Part 2 – CI

Release Date:

March 11, 2026

Narrated by:

Senshi

Abstract

Tensions rise to a boil across the Indian Subcontinent, as old and new enemies alike meet on the battlefield, with twists you could never see coming. But don’t take my word for it. Why don’t you read the part and find out what happens?

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G’day folks, and welcome back to Chandragupta’s Invitational! I’m Senshi, and I was personally invited by Chandragupta himself (in the guise of his mortal envoy NopeCopter) to narrate this part for you all today. You may know me from my various civ mods for this game, or from just, like, existing in the places where people watch games of Civ 5 in the year 2026. Anyway, enough faffing about, let’s get right into the action!We open with news from the war in Kathiawar, with Gujarati forces seizing the city of Varanasi. Gandhi’s forces, meanwhile, are mounting an assault on Cambay, with the city looking likely to fall. At this moment it’s looking more like they’re just swapping cities around rather than one invading the other.

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To the north, we see war break out between Punjab and the Ghaznavids. Ranjit Singh seems to have a significantly greater military presence around cities like Ghazni and Balkh, and with these present borders it’s hard for a Punjabi soldier to walk outside without besieging a Ghaznavid city. At the same time, if Singh divides his forces between these targets he’ll likely find his numerical advantage quickly fading away, so it’ll take a bit of tactical positioning to ensure any progress here.

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Delhi and the Mughals make peace, with not much in the way of progress on either side. Looking at the sparse defenses of neighbouring Gupta and Mewar, Akbar might have easier targets for his decently sized army to push against.

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Kashmir and Ladakh make peace, with the massive Ladakhi army unable to mount an offensive on the isolated, barely defensible city of Suyyapura. An excellent diplomatic play from Didda and an embarrassing first showing from Namgyal.

Incidentally fix your civ icon grrrrrrr

Coiot: 😓

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As expected, Gandhi captures Cambay, currently making this war look less like an invasion and more like a rationalisation of the borders. At this stage, Gandhi seems a lot more likely to recapture Varanasi than Begada is to recapture Cambay, though, so a slight advantage to India?

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The sharks sense blood in the water, as both the Indo-Greeks and Delhi join the war against the Ghaznavids! Both these civs are likely too far away to mount any real offensive, but Menander also seems to be using this instability in the region to just send a fuckton of settlers out while their neighbours are distracted.

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Pyu and Pegu also end up at war, but the rough terrain and reasonably-sized armies on both sides leads me to believe this is more likely to amount in a lot of units grinding against each other than any sieges or city captures. I’m more interested in the waltz between these two settlers in the south.

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Kashmir also makes peace with the Indo-Greeks, another numerically superior foe who failed to mount much of an offense against them. I wonder if soldiers just look at all those hills and mountains and go “yeah nah mate, not worth it”

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Alaungpaya declares war on Mrauk U, though his army is a whole jungle away and out of position. I think this war might be more of a symbolic protest against the Arakanese snapping up all the land along the Burmese coast while Konbaung sits around fuming.More notably, they’ve dragged Bangladesh into the war alongside them, and they may be in a position to attack the undefended city of Ramu, though walking across a marsh to get there might not be the most fun.

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On the opposite side of the map we see a war that might (emphasis on might) see some more action, as the Zunbils attack Afghanistan! The Zunbil army seems mighty, but fighting Afghanistan in particular can pose a challenge - they aren’t called the Graveyard of Empires for nothing, as their unique ability will passively damage enemy units near hills or mountains in their territory, which, if you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of.

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The words of the prophet Nestorius, which I didn’t care enough to try to research or understand, echo through the mountain valleys of Guge, as they adopt Nestorianism as their state religion. I’m not sure we’ll actually see what beliefs they ended up with in this part, so you can pretend they believe in whatever you like I suppose.

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A look at the core of the Shan States here, who has some settlers poised to take hold of the untouched fertile lands to their north. That, or, like, just hang around between Mong Yang and Hsipaw, that works too. We can also see that Konbaung has not even bothered to pretend to move their armies towards Mrauk U so far. No one’s bothered to seize that settler from the barbarians at the gates of Mong Mit either. Very laid-back area overall, I think Emerald would be proud.

