Season 2 Final Bow – S2

Release Date:

July 24, 2022

Narrated by:

CBRX Community

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Places, Everyone

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1: Places, Everyone

Hello everyone! Coiot here on behalf of Blue Cassette to look back on all the memories we made across Season 2 of CBRX. It was a great ride that had several twists and the outcome seemed in doubt right until the very end. We had some hiccups in Cycle 1, but our optimizations pulled through in the end and we were able to make it till the end and release a Defeat Screen as well as having every single city flying a single banner. While community activity has greatly fallen down during the course of the season, the action in-game was truly unrivavled across all editions of the show, and we would like to have various members of the community sum up their thoughts and feeling for each of our competitiors.

CBR In-Game Screenshot of Places, Everyone

1: Places, Everyone

2: Iceland

Coiot:

In many ways, CBRX Season 2 feels like the true successor to CBR Mark 2 (reading through the season, or even this retrospective, the parallels pop out, if at times in unexpected places), and the at a glance familiar roster was definitely aided with the inclusion of Iceland. Sadly, Kristján Eldjárn is no Ingolfur Arnarson. An exciting start with land claims in the British Isles and North America got a segment of the community in glee, but the promise never materialized. Scared by the settlements of Wales, and encroached by Spain (!), Iceland only had minor victories against the Neutrals which in time would prove to be flawed ventures. Iceland would sit back in the cold domain until the true empires came knocking, and having added a familiar name to the roster is all the best that could be said of their time with us.

3: Wales

NopeCopter:

Many civilizations in the CBRX2 could be called “disappointing”. Sweden, the Manchu, Peru-Bolivia, Burkina Faso… the list goes on and on. But although the gap between their expected performance and their actual performance wasn’t the largest of any civilization this time around, Wales probably deserves the title of the most disappointing civilization in this game. Wales entered the CBRX2 as a fan favorite - after only narrowly missing out on X1, Llewelyn’s great green civilization was welcomed into the game with plenty of fanfare and high expectations for them to pull all sorts of shenanigans after a series of legendary test run performances. Hell, one time they apparently settled all of West Africa! And with a modestly strong start to the game, they appeared set to at least put on a decent showing. Unfortunately, they fell victim to the “England trap” of forward-settling the mainland instead of consolidating power on the British Isles, which let Iceland and Spain set up camp on what should have been rightful Welsh clay. They tried to fight back against Iceland and the Gauls, but they seemed incapable of actually making any progress in their wars. Without the ability to make progress against even relatively undefended enemy forward-settles, the Welsh seemed doomed to be nothing more than a mediocre and incompetent island civ.

Fortunately for Wales, their story would suddenly take a massive and exciting turn in Episode 5! Unfortunately, that turn took the form of a Gallic invasion that instantly rumped Wales and sent them straight from mediocrity to dead last in the Power Rankings. Even worse, their war against the Gauls hadn’t even ended yet, and Iceland and Spain soon joined in the effort to wipe the dragon off the map. Wales was dead - plain and simple. It was just a matter of time before someone finished them off. But… nobody did. Somehow, Wales’s inability to take cities must have infected all their would-be killers, because the Gauls, Spain, and Iceland were all unable to take their final city for three entire episodes. Their final stand on Ireland ironically earned them the ire of many as they just refused to die, not because of their own skill but because of the incompetence of their enemies. When Wales finally got the axe at the hands of the Gauls, few seemed to care, and some even cheered - a sad fate for what should have been a fan favorite of the CBRX2.

4: Sweden

Msurdej:

When the Power Rankers were doing the Episode 0 rankings, Sweden was our number #2 pick. They were almost #1, but someone ranked them 13th. I was that someone. I mentioned in their Episode 0 write up that there was a chance of a lowball AI for Karl XII, and that we’d have to wait and see if Karl would make Gustavus Adolphus proud.I wish I could tell you that Karl made Gustavus proud, and dominated Europe. I wish I could tell you that. But the cylinder ain't no fairytale world. Sweden was neither aggressive nor expansive, content to sit in Scandinavia and do nothing. Germany and Uzbekistan of all people, began slowly taking Sweden apart, with Karl unable to do anything about it but watch and play FF XIV. He went out not with a bang, but a whimper shortly before the end of Cycle 1. He will be remembered, not as he did, but what he could have been.

5: Spain

Lunar:

I remember how hyped people were to have Spain back in, taken by Portugal or the Moors in previous iterations, but with Moors defacto victory in Season One, many kept their eyes on the Iberian continent for a repeat performance.

Spain started off well enough, taking Barcelona and securing Iberia - however Gaulic's anger ensured that city after city would be flipped by the Gauls, halting their advance around Barcelona due to lack of proper siege units. Vandals declared shortly after, weakening their army enough that nearby ailing Wales would be unable to be captured by the nearby Gallic army, ensuring that Gauls had strategic dominance over the region. Weakened by frequent assaults from Vandals and Gauls, they had a moment of victory by taking most of the Western France with their superior navy only to be met with losing their capital and being rumped, losing Irish cities before before left alone to become irrelevant, being mercy killed by Gauls a few episodes later.

While you may think of Spain as a peninsula, their relatively close access to Africa and the rest of the Mediterranean meant that any major threat to their north or south could kill them, and in their unfortunate case, continued attacks from both directions thwarted them, but if Vandals weren't as competent, or Two Sicciles was competent, this likely could've been avoided. Alas, death by stagnation is the name of the game in this 61 Civ free-for-all.

6: The Gauls

shadecrimson:

Of all the civs in the cbrx2 Vercingetorix's Gauls sure were one of them. Thats selling them short, in truth i might say they were a civ of missed potential. a few european civs were in fact. Vercingetorix had some tempered expectations coming at 28th, just below Vietnam (lol). they just didn't have enough space and no one expected their neighbours to be uncompetitive enough to give them any. Germany was supposed to be powerhouse and Spain were thought to be fairly strong too with a better defensive position. Their UU swordsman and mining focused uniques were interesting enough to put them in the top half.

Gaul and Germany had some wars that largely went nowhere. Gauls fought with Two Sicilies and lost the Mediterranean port city they spent the rest of the game trying to get back. they did kill the Welsh but it took a couple tries and the help of the Spanish (who they also killed) to finally take that last city. They also had the unfortunate circumstance of having the Vandals move into Iberia who were a much worse neighbour to have than Spain. They eventually got dwarfed by Germany especially on the naval front and got locked into their rather small region.

Vercingetorix just did the bare minimum to not be a boring, irrelevant civ. having decent enough stats and finishing off a couple of bottom feeders before someone above their weight class comes crashing down on them. Not every civ is a winner but I was expecting more from Vercingetorix and the Gauls.

7: Germany

BloodyAltima:

Germany was a weird civ. We were promised mindless, violent, suicidal aggresion out of Wilhelm, and to his credit, he did fullfil that during C1. Problem was, a lot of that aggression was hyper focused at entirely the wrong neighbor. While they did get some meaningful early conquests in, rumping Sweden and the Teutons early, Germany spent most of C1 wasting its time and production through men into the absurdly rough meat grinder of Italy. Eventually, this would yield fruit, but to get there, Wilhelm had to pass up on several much better opportunities to fight his other, more accessible, neighbors while they were weak, and expend an absurd amount of manpower and production wearing down on a stone and a sea.

Going into C2, Germany had some bonuses, but not as many as some. Unfortunately, after eating the Kosovans, they just kinda stagnated, forever behind several of the other powers in Europe, but not so behind that any of them were confident just going for the throat. Despite this, they still found time to be entertaining madmen- the Citadel Bulge to Moscow was fun, as was the glorious stand of that one infantry unit, and their brief apex of power before Lenin crushed them was fairly impressive for a civ that by that point was firmly mid-tier. I suppose, then, it is fitting that Germany was never runted- the war that ended them did so in one fell sweep. They went from their peak to the grave in a single motion. Were it only so easy for the rest of us.

8: Two Sicilies

BV:

Two Sicilies wasn’t the most entertaining civ, but to their credit they weren’t really the least entertaining either. I remember Ferdinand doing some inconsequential, probably just outright irrelevant war with his father Carlos of Spain in the early game. Two Sicilies conquered Gjakovë and even briefly flipped Pristina. They settled Italy and Greece and some Mediterranean islands, and built a giant navy, even took Alesia from the Gauls, and then they just… sat there.

They could’ve become a plausible rival to the Vandals, but they didn’t. They could’ve struck at the Ptolemies, but they again didn’t. Instead they ended up in a series of wars with Germany, with mixed results. Germany took Gjakovë and Palermo and forced Two Sicilies to give over Alesia in one of those wars. Some time along the way, the Sicilians managed to take some of the few remaining Ptolemaic cities. In another German-Sicilian war, featured prominently in episode 18, which I narrated, Germany captured Teramo, and bombed 6 other Sicilian cities into the yellow, red and black, but couldn’t push due to peacekeepers, and eventually all the Sicilian cities recovered, Two Sicilies captured Teramo and Alesia, while Gjakovë and Palermo got bombed into the red despite Germany’s air superiority. The war ended there, making it a seldom remembered Sicilian victory. They also clashed with Zaire in the Middle East, co-operating with the Kurds in doing so.

However, the Two Sicilies’ middling, if secure, level of power was not to last. Several German-Sicilian wars later, Germany finally managed to bulldoze its way through Italy, just in time for total war. In the end, it wasn’t either of their Mediterranean rivals (one of whom they’ve managed to outlive) nor the Germans they’ve warred so many times that eliminated them, it was the African tech giant, Nigeria, amidst the flames of Cycle 1’s Total War.

Two Sicilies spent most of its time just living as a, perhaps even the, Mediterranean power. Although definitely not a winning nor an entertaining strategy, it was one that some might appreciate as a break from the usual chaos of the Cylinder. They disappointed our expectations by not going after other Mediterranean powers when they had the chance, but they also really overshot earlier or later expectations in some of their wars with the Gauls and Germany, even if geography and peacekeepers probably played more of a role in that than the Sicilian army. All-in-all, an not bad, but not exceptional civ in this season.

9: Kosovo

BV:

Kosovo wasn’t expected to be a very powerful civ, but it was expected to make waves with its UA, which calls any civ they’re friends with into any war, regardless of whether Kosovo sent or received the DOW. TBF, the UA did do that, but there wasn’t much in the way of relevance that most of those wars had, so the waves ended up being minimal.

Kosovo settled much of the Balkans, Anatolia and the Black Sea basin, but ended up losing Gjakovë to the Two Sicilies early on, and even briefly lost Pristina, its capital, but held onto it. The Kosovars mostly just sat there, occasionally skirmishing with their neighbours. Notably, I remember them capturing Mtskheta from Georgia. You might be surprised to hear that it was Kosovo who eliminated both of this season’s crusader civs - Jerusalem and the Teutonic Order.

