[SPOILERS - NO PLAYERS] The Final Clusterfuck: The PB38 Map and Lurker Thread

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Finally checking in. Looks like Gavagai doesn't intend to report much so no point in me staying dedicated now two weeks after handing the civ over. I hope he's enjoying a new lease on life. I feel a little bad abandoning midstream but there's no way I could have even logged in every turn so leaving was the best thing.

Can someone give me the lurker thread tl;dr for this game? I have my thoughts on how things stand but I'm still a little pressed for time for posting. New baby is doing fine, thanks to those who commented previously.

[Krill]

Thread title describes this game adequately. Mack pulled off a HA rush and has been maintaining the lead as you know, OT fought constantly for the first 100 turns but are pulling back into a good in he position, TBS is second place and is aiming for Taj, which would likely put him about equal. He needs to eat someone though.

Commodore is playing Civ:Col though.

[Mardoc]

Finally checking in. Looks like Gavagai doesn't intend to report much so no point in me staying dedicated now two weeks after handing the civ over. I hope he's enjoying a new lease on life. I feel a little bad abandoning midstream but there's no way I could have even logged in every turn so leaving was the best thing.

Can someone give me the lurker thread tl;dr for this game? I have my thoughts on how things stand but I'm still a little pressed for time for posting. New baby is doing fine, thanks to those who commented previously.

The story thus far.  First, for context, you'll need to look at the overall geography; it's had quite an influence on the overall geopolitics.  Note that teams are assigned roughly in pentagons with rough terrain separating each group of five.  This was intended to push things towards each player having only 2-3 neighbors who might really interact early game, and has mostly worked as designed.

So I'll cover the pentagons in order, west to east.

First we have the group of FinHarry, WilliamLP, OT4E, elkad, and GermanJoey.  This has been an absolutely weird and incredibly bloody area - a lurker's paradise.  FinHarry played the early game quite efficiently, outexpanding both of their neighbors.  They grabbed several cities in disputed territory, angering both William and OT4E, as well as convincing both of them that they were already becoming irrelevant.  William declared war on FinHarry, and OT4E joined in shortly afterward.  FinHarry fought them to a draw, mostly by building garrisons and walls and being too dangerous to attack.  At which point both of them noticed 'hey, I have this army and it's not getting me anything northward, but my southern neighbor didn't build an army', so both elkad and GermanJoey got invaded.  Since then, I don't think there has been a turn without war in this pentad.  Once the wars became general, FinHarry have been able to slowly work their way back into the game.  Mostly they've managed to be opportunistic - they have grabbed 2-3 cities, fortified, rested, and waited for the geopolitics to swing, then grabbed 2-3 more a dozen turns later.  Because they aren't taking many casualties and are more efficient builders, they managed to get a decent tech rate.  That means they're also one of only 4? teams with Astronomy.  New World colonization has given them a lot of new cities.  

Meanwhile, OT4E has eventually died, and William, Elkad, and GJ have all managed to fight themselves into being well behind.  They're still prickly enough that they won't die soon, but I think they're all destined to die.  It's just a question of whether they die to FinHarry attacking with gunpowder off galleons, or to someone else.

Next pentagon.  It was reported pretty decently at first but the reporting has faded, so I'm not sure where it stands now.  Early on, Donovon Zoi managed to Holkan-rush Dark Savant and take him over.  This seemed like a brilliant play, but DZ has played the economic side of things indifferently and hence the conquest only brought up up even with the pack.  Surprisingly, GermanJoey wasn't able to take advantage of the missing neighbor all that well - I have to assume he's busy in Real Life.  After that, the only significant event was 2metraninja being wiped out.  One of his neighbors (Adrien, I think) built a large army and attacked.  All the other neighbors had been building armies and looking for opportunities.  They decided that 2metra was that opportunity and at one point he was fighting a 4v1.  No one has reported well enough for me to really know who got the most profit...I think it was Xenu but I'm not sure.  