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Yarlung enhances their religion, and is actively sending settlers to claim the regions the Shan have been ignoring. I just want to say I thoroughly enjoy Gangbar as a city name :)

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In the corner of the map where nothing ever happens, my beloved Pakistan mounts an offense against Harappa, presumably for the heinous crime of building a settler, which as we all know in Sindh is punishable by death. Harappa’s cities are very lightly defended and on flat accessible terrain, so we may see a pretty substantial push here if Jinnah can coordinate his forces effectively.

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Punjab has mustered its forces around Balkh and seems to be making steady progress in conquering the city. At least the Ghaznavids don’t need to worry about defending their flank against the White Huns, which they TOTALLY were worrying about before.

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The Maldives manage to snag a religion, founding Oriental Orthodoxy, which I predict will spread all across the Maldives and probably nowhere else. That’s the curse of being an isolated island civ - your islands provide a decent base to build from, but getting anywhere that ISN’T your islands is substantially more challenging.

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Balkh falls to the well-drilled Punjabi army, as the remaining Ghaznavid citizens presumably flee to the south as we can see. In the meantime the Ghaznavids have shown a heroic defense of Merv by bombarding the sole Indo-Greek warrior trying to slip through with a settler.The text at the top of the screen was very confusing to me paired with this screenshot lol, but it makes sense because…

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Golconda falls to the British Raj, who are building a pretty substantial empire in the TSL deadzone that is Gondwana and Chhatisgarh. Rudrama Devi may be able to take the city back, but terrain and archers may not be on their side. I just want to point out as well how massive the Kakatiya cities are already - Orugallu is sitting at 18 pops when there are only a few other cities on the map with double digits. Maybe the Kakatiyas’ best play is to just out-tech their enemies?

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Kandahar falls into the yellow as the Zunbils continue their assault. It’s not looking good for Afghanistan - their one glimmer of hope at the moment is that all the Zunbil melee units are far away and badly damaged, but that doesn’t seem too likely to be a deciding factor here.

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Having consolidated his grip on Balkh, and no longer being completely boxed in by the Ghaznavids, Ranjit Singh elects to make peace and rebuild. Meanwhile there’s literally an Indo-Greek settler just standing in the middle of Ghaznavid territory and they still haven’t nabbed it.

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Lothal quickly falls to Pakistan, and Mohenjo-Daro isn’t looking much more defended - even Barbarian bandits can walk through Harappan territory unmolested. This city capture, is, however, immediately overshadowed, because…

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Holy shit! While no one was looking, Gujarat was able to amass a massive army of archers and invade Mumbai! This puts them in a fairly dominant position over Gandhi in their little region, and the Indian army does not seem to be in a position to take Mumbai back any time soon.Someone please do the bit from Toy Story but like “We’re gonna miss Cambay!” “We’re not aiming for Cambay.” etc tyvm

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The Indo-Greeks and Kashmir decide to gang up on Punjab, still a bit weakened from their war with the Ghaznavids. Menander has a pretty scary-looking army, but as we’ve seen this part, he can be a bit reluctant to actually move it. Note that the settler hanging around Merv is still completely undefended and untouched, while Punjab has managed to capture another Indo-Greek settler within one turn of war.

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Shan founds Eastern Orthodoxy, which unfortunately lets us see they’ve still not expended any of the settlers they’ve built and they’ve also still not taken back their settler from a half-health Hand-Axe one tile away from their borders. Was it worth it, Sawlon?

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Bangladeshi soldiers are at the gates of Ramu, but the fact they have to wade through a massive marsh to get here is probably gonna impact their success. I’ve noticed the issue the Bengali civs are facing here - everything is a goddamn marsh. Look at the terrain around the Bengal Delta! Everything is a marsh! This is absolute torture for warfare and for city growth, so hopefully these civs can push past that if we want to see things happen in the region.

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The Maurya have their UU, the War Elephant! Replacing the Chariot Archer, the War Elephant boasts much higher stats for the era and requires no Horses, at the cost of being more expensive and having reduced movement. Notably, they don’t suffer the same “instantly lose all your movement from moving over slightly bumpy ground” drawback the Chariot Archer does, so in the forests and jungles of the region they might actually be faster than their equivalents. Of course, it’s on Ashoka to actually make use of these elephants while they’re still relephant.

