RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - De Gaulle of the Egyptians

[Lord Parkin]

While there's downtime, what are your thoughts on the war between WarriorKnight and Plako? From what I gather from the UN thread, WK declared on Plako. This seems strange, since WK doesn't seem to have a sufficient enough force do do anything besides hold off an offensive from Plako. Maybe I'm missing something?

I think WarriorKnight never had much of a chance in this game anyway due to the errors of his predecessor. I've talked to him in chat, and he's not optimistic about his chances, but figures he may as well initiate the war on his own terms rather than waiting for Plako to just gobble him up once he has enough of a tech lead.

Also, do you intend to start building the AP immediately after getting out of anarchy?

I'm actually thinking of going for a Monastery first, then on to the AP. Getting to CS a turn or two quicker will partly make up for the hammers invested, and will net us quite a few extra beakers. Plus, I'm fairly sure we'll have no competition for the AP for quite a while.

[Kyan]

Just wanted to say cheers for the regular updates and well done on your play thus far.

[Lord Parkin]

Just wanted to say cheers for the regular updates and well done on your play thus far.

Thanks... it's certainly quite time consuming to keep the thread up to date with write-ups, so I'm glad the effort is being appreciated.

[Lord Parkin]

State of the World at 1 AD

City numbers:

Plako - 15
Us - 12 (+3 more in 4 turns)
Locke - 12
Rego - 12
Nakor - 11
Luddite - 10 (lost one to Mackoti recently)
SleepingMoogle - 9
Adlain - 7
WarriorKnight - 7
Mackoti - 6

Rival Rankings:

1. Plako, of course, is blowing everyone else out of the water at the moment. He's at war with WarriorKnight and is probably likely to eventually gain even more cities there in the near future. Fortunately we're not that far behind him, and we should have enough expansion room to keep close to him in city numbers even if he does take over WarriorKnight's land. We just have to hope that WarriorKnight can inflict some decent damage to Plako before he goes, so it's not a complete walkover for him.

2. Locke's been steadily keeping up with us all game in city numbers, and he's definitely next in line behind Plako in the list of the strongest rivals we have in this game.

(Quite a big gap from here to next nearest rival.)

3. SleepingMoogle seems to be doing alright for himself so far, though he's falling behind in city numbers and his score is propped up by a now-redundant wonder.

4. Rego's possibly the trickiest one to place right now, as his position is likely to improve markedly soon. He's really been spamming out the Settlers lately - he can probably afford to due to his Great Lighthouse, but I do wonder if he actually has enough Workers to support the sudden growth spurt. He's in second to last on the scoreboard, probably suggesting small city sizes as his tech rate should be fairly high. He's not yet a significant threat, but my bet is he will be in the future.

5. Luddite would have placed a bit higher a few turns ago, but he recently lost a city to Mackoti which suggests that the tide may be turning in that war. Luddite's power is only a little higher than Mackoti's now, so he's definitely facing some tough competition. As long as those two remain at war and continue to build massive armies, I don't think Luddite's position is going to improve much.

6. Nakor surprisingly seems to have made a bit of a comeback from his earlier poor position. Things are still not looking that good for him, but he's doing very respectably in city numbers and seems to have a half-decent tech rate to back it up from what I can tell. I think he's just about out of expansion room though, so it'll be interesting to see where he goes or what he does next.

7. Mackoti would have placed lower a few turns ago, but with his recent turnaround of his soldier numbers and his capture of a city of Luddite's, he seems to be doing much better now. He's still got an awfully big hole to pull himself out of, but he actually seems to be doing alright so far. Of course, if he'd prepared in advance when the initial power spike from Luddite became apparent, he probably wouldn't have had a hole to pull himself out of in the first place.

8. WarriorKnight never really had much of a chance in this game due to the mistakes of WarlordDR who made a mess of his position early on. However, he at least gets props for starting this latest war with Plako on his own, without waiting for Plako to take the fight to him. He still doesn't stand much of a chance against such a huge powerhouse as Plako, but hopefully he can deal a bit of damage before the tide turns. He's probably the most likely civ to disappear over the next few dozen turns.

9. Adlain hasn't exactly played the best game so far, there's no doubt about that. Without ever facing a conflict, he's managed to consistently stay in the bottom rung along with civs that have lost heavily in wars. I still can't work out what he's been doing all game to maintain such a poor position... his snail-paced expansion in the face of no opposition whatsoever on a map with a mountain of land is a bit mind-boggling. Ironically he may not actually end up technically placing last simply because he might manage to outlive a couple of players just by sitting around and doing nothing.

[Lord Parkin]

For future reference - scores at 1 AD:

Lord Parkin - 481
Plako - 475
Locke - 421
SleepingMoogle - 384
Luddite - 342
Nakor - 326
Adlain - 319
Rego - 292
WarriorKnight - 285
Mackoti - 277

[Lord Parkin]

Rego's Great Merchant is in our territory. He should be getting his payoff (and us ours) in 2 turns. So turn after next we'll be able to turn up our research a bit to burn through the extra gold.

[DMOC]

Nice analysis of the civilizations. I actually did something similar to the lurker thread, where I posted comments about all 10 players and where I thought they would be ranked if there was a "civilization ranking" i.e. who is in the best position to win the game, etc. Obviously, I can't tell you anything in depth. It will be interesting to compare our thoughts later.

[Lord Parkin]

Indeed, sounds like it.

For the record, after a chat with Rego I just checked out the values for gold that his Great Merchant will get in my sim. Assuming I haven't made any errors, he'll get 1100 gold if our capital is at size 13 or 14, and 1300 gold at size 15 (though that's too far away to be a logical choice). So giving 100 gold to us, that means he'll net 1000 gold out of our capital if he does the mission next turn (which I'm expecting he will). That's quite a bit... but he would have got 900 from other places in the world anyway (according to my sim), so we might as well let him have the extra and take a small slice of the pie ourselves.

[Lord Parkin]

Ugh... WarriorKnight's really not doing well, which in turn is bad news for us. I have a Scout in his lands, and from what I've seen so far it seems like a fair few bung moves have been going on. He left the forested hill next to his capital unguarded, so a stack of Plako's units have moved onto it, including a Catapult. I'm guessing his capital will fall in the next few turns. I hope he at least whips it into the ground before then, so as not to further help out Plako.

The other thing is that Plako has some troops positioned on WK's Copper (which he also left unguarded). WK told me in chat that he didn't think he could remove them, so he'll also get his only source of metal pillaged this turn. I could potentially send him my metal, but that'd really aggravate Plako, and I'm not sure how much good it would actually do given just how poorly WK has played out the first few turns of the war. (There's also been a big drop in his power recently, which - as no cities changed hands - I have to assume was him losing a bunch of units.)

It's quite frustrating when the last thing anyone in this game needs is for Plako to have a complete walkover campaign and gain up to 7 new cities - as well as multiple future sites - for next to nothing. Yet all these fundamental mistakes from Greece already seem to be on the way to handing Plako all that territory on a platter. Not to sound mean, but perhaps it would be better for game balance if someone with more tactical knowledge was on board that civ to help out right now. Maybe even just a combat savvy dedlurker alongside WK to assist him? Dunno... maybe he already has someone, I'm not sure.

[Cyneheard]

Tactical advice is really hard to give from a DL in my experience, unless that DL can also log into the game: you really need to look at the entire board in a way that screenshots are rarely sufficient for.