Dreylin - nice neighbour, did pretty good scouting and development in PB75 (not spoilery anymore) but doesn't seem aggressive.
Gav and Superdeath - not nice neighbours. Nauf may temper SD but we still need to be careful.
Magic Science - I don't know anything, will have a look at his threads at some point.
Thrawn - total noob
to the extent that i know anything about the others (limited) almost all of it comes from PB75 so big pile of spoilers incoming
Dreylin: my understanding is they are a vet from a looong time ago who took a lengthy break and have been back for two games.... they were considered strong during their previous active period but in such circumstances "rust?" is always the question
Drey PB74
Drey played in the huge PB74 game that is now ending in flames and bad blood, but got chariot-rushed out of it VERY early by tarkeel... they saw it coming but i think had neither hunting nor BW for spears at the time they made contact, and maybe there just isn't much to be done in that situation
Drey PB75
Drey developed well in PB75, and was i think a consistent second in many demo categories behind ginger, but obviously being one of the two neighbors of the rapidly-militarizing megathreat is another bad break that they can't really control. as for how well they are defending, too early to say i think - i guess we will have more info pretty soon though, you moreso than me i am a bit surprised they never pursued aggression themselves in that game, as it doesn't seem like they were ever outbuilding the HG + religious trinity-juiced ottomans which i think leaves attacking someone, probably said ottomans, as the only real option... so maybe the "doesn't seem aggressive" characterization is a correct one. if so um.... gavagai + superdeath + thrawn is NOT a field they are likely to be happy with...
superdeath: i also feel that SD is a kindred spirit, and am trying to dedlurk them in PB77, if that game does not die a turnpace-related death as such i am HEAVILY biased in favor of wanting SD to win every game which i am not personally participating in so do not expect much objectivity from me on this topic
SD PB75
my interactions with SD in PB75 have been pretty cordial and fair, but limited by geography of course... they did send one or two of their trademark incomprehensible diplo messages but ignoring them didn't seem to do anything and other than that diplo with them has been straightforward and reasonable.... it is REALLY hard to get a read on SD as a player just from this game though as they started next to an inca player who started really slowly (like, still had mostly quechuas on defense when SD attacked with praetorians) and got to be the prime beneficiary of their collapse. but their wars in that game have not been super erratic, doomed attacks or anything - they sensibly killed their neighbor who was way behind, and equally-sensibly attacked gav who was then the most behind remaining player, and are in a good position as a result. or... were in a good position, but they are now getting dogpiled; not too sure what they were supposed to do to keep the diplo from breaking like that though (besides finish gav quicker i guess, but you know better than i do why the conflict down there has apparently stalled out).
as far as the hyper-aggressive dedicated SD rushes that are every SD neighbor's greatest fear, i get the sense from the last time they tried that (with holkans against, i think, pindicator + krill?) it wasn't because they took maya with a rush in mind, but because they felt that against a spreadsheety micromanager like krill they could not win a build-off and their only chance was to play to their comparative advantage (of killing). SD has a strong dislike of both simming and spreadsheets generally and i think yearns for the older, less-developed meta where you didn't HAVE to do that kind of thing to compete in the economic game. so in conclusion..... if SD has followed your civ6 reports in any detail at all they are definitely going to come for you but i have no reason to believe they have (unlike eg amica and ginger i have NEVER seen them post in a civ6 subforum) and it's too late now
Nauf PB75
nauf has been a lovely neighbor to me personally and very easy to work with - all i had to do was send them "war with GT" and a date and we split GT (admittedly nauf getting attacked by GT probably influenced the likelihood of their participation...) and then a 30-turn cow-cow offer and now we have a gorgeous long-term-demilitarized border. but um, both of us having bigger fish to fry in opposite directions will do that i guess
apparently their reputation in every other game they have played in is pretty warlike and paranoid though (according to aetryn), so perhaps their seeming pattern of buildering until they are either invaded by GT or are forced to invade SD by strategic necessity is more a function of their PHI america civ draft than a more general inclination..... in that case there may not be as much tempering as we would like. i will say that like ginger and unlike *cough* me, they have been quite good about actually teching to a decisive unit and then massing that unit before attacking, which i gather is the recipe for successful offensive war in this game. which to me suggests that if there's one thing about SD that they are likely to temper, it is SD's impulsivity.... SD's aggressive instincts plus a sensible builder-into-aggression dedlurker seem like a pretty dangerous combination to me
Gav PB75
i am not really sure what went down in this game... gav is the player who i have had the least interaction with, but from what i can gather they attacked all three of their neighbors in sequence without ever really gaining enough to make up for the whipping required to do so.... i think they razed an mjmd city in an early war that was mostly mutually-destructive, then vultured just one city off the collapsing incas (but i kinda suspect they didn't push harder here to avoid giving ricketyclik a hard[-er] time than they were already destined to have), then took a city off a larger superdeath but again had to whip heavily to keep it to the point that it might not have been worth it. then somehow they got attacked by a bunch of troops from GT for no apparent reason? i don't know, you probably have a clearer understanding of how their game went than i do....
