Ride to ruin and the world's ending! (TBS, Becko & Joao)

[The Black Sword]

I think it's about time I started these player profiles. I've already talked about the picks further up thread so I'll try not to go into those much, but I'll give each pick a rank. In my notes from the start of the game, I also gave everyone an expected finish. Honestly, the field feels too close to call to me, but I might as well have a bit of fun. I'll also put in an updated position, based on how the last 65t have played out.

Thoth(Hatshepsut, Cre, Spi of Zulu)


First and most intimidating is Thoth. I've read a lot of his FFH games where he's an excellent player and most of the skills transfer across. He's got very strong micro and also has a penchant for keeping 'boots on the ground' and a sizeable army. We've already seen this in this game with his conquest of Carthage. He also did very well in PB15 in a field even more competitive than this one. Unlike a couple of the other players, this is his only ongoing game and so he's potentially more focused than the rest of us. Expect his thread to be littered with YouTube videos too, in fact, that's probably the difference in our post war!

I ranked him as the most threatening player before his conquest and that has only been reinforced now. He seems to have played a very strong opening and leveraged that and his Zulu pick into a military advantage that was too powerful to stop. I'm really hoping his economy is in at least a little bit of trouble.

Pick Strength: 1
Expected Finish: 2 (I'm good )
Current Position: 1

Dtay(Roosevelt, Ind, Org of Mali)


What can I say, dtay does seem to like Liberalism. I think he probably values it a little too highly tbh but still, I'm sure a lot of people would love to have that in there problem column: wins Lib too much. Anyway, reading through dtay's threads, he doesn't post much about micro, but I get the sense that's because he doesn't feel it's interesting(probably true!). Nonetheless, I get the feeling that he's more of a macro guy, he's certainly capable of coming up with some cool plans. I think he also tries to skate by with a slightly too small army in peacetime when he isn't planning for a hot war himself. In contrast to Thoth, dtay has 2 other ongoing games, including PB13 which has got to be time consuming. His thread's post count also indicates that he's not totally involved with this game.

His game so far hasn't been great I'm afraid. Not bad, he's keeping up in expansion with 5 cities but not enough in this field. He hasn't utilised his Ind trait and he's the last civ left without a solution to the culture problem. Where he goes from here probably depends on what wonders he picks up, the GLH that is Roosevelt's birthright, or the pyramids economy facing off against a bunch of non-financials? If he lands both, he'd probably be back among the frontrunners. The lack of marble and stone on the map is a big boost to both him and Commodore, which wasn't taken into account in the pick strength.

Pick Strength: 4
Expected Finish: 7 (somebody had to be last I'm afraid, as I said at the start though, everyone's a bit too close to call IMO)
Current Position: 6

[The Black Sword]

Oxy offered a wheat for wheat trade, which I accepted. Thoth offered OBs, which I declined. However, it seems Oxy already accepted OBs with Thoth and they're both getting benefits from it. So, I'm considering re-offering. We'd fill up Thoth's last 2 trade routes, he'd fill up ours, I'd prefer not to do that with the leader but when someone else has already cracked and given him OBs ...
The other option for OBs is Gaspar, and I don't think our trade routes have recovered yet, in either case both parties need to defog a trade route. For a further bonus, this would make Thoth less likely to attack our scouts.

Other points:


Oxy has fortified his spear here instead of moving up, I switched the MoM whip back to a spear.



I'll move west next turn.



Chopping two forests for immediate granary.

[The Black Sword]

Dtay has accepted OB with Thoth too, so there doesn't seem any point in holding out.


Caught up with him in cities at least.

And I'm thinking of getting two more out of TC in quick succession:


Slow build this guy, 2t growth, whip another. For these two spots?

[Becko]

Good name for the new city, you're clearly getting the hang of it! As a reward, here's a trilingual poster:



How is the economy affected by the new plant? Still looks to be doing OK. I guess OB's are more useful to us for expansion than the lack of them would be harmful for Thoth, especially since he has other options. The diplomatic function can be useful, too, if Thoth sees it as "let's be friends for now". I mean, Pindicator getting eliminated is an opportunity for us, too. We should make sure to get a fair share of his old lands, and if possible try to get some sort of let's-split-the-world-between-us vibe going. We do want to find his borders soon.

BTW, have you agreed on anything about diplo? Specifically, I'm thinking about (PB13 spoiler):

the gpt-for-NAP's and other diplo signalling they're doing over in PB13, which I guess is common enough knowledge that I don't need a spoiler, but still.

The two new cities look nice. What are your thoughts about the dotmap in the west otherwise? It's a shame about the placement of the corn, we could have a chain of canal cities all the way up to the northern seas!

Also, the map setup seems like it would allow planting forward cities and then back-filling. I don't think that would necessarily work for us, but Oxy's sentry made me think that someone else might play it that way.

[Becko]

Oh, and one more thing: it looks like I might be out of the country for two weeks starting July 3. Just thought I'd give a heads-up since the reason you wanted a ded-lurker in the first place was that you couldn't play every day in the summer. :P

[The Black Sword]

Hope you don't mind me stealing your job.

The city cost 4gpt net IIRC, and of course that's with only a 1g trade route. I expect the next one to be more expensive though, we'll see.

