[SPOILER] The Steak, Beer, and Cigar Saloon

[MaxPower]

Demos look good. Among the leaders in food and production. But that rival best GNP is really impressive. I guess it is the guy who landed the pyramids. Anyway you are average for the moment with no libraries and running few cottages. You can certainly catch up with him.

[Catwalk]

Azza landed the Pyramids. If he's working 4 scientists, that's around +30 GNP from research and +10 from the pyramids (they haven't doubled yet). Those 4 people could be working cottages or lakes for around 10 GNP instead, so in a relative comparison that only puts him ahead by about 30 points. He's also not FIN, so subtract maybe 5 points from less productive cottages. If the top food player (I'm guessing zanth) also has that GNP then we may be looking at the beginnings of a runaway. I do think that I'm still in the running, the start has turned out mostly fine and nothing major has gone wrong other than losing a lot of map info from the early demise of our scout. I'm ahead on cities, so my already decent demos ought to conceal a lot of growth potential. I'm trying to push myself into making micro plans, but laziness seems to win out every time

[MaxPower]

Azza landed the Pyramids. If he's working 4 scientists, that's around +30 GNP from research and +10 from the pyramids (they haven't doubled yet). Those 4 people could be working cottages or lakes for around 10 GNP instead, so in a relative comparison that only puts him ahead by about 30 points. He's also not FIN, so subtract maybe 5 points from less productive cottages. If the top food player (I'm guessing zanth) also has that GNP then we may be looking at the beginnings of a runaway. I do think that I'm still in the running, the start has turned out mostly fine and nothing major has gone wrong other than losing a lot of map info from the early demise of our scout. I'm ahead on cities, so my already decent demos ought to conceal a lot of growth potential. I'm trying to push myself into making micro plans, but laziness seems to win out every time

Azza gets another GNP boost from creative. Obviously the best scenario is him being the top GNP. Investing all those early hammers plus running multiple scientists that early (and thus not whipping) should slow down his expansion.
Of course it's possible for civs with farming/wheel start to jump ahead in commerce just beelining pottery/writing and throwing early cottages everywhere but they should be behind in expansion as well (no early BW).
I Don't see how the same guy can be ahead of you in food+GNP. IMO you are definitely in the running.

[Catwalk]

True, there are around 10-12 points from that too so I guess we've found the culprit. And I agree that it's going to be costly for his expansion to work all those scientists, especially since he sacrificed a lot of early growth to build pyramids without stone. Or should we speculate that Xenu was mean and gave the IND player easy access to stone? Not a far-fetched theory, come to think of it! I know Pyramids are renowned as the Win Wonder, but I've found it difficult to capitalize on properly unless you luck into it without stunting your early growth. I guess you need a very food heavy map for it to work out well, you both need the people for specialists as well as extra growth to take advantage of your high happy cap.

When I log on next time I'm going to map out what GNP the players above have by fiddling around with cities and checking out the demos. Going to do the same thing for food and hammers.

[MaxPower]

Your capital has a desperate need for cottages: Next turn you could work another one from pop growth (I assume we are still in turn 80), and could work 3 extra cottages instead of fish (shared with vacuuming who is building a worker letting Foot Rubs work the rice), mine and silk tiles. Workers badly needed here! Chop those forests for a library and lay cottages in your river.

[Catwalk]

Turn 81
In a hurry, so I'll just post a screenshot of meeting 2metraninja's borders on the continent to the south:

Whipped a worker in Groceries, started one in Dishes, getting one soon in Vacuuming and starting one next turn in Punching Bag. That should help me catch up

[haphazard1]

And I am back again. This month has been way busier than I expected.

Things are looking very good, Catwalk! Demos are very strong in the key food and hammer categories, and land area also looking very nice. That GNP leader is kind of scary, but I have to agree that I don't see any way that doesn't come at the cost of other things like expansion.

It is good that you have more workers queued up -- you definitely need tile improvements at both your new cities and your existing core. Currency before Calendar looks like the right choice, since you can't efficiently use more pop quite yet. But after Currency it should be a priority so you can grow vertically.

An extra spear or two also looks like a good investment, in case the war between Jowy and yuri ends suddenly and Jowy finds himself with bored troops looking for something to do.

Thanks for the pictures of the various cities and the border region, very helpful.

[MaxPower]

The fact that there is someone beyond the "south pole" indicates this may be a toroidal map. Beware of maintenance costs. Try to queue CoL somewhere near in your tech path and throw gazillion cottages in your core.

[NobleHelium]

Uh, you should know whether the map is toroidal or not.

[Catwalk]

Yeah it's toroidal, Xenu confirmed that somewhere in the middle of the setup thread. That said, I don't think upkeep will be bad on this map. It's a very large map, which helps reduce distance upkeep some. And given that it's only on Prince, upkeep from number of cities will also be kept in check. So far I've expanded rapidly without much of a commerce focus and I'm still making a decent 35 gpt. My commerce focus will start around now, I have ivory to grow my cities with and the payoff on new cities is starting to taper off.