T202 Extravaganza Part 2 - Opponent Analysis
Alright, I'm going to try to walk through each of my opponents, and then I'll try to similarly analyze myself. I'm going to try to follow a basic pattern for each of them. I'll go in inverse order of current standings (standings are my estimate and not necessarily scoreboard) and I'll do myself last because I'm the hardest person to rank AND I'm very biased, so I won't bother trying. Also, my knowledge here is limited to what I can see. I pretty much am aware of a ton of wars that have occurred from Civstats early and all that, but I don't know motivations and it's hard for me to judge prudence of these decisions... So I'm giving it my best guess. If some things I say are wrong or impossible, then that's why. Alright, disclaimers done, ONWARD.
Plako
What went wrong: Sorry Plako
. I'm not really sure what you can do about dying so early in this kind of game. We all use the units to scout anyways, so it's just dumb luck to get killed. Not really sure what the solution is. I feel like this conversation crops up from time to time, but I've never heard a satisfying solution
What if? Plako is one of the many fascinating "what-if" scenarios this game has. What if Plako doesn't die and plays this game out? You see how cramped Nakor looked in that previous post, but it's easy to forget he actually had access to two civs worth of land. Does Plako see himself boxed in and eat Ceilakor early? Does he take to the islands and cut down on the amount I have access to? Maybe he swipes one of my water wonders. Does he prove to be the aggressive player who holds Krill in line that the eastern continent currently lacks? I maintain that Nakor/Ceil got some of the best land in the game, and I can't help but wonder what would have happened if Plako warrior kills them instead and is the guy playing their land. That's not a knock against Nakor/Ceil at all, but rather a statement about what I felt pre-game - Plako was one of the top-tier players in this game. Really wonder what would have happened if he hadn't been executed.
Yuris
What went wrong: The last 25 turns mainly
. I think he lost interest and/or just signed up for too many games is the main thing (he was playing his turns silly fast for having such a big empire). I think it was just 30-40 turns ago that I was talking about him as a dark horse candidate given all the land he had access to and his backward northern neighbors. Um, not my best prediction. He also fell victim to something I've talked about in my thread - RB Mod on normal speed is SO SO SO different to quick speed vanilla BtS in how quickly you can scrounge together a defensive army. You need bigger standing armies here (unless you are located in Australia of course), and it's harder to pull one together here. I think Yuris got a rough first-hand account on that. I also suspect he was pretty apathetic about defending. He didn't really whip very hard at all. He had a massive amount of cities but was whipping just a few times every turn. That's not going to cut it against a determined attack by an opponent with numbers.
What went right: Flying under the radar and slowly cutting through the jungle into the lush center of the continent while Commodore/Cyneheard squabbled for king of the dung hill that was the northern land on the west continent. Colonizing the islands early to get himself some IC routes was prudent, and I think he played an all-around solid game for the bulk of it.
Future Outlook None really. My prediction for next to join Plako in the dead pool.
What if? What if Yuris deterred Regopin from attacking and/or slowed him down? Given the tech settings, just getting attacked doesn't make him out of it. It's not impossible for him to come back from that scenario if he could just workshop over stuff and use his land advantage to roll over his backwards neighbors. What if he didn't check out, but rather used his advantage and position as western continent alpha dog to conquer the west continent? That would make him a contender. Was all this possible? Dunno. I'm guessing probably though if he prioritized his techs properly. Not hard for him to get to Guilds quickly and do to Commodore/Cyneheard what Regopin did to him.
Brick/Mist
What went wrong: First off, they got shafted even worse than me in land, and that's really saying something. At least I got stone which let to Pyramids. Brick really had very little to work with. Brick also was the greenest player coming into this game, and I think it showed early on. He had a capital with double corn, a river, a bunch of forests, and IMP. Despite this, we deforested our capital long before him. There was no real sign of him chopping out settlers early which could have been strong, so that set him back. I don't know what all he was doing, but in general, his start was very rocky. RL also hit him at the same time, so he wasn't really able to devote a lot of time to playing turns which I'm sure made it a lot more difficult to have to play on the fly without thinking much about the turns. Tough luck for him, and I'm positive he'll do better next time.
What went right: Mist taking over and steadying the ship, and then the two of them apparently working together now judging by Civstats. It seems to be like 70% Mist and 30% Brick now. But anyways, Mist sharply pushed out Vultures en masse to survive me, beelined military techs, and got spies in play and started pushing EPs and stealing key techs that way. Very smart for survival - just generally made themselves unattractive. They also did everything they could to be nice to me and not provoke me to kill them sooner, so this is going to result in them outliving Yuris, which NOBODY would have predicted 100 turns ago. After the rocky start, I think these guys have done a nice job since my invasion of them.
Future Outlook: Not much. They're miles away from even being allowed to trade techs, and don't have long to live most likely. Surviving this long and outliving Yuris is a victory though, so nicely done.