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Maharashtra is kind of the Quiet Corner of the continent at the moment. There are cool and scary-looking civs here, but they’re not DOING anything. This slide is just a reminder for you that yeah, we did put civs here :)

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War breaks out along the eastern coast between the Dutch East India Company and Orissa. As Nope pointed out last part Batavia is in a slightly awkward position to defend, but VOC has a lot of archers and a road for easy access, so I think the city will be more defensible than its would-be conquerors have reckoned for.

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The Ghurids declare war on Delhi, and, unlike so many other attackers we’ve seen this part, actually have their armies somewhat ready to go! Daulatabad is immediately under fire, although I think Delhi will have a decent time defending, especially if Mu’izz ad-Din decides to keep his armies in this interesting ‘diagonal line’ formation.

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Kandahar falls in what is presumably a death blow to Afghanistan. This isn’t the first capital conquest - and we’re only at part 2 lol - but the Zunbils may be primed to deliver the first full elimination of a civ at this stage.

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Rashtrakuta founds Bogomilism instead of Jainism for some reason (did I miss another civ founding it?), another religion I’m sure someone more interested in Orthodox theology would be interested in telling you more about. I wish the order spare religions are founded in could be randomised sometimes…

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Right next door at the same time we have another medieval Christian heresy, as Hyderabad founds Catharism! I know a bit more about this one because it emerged in southern France, there was a big crusade against it, and also Catharism notably offered much more equal (not fully equal, just more equal) roles for women compared to most contemporary Christian churches. We’ll take it as a win for Hyderabad.

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Travancore and Pandya come to blows, but the Travancori(?) army is gonna have to be funneled through one or two mountain passes to get into Pandya territory, which is very much gonna halt any offensives. I reckon this will be a nothing war.

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Durrani clings on for dear life in Kabul, with Afghanistan living to see another day! But is life as a rump state truly better than death? I guess it depends on how keen a powerful neighbour is on clicking the ‘liberate city’ button.

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Mohenjo-Daro is in the yellow with no real defenders to speak of, but notably Pakistan has one melee unit and it’s hanging out alllll the way down in Karachi. I love this civ but I can easily see them fumbling a trivial city capture like this.

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Well now I look like the fool, as Konbaung has rammed an army into Mrauk U and looks primed to conquer Sittwe! At the same time, Shan has settled another city and Ramu is in the red. I guess people were capable of doing things in this region after all.

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ANOTHER Christian heresy is discovered, with Ladakh founding the famous Bohemian heresy of Hussitism in Leh. I don’t know that much about the Hussites, but based on Ladakh’s territory at the moment I assume Hussitism is focused entirely on the worship of Chariot Archers, cause honestly wtfOn an unrelated note, Kashmir settles the city of Varahamula, connecting its exclave of Suyyapura to its core. Good news for Kashmir fans, bad news for people who have a vendetta against Kashmir after it killed all their favourite civs in the chrisymas AI game

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The White Huns have seemingly formed a fuckin barbershop quartet of warrior-settler escorts, with four moving in perfect harmony. They might be keen to settle the hills and valleys their neighbours have been ignoring owing to the constant warfare.

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Sittwe falls to Konbaung, fracturing Mrauk U and isolating the city of Sandoway! Getting to the capital or coast seems quite difficult from this position, but Konbaung has imo successfully proven they’re a significant threat on the eastern side of the map.

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Mewar also has their unique unit, the Jagirdar! I went on the wiki to see what it does but Mewar still doesn’t have a wiki page so I’m gonna make you look it up as well. If only there was an easy to access website which had the information about almost every modded civ…Incidentally for a civ that has done NOTHING this part Pratihara is looking in a pretty good state. Strong core, big army, still expanding, if they actually did something they’d be legends.

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Is it possible? Could it be? A civ has founded a religion that isn’t a medieval Christian heresy??? Pegu founds Mahayana Buddhism, the largest branch of Buddhism which oddly enough is often underrepresented in civ and other historical strategy game as while most Buddhist PEOPLE are Mahayana, more Buddhist STATES are Theravada, at least in the games I’ve played.It’s probably worth mentioning that Pegu is at WAR with their only neighbour and this is somehow the most relevant thing either of them have done.

