The big news of the turn is GKC declaring war on giraflorens, his smaller and weaker neighbor to the west. This could get interesting, mostly because it puts pressure on Plemo to do something to claim more land as well. This game may hinge on who and when Plemo decides to attack. We have GKC's graphs so we can monitor his power rating during the war, he's already whipped 4 times for 6 pop on T92 so it looks like the real deal. Also yay for another passive Buddhism spread.
Our WC finished defogging Ramk's capital (and most of his territory except for the jungle south of Djenne), and something here just looks off. He settled on T0 on a plains hill so this is presumably where he started, but that leaves his capital with the weakest food bonus that we've seen so far, and no good way to share food with his second city, and this could help explain his slower start.
Demos:
We're now second in food and making further progress in that area. I'm going to have to whip in some more military though, partially on its own merits (can't leave the border city with Ramk completely vulnerable) and partially so that our cities don't run out of improved tiles to work. That situation will get better with some border pops and as more Workers circulate.
Graphs:
We got resource visibility on Mjmd, and he might be top GNP given he's the only one not saving gold and has a religion and Academy.
I got a loan offer from Plemo and re-offered, but misclicked gpt instead of flat gold. Now he's accepted and counter-offered with a gpt-for-gold that would reflect his original deal, which I'd basically be forced to take.
The whole point was that I didn't trust him to not take the flat gold and immediately declare war to cancel my payments, especially since the amount would fund his Construction research and prevent mine, and that we should start with a smaller deal to build trust. My offer to him was supposed to have been my 26 flat gold for his 3gpt, the same ratio as his offer, just smaller.
I had some unexpected work and personal stuff come up yesterday so I put off reporting three turns, but everything is successfully resolved now and it's not too much to catch up on.
T94:
Scouting:
Plemo and Lazteuq are close neighbors by sea and have Open Borders. Not sure if that northern Dutch city is on an island or not, but it wouldn't be surprising if it were, Plemo has had Sailing for a while now and it would mirror the setup Mjmd and Amicalola had.
Demos:
Graphs:
T95:
Plemo turned down my smaller loan offer, which I take as a sign that his deal was made in bad faith with the intent on ripping me off with a war-dec. A bit odd that he didn't sweeten the interest rate a bit, but if wanted cash for research then a smaller amount should be just as welcome as a larger. It's not like this was an emergency loan for unit upgrades, right? Anyway, we have enough gold in the bank for Construction, so let's get on with it.
Plemo's Worker looks awfully suspicious, I expect he's optimistically bringing up a Settler. Well, I did say I wanted to claim this spot when I had real units, and now I do, with 2 Axes and 2 WCs and Catapults a few turns away. Let's see if he wants to push on this issue.
Scouting:
Somehow a barb Spear spawned in the one-tile-wide gap in my fogbusting net in the south. Fortunately I have an Axe handy, but that kind of thing is just sloppy on my part (I had moved the Warrior up to check out Ramk's new city, but not shifted other units accordingly).
Demos:
Graphs:
We have graphs on superdeath, and his early game has looked pretty weak considering his EXP trait. Also, despite having Iron since we met, he doesn't appear to have built any Praetorians yet. That actually makes us second in global Power behind Plemo, which is great because he presumably needs to keep garrisons against Ramk and perhaps GKC.
T96:
Yep, Pyramids built, almost certainly by Plemo by score increase, but we'll confirm it when someone revolts later this turn. I can't say I'm surprised since I predicted this some turns earlier, but I'm still disappointed. Lazteuq and Gira both have stone hooked, it's pretty rough that Plemo managed to land both of the strong early stone wonders. I'm drafting up a plan for a Calendar run after Construction to attempt to race for the Mausoleum, but that'll hinge on a couple of things going our way first so I haven't committed much to it.
Scouting:
vanrober's newest city faced a raze chance from Spear vs Impi, but I happened to move in my WC by chance. Meanwhile, the Axe is going to start farming the Warriors at the barb city.