What if? What if Brick had rushed us when we were whoring wonders and defended by warriors? Dazed will remember my extreme paranoia early on when stuff like this was happening:
What if Brick had used his massive forest to chop out a bunch of Vultures and send them at me? This would have been a drastically different game for me, that's for sure. I suspect we would have held him off, but we would have definitely been crippled in the process.
Cyneheard
What went wrong: I wish I knew on this one. I just knew so little about what was going on with him. He just... really lagged behind. And after seeing his capital (TRIPLE corn!!!) I'm stumped on how he struggled so much. The only thing I can figure is the giant desert south of him made settling south awkward. Yeah, I just don't know what to write here. I think Cyneheard got a bit burnt out on civ and regretted joining this, resulting in him checking out a bit early. Or something. Most curious about this afterwards. Got Commodore'd too which was pretty much lights out.
What went right: Maybe surviving this long? I'm really reaching for something here.
Future Outlook: Seems to be unkillable to Commodore. So he'll probably stick around for quite awhile at minimal relevancy. Regopin can't reach him and Commodore has to worry about Regopin now, so I'm really not sure when Cyneheard is going to die.
What if?: Cyneheard plays like Cyneheard. He's still stuck between Toku Zulu Commodore on one side and giant desert on the south side, but I don't think he gave this game too much attention either. I don't think much would have changed on this one though.
Azza
What went wrong: Skirmished with Krill and didn't go well. No idea if that was avoidable (unlikely because Krill). I also suspect his start played out a little wonky because he has some decent land and resources, but he was a bit further behind than I would have reasonably expected. He literally has every gold on the map IIRC, for example. There's just no real good reason Krill should beat him to the middle of the continent, but he did. So I'd say that was the key issue - not recognizing the need to hurry to claim important land. Land is king in RB mod land, and he was fairly well-positioned to get a nice chunk of it, but it didn't work out.
What went right: Hard to say this definitively, but he apparently defended well enough vs Krill to get Krill to eventually back off after taking a couple cities. Given that he was kind of overmatched, that's not a bad effort. I really thought he'd totally collapse like we're seeing Yuris now, but well done to him for sticking with it.
Future outlook: Hope he outlives Mist? He'll outlive Yuris for sure, but if Krill comes after him next, he's not long for this world. His best goal can be to defend as best he can and make a Krill invasion painful. Hopefully he gives it his best shot.
What if?: He recognizes the value of the middle of the east continent and pushes hard to settle & keeps it. Vastly limits Krill's reach and land footprint. This either results in Krill slogging out a more difficult war vs Azza or results in Krill being forced to go harder after Nakor or Regopin to get his land. The game becomes less Krill-centric, opening things up dramatically.
Commodore
What went wrong: A land situation nearly as bad as us Pacific island inhabitants, a crappy leader and civ, a Regopin war that seemingly got no real returns, a Cyneheard war that started promisingly and then stalled out quite badly, etc etc. A lot of war-related things. Also not sure how Regopin got the relatively nice land south of Commodore. Perhaps that was war related? But yeah, that was a miss too, though I don't know whose fault that is exactly. In fact, the only neighbor Commodore did not war against was the one guy who folded like a deck of cards to Regopin, and a big part of that is probably because Regopin oddly got a footing here that Commodore didn't..? I don't know, I still don't really understand what happened in this region, I just saw cities change hands on Civstats and eventually a map trade showed me the aftermath. Commodore also expanded very slowly off the start IIRC which was surprising and odd given that he has cheap granaries and cheap barracks (culture).
What went right: Um, the Cyneheard war for a little while? This is a short list. I feel bad but I can't think of anything to put here. I'd say the fact that he's still fairly relevant (he's in the tech trading game) despite the length and magnitude of the previous sections says a lot.
Future outlook: A much tougher neighbor than Yuris for Regopin? He's a wildcard. He's still very much in it on the TT front so don't count him out yet as a factor. He's still got more land tiles than me I'm pretty sure
. Given the craziness that will be no brokering and his relatively unthreatening position, he can probably tread water tech-wise just fine while continuing to declare war on anything that moves. Regopin may have to worry about Commodore more than Krill because Commodore has far less to lose than Krill when it comes to wars. I think you can make a case that Commodore belongs in the "contender" group solely due to the fact that he's in the tech trading game and he'd be really difficult to kill, something the other non-contenders can't say.
What if?: His Regopin war is more successful. Don't you think he would have been a much scarier (and far less predictable) neighbor to Krill than Regopin? Ask Krill yourself, he'll say yes. This means he gets a foothold in that continent, and he also gets the land south of him all to himself. That means HE gets to reap the benefits of Yuri defending with missionaries, scouts, and an army made of dreams. Basically, his whole game rode on that war. Maybe a better what-if would be what if that person he attacked was a weaker player who didn't defend as well as I'm guessing Regopin would? This is an interesting one to me.
Nakor/Ceiliazul
(As we get into "contender" land I'll do what went right first, as it makes sense to focus on positives first for the players who've succeeded more)
What went right: Warrior-killing Plako. Beautiful surrounding land. Decent traits, great civ. Their leader/civ isn't as good as Krill's, but I believe their starting location is the best. Their game has never been bad, making mostly wise, conservative decisions. Nakor realized he was overmatched vs Krill and got peace and promptly started colonizing some fairly good islands. Kudos for not falling apart after the disappointment of losing key land, but rather Nakor went right back to work and improved his position noticeably. Overall just a solid and consistent performance.