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Bhutan declares war on Bengal, who has been completely unable to rebuild after the loss of their capital, probably existing in a Dukat-esque fugue state. Kolkata looks like a pretty juicy prize if Wangchuck can grab it.

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The Ghurid invasion of Delhi fizzles out, seemingly without Delhi even having to move a bulk of their army to the south. It’s probably not a great sign for an invading army when their unit closest to the enemy is a settler, after all.

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Pyu and Pegu declare peace, and honestly saying ‘Pyu and Pegu’ was probably the most exciting part of the conflict.

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Things finally heat up a little in the south, as Mysore declares war on Vijayanagar! Both sides have a substantial military presence, with Mysore perhaps edging out on raw unit count, but Calicut looks a lot easier to take for VJ than any of their cities does for Mysore…

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The Dutch East India Company, presumably just to flex on their floundering invaders, is now sailing boats right past their window with settlers on board. This could be an astonishing ploy for the VOC, letting their neighbour slam ineffectually against their cities and drain their armies only to box them in on the other side. Astonishing as in ‘insane’ maybe more so than astonishing as in ‘effective’, but astonishing nonetheless.

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Sheikh Mujib seizes Ramu, and now both Konbaung and Bangladeshi soldiers amass at the gates of Rambray! Mrauk U is very quickly going from looking like the strongest civ in Burma to a boxed-in rump state - if you’re losing cities to THIS Bangladesh it’s looking bad.

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I was mentioning before about Pratihara doing something - this was not really the something I had in mind, as they ignore their neighbours to attack the Mughals! Usually when you forward settle someone, move an army up, and invade them, you do the declaration of war after step 2 rather than before step 1. There has been a lot of civs taunting their enemies with settlers this part, hasn’t there.

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Mountbatten nabs the Statue of Zeus, making any future sieges all the more easier for him. Note that Orugallu is now at 20 population, compared to neighbouring capital Hyderabad’s 7.

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After both their border cities take a little bit of damage and the war suddenly Becomes Real, both VOC and Orissa get cold feet and peace out. Note you can see someone in Puri bombarded the settler instead of an actual combat unit, sometimes taunting can be dangerous.

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We’ve moved from heresies into Protestants, as King Dharmapala decides he’d like to divorce his wife, and even though there’s no religion stopping him, decides to found a religion around it anyway.

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Right next door Maurya follows in Pala’s stead, forming Calvinism. One downside of Historical Religions Complete is that for whatever reason civs end up forming like every branch of Christianity before moving on to other religions, which imo is a lot lamer. This is talking shop, but I wonder if it would be feasible to cultivate specific religion lists for different ai games…

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The vultures come to peck at the carcass, as Shan and even Bengal join in against Mrauk U. Rambray looks likely to fall to either Bangladesh or Konbaung, but I don’t think even Mrauk U has much to fear from Shan and Bengal lol

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Seizing the opportunity presented by the failed Ghurid invasion of Delhi, Mewar declares on the exhausted Ghurids, joined by a civ that prefers to stay incognito! Mewar seems pretty poised to make a push here, though leaving their flank exposed could make them vulnerable to a sudden invasion from Pratihara.

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The war in Karnataka has very much ground to a halt by the looks of things, Vijayanagar got Calicut down to yellow but Mysore looks to be in a position to reinforce… but maybe not to push. I think at this point the most likely way a city will be flipped is in an embarrassing peace deal, but I may be giving the Vijayanagari army too much credit there.

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Bangladesh wins the race to Rambray! This has been a good war for them, they’ve doubled their city count and might even be able to break out of the fetid marshland that apparently makes up the entirety of Bengal in this world.

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As you can see at the top of the screen, Vijayanagar did actually manage to nab Calicut but Mysore swiftly took it back. I kinda immediately have to eat my words about no city flips, but I think the core of my prediction might still be true. Mysore does have a settler that looks like it might settle more of the coast, but, like, they didn’t need to be at war to do that.

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In a war we all totally remembered was going on, Rashtrakuta and Kakatiya peace out with nothing changing hands. Hyderabad has a mass of settlers still going off into the world, but they seem stubbornly opposed to actually connecting their territory by settling to the south. Maybe there just aren’t enough diamonds there.

