Oh boy. Turn 150. A big report for a big turn.
Well, that's why they pay us reporters the big bucks.
First things first, we advance:
I'll show the power graph later, but trust that Gav is way, way stronger than me. My only hope is that some of the diplo work I've done the past 12 turns bears fruit. Specifically, that was inviting Amica into the war and rapidly thawing relations with him. I went from closed borders and chanting "death to the great Satan" to removing all my Amica-facing garrisons and giving him open borders+luxury trade. I still kept my EP spending predominantly on him, but we can't lose all our old habits.
To Superdeath, I've been giving two free luxuries in exchange for the promise of war against Gav. Two free extra happiness is a lot. If he's able to work two extra coast tiles at even half of his cities, that's +12gpt and he should be able to do better than that. I'll talk more about Superdeath in the player overview section, but it's in my interest to prop Superdeath up. If he decides to commit to the war, great! If not, well too bad.
The red dots in the pic above mark where I would put my zone defense force, if I were Gavagai. If he throws his entire army at me, he can certainly stop my stack. I'm not sure if he's able to stop Amica's with brute force alone. There are many possible outcomes, even assuming Amica does declare war on Gav this turn. Gav can bribe Amica with a city or whatever and turn to stop me. He can split his forces and take his chances. He can try to bribe me. There are probably infinite permuations but those are the three main ones. Amica could put me in the same situation that I had when allied with Gav: he could peace out immediately and leave me to fight Gav's army solo. Gav only researched Construction last turn, so he doesn't have a deep reservoir of catapults, so I'm (slightly) less concerned about this than I was in the earlier war.
War is uncertain. We'll see what happens next turn. In a perfect world, Amica and I stay in the fight long enough for Superdeath to come in. In the meantime, I want a couple cities off Gav. In the bigger picture, this war undoubtedly helps Amica (again, more talk about this later). But my thinking is that if Amica and I each gain an even number of cities, that's way, way better for me because I'm starting with fewer, so each city gained is a bigger percentage increase for me, and my new cities are (marginally) more economically productive thanks to Org. (If a city's on a coast, Amica's Great Lighthouse probably renders this moot.)
Let's go through each player now, going down the scoreboard.
Ginger
Ginger, Ginger. You've been playing a fascinating game. Ginger has a tiny little empire that is producing roughly a billion commerce per turn. Despite lacking the Philosophical trait, he's been daisy-chaining Golden Ages and cranking out Great People in massive amounts. He recently naturally produced a Great Engineer and then shortly afterwards nabbed the Music Great Artist. (The delay was too short for the Artist to have been born naturally.) He's on 8 cities to Amica's 15, so I'm not sure what he does. I'm guessing that he's thinking Nationalism, Taj Mahal kind of things. Probably Liberalism too, but I honestly don't know what he can do with that massive tech advantage. With only 8 build queues, there's only so much strength one can muster. My prediction is that he booms out to an incredible tech lead, maybe even as far as Rifles, but can't doing anything with the techs he's gotten and one of the big players (which at this point is just Amica) has gotten just too big. Perhaps my Gav war gives Ginger an opening, but I doubt it. He's in full on pacifistic, money-making mode. And Comm, for his part, has done amazing things to keep himself safe from Ginger.
Gavagai
Gavagai the Furious. He's surrounded by 4 different players. I know he attacked Ginger. I can't remember or never knew if he or Superdeath was the aggressor in their war. He and Amica have locked horns. He's done me dirty. Basically, every single one of his neighbors wouldn't shed a tear to see him dead. I've whined enough about how I prefer him as an ally to Amica, but he's played so treacherously and arrogantly that I can't trust him. He's got a very interesting economy. This map was very unkind to cottages, so Gav is powering basically the entirety of his research through Representation Scientist specialists. It's a clever idea. It has meant he hasn't whipped much, so he doesn't have much whip anger stacked up. He hand-built a gigantic army of axes and horse archers a while ago, and now is supplementing with Crossbows and Catapults. He was likely most vulnerable 5ish turns ago, but now will have to do. I think that Gav has no shot of winning this game just because of the way he played his diplomatic hand. Even if he gets local superiority versus one neighbor, he has too many decently strong enemies. He'll never get more powerful than Ginger or Amicalola. If I were him and saw a coalition coming for him, I'd do my damnedest to swing Amica to my side and hold naufragar off. It doesn't change his chance of victory, though. Even if he ate every single one of my southern cities, his empire would not be competitive with Amica or Ginger's.
Amicalola
Amica, my dearest. Amica played an interesting game, if hilariously greedy. He literally pushed from pole to pole settling cities and wrecking his economy. This made him enemies of all his neighbors (if we don't count Superdeath, since there's a thin stretch of sea between them). And the crashed economy plus the neighborhood animosity was enough to kill him. He lost a couple cities, was down to making no money. He was dead. But then, as you all know, Gavagai threw the game. I believe Amica has now "turned the corner." There's a certain point in every Civ4 empire where costs stop mattering. Usually this is because of a combination of trade routes, court houses, and matured cottages. I'm pretty sure Amica is hitting this point now. His larger empire will not be making significantly less money than the smaller ones, but he will retain all the benefits of bigness.
This doesn't mean he has won! And Realms Beyond Civ4 players seem addicted to the resignation button, so I feel I have to say that here. The victory conditions (primarily Space and Domination) are very far away for him. I've no doubt he can get a world-class research program up eventually, but that's still very far way. As for domination, he can certainly make gains, but the fact that he has to push in practically two opposite directions (either East against me or South against Gavagai) means he can't sweep up the world just yet. So I'll repeat, Amica is certainly
winning, but he has not yet
won.