What went wrong: More than you'd think. First, I still theorize that they had hardly any forests (all those floodplains) which hurts in this mod which is why they got to a slow start. They're IND with stone, so I do wonder if we beat them in a race for Pyramids..? I also think it's remarkable that they had a dead neighbor and ended up with as little land as they did. Yes it's largely because Krill beat them up and pushed their borders back, but why was this possible exactly? Krill did that despite 2 other hostile borders, and Nakor had total peace elsewhere. I think Ceiliazul having to leave gets included here, as Ceil and Nakor are quite different players and complement each other very well. Ceil is the more aggressive half, and losing him I think hurt as Nakor is more suited to solid economic choices and less suited to fending off a maniac Brennus neighbor. A lot of strange metagame decisions too I've documented - such as not pressing for Taj (he apparently thought he could tech to Liberalism and sling Taj first which was crazy given I was teching 2x faster and taking a similar path). In fairness, this section is over-inflated because Nakor is the one I see the most as a neighbor, but it truly has been an up and down game for this team. They're still quite strong economically though so don't completely count them out.
Future outlook: I don't know, I feel like he's in the same boat (no pun intended) as me. He's surely a contender now, but I don't see him having a prayer of launching a spaceship or smashing heads or anything like that. Krill can probably crush him at leisure. He's all kinds of vulnerable against me in the ocean. It's unfortunate that he's peaked for the most part. The good news is he can definitely hang in the tech trading game if he's alert enough to do so wisely, so he'll hang around for as long as he can avoid war. He's also built up some decent power, but I fear for him it's about to go obsolete. Hard to say if he'll wisely spend cash to upgrade or not. So far, survey says no (no sign of Muskets).
What if?: Ceil doesn't have to leave and they continue working together? Nakor is the economy, Ceil is the fighter. I have a hard time believing Ceil would let them get bullied by Krill like Nakor did. That's no offense to Nakor (it happened to Azza and Regopin too after all), but Ceil strikes me as very aggressive and he had IMO a better base to work with than Regopin and Azza did. If Krill doesn't get all that land down south, things REALLY change dramatically. Krill isn't able to get seriously into the Pacific for one. This means Ceilakor get more islands, but I do too as they spend less time fooling around with the middle Pacific ones that are less attractive than the island Krill got. They potentially enter this phase of the game as nearly as big a threat as Krill, which makes the balance of power quite a bit more shaky given Krill is surely more concerned about them in this alternate universe than in the current version. Their future outlook looks much brigher here too.
Regoarrarr/Pindicator
What went right: Fending off Commodore and Krill without totally dying, then brilliantly invading Yuri, resulting in one of the quickest Ren-era war collapses by two fairly even tech neighbors that I've ever seen. Really, it's been kind of surreal. They were given grief by the two most aggressive players in this game, and yet here they are moving up into 3rd place with (IMO) the second best chance to win this game. I'd say a lot went right for them.
What went wrong: Pissing off Commodore somehow? I don't know what they did to incur his wrath here because I don't know how this war started. But basically, if they provoked it, that was a bad idea. Or something. They knew Krill was their neighbor I'm assuming, so surely they didn't want to have to now worry about two fronts with bloodthirsty neighbors. I'm not sure what else to add here, my understanding of their two skirmishes is just so limited, but if they were avoidable, that would have been helpful.
Future outlook: If they can integrate the west continent without interference from Krill (and Commodore to a lesser extent), then it's very bright. If I were them I'd keep workshopping things and keep pushing army and just run roughshod over the whole west continent while everyone is still adjusting to not really teching because of the painfully expensive techs and funky trading rules. Use captured gold from cities to buy techs from people - really it's easy if they do it right. If they can't avoid another war breakout from Krill/Commodore before they're ready, then this may be less optimistic. This is why I think there's still a strong chance Krill goes after them - I believe Krill wraps the game up if he kicks Regopin off the east continent. So a lot hinges on just trying to integrate and then secure themselves as fast as possible, but overall they're in great shape.
What if?: The Commodore fiasco doesn't happen and both of them mind their own business and stick to their own continents? There's no way Krill really gets ALL that land is there? This is a recurring thing here. I could very well be wrong here, but Regopin, Azza, and Nakor all seemingly settled Best Site Available without considering the land claiming implications, while Krill pushed south like a crazy person and got an unbelievable amount of land. That's the only reason I can figure for how Krill beat everyone into the middle of the east continent. What if Regopin did something similar? They lost a city early and apparently got it back, so they invested resources on that, and then they clearly invested resources in settling the west continent too. I just wonder what happens if all those resources go east instead.
