For Ruku's reference, per our discussions about build strategies.
I made the following map, with each island in it's precise location. Blue space is either neighboring islands, or grid locations where an island could potential spawn in the future. I dropped the first number in the coords. Bold islands are "power mains" with feeders. Italic islands are "stand-alone" mains. Non-bold, non-italic islands are feeders.
What I do with this is have a quick way to determine where a new island (such as 14.58.9) will supply as a feeder. Also, for attacks, it allows me to quickly determine which isles are closest to the target.
Per your request for input on your island system, I am a strong advocate of "power mains". By having 4 feeders, you can produce 2 cats, 46 spears (+33 archers and 75 stoners, if you have XXL, which you do), plus 11 LWS per day (while still building 20 spears/day on the feeders - good enough if you're already around the 2k benchmark, which you are). And still build a slow fund for a coloship every couple of days. XXL will manage it all nicely, with only the cats/LWS needing to be manually queued, and 4 transports made per day to the "power main" (assuming you have 50 or so sms).
Right now, Ruku, your spear counts are solid for o14. You're at 2k across the board. Your fleets are a bit soft - you have plenty of 100-200 LWS range fleets, but lack in the "hammer fleets" of 300+ that are critical for breaking tough mains, inflicting mass cat damage, or transporting heavy loads of stoners. The "power main" approach allows you to build far more than 5 LWS per day on a main.
The current flaw I'm seeing is that while your spear counts are solid, once the fleets depart, that leaves about 1k spears per island. This would make you a soft target in an extended war when you start burning those fleets, and/or a prime target for fleetsteals. You need to increase your spear production to 46/day to accommodate for this, or utilize "power mains" so that fleets can crash on enemy shores with near-exclusively archers.
You have a great geographic footing. This is further reason to utilize feeders/mains. While your a bit scattered around o14, you are indeed confined to o14.
Identify your clusters, and arrange them in your "list" page so that they appear together - check out my island listing for an example. This will allow you to quickly make the appropriate transports (roughly 4k gold and 4k lumber per day from each of the 3-4 feeders to the mains).
My current strategy allows for roughly 175 LWS, 12 cats, 1 colo, 2100 spears, 350 archers, and 600 stonethrowers per day to be produced - and they are concentrated to roughly a dozen "power mains". Since you have 2/3 my island count, there's no reason you couldn't have 2/3 this production.
If you have isolated mains, or lack feeder availability (such as my northwest region, or southeast region), they can be "stand alone", but 30 spears and 5 LWS per day is not sufficient defensively. That's really only 5 spears for defense when you consider those 5 LWS are going to send 25 spears off to their death. You can XXL 46 spears and 4 LWS a day otherwise - that leaves 26 spears per day for defense, and sends 20 off to their death. Ideally, every main should have 24/7 troop production. Gold is not the most valuable resource in this game - time is. Every day that you only build 30 spears is 16 spearfighters you'll never get back. My "power mains" range between 4k-7k spears - moderate for the old oceans, but amongst the most formidable in our waters. "CONSTANT SPEARFIGHTER PRODUCTION" needs to become your mantra.
My strategy is inherently more defensive - granted. But I have found that in warfare, if you cannot hold your islands, the ability to conquer new islands becomes moot. My feeders have 2k spears each, with only a small compliment of LWS for fleetsaving and thus punishing an attacker - only Aspen and Robkohr were naive enough to attempt to crack them, and it did not work out well for them. And that's after seeing heavy combat against Empire, MX, Phoenix, and Iliad - I never saw incoming attacks from H|F or E|S. I cannot count the number of times I have been spied and correspondingly bypassed for attacks, due to the "heavy punch" that "power mains" provide, while maintaining ocean-relatively superb defense.
The strategy also relies on feeders being "disposable". 2k spears on them in o14 is a solid deterrent force - but the critical lynchpin is the "power mains" have the stoners to reinforce them, and the LWS to move those reinforcements. The geography allows this to be done on short order - less than 1 hour. In a war, this strategy allows 2k stoners to come from the single corresponding "power main", rather than having to scrape together 2k spears from a half-dozen islands. It may seem like a only a minute of clicking saved, but when Aspen/Rob had 41/42 of my isles lit up in red for a 24-hour span, that time was critical. There's a "fatigue factor" in warfare that can take a toll.
Your cat production is admirable - few players with 50 islands churn out 20 per day. And it may be good for a short-term injection of cats. But for the long-term, it's crippling your defensive production
I reviewed dozens of accounts during my time with DIGG, and have seen many that are in far worse shape than yours. A minor degree of refirement, and yours could rank among the top-notch warfighting machines.
Of course, this is just my $0.02, at your request. I'd have shot this to you in a PM, but I figured a few others might have differing perspectives they'd like to share. I am by no means an expert, and use but one of many strategies.
Michigan as a state might produce some good teams, but Michigites as a people are lousy players themselves 
Michigan as a state might produce some good teams, but Michigites as a people are lousy players themselves 