Kosovo was left in relative peace for a good while, until Germany came in knocking, pushing them into Anatolia, particularly during Cycle 1’s Total War. In fact, the German-Kosovar war outlived that total war. Kosovo was definitely the defeated party there, but they weren’t giving up. One imagines Marshi i UÇK playing at Gjilani. Kosovo survived Cycle 1 by the skin of their teeth, but survive they did.

Starting Cycle 2 in Anatolia was gonna be more difficult, as with rather small bonuses, they’re gonna be boxed in, and the best they could hope for was that they might turtle their way into longevity - victory had become nigh unattainable. This is also kind of where my memories of Kosovo in this royale turn from blur to advanced blur.

But for settling Gjilani all the way in Siberia, I don’t remember much of what Kosovo was doing in Cycle 2. Their alliance with PARG protected Gjilani for a time, but that couldn’t last forever, and, sure enough, North Yuan seized the far-flug Kosovar colony. Confusingly enough, when Rugova peaced out with Mandukhai, he also gave away Prizreni, in the Caucasus, to her too, for reasons that will only ever be clear to the AI. Kosovo then sat there until they were eventually partitioned between the Vandals and the USSR, the latter of whom eliminated them.

A civ that was good for memes and for forcing other civs into war with each other, but one that didn’t live up even to the not really all that big expectations we had. Still, we’ve seen worse and we’ve seen less entertaining than Kosovo.

CBR In-Game Screenshot of Teutonic Order

10: Teutonic Order

shadecrimson:

The Teutons are a rare civ that performed precisely as expected. Terribly. Squeezed into a dogpile of expected giants in Sweden, Germany, and the Soviets, Kosovo was there too, Hermann just never stood a chance and that was noted in their Episode 0 ranking of 54 (Final rank 52). All we really wanted out of them was to last long enough to get their UU Knight so Deus Vult could intensify.

Deus did not Vult for Hermann von Salza as the expected scenario played out and The Teutons were left with no land and no possible routes of expansion. They didn't even get their UU!

11: Finland

JDT:

Finland is the CBRX equivalent to Morbius. A potent memetic agent that is so boring and mediocre everyone memed them to high heavenly status. Before the game began, while expectations were highly tempered for Mannerheim given his reputation as being worse than the Top Kek, nobody knew what was in store for them. In cycle 1, Finland settled an area roughly equivalent to irl Finland, got into early scraps with the USSR and Sweden… then proceeded to do literally nothing for the rest of the cycle. They literally never got into another voluntarily declared war after the Winter War, were not declared on by any of their neighbors and just kinda sat there and… existed. Even when total war was declared, they lost about half their territory to the USSR then proceeded to do nothing to cruise into cycle 2. When cycle 2 happened, they attempted to continue their pacifistic ways, but in spite of Sweden's disappearance providing more space, Germany and the USSR were far more powerful and bloodthirsty than the start of cycle 1, and they promptly crushed Mannerheim’s kingdom into a pulp over the course of a few wars. Nevertheless, the resilient Finns used the sacred art of Finn-Jitsu to stay silent over several millennia, getting forgotten by the rest of the world, only finally getting eliminated when the Gauls of all people took Turku before proceeding to immediately follow the sacred texts of the Finns.

Finland truly is a civilization in CBRX2. It has cities that were settled, wars that were waged, the population grew and buildings were built. My favorite moment from them was when Mannerheim looked at the Gauls and said “It's Manning’ Time” and he proceeded to mann all over them to become absolute legends.

12: USSR

Admiral Cloudberg:

The USSR was one of the major players in season 2, dominating Eastern Europe almost from the beginning. Lenin was quick out of the gate, settling a solid core of cities before marching against the Teutonic Order in episode 2, playing a central role in the dismantlement of that civ which culminated in the Soviet capture of Danzig on turn 58. From there, Lenin benefitted from weak neighbors as Great Perm and Finland failed to expand, while Georgia decided to settle on two sides of the USSR at once, fatally splitting its forces. Nevertheless, the Soviets were slow to capitalize (pun intended), earning more credit for making a perfectly straight eastern border than for doing anything of note. Lenin turned into a science turtle throughout much of the mid game, building up a large core with many cities and high stats while remaining remarkably peaceful. The USSR did not capture another city until it took Königsberg from Sweden in episode 11. Lenin slept again for almost as long after that before suddenly waking in episode 17, when he launched a massive invasion of Great Perm, capturing all but two of their cities in just a few turns. Lenin would go on to finish Perm off two episodes later. The invasion showed the USSR’s potential, but by then its lack of action had caused it to fall in the power rankings, from a height of 3rd place down to a barely respectable 13th (prior to the Perm invasion).

These limited conquests marked the full extent of Lenin’s willingness to fight. Nothing else had changed by the time total war was declared more than 1,000 turns into the game. Nevertheless, the USSR performed surprisingly well during total war, despite its relatively small army, thanks to its immense productive capabilities, which allowed it to fight off a mass paratrooper invasion by its neighbor, Uzbekistan. Total war saw the USSR gain large tracts of land in Finland and around the Caspian Sea, where at its height their empire reached as far as Iran. That put Lenin in a strong position going into cycle 2, and reminded us that he was very much still in the competition for first.

Lenin’s performance in cycle 2 was slightly more aggressive than in season 1. After again settling a strong core of cities, he went on the offensive against Finland, conquering all of Scandinavia except the enclave of Turku by the end of episode 26. Lenin ultimately chose to reduce Finland to a single tile using citadels rather than eat the elimination penalty, which eventually went to the Gauls. Instead, the USSR became bogged down in multiple grinding wars against the Provisional All-Russian Government, during which any sustained conquests were largely thwarted by the Ural Mountains. An attempt to invade Germany, perhaps in response to Wilhelm building a chain of citadels almost all the way to Moscow, resulted only in the capture of Frankfurt. However, Lenin’s biggest breakthrough of the game came in episode 32 when Lenin invaded Germany a second time. This time, the USSR’s superior technology and numbers made short work of the once-might Germany, utterly destroying Wilhelm’s empire in one shocking campaign and creating a Soviet Empire stretching from Eastern Europe through Germany and the Low Countries to Scotland, Iceland, and Greenland. Unfortunately, Lenin’s fall was as swift as his rise. Just one episode later, the USSR was reduced to a rump by an apocalyptic Marajoaran invasion, leaving Lenin to be eliminated in 5th place during total war. As for whether he deserved that placement, the debate remains to be settled.

13: Great Perm

ItsTruckMonth:

If I could summarize any civ’s game with the “A Mimir” meme, it’s gonna be Great Perm, there’s no question. They were given a fairly high rank early on for the amount of space they could take advantage of. They did that, settling a decently sized empire, got blocked in by their two Russian neighbors, and then for the longest time proceeded to do literally nothing else. Other than a brief stint or two with the Soviets and PARG, they go through multiple episodes with little mention to their name (hell some episodes they wouldn’t even be mentioned outright), mostly in regards to irrelevant peace deals.

Then they finally did something: they adopted Freedom as their ideology! It’s a rare case in a world dominated by Order and Autocracy supporters, but that’s probably because it is essentially the same thing as holding up a sign saying “Please dome me with a Barrett .50 cal.” Lenin would be happy to oblige, slowly taking cities off Perm (thanks to a poor Madagascar cosplay) and leaving them rumped, before coming back to finish the job an episode later. In the end, they did little to deserve the title “Great”, and will at the very least be in the Top 5 most forgotten civs in the CBRX2 Sporcle Quiz.

14: Jerusalem

JDT:

Just like the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in real life, most of Jerusalem’s existence in CBRX was spent getting bodied. The Levant was never the strongest starting position in a CBR, often getting squashed in by 4 greater powers with decent but not amazing land, land that often serves to become the envy of your neighbors. After an okayish start that saw them expand to an area roughly the size of the actual nation, Jerusalem lost basically all chances of any further expansion the next episode. Kurdistan, Hejaz, Kosovo and especially the Ptolemies enveloped them, preventing much further expansion. Seeing and realizing this, Baldwin decided to go full Castle Doctrine and spend the rest of his nation's existence angering his neighbors. They dropped Tripoli in the middle of Jordan and almost immediately started weathering a coalition from Hejaz and Kosovo. Science? Who needs it when you have God and the Holy Spirit on your side? Though this invasion languished, a Ptolemic invasion resulted in the fall of Jerusalem itself and Tripoli in episode 7. This new Duchy of Acre, sitting pretty between the rock of Kurdistan, the sharper rock of the Ptolemies that would become the slightly less sharp rock of the 2 Sicilies, and the sharper-but-slightly-less-sharp-than-the-Ptolomies rock of Kosovo, continued to survive, by some miracle only ordained by God, until episode 15. Even more miraculous is what I would like to christen “St. Baldwin’s Rout on the Euphrates”, where by what I can only be described as a irrational fear of God, a massive Kurdish army was routed away from the Duchy, said army trembling in fear on the other side of the Euphrates out of sheer respect for the Lord. Unfortunately, one miracle isn’t enough, and St. Baldwin would eventually find himself with the creator following a final, inevitable conquest by Kosovo.

Damn thats a surprising amount of sophisticated imagery and words used to describe a nation whose history can be divided into “Sit still and decay amongst a lack of expansion opportunities” and “Get bodied.”

15: Georgia

Lunar:

Georgia expanded rapidly... Perhaps too rapidly, settling towards Uzbek and north of the Soviet Union and Perm, however by spreading themselves so thin and not letting units ever build up, they found themselves getting rapidly pressed in. Uzbekistan, determined to take revenge for the forward settle made it their goal to press down on the Georgians, pushing them in by dwindling their Caspian navy before suddenly breaking into the continent, rapidly taking their land in a burst of glory once they teched up. A simple case of meatgrinder attrition isn't the most exciting history but it is what it is.

16: The Ptolemies

Coiot:

Cleopatra seemed to have had it easy: several impotent neighbors, a versatile starting location, a potentially busted UA, and a sizable empire. The audience might have felt for a time that the Ptolemies were going to go the distance and conquer vast swaths of the cylinder before they would be bumping up against top 5 opposition. For a time they hovered in and out of the top 10 based on rather sound speculation that their steady progress would make them a formidable regional power. Yet, a string of bad luck proved a heavy burden to overcome.

