T150 - Foreign Update
First is Cairo. Land-wise he got squeezed the hardest I think. I'm not totally sure until I finish defogging, but in general it feels like he could have had some land that Superdeath and Yuris hoovered up. In a way it seems his land is not too unlike mine in that he had enough if he pushed (in his case west), but he needed to hustle to get some of it. The one thing he does have going for him is like Yuris and Bing, his land is extremely green. Mine is painfully brown in comparison.
Cairo's tech situation is also pretty rough. He's not really a serious contender to win, and his islands near me are virtually empty. In general Ginger picked a high degree-of-difficulty leader/civ, and then Cairo was left to try to pilot it. His core cities nearest me are well-defended which looks like fear of me, but this is a player I see no need to mess with.
Threat Level: Low
Food Potential: Low
Next is Bing, who I am 85% sure is gearing up to take Ise from Yuris and 15% doing something wild I haven't considered. Bing is probably even further behind than Cairo, realistically. His panic rush to Feudalism came at a tough cost. He's the only remaining player without Machinery, and while he is PHI America, he already used a bunch of GP on a couple early golden ages and a weird bulb of a cheap-ish tech early in the game. Calendar was it? I don't remember. And now he's building up military. It's hard to know where he goes from here. His path to Galleons requires Machinery-Optics-Paper-Astro, and right now he's saving gold at 33gpt, so he might honestly be 50 turns from Galleons.
Bing is in last place. If I want to make gains, he looks to be the simplest target. Feudalism means cities will be expensive to capture, but I could come back with Grens off Galleons with Frigates to bombard long before he'll have Galleons, so it's on the table. Also, his culture is annoying, and his cities would integrate most easily. For now though, happy to have him and Yuris swipe at each other.
Threat Level: Low
Food Potential: Medium-High
Superdeath had an absolute ton of land available to him and expanded away. He's got so much he still has not settled it all. Superdeath I think is my top competition in this game. He completed Paper, and he's manual-teching Astro right now, fortunately no longer in a Golden Age. I think this will likely take him another 10T or so, but he's in striking distance. I can only assume his goal will be to whip a ton of Galleons and go conquering. The question really is whether he'll try to duel me, or if he'll try to out-capture me elsewhere. Actually, probably neither. He'll try to organize a dogpile, and if nobody wants to help him, he'll mail it in, maybe building a naval stack to dive bomb at me.
Superdeath is a unique case where he's not really ideal to conquer, but he's more in a position where I could maybe extract a concession if I started pressuring hard. Unlike the previous two, I think his chances of winning are > 0%. The tricky thing is that this isn't necessarily an obviously correct move as it doesn't account for the next player who also is probably > 0%, and whose chances would go up if I squabbled with Superdeath. So let's stick a pin in that idea for a moment.
Threat Level: Medium
Gank Potential: Medium
Yuris is an interesting case for different reasons. A lot of what I said about Superdeath can be said about him. The big, big difference here is I could capture and hold stuff from him realistically were I inclined to pursue that route. Satsuma for example contains the Buddhist Shrine, and it's enticingly close to my land. IIRC it also has another wonder. It can't be hit from the fog post-Optics of course, however what CAN be done from the fog is advancing to a quad-fork tile. Galleon(s) from the fog could move S-SE of Satsuma and fork Nagoya, Satsuma, Yokohama, and the capital of Kyoto. It's difficult to imagine all of them being defended sufficiently. There's also obviously his ongoing conflict with Bing which could have him distracted.
Of course, the obvious downside is surely he will have extremely well-promoted Samurai soon, so he would be prickly. Everything I said about Superdeath previously is true here. SD is the only player who feels vaguely close to me tech-wise, and he would be more free to try to turn this into a 2v1. And being on the receiving end of a Yuris/SD proper post-Astro dogpile feels like one of the avenues where I lose this game. That is the big issue here.
Threat Level: Medium
Gank Potential: Medium
Let's also run through graphs, though I did lose Cairo's because everyone's spending on me, and Superdeath is spending a LOT on me.
Food for me is steadily rising again as I keep settling cities, despite the fact that you can also see a few infra whip spurts. Yuris Forge usage (and therefore production-oriented tile improvements) is really stark here compared to the other 3 players.
My GNP just doesn't jutter THAT much. Part of this I think is my proliferation of Markets which I think dulls the gap between tech on vs tech off, but also I have just been running a LOT of 40-60% sliders over the last 50 turns. I've done away with that the last couple of turns. In general though my city spam and buildings completed are broadly canceling each other out.
Bing's buildup is actually crazy for someone who cannot even build Caravels. How does he expect to transfer any units safely across water? Yuris surely has some by now, and I've got both Caravels and Galleons. Any true offensives are one-way trips that are likely to be lost at sea.
Superdeath has absolutely blistered out the Courthouses in this game despite no ORG which has surely been incredibly expensive. As a result, he can see my research. I am spending all my EPs on him to prevent him from getting any further and hopefully eventually blocking the tech vis.