Krill
What went right: Oh geez, where to begin. He was in the lead at T0 when he got unquestionably the best leader/civ in the game, and then he proceeded to drastically out-play all his neighbors. He put on a clinic on why short-term wars can be really powerful. He fought Nakor, Azza, and Regopin and IIRC he got city-exchanging peace deals out of all or nearly all of them. You don't use your army for a full-blown offensive, you use it to extort your way to a top position and then hold it, and Krill showed all of us why. As predicted before the game, he was one of the few players who played like he understood the ramifications of RB Mod. This was a striking difference to Ceilakor's game for instance. I remember seeing an awful lot of nerfed whips from Egypt early for instance, and then I get Krill's graphs and see he's dominated in MFG which pretty much lines up with the right way to play this thing. He wisely went vertical too which helped him fund his mammoth of an empire. I also like that he recognized my tech advantage and it seemed to me like he always "responded" wisely. There's tons of big "first to" advantages, and he knew I was going to clean up a lot of them. I went one direction on the tree and he went the opposite. I ignored the top of the tree to focus on the Zerk part, so he ran to the top and snagged GLib, some other wonder I don't remember (Zeus I think), and I'm pretty sure he got Music too. Good tech prioritization. I could go on, but you get the point. Good game from him all-around, and he got breaks when he needed them to really pile onto his lead.
What went wrong: 404 file not found
Future outlook: Still the odds-on favorite to win IMO. Going to be awfully hard to knock him off. He'll have to make mistakes I think. His massive amount of land is really starting to come into its own as expected, and if he can just get TT partners he'll be fine. Someone gave him Printing Press (for fricken real guys?). I haven't investigated who yet, but whoever it is has no real grasp of how important that is for him. So given that as a precedent, I'm pretty sure he'll win.
What if?: Not sure I can provide anything original here, as the what-if's from Nakor and Regopin really apply to him pretty strongly. Maybe I'll say, what if he didn't start in that spot? I don't know. He mostly just took advantage of people left and right, so I'd like to see the alternate universe where people stood up for themselves a little better.
Dazed/scooter
What went right: Yep, I'll do myself. Well, I'd say the first 100 turns went pretty spectacularly all things considered. We came out of that with Pyramids, Oracle, Great Lighthouse, Colossus, quickly profitable Hindu shrine, a backwards neighbor, etc etc. And no Agriculture. Our position was really quite hopeless, so it was fun finding hope. I'd say starting next to an unaggressive player was a nice boost. No way our opening works if that's Commodore or Krill, for instance. They'd recognize their equally hopeless position and just rush us because it was the right call. So that was fortunate as well. Hitting a bunch of key things was also great - MoM was huge, Notre Dame was helpful, Circumnavigation was amazing, etc. I'm more happy about this game of Civ than any other I've played before.
What went wrong: More than I'd like to admit. One major shortcoming was the waffling on the Mist invasion and the northern settling spree. Trying to do both at once is always a losing situation. I don't think the Mist attack was a total failure though, as it did get us 2 cities and a more comfortable border. However, if we had committed to that or committed to the settling spree, I think either one would have put us in a better position no question. I'd probably also call our complete lack of luxuries a "what went wrong" too, as that's resulted in a lot of decisions I wouldn't normally make.
Future outlook: Similar to Nakor in that I've mostly peaked. Well, not quite. The age of Amphibious Rifles when everyone else has longbows/muskets should be a bit of a high-water mark for me, but with my golden age wrapping up and all that, my glory days will be over pretty soon. I can absolutely impact this game, but I can't say much else.
What if?: There were a handful of luxuries on my island? I was constantly scraping the happy cap and having to make weird decisions as a result. One key one is I would have been able to afford drafting, which I just can't right now. I also wouldn't have had to offer so many one-sided trades just to pry away luxuries. Just a few turns ago Krill's declaration on me cut a bunch of trade routes which meant I lost quite a few luxury deals and suddenly all my core cities were unhappy. In a golden age! I started throwing offers everywhere hoping something stuck and I eventually pried an ivory away from Nakor, but I've been dealing with shenanigans like this all game. I've also been at a severe disadvantage in general trading and goodwill because I literally have nothing to offer to trade except seafood, which nearly everybody has anyways. And it's not like I can found Sid's Sushi and take advantage because it's RB Mod. Maybe that's a better what-if: what if this was a standard vanilla NTT game? My starting position is a bit more suited to vanilla. I've had excess food and low hammers to go with a nerfed whip. I've had a huge tech lead in a game where tech lead evaporates. I'm really curious if Krill would be able to shut me down in that kind of game. I tend to think probably, but the ending would be far more climactic IMO.
