Cycle 45 Commentary
Raw Data is out
Known Merits
Above is the chart from Cycle 33 showing the total merits from 12 weeks ago.
You can see the general change in total merits from last cycle, cycle 46, and cycle 33 above it.
Although Hudson had no expansions (so obviously had 0 expansion merits) the amount of total merits has been moving away from ALD and Hudson, and in general grinding activity has been reducing.
ALD dominated the total merits, with most of the other 9 powers doing more merits in preparations than usual, and Mahon and Hudson were in a large prep war.
The raw data showed over 140000 merits each, but I believe the number was actually over 190000.
Mahon, Hudson and Aisling did a very similar number of total merits, with a large gap between them and the other 5 powers.
On the effective merits chart you can see Mahon clearly did the most, with a large amount of fortifying and a large amount of preparation.
Effective merits steadily decline from 2nd down to 10th.
Opposition and Undermining
On the total opposition chart you can see undermining was down across the board.
Winters faced the most total opposition, followed by Mahon and Hudson.
Patreus down to Antal steadily decline in total merits, with Winters and Patreus getting a large amount of merits in opposition to their expansions.
Torval also faced a large amount of total opposition to her expansions.
On the Effective chart, Hudson received a high amount of undermining, and Winters and Mahon got a medium to high amount of undermining.
Aisling got a very high amount of undermining compared to her usual amount.
Patreus down to ALD got a low to very low amount of effective opposition with a large amount against Patreus and Antal coming from their expansions.
Score
The formula I am using is still accurate for 8 of the Powers, but very inaccurate for Torval and Aisling this week.
This Week in Slavery with Archon Delaine
Torval expanded to Candecama, which is an Independent Corporate system with a population of 2.4 Billion.
Imperial Slavery is now legal there, and a very large amount of Imperial Slaves will be available for sale now.
Patreus expanded to an Imperial System, so no change there.
Antal expanded to Anouphis, which already baned slavery everywhere, except for an Anarchy system with 68000 people.
They also expanded to LP 708-253, which has around 1.8 billion people in Dictatorship's and Anarchy's, which are no longer at threat of being made into slaves or imperial slaves.
A large increase in galactic slavery last cycle.
Commentary and Speculation
Edmund Mahon 82
The Prime minister returned to the number 1 position after doing a large amount of fortification, but faced less undermining than usual, which means he has a massive 2214cc to spend on preparations.
Two bad systems were prepped from perhaps the same source that was responsible for Aislings run of bad preparations.
A large prep battle was fought with Hudson for the Contien bubble, which Mahon was able to win, with the majority of his preparations being dropped on the last day.
Several weaponised expansions were also prepped in federation space, one in the Federation Founding system of Beta Hydri.
All expansions will come under heavy opposition from the Federation Powers, and many billions of cr will need to be spend to have any chance of expanding them.
If Mahon falls into Turmoil, he should still be in 1st position at the end of the week.
Zachary Hudson 74
The President moved up to the 2nd position, mainly because Winters lost all of her expansions.
Hudson lost the large prep war for Contien, so has no expansions this week, but his players have many expansions they will want to stop, so this may be good news.
Last cycle Hudson had a large amount of undermining, presumably from both the Alliance and Empire players, and there is no reason to believe this will change this week.
If Winters wins an expansion, Hudson may drop back down to 3rd, otherwise he will still be in 2nd position at the end of the cycle
Felicia Winters 70
Winters moves down to 3rd from 1st last cycle.
2 systems were prepped, one was from a bubble Mahon just lost, the other is a weaponised expansion inside Torval/ALD space.
The second expansion will probably come under heavy attack from ALD players.
There will probably be a prep race between Winters and Mahon this week, for some of the system bubbles Mahon just lost.
If Winters wins an expansion, she could move up to 2nd, otherwise she will be in 3rd position at the end of the cycle.
Arissa Lavigny-Duval 66
ALD got out of Turmoil and moved all the way back up to 4th.
No Powers targeted ALD last week, and she received the lowest amount of undermining out of all the Powers.
This week ALD has no expansions, so her players should be able to do a higher amount of undermining, presumably against the Federation Powers, and Winters weaponised expansion at Ch'iang Fei has been listed as their primary target.
If Aisling wins her 2 expansions and gets out of turmoil, Aisling may move past ALD to 4th, but its more than likely ALD will still be in the 4th position at the end of the week.
Zemina Torval 59
Torval moved back up into the top 5, with winning 1 of her expansions.
This week her score seems higher than it should be, unlike the previous week, when it seemed too low.
She now has 1 more system than Sirius, and 1 less than Aisling, and the score for these 3 powers are still very close together each week.
With no expansions this week, and with Sirius having no expansions, Torval should still be in 5th position, but Aisling could move ahead if she gets out of Turmoil.
Li Yong-Rui 45
Sirius began prepping Contien but had many less merits in it than Mahon and Hudson, so has no expansions this week.
Chang O is being prepared again, and seems to be their favorite preparation target.