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Things just got a lot more complicated in Burma, as Pyu joins Mrauk U against Konbaung! Sittwe seems like a juicy prize, but that this moment it looks as likely to end up back in Mrauk U’s hands than to end up a new Pyu city-state.

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ANOTHER Prot spotted, as the Khoshuts found Methodism in the city of Dam. Are Methodists even allowed to say ‘dam’?

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Punjab, meanwhile, gets an actually thematic religion, with the Sikh Empire naturally founding Sikhism. Having prevented themselves from getting boxed in from the Ghaznavids, they’ve ended up getting boxed in by Ladakh instead. Oops!

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Another devastating blow for Bengal, as Pala grabs Patna as well. I had sorta forgotten these two never peaced out, but it seems to have worked out well for Pala.

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In their endless quest for relevance, the Maldives build the Great Lighthouse, giving a significant boost to their ability to wage a naval war. This might actually give them an opportunity to get off their islands, if they actually remember to build a navy now.

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Dharmapala decides to let Bengal live, for now, but they still have the Bhutanese army on their doorstep to worry about. I’m surprised Dorji is yet to damage Kolkata at all, though maybe he’s been focusing on destroying the defending units first.

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I guess I was wayyyyy too NothingEverHappens with this war, as Mysore marches quite effectively on Chandragiri. Vijayanagar has tons of archers, but for whatever reason they’re all hanging around up north rather than defending their actually burning cities. I suppose I’d rather be stationed up north, to be fair.

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Having managed to entirely throw away their siege of Mohenjo-Daro, and now likely to lose their conquered city of Lothal, Pakistan now also finds themselves faced with a declaration of war from both the Indo-Greeks and Ghaznavids. The Ghaznavid army is far away, but they’re looking at only having to march through flat desert to get to the front, which weirdly enough is very desirable for them.

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A big uh-oh for Vijayanagar here as Osman Ali Khan sees their weakened state and suddenly the Hyderabadi army is also barrelling towards Vijayanagari border! Hyderabad notably has melee units much closer to Chandragiri than Mysore does, meaning they’re in a better position to actually capture or snipe the weakened city.

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Pakistan has somehow managed to lose all of their units that once surrounded Mohenjo-Daro, and lost their one pretty pathetic conquest as well. However, they’ve finally decided to actually settle cities, doubling their city count to four, which might be alright if they took Tradition and also weren’t in a domination only game.

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Noting the Bhutanese army’s entanglement in Kolkata, Yarlung and Maurya seize the opportunity to bring the fight to them! Dorji’s failure to commit many units to invading Bengal might actually work in their favour here, as Paro is actually looking pretty well-defended.

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The Konbaung hold on Sittwe is looking a little more fragile, as Pyu has had a decently easy time moving an army in there and laying siege to the city. Obviously the Pyu probably would have benefitted more from invading Mrauk U, but we’ll take what we can get for them. Also shout out to the legendary city of Mong Mao we can now see settled.

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Orissa is finding themselves decidedly boxed in along the coast, with Pala and even VOC seizing more of the Bay of Bengal than they have. Their only other neighbour is the British Raj, whose border cities seem fairly undefended but who are overall one of the scarier militaries on the subcontinent. Bad times ahead?

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Osman Ali Khan manages to seize Chandragiri, forcing the Mysorean armies out of his newly claimed territory and in doing so putting a buffer of Mysorean troops between the city and the nearest Vijayanagari unit. The war is suddenly looking a lot worse from Mysore’s perspective - they seem fairly likely to lose Calicut, their only clear target is the 20 strength capital on the other side of a river, and even if they do siege that down effectively Hyderabad might just waltz in to that one at the last minute as well. Bad day to be a Mysore fan, to which I must say lol sucks to suck.

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Reduced to a city-state, the de jure Empire of Afghanistan and de facto Emirate of Kabul has begun churning out settlers to gain back their former glory. They’ve been beaten to the punch by the White Hun barbershop quarter, who have settled most of the wide open territory the Afghans had access to but were too busy being horribly invaded to settle.

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Gushi Khan joins the anti-Bhutanese coalition, and I think Dorji must be very grateful Thimphu is on the other end of a mountain pass with one narrow corridor. I need to assume nothing will happen less, but I for one would not want to attack a city through THAT pass lol.