First is Cairo. Land-wise he got squeezed the hardest I think. I'm not totally sure until I finish defogging, but in general it feels like he could have had some land that Superdeath and Yuris hoovered up. In a way it seems his land is not too unlike mine in that he had enough if he pushed (in his case west), but he needed to hustle to get some of it. The one thing he does have going for him is like Yuris and Bing, his land is extremely green. Mine is painfully brown in comparison.
Cairo's tech situation is also pretty rough. He's not really a serious contender to win, and his islands near me are virtually empty. In general Ginger picked a high degree-of-difficulty leader/civ, and then Cairo was left to try to pilot it. His core cities nearest me are well-defended which looks like fear of me, but this is a player I see no need to mess with.
Threat Level: Low
Food Potential: Low
Next is Bing, who I am 85% sure is gearing up to take Ise from Yuris and 15% doing something wild I haven't considered. Bing is probably even further behind than Cairo, realistically. His panic rush to Feudalism came at a tough cost. He's the only remaining player without Machinery, and while he is PHI America, he already used a bunch of GP on a couple early golden ages and a weird bulb of a cheap-ish tech early in the game. Calendar was it? I don't remember. And now he's building up military. It's hard to know where he goes from here. His path to Galleons requires Machinery-Optics-Paper-Astro, and right now he's saving gold at 33gpt, so he might honestly be 50 turns from Galleons.
Bing is in last place. If I want to make gains, he looks to be the simplest target. Feudalism means cities will be expensive to capture, but I could come back with Grens off Galleons with Frigates to bombard long before he'll have Galleons, so it's on the table. Also, his culture is annoying, and his cities would integrate most easily. For now though, happy to have him and Yuris swipe at each other.
Threat Level: Low
Food Potential: Medium-High
Superdeath had an absolute ton of land available to him and expanded away. He's got so much he still has not settled it all. Superdeath I think is my top competition in this game. He completed Paper, and he's manual-teching Astro right now, fortunately no longer in a Golden Age. I think this will likely take him another 10T or so, but he's in striking distance. I can only assume his goal will be to whip a ton of Galleons and go conquering. The question really is whether he'll try to duel me, or if he'll try to out-capture me elsewhere. Actually, probably neither. He'll try to organize a dogpile, and if nobody wants to help him, he'll mail it in, maybe building a naval stack to dive bomb at me.
Superdeath is a unique case where he's not really ideal to conquer, but he's more in a position where I could maybe extract a concession if I started pressuring hard. Unlike the previous two, I think his chances of winning are > 0%. The tricky thing is that this isn't necessarily an obviously correct move as it doesn't account for the next player who also is probably > 0%, and whose chances would go up if I squabbled with Superdeath. So let's stick a pin in that idea for a moment.
Threat Level: Medium
Gank Potential: Medium
Yuris is an interesting case for different reasons. A lot of what I said about Superdeath can be said about him. The big, big difference here is I could capture and hold stuff from him realistically were I inclined to pursue that route. Satsuma for example contains the Buddhist Shrine, and it's enticingly close to my land. IIRC it also has another wonder. It can't be hit from the fog post-Optics of course, however what CAN be done from the fog is advancing to a quad-fork tile. Galleon(s) from the fog could move S-SE of Satsuma and fork Nagoya, Satsuma, Yokohama, and the capital of Kyoto. It's difficult to imagine all of them being defended sufficiently. There's also obviously his ongoing conflict with Bing which could have him distracted.
Of course, the obvious downside is surely he will have extremely well-promoted Samurai soon, so he would be prickly. Everything I said about Superdeath previously is true here. SD is the only player who feels vaguely close to me tech-wise, and he would be more free to try to turn this into a 2v1. And being on the receiving end of a Yuris/SD proper post-Astro dogpile feels like one of the avenues where I lose this game. That is the big issue here.
Threat Level: Medium
Gank Potential: Medium
Let's also run through graphs, though I did lose Cairo's because everyone's spending on me, and Superdeath is spending a LOT on me.
Food for me is steadily rising again as I keep settling cities, despite the fact that you can also see a few infra whip spurts. Yuris Forge usage (and therefore production-oriented tile improvements) is really stark here compared to the other 3 players.
My GNP just doesn't jutter THAT much. Part of this I think is my proliferation of Markets which I think dulls the gap between tech on vs tech off, but also I have just been running a LOT of 40-60% sliders over the last 50 turns. I've done away with that the last couple of turns. In general though my city spam and buildings completed are broadly canceling each other out.
Bing's buildup is actually crazy for someone who cannot even build Caravels. How does he expect to transfer any units safely across water? Yuris surely has some by now, and I've got both Caravels and Galleons. Any true offensives are one-way trips that are likely to be lost at sea.
Superdeath has absolutely blistered out the Courthouses in this game despite no ORG which has surely been incredibly expensive. As a result, he can see my research. I am spending all my EPs on him to prevent him from getting any further and hopefully eventually blocking the tech vis.