------
So that's my wrap on things. Don't take this TOO seriously because there's a strong chance I have no idea what I'm talking about on a lot of these. I figured we're heading into the final third of the game, so now seemed like a nice time to step back and assess. It also seemed like my last chance to do so, as the turns will probably get a bit more involved now that I'm hitting Rifling. Hopefully it was worth the read. Questions or comments are welcome of course. For my money this is the most interesting game going on right now on RB with nearly all contenders updating and so many wars, so hopefully it provides a good finish. (Yes, that's 7500 words and over a dozen pictures for the two part state of the world update)
Alright, I'm going to try to walk through each of my opponents, and then I'll try to similarly analyze myself. I'm going to try to follow a basic pattern for each of them. I'll go in inverse order of current standings (standings are my estimate and not necessarily scoreboard) and I'll do myself last because I'm the hardest person to rank AND I'm very biased, so I won't bother trying. Also, my knowledge here is limited to what I can see. I pretty much am aware of a ton of wars that have occurred from Civstats early and all that, but I don't know motivations and it's hard for me to judge prudence of these decisions... So I'm giving it my best guess. If some things I say are wrong or impossible, then that's why. Alright, disclaimers done, ONWARD.
Plako
What went wrong: Sorry Plako
. I'm not really sure what you can do about dying so early in this kind of game. We all use the units to scout anyways, so it's just dumb luck to get killed. Not really sure what the solution is. I feel like this conversation crops up from time to time, but I've never heard a satisfying solutionWhat if? Plako is one of the many fascinating "what-if" scenarios this game has. What if Plako doesn't die and plays this game out? You see how cramped Nakor looked in that previous post, but it's easy to forget he actually had access to two civs worth of land. Does Plako see himself boxed in and eat Ceilakor early? Does he take to the islands and cut down on the amount I have access to? Maybe he swipes one of my water wonders. Does he prove to be the aggressive player who holds Krill in line that the eastern continent currently lacks? I maintain that Nakor/Ceil got some of the best land in the game, and I can't help but wonder what would have happened if Plako warrior kills them instead and is the guy playing their land. That's not a knock against Nakor/Ceil at all, but rather a statement about what I felt pre-game - Plako was one of the top-tier players in this game. Really wonder what would have happened if he hadn't been executed.
Yuris
What went wrong: The last 25 turns mainly
. I think he lost interest and/or just signed up for too many games is the main thing (he was playing his turns silly fast for having such a big empire). I think it was just 30-40 turns ago that I was talking about him as a dark horse candidate given all the land he had access to and his backward northern neighbors. Um, not my best prediction. He also fell victim to something I've talked about in my thread - RB Mod on normal speed is SO SO SO different to quick speed vanilla BtS in how quickly you can scrounge together a defensive army. You need bigger standing armies here (unless you are located in Australia of course), and it's harder to pull one together here. I think Yuris got a rough first-hand account on that. I also suspect he was pretty apathetic about defending. He didn't really whip very hard at all. He had a massive amount of cities but was whipping just a few times every turn. That's not going to cut it against a determined attack by an opponent with numbers. What went right: Flying under the radar and slowly cutting through the jungle into the lush center of the continent while Commodore/Cyneheard squabbled for king of the dung hill that was the northern land on the west continent. Colonizing the islands early to get himself some IC routes was prudent, and I think he played an all-around solid game for the bulk of it.
Future Outlook None really. My prediction for next to join Plako in the dead pool.
What if? What if Yuris deterred Regopin from attacking and/or slowed him down? Given the tech settings, just getting attacked doesn't make him out of it. It's not impossible for him to come back from that scenario if he could just workshop over stuff and use his land advantage to roll over his backwards neighbors. What if he didn't check out, but rather used his advantage and position as western continent alpha dog to conquer the west continent? That would make him a contender. Was all this possible? Dunno. I'm guessing probably though if he prioritized his techs properly. Not hard for him to get to Guilds quickly and do to Commodore/Cyneheard what Regopin did to him.
Brick/Mist
What went wrong: First off, they got shafted even worse than me in land, and that's really saying something. At least I got stone which let to Pyramids. Brick really had very little to work with. Brick also was the greenest player coming into this game, and I think it showed early on. He had a capital with double corn, a river, a bunch of forests, and IMP. Despite this, we deforested our capital long before him. There was no real sign of him chopping out settlers early which could have been strong, so that set him back. I don't know what all he was doing, but in general, his start was very rocky. RL also hit him at the same time, so he wasn't really able to devote a lot of time to playing turns which I'm sure made it a lot more difficult to have to play on the fly without thinking much about the turns. Tough luck for him, and I'm positive he'll do better next time.
What went right: Mist taking over and steadying the ship, and then the two of them apparently working together now judging by Civstats. It seems to be like 70% Mist and 30% Brick now. But anyways, Mist sharply pushed out Vultures en masse to survive me, beelined military techs, and got spies in play and started pushing EPs and stealing key techs that way. Very smart for survival - just generally made themselves unattractive. They also did everything they could to be nice to me and not provoke me to kill them sooner, so this is going to result in them outliving Yuris, which NOBODY would have predicted 100 turns ago. After the rocky start, I think these guys have done a nice job since my invasion of them.
Future Outlook: Not much. They're miles away from even being allowed to trade techs, and don't have long to live most likely. Surviving this long and outliving Yuris is a victory though, so nicely done.
What if? What if Brick had rushed us when we were whoring wonders and defended by warriors? Dazed will remember my extreme paranoia early on when stuff like this was happening:
![[Image: 67%20power.JPG]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10326940/RB%20Pics/PB5/67%20power.JPG)
What if Brick had used his massive forest to chop out a bunch of Vultures and send them at me? This would have been a drastically different game for me, that's for sure. I suspect we would have held him off, but we would have definitely been crippled in the process.