I have no real idea how this group is doing techwise, or in GNP, so I don't know if they are relevant long-term or not.  Not a lot of reporting from these players anymore.

A sideshow has been Naufrager grabbing little bits of Adrien's border whenever Adrien was distracted.  I don't think this had any serious effect on either party's power level, but it means Adrien is likely to hit back.

Middle pentagon.  Main story here has been mackoti's rise.  Early on, he managed to hit Horse Archers early, and used them to take over Aretas.  Both naufrager and Rusten were concerned but caught a step behind, unable to either interfere or significantly profit.  Mack then built up again, and hit Rusten at knights...again a step ahead of Rusten's neighbors, so he was able to eat a good bit of Rusten.  A few turns later Mack attempted to war-peace naufrager.  Nauf refused to give peace, and instead attempted to come to Rusten's rescue - on the theory that he was going to fight Mack now or later, might as well be now.  Unfortunately, Naufrager doesn't quite have Mack's tactical skill, and he was also a bit late, so Mack has been gradually winning the 2v1.  Rusten when mostly-dead peaced out, so now Mack is grinding through Naufrager.  I'm sure he'll be back to finish off Rusten eventually.  Not sure what Mr. Cairo has been doing during this whole thing, but score-wise he's falling behind.  

Somewhere in here Mackoti got Astronomy, I think, but I've no idea if he's been settling overseas.  It would distract from his acquisition of core cities from Naufrager and Rusten, so I'm sure it's no more than a back-burner effort...but a Mackoti back-burner effort might still be having a substantial effect.  No reporting has enlightened us, though.

Next pentagon - yours, BGN.  Reporting has been sketchy except for TBS.  Essentially what happened, I think, is that superdeath built his defending army too early, which gimped his economic expansion.  Eventually his neighbors noticed and attacked.  He being Native America, he managed to extract a lot of pain, mostly from Rusten.  After Rusten did most of the bleeding, Mackoti hit him, but superdeath had been damaged enough to become the victim of an opportunistic dogpile.  Eventually his neighbors snuffed him out, at significant expense.  Again I don't really know who profited most.

Meanwhile, TBS has doing the best at building. He claimed a lot of superdeath, I think, but no other conquests.  Early on, superdeath had a scouting warrior who killed an unguarded Commodore settler, which appears to have let TBS claim a greater than average share of the border jungle, too.  TBS got Astronomy (first, I think, unless that was mackoti) and has been putting a modest effort out.  He's got quite a few overseas cities but it's clearly not his main focus.  I think he's the most likely mackoti-challenger, being both close to him geographically and close in tech and cities.  It will be interesting to see what he can do - he's been grabbing new size 1 overseas cities while Mack grabs core cities from his neighbors. TBS needs to do something important soon, but I don't know if he has any opportunities.

Final pentagon.  Since this is mostly vets, initially everyone was nervous and paranoid and stayed pretty much at peace.  Eventually B4ndit fell behind enough for Gavagai to decide to attack him.  Plako piled on after B4ndit was weakened, which angered Gav...Gav ended up declaring war on plako in order to claim at least ex-B4ndit lands.  This fight has been pretty much going on ever since.  First war, Commodore saw the plako-Gav action, declared on plako...then Gav peaced out.  Commodore managed to extract himself by abandoning plako cities to be recaptured and they reverted to status quo ante bellum.  Eventually Gavagai attacked plako again, and was extremely frustrated when Commodore came in on plako's side.  In addition, around this time Lewwyn came back and dedlurked pindicator, which energized him - he piled on Gavagai too.  Gav pulled his entire army north, and intimidated both pindicator and Commodore into taking peace.  Pindicator got three cities profit from the deal, while Commodore returned to his pre-war lines.  After they rested and built a Knight/Cho-Ko-Nu army, Pindicator declared again on Gavagai.  This time he's pushing to completely conquer Egypt.  Plako of course is getting a good portion as well, although not reporting on it. Gavagai became frustrated with the way his neighbors were only fighting him (especially Commodore) and that's what caused him to decamp to your civ, Boldly. Personally I think he caused his own diplomatic situation by fighting every war for maximum self-profit, never giving his allies a chance to gain anything. He could have given either Plako or Commodore a route to profit by being his ally, if he accepted a little less profit himself, but both times he convinced them that he was an unreliable partner. From his perspective, though, they were being unreasonable in piling on when he didn't ask them to and then being mad when he achieved his goals and jumped out of war again.

