[spoilers] Pax Commodorica: Pharaoh of Rome

[Commodore]

When you have more happy than pop, sometimes a 1-pop whip isn't a crime. But it kinda sucks. Cyrenica needs a forge next (worth a happy, so happy-neutral), then it'll use that gross food surplus to whip out more settlers. And workers. And maybe, maybe, get some more riverside cottage goodness cooking. I'm going to make magic hammers here in a couple turns, as I whip the granary with OR bonus...


...then swap out of Hinduism. The whip gets the hammers but they don't get divided back out. I'll be making the swap for five turns so that Felix here can pop borders; it's not very impressive without its seafood. C-nav means the work boats can be awesome and insta-hook the fish and then the clams though, and that will officially give Felix more food than it really knows what to do with. You'd think that would translate to happy problems too, but when I do the whip-overflow stuff here it'll be into a pair of conveniently priced temples as well as other odds and sods; Moai+priests here are the back up plan for the shrine.


Finally, our newest landbound acquisition Alaudae is also on the boring growth unto settlers path, albeit with a bit less long term potential. Still, it's a fine city and a good whipper, coming along quite nicely now.

[Commodore]

Finally got a free spread...

...Jewish. I think Hinduism is broken.

[Krill]

And that's why you should burn every holy city to the ground.

[Commodore]

Slightly out of sequence, but here are a few shots from the turn before this one. I think I finalized my dotmap in the south. Without stretching, despite pink dots, I'm looking at some two dozen cities before I'm "full" in my lands.

And everyone else has more land open. This is going to be a loooooong game, which is the only reason I'm not hyperventilating right now.

And that's why you should burn every holy city to the ground.

You hurt my feelings when you do that, you know. You don't deserve power rankings!

...but I'm a man of mercy. I'll drop 'em in a bit. For now, cackle about my exclusion from The List!

[Commodore]

So I was just chatting with Pindicator and I realized my power rankings were a long long time ago. So here, at the randomish time of Turn 85, are the updated ones:

1st place: Thoth

Thoth played a freaking blinder of an opening here. He got out of the gate astonishingly fast and then used half a dozen impi to gain himself a second empire. His GNP then, of course, promptly plummeted but he's showing the effects of an island city, ikhanda, and cheap Creative libraries to get back under control remarkably fast. He is currently in a strong and stable second place and while Creative's benefits won't last forever Spiritual is going to come ever more to the fore very soon. He's also got perfect neighbors: North dead, other two behind and one pink dotted the other harcore. :rolleyes:.

Thoth needs now to keep his economy under tight control and just grow like a weed on twice the core land of anyone else. Breezily confident front-running is Thoth's wheelhouse...I think he'll manage this one fine. Although...

2nd place: The Black Sword

I am impressed as hell with TBS, even though I had very good things to say about him in the prepick and early game stages as well. If the game ended today, we'd have to say that score don't lie...he's pretty much the leader. The only reason I place him slightly behind Thoth right now is that he is Joao of Mongolia with Stonehenge. Basically, he's living the Krill Dream right now. Not only that, but despite his heavy expansion he's kept up a solid GNP, earning him Buddhism and Monarchy (!) from it. But he'd better be in front with his incredibly front-loaded leader here.

That being said, he's got some future problems. Imperialistic's benefits are fading, as are Expansive's (this side of factories). He's also grown alarmingly fast, with his next door neighbors of Gaspar and Ox both playing strong expansion games themselves. He's also probably oriented closest to the other emergent giant in the world, Thoth. That being said, I keep having second thoughts about possibly swapping him and Thoth...this is a scary-good player here.

3rd place: Oxyphenbutazone

Whew, this is another closely contested slot. I'm going to have to give a slight edge to Ox here for the Bronze right now; he's in a damned solid position and he's pushing his REX to the utmost. Lacking the benefits of either Exp/Imp or a consumable neighbor, he nonetheless is keeping up with the top guys in expansion; he's also got a solid economy and I know his land is excellent. He's also got pretty good borders; he's claimed a bit extra from me to his south, and seems to have nice room against Gaspar to the east. He has cheap Ball Courts soon; once he has them coupled with the copious happy he already has secured, he's got no reason not to hurtle down the meat of the tree to Education.

I don't see any fundamental issues at all with Ox's play up to this point. Unless you can count “doesn't neighbor Pindicator's vacant lands” a flaw. He's going hell-for-leather up the good paths and has secured himself a might parcel of land. I'd be annoyed at his jungle claims, but they are nowhere so extreme as Dtay's Pink Wonder. So I think he's getting solid diplomacy points too (given OB, a lot).