Cyneheard
What went wrong: I wish I knew on this one. I just knew so little about what was going on with him. He just... really lagged behind. And after seeing his capital (TRIPLE corn!!!) I'm stumped on how he struggled so much. The only thing I can figure is the giant desert south of him made settling south awkward. Yeah, I just don't know what to write here. I think Cyneheard got a bit burnt out on civ and regretted joining this, resulting in him checking out a bit early. Or something. Most curious about this afterwards. Got Commodore'd too which was pretty much lights out.
What went right: Maybe surviving this long? I'm really reaching for something here.
Future Outlook: Seems to be unkillable to Commodore. So he'll probably stick around for quite awhile at minimal relevancy. Regopin can't reach him and Commodore has to worry about Regopin now, so I'm really not sure when Cyneheard is going to die.
What if?: Cyneheard plays like Cyneheard. He's still stuck between Toku Zulu Commodore on one side and giant desert on the south side, but I don't think he gave this game too much attention either. I don't think much would have changed on this one though.
Azza
What went wrong: Skirmished with Krill and didn't go well. No idea if that was avoidable (unlikely because Krill). I also suspect his start played out a little wonky because he has some decent land and resources, but he was a bit further behind than I would have reasonably expected. He literally has every gold on the map IIRC, for example. There's just no real good reason Krill should beat him to the middle of the continent, but he did. So I'd say that was the key issue - not recognizing the need to hurry to claim important land. Land is king in RB mod land, and he was fairly well-positioned to get a nice chunk of it, but it didn't work out.
What went right: Hard to say this definitively, but he apparently defended well enough vs Krill to get Krill to eventually back off after taking a couple cities. Given that he was kind of overmatched, that's not a bad effort. I really thought he'd totally collapse like we're seeing Yuris now, but well done to him for sticking with it.
Future outlook: Hope he outlives Mist? He'll outlive Yuris for sure, but if Krill comes after him next, he's not long for this world. His best goal can be to defend as best he can and make a Krill invasion painful. Hopefully he gives it his best shot.
What if?: He recognizes the value of the middle of the east continent and pushes hard to settle & keeps it. Vastly limits Krill's reach and land footprint. This either results in Krill slogging out a more difficult war vs Azza or results in Krill being forced to go harder after Nakor or Regopin to get his land. The game becomes less Krill-centric, opening things up dramatically.
Commodore
What went wrong: A land situation nearly as bad as us Pacific island inhabitants, a crappy leader and civ, a Regopin war that seemingly got no real returns, a Cyneheard war that started promisingly and then stalled out quite badly, etc etc. A lot of war-related things. Also not sure how Regopin got the relatively nice land south of Commodore. Perhaps that was war related? But yeah, that was a miss too, though I don't know whose fault that is exactly. In fact, the only neighbor Commodore did not war against was the one guy who folded like a deck of cards to Regopin, and a big part of that is probably because Regopin oddly got a footing here that Commodore didn't..? I don't know, I still don't really understand what happened in this region, I just saw cities change hands on Civstats and eventually a map trade showed me the aftermath. Commodore also expanded very slowly off the start IIRC which was surprising and odd given that he has cheap granaries and cheap barracks (culture).
What went right: Um, the Cyneheard war for a little while? This is a short list. I feel bad but I can't think of anything to put here. I'd say the fact that he's still fairly relevant (he's in the tech trading game) despite the length and magnitude of the previous sections says a lot.
Future outlook: A much tougher neighbor than Yuris for Regopin? He's a wildcard. He's still very much in it on the TT front so don't count him out yet as a factor. He's still got more land tiles than me I'm pretty sure
. Given the craziness that will be no brokering and his relatively unthreatening position, he can probably tread water tech-wise just fine while continuing to declare war on anything that moves. Regopin may have to worry about Commodore more than Krill because Commodore has far less to lose than Krill when it comes to wars. I think you can make a case that Commodore belongs in the "contender" group solely due to the fact that he's in the tech trading game and he'd be really difficult to kill, something the other non-contenders can't say.What if?: His Regopin war is more successful. Don't you think he would have been a much scarier (and far less predictable) neighbor to Krill than Regopin? Ask Krill yourself, he'll say yes. This means he gets a foothold in that continent, and he also gets the land south of him all to himself. That means HE gets to reap the benefits of Yuri defending with missionaries, scouts, and an army made of dreams. Basically, his whole game rode on that war. Maybe a better what-if would be what if that person he attacked was a weaker player who didn't defend as well as I'm guessing Regopin would? This is an interesting one to me.
Nakor/Ceiliazul
(As we get into "contender" land I'll do what went right first, as it makes sense to focus on positives first for the players who've succeeded more)
What went right: Warrior-killing Plako. Beautiful surrounding land. Decent traits, great civ. Their leader/civ isn't as good as Krill's, but I believe their starting location is the best. Their game has never been bad, making mostly wise, conservative decisions. Nakor realized he was overmatched vs Krill and got peace and promptly started colonizing some fairly good islands. Kudos for not falling apart after the disappointment of losing key land, but rather Nakor went right back to work and improved his position noticeably. Overall just a solid and consistent performance.