Meanwhile, Commodore decided to beeline Astronomy and fight only opportunistically.  He's maybe taken 2 mainland cities, by raze and resettle, but he's gotten at least a dozen overseas cities planted, and this is clearly his main focus. I think he'll be planting a new city every turn or so for a while.  He's managed to box TBS in, so that Commodore has a ton of available land, as soon as he can manage to settle it.  Initially he was economy-limited, but now that Commodore has made it to Mercantilism he seems to have gotten overseas cities profitable on initial settle. I expect him to fill up the nearby continents soon.  Main question for him is whether the New World will pay back before someone invades him; these cities haven't paid back the investment yet, and are all still pretty small.  He intends to deter aggression and expand via galleon...we'll see if he can pull that off.

Finally, there are still several overseas continents with either no or minimal colonization efforts going on.  The main uncertainty is the area north of mackoti...no one has reported any presence here, but there are several civs (including yours, Boldly) which maybe could have reached it but haven't been reporting.  In addition, mack's only been reporting on his wars, so he might or might not have a presence on those continents.  

Going forward, the top 4 civs seem to be:
Mackoti
The Black Sword
Pindicator
FinHarry

Fifth place is either Commodore or someone who's not reporting - main question here is whether new Astro-cities can grow to relevance before mainland conquests let someone snowball into complete dominance.

Unfortunately, about half the map is dark from a lurker perspective, so it's entirely possible I've missed some big drama and a contender somewhere in the fog.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Excellent post. Thanks for the synopsis. Apparently this has been more exciting to lurk than play,  at least from my civ's perspective. Mackoti definitely has astronomy. I had tech visibility on him long ago and he double bulbed it. One turn only I saw the Astronomy (1) next to mack on the scoreboard. This was not long after TBS started logging midturn score increases on civstats that could only have been astronomy overseas settlements. I think mack had to have concluded knights and captured cities are stronger than colonies when you're militarily strong. Commodore seems a wildcard here. How much can he get away with grabbing land before someone calls him back home? I think he is pursuing things very aggressively but not from the same position of strength as some of the other colonizers. I could be wrong.

I wanted to push astro sooner but neighboring mackoti with knigs has a way of shifting priorities. I think Commodore had astro before construction? I had to go to engineering to ensure knigs picked a different target than me. This looks to have been a significant delay given the rate of expansion overseas. I had a plan in place to fire a GA and get Gavagai to astro but he seems to have delayed this.

[Mardoc]

Mackoti definitely has astronomy. I had tech visibility on him long ago and he double bulbed it. One turn only I saw the Astronomy (1) next to mack on the scoreboard. This was not long after TBS started logging midturn score increases on civstats that could only have been astronomy overseas settlements. I think mack had to have concluded knights and captured cities are stronger than colonies when you're militarily strong.

I can't say he's wrong about this.  It's not super exciting to watch but it's definitely a very strong play.  Sometimes the standard play is standard for a reason .

Commodore seems a wildcard here. How much can he get away with grabbing land before someone calls him back home? I think he is pursuing things very aggressively but not from the same position of strength as some of the other colonizers. I could be wrong.