After having painted the eastern Sahara in their colors, the Ptolemies received diplomatic troubles as soon as ideologies came into play. The communist regime of Zaire decided to pick the Ptolemies as their prime target for harassement, and despite joining the autocrat bandwagon early on, got in trouble with their fello brown shirts. Having had their religion extinguished by Nigeria proved to be not enough, and several joint Zaire-Nigerian pacts against the Ptolemies routinely exhausted their resources to maintain a balanced empire in troublesome intervals. Each time Cleopatra seemed to have caught a break, a new battlefront would open up (such as even with Kosovo in Anatolia), and the opportunities started to slip from there.

Even so, the defining conflict for the Ptolemies may be their struggle against the Hejaz. The audience may not have much to remember the Hejaz, but the Ptolemies focused intensely on proving their worth against a comparable foe by focusing the bulk of their available battle strength against them. If not for a drought of melee units in the Arabian Peninsula, and a flipfest of coastal cities in the Red Sea, the eventual onslaught by the technologically superior Nigeria may have been thwarted easily (as proven by the repeated favorable peace treaties in Cleopatra’s favor in the past). The Ptolemies surely had the means to keep up and shore up a better fight, in fact even after being rumped, looked to be able to hold their own for a while.

17: The Vandals

Coiot:

It is difficult to put all of Vandals into words. The lazy, though accurate, description is that they were the Buccaneers of the season. Rambunctious, five continent spanning, overlords of all inland and ocean faring trade, the Vandals did everything the Buccs did, but better. If you look back at the maps, the Vandals never seemed to have that many tiles, but look through the screenshots, and you’ll find that they were never far from any screen. The Vandals were everywhere, literally, and even had a genuine chance of winning it all. If anything crazy was happening, the Vandals were either at the center or at least in the periphery of the action.

Starting in Northern Africa is an unenviable start—crowded, surrounded on all sides, and with horrible tiles to work with. There is a reason the Vandals were placed by nearly everyone in the bottom five going into the competition. How opposite these expectations turned out to be (with some observers rightfully wanting them to keep their final episode top 4 status). At one point, the Vandals were even the leaders in Capitals, having taken the Atlantic coasts by storm. It is true the Vandals were aided by seemingly great coincidence and opportunity (the caravan bug is still even now a mystery), but in a game which competitors build up power and throw it away all the time, it is an utter joy for a civ to take it all when able, regardless of how it came about. The Vandals by all means should not have reached the heights it did, but surpassing expectations became the expected behavior for them.

So to no surprise, being a Vandals fan this season was a continual reward (I too amongst the forever Buccs crowd that became 100% woo’d), as they would do the improbable, keep teasing us greatness, and had us on the edge. When they formed the entirety of the Roman Empire, it almost felt like they were one correct move away from victory, but alas someone else struck first. Genseric may not have won the game, but they became the fan favorites, and when long time viewers thought the Buccaneers would never have a proper heir, let alone a usurper, the Vandals were quite a treat for all to witness.

18: The Tuareg

Coiot:

Tin Hinan should have been a badass, but their own home turf was their undoing. Immediately sandwiched between stronger competition, there is seldom much to say about their time in CBRX. A slow and steady start was not the play, and Burkina Faso gained much of their only conquests against their easily plucked desert cities. The Tuareg would not quickly go out solely because their survival was staked on the city of Kidal which had a river, hills, and two mountains guarding any entryway.

To be clear, the Tuareg had no luck nor chance. Starting in one of the worst positions on the map, their inclusion this season directly lead us to remove having two civs starting North Africa. The Tuareg exemplifies why this is a needed change to maximize our limited slots. Despite that, parallels are already forming for their respective representative for next season.

19: Burkina Faso

JDT:

Burkina Faso. What a start, and what a middling nation. At the start of the game, no one really knew what to make of Thomas Sankara and his feisty little nation. He had some good runs, and some bad runs before, and had less favorable land than his immediate neighbor of Nigeria. The Sahelian plains and Saharan wastes meant that they often languished after a while, boxed between Nigeria and the Tuareg, but the battle over West Africa often still came to a stalemate. When Episode 1 came about however, he attempted to defy all expectations by settling a whopping 5 cities, boxing in Nigeria and being crowned first in the power rankings. However, the hype train came to a blazing end when they lost a war with Nigeria the very next episode, losing Banfora and Ouhagihoya, with the capital of Ougadougo under threat.

Henceforth, Burkina Faso’s fate was sealed. To their immediate south, Nigeria and Zaire continued to bulk up, becoming monstrous world powers and in Nigeria's case, a scientifically imbued supervillain. To the north, the Vandals laid waste to the Maghreb, creating an intercontinental empire and an impregnable navy. What does this leave Sankara? The Sahara and Sahel, a series of somewhat fertile floodplains and rolling hills of desert sand, distinctly less favourable terrain than the Mediterranean climates of North Africa and the jungles of the south. This doesn’t mean Sankara didn’t try, or that this is the absolute worst position for a civ to start in. But when he did, it often ended in failure. Most notably, they held a grandstanding rivalry with the Tuareg that ended up causing a hilarious meatgrinder due to the unbelievably defensible geography of the Tuaregs last city. Nevertheless, the Atlas Mountains and Gambian jungle would prove to herald an end to any ambitions for Sankara, terrain too well defended and hostile for conquest. Instead, Burkina Faso languished away in their diminishingly rewarding lands, rotting off into the Sahara, like many of those that started in the same region. And as the sands of time decayed, the doom of Burkina Faso devised itself in the form of the Vandal-Nigeria coalition. In a matter of 2 episodes, Burkina Faso was devoured completely, first losing the coastal areas to the Vandals before being exiled to Ubari by the Nigerians. There, they faffed about for several episodes, being pushed further and further into their hole, protected by the mountains that plagued them and the shifting desert sands, somehow growing the city into briefly the most populated city on earth. It became a bustling international zone, protected by a global coalition of peacekeepers, until in a tragedy that befell all of mankind, the city in the rocks was set to the blazes in episode 20.

20: Nigeria

CelestialDalek:

Nigeria lived a highly respectable life as a turtle who focused on science. He took some cities in the early game, snagging two from ex-#1 Burkina Faso, repeatedly making the lives of everyone who lives in Gideon literal hell by setting the city on fire, and then quickly becoming the world’s tech hub and spamming out wonders. Awolowo, deep down, had a special love for war, sending his navy across a continent just to take one city in a masterful ploy. The Nigerian cavalry, something else Awolowo deeply loved, helped in their first break in a long time into war against the Ptolemies. Because Nigeria was good at tech and the Ptolemies were significantly less good, the fast cavalry cut through Cleopatra’s empire like a hot knife through butter. Eventually, she was kicked off the continent after a peace deal gave away her mountainous cities. Awolowo wasted no time dismantling the rest of Burkina Faso, wanting more than two of their cities. Paratroopers ran into an empty Sahara and reduced the once-mighty empire to two cities, one of which was a one-tile island. They continued turtling until they got to the end of the tech tree, and until total war, in which they crushed straight through Zaire and the Vandals. And then came Endgame.

One of the worst problems that Nigeria had was resetting. Because they didn’t dominate the continent in the first cycle, they had far less space to settle in than most other civs and got boxed in almost immediately. Dismembering Zaire helped for sure and they seemed successful. History repeats itself, but always gets the details wrong. In this case, the wrong detail was that Nigeria found themselves throwing a bunch of units away at the Vandals’ coastal cities, which were recaptured by their naval carpet, effectively burning down most of their troops. Stalling Lesotho turned into being absolutely slammed because Nigeria’s units were all flipping cities. Luckily for Nigeria, they got their shit together… or did they? They now had the Vandals gathering forces to attack from the north and Lesotho from the south, while Marajoara was brewing a naval invasion in the west. Luckily, they managed to sue for peace while Lesotho was at its weakest and the Vandals weren’t doing anything. There was peace, for a couple turns. However, noticing the weakness of the Vandalic land forces, they declared war to capture Catina in the southwest Sahara. History repeats itself, and Nigeria found themselves throwing Awolowo’s beloved horses at coastal cities and getting wrecked. The tide turned, and now Genseric was rushing cavalry through the desert to capture Catina. With Lagos in the red, Genseric decided to spare Nigeria for the price of all of their other cities. Their rival for most of the cycle, Lesotho, killed them.

Like Sejong and literally all of the CBRX1 civs before him, Awolowo found that being a science turtle is a pretty good way to live. To thrive, you need to be smart with your units and not throw them at cities defended by naval carpets. Sadly, Nigeria did not thrive in this matter. Their best two wars before total war were the only two that had any impact on their game. They had so much potential and could have crushed so many civs at their prime, but instead used their production on wonders and buildings. Calling them a “disappointment” would be an insult to their successes. Calling them a “success” would be an insult to their sloth. They were good, maybe even great, but not great enough.

21: Zaire

CelestialDalek:

When I called a lot of civs that I wrote up earlier “civs with potential”, I was sort of exaggerating: most of them weren’t coming in with insanely high expectations. Zaire, on the other hand? Placing 3rd in the Episode 0 power rankings is nothing to laugh at. That said, also in the top 10 were the Neutrals, Manchu, and Sweden. A bit of a mixed bag overall. Zaire, however, did not disappoint.

Zaire came out of the gate rather well. They settled quite a bit, but overall they did nothing too special for the first episode of the game except tank up. Mobutu built quite a large army, and decided to actually use it after a couple episodes against Namibia. Jacob Morenga was not strong, so he was a natural target. After taking one city, Mobutu decided to for some reason retreat his troops back, but Namibia wasn’t smart enough to take it back. However, Zaire came knocking again, taking a city while Nigeria gave Gibeon a forceful heatwave (read: tried to burn it). Zaire took it for themselves after Namibia flipped it, which allowed them to launch an offensive towards the Nigerian capital and take it. Mobutu was content and peaced out, and without hesitating for more than a few turns turned his attention to the Ptolemies. There was just one minor problem with the war: Nigeria. Nigeria rushed through the Ptolemaic cities much faster than Mobutu could, and completely cut them off while they were busy grinding out the opponent’s army. In fact, Zaire handled the war so poorly that they lost a city to the Ptolemies. From there, they were encircled by a science turtle, and a pacifist Lesotho. However, they still had one way out in the Horn of Africa, and they managed to take three of Hejaz’s cities using the power of paratroopers, and also a Kurdish city? I bet you forgot about that Kurdish city, because you also forgot about Kurdistan. From their amputee centaur’s footholds on the Arabian peninsula, the paratroopers and infantry they had conveniently turned onto the Ptolemies, who were reduced to there after the Nigerian war. Mobutu was merciful/stupid, though, and spared them on one city. With a iron grip on the Arabian peninsula, they advanced once more into Kurdish territory, an advance that was halted after taking one city by peacekeepers. That’s how Kurdistan rolled. The problem was that some peacekeepers got bored, and Zairean units snaked into their cities. A peace deal that gave up the rest made Mobutu reach his apex. In total war, he flopped, but that didn’t matter, because it was endgame time.