What went wrong: More than you'd think. First, I still theorize that they had hardly any forests (all those floodplains) which hurts in this mod which is why they got to a slow start. They're IND with stone, so I do wonder if we beat them in a race for Pyramids..? I also think it's remarkable that they had a dead neighbor and ended up with as little land as they did. Yes it's largely because Krill beat them up and pushed their borders back, but why was this possible exactly? Krill did that despite 2 other hostile borders, and Nakor had total peace elsewhere. I think Ceiliazul having to leave gets included here, as Ceil and Nakor are quite different players and complement each other very well. Ceil is the more aggressive half, and losing him I think hurt as Nakor is more suited to solid economic choices and less suited to fending off a maniac Brennus neighbor. A lot of strange metagame decisions too I've documented - such as not pressing for Taj (he apparently thought he could tech to Liberalism and sling Taj first which was crazy given I was teching 2x faster and taking a similar path). In fairness, this section is over-inflated because Nakor is the one I see the most as a neighbor, but it truly has been an up and down game for this team. They're still quite strong economically though so don't completely count them out.
Future outlook: I don't know, I feel like he's in the same boat (no pun intended) as me. He's surely a contender now, but I don't see him having a prayer of launching a spaceship or smashing heads or anything like that. Krill can probably crush him at leisure. He's all kinds of vulnerable against me in the ocean. It's unfortunate that he's peaked for the most part. The good news is he can definitely hang in the tech trading game if he's alert enough to do so wisely, so he'll hang around for as long as he can avoid war. He's also built up some decent power, but I fear for him it's about to go obsolete. Hard to say if he'll wisely spend cash to upgrade or not. So far, survey says no (no sign of Muskets).
What if?: Ceil doesn't have to leave and they continue working together? Nakor is the economy, Ceil is the fighter. I have a hard time believing Ceil would let them get bullied by Krill like Nakor did. That's no offense to Nakor (it happened to Azza and Regopin too after all), but Ceil strikes me as very aggressive and he had IMO a better base to work with than Regopin and Azza did. If Krill doesn't get all that land down south, things REALLY change dramatically. Krill isn't able to get seriously into the Pacific for one. This means Ceilakor get more islands, but I do too as they spend less time fooling around with the middle Pacific ones that are less attractive than the island Krill got. They potentially enter this phase of the game as nearly as big a threat as Krill, which makes the balance of power quite a bit more shaky given Krill is surely more concerned about them in this alternate universe than in the current version. Their future outlook looks much brigher here too.
Regoarrarr/Pindicator
What went right: Fending off Commodore and Krill without totally dying, then brilliantly invading Yuri, resulting in one of the quickest Ren-era war collapses by two fairly even tech neighbors that I've ever seen. Really, it's been kind of surreal. They were given grief by the two most aggressive players in this game, and yet here they are moving up into 3rd place with (IMO) the second best chance to win this game. I'd say a lot went right for them.
What went wrong: Pissing off Commodore somehow? I don't know what they did to incur his wrath here because I don't know how this war started. But basically, if they provoked it, that was a bad idea. Or something. They knew Krill was their neighbor I'm assuming, so surely they didn't want to have to now worry about two fronts with bloodthirsty neighbors. I'm not sure what else to add here, my understanding of their two skirmishes is just so limited, but if they were avoidable, that would have been helpful.
Future outlook: If they can integrate the west continent without interference from Krill (and Commodore to a lesser extent), then it's very bright. If I were them I'd keep workshopping things and keep pushing army and just run roughshod over the whole west continent while everyone is still adjusting to not really teching because of the painfully expensive techs and funky trading rules. Use captured gold from cities to buy techs from people - really it's easy if they do it right. If they can't avoid another war breakout from Krill/Commodore before they're ready, then this may be less optimistic. This is why I think there's still a strong chance Krill goes after them - I believe Krill wraps the game up if he kicks Regopin off the east continent. So a lot hinges on just trying to integrate and then secure themselves as fast as possible, but overall they're in great shape.
What if?: The Commodore fiasco doesn't happen and both of them mind their own business and stick to their own continents? There's no way Krill really gets ALL that land is there? This is a recurring thing here. I could very well be wrong here, but Regopin, Azza, and Nakor all seemingly settled Best Site Available without considering the land claiming implications, while Krill pushed south like a crazy person and got an unbelievable amount of land. That's the only reason I can figure for how Krill beat everyone into the middle of the east continent. What if Regopin did something similar? They lost a city early and apparently got it back, so they invested resources on that, and then they clearly invested resources in settling the west continent too. I just wonder what happens if all those resources go east instead.
