Ok I'll do a post on the situation of the world on t50 in between here as I started writing this some time ago...
Our neighbours:
Donovan Zoi is our closest neighbour. Generally a nice fellow to have next to you, but this time he’s sporting aggressive impis and at times I’ve worried more than a little bit about this threat. DZ had one of the fishing starts and he’s used that to grow his capital tall. At size 6 it’s one of the biggest cities so far, but otherwise I don’t know if he has that much going for him? His second city was founded on t35, presumably for copper and so far he hasn’t managed to settle a third city. What could upset the tables still is that a few turns back he produced 3 impis that I presume he’s sent out to take out or at least cripple an opponent. Should that be successful (say that he could take HAKs capital for instance) he could still be in with a good shot here, but the likelier scenario is that he’ll stay small but thorny. In the future I do see DZs land as our land, but when that'll happen is still very unclear.
To the opposite side of Donovan we have
Really Evil Muffin. Otherwise similar to us, REM has a slightly stronger expansion trait in the imperialistic ideas he pushing. Unlike most people he managed to beat us to both 3 and 4 cities, albeit with perhaps slightly worse initial worker support. Our border with REM is set to become shorter than that with DZ, but not necessarily any less conflict ridden as he’s got some prime real estate on his side that I can’t help but long for. In a possible future conflict one good thing is that unlike most Civs (?) REM has his capital on flatland, but on the other hand we probably don’t want to be on the receiving end of a rush as he decided to go for super early Ironworking (even though he had copper nearby). I actually haven’t seen a scout from REM so far, so it’s possible that we haven’t been scouted by him at all. This is nothing I would count on though…
Our last neighbor at this point is
Serdoa and Noble located to our east. These guys I guess could become really strong with time, but for now they’re sitting on three cities and are not much of a concern as they’re bound to have better avenues of expansion than immediately stealing prime land from us. Still, this border is one that could be suffering if we direct too much resources to wonders or similar instead of expansion.
possible map composition:
Apart from our direct neighbours we’ve also made contact with two other civs, both to our north. Keeping REM in check we have forever dangerous
Commodore on one side. Though I haven’t seen his borders yet I believe Com might be to REMs east. Commodore has so far a very similar opening to ours, only slightly behind in the expansion. One thing that actually speaks against us attacking REM in the future is that, if successful, we’d probably open ourselves up with a long border against the culturally strong Commodore and that’s something generally best avoided. Also, presumably bordering REM, is
Elkad. On the surface Elkads doing decently with his 3 cities, but looking at CivStats it seems he founded them on t41 and t46 which simply is way too late. If I could buy his map I probably would, as Elkad’s likely to be the first to send out exploring workboats, but map info might not be enough to save this (luckily aggressive) fellow when Commodore (or REM) comes a knockin’.
Other people possibly worth mentioning:
HitAnyKey was the fellow who landed Buddhism. He later followed that up with the Oracle and now has a leg and a half up on a delicious shrine. Still he stayed put on one size 3 city until t47 or something crazy like that and even if he now has 5 pop in two cities I wouldn’t want to trade with him.
AdrienIer in turn founded Hinduism, but after that I haven’t really kept track on him. A look at Civstats now suggests he built a city on t50, but nothing in between that and t35, so my guess is he got to a decent two city start, has grown a bit and built a few fast workers and might now start a first expansion wave. Still, this is only speculation.
(As for Judaism I didn’t pay enough attention to be able to pair it with any person in particular. I guess time will have to tell…)
Dtay is his normal self and has gotten off to a splendid start. On t40 he landed Stonehenge and I believe he even had 3 cities already at that point
He’s since then followed that up with being second (?) to four cities on t46, so yeah, one to watch out for…
Yuri I think deserves a mention simply because I had him at the bottom of the pile in my rankings. He has, however, done well for himself by focusing on the imperialistic part of his combo instead of the religious route and if I’m counting correctly he founded his 5th city on t50. Still, his main problem is generally not a lack of knowledge or empire management, but simply the absence of aggression so we’ll just have to see if this cat can grow some claws.
Other than this it’s hard to say much as score doesn’t say that much about development yet at this point. For instance I had plako as one of the favourites before the game, but here he is dead last. Still, he’s at 3 cities and has probably done a little bit of a beeline to some tech. Who knows maybe we’ll see a notice of Taoism being founded in a german city soon or something
and it can help you keep focused.