Gav PB74
...but one thing i do know is that it's anomalous, gav is crushing it and looks like the likely winner in the enormous 18-player PB74 game, from what i'm told was a pretty rough start. so maybe my rating of gav is highly competent, and if i had to pick, probably the most dangerous opponent in the field, but maybe also capable of tilting into disengagement (as opposed to me, who tilts into derangement ) if things go badly enough. not sure at what point in PB75 they hit that point, but DEFINITELY not to be underestimated because of that game
Magic Science PB74
tbh i haven't followed this game closely and know almost nothing about MS as a player.... i gather their game mostly consisted of surviving defiantly against, but ultimately getting conquered by, donovan zoi (of apolyton demogame fame!) and the ginger + miguelito team that came out on top in the small continent. not sure where we would find out more about them either as their game was very sparsely reported. so pending additional research, i rate MS as a wildcard but not someone who i've personally seen the kind of proven track record from to rate as among the top threats on either a buildery or aggressive axis. which is not to say that they aren't! but i have no evidence and i DO have evidence for nauf and gav so
all in all, with naufragar, superdeath, gavagai, and thrawn (and do i count at this point?) all participating in some capacity, is this a field of psychotic warmongerers or what? luckily there is a good chance that the rest of the field lacks the familiarity with the civ6 canon to know of your..... tendencies (unless amicalola, who has given some indications of being a secret civ6 lurker, ends up on one of the other teams and clues them in). i certainly am interested in learning what scooter has done with this map to discourage such lunacy.... you'd think some balancing would be needed to keep maxed-out aggro from being the right call on a mostly pre-improved map, but in a setting as artificial as this one it is not too hard to imagine how this might have been done...
Thanks scooter, and also for sponsoring the game and leading the tech thread so efficiently. In return I promise not to bitch about the map or the mapmaker
why does the map look so....normal? we have what, two visible pre-placed roads, and one of them crosses a river so we can't even use it?
...hang on, is that a forested lake
well, one thing i guess that tile could be good for is founding a religion, or very early teching generally (bronze working?) - normally the "spain on a lake" start requires working a garbage 2-FH tile but here we have a 3 FH tile with 2 commerce as well. although i see that when borders expand we will get the forested ivory in range which is a FOUR fh tile unimproved.... we would have to start with fishing to work the lake which is otherwise useless, but..... we DO get an extra starting tech of our choice in this variant...
another thing to note: i think the extra starting tech makes the choice of civ less important than that of the leader, relative to normal starts.... if we want the standard snowball opening of "improve food asap" we can do that with any civ that starts with EITHER hunting or ag (taking the other as the free tech), then we have a third tech to do whatever we want with...
as such i am HEAVILY biased in favor of wanting SD to win every game which i am not personally participating in so do not expect much objectivity from me on this topic 
) if things go badly enough. not sure at what point in PB75 they hit that point, but DEFINITELY not to be underestimated because of that game
(unless amicalola, who has given some indications of being a secret civ6 lurker, ends up on one of the other teams and clues them in). i certainly am interested in learning what scooter has done with this map to discourage such lunacy.... you'd think some balancing would be needed to keep maxed-out aggro from being the right call on a mostly pre-improved map, but in a setting as artificial as this one it is not too hard to imagine how this might have been done...