Krill
What went right: Oh geez, where to begin. He was in the lead at T0 when he got unquestionably the best leader/civ in the game, and then he proceeded to drastically out-play all his neighbors. He put on a clinic on why short-term wars can be really powerful. He fought Nakor, Azza, and Regopin and IIRC he got city-exchanging peace deals out of all or nearly all of them. You don't use your army for a full-blown offensive, you use it to extort your way to a top position and then hold it, and Krill showed all of us why. As predicted before the game, he was one of the few players who played like he understood the ramifications of RB Mod. This was a striking difference to Ceilakor's game for instance. I remember seeing an awful lot of nerfed whips from Egypt early for instance, and then I get Krill's graphs and see he's dominated in MFG which pretty much lines up with the right way to play this thing. He wisely went vertical too which helped him fund his mammoth of an empire. I also like that he recognized my tech advantage and it seemed to me like he always "responded" wisely. There's tons of big "first to" advantages, and he knew I was going to clean up a lot of them. I went one direction on the tree and he went the opposite. I ignored the top of the tree to focus on the Zerk part, so he ran to the top and snagged GLib, some other wonder I don't remember (Zeus I think), and I'm pretty sure he got Music too. Good tech prioritization. I could go on, but you get the point. Good game from him all-around, and he got breaks when he needed them to really pile onto his lead.
What went wrong: 404 file not found
Future outlook: Still the odds-on favorite to win IMO. Going to be awfully hard to knock him off. He'll have to make mistakes I think. His massive amount of land is really starting to come into its own as expected, and if he can just get TT partners he'll be fine. Someone gave him Printing Press (for fricken real guys?). I haven't investigated who yet, but whoever it is has no real grasp of how important that is for him. So given that as a precedent, I'm pretty sure he'll win.
What if?: Not sure I can provide anything original here, as the what-if's from Nakor and Regopin really apply to him pretty strongly. Maybe I'll say, what if he didn't start in that spot? I don't know. He mostly just took advantage of people left and right, so I'd like to see the alternate universe where people stood up for themselves a little better.
Dazed/scooter
What went right: Yep, I'll do myself. Well, I'd say the first 100 turns went pretty spectacularly all things considered. We came out of that with Pyramids, Oracle, Great Lighthouse, Colossus, quickly profitable Hindu shrine, a backwards neighbor, etc etc. And no Agriculture
. Our position was really quite hopeless, so it was fun finding hope. I'd say starting next to an unaggressive player was a nice boost. No way our opening works if that's Commodore or Krill, for instance. They'd recognize their equally hopeless position and just rush us because it was the right call. So that was fortunate as well. Hitting a bunch of key things was also great - MoM was huge, Notre Dame was helpful, Circumnavigation was amazing, etc. I'm more happy about this game of Civ than any other I've played before. What went wrong: More than I'd like to admit. One major shortcoming was the waffling on the Mist invasion and the northern settling spree. Trying to do both at once is always a losing situation. I don't think the Mist attack was a total failure though, as it did get us 2 cities and a more comfortable border. However, if we had committed to that or committed to the settling spree, I think either one would have put us in a better position no question. I'd probably also call our complete lack of luxuries a "what went wrong" too, as that's resulted in a lot of decisions I wouldn't normally make.
Future outlook: Similar to Nakor in that I've mostly peaked. Well, not quite. The age of Amphibious Rifles when everyone else has longbows/muskets should be a bit of a high-water mark for me, but with my golden age wrapping up and all that, my glory days will be over pretty soon. I can absolutely impact this game, but I can't say much else.
What if?: There were a handful of luxuries on my island? I was constantly scraping the happy cap and having to make weird decisions as a result. One key one is I would have been able to afford drafting, which I just can't right now. I also wouldn't have had to offer so many one-sided trades just to pry away luxuries. Just a few turns ago Krill's declaration on me cut a bunch of trade routes which meant I lost quite a few luxury deals and suddenly all my core cities were unhappy. In a golden age! I started throwing offers everywhere hoping something stuck and I eventually pried an ivory away from Nakor, but I've been dealing with shenanigans like this all game. I've also been at a severe disadvantage in general trading and goodwill because I literally have nothing to offer to trade except seafood, which nearly everybody has anyways. And it's not like I can found Sid's Sushi and take advantage because it's RB Mod. Maybe that's a better what-if: what if this was a standard vanilla NTT game? My starting position is a bit more suited to vanilla. I've had excess food and low hammers to go with a nerfed whip. I've had a huge tech lead in a game where tech lead evaporates. I'm really curious if Krill would be able to shut me down in that kind of game. I tend to think probably, but the ending would be far more climactic IMO.
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So that's my wrap on things. Don't take this TOO seriously because there's a strong chance I have no idea what I'm talking about on a lot of these
. I figured we're heading into the final third of the game, so now seemed like a nice time to step back and assess. It also seemed like my last chance to do so, as the turns will probably get a bit more involved now that I'm hitting Rifling. Hopefully it was worth the read. Questions or comments are welcome of course. For my money this is the most interesting game going on right now on RB with nearly all contenders updating and so many wars, so hopefully it provides a good finish. (Yes, that's 7500 words and over a dozen pictures for the two part state of the world update)
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