He flopped again. He was put right between Nigeria and Lesotho, and after some buildup was sandwiched in a group war that got him down to one city after a grindy jungle war. Then, they comitted suicide in the same manner of Laos. For some reason angry at Kosovo, Mobutu declared war in a fit of rage. Remember Kosovo’s UA that was supposed to be bombastic and make allies fight each other? Nigeria was Kosovo’s friend. A single turn after he made peace, he was at war again with Nigeria, and the tiny bit of defense he held onto was gone. Zaire came in impressively, but the only places they were 3rd-place impressive was the middle east and their final war against Kosovo. They performed well, but they just weren’t the Africa-eating monsters they were made out to be.

22: Somalia

CelestialDalek:

Somalia was bigger in death than they were in life. With a desert start, they came in as sort of a disappointment and continued the same way they stayed in. They spent a lot of time engaged in mountainous meatgrinder wars against Zanzibar that decimated their army. They engaged in a war against Cleopatra with pretty much no military engagement that ended up with them giving away their second city, something so uneventful it wasn’t even given a slide. It was burned and not resettled by the Somalians. Next up, a naval brawl against Hejaz. Because neither side had many naval units, it feels unfair to call it a brawl. It seemed as though Somalia was actually winning - Hejaz resettled the burned city, troops were surrounding it, it was flipped. Importantly, Hejaz and Somalia were both notorious for having as much science as Andrew Wakefield’s anti-vaxx paper. Then they made peace while Somalia only had its capital.

As part of a pan-African coalition, Nigeria declared war on Somalia. What happened next seemed unbelievable. Nigeria had advanced ships. Somalia had abysmal science and thus low defense. They were on opposite sides of the continent. Through shots of Lesotho’s core, we could see the Nigerian navy slowly moving down, stopping for a quick drive-by on flipping Gideon. Very soon the ships were at Mogadishu’s door. There were enough land units to retake it. But, instead, the turn afterwards, they made peace. Somalia’s short life was high comedy, then tragedy, then farce.

23: Zanzibar

Coiot:

Up until Episode 18, Barghash bin Said seemed to have a very solid game plan going. Surviving early aggression against them, and able to secure a respectable beachhead in the mainland, the stable Science turtle of Africa looked like they had several expansion opportunities leading right up to their untimely war with Chola. Having built up a great tech lead against their rather inept neighbors, Zanzibar could have made large gains if Chola had just looked the other way for a moment longer (or invested more in defending against Punjab rather than trying to own the Indian Ocean). Much to Lesotho’s delight, Zanzibar bet it all on Science, and lost it all in one quick smash and grab. Chola blundering against a middlingly token force meant that the Sultan of Zanizbar was briefly in Oman now, and that joke may be Zanizbar’s lasting legacy.

24: Namibia

Lunar:

Attrition is the name of the game, and luck can only last so long as seen with Namibia. The river nation pushed back Lesotho at their weakest and held on to far flung forward settlements with surprising tenacity, however as they managed to hold off the attacks, their opponents got bigger and bigger guns. Zaire was their biggest opponent, with Lesotho providing support at key times.

Their first fight was surprisingly bad, allowing Namibia to maintain status quo minus one burnt down forward settles and plus one major Lesothan city. Their second war however was against the full continent, who took potshots at Namibia's far flung army, weakening them to allow Zaire with aid of Nigeria to push through their border cities.

The death knell was given in two parts as Zaire, having reinforced with modern tech that Namibia lacked pushed through their capital leading them to be a corner colony of Lesotho, citadelled to the point Namibian peacekeepers appeared all over Africa and the Indian ocean. The final blow was done in one turn by the much much more powerful Lesotho who mercy killed them in one fell swoop.

Honestly, I think they were boned from the get-go, given a desert filled tiny plot of land between two jungle-land neighbors with hills. They were destined to be eventually rumped, and lived far longer than they had any right to. F, but an F with pride. Good job!

25: Lesotho

CelestialDalek:

A defensive civ in Africa, which was already a sea of defensive civs, Lesotho was picked as the #2 best African civ from the get-go due to being roughly around the location that produced the Boers and Zimbabwe.

This started off not showing when they lost a city to Namibia. After some pretty futile wars, they expanded to fill the entire Southern part of the continent and continued cycle 1’s African tradition of turtling after they regained their city from Namibia. They settled Madagascar and some islands in the Indian ocean, and clogged up quite a few wars with peacekeepers in their later days. They nearly avoided losing some cities to the Vandals in a very stupid war declaration. However, their peacekeepers were very lazy. In Kurdistan, they allowed Zaire to snake through and take most cities. In India, they allowed Punjab to grab some spots right next to cities from the Chola. To apologize, they allowed Chola to take all of Zanzibar’s African holdings. To apologize for that, they declared war on Chola and shredded through the loosely-defended cities. The peacekeepers blocking Punjab died immediately, and the Lesotho navy was shredded worse than the Cholan cities, so badly they almost lost Madagascar. Overall, they took a few cities that significantly made their borders creep up Africa and lost some ocean holdings and stayed that way until total war, and took some cities off of Zaire in total war. Frankly, total war’s impact was negated by endgame, so I won’t be looking at every Lesotho slide there to analyze their gains.

Then, cycle 2 came along, and the tag team of Lesotho and Nigeria ate up Zaire quickly, and both returned to their turtling status. A war over who was doing it better ended up in, predictably, a stalemate. Then, it was time for a rematch, and Lesotho seemed to be grinding out Nigeria and held one city. Sadly for the Lesothan war machine, Malacca declared war. Madagascar was lost quickly, and most of the east coast was taking heavy damage and flipping. The flipping just kept going on and on, and somehow they managed to get peace with Malacca after heavy losses. While the Vandals were weak from their Nigerian offensive, they declared war and finished off their war against Nigeria by taking all of the cities they had once owned. Then, it was back to war with Malacca, and this time they beat Malacca’s ass (likely because their ass was preoccupied with being eliminated by Asian civs). Punjab was next, and somehow Lesotho managed to break a good ways into Asia and even a city in Europe, and then total war started while they were still fighting wars of their own. With their army mostly expended, they lost a lot of land to Marajoara from Europe, but managed to hold the line just south of the Sahara. Chukchi came in from Asia, and crushed the resistance. Marajoara managed to take out the kill.

Lesotho was one of the civs that, while boring in cycle 1, was an extremely interesting civ when it got a second chance. Any civ that can hold navally against Malacca with Jongs deserves an award. Even though they weren’t top dog the first time around, endgame proved what they could really do given the chance. Second Boers? Maybe not. But 3rd place sure lives beyond the Boer’s legacy.

26: Kurdistan

CelestialDalek:

If the Nenets were in CBRX1, they would have probably been like Kurdistan. Kurdistan appeared in slides so little that it was a spectacle when they were shown. Outteched, plagued with unhappiness for some time, they did literally nothing of note until they got into a war with Zaire. At the outset, they lost some cities, flipped one of Zaire’s once or twice, and then peacekeepers came in. Sadly, Barzini’s troops dying left gaps in the line. In came the paratroopers, down came the walls of all of their cities. Their crown jewel was being eliminated by Laos of all civs, who burned the city to the ground - after Laos had lost all their cities. This was literally the only notable thing that Kurdistan ever did. Kurdistan participated in some wars but never got far in any of them. They took 0 cities the whole game and just turtled. They didn’t even do a good job of turtling because of their tech. Wholly unmemorable in life, one of the best moments the CBR has seen in death.

I might have gotten something wrong here because I didn’t fact-check it. This is because there were no facts to check in Kurdistan’s life.

27: Hejaz

CelestialDalek:

At no point did Hejaz have good stats. Science? Abysmal. Military? Old. Wonders? Zilch. Social policies? It’s hard to read the sheet but I think they probably failed there too. It makes it all the more surprising that they did kind of well. They repelled Malaccan naval invasions, took cities off of Somalia (not much of an achievement given that they were also horrible), took a city off a Jerusalem (also not an achievement), and managed to stall off their invasion by the Ptolemies, which had a much better army. Their entire life was a miracle.

Yes, they went from almost losing their capital to Cleopatra to PUSHING HER BACK to Hermoupolis. Yes, they repelled Malaccan naval invasions. They took some cities from worse civs. But, they eventually met their demise to Cleopatra. Hejaz ultimately fell to a flood of advanced units swarming down the Arabian peninsula, rumping then to a line of cities. The Indian civs, Chola and Punjab, eventually took their northernmost cities, reducing them to the horn of Africa. Zaire and the Ptolemies just obliterated them eventually.

Hejaz did a whole lot of nothing except expanding. They managed to get most of the Arabian peninsula under their heel, getting a few cities outside, winning a few wars. But the reason that we actually remember them as opposed to civs like Kurdistan is that they did miracles. They held on for a very respectable amount of time when faced with imminent death from every turn. After being dumped, they got more troops into their homeland than they had originally. They almost took Hermoupolis twice by sniping it with their desert army. Everything Hejaz did was a miracle. Best of all, after their final city was taken, they survived another episode by flipping it. I think it’s hard to overstate just how much of a miracle Hejaz was. Godspeed, emphasis on god.

28: Uzbekistan

ItsTruckMonth:

Choke (in sports)

Definition 1: fail to perform at a crucial point of a game or contest owing to a failure of nerve. Definition 2: Uzbekistan in X2.

Uzbekistan was seen as one of the top contenders coming into this season, being ranked 8th overall in the Episode 0 PRs. They set out to prove they were worthy of such a placement immediately out the door, building a strong core in Central Asia, bullying the Kurds, and standing toe-to-toe with their Russian counterparts to the North. Eventually after a long but eventually successful war against Georgia, taking their capital and establishing a strong presence in the Caucasus, they began a campaign to annoy many a warhawk: they started peacekeeping. In a move reminiscent of a former Green power, Uzbeki peacekeepers scattered across the world, preventing the deaths of many civs that should have died a while ago such as Great Perm and Yuan, and even partaking in some, let’s just say not very peaceful actions (and by that I mean slaughtering the Swedes). What Karimov didn’t realize was that there’s this little thing called “Gold” you may have heard of it, you kinda need it to keep things running in your civ and with all those troops he had to pay, there wasn’t much dough around to run things with. As a result, Uzbekistan’s once extremely solid science output cratered, and with their neighbors quickly surpassing them in tech, Total War was going to be a dark day for Karimov.