4th place: Gaspar/Lewwyn

The reasoning behind Gaspar's placement here is more based on the players than the civ. He's a touch behind Ox in some fundamental areas but Zara is awesome and Org is going to get better and better as time goes on. Lewwyn is highly active, playing as much if not more than Gaspar and engaged Lewwyn is very good, particularly with someone like Gaspar (and Noble and Boldy) feeding back. That being said, among all of the listed team there except for Boldly there is a tremendous pressure of pent-up-despair. And that matters a hell of a lot; hopelessly grinding wars are born of hopelessness, for some reason.

That's not to call Team Ottomen's situation hopeless, not at all. They've got a goooood southern neighbor to have, given he's opted to aggress me over them, and if they border TBS and Thoth to the east and southeast respectively, at least those monsters have to worry about each other too. If the morale and engagement level remains high this could be another Gaspar/Lewwyn victory. But that's a dozy in the teeth of the Best Two FFH Players on the forum romping up ahead.

5th place: Commodore

Okay, maybe score does lie a little. My wonders (Oracle, Colossus) and classic tech (Metal Casing) inflate my score...clearly I'm not in third place! Although...I'm also not the beetlebomb here precisely because of those two wonders and the tech they lean on. My cheap Industrious forges are cropping up all over the place, something that is probably fifty turns away for most of my rivals. Colossus is a tremendous wonder for this map, which will allow me a roaring economy on...much...less...land...damnit, that's a theme, isn't it?

I can talk about potential until I'm blue in the face, but fundamentally I am behind the pack because I have fewer citizens doing useful things. More pop, more cities, more tiles are needed here in the Legion post-haste, or I will be left eating dust as better players with their bigger empires turn their pop into strength. So that's where I am now, scrambling like a madman to get out of my self-inflicted snowball flaccidity. Which is why I got attacked by Dtay, and what severely constrains my options going forward. This is winnable for me, but not really.

6th place: Dtay

Maybe this is a touch unfair; Dtay does have more cities than I do and the fire-and-forget wonder for spamming out more. But he lacks a few key strengths, like a tech rate for the last couple dozen turns, a religion/way to pop culture, and Metal Casing. Plus, well, he settled an unacceptable city in my face. He's running a farmer's gambit, but he's got a looooot of stuff to make up if he's going to let it profit him.

Internals of Dtay's empire are a bit murky to me, but he's strung out and more than anything else gives a decided feeling of being under-engaged. He's usually the last to end turn, his reporting here takes third place behind 18 and 13, and, welll, he's not the monster starter that he's been before. I don't have high hopes for his prospects...although let's mention again that he's probably playing good enough to kill 75% of the other players on the website.

7th place: Pindicator

He's dead, Jim. Maybe going for an “extinct animals” theme is bad juju....

So, in toto, I'd basically place PB19 right now as:
Thoth > TBS >> Ox > Gaswyn >>> Commodore > Dtay
Anyone wanting to swap any of those solitary “>” signs wouldn't get much argument from me.

That's...actually, a pretty grim picture painted. Damnit, Pindicator, these aren't fun. I guess I need to make another six installments: “How does ____ win this?” Basically, the power rank inversely correlates to how many ways a given player can win. A lot has to go right for me. Not so much for Thoth; he's got a ton of give.

[WilliamLP]

Nice! Do a tier list for every player on RB now? Kappa

[Commodore]

Nice! Do a tier list for every player on RB now? Kappa

You know, you totally are a kappa...

WilliamLP: Kappa Tier.

Unless that's another "you kids these days" expression?

[Dp101]

Kappa is generally used to indicate trolling, and originated from the twitch emoticon of the same name.

[Commodore]

Commodore: Older Than Dirt stuff aside, I note with vague and wry approval that Hinduism has, at least, spread over to Maya. The dirt cheap Pericles Early Scientist is probably going to be an academy next turn, but there is an off chance he founds Taoism. In any case, good for you there Ox.


As the combat log mentioned, the barbarians are spawning axes now. I took it out on defense in the deer camp woods, but that did land me some nasty unhappiness in Augusta. Still, I was planning on putting hammers into a settler anyway, so hey, free food! Ish.


As always, the slide-the-blocks puzzle continues with each freed up food tile; Germanica is finally allowed to grow at least a touch more. I'll probably slip an engineer in the last couple turns to shave a couple turns from the GP. On the off chance its an engineer, I'll cheerfully rush the Pyramids and get Currency on the failgold. Shrine is still going to be better than 2 of 3 odds though.


I'm eager to pop a few more borders around here. Fretensis whipped herself a library; dear Flavia Felix here will rock the ever-classy Holy City two-turn pop. Last turn I whipped the granary in here and enjoyed the growth trick; next turn I'll whip the work boat and the overflow ought to garner us a fair bit on the forge. Forge, lighthouse, Moai here...probably by way of a pair of temple whips for overflow too. It's not like I won't need the happy! This is going to be one fine Moai city.

I'm doing great! Cognitive dissonance is fun!

[Dp101]

Last turn I whipped the granary in here and enjoyed the growth trick

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