Other than some distant systems Mahon lost recently, there really aren't any profitable systems left for Sirius to expand to, which means they will need to either try to turmoil one of their neighbors (which is extremely unlikely) or slowly take unprofitable systems until they can't fortify enough to avoid turmoil themselves.
With no expansions this week, Sirius should still be under Torval, but Aisling could move back above Sirius if she leaves Turmoil.
Denton Patreus 43
Patreus moved out of the bottom 3, with Aisling falling into turmoil.
He had 2 weaponised expansions which received a large amount of opposition, but he was able to win his other expansion.
There was a large (not as large as Hudson vs Mahon) prep war with Archon Delaine, and like Sirius, there are very few systems left that his players would want to expand to.
Patreus also has a CG to construct a new Capital Ship, which may bring more underminers to his space than usual.
With no expansion this week, its likely Antal will move ahead of him, and its possible Delaine and Aisling could also move ahead, but its more than likely he won't be 10th, but 9th at the end of the week.
Aisling Duval 42
Aisling fell all the way down into the bottom 3, with most of her unprofitable systems getting undermined with piracy, in a controlled turmoil attempt.
5 systems are currently in Turmoil, and should all of these be lost Aisling will be on 55 systems, the tipping point for overheads, where every extra system they lose reduces their costs by a large amount.
This week she has 2 mediocre systems to expand to, which will hurt her starting CC balance, so not only will her players want to lose all the systems in Turmoil, they will also want Turmoil to stop these system expanding.
Aisling still has the disadvantage of not having many better systems around her than the ones she is trying to lose, so many more than these 5 will need to be lost to move her to a positive starting CC balance.
If Aisling remains in Turmoil, she may drop down to 10th, but this will be best for her in the long term, if she can lose even more low income systems.
Pranav Antal 40
The Utopians were able to win 2 expansions and is only 3% off 7th position.
Several systems that Mahon just lost were in a prep race with Archon Delaine, with San Guan developing into one of the biggest prep races the Utopians have been involved in.
Their expansion at Maia wan't really pushed, and failed, but with a large CC balance again this week, this system may again be prepared for expansion.
This week they have 2 expansions, and if they win both of these they should be above Patreus, and depending on what happens to Aisling, they may move up to 7th place at the end of the week.
As with many of the Powers, there is very little left for the Utopians to expand to, that wont worsen their position.
Archon Delaine 29
This week Archon Delaine had no expansions, but had a very busy week putting more merits into preparation than fortification.
There were large prep wars with both Antal and Patreus, and this week Delaine has 4 expansions to work on.
Antal will probably be ranked above Delaine at the end of the week, but its possible both Patreus and Aisling could be ranked under him.
Raw Data is out
Known Merits
Above is the chart from Cycle 33 showing the total merits from 12 weeks ago.
You can see the general change in total merits from last cycle, cycle 46, and cycle 33 above it.
Although Hudson had no expansions (so obviously had 0 expansion merits) the amount of total merits has been moving away from ALD and Hudson, and in general grinding activity has been reducing.
ALD dominated the total merits, with most of the other 9 powers doing more merits in preparations than usual, and Mahon and Hudson were in a large prep war.
The raw data showed over 140000 merits each, but I believe the number was actually over 190000.
Mahon, Hudson and Aisling did a very similar number of total merits, with a large gap between them and the other 5 powers.
On the effective merits chart you can see Mahon clearly did the most, with a large amount of fortifying and a large amount of preparation.
Effective merits steadily decline from 2nd down to 10th.
Opposition and Undermining
On the total opposition chart you can see undermining was down across the board.
Winters faced the most total opposition, followed by Mahon and Hudson.
Patreus down to Antal steadily decline in total merits, with Winters and Patreus getting a large amount of merits in opposition to their expansions.
Torval also faced a large amount of total opposition to her expansions.
On the Effective chart, Hudson received a high amount of undermining, and Winters and Mahon got a medium to high amount of undermining.
Aisling got a very high amount of undermining compared to her usual amount.
Patreus down to ALD got a low to very low amount of effective opposition with a large amount against Patreus and Antal coming from their expansions.
Score
The formula I am using is still accurate for 8 of the Powers, but very inaccurate for Torval and Aisling this week.
This Week in Slavery with Archon Delaine
Torval expanded to Candecama, which is an Independent Corporate system with a population of 2.4 Billion.
Imperial Slavery is now legal there, and a very large amount of Imperial Slaves will be available for sale now.
Patreus expanded to an Imperial System, so no change there.
Antal expanded to Anouphis, which already baned slavery everywhere, except for an Anarchy system with 68000 people.
They also expanded to LP 708-253, which has around 1.8 billion people in Dictatorship's and Anarchy's, which are no longer at threat of being made into slaves or imperial slaves.
A large increase in galactic slavery last cycle.
Commentary and Speculation
Edmund Mahon 82
The Prime minister returned to the number 1 position after doing a large amount of fortification, but faced less undermining than usual, which means he has a massive 2214cc to spend on preparations.
Two bad systems were prepped from perhaps the same source that was responsible for Aislings run of bad preparations.
A large prep battle was fought with Hudson for the Contien bubble, which Mahon was able to win, with the majority of his preparations being dropped on the last day.
