[no players] Uninformed criticism spoken loudly; lurker's thread.

[Rowain]

It's still a huge advantage to whoever initially had the upper hand, but a concerted effort by several weaker civs can probably break the stronger.

Of course he has an advantage but he also had to work for it. Besides if his opponents are smart they attack the other CS of his too (not only Helsinki) and watch how he struggles to keep all his Minors alive.

Building your strategie for a CS-Harem is a good way but it binds you and forces you to defend them because if you lose them you suffer alot.

[Cyneheard]

Wrong. In the patronage tree you can adopt a SP that sets your influence to +20 as soon as you are at peace. So to keep you out he has to maintain war for the whole time.

So? MP Always War leads to long periods of Not Shooting At One Another in Civ4. There's a cost there, but if he's a runaway leader he's not going to get good diplo deals from players anyway, so it's not an exorbitant one.

And social policies are expensive; how many policies does the other player need to burn to be able to get those CSes anyway, if he's not going after Patronage?

[Rowain]

So? MP Always War leads to long periods of Not Shooting At One Another in Civ4. There's a cost there, but if he's a runaway leader he's not going to get good diplo deals from players anyway, so it's not an exorbitant one.

The diplo-deals are not the big problem. In Civ4 you can play AW with a paperdefense because you can whip/draft a nice effective defenseforce
if you need. In Civ5 there is no whip and draft so you have to maintain quite an Army if you want to stay AW with 2-3 opponents. And such an Army is expansive => less gold to buy your CS.

[Commodore]

So is anyone else delighted with Yuri's aggressive play-style shift? I have to cheer it, much as I feel bad for the Fire/Water/Ice/Bat team. It's weird that he's leading in tech, but that's because economy=gold and tech=population, right?

[luddite]

So is anyone else delighted with Yuri's aggressive play-style shift? I have to cheer it, much as I feel bad for the Fire/Water/Ice/Bat team. It's weird that he's leading in tech, but that's because economy=gold and tech=population, right?

I'm pretty sure Yuri's tech lead comes entirely from him getting the great library and a free scientist from liberty. Free techs are way better than regular research power in this game. At any rate, it's definitely interesting to see how this plays out!

Another advantage that Yuri has is that, after this war, he'll have some highly promoted units. That's much more powerful than it is in civ 4, and unless you've played the game you might not realize how important it is in civ 5. Unfortunately for Yuri, longbows don't upgrade into anything except riflemen (which wastes their promotions). But they can still be useful for a long, long time.

Oh and at some point (pretty soon I think?) Yuri will get a Great Scientist from the Great Library giving scientist points. I don't think this game is anywhere close to being decided, yet.

[Sullla]

Are you kidding me? We are watching the same game, right? SevenSpirits has a stranglehold on this game, and the only possible way that he can lose right now would be through a huge dogpile of everyone else in the game. (In which case he would effectively be the winner anyway, for forcing such a move.) Again, with Seven finally posting some screenshots this turn it's possible to see just how badly he's beating the other teams. Look:



The key number is in the top-left corner. SevenSpirits is making 150 beakers/turn. Everyone else is around 50 beakers/turn. Yes, he's researching at roughly triple the rate of everyone else. Now we all know about Great Scientists in Civ5, blah blah blah actual beaker rate doesn't matter blah blah. Well guess what? Great Scientist production is largely controlled by the number of cities that you have. More cities = more universities = more Great Scientists, since you usually only get 1 Great Scientist per city. There's also one key wonder that creates faster Great Scientists. It's called Hagia Sophia (+25% GPP in all cities), which is owned by... SevenSpirits. Oops.

So SevenSpirits has the highest beaker rate and the highest potential for Great Scientist generation. He also has by far the highest Food and Production:



He's also leading in Power, has a ton of city-state alliances (backed by Patronage), and a vast backlines area to expand in rather safey:



Someone please tell me how this game is at all close? oledavy is the only one who has even a remote chance of doing anything, and that's only in conjunction with the rest of the other players. Barring a gamelong 3 vs 1 alliance, Seven will take this in a cakewalk. He is CRUSHING this game in every conceivable metric.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Seven spawned with way more land than anyone else, and he's definitely used it well. There's enough luxury diversity that he could go both wide and tall. It also seems that his city states got the junky land, while he got the lush green rivers.

But what really surprises me is where Seven's getting his economy from. I don't see any trading posts, is it all from trade routes and working luxury specials?

Also, from what I understand of the mechanics, in Seven's T72 picture, he's getting ~85 beakers from his cities. Where are the rest coming from? That Patronage SP? If so, that feels awfully fragile. He's lost one ally (though it should be a cinch liberating them), going to lose another. So I can see Yuri and Mist doing some damage to Seven, but I doubt it'll be enough to knock him out of the game. We'll see what Cannons lets him do.

And at least Dave should get 2 research agreements out of this.

[luddite]

I dunno, Seven definitely has the upper hand right now but I think it's still too soon to count the others out. Yuri's longbows can probably take out all of seven's longswords without too much trouble, maybe even his cannons too depending on promotions and luck. If Yuri pushes forward and takes out some of Seven's City States that could have a big effect on the game. The other players could also form a Research Agreement alliance- Two 1500 beaker RAs every 30 turns makes up the 100 beaker difference right away.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Plus, Yuri is going to be nigh impossible to dislodge with 3-range LBs and the Great Wall destroying any ability for Seven to overwhelm him (even with sheer numbers). Mist has a big army, a single front to defend, and a friendly neighbour to back him up.

[Ilios]

All those fancy screenshots and explanations are making me want to try the game...