Total War would indeed be judgment day for Uzbekistan, as both their territories were absolutely shredded by their more technologically advanced neighbors, most notably the Soviets (hell they even lost a city to MANNERHEIM). As a result, they were absolutely neutered going into Cycle 2, and were quickly imprisoned between PARG and Punjab (the PP Prison, if you would be so inclined). The former P would take the Uzbek capital 2 episodes into C2, and the latter P would eventually put Karimov out of his misery. In the end, Karimov was the CBRX2 equivalent of the “Taunt to Get Bodied” fate: taunting the world with their peacekeeping shenanigans, followed by being bodied not once, but TWICE. Easily one of the hardest chokes in CBR history imo.

29: Punjab

Random Strategy:

Punjab were one of the most competent civs of the entire cylinder, systematically making the correct moves all game with ne'er a misplay. Though I realise the AI isn't actually capable of such intelligence or forward-planning and it was all just lucky rolls, their AI did seem so much smarter than typical AIs, appearing to act with long-term plans in mind and knowing exactly what to focus on at any given point of the game. They knew when to make war to try expanding or weakening their neighbours, and they knew when to make peace to rebuild and tech up. TBH the only reason they didn't outright win the entire thing, was because their neighbours were the toughest set of neighbours of the entire cylinder. If their neighbours had been of the same calibre as, say, the american civs, they absolutely would have become the giant orange menace to carry on the Boer's legacy.

Their takedowns of 'the wall' Bhutan and their main rival Chola in cycle 1 were slow and methodical, making sure to take out the dangerous forward settles early but once dealt with, they peaced out in order to build up their strength; then while fighting Chola in the end of cycle 1, they continued taking numerous peace breaks in order to rebuild and not fall behind everyone else. Many other civs would have blundered here and either not dealt with the forward settles, ending up at a disadvantage to Chola, or stayed at war too long and allowed Uzbekistan to get too far ahead, or gone to sleep after the early game and become irrelevant, or pushed too hard into Chola and ending up with both getting taken out by Malacca, but Punjab played cycle 1 perfectly. Unfortunately, in cycle 2 they did fall victim to early-game uncounterable jongs, but even after that, they knew exactly what to do to stay in the game. They toadied up to Chukchi to dissuade Malacca and PARG from attacking and teched up really hard; I remember being amazed when in the middle of the tech battle between Nigeria and Marajoara, Punjab suddenly showed up with simultaneously the most modern navy and land forces of the entire cylinder. One play they made which could be considered a misplay but could also be considered absolutely cheesing was giving away a border city to Germany, who were too far away to do anything with the city, but then also getting open borders with Germany and stationing one of their units in the city itself. This meant the city was completely impregnable: nobody could get into the city to capture it and that meant that Punjab's western border was completely safe. Once they had no more need for an impregnable wall on their western border, Punjab simply took it back easily, as Germany was too far behind technologically to station any powerful units there. This is one of those plays that gave the impression of Punjab being excessively smart, able to plan around other AI's stupidity and exploit it for Punjab's own benefit. Again, I realise it was just lucky rolls, but still when have you ever seen an AI exploit the stupidity of other AIs in such a creative and cheesy way?

Eventually, through excellent city management and a powerful set of allies, Punjab were able to get revenge on Malacca. It seemed very personal when they purposefully sent a military operation through the Chukchi-held Malay peninsula in order to capture the capital and get the kill on the civ that had completely ruined their game. They were also powerful enough to crush PARG, who had been in a similar situation to Punjab but had played it much worse economically and were therefore weak by now. Unfortunately, at this point they were betrayed by their once-allies of Chukchi, Lesotho and the Kulin, and there was simply no way to win at that stage.

30: Bhutan

Coiot:

Our audience may not have much words for Bhutan. In fact, many might be forgiven for forgetting their involvement. Though this would be sad way to remember them.

Bhutan may have been a quiet civ, but they surpassed expectations. From the start of the game they ignited the balance of South Asia by seemingly being able to bully Punjab, only to stop before the final blow. They settled nearly the entirety of the Tibetan plateau, and had quite a large and safe domain. Though by Episode 7, Punjab exploded in size, and Bhutan woudl largely by relegated to the mountains, even though they would hold out a coastal city against Chola aggression for the longest of time.

Even so, Bhutan was a likable rump, and a dependable one, stalling Punjab’s progress by disappearing their army in the high valleys and staying remarkably in the game until Episode 18 when their walls were finally breached just before the game would go into the long lull before the cycle reset.

31: Chola

NopeCopter:

Chola just might be the greatest example of an underdog civilization in the history of the CBR. Initially ranked near the middle due to their lack of relevant uniques, Chola catapulted into the top 5 due to an early settling spree… only to be immediately invaded crippled by the cylinder’s new top dog, Punjab. Most people probably assumed that Chola’s game was over right there and then - Chola was trapped under Punjab’s shadow, and just to the east, Malacca had grown to be a frightening naval power. But while Punjab sat there and wasted their potential, Chola got to building a little empire of their own. It took them a little while to actually build a navy, but when they did… oh boy. They took a huge bite out of Hejaz, rumped the VOC when Malacca refused to, and they even bullied Laos into giving up several inland cities. Before long, they’d managed to crawl their way all the way back into the top 10, despite being trapped between two civilizations almost tailor-made to kill them.

Despite Chola’s aggression and rampant successes on the high seas, however, Punjab never really stopped being a massive threat… and when they finally invaded, most assumed that Chola was dead. After all, Chola’s only redeeming quality was their navy, and Punjab was a mostly-landlocked powerhouse with three times the military power and more Coal for state-of-the-art Ironclads than Chola could hope for. And yet… Chola held firm. Many times Punjab invaded, and every time Chola forced them into a stalemate against all odds, even tearing a hole in Zanzibar and eliminating Bhutan along the way. Raja Raja’s plucky seafaring empire made its way into Cycle 2 despite being sandwiched between Punjab and Malacca, giving them a chance to turn everything around and finally go from underdog to top dog.

Unfortunately, Punjab and Malacca made sure to never give them that chance. As soon as Cycle 2 kicked off, Punjab immediately boxed Chola in and declared a joint war with their blue buddies, and within 2 episodes of the reset, Chola was dead before they could build up enough to put up a fight. If there was any consolation for this cruel act, it was that Punjab’s partner in crime Malacca would go on to betray their former ally and steal southern India from Punjab not long after, crippling Punjab for hundreds of turns after and effectively robbing any chance they had of victory. But for the Chola, the ultimate underdog who had rivaled a vastly superior opponent for ages against all odds, this was still a horrible way to go.

32: All-Russia

Coiot:

Inept, scattered, bold claims, and literally dysfunctional, all these things describe both Alexander Kolchak, both in-game and IRL. Officially All-Russia, though most commonly denoted as PARG (Provisional All-Russian Government), was true to its IRL counterpart by essentially being doomed from the start but still filled our timeline with plenty of what-ifs and what could have beens.

All-Russia, the mod, has been re-built numerous times; the CBRX version not even the one that scrapped by to join the voting rounds at the death (and was even pulled out for a time being). It’s UU the Bronepoezd armored train which served as a landship replacement was a powerful unit but could only ever move on rail tiles, which meant when All-Russia’s vast cavalry was upgraded during their fight against Northern Yuan, most of their military was immobile. This is just one of many things about All-Russia which seemed to not really fit together.

Despite these kind of inherent faults, All-Russia’s position on the map, with worth mentioning the impenetrable Urals to the West, meant that they would grow and build up a respectable presence on the map. However, this projected image of strength never translated to any significant gains against their opponents, and they fell just shy of a breakthrough to greatness. Just like the White Russians in IRL, perhaps a few good decisions could have turned the tide, perhaps better leadership and troop concentration could have resulted in different divisions in the map today, an perhaps if Kolchak could have just struck when the iron was hot and taken all of Central Asia and Siberia in Season 2 with little difficulty. Ifs and buts, nerfs and gifts, All-Russia could have had glory or outright disaster, but instead they were simply present, teasingly so, until finally the end came quick for them.

33: Northern Yuan

Coiot:

Highly regarded as the strongest of the Siberian civ entering the competition, Northern Yuan was bestowed with the #1 rank in the Episode 0 rankings and it was sadly all downhill from there. Mandukhai may have been lucky to witness her most immediate and formidable foe the Manchu be relegated to a small empire in short time, but her own flawed decision making also doomed her own ambitions starting in the mid-game. Attacked on all fronts—by Japan, Yuan, All-Russia, and even Taiping—Northern Yuan was in perpetual peril and the poster child of incompetence amongst the middling powers. An early exit looked likely… or so it seemed.

Despite being on the brink numerous times, they continued to persist. Several prolonged skirmishes with Yuan wrecked their progress and dwindled their army; at one point Yuan’s devastating UA even activated against them and all Northern Yuan cities were in the red. A decisive and unexpected counter-attack against an opportunistic Yuan in a later conflict had their opponents nearly extinguished and exiled to Korea. Next they would lose their capital to All-Russia, but then gain several sizable holdings from Japan. Taiping could not keep the Mongols at bay and lost several border cities and eventually had 10 tile long chains of citadels encroaching on their homeland. They took revenge on All-Russia in the most brilliant of ways and clawed back nearly every lost city, and then some.

In many ways, Northern Yuan mirrored their IRL self as being a rather large but indecisive former powerhouse. A threat on the horizon, but a shadow of its former strength. Always getting into fights, never focusing on one objective, and prone to fragmenting at any time, Northern Yuan lived up to the reputation, and it was a blessing. Ignore the naysayers that highlight Northern Yuan’s deficiencies, in a game about chaos, violence, and bold leaps of faith or madness, the Khatun delivered in abundance, and entertainment from our competitors is the primary thing we want delivered. Northern Yuan may have not reached great heights, but they were never dull.

34: The Chukchi

NopeCopter:

As with all great CBR winners, the Chukchi were not expected to do well at all. With a terrible starting location cut off from most of mainland Asia by the #1-ranked Northern Yuan and the similarly high-ranking Manchu, the Chukchi were considered to be an underdog at best. But then, a miracle happened: the Chukchi took to the seas and formed a naval empire. When Japan forward-settled the mainland, the Chukchi forward-settled Japan right back, and they made the northern Pacific their domain. Their stats were high, and their takedown of the Manchu showed that they were no pushover, but what really cemented the Chukchi as a civ to watch out for was their sudden and absolutely brutal invasion of the Chinook. After that, the northern Pacific was the domain of the Chukchi, and they ruled it with an iron fist. Sure, they had their dry spells, but by the end of Cycle 1, the Chukchi had crushed Hawaii, Japan, and the Tongva, they’d put some hurt on Northern Yuan, and they’d even clashed with the great Malaccan navy at the very end (and of course they managed to snipe various cities in Total War with a bit of Paratrooper shenanigans).