Superdeath
Superdeath the demoralized? I don't understand why SD isn't move involved. (It actually looks like he is getting more involved in this game. If so, I'd like to think my alliance offer has something to do with it.) I've mentioned that this map was really rough on cottage-able tiles. There are very few rivers and not a huge amount of green grasslands. On the other hand, the continent folds in on itself, offering more coast than most players can use. Superdeath and I are Financial. This map gives us a massive, massive advantage over players who rely on cottages. If I were Superdeath, I'd be delighted. I could just throw down coastal cities everywhere, even where there aren't food resources (as indeed, I have). It would be a pain for him without Organized Lighthouses, but who cares? It's an extra 30 hammers and then you can essentially forget about the city. All this to say, Superdeath was playing like he was completely out of the game and maybe, because of that attitude, he is, but he wasn't in any worse spot geographically than Commodore and Ginger, and those two have done amazing things through sheer force of will.
Even if Superdeath doesn't join the war against Gav, I think I still keep feeding him free luxuries. He is Amica's neighbor, even if that water lulls him into a false sense of security, and he's certainly Gav's neighbor. Either way, the stronger Superdeath is, the happier I am. At this point, I might be more invested in SD's success than he is.
Commodore
Speaking of Commodore... This guy, man. He was dealt easily the worst hand. Just absolutely terrible. And then through amazingly elegant strategic play, he has saved himself from annihilation. First, he warded me off with diplomacy. (See, I can be a reasonable, diplomatic guy sometimes.) Then he solved his economy with the Colossus (
after another player Oracled Metal Casting!). And he has survived living next to Ginger, when Ginger was at his most strong. He has sacrificed when he needs to (like giving away his entire economy to Ginger for a bit of peace) and he's lashed out when he needs to (he's secured multiple peace treaties through threat of war). I honestly cannot praise his game play enough.
He recently requested a deer from me. At first I thought this was because he was hurting for health. (Frankly, in some places, I was too.) But then I thought it was to reassure himself that we're still friends. I'll be honest. My brain has sort of characterized my Eastern border with Commodore as void space. I was reading some spy thriller, I forget which, probably
The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer, which had the line "you have to trust somebody," meaning that no matter how paranoid, duplicitous, conservative, whatever, you can't play the game on guard from everybody. Commodore is the one I'm trusting. All of my mental energy is going towards my Western border and figuring out my stance towards Amica and Gav. If Comm takes advantage of this with a surprise attack, so be it. I can't defend every angle, both literally with troops and mentally with planning. If I were Comm, I don't think I'd be planning on attacking me. We have been good allies for a while, and attacking me maybe creates more openings for Amica. On the other hand, when Comm sees that I'm allied with Amica against Gav, he might think I've fallen to the dark side and I'm no longer an effective counterweight to Amica anyway. I honestly don't know, but as mentioned, I don't have the mental capacity to include Commodore in my list of concerns.
And now let's get through the graphs:
GNP (the Money one)
Holy moly, look at Ginger's golden age! He's trusting that he's secure from Gav, and he bought off Commodore for a hefty sum, so now he's free to tech away in Caste System. Other items of note is Gavagai's potential. In the Gav section, I mentioned his interesting economic setup. Pyramids and libraries are good. Superdeath's econ is low because he hasn't settled enough coastal cities. Don't be fooled by Amica's level. Next time he turns on tech with the aid of all his new courthouses, he'll be a scary sight. Btw, I'm currently teching at full bore; there are no high-school statistics class tricks here. (The tech is Guilds. We should get it in 3 turns.
)
Production
Ginger's got a massive lead, but he needs this because he's trying to avoid slavery. I repeat myself: his game has been fascinating. He's working windmills in golden ages, which are not bad tiles at all. Again, do 8 cities even in a golden age compete with an empire with 15+ cities? Doubtful, but for now, he's in a good spot. It's his job to make sure that good spot persists.
Crop Yield (Let's play spot the whips.)
Gavagai's decrease is actually not whipping, I think. It's just him switching to hammer tiles. He's been pretty studious about avoiding the whip. (He's whipping Catapults now. Wise move.) Amica's decrease is all whipping, so pretend he's still at his peak. Hereditary Rule happiness and many, many units means whip anger doesn't matter once he's back at peace. I'm trying to avoid the whip, simply because my units still haven't recovered from the last war. I'm not in great shape...
Power
Yeah, we're weak and attacking, who cares?
I'm really putting a lot of faith in the power of dogpiles and having catapults when your opponent doesn't. This graph looks scary, and it is, but if I have one strength as a player, it's my complete immunity to reality.
It's my habit to give people a tour through all my cities at the 50-turn milestones, and I've got the screenshots at hand. But I want to do things with my Saturday besides play or report civ, so these will have wait. You'll get to see such sights as "The World's Most Wasted Moai" and "The Flat Plainsland Worked by Choice" and "The Stacked 45 Turns of Whip Anger." All coming soon. Tschüss.
Pseudo-edit: This crap is so annoying:
My man, I sent you a PM precisely to avoid this situation where you log in again after me, spend fifteen minutes in turn, and let my paranoia run rampant, suggesting you're fiddling with build queues or moving troops.
I think Gav's an honest player, so I don't think he did anything untoward, but life is simpler if we don't give each other reasons for doubt.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
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