Graphs and demos: Gavagai is also building a ton of units. Someone is in trouble here. Let`s hope he looks elsewhere for more land. Also, note that we`re 4th in mfg right now. Those Workshops are helping us out here.
Interesting times continue; thanks again for the thorough reporting!
I should qualify something I said before about early golden ages, because I think I was too dismissive of their importance: The advantage of an early golden age is that it provides a temporary edge in beakers and hammers: Temporary because - unless it's used to gain a permanent edge by means like those described below - a similarly-developed player who executes a golden age later on will match and surpass this advantage when they do. Often, GAs are timed to support important civic swaps, but beyond that (and apart from it as a Spi leader) the best use of a Golden Age is to get a "first-to" bonus of some kind - whether that's Liberalism, a key wonder, or a military tech and/or giant stack of units with which to claim more territory. Of course, even if a player who's not pursuing any of those things may need to launch a golden age to keep up in military tech and production with those who are, so as to avoid becoming the target of an attack by a player taking the Golden Military route. And then Dark Savant is a special case: Even if he has no other reason to pursue early GAs, he wants to start as many as he can before landing Nationalism and obsoleting MoM. (Whereas if another player expects to be able to conquer the MoM city, they might be tempted to delay a GA if they think they can get away with it and still take the city....)
So, 50 turns have passed since I did the last ranking. A lot has changed in the world and the first player is out.
Those who are out of the running
9. Yuris got attacked by an overwhelming force of Knights and went down in flames.
8. Donovan Zoi is under attack by Greece and won`t be long for this world. Let`s see if he can inflict some damage on those Knights that surely are coming for him. If he defends stubbornly there might be an opening for Krill to take advantage of. He`s definitely going to end 8th.
Those who are still relevant but have a very low chance of getting back to contention
7. Dark Savant has made a few very good plays (circumnavigation and building the MoM come to mind). He just fired his second Golden Age and is hoping to catch up a bit with that. In the last 50 turns he`s been attacked numerous times, (including by us!) and is probably on the decline here. However, his core is still intact and he can certainly hurt e.g. Gavagai if he goes all-in.
6. We stay in 6th, I still feel that we`re in a slightly stronger position than Dark Savant. We still have a mountain to climb to get back into the game, but we`re very much alive. Our hope is that neither Joey or dtay will come for us as the other one could pick up most of the spoils. If we can use the Golden Age to good effect, we might get to t200 with an intact empire.
The contenders
5. Gavagai is still 5th but could easily be placed higher if his military buildup gives him more land. He`s definitely ahead of us and has about a million options. I think he`s going for Dark Savant (actually I`m a bit surprised that they have been peaceful the whole game) and then Gavagai could be very dangerous in the endgame. There is a chance he`s going to attack someone else, we`ll see. He has an interesting position.
4. Krill is moved down to 4th as he lost a big city to Couerva and is in a hot war with him. Yes, Krill took back a small city this turn, but I really think that he needs to compete with Joey for Donovan`s lands, as China is going down quickly. Krill has been pretty peaceful this game and needs to make a move soon in order to win PB37.
3. Couerva made a play for early Galleons and probably surprised Krill by conquering that big island city. He`s done a lot of unexpected things, like attacking Dark Savant instead of Yuri. I still think Couerva`s in an excellent position here but he can`t fight a war of attrition with Krill..
2. Joey is in the process of eliminating China. He`s doing very well indeed and is not far behind dtay. Perhaps Joey needs to attack us to be able to compete with dtay later. Greece is starting to look outright scary. Joey just started his second Golden Age so he might have a specific tech goal in mind.
1. Dtay has played a very strong game. His Knights overran Russia and he got the first kill of the game. I put dtay first because he`s got his conquest done fastest and can start digesting the Russian lands. Also, dtay is the tech leader of PB37 and has a lock on Taj Mahal. Perhaps he`ll get Liberalism first also.
Here`s a screenshot of the city that Krill took last turn. The border there really looks like a mess. As you can see the Carthagian size 4 city right N of that city will be very hard to defend. Maybe Couerva went a bridge too far here?