In Cycle 2, tensions were high out of the gate as people wondered which civilizations would continue their dominant streaks and which ones would fail to live up to their Cycle 1 performances. The Chukchi did neither - they became even more aggressive and scarily competent than they’d ever managed in the first half of the game! After an admittedly fairly slow first few episodes, everything changed when the Chukchi turned Northern Yuan from a respectable minor power to a corpse in a single episode. From there, they never slowed down again, going on a bloody rampage throughout the world. The Chukchi were no longer just the lords of the northern Pacific, but the lords of East Asia, too. And once their overwhelming naval prowess beat the Dene coast into submission so hard that the Dene literally just gave away half of their empire in the peace deal, the Chukchi effectively became the lords of North America, too. Lawtiliwadlin slowed his conquest of the planet a little bit after this, because his land armies were fairly weak in comparison to his navy, but he needed all the navy he could muster for one key threat: Malacca, the Chukchi’s oldest rival, building up a monstrous army of their own. An entire ocean was filled to bursting with ships as the two Pacific powers engaged in the Cylinder’s most intense Cold War, though the Chukchi didn’t forget to snag a few more cities off of All-Russia and the Dene while they were at it. In the end, though, a Cold War was always going to end in favor of the Arctic civilization, and when the Chukchi and Malacca finally clashed, a slight Chukchi advantage in the initial slaughter snowballed into a complete advantage. Malacca’s fate was sealed when their many former enemies all finally ganged up on them to finish them off, leaving the Chukchi ascendant as the sole ruler of the Pacific Ocean and all of eastern Asia.

From there, the Chukchi got to cleaning up - they finally tore apart All-Russia before turning on their recent ally Punjab, leaving both with only a single city by the time they were done. They then scored a devastating peace deal against the USSR, granting the Chukchi control over lands stretching all the way to the gates of Moscow. At this point, there were only two great powers left, forced to fight for control of the entire world in one last Total War. Opposing the Chukchi was Marajoara, their polar opposite - both had come from humble beginnings and had climbed to the top against all odds, but while the Chukchi had done so through constant conquest and clever warfare, the Marajoara had reached their position by just happening to get handed an entire continent to themselves in Cycle 2, which they used to science turtle until nobody in the game could oppose them. Truly, it was to be a battle for the ages. The two powers were remarkably even for most of the ensuing war, with the Marajoara even briefly taking the lead due to their massive Production score, but the Chukchi were able to finish off the Kulin and Lesotho to score themselves critical extra cities while also building large amounts of the powerful Nexus unit. This, combined with their more centralized core and their relentless attacks, slowly let them wear down the Marajoara until the final enemy city collapsed under a storm of Nexi. At that moment, the bloodthirsty Chukchi rather fittingly became the first civilization in CBR history to control every single city on the cylinder at once, and took the crown as the CBR’s third winner.

So, the question remains: how did the Chukchi win it all, and what made them so entertaining to so many people? Most likely, it was their sheer determination and brutality. Unlike the peacekeeper-spamming Brazilians or the science-turtle Moors, the Chukchi got to the top by constantly slaughtering and conquering, never really slowing down once Cycle 2 picked up. They were in that perfect position where they were strong enough to constantly conquer without ever being utterly dominant, and they broke the trend of sleepy Siberian civs by not growing content with their gains. The Chukchi worked for their victory and gave the viewers the carnage they all desired, and they did so with their own unique blend of naval (and eventually Nexus) warfare, a funky UA, raw intimidation, and a thirst for blood that no other competitor could hope to match. Sure, they resembled the Inuit on a superficial level, but the Chukchi were their own beast, and that beastly nature won them both the game and the hearts of many viewers.

35: Manchu

NopeCopter:

Do you remember when people thought the Manchu were going to be strong? I certainly remember. With a fearsome reputation and a solid starting location, the Manchu were initially ranked 7th in the Power Rankings… only to immediately plummet to 54th when they did literally nothing but get horribly forward-settled by the Yuan and even Japan in Episode 1, alongside becoming the target of one of the cylinder’s earliest wars. Even when that war ended peacefully, the Manchu’s decision to become Korea rather than build an empire in Manchuria proper sealed their fate as a lower-tier. However, the Manchu did finally start to show a bit of that high-tier promise at this point - they took advantage of an unprepared Yuan in a second war, and they took advantage of Japan’s incompetence to settle lower Honshu when they were cut off from most of mainland Asia. The Manchu seemed to be settling into the role of a respectable and plucky minor power, which wasn’t a bad fate for a civ which failed so hard so early in such a competitive region.

But then the Chukchi arrived and changed everything. Over the span of basically a single episode, the Manchu were reduced to a single city and left to die at the hands of their old rivals the Yuan. When Episode 8 ended, the Manchu were ranked 61st, with one city in the deep red with enemy melee units right outside the city gates. When Episode 9 rolled around, the first four civs of the game finally kicked the bucket… and the Manchu were not one of them. Against all odds, they survived another episode and avoided the dreaded last-place finish. Sadly, they didn’t do much more than that - come Episode 10, Yuan finally managed to finish them off, ending the tragic tale of a civilization that should have done so much better, a Gran Colombia that never even got the chance to start climbing back up the ranks. In the end, the Manchu’s most enduring legacy was how they helped dramatically prolong the life of another civilization - their final city of Hetu Ala was also the city where the Yuan remained trapped without even a single workable land tile to their name all the way until Episode 20.

36: Japan

shadecrimson:

The tale of Japan is a tale of two civs, neither terribly good. The first is the story of the Tokyo Japanese, failing to settle their islands and being easy pickings for the Chukchi. The other is of the Osaka mainland government setting up a small but respectable base, sniping Khovd and taking Xilinhot briefly in what was both their play of the game and the start of the end. Their allies in the war they just declared on Nuan peaced out right away leaving them exposed to a monster.

Japan spent basically the whole game at the mercy of the Chukchi, and mercy is in short supply among those chaotic evil ice civs. I can't imagine the game would have gone any better for them if they actually did settle their home island.

37: Yuan

Admiral Cloudberg:

Going into season 2, no one was sure what to make of Yuan. With a decent start location but several aggressive neighbors and a largely untested AI, Yuan was difficult to rank, and the power rankers decided to start them off in 29th, almost exactly in the middle. This would prove prophetic, because (after accounting for the resurrection of the Neutrals) 29th is exactly where they ended up, although their path to that rank was highly unconventional.

Yuan started strong out of the gate, building a large army and several cities which cut off one of their key neighbors, the Manchu, from any further expansion. It was a smart move, but it was not followed with action. Kublai Khan became bogged down in repeated wars against the Manchu, allowing Taiping and Northern Yuan to settle much of the remaining nearby land. Yuan became the smallest of the three, able only to take out its anger on the much smaller Manchu, albeit almost always ineffectively. From that moment on, Kublai Khan was under constant pressure almost the entire game. In episode 8, he managed to take the Manchu capital, although far too much was spent in the process. He didn’t lose a city until episode 9, but constant wars against all of his neighbors bled his economy dry. Yuan’s science and production suffered, and they fell farther behind. In episodes 12 and 13, Yuan was brutally dissected by a Taiping and Northern Yuan, losing every city except a heavily citadelled former Manchu outpost in Korea. Believing elimination to be imminent, the power rankers dropped Yuan’s rank to 51st. And yet, somehow, Kublai clung to life. Within a short period, the death of a unit inside his city, which abutted Chukchi borders, caused the tile beneath the city to flip to the Chukchi. After that, the only way to capture the city was to have open borders with the Chukchi, but most nearby civilizations were on poor terms with Lawtiliwadlin and lacked this prerequisite. Kublai Khan managed to survive in this vestigial state until episode 20.3, despite numerous attempts to take his last remaining city. It was not until the very eve of total war that the Kulin managed to get a unit through Chukchi territory and capped Yuan in a dark alley. Kublai’s passing was so silent that the game runners didn’t notice, and no pictures of the moment were captured.

In the end, Yuan managed to survive to 28th place, but in a strange twist just one episode later, the resurrection of the Neutrals bumped them back to 29th—exactly where the power rankers predicted they would wind up. Power rankers 1, fate 0.

38: Taiping

MRN:

Hopes for Taiping going in weren’t high.Their performance in the Lefon Royale (a separate 61 civ royale) wasn’t good, and in a update post about religion changes for S2, their religion of Bài Shàngdì was mentioned among the new religions, despite already being part of the mod, revealing that they weren’t founding a religion in tests. They got a decent ranking of 37 in the Episode 0 PRs though, above Malacca and the Chukchi, but below Peru-Bolivia. But actually importantly, below Yuan and Vietnam, their neighbors

Things quickly started looking up for the underdogs though, a forward settle of Vietnam and Yuan-Manchu conflict gave them plenty of space for expansion, though they wasted some time with fruitless wars with Yuan and Laos. But Indochina ended up being the right spot to focus in for Hong, he was able to take Vietnam’s capital of Ha Noi. They even actually founded their religion this time. With this success (they got to number three in the PRs), a hypothetical Taiping fan going through a not so great mental health episode would think it was god answering their prayers for a sign of his existence.Things quickly went south, with Malacca taking their island holdings, they quickly became regarded as something akin to a punching bag, or Worf. This idea was reinforced by Malacca coming in to beat on them again, this time on the mainland, and a war with Yuan failing to take the capital thanks to their northern counterpart. They coasted for a while, doing nothing, couple wars, they got citadeled, and building a large fleet of carriers actually armed with planes. Then came total war, where they were saved by the bell, ending the first cycle with one (1) city, and at the bottom of the PRs.

Cycle 2 didn’t go well for Hong Xiuquan, he didn’t expand much, his religion didn’t find much success, and was quickly relegated to a rump in Southern China by Northern Yuan. But he wouldn’t give up that easily, he struck back at Mandukhai, joined by Chuckchi and PARG. It didn’t exactly go badly, because his downfall was completely unrelated. That was the result of a joint war from Punjab and Malacca, the latter of which knocked him out of the game for good. All in all they were a pretty fun Civ to support, a nice roller coaster, with a bit of a lame ending.

39: Vietnam

shadecrimson:

Vietnam had some pretty big shoes to fill. The MK2 Trung sisters created an empire that spanned from Arabia to the Pacific and were called the Dragon Empire or something similar by some of us. They would have done even better if it weren't for the tech bug. /salt. Ho Chi Minh initially ranked at 27th with some hype around his UA. Surely he could be a big player in the region. There's no way Vietnam was going to disappoint.