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Pakistan and Harappa make peace in what was objectively quite an interesting war, what with the Harappans managing to fight off a massive invasion that swamped their capital a la The Deluge, but in practice felt like two people waggling wet noodles at each other. Maybe they call this region Sindh because it’s for civs who have sinned(h) in a past life and so are sent to this purgatory to fight deathwars over 1-tile flat desert cities. I can’t help but notice a big Zunbil army marching towards Quetta as well…

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Mewar, hungry vulture that it is, notices that Harappa has about as many bullock carts as soldiers and declares war. Maybe they forgot that they were also supposed to be invading the Ghurids right now? Maybe Rana Kumbha, as the second-coolest Mewar leader, is just hungry for blood.

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In this slide’s edition of Wars You Forgot Were Happening, Pandya and Chola peace out, after a long and heroic campaign of Maravals bravely standing around Tirunelveli. Maybe Raja Raja was just being courteous and thought it was unfair that Alli Rani had to fight two nothing wars at the same time.Kandy, in the bottom right, is the first civ I’ve seen fielding swordsmen, interestingly enough. They don’t really seem to be in much of a position to DO anything with them, but I guess it says good things about their tech?

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Pyu manages to grab Sittwe from Konbaung, crushing Mrauk U’s attempts to retake the city in the process. It’s not impossible for Konbaung to recapture from here, but their units are far away and there are a LOT of Pyu units looking to flood in to their new territory. Pyu also has like 7 billion (technically four) settlers that they’ll hopefully try to actually settle with at some point.

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Aha! The Zunbils reveal their REAL target was not Quetta but actually Harappa! Unfortunately to actually get there it looks like their plan is to send their entire army through a 1-tile mountain pass, Harappa now has Composite Bows, and their entire invasion route will be blocked off if Quetta’s borders expand in the wrong direction.This invasion could go tits up real easy, but I guess what have the Zunbils got to lose? Who’s going to invade them? Pakistan? Afghanistan???

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Delhi is back with a vengeance against the Mughals, and immediately has a pretty significant army heading straight for their relatively undefended capital. It seems Pratihara’s strategy of founding a city directly in their faces and then irritating them with ranged units has actually done a lot of damage to Mughal formations, and I can see Agra falling if they don’t quickly fortify it.

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The Indo-Greek invasion of Punjab ends with a decisive Punjabi victory after the massive Indo-Greek army decides it can’t be arsed to walk all the way across a river and sues for white peace. The Punjabi army is now looking somewhat rebuilt and could possibly turn its attention to the lightly defended cities boxing it in again.

Another thing of note, the Indo-Greeks have their unique unit, the War Mahout! Replacing the Chariot Archer, the Mahout is unlocked at Mathematics (which probably explains why it’s coming out later than most of the other Chariot Archers here) but requires no Horses, gains bonus XP from being trained in conquered cities, and has a large defensive bonus against city bombards. Quite a good offensive tool which might actually be good enough for the Indo-Greeks to move a unit out of their borders mid-war for once.

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Our last in-game slide today is of one of the quieter civs (you can tell I like them cause I didn’t call them a do-nothing civ) in the game, Nepal under Tribhuvan, a leader I have been physically compared to several times. I’ve really not got much to say about them at this stage other than that they’ve got ample expansion opportunities into Tibet and seem to be actively settling the area as we speak, having three pretty new-looking cities to the north and west and two more settlers on the way. I have hopes they’ll get into combat at some point, cause it’s when their unique Great General shows up that the civ gets very weird and interesting. That’s a story for another time, though.

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And with that, folks, it is time to wrap up the part! We’ve seen some shake-ups to the global stage, some more settlement and consolidation, and a few juicy hooks to tide us over to part 3. I think it’s worth noting that much of the infamous TSL deadzone that is Chhattisgarh remains largely unsettled - with the amount of civs still churning out settlers around the map we could possibly see some ludicrous borders in this big central chunk. I don’t have much more to say, except thanks for reading through the part with me today, I hope you’ve enjoyed, I’ve been Senshi, and until next time, cheers!

I’ll leave you with the stats if you’re into that kind of thing, but regardless, stay tuned for the next part folks, have a good one.

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