Demos:
We're in a comfortable second place by the looks of things, which would be fine for this point in the game, if it weren't for Plemo being the player in first. Moving into the middle-game we have more room to grow and a weaker neighbor on our flank in vanrober, and the four-player dynamic between us, Plemo, Ramk, and GKC is going to remain critical. With Catapults I think we can avoid being the one 2v1ed, and just need to be vigilant for anything sneaky and also be ready to move in if an opportunity arises.
Graphs:
vanrober and superdeath continue to spend EP on me, so I'll keep a trickle there and slowly start getting Mjmd's graphs.
Looks like we have ourselves a good old-fashioned settling race. Maastrict was 3-pop whipped a turn ago so it may come down to who can play T98 first, given the option of settling a less-than-ideal spot that prevents the other from settling at all. For instance, I'd have to settle 1N of the current Settler location (still gets first-ring pigs and bananas but is on flatland), and Plemo would have to settle on one of those flatland forest tiles, most likely the grassland 2S of the peak where it could claim gems as well. I believe he has the option of declaring war and claiming the second half of the turn to kill one of my WCs, but then he can't prevent me from settling first in T98.
If this does turn violent, I think my best bet is to build up a slightly larger force with Catapults and minimize the number of Axe vs Axe combats where Plemo's AGG tips the scales. Plemo has started spending his gold as well, so it won't be an advantage for long (though honestly I wouldn't have expected him to be able to finish it with his ~230g, but what do I know), but I'm hoping to buy enough time for my Workers to chop and road enough to be able to make a defensive first strike. It would've been better to settle this spot 10 turns earlier and get culture, but I'm not sure I could have gotten away with that without whipping way more Axes than I could've supported at the time.
I have more Axes inbound, cities ready to whip Catapults, and we should have slightly shorter supply lines, since neither of us have fully completed roads in this area. However, if we're outplayed again and can't contest the spot because he shows up with half a dozen Axes next turn, then that's still not the end of the world, though losing timely access to marble would be very unfortunate. Our Settler can find another site to the southwest, and I'm not above letting grudges simmer.
Scouting:
Superdeath is now building Praetorians, though at this point either of his PHI neighbors could probably make it to Construction in time to avoid outright elimination (and Lazteuq has played a pretty impressive growth-oriented opening). Vanrober has some impressive tile improvement density but is still way behind on city count.
Demos:
Time for some random guesses: top GNP is Lazteuq, bottom is superdeath. Top MFG is Plemo, bottom is giraflorens. Top CY, ditto Plemo, bottom is vanrober.
Graphs:
We lost graphs on superdeath briefly, I hope he's content to let the balance rest at 43/43 or whatever the equilibrium value is. Our recent unit builds show up nicely on the Power graph, Construction should be a nice bump as well.
I think we're going to see a war declaration, and not just because I happened to see Plemo reading the Pitboss Etiquette thread from the "Who's Online" screen today It seems he wants this marble source as well, but my newest city of Huangshan Mtn blocks him from settling in any reasonable location. I have 3 Axes and 2 WC in theater, two more Axes finishing from nearby cities, and a Catapult being whipped next turn. He has just an Axe and two Spears, but of course is higher rated in Power and has a ton of population he could whip away, if he so chooses. I feel confident that I can make any dedicated attack on his part a net drain for both of us without large benefits to him, but he's welcome to prove me wrong.
I've also decided to hide my gold rate for a bit by teching Iron Working at breakeven. If we're going to be fighting over this area I want the ability to clear jungle for defensive purposes, and revealing iron is nice too. Plemo finished an Ancient tech this turn, but he only spent one turn of gold so I know it can't be anything too threatening like Construction or HBR.
Scouting:
Vanrober has another Settler headed east under that Impi, and I have the barb city down to one Warrior defender.
Demos:
Graphs:
Superdeath has continued to put his full EP on me judging by the ratio, forcing me to spend more as well to get graphs on him. I know I joked earlier about how he surely wouldn't consider a Praet attack via Galley, but I'd like to keep tabs on him all the same.
