![[Image: biggrin.gif]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Smilies/biggrin.gif)
More seriously, I think the Demographics show that we're in a rather strong position at present. We are essentially the best or extremely close to being the best in all the major categories, with a strong economy, good expansion prospects, and the #1 military. We also know what techs everyone else has, and no one has a sizable lead in anything important over us. About a third of the remaining teams are starting to fall meaningfully behind in tech, and that gap should only widen as this No Tech Trading game continues.
Of course, it's basically inevitable that Speaker and I will be dogpiled by a large alliance again at some point. We're both expecting this to happen down the road, since we're the biggest favorite to win and the other teams will want to stop that from happening. The question is really how much time we have before that occurs, and how strong of a lead we can get before the big attack arrives. Ideally, we could keep the current alliance structure intact until all of the opposing teams were dead (Kathlete, Nakor, Whosit, and Jowy). I don't think we'll be that lucky though, as there will likely be an alliance shift at some point, with our current allies going over to the other side. Hopefully we can preserve plako as our friend, sort of like the regoarrarr/sunrise relationship in RBPB1, since we've had such a close relationship throughout this game. If we could make it so things were no worse than a 4 vs. 2 (or something like that), I like our chances to win.
If no big alliance would ever form against us, we should win this thing going away. Because we're awesome.
2) slaze of IKZ: Yes, I rate slaze as the next-best threat to win the game after us. Even though we don't know that much about him, I think slaze is the most capable player among our opponents. He has the most cities in the game currently, is racing neck and neck with us in Food count, and has very strong prospects for future expansion with Kathlete and Whosit as neighbors. I can see some sort of outcome where slaze winds up getting most of the spoils of Kathlete's lands in a partition later on. Unlike a lot of other teams, slaze acted decisively and ruthlessly when threatened, whipping out a huge army of longbows and easily defeating the clumsy attacks that came his way. Very well played indeed.
The biggest weakness of slaze is that his economy is rather backwards, not helped by having to do all those whippings. Nevertheless, once slaze has time to sort things out and tech upwards, I think he'll be a major force and our most serious competitor.
3) Nakor of Holy Rome: I think it's very clear that Nakor's in the best position of the teams in the other alliance. Nakor has never really fought anyone in the game so far, just teched and built up, teched and built up. That along with the Darius leader (Financial/Organized) and those Rathauses on this Toroidal map, has made him into the GNP leader among our rivals. (Hard to tell how Nakor compares to us, but my best guess is that his research rate is just slightly behind ours.) Nakor looks set to ride out the current crop of wars too, escaping once again with minimal damage as others crash and burn. He will very likely land Liberalism first and slingshot a relatively cheap tech with it (Nationalism?)
Nakor's biggest issues are a lack of room for expansion, and possibly diplomatic problems moving forward. The first could be solved by teching more advanced units and attacking a backwards nation like Dantski. But I think it's more likely that Nakor will try to switch sides at some point diplomatically, and try to orchestrate an alliance against us. That's really his best chance of winning, getting other teams to do the dirty work while continuing to tech and build. So far, it's been pretty successful. We may try to pull off some kind of raiding/plundering tactic to slow down Nakor eventually. (Get Astronomy first, get galleons in the water, and start razing every coastal city. Nearly impossible to defend against in MP.)
4) Kathlete of Ottomans: This team was in amazing shape as little as three dozen turns ago, with tons of land to expand into, a captured Holy City and enemy capital, and no military threats to their territory whatsoever. Unfortunately for them, Kathlete has largely squandered a tremendous position, and is now falling back into the middle of the pack. Their tech progress has been simply underwhelming for a team with Willem as its leader (Creative/Financial) and extremely fertile terrain. With the Buddhist shrine and all of regoarrarr's territory to work with, plus cheap Creative libraries, this team should be killing all of us! Instead, they're racing desperately for Feudalism at fourth-civ research rate because they need longbows to defend their cities. Not exactly a shining moment.