Yes, pretty much.  It really comes down to the question of whether he can keep deterring his neighbors.  He's been using both stick and carrot here, trading Astro resources, as well as being careful to stay inside his own culture with a stack of trebs and praets and crossbows.  And he's now caught up in miltech.  But he's also the natural next target for plako and pindicator after they finish off Egypt.  He needs them to spend enough time consolidating that the colonies pay off.  Colonies might push him up to Grens or cannons or rifles in time.

I wanted to push astro sooner but neighboring mackoti with knigs has a way of shifting priorities. I think Commodore had astro before construction? I had to go to engineering to ensure knigs picked a different target than me. This looks to have been a significant delay given the rate of expansion overseas. I had a plan in place to fire a GA and get Gavagai to astro but he seems to have delayed this.

Yeah, Commodore seems to have been skating on the edge of 'just enough military + past reputation', his Astronomy play was a true beeline.  It's helped that his pentagon has been in a fairly continuous war in which he's not lost anything - I'm not sure if he even lost units.  I'm sure he has more tech than his non-TBS neighbors but I don't know how much of that is military tech.  I think Astro was before Construction but after Machinery, so he did at least have trebs for deterrence.

It might work out for him, that's probably the part of the show I'm enjoying the most at the moment.  If he has the time, then his Astro-colonies could take him from ~15 mainland cities to 60+ total cities...and an empire that size would give him the tech and production to dominate someone.  Now that he has galleons that might be plako or it might be anyone on the same ocean as he is.  But he's not there yet, and he's not the only active player making things happen, so he might just be too late.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Once you get to souped up workshops it doesn't take long to make a new city a good city, especially if you have sufficient worker force to optimize growth (farms) to hammers (convert to workshops). Granary, forge, ____, profit. No culture needed, caste artists are all you'd need. And with merc this is even easier.

I will say this, though: I'm very happy not to have to manage 100 cities. The endgame is going to be a slog for some of these guys. If I had to guess, Old HitOurist, TBS, and mack will enjoy their large empires and do well. Commodore will enjoy grabbing land and making life hell for someone but I think he's off the podium and may see himself chased off the peninsula by the resurgent pindilew who may finally eschew the spoiling attack on TBS to seek redemption for whichever PB it was where the great island exodus happened against Commodore. I'm also interested to see what happens in that southern backwoods area with adrien, xenu, and dz. I think if mackoti wanted to salt this game away he'd do well to steamroll in that direction through Cairo after finishing with naufrager. I would want to leave a rump state neutral buffer in Rusten to safeguard against TBS and project force in the opposite direction against weaker civs who are hopelessly behind.

I would be really surprised if mack doesn't win, unless Gavagai is willing to do what I wouldn't and just throws the Khmer civ into the woodchipper and hope for help a la naufrager. But that would require help from TBS, who would then be open to an attack from pindilew. As many other priorities as TBS has right now, this is probably unlikely.

This is a fun gamestate to theorycraft right now.

[Krill]

Have there been any mid turn score increases for Mack showing him setting astro lands?

[superdeath]

I dont know who i should cheer for, im just glad rusten fell on his sword

Id love to learn more from the likes of Mackoti and Dtay. Dtay doesnt seem to post ever, but his early game was strong. Mackoti doesnt post much, and im assuming a language barrier is preventing me from understanding what he does post half the time.

[superdeath]

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Next pentagon - yours, BGN. Reporting has been sketchy except for TBS. Essentially what happened, I think, is that superdeath built his defending army too early, which gimped his economic expansion. Eventually his neighbors noticed and attacked. He being Native America, he managed to extract a lot of pain, mostly from Rusten. After Rusten did most of the bleeding, Mackoti hit him, but superdeath had been damaged enough to become the victim of an opportunistic dogpile. Eventually his neighbors snuffed him out, at significant expense. Again I don't really know who profited most.
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TBS profited the most, then Dtay. Rusten got... 1 ok city, and 1 bad city if i remember right.

[Krill]

Question: does Mack have astro?




I think he does but it has been so long since looking at F4 I don't know if I am reading this correctly. If it was unresearched it would be in the can research column, right?