Elsewhere in the world, Lazteuq settled two cities on T97, bringing him to 10 in total. Mjmd founded city #8 on T97. Judaism was founded in a distant land, no clue who that might be, a lot of people could have finished a tech this turn.
Can't say I'm surprised by this turn of events, though the 0.9% Spear vs Axe combat landing 4 hits was a bit unexpected. Let's see if all my thoughts about my ability to defend myself can withstand Plemo's scrutiny. This will only be my second time defending in MP against a skilled opponent, so I'm going to lay everything out as I see it, and I expect this to be a good lesson one way or another. Charriu, I know you're busy reporting PB52 but if you have time please let me know if you see anything that alarms you, either in a screenshot or in my posts. You have no obligation of course, but Plemo's thread just saw a bunch more activity, though that's not a fair comparison given how lurkers do things differently at civforum.
Looking at the immediate situation, Plemo has only three units in theater: the C1 Shock Axe and C1 Spear on the pig hill, and a C1 Woodsman3 Axe 1E of the copper. That could allow him to attack Huangshan Mtn, which is defended by two Axes and a WC, but the WC defends first against his first Axe at close to a coin-flip, leaving his Spear to fight an Axe. Barring some fairly unlikely rolls, the city should stand.
Alternatively, his W3 Axe can move SW-SW to threaten the capital, which up to now he hasn't had vision of. I was forced to whip in an Axe in response (maybe this should've been a WC at the swapping penalty?), and am running full gold for an emergency upgrade if needed. I wasn't quite able to make it to 80g on my own, so I offered two 16g-for-2gpt deals to Mjmd and Lazteuq, who I think should be inclined to help me as the underdog. Even if not, my C2 Shock WC will get there in time.
That should resolve the immediate threats. I saw nothing on the marble tile at the start of this turn, and I have vision on all the other approach tiles. I can even use my Workboat to keep an eye on incoming Galleys by parking it on the ocean fish inside superdeath's borders, since Plemo and superdeath don't have Open Borders. That's probably worth delaying improving the second crab for a bit.
In the medium term, I'm reassigning some Workers to come up and do some defensive forestry and road-building, which I see as my critical weakness currently. Access to Catapults is all well and good but for best effect I want to hit an incoming stack on flat land or at worst a bare hill. That means the priority chops are the banana jungle and the forests 1NE of Tuolumne Meadow and 1E of Huangshan Mtn. More redundant roads are of high importance as well, for example the new Axe from Las Trampas can't defend the capital next turn because I lack a road connection there.
From a war-planning perspective, Plemo has a much larger MFG base and more population, so this effort is going to be primarily defensive on my part, there's no way I could feasibly take and hold territory from him, fighting in his culture. My three main goals (aside from not dying, of course) are:
1. Put up a stiff enough fight that Ramk (and possibly superdeath and vanrober) decides it's not worth piling on the weaker party. If I were to be optimistic, Ramk sees his own opportunity here to get revenge on Plemo for that earlier double Worker snipe, but I expect him to be more pragmatic and wait and see which way the wind is blowing. I'm not moving the garrison Axe/Spear duo out of Wildcat Canyon for this reason.
2. Have a favorable hammer exchange rate at the end of this. I both should be able to do this with the defender's advantage, but also kind of have to to not fall further behind Plemo. The fact that I'm currently whipping off cottages for units is assuredly not lost on him. If I can use Catapults well and keep my losses low, accumulating CHA promotions on my hitters, I can keep the future strategic balance of power from growing even more lopsided in Plemo's favor.
3. Get enough experience for a Great General. We're currently at 24/30xp from the Inca war, and a settled GG would give us access to our own Shock Axes to help even the odds.
All plans fail at first contact with the enemy of course, but I'd like to think that these aren't too far-fetched. Like I said, I expect this to be a good learning experience.
