[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[antisocialmunky]

I don't know what I missed but its probably better in zero G. Everything is better in zero G

[Rowain]

Knowing when the settling team will be ready will tell you when you need to stop exploring. But for now it looks like there's more island to see up that way.

Have you become a ded-lurker suddenly?

[pindicator]

Turn 125 Power Rankings


Link to previous Power Rankings:

• The Way-Too-Early-To-Tell Power Rankings
  
• The Post-Pairing Power Rankings
  
• Turn 25 Power Rankings
  
• Turn 50 Power Rankings
  
• Turn 75 Power Rankings
  
• Turn 100 Power Rankings
  

It's turn 125 already!? I guess that means it's time for another power rankings. And once again, we're completely shaking up the order of things. The end of peaceful expansion is approaching and already we're starting to see wars where the bigger civs devour the smaller ones. I think that will only escalate over the next 25 turns.


Biggest Gain: +4, dtay
Biggest Drop: -8, mostly_harmless


1. dtay as Alexander of Germany
Prev Rank: #5
City Count: 14 with 78 total population
Our latest #1 should be no surprise. dtay is playing a very strong game, using an early war to bully Black Sword and gain land, and has stayed in the top tier of settling and growing cities while keeping a strong economy. He's catapulted his GNP to tops in the game with help from a golden age, and wisely used the golden age to leverage the crucial midgame civic swaps, letting him become the first team to get into Bureaucracy and Caste System. He's wrapped up the top half of the tech tree, grabbing the Great Artist from Music, and added The Great Library & SoZ to his trophies. Next up, he's going to need to war to gain future city locations - he's settled about everything that's available for him to settle early on.

2.  Pindicator & Scooter as Darius of Vikings
Prev Rank: #3
City Count: 14 with 68 total population
The only thing keeping us in the #2 spot is an assumed beaker lead on the competition. When you look at all the teams that have settled 13 or more cities (which is about half of the teams), we have the lowest total population of any of those teams. Part of that shows just what kind of food challenge we've had, but it also can be expected for the team that landed Pyramids and is running Rep Specialists. But a case could be made that the next team on the list really should be #2.

3. Mackoti (& Yuris) as Mehmed of the Ottomans
Prev Rank: #2
City Count: 16 with 84 total population
Mackoti picked a good time to strike and a good target to hit. He's gained 4 cities in the war and looks poised to engulf all of mh's land. All that land will give mackoti a real chance to move up the rankings for turn 150. He's still my favorite to win it all, but he's going to have some solid civs on his continent to overcome first.

4. plako as Ragnar of Maya
Prev Rank: #1
City Count: 15 with 63 known population (3 cities unknown)
A little bit of a slip by plako, but he still has Great Lighthouse and tons of open borders and he still has MoM at his disposal for future golden ages.

5. Commodore & Kurumi as Victoria of Portugal
Prev Rank: #7
City Count: 14 with 82 known population (1 city unknown)
He's rexing and pushing economy very well, owns the largest city in the game, and likely has the largest number of population. But now he has to go either through us or Black Sword to continue expanding.

6. Fintourist & Old Harry as Montezuma of Babylon
Prev Rank: #9
City Count: 16 with 75 total population
He may be stuck on a continent between dtay and mackoti, but I love how Fintourist and Old Harry have positioned themselves. They've grabbed a large fertile belt of jungle, and then also taken the majority of the island between themselves and ichabod. They're one of the teams that I look forward to seeing how they continue to play and if they can keep up with the top teams as priorities change from settling and claiming lands to winning and defending battles.

7. Ichabod & Wetbandit as Shaka of Greece
Prev Rank: #6
City Count: 13 with 86 total population
Ichabod is another civ that I think is in a great position. He has amazing demos, and a power graph the says "I'm going to take somebody's toys". Surrounded by neighbors like WilliamLP, slowcheetah, or even Fintourist, he has options about where he can expand. I like his longterm prospects quite a bit, actually.

8. Bigger, Lewwyn, & Qgqqqqq as Gandhi of China
Prev Rank: #4
City Count: 13 with 62 known population (2 cities unknown)
Lewwyn has really slowed down as of late. Whether it's running out of land or emphasizing settling north rather than pushing east, he's down with us in the low-end of population for the top tier teams. I don't like his long-term position as much, because he has to go through either Azza or us. I don't think he'd get through us easily and I don't think he has the stomach to go after Azza first. His best bet may be to expand east towards dhalphir, across the narrow sea.


*** I would say that this is the dividing line between civs that are still in the hunt for winning and civs that are effectively out of the game. The next few teams have an outside shot to get into the hunt, but they would need a bit of luck and to start expanding really soon ***


9. Azza as Joao of the Dutch
Prev Rank: #8
City Count: 11 with 71 known population (1 city unknown)
Azza has really started to slow down. Whether it's running out of room, or running out of motivation, he's only planted 2 cities in the last 25 turns and has fallen out of being one of the top teams. Black Sword has even caught up in city count to him now. Azza has a lot of islands to his south but has not made use of them for gaining IC routes; he hasn't even explored them yet. His best chance to get back into things may be to vulture Nakor's south when we attack.

10. WilliamLP as Isabella of Inca
Prev Rank: #11
City Count: 10 with 56 known population (1 city unknown)
When I look at the dot mapping that WilliamLP has done with all that gorgeous land, it makes me cry a little. But worse, his constant skirmishing with retep and bacchus is certainly slowing him down. It may not be fair to judge him on that as it seems they've been locked in war for a long while now.

