LURKER THREAD- No Players

[civac2]

Well, in a game as slow as this the Apostolic Palace religion (Hinduism) is sought after quite a bit since the extra production on religious buildings is valuable. Some players are even actively spreading Hinduism. The other religions Isabella founded are irrelevant. Buddhism was founded by the Americans in Madagascar and has a decent spread as well. All religions were founded on the African continent. Islam is still available though.

[Mjmd]

Btw, the war in question is the civil war between Augustus and Caesar in South and Middle Africa respectively.

Pope and builder of the Apostolic Palace is Frozen as Isabella sitting at the North African coast. He is basically roleplaying Isabella having founded 5 religions. With his shrine he is gaining money at 100% research and is the overall tech leader but he lacks land.

Obviously this would be a huge prize for people. How many cities do they have / any expansion prospects of their own with better tech? Any chance you or Mig can give us a screenshot and a short run down pretty please

[NobleHelium]

It seems unlikely that people would be able to attack him if he has a tech lead and gold overflowing for unit upgrades.

[civac2]

Not in the short term. Eventually his lack of cities (he has 7) will catch up to him. Plemo has 30. He is also likely going for Liberalism atm. (We don't know for sure.) If so he will get it first almost certainly. But tthat means he does not have any advanced units right now just an Ele/Cat stack like everyone else in Africa. His northern neighbour in Europe recently saw a significant force of galleys. So maybe he is making a move to expand soon. Isabella has the circumnavigation as well, gained by map trades.

I will post some updates on the situation on the different continents over the next days. It's quite a bit of work. The game is so big.

[civac2]

I foolishly promised to make an overview of the game state. Let's start with the cradle of mankind:




Africa harbors the two most technologically advanced Empires in the world. It is also a powder keg with every nation, even the small ones, fielding a large standing army of elephants and catapults. Nobody can make any move without risking both a poweful first strike and one or more backstabs.

The first technological powerhouse is Isabella at the North African cost played by Frozen. Frozen is likely the strongest active player at civforum.de. A bunch of old time legends with deep PB resumes came back for this game but most of them hadn't been playing for a while afaik. Frozen founded all religions except Buddhism and Islam (still open). His monstrous Hindu shrine allows 100% research with money to spare (we think, he doesn't report much). Hinduism is the Apostolic Palace religion, which means that some players spread the religion actively to gain extra hammers. He is close to grabbing Liberalism as well. However, he only has 7 cities. Recently his European neighbor spotted a significant force of Spanish galleys. The purpose is as of yet unclear.

The second technological powerhouse is Dulland (one of the aforementioned legends) playing the Inca at the Nigeria/Congo position. He was rushed with dog soldiers by his southern neighbor. The attack went so bad that Dulland was able to counter and take the Native American capital. He has 11 cities and also needs to expand soon.

The Zulu in Egypt is played by Sauron. He is both very aggressive and very good at warfare. However, his aggression gets him into trouble often and his Empire building skills are not at the same level as his warring. In this game he choked one player with Impis (one of the Russian leaders sitting at the horn of Africa) and took two cities from Julius Caesar (Kongo/Tanzania). After that he just built and expanded peacefully.

Rome in South Africa (Augustus) is played by Tim Twain and Ilja. They are newer players and made several mistakes but are in a decent position regardless. (They conquered a fledgling Chinese Empire very early and thus have good amount of land.) One of their mistakes allowed Julius Caesar (though weakened by the Zulu aggression and with an unfortunate middle position) to take two of their cities. Tim and Ilja gave him a city for peace and then whipped a huge army. It turns out that even a 50 units strong Prats/Cats stack cannot dislodge the Southern Roman macemen as long as they stay on hills. With the Southern Roman aggression clearly very successful Dulland and the Washington (Madagascar) have jumped in to take a part of North Rome for themselves. North Rome will likely be eliminated soon but they still have most of their army.

Madagascar is the home of the Americans under Washington played by Flomac and Pico. They have founded Buddhism and also have a strong shrine though not as strong as the Spanish one. Their incursions on the African mainland were beaten back by North Rome twice. Now they are about to take back their cities. It remains unclear whether they can keep their foothold on the continent this time.

[Old Harry]

Thanks civac - that's fascinating.

[Mjmd]

Thank you! I love maps.

It still is interesting to me that they stuck so many people in barren northern Africa but only 1 person in Australia. Where was America's original capital?

[civac2]

It's on one of the islands off the African east coast.

As for Australia there is a lot of desert there as well. There were two players on Australia on Australia in previous iterations with better land quality compared to this game to make that feasable.

[civac2]

Europe typically has very good land to make up for lack of volume.




The largest nation in Europe is Portugal played by Ziankali starting in Germany. He had planned to conquer the French sitting in Italy and Greece with a humunguous pure axe stack but had to cancel the campaign after one city capture when the Egyptian Civnoob in France and Iberia (tricky this) moved to backstab him. Ziankali then researched Currency and Construction, added lots of catapults to his axes and finally felt strong enough to complete his conquest of Italy and Greece. After a recovery phase he has built yet more units including imported elephants and is currently attacking the Egyptian. He cut off cities in France and will take them. Whether his army can advance into Iberia proper remains to be seen. He had an early lead in economy but his utterly insane military expenses (he had the largest army by far at various times in the game, including right now) have hampered his progress.

KSL playing the Greek (Alexander) in England is another strong player who was still active prior to this game (similar to Frozen). To make up for his disadvantaged start he tried to build the Pyramids very early. It turned out that turn 58 (I believe) was too early and his expansion suffered too much.

The English (Elizabeth) on Greenland are led by Xist10. Greenland is indeed very green and Xist10 was another player with strong early research. He took advantage of KSL's slow start to settle some of the islands between them and later took another via a surprise attack. Emboldened by this success he came back for more attacking isles close to the Greek-English main islands with far too few troops.
The Trireme standoff is now close to 20 turns old and Elizabeth's research is essentially dead. Worse even, Pyramids powered research allowed KSL to reach Optics and he may be able to bulb Astronomy and it may be Xist10 who loses this war despite his vastly superior production.

Arabia in Turkey is played by Maugitar who took over from Suite. Another nation with good land and a promising start Maugitars utterly disastrous expedition into Arabia (again tricky, Arabia is the home of another American who was badly weakened by multiple rush attempts against him). Maugitar's stack was cleaned up by horse archers with the Americans barely even losing a unit (an earlier pic of the day posted by Miguelito shows the combat log).

Finally we have aspi in Sweden. He is playing Mansa and is technologically advanced. However, unlike the wo African tech leaders he is probably not advanced enough to make up for his lack of expansion. He is planning to go for a culture victory and has built the Sistine Chapel. Regardless he will have to conquer Sven, the other Greek leader, sitting in Finland.


None of the European nations have a realistic shot to win the game. Ziankali and Aspi perhaps have the best longshot odds. Regardless, the nations I mentioned are the ones which may still shape the course of the game to a certain extent. For the others, Civnoob, Sven, nafraugar (Montezuma, Ukraine), nane (Carthage, western Russia), Holland (England, Caucasus) history is something that is going to happen to them.

[Amicalola]

These are fascinating Civac, and Hugely helpful for people who don't speak German! Thankyou for finding the time to make them.