Demos:
Graphs:
Abroad, vanrober founded city #7 on T98, and GKC founded city #11 on T98. We got graphs back on superdeath, showing his Praetorian buildup and flattening CY.
GKC doesn't seem to have fought giraflorens except for on the first turn of the war, both from Power rating and WW count. If I were optimistic, I'd say that GKC's wardec on giraflorens was maskirovka and he has a plan to go after Plemo at some point.
I think whipping an axe in the capital is ok, we do have the hill advantage after all as well as the culture. So far it looks like you did everything the best way you could.
In between turns, Plemo offered a Ceasefire, which I declined on principle. We also got a passive Buddhism spread to Huangshan Mtn due to its proximity to the holy city, which is always welcome.
Plemo attacked at Huangshan Mtn with the W3 Axe and just barely won against my Sentry WC, then sent in his Shock Axe and won that combat too, but declined to send the Spear against the remaining Axe. I took a chance and sent a fresh Axe against his injured one where winning would net me a Great General, and that left the situation like so:
I moved in a fresh Axe to defend so the city shouldn't fall, and Plemo can see my Catapult and WC inbound, while he doesn't know about the other two Axes. We see nothing inbound from him yet. So far so good in terms of our war goals. I don't think we need an emergency Axe upgrade anywhere, so I turned on tech for Iron Working as planned. Once we chase out Plemo's units we need that banana jungle chopped pronto.
As for the Great General, I thought a bit about where to send it, and I think Olympic Forest might be a good place to settle it and later build the Heroic Epic. The city has very low commerce potential and the ability to work more than 20 base hammers, so while it won't contribute much to the current conflict, it will be very nice for the future.
Scouting:
The barb city produced a Worker which I was more than happy to snag, and we uncovered superdeath's capital and second city. You can see how close Mjmd's borders are in the bottom-left. Finally, the island between us and Mjmd is still pretty barren, but this marble source could be critical since the one on the Plemo border is probably off the table for now.
Now for the real meat of the overview, the screenshot dump. I'll give a little commentary with each picture, and then a summary at the end.
Demos and Advisor Screens:
We're still second in city count at 12 behind Plemo (14) with GKC (11) and Lazteuq (10) close behind us. Wealth builds from our southern production cities is helping fund our research, but the main takeaway here is that our latest unit whips were not kind to our northern cities, and we have lots of happiness to grow into everywhere.
Mjmd came through on our loan request, while Lazteuq declined. Gotta love these toroidal expenses, 80g in city maintenance at these sizes is rough. This is probably why some of the other players have been so much slower to expand.
Everyone is running these civics, except for Plemo in Representation and Mjmd in Organized Religion (confirming him as the Judaism founder in addition to Hinduism. A bit odd that he swapped into it by itself without HR, considering how little Hinduism has spread.
There's been a bit more fighting on the GKC-Gira front. The civs are all slowly starting to meet one another, and I have to imagine there will be more conflict soon. We're getting to the age of Catapults coinciding with borders growing tight and tense.
We're light on Workers and Spears, and of course we want more Catapults. I'd like to skew my composition more towards WC than Axes as well, especially since most of my WCs are scouting and not available-in-theater.
The original plan was a somewhat bold rush to Calendar and chopping 9 marble-boosted forests into the Mausoleum, but of course that's no longer possible. Calendar is still probably the next tech just to unlock all the resources there, and I still have some ideas about how to build the Mausoleum, which I view as critical to deny from Plemo.
I've invested fairly heavily in spreading Buddhism with the Monastery/Missionary builds and the shrine. It's still very much in the early days of paying off, but since we don't appear likely to die in the immediate future (knock on wood), I feel pretty good about the decision.
It's good news that Plemo is not leading in land area as well as population. Since we've scouted the rough outline of Lazteuq's territory, that gives me a decent estimate about how much land Plemo has. It's also interesting that this screen has me first in land area, while the demographics screen says otherwise. Does this one count land+coast tiles and the other land tiles only, or something?