The attack on slaze has clearly backfired enormously at this point, making no gains and leading to lots of dead Ottoman units. In retrospect, the real mistake was signing an NAP that had a 15-turn cooldown. That's a very, very long time in a game like this! In those 15 turns, slaze researched Feudalism, revolted to Vassalage, and whipped something like 50 population to create an army out of thin air. By the time Kathlete went on the offensive, it was too late. Longbows everywhere. I think we'll look back and see that decision as the biggest fault in Kathlete's gameplan.
If our attack on Jowy succeeds, Kathlete will be in very bad shape, sandwiched between us and slaze. That's a major reason why they get rated lower than Nakor.
5) Whosit of Rome: If you go back even further in time, I thought that Whosit would be our biggest competition to win the game, back when he was overrunning plako and had about a quarter of the continent to expand into unopposed. As it's turned out, however, Whosit has also failed to capitalize on this great situation from earlier. Not killing plako was a tremendous error, since plako was able to build an island empire fueled by Great Lighthouse trade routes. Now plako is the one burning down Whosit cities! The Roman economy is also quite weak, lacking even Monarchy last we heard, and Aggressive Praetorians have just about ended their useful shelf life. Maces will eat them for breakfast.
Whosit still has a lot of cities, and plenty of expansion room if he starts planting some island locations. But he's falling behind seriously now in technology, where Shaka's traits (Agg/Exp) won't help, and his military performance has been pretty sad outside of the early game Praetorian rush. While Whosit probably isn't in much danger of being eliminated any time soon, his chances of winning the game don't appear all that great right now.
6) plako of Korea: Honestly, I would rate plako even higher except that his cities are all coastal and have little real production to speak of. But economically, plako's just made an amazing recovery, and is one of the tech leaders at present right now along with us and Nakor. (Of course, once the Great Lighthouse obsoletes eventually, plako will be in some trouble!) I don't know what else to say, these guys are our buds and plako has played a great game since the early Whosit rush took place. But plako has little chance to win, outside of some kind of wacky AP or UN diplo victory.
7) Dantski of Romali: We all know that Dantski doesn't update his spoiler thread, rarely sends emails, and shows little interest in the game overall. Why he's involved in two different Pitboss games is a total mystery to me... Dantski's in no danger of being eliminated, but his army is full of outdated Ancient Age units, and he's fallen about half an age behind the leaders in technology. His only real chance to do anything in this game would be to carry out a successful attack on either our team or Nakor... and Dantski failed at the first option, and apparently refuses to try the second one. Since both our team and Nakor research faster than Dantski, he's only falling more and more behind in relative terms. I can't help but feel that his moment to act has already come and gone in this game. Those awful civ traits on his leader (Imp/Org, I think?) aren't helping either.
I fully expect Dantski to turn on us at some point - we don't trust him at all. That's why our southern border is getting lots of longbows, "just in case" something would flare up with Dantski...
8 ) Jowy of Greece: Not a lot to say here either. Jowy played for a high-risk, high-reward gamble by attacking us earlier. It failed, and when he signed away half his territory, he basically gave up any chance of winning or being competitive. I give Jowy credit for expanding again and trying to rebuild in the hopes that no one would attack. However, in planting those extra cities he crashed his econmy pretty badly (Jowy has 8 cities, which he definitely can't afford right now) and thus has made little tech progress over the past 25 turns. Jowy probably has fewer than 20 turns remaining to live in this game, but hey, he still did better than these guys:
9) regoarrarr/sunrise of Byzantium: It was fun while it lasted! Next time, be careful about those aggressive city placements with warriors as defenders. :neenernee
10) Mortius of Zulu: Really bad luck. I wish that Mortius had had a better fate in this game.
Ummm, I don't think lurkers can really comment on this stuff, knowing what they know, but hopefully it was a fun read.
1) Speaker and Sullla: Because we're awesome, of course!