Nambui is starting to look like a powerhouse now, 1 turning units! It will make sure that the city itself and Chabui are adequately defended. The Chariot took the sentry promotion and went to Chabui. It got vision on a whole new sea tile. The Confucian Missionary went to Oghul Qaimish and tried to spread the faith... Success! Another Monastery was started there.
As the average military is going up a lot, we have quite a few military builds now. 4 units are completing eot. We`re easily 1 turning Compass and then we`ll head for Optics immediately. Hopefully we`ll get it the turn after. Astronomy is a 7 turn tech for us. We should be able to shave off at least 1 (hopefully 2 turns off that).
We have 7 cities growing eot. The whip hasn`t been used a lot lately, we need to preserve a lot of population for our coming Golden Age. Speaking of GA: I don`t know whether it pays for a SPI civ to start an early Golden Age or not. I guess we`re about to find out! At least we`ve got research visibility on the rest of the players so we`ll be able to beeline a military tech if needed.
It looks like a fair bit of drama happened while I was offline.
First, Couerva posts something spoilerish in the tech thread (I didn`t read it), which was later deleted. Understandably, Joey wasn`t too happy about that. And then, out of the blue Couerva suddenly asks for a sub.. Oh well, these Pitbosses can be a massive time sink so I guess he was overwhelmed by the turn duty requirements. I`d like him to continue playing but he seemed intent on quitting, which is a shame. He`s played a good game so far and finding an unspoiled player to take over Carthage is going to be hard to say the least.
Pretty much agreed all the way around. I guess the best case scenario would be that Couerva gets a good night's sleep, sees the responses to his announcement, and decides he wants to continue after all ... but that's predicated on the hope/assumption that it's not causing problems for him in real life. If the stress and time cost of turn playing is hurting him in the real world, I'll just hope we can find someone willing to take over. (My guess is that most players would even be okay with a partly-spoiled player like Yuri taking over if he wants to take part again - or even a global lurker who hasn't been following e.g. Krill's thread too closely of late, but we'll see.)
And we`re rolling again! It looks like Chumchu taking over Carthage is the best solution for all parties. According to Civstats Krill lost another two cities (quite small, though). Couerva and Krill haven`t signed peace yet.. Note that Dark Savant has a Castle in Tulearean Forest. He`s also moved out a Longbow to the deer to prevent any landing there. To me it seems like a very defensive strategy. He really wants to make sure that he`s not losing it to any random attack. Fair enough, we`re not taking that any time soon. Joey has a Knight in State of Zijin, it was probably trained this turn. We should be careful not to allow any forking of our cities (I don`t think we`re in any danger yet).
Also, we`re just about able to 1 turn Optics! The ktb is quite big and is helping us out here. We really need Calendar and Engineering, not to mention Astronomy. We could save gold for a turn or more likely finish Calendar at something like 50 % science. Engineering now shows 2 turns. Oh, and we`re only 3 turns away from our first Golden Age! I can`t wait for that.
Mandukhai started a Settler, as it is a relatively unimportant city and can 5 turn it. Borte and Muqa`s banks are 2 and 3 turns away respectively, just in time for saving gold for Astronomy (I assume that`s our tech goal in the GA).. Vulcania whipped a Temple, it needs the option of running a Priest. A little more culture is also good.
Graphs and demos: With tech turned on we`re pretty much the average civ everywhere! China is of course puling the average down a bit but it`s still okay.
Yay, a new turn! And I'm glad Coeurva found a substitute. I expect Chumchu to do a good job with that civ, but more importantly, I know from bitter experience (from PB3, where I signed up as a dedlurker and wound up as a primary turnplayer for large portions of the game) how a Pitboss game can commit aggravated assault on a player's real-life schedule. I'm glad Coeurva's out from under that so he can focus on more-important things.
On the Dark Savant situation: I think it depends on the geopolitical situation and what we want to achieve: A C2/Amphibious Knight should have very good odds against the longbow on that deer tile if we want to drop a stack there. Whether or not that's in our plans, I would rather be starting another Knight than another Longbow in Bulugan (one of the cities that can produce 3-promo mounted units for us) right now. I'm a big believer in the defensive power of a bunch of knights and cats.