GNP is inflated by wealth builds, culture, and 100% tech, so not being further ahead there is troubling. Food and MFG continue to improve, but again we just need to grow our cities more.
We're basically done with the best Ancient wonders, it'll be critical who gets the Classical marble wonders. Lazteuq's size-8 capital with an Academy is probably a GNP powerhouse.
Graphs:
Foreign territory overviews, counterclockwise:
I don't have much visibility on Plemo or Mjmd yet.
Egyptian territory overview:
It'll be time soon for another wave of Settlers, one finally for the rice by our capital and then up to three toward the southwest. That, combined with the island if Mjmd doesn't beat us to it, will probably be the extent of our natural peaceful borders, with room for a few more fillers. Just need to keep things steady until we can get to that ~20-city happy place
City screen review:
Our harshly-whipped capital. Desperately needs to regrow, and will take back the pigs shortly to do so. We haven't emphasized satellites to work cottages but there are so many hills that this will still be a powerful city in Bureaucracy. The forests will probably get chopped into a Forge somewhere down the line, and then we'll just get by with natural production.
2-pop whip central for now and the foreseeable future. Responsible for all of our Missionary production and will eventually finish the Market with overflow. Probably will never grow above size 5 for the remainder of the game.
Growing unwhipped to eventually run specialists for a Golden Age. Note the Barracks and Settler both nearly completed in the queue. We'll soon give away the mine and second wheat and just work a ton of cottages here.
I probably should stop whipping this city soon if I want it to house the Moai Statues at some point. I had planned to chop its forests into that and finish building it with whip overflow, but that'll be really pushing the happy cap if we do that (unless I can secure a stone resource somehow).
I'm juggling whip anger and tiles worked between Las Trampas and Blacksand Beach, badly, at the moment. Need more Workers still, as always.
I'm chopping/whipping out two more Workers here in between growing, as part of the tile/anger juggle with Las Trampas.
Our current border with Ramk. Steadily growing onto cottages, I'll whip in the Granary next turn.
Future home of our Great General and Heroic Epic. I took the Barracks out of the queue for some reason but it should roughly be half done.
Our other production center in the south. More or less good to go, it'll pick up some cottages and then stagnate on four mines.
Glorified fishing village that picked up a luxury #1.
Glorified fishing village that picked up a luxury #2.
A strong city with a lot of production potential once we hook up the food and clear/mine the hills. I still regret its flatland status, but what can you do. If Plemo had asked for a peacetime turn split, this was the best site I could settle before him. Honestly neither of us having marble for the moment is a pretty decent outcome for us.
Summary:
After mishandling the early-midgame snowball opportunity that we had, we have the tools we need to defend ourselves for the current era and opportunities to continue improving our position through peaceful growth and expansion to the southwest. We still need Plemo to misplay or stumble somewhere and not continue to keep snowballing his lead, but it does look like he's currently in a bit of an economic crunch, despite Representation. Our next military goals are to secure our northern borders against a real invasion, keep unit production at credible counterattacking levels, and rebuild our sentry net. We also need more sentries in the southwest. Economically, we just need more Workers and Settlers and time, we already have enough land to compete and access to more to pull back into the lead. I remain determinedly optimistic about our chances in this game.
Plemo withdrew both of his units and offered another Ceasefire, which I offered back as a 10t peace treaty. We should probably both recognize at this point that we can't really harm each other, and I wouldn't mind a ceasefire or staying at war, but a peace treaty would be better for me to guarantee the border pop and chops/roads.
Iron popped in a very convenient place, bringing the Heroic Epic spot to 25 base hpt. My original iron, on the other hand, is currently unworkable, but the planned rice city will pick it up.
Scouting:
Demos:
I swapped off of some Wealth builds and whipped off 4 cottages, but our true 0% GNP is still acceptably mediocre. Lazteuq is researching something expensive, my guess is Construction or Calendar or Currency.
It seems he wants this marble source as well, but my newest city of 
