Sorry for the lack of recent updates; I picked up a bunch of P&C games in the Steam Sale and have been playing them with my Wife, so each evening I get a pointed question about how long I'll be "playing my turns"...
Quick update on the Marijuana Empire: grabbed HBR a few turns ago and have some Stables in production. Guilds due at the end of next turn with a minimum of Wealth builds, then ~4t to Banking. I have a Great Person due from Weed in a couple of turns, which will be approx 80% GSci, 18% GArt & 2% GEng; I delayed the GPro from Troll, since there's no rush to use it. I already have the GS & GA stacked for the 2-man GAge, and have run rough numbers to be confident that I can get through Philo & Nationalism in that time, but until I actually get the GA going and Emancipation adopted I won't be sure whether I can pick up Mono & Drama as well, nor how much Wealth will need to be built.
I've been generally growing cities in anticipation of GA/Emancipation, but once Guilds is in I'll be "resizing" a few down to Filler status so that others can pick up the tiles as they grow. In particular, Dope & Hash will cede tiles to their larger neighbours and in the South Commerce tiles (incl. both Gems) will shuffle into Panama Red as the Market completes and the production tiles will move to Bhang and Blunts. Not sure how many Knights will come out and how quickly, but probably not enough to put a dent in anyone unless I see an opening (more on this later).
Geopolitical update:
Ichabod: has not completed any tech since researching Paper, but he must be weighing up his chances for Liberalism and what he can expect to take with it. He knows that I have a GSci sitting idle, so I expect he's waiting to see what I do. If Weed spawns a GSci in a couple of turns I could theoretically burn them both to try to race him, but a) even then I think I'm too far behind & b) if I went all-out, I wouldn't even be able to Lib a decent tech target, having neither Banking to open Economics nor Philo to open Nationalism. Overall, my assessment is that the risk/reward is very against making the attempt.
He has his Cataphracts healing in Jowy's final Capital, on the border with Adrien; I'm keeping a careful eye out, but I doubt he'll make a move against either him or myself. The cost-reward ratio of hitting Adrien is just tiny for him, me or Mr. Cairo; there's 3 cities to be gained, but the size of Adrien's stack means it'll cost a large number of units to bring down, and then you're immediately vulnerable to having your stack remains wiped by 2 opportunistic new neighbours so need it to be even bigger. I expect Adrien to be around for a long while yet (probably Cannons).
Gawdzak: has gone the Religious route grabbing Theology and building the AP. In an interesting move he did so for Christianity rather than the more-established Judaism which he had previously adopted (but probably not manually spread). What was excellent news for me was that I got a very quick spread into my Moai city which interrupted its Market build to pop out a quick Monastery. On further thought, I may grab Mono on the way to Banking so I can OR at the start of the GA and suspend the Market in the meantime to throw out some Missionaries to take advantage of the extra hammers.
Gawdzak followed that by grabbing (Bulb?) Philosophy and is saving gold on Nationalism. Mercantilism is certainly the right civic for him since he's already running Rep from Pyramids, and as IND I expect him to grab the Taj - though it won't stop me challenging if it's still open when I get there (it won't be). It does mean that he's spent a lot of time in the middle of the Tech tree, and I doubt he has much at the bottom. This is in contrast to Ichabod, who has spent his time at the bottom and little in the middle.
Mr. Cairo: I've mentioned a bit already, but he's about to run out of his first Golden Age and will be exiting in Bureaucracy having just grabbed CS. Guilds is queued up, but I don't think he'll reach it before the end. As previously mentioned, he's now bogged down with very little incentive to finish off Adrien, but probably still quite a bit of WW. He's got a lot of Galleys and a big army, but I haven't seen any Triremes to face off against mine and now we have Open Borders I have an unused Worker keeping eyes on his stack.
AT: I have less info on AT because he's the EP leader and I gave up on trying to get tech visibility on him (I think he has on me). He's been whipping quite a bit recently and his Power has been climbing steadily, although not at a much faster rate than me which made me think that it's a more defensive than offensive build-up - he borders Ichabod after all. OTOH, he just adopted Theocracy ... and I think did so outside a Golden Age, so now I have no idea. It does raise the concern of C1 Triremes coming at me, but I have been emphasizing them myself for a while and I doubt he could do more than grab an odd island city from me before I pushed him back. If he's going on the offense, I think it's much more likely to be Molach as the target.
Then there's the mess on the Southern continent. From what I can tell, Nyles hit Yuri pretty hard and is wearing him down slowly. BRick took advantage and grabbed a bunch of his cities back, but I have no idea if he can hold them in the long term. This might be an opportunity if I can apply the right force at the right time, but my visibility down here is severely lacking. I'm accelerating an extra pair of WCs down to do a quick survey and see what's what. I'm also bringing 2/3 of my NW Galleys down through my new Fort Canal for the eventuality of a potential attack - ETA 4-5t to go through the whole route. I'll trickle some of the Swords, etc. down this way as well and any new Knights will stage somewhere with easy access. We'll see how things develop over the next few turns....
Then it was cleanup with a CRI Sword scoring another promo vs a Spear and an unpromoted War Chariot getting 2xp from a Warrior to get up to 5xp and gain Sentry!
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