More seriously, I think the Demographics show that we're in a rather strong position at present. We are essentially the best or extremely close to being the best in all the major categories, with a strong economy, good expansion prospects, and the #1 military. We also know what techs everyone else has, and no one has a sizable lead in anything important over us. About a third of the remaining teams are starting to fall meaningfully behind in tech, and that gap should only widen as this No Tech Trading game continues.
Of course, it's basically inevitable that Speaker and I will be dogpiled by a large alliance again at some point. We're both expecting this to happen down the road, since we're the biggest favorite to win and the other teams will want to stop that from happening. The question is really how much time we have before that occurs, and how strong of a lead we can get before the big attack arrives. Ideally, we could keep the current alliance structure intact until all of the opposing teams were dead (Kathlete, Nakor, Whosit, and Jowy). I don't think we'll be that lucky though, as there will likely be an alliance shift at some point, with our current allies going over to the other side. Hopefully we can preserve plako as our friend, sort of like the regoarrarr/sunrise relationship in RBPB1, since we've had such a close relationship throughout this game. If we could make it so things were no worse than a 4 vs. 2 (or something like that), I like our chances to win.
If no big alliance would ever form against us, we should win this thing going away. Because we're awesome.
2) slaze of IKZ: Yes, I rate slaze as the next-best threat to win the game after us. Even though we don't know that much about him, I think slaze is the most capable player among our opponents. He has the most cities in the game currently, is racing neck and neck with us in Food count, and has very strong prospects for future expansion with Kathlete and Whosit as neighbors. I can see some sort of outcome where slaze winds up getting most of the spoils of Kathlete's lands in a partition later on. Unlike a lot of other teams, slaze acted decisively and ruthlessly when threatened, whipping out a huge army of longbows and easily defeating the clumsy attacks that came his way. Very well played indeed.
The biggest weakness of slaze is that his economy is rather backwards, not helped by having to do all those whippings. Nevertheless, once slaze has time to sort things out and tech upwards, I think he'll be a major force and our most serious competitor.
3) Nakor of Holy Rome: I think it's very clear that Nakor's in the best position of the teams in the other alliance. Nakor has never really fought anyone in the game so far, just teched and built up, teched and built up. That along with the Darius leader (Financial/Organized) and those Rathauses on this Toroidal map, has made him into the GNP leader among our rivals. (Hard to tell how Nakor compares to us, but my best guess is that his research rate is just slightly behind ours.) Nakor looks set to ride out the current crop of wars too, escaping once again with minimal damage as others crash and burn. He will very likely land Liberalism first and slingshot a relatively cheap tech with it (Nationalism?)
Nakor's biggest issues are a lack of room for expansion, and possibly diplomatic problems moving forward. The first could be solved by teching more advanced units and attacking a backwards nation like Dantski. But I think it's more likely that Nakor will try to switch sides at some point diplomatically, and try to orchestrate an alliance against us. That's really his best chance of winning, getting other teams to do the dirty work while continuing to tech and build. So far, it's been pretty successful. We may try to pull off some kind of raiding/plundering tactic to slow down Nakor eventually. (Get Astronomy first, get galleons in the water, and start razing every coastal city. Nearly impossible to defend against in MP.)
4) Kathlete of Ottomans: This team was in amazing shape as little as three dozen turns ago, with tons of land to expand into, a captured Holy City and enemy capital, and no military threats to their territory whatsoever. Unfortunately for them, Kathlete has largely squandered a tremendous position, and is now falling back into the middle of the pack. Their tech progress has been simply underwhelming for a team with Willem as its leader (Creative/Financial) and extremely fertile terrain. With the Buddhist shrine and all of regoarrarr's territory to work with, plus cheap Creative libraries, this team should be killing all of us! Instead, they're racing desperately for Feudalism at fourth-civ research rate because they need longbows to defend their cities. Not exactly a shining moment.