This is where I would put the pic of their greatest extent but the format doesn't allow for that

Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam might have been the worst performance we've ever had. I said the same about Somalia (reading old PRs is fun) but at least they did something memorable. Vietnam was not eliminated first or even in the first two episodes but my point still stands. Ho Chi Minh settled 3 cities, got gimped by an equally wimpy Laos, got bogged down in wars with Laos and Taiping and accomplished nothing before finally being finished by Laos.

40: Laos

Peach_T:

The year: 2356. The cylindrical planet, perhaps resembling a giant blue-green D battery hurtling through space, or more aptly a giant blue-green aluminum can (also hurtling through space), seethes with cataclysmic conflict. An army, thousands of warriors mounted atop great armored elephants, nears its objective. Their journey has been long and strange. They’ve crossed steppe, sea, mountain, through territory irrevocably altered by incomprehensibly advanced technology. Though they face hunger, homesickness, annihilation, they push on, for their cause is true. The Kurdish people hunker in ruined buildings, burned out hospitals, collapsing metro stations. Qamislo, once a shining beacon in the rugged highlands, is all but rubble. Its citizens are resigned to rule by the Zairean titan, accepting a future as pawns in Kinshasa’s struggle against the Alchemist-Emperor Awolowo. Suddenly, the incessant shelling ceases. Hollow eyes peer onto the ruined streets, Peshmerga fighters throw down their arms. However, they do not see the silently levitating Zairean hovertanks they expect. A trumpeting call sounds through the city. Strange beasts parade down the remains of Qamislo’s main thoroughfare. At their head was a resplendent figure, the King of Laos, Fa Ngum himself. This, his final conquest, required impeccable timing, a plan set in motion decades ago. Thousands of miles away, Punjabi combat droids suppress the last Laotian resistance in Sai Gon. Good. Fa Ngum receives this news in the crumbling remains of a Kurdistani palace. All according to the vision, his vision, seen in years and years of feverish nightmares. A great war, the final death of peace in the world. Watchers in the deep, silently observing over the millennia under miles of ice and water. The cylinder made anew, warriors clashing with arrows and stone spears where once war machines vaporized entire nations. Fa Ngum knew his people would be fuel for the cleansing flame that would remake the world. He had led them here to the fertile crescent, the cradle of civilization, to make way for that new world. Fire does not destroy a forest. It cleanses the old dead wood, fertilizes the soil so that new strong, healthy trees may grow. I am the arsonist, thought Fa Ngum as he stood before terrified Kurdish citizens and fanatical Laotian warriors, drenched in holy oil. “Let our immolation enrich the soil of history, so that the world to come may know peace, love, righteousness!” The King’s attendants lit the pyre atop which he stood. He smiled as fire licked his robes. Their king did not scream. Qamislo’s people did. It mattered not. The warriors carried out Fa Ngum’s last wish.

41: Malacca

Orange:

Oh my beloved Malacca. My sultanate of splendor. I’m so proud of you. So many doubted you and you blew them all away. Ranked 48th to begin, many tests showing lacking plays (though a few notable ones), there wasn’t much hope at the start. But when the real royale began, you feasted on your neighbors and truly became the greatest maritime empire. Strong plays, well timed wars, incredible tactics, you stole the number one spot for far longer than any south east Asian civ should’ve been able to achieve. And yet, despite your victory, you were snuffed out too soon. While you grew big in Cycle 2, it was seemingly not enough to stop the onslaught of the Chukchi and their technological and production advantage. 13th was too low for such a magnificent civilization. Far too low for someone who was the number one player for so long. It was a grave injustice to go that early. Didn’t even make it to the total war. We weep for the fallen empire of the sea.

Alright with that emotional stuff out of the way, fuck Malacca got screwed over. They took their shitty start, settled well, teched well, focused naval tech, wiped the floor with Taiping in a display of such awe that I was left stunned. They played the game incredibly and yet didn’t even make it to the top 10. This isn’t some Yakutia being on top at the start because they turtles for a bit then fell off. No, this was a civ that fucked. They got on top from sheer strength, power, and brilliance. They got in far too many wars to summarize here, but they fought hard and beat so many others and honestly deserve to be recognized as one of the greatest civs we have seen in the battle royale. The fact that they ended up in 13th and not higher is a disgrace and an injustice to their performance.

Cycle 2 saw them faltering, it’s hard to hold up such a performance twice in a row, but they did remarkably well. They took southern India, went into China, Fought off a surprise war from Kulin and Lesotho and even pushed them back (and then fought Kulin again on their own terms after taking some of Lesotho’s islands where they pushed back the Kulin line of new settles). Fought Lesotho again and took Madagascar. But that’s when things started to go wrong. They began to lose their tech advantage, weren’t proactive enough in attacking Kulin when they were still much stronger and able to gain land on the continent again, they failed to send enough fleets west to properly deal with Lesotho so that they could hold the coast, and they started falling behind on tech and production, by quite a bit. Cycle 2 was glorious, don’t get me wrong, but they needed to play perfectly and they didn’t do that. They let the Chukchi settle far too much of China and the Pacific islands, they didn’t settle enough of Indonesia and let Kulin settle a lot of it (and even though they took many of those settles in their wars, they didn’t go far enough, they didn’t attack Kulin enough when they had the chances), and they didn’t properly manage their fleets so that they could launch full scale attacks. These things are what broke them and put them behind. Not settling cities, letting other civs settle, not focusing enough in their wars, and missing opportunities for war. If they had settled up China and much of the Pacific islands who knows how different the end result would have been.

Malacca saw and seized greatness so much in this royale, but a few mistakes cost them the game and a chance in the top ten. But they will not be forgotten. Because they were able to accomplish what few other civs were able to accomplish, and they did it in a way that was wonderful to watch. May every mk have a competitor as fantastic as this. And may Mansur’s spirit live on in us all.

42: V.O.C.

CelestialDalek:

At the beginning of the game, there were two meme stocks. Jamaica was because people knew it would go up: after all, it was at 61st. It literally would go up if they didn’t trip over their own two feet (spoiler: they didn’t). V.O.C. was because of a large and sudden influx of Civ Hybrid Games users who flooded in to play the stock game: still a good bet because of their initial rank. And they did… surprisingly well. They settled a few cities, and started turtling. Everyone knew Malacca would be a force to be reckoned with as soon as their Jongs came out, and V.O.C. was pinned between a rock and a hard place. Turns out, that hard place was actually Chola: a civ with a rather large and advanced navy. That navy proved to be very, very bad news when Chola declared war on them. They had a couple cities on the Malay Peninsula - they’d done a decent job putting out cities - which weren’t in danger. That is, until Laos gave up two neighboring cities to Chola, and the units flooded down and took those peninsular cities. As their entire core and holdings fell, Hawaii battled for Makasser, their city on Sulawesi, but clutched peace from the jaws of victory. The battle happened again, a few episodes later. This time, Hawaii eliminated them. HAWAII. Let that sink in. An absolutely embarrassing way to be eliminated.

43: Anangu

JDT:

Ah, Anangu, where did it all go wrong. Smack dab in the middle of the outback, the Anangu were poised for a rivalry with the Kulin, a rivalry that stretched even back to Lefon Royale in 2019. If you were to ask who would win Australia at this time it would practically be a coin flip, with a very slight weight on the Kulin. At first glance, they initially looked like they would pose an actual challenge, getting on par in city count by episode 3. Though the Kulin had better terrain and started to eclipse them in city count by the next episode, hope always remained for the Anangu, due to the fact that they had a large contemporary military and the fact that the Kulin kept most of their army in the eastern shoals around their capital region. This helped convince many that a war between the two would wind up as a meatgrinder and potentially a small net gain for the Anangu.

Then in episode 4, they decided to send their army into the ocean during a Kulin invasion.

Though Tjlipi’s noble vision of teaching his army to swim was entertaining, this resulted in them losing every city aside from Amata, a tiny exclave by the coast of northwest Australia that simply couldn’t be picked off by sea. Thanks to the mercy of the Kulin and the very strategic location provided by the city, the Republic of Amata was able to survive as a rump state all the way until episode 16, 11 episodes after their formation. Along the way, they became known as possibly one of the more famous rump states, due to the fact that they simply never died despite constant threats from Malacca and the Kulin. They even somehow expanded out to 3 cities over the next 11 episodes, sitting still and happy in their native reservation, jeering away at the hilariously overpowered Malacca! Unfortunately, in episode 16, the Kulin sought to show who were really keeping them alive, sending Tjilipi and his hardened men on the cosmic sea, dreaming away forever.

44: Kulin

Romulus:

The Kulin’s story, like the story of most leaders, has been shaped by several large events both in and out of their control. Originally ranked 20th in the Episode 0 rankings, they were given the edge over the 34th ranked Anangu given their strong starting location – strong being defined as not in the brutal Central Australian desert. However, Barak tempted fate by focusing far more on developing his cities than building an army, and by the end of Episode 2 Anangu had nearly double the Kulin’s military.

What followed in the war between the two nations in Episode 4 can only be described as baffling. The Kulin took advantage of the fact that half the Anangu army watched a Michael Phelps documentary and were inspired to take up competitive swimming in the Timor Sea, and pillaged the Anangu core. The Anangu tumbled down the rankings, their chapter of relevancy closed as quickly as it opened (though they did hang around like a bad smell for many episodes), and the Kulin cemented themselves in the top half of the rankings with their very own mini-continent. While it’s hardly the first time an Australian civ spawned in the south-east has taken over the continent for themselves, it was a much faster and more decisive takeover than seen in previous CBRs.

William almost immediately had a new vendetta, with the aggressively up-and-coming Malacca. The wars against Malacca and their trademark Jongs were bloody and stopped the Kulin from making any significant progress into South-East Asia. However, William Barak knew the importance of a balanced portfolio, and also turned his sights to South America, taking pot shots at Gran Columbia and decimating the Mapuche.

In the episodes preceding Endgame, the Kulin finally managed what so few Australian civs had managed before – significant landfall on another continent. The Kulin had padded out an impressive stat sheet and used it to conquer the Chile and Argentina regions, owning the third most amount of land of any other civ on the cylinder (beaten only by the eventual first and second place civs). Given more time, Barak had a real look at unifying South America and becoming a major claimant to the throne.

