The Siamese Empire
The Siamese Empire. Cities are growing nicely, but I do not like the lack of production at the moment. Can't beat the Ottomans by throwing rice at them.
Siam had a decent start. While there was not too much space for cities (Siam only has 4) there was good enough spots to build 4 cities with a lot of space around them. I placed all of my cities on coast. While this has its downside, by being damn dangerous, it also helps to build a large navy that I will need to win the game, or even to survive with both Ottomans and Greece on the map.
Siam is not my favorite civilization because it requires heavy use of City States to get everything out of its special ability. Generally I like more civilizations that have either special abilities that enhance their own cities, or trade or use of resources. However, I managed to get nice gold production on going, so this should make it possible to fully utilize this ability.
I ran out of places to build cities quite fast and Ottomans were too fast to block me from founding cities on their continent. The solution for this is quite straight forward, but Siam probably needs to act in next 100 turns, or otherwise it might prove quite hard to make war against civilization with double number of cities.
Other Civilizations
Ottomans - The main threat
At this point it seems that ottomans are the main threat. They have plenty of space to build cities (basically more than double of that of Siam) and their neighbor the Inkas had a bad starting place right next to them, across a small inland sea and were blocked from the eastern part of their continent by Ottomans.
Ottomans are leading the tech race at the moment, but they may have problems with happiness. Their special ability makes them even more dangerous, so I probably need to start a preemptive war against them.
Inkas - The most likely ally
Inkas had clearly worst starting place in the game. The area where they could build was roughly a half of those of the Ottomans and mostly hills and plains. It remains to be seen if player can adapt to this start, but it might be possible to get Inkas on war with Ottomans at the same time, or some time after the I have started the war.
There is however many city states around Inkas, so they might just try to grab some of those (I even encouraged her to do this, so there would be stronger ally against Ottomans) and ally the rest.
Greece - Playing its own game
Greece is on its own island, east from Siam and west from Inkan/Ottoman continent. There is a lot of smaller islands as well. As a starting place it was a little bit smaller, but maybe a little bit better also. Greece already has the largest population in the game and I know by experience that the player of Greece can really build a tall Empire.
While Greece is not immediate threat, it is threat on long term. If the player wants to, he has a good change on just sitting there and building up his Empire. Greece is also, of course probably the largest threat on Siams city state allies, since it can use its special ability to crab those allies. However, Athens seems to be on coast..
Demographics and Victory points
Greek population is significantly larger than Siams. Production is OK, but I'd like to get more especially on my second and third city. GNP is nice and that is how it should stay, to keep and get more city state allies and friends.
Land, well Ottomans are in clear lead. Soldiers, well I though I was in lead couple of turns before the end, but so it seems that Ottomans have gone past. I know they also have at least as good technology as Siam, so this could become interesting.
Victory Points
675 - Striker - Ottomans
566 - Forodus - Greece
566 - Tzaari - Siam
495 - pj - Inkas
Striker has a lead in Victory points, with most cities and also most wonders build in game so far. After that it is quite close between Greece, Siam and Inkas. Inkas have only three cities though, so that partly explains the cap in points.