11. The Black Sword & Jowy as Pacal of India
Prev Rank: #14
City Count: 11 with 49 known population (3 cities unknown)
A nice little rebound by Black Sword. He's expanded into island cities that Nakor rightly should have settled, and managed to stake back a fair bit of land. The biggest thing going against him is his neighbors: he's sort of the natural target for a number of civs, including dtay, Commodore, and possibly even our zerkers.

12. Dhalphir as Mansa Musa of America (previously Serdoa)
Prev Rank: #12
City Count: 10 with 52 total population
How long until plako eats you? Or does Lewwyn start feasting first?

13. Nakor & CFC Jester as Wang Kon of Rome
Prev Rank: #13
City Count: 10 with 53 total population
Settling cities in the middle of the jungle instead of taking the food resources on the islands was a bit mistake. Of all the teams we have graphs on, they are at the bottom of the GNP graph and have been for some time, meaning they fall farther behind every turn.


*** Below this line there isn't even a faint glimmer of hope. At least the teams in the middle section can delude themselves into thinking about a comeback for hte next 50 turns. Teams below this line are playing for pride or for fun ***


14. Bacchus as Suryavarman of Carthage
Prev Rank: #15
City Count: 8 with 44 total population
He's seen WilliamLP take a city off him in the last 20 turns, but he's still enough of a presence in the area that he can't be taken over yet.

15. suttree as Huayna Capac of Spain
Prev Rank: #17
City Count: 6 with 24 total population
Not only are you next on mackoti's all-you-can-eat buffet, but now Black Sword may be swooping down to take the island cities you thought you would have

16. Slowcheetah as Ramesses of Mongolia
Prev Rank: #16
City Count: 6 with 20 total population
Good news! You just fought a war and captured a city from the top team in the game. Bad news: that was the only city you gained in the last 25 turns.

17. retep as Sitting Bull of Khmer
Prev Rank: #18
City Count: 3 with 9 total population
Still on 3 cities. He won't be the first city to be eliminated, so at least there's that.

18. mostly_harmless as Qin Shi Huang of Sumeria
Prev Rank: #10
City Count: 2 with 7 total population
GG. Nice of him to build mackoti all those wonders

[Zed-F]

Rowain, I'm not saying anything other than to have a plan, which seems pretty obvious. As far as what the plan should be, that's up to them.

But, if you still think that's too much, fine.

[pindicator]

Rowain, I'm not saying anything other than to have a plan, which seems pretty obvious. As far as what the plan should be, that's up to them.

But, if you still think that's too much, fine.

I didn't read anything into it. You can tell from the screenshot there's more land up north ro be explored

[flugauto]

Thank you for the list. Who do you think will be the N1 in 25 turns?

[pindicator]

I think predictions are scooter's department. But if I had to make a guess...

Us, of course

[Ceiliazul]

Knowing when the settling team will be ready will tell you when you need to stop exploring. But for now it looks like there's more island to see up that way.

Have you become a ded-lurker suddenly?

wondering that myself. ..

[scooter]

By the way I'm convinced that Zed-F knows more about the empire than either of you individually, if not combined.

This has crossed my mind several times lately . Glad to know people are following pretty closely.

Knowing when the settling team will be ready will tell you when you need to stop exploring. But for now it looks like there's more island to see up that way.

Have you become a ded-lurker suddenly?

Agreed with pindicator that I don't think he's said anything over the line or even really close to it.

Btw, dtay swapped to Bureaucracy last turn.  His GNP is now double ours.
In a way I'm glad - let him be the tall poppy.  But still, super strong showing from dtay early on.  When the t125 power rankings come out there's no doubt who will be #1

FWIW, he's in a golden age and running science on so that distorts it a tad. But yeah, great game from his so far.


Stray Comments:
1) Yeah I'm up for further north exploring. I think the other galley is enough for our transportation needs right now in that region.
2) I think our workshop prioritization should be Orioles especially right now. We'll be coming off those scientists in the golden age, and it would be really nice to be working some Caste + GA enhance workshops there. There's a few other spots where they'll be useful too.
3) Valiants for our next settler? Chop/whip after the work boat maybe.

[scooter]

Should probably start considering what gains we're hoping to achieve with Nakor. Very brief comments because I'm headed out the door in 5.



We want all this land. Some razing/replacing is at least worth considering - I really dislike Alcair's placement for instance - but we definitely want this land. I like the amount of villages that are here to be captuerd.



So this is where we need to plan. We did kind of say we figured we wouldn't go further south than the capital, but man Cold Rocks Hold is a nice city. The two below it I care less strongly about. I would not be shocked if Azza were to pile on and try to grab those. I'm not opposed to even going as far down as Imre Stand if we can manage it.

In the middle, I think we dont capture Chaendaer. I think Lewwyn is probably already wanting to capture that spot. We could raze it and clear out, but I wouldn't be surprised if Lewwyn piles on to grab that city when we move in on Nakor. The sign in the middle is a new plant. It'll be a pretty respectable spot later, but it's brand new, it'll have no infrastructure, and it won't be super fast starting. I do think we want it those tiles though - leaving Timbers, Gators, and that city as our southeast border with Lewwyn.

Yes, counting chickens, etc, but I think we need to think about this to get a better idea of how much military we'll need.