Regarding Thoth; yeah, we really need to find his borders and see how far we can push and what our dotmap should be. That's probably the most important thing right now. I'd really like that information before finalising any dotmaps of our area too, I'm not even sure about that wheat/corn city atm but I need to pick a spot to have the workers in position to set it up. We've got a few backfill spots ourselves; the two islands and the furs spot north of the capital, I've been wondering should I settle that, but I think I prefer pushing for contested land first.

Diplo wasn't really brought up IIRC, maybe it should be. I'm not a fan of using numbers in the diplo. Tbh, I don't really like things such as the wheat for wheat trade with Oxy too. As far as I'm concerned it's meaningless, but might as well accept in case he puts some stock in it. I do like Oxy at the minute, but it's for concrete actions; giving us trade routes, not bothering us with the spear, not a trade that doesn't effect either of us.

Regarding some civ-incompatible trips; I'll be away myself June 12-14 I think, could you pick it up then? I can't quite remember if I'm doing anything in July, guess I'll have to try survive without you in any case.

[The Black Sword]

Also, the rest of my player profiles.

Gaspar(Zara, Cre, Org of Ottoman)

Onto Zara, of the multiple personalities. The casuals went with a pretty straightforward pick to play, two of the strongest traits, but neither of which requires as much work to leverage as Ind/Spi/Phi. Gaspar loves his starting techs too, so no surprises with the Ottomans. I have different impressions of each of the team, so it's hard to give some reads on them, it depends whose in charge. It does seem to be mostly Gaspar and Lewwyn logging in. I've been quite surprised by their agressive image so far in the game though, nuking their OB opportunities with both me and dtay, and I'm not sure for what gain. The one thing you can count on with Gaspar though is a long an entertaining thread, which I look forward to afterwards. That's part of the reason I'm doing these, I'm sure both Gaspar and Commodore have done some, so it's only fair to reciprocate.

This team seems to have had a very good start to the game. They have 6 cities, tied with us and only behind Thoth. That's pretty impressive when I'm Joao and Thoth has managed to conquer another civ. I'd put them slightly ahead of Oxy at the moment.

Pick strength: 2
Expected finish: 4
Current position: 3

Commodore(Ramsesses, Ind, Spi of Rome)

Next up we have our resident puppeteer and recovering warmonger, Commodore. There appear to be two parts to this reputation that he's trying to lose; he's happy to fight out wars at tech parity or even a deficit and he can switch to duel mode at the drop of a hat if you annoy him. I think I'll take him at his word and treat him the same as everyone else . I think Commodore also stays connected and enjoys his games after other people might have begun to mail them in. I was quite surprised in PB13 to see how well he was doing after I was eliminated, which didn't seem all that evident in game. He appears to be a bit addicted to his super capitals though. He's probably our most experienced opponent and his thread spam skills are second to one(to be fair, Gaspar has help).

So far Commodore has made some nice plays, landing buddhism and oracling MC. This will give him a shrine, the Colossus on a really nice map for it and his cheap forges. So he should have the tools he needs to generate enough commerce to expand. He appears to be last in expansion though, with only 4 cities, and I can see quite a gap in the graph between his food total and the rest of us. This is probably just a consequence of having no early traits and putting resources into the oracle but it still feels like he has a bit of a distance to catch up.

Pick Srength :5
Expected Finish: 5
Current Position: 5 (that matches up nicely!)

Oxy(Pericles, Phi, Cre of Maya)

Finally we come to Oxy, of all of our opponents, he's the one for whom I've the least information. In PB11, his first game, he seemed to get boxed into small crescent of land, destined toward irrelevancy. He turned this experience around with an ever-changing naming scheme and a GIANT stack of knights. He won games 2 and 3, which is a nice win percentage for FFA games, albeit against a slightly weak field in PB14 and a small one in PBEM57. Both game featured some strong GP play and he's picked Phi again here, so we should watch out for more of that.

Oxy seems to be pretty middle of the pack so far, 5 cities and some nice graphs. He's also been quite kind in giving us OB trade routes and I'll be happy to give him vision of our cities to reciprocate. I'm pretty hopeful we'll have a good relationship.

Pick strength: 6
Expected finish: 3
Current position: 4

[The Black Sword]

Now there's an even more tasty city spot:


We could use some more riverside too. Found some zulu:



The city's name is blessed!

[Becko]

Nice profiles! Agree that having a neighbor you predicted to finish 6th being eaten by the guy you predicted to finish 2nd is probably not a good thing, but it does score you points in the picking contest.

Plenty of nice sites. Maybe incense city goes 1S for a better road connection to the PH site?

Yay for free Buddhism spreads! Do you plan on spreading it actively, e.g. to Thoth or Oxy?



On a C&D note, Oxy had a biggish (20) point increase on T68, which he promptly whipped away. Gaspwyn and Thoth have also had similar-size increases recently (as have we). I think it's hard to figure what's land points and what are more interesting events, like tech or wonders; you haven't seen anything interesting in that department? Also, Dtay is flatlining, just doing 1-pop whips. Going by the tech thread, he seems to be paying less than full attention.

June 12-14 should be fine, I'll be heading off on a weekend trip on the 13th but I'll have a Civ computer and net access. Just don't get us involved in anything that requires actual Civ skills to play!

[pindicator]

So dead people don't get profiles?