Several weaponised expansions were also prepped in federation space, one in the Federation Founding system of Beta Hydri.
All expansions will come under heavy opposition from the Federation Powers, and many billions of cr will need to be spend to have any chance of expanding them.
If Mahon falls into Turmoil, he should still be in 1st position at the end of the week.
Zachary Hudson 74
The President moved up to the 2nd position, mainly because Winters lost all of her expansions.
Hudson lost the large prep war for Contien, so has no expansions this week, but his players have many expansions they will want to stop, so this may be good news.
Last cycle Hudson had a large amount of undermining, presumably from both the Alliance and Empire players, and there is no reason to believe this will change this week.
If Winters wins an expansion, Hudson may drop back down to 3rd, otherwise he will still be in 2nd position at the end of the cycle
Felicia Winters 70
Winters moves down to 3rd from 1st last cycle.
2 systems were prepped, one was from a bubble Mahon just lost, the other is a weaponised expansion inside Torval/ALD space.
The second expansion will probably come under heavy attack from ALD players.
There will probably be a prep race between Winters and Mahon this week, for some of the system bubbles Mahon just lost.
If Winters wins an expansion, she could move up to 2nd, otherwise she will be in 3rd position at the end of the cycle.
Arissa Lavigny-Duval 66
ALD got out of Turmoil and moved all the way back up to 4th.
No Powers targeted ALD last week, and she received the lowest amount of undermining out of all the Powers.
This week ALD has no expansions, so her players should be able to do a higher amount of undermining, presumably against the Federation Powers, and Winters weaponised expansion at Ch'iang Fei has been listed as their primary target.
If Aisling wins her 2 expansions and gets out of turmoil, Aisling may move past ALD to 4th, but its more than likely ALD will still be in the 4th position at the end of the week.
Zemina Torval 59
Torval moved back up into the top 5, with winning 1 of her expansions.
This week her score seems higher than it should be, unlike the previous week, when it seemed too low.
She now has 1 more system than Sirius, and 1 less than Aisling, and the score for these 3 powers are still very close together each week.
With no expansions this week, and with Sirius having no expansions, Torval should still be in 5th position, but Aisling could move ahead if she gets out of Turmoil.
Li Yong-Rui 45
Sirius began prepping Contien but had many less merits in it than Mahon and Hudson, so has no expansions this week.
Chang O is being prepared again, and seems to be their favorite preparation target.
Other than some distant systems Mahon lost recently, there really aren't any profitable systems left for Sirius to expand to, which means they will need to either try to turmoil one of their neighbors (which is extremely unlikely) or slowly take unprofitable systems until they can't fortify enough to avoid turmoil themselves.
With no expansions this week, Sirius should still be under Torval, but Aisling could move back above Sirius if she leaves Turmoil.
Denton Patreus 43
Patreus moved out of the bottom 3, with Aisling falling into turmoil.
He had 2 weaponised expansions which received a large amount of opposition, but he was able to win his other expansion.
There was a large (not as large as Hudson vs Mahon) prep war with Archon Delaine, and like Sirius, there are very few systems left that his players would want to expand to.
Patreus also has a CG to construct a new Capital Ship, which may bring more underminers to his space than usual.
With no expansion this week, its likely Antal will move ahead of him, and its possible Delaine and Aisling could also move ahead, but its more than likely he won't be 10th, but 9th at the end of the week.
Aisling Duval 42
Aisling fell all the way down into the bottom 3, with most of her unprofitable systems getting undermined with piracy, in a controlled turmoil attempt.
5 systems are currently in Turmoil, and should all of these be lost Aisling will be on 55 systems, the tipping point for overheads, where every extra system they lose reduces their costs by a large amount.
This week she has 2 mediocre systems to expand to, which will hurt her starting CC balance, so not only will her players want to lose all the systems in Turmoil, they will also want Turmoil to stop these system expanding.
Aisling still has the disadvantage of not having many better systems around her than the ones she is trying to lose, so many more than these 5 will need to be lost to move her to a positive starting CC balance.
If Aisling remains in Turmoil, she may drop down to 10th, but this will be best for her in the long term, if she can lose even more low income systems.
Pranav Antal 40
The Utopians were able to win 2 expansions and is only 3% off 7th position.
Several systems that Mahon just lost were in a prep race with Archon Delaine, with San Guan developing into one of the biggest prep races the Utopians have been involved in.
Their expansion at Maia wan't really pushed, and failed, but with a large CC balance again this week, this system may again be prepared for expansion.
This week they have 2 expansions, and if they win both of these they should be above Patreus, and depending on what happens to Aisling, they may move up to 7th place at the end of the week.
As with many of the Powers, there is very little left for the Utopians to expand to, that wont worsen their position.
Archon Delaine 29
This week Archon Delaine had no expansions, but had a very busy week putting more merits into preparation than fortification.
There were large prep wars with both Antal and Patreus, and this week Delaine has 4 expansions to work on.
Antal will probably be ranked above Delaine at the end of the week, but its possible both Patreus and Aisling could be ranked under him.