The attack on slaze has clearly backfired enormously at this point, making no gains and leading to lots of dead Ottoman units. In retrospect, the real mistake was signing an NAP that had a 15-turn cooldown. That's a very, very long time in a game like this! In those 15 turns, slaze researched Feudalism, revolted to Vassalage, and whipped something like 50 population to create an army out of thin air. By the time Kathlete went on the offensive, it was too late. Longbows everywhere. I think we'll look back and see that decision as the biggest fault in Kathlete's gameplan.
If our attack on Jowy succeeds, Kathlete will be in very bad shape, sandwiched between us and slaze. That's a major reason why they get rated lower than Nakor.
5) Whosit of Rome: If you go back even further in time, I thought that Whosit would be our biggest competition to win the game, back when he was overrunning plako and had about a quarter of the continent to expand into unopposed. As it's turned out, however, Whosit has also failed to capitalize on this great situation from earlier. Not killing plako was a tremendous error, since plako was able to build an island empire fueled by Great Lighthouse trade routes. Now plako is the one burning down Whosit cities! The Roman economy is also quite weak, lacking even Monarchy last we heard, and Aggressive Praetorians have just about ended their useful shelf life. Maces will eat them for breakfast.
Whosit still has a lot of cities, and plenty of expansion room if he starts planting some island locations. But he's falling behind seriously now in technology, where Shaka's traits (Agg/Exp) won't help, and his military performance has been pretty sad outside of the early game Praetorian rush. While Whosit probably isn't in much danger of being eliminated any time soon, his chances of winning the game don't appear all that great right now.
6) plako of Korea: Honestly, I would rate plako even higher except that his cities are all coastal and have little real production to speak of. But economically, plako's just made an amazing recovery, and is one of the tech leaders at present right now along with us and Nakor. (Of course, once the Great Lighthouse obsoletes eventually, plako will be in some trouble!) I don't know what else to say, these guys are our buds and plako has played a great game since the early Whosit rush took place. But plako has little chance to win, outside of some kind of wacky AP or UN diplo victory.
7) Dantski of Romali: We all know that Dantski doesn't update his spoiler thread, rarely sends emails, and shows little interest in the game overall. Why he's involved in two different Pitboss games is a total mystery to me... Dantski's in no danger of being eliminated, but his army is full of outdated Ancient Age units, and he's fallen about half an age behind the leaders in technology. His only real chance to do anything in this game would be to carry out a successful attack on either our team or Nakor... and Dantski failed at the first option, and apparently refuses to try the second one. Since both our team and Nakor research faster than Dantski, he's only falling more and more behind in relative terms. I can't help but feel that his moment to act has already come and gone in this game. Those awful civ traits on his leader (Imp/Org, I think?) aren't helping either.
I fully expect Dantski to turn on us at some point - we don't trust him at all. That's why our southern border is getting lots of longbows, "just in case" something would flare up with Dantski...
8 ) Jowy of Greece: Not a lot to say here either. Jowy played for a high-risk, high-reward gamble by attacking us earlier. It failed, and when he signed away half his territory, he basically gave up any chance of winning or being competitive. I give Jowy credit for expanding again and trying to rebuild in the hopes that no one would attack. However, in planting those extra cities he crashed his econmy pretty badly (Jowy has 8 cities, which he definitely can't afford right now) and thus has made little tech progress over the past 25 turns. Jowy probably has fewer than 20 turns remaining to live in this game, but hey, he still did better than these guys:
9) regoarrarr/sunrise of Byzantium: It was fun while it lasted! Next time, be careful about those aggressive city placements with warriors as defenders. :neenernee
10) Mortius of Zulu: Really bad luck. I wish that Mortius had had a better fate in this game.
Ummm, I don't think lurkers can really comment on this stuff, knowing what they know, but hopefully it was a fun read.
![[Image: RBPB2-302s.jpg]](http://www.cassiopeiathedog.net/Images/Pitboss/RBPB2-302s.jpg)
![[Image: smile.gif]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Smilies/smile.gif)