Then of course, Endgame happened, and the Kulin were plonked in a much smaller Australia. Malacca’s swarm of Jongs denied Kulin the fertile islands of South-East Asia, and the Marajoara had the entire South American continent to themselves and became far too big for the Kulin to take on. William’s silver lining was that he helped the Chukchi take down Malacca (in the same way a small child holding a torch while their parents fix the car engine is ‘helping’), and even managed to make inroads against Punjab and Lethoso. In the end, those conquests were just résumé padding, and the Kulin defiantly met their end on their beloved Australian shores at the hands of the Chukchi, finishing four-. Wait, what? The Vandals got resurrected, pushing the Kulin down to 5th? First the Endgame reset, and now this - the sub can expect to hear from Barak’s lawyers.

45: Hawaii

NopeCopter:

By all accounts, Hawaii should have been the least interesting civilization in CBR history. They were the least interesting of the two(!) Pacific island civilizations in X2, without any naval bonuses whatsoever until their unique Ironclad replacement, and both Japan and the Tongva had a straight shot toward their home islands via a shallow water bridge. This led to Hawaii taking the 60th place spot in the initial power rankings, only placing above Jamaica. And to top it all off, they were immediately forward-settled by Tahiti, which caused their ranking to drop all the way to dead last by the end of Episode 1. Needless to say, Hawaii spent the next several episodes being completely irrelevant, consistently failing to capture the Tahitian forward-settle and only ever settling one more city after their initial two. It wasn’t all bad, though - Hawaii’s life was peaceful, and they slowly climbed up the ranks as their opponents slowly picked each other off.

Alas, this peaceful life was not to last forever. Eventually, the Chukchi noticed the free capital lying in the middle of the ocean and took it, reducing Hawaii to just the city of Hilo in Papua. Here, they would spend the rest of their days doing just as little as they had done on their own homeland… but wait - the VOC had also been reduced to a single city, which was mere tiles from Hilo and almost completely defenseless. Hawaii was lazy, sure, but they were no idiots - and when the opportunity to etch themselves into history presented itself, Hawaii diverted all of its efforts into taking that last VOC city. It took them a few episodes, but they eventually succeeded, and Hawaii managed to score an elimination against all odds before promptly falling back asleep until Malacca eliminated them. Sure, it wasn’t a glorious existence, but Hawaii lived a good life in a relatively peaceful land and even managed to rack up a kill count. For a Pacific civilization screwed over at every turn, that’s just about the best life one could ask for.

46: Tahiti

CelestialDalek:

From when Tahiti got in, everyone had a dream that their UA would teleport all over the world. Would this make them crash and burn? Yes. Would it be funny? Yes. Did it happen? No, the code only teleported them in a limited range. And so ended any hopes of Tahiti being actually interesting, as they were relegated to Yet Another Island Civ. Their #1 hope was to be expansive, and they sort of did that: settling New Zealand. “Sort of” doesn’t get you to endgame. However, they were damn exciting. They brawled with Hawaii multiple times in battles dubbed the “Pineapple Wars”, but nothing ever came out of that due to a multitude of reasons: primarily, neither side building enough units. They managed to spar with quite a lot of civs, but most of them weren’t close - until the Kulin decided that they wanted to take Tahiti’s New Zealand holdings. They nearly lost one of their garbage one-tile island cities, but rejoice! They actually pushed back the Kulin to their own one-tile island city of Woori Yallock! This didn’t last, and ultimately made Tahiti worse off as their navy was sunk there. Their “core” was now just two garbage one-tile island cities.

Things quickly took a turn for the worse with a coalition war against them, featuring the Mapuche, which were right next to them. As their capital was almost gone, they peaced out. Then in came Chukchi and Marajoara, the top 2 civs, whose combined efforts led to them becoming a city-state, until they took Paraguay’s one-tile island back. Finally, Malacca gave them mercy.

Tahiti’s life was like driftwood, going along with the tide: up and down, up and down. From being expansive to being reclusive and from being considered one of the civs with the most potential to one of the civs with the least potential, from their “core” being threatened to pushing Kulin, from being reduced to one city to taking one from Paraguay, to sinking. Tahiti was endlessly entertaining, and I’m sure everyone cheered them on at least once. If only they had filled their original potential.

47: The Dene

shadecrimson:

The Dene came into this BR with a stupendously bad reputation. A primarily religious civ with little expansion and war ai values. This setup spelled disaster from the get go. Yet somehow, it didn't. Thanadelthur put on the death metal mask and went on the warpath on by gimping Four Bears' Three Affiliated Tribes with an early siege of their cities before later coming back for the kill. Nobody thought they would do well and they went and smashed all expectations.

This season hosted the weakest NA seen in CBR history (imo) but that didn't exclude NA civs from big moments. Mississippi, the top dog at the time, came calling and Thanadelthur sent them packing down a couple cities (one given to Mara J for reasons). When Rio cheated their city defense, Thanadelthur called them out on their bullshit and nuked the bloody hell out of their frontier. They even ended up taking some of those cities in the onslaught, but even if they couldn't keep them, Rio sure as hell wasn't gonna keep them either. I respect that.

At the end of Cycle 1 Thanadelthur decided to do some resurrections dragging the Neutrals into Cycle 2 possibly as a snack for later and immediately putting Mississippi back down for daring to fight with their new wimpy brother. After the reset, the starting stats and location favored an early Dene advantage, which they captialized on by almost immediatly resettling all of their Cycle 1 territory and having succesfull skrimishes against both Rio and the Neutrals. While these efforts cemented them as a Top 10 contender, a failure to finish off the Nuetrals before Rio, and stumbling on taking advantage of Rio's early defensive weakness meant that Dene would focus much attention on its immediate neighbors and not the real villian coming to blow their hosue down. Indeed, Dene just never could escape being bullied by the big bad Chukchi, which had eyes over their core at a moment Dene could not properly defend against.An overly generous peace deal with CHukchi had Thanadelthur give away over half her empire for a short respite as the hungry wolf quickly came back for seconds soon after. Overall a fine effort, but going down to the champ fair and square is nothing to be a shamed about.

48: Chinook

CelestialDalek:

Chinook came in with, like a lot of civs, promise. They seemed pretty much guaranteed to get a good core because of the Pacific’s fish density. That they got. What they didn’t get was success.

Their modest fishing life started of pretty well, and they were able to take a city off Four Bears in a peace deal early on. They fought against all of their neighbors at some point - Tongva, Dene, Mississippi, and the aforementioned Three Affiliated Tribes. None of them really went well, but then again they didn’t go poorly either (apart from losing an Alaskan city to Chukchi). Comcomly was content with not taking cities and building up. He just wanted to fish, for God’s sake. However, the Chukchi had different plans. Their attempt to unify Alaska turned into the Chinook fishing boats valiantly sinking their opponent’s more advanced navy and trying to take one of Chukchi’s founded cities. This didn’t last, as Chukchi demolished the trireme replacements and began striking many cities on the Pacific coast. Lawtiliwadlin just wanted to grill, for God’s sake, and burned down these cities. When an attack diverts so many resources that Three Affiliated Tribes does significant damage to your cities, you know you’re screwed. City after city fell, the cities stopped burning, and his empire was crippled after making peace. Down another city went after a war with Mississippi. Then Tongva attacked, and after a stalemate, Comcomly lost his capital and another city. Dene took another one. From there, Tongva brutally citadelled him. His life ended after Northern Yuan peacekeepers noticed an opportunity and gave him mercy. Due to the citadels, Chinook’s two cities consisted of 5 tiles.

Chinook’s life was plagued by war and, worst of all, by terrain. They started out right next to the Rockies. South was Tongva. North was tundra. The coast was hard to navigate. Their chances relied on their navy, or winning the eventual war against Tongva. Sadly, their navy consisted of mostly trireme replacements and they were crippled by Tongva. Constant wars used up their armies, magnified by a lot of these wars being two-front. They played the lottery a lot, but never came out with a winning ticket. Such is the CBRX.

49: Tongva

Orange:

Poor Toypurina. There weren’t the most expectations for them going into the game to be honest, they seemed to at most go even with civs like Rio Grande and Chinook in tests. However, in the real game, they survived fairly long, or at least well longer than expected. They got a big break in Episode 15 where they finally took the Chinook capital after their northern neighbor had been massacred by the snow killers across the Pacific. They reached their peak with this war, but as some may say, they did too little too late. Finally controlling the west coast they so desperately needed only to be faced down by the behemoths of the Chukchi, the Dene, and Rio Grande (along with Malacca having taken some Baja California land earlier on), it was just a challenge they couldn’t take on. In episode 19 everything crumbled as they got attacked by the Chukchi, the Dene, and even Germany jumping in to nab a city. Forever more lost to the sands of time.

“Tongva failed to fight” is probably the best way to describe their time in the CBR. For instance, they never fought Hawaii nor Tahiti who had inhabited the Hawaiian islands just off the coast, not until a big coalition war happened while Malacca and the Chinook were attacking Tongva, of which Tongva lost cities to Malacca, took cities off the Chinook, and nothing happened with the western islands. Also Hawaii had been evicted by Chukchi at that point so only Tahiti remained on the islands that Tongva could take from. Tongva fought two relevant wars against their two main neighbors the Chinook and Rio Grande, the first of which were super early on, short, and nothing happened. The second with Rio Grande was later and they lost their Mexican settlement to Rio Grande. The second with the Chinook was in a joint war declaration with Malacca that lasted 75 turns and resulted in a nice expansion as the Chinook got completely fucked by the Chukchi. This was around turn 400. The first wars were before turn 50. Outside of these and the wars that would cause Tongva to quickly fall in Episode 19, they didn’t fight any relevant wars. The closest of which was some wars against the Olmecs who didn’t found any cities on the west coast of Central America. This is why they lost, they did not fight their neighbors. They stayed motionless hoping no one would notice them, which of course, they got noticed. Had they been more proactive in wars maybe they would have done better, but they didn’t, and they died as a consequence. 36th was probably too good for such a performance.

CBR In-Game Screenshot of Three Affiliated Tribes

50: Three Affiliated Tribes

Coiot:

Three Affiliated Tribes is a lesson for cautious optimism for judging long-term performances in the first few episodes. Having forwarded settled both Dene and the Missippians whilst having a strong military to back up their aggressive settling earned Four Bears and instant spot in Top 20 ranks. A fine snapshot, but then literally nothing next. No more settles against the settler happy pair they had bumped against, alongside a blunderous peace deal giving up perhaps their best city, plummeted the Three Affiliated Tribes to the bottom of the ranks and with no hope of recovery at all. Sometimes it is best to wait before going all-in on supporting a compeitior, and always with the mindset that for every early exciting winner there is going to be one or even two disappointments like the Three Affiliated Tribes which sadly have to bow out early without having done much of anything.

CBR In-Game Screenshot of The Mississippi

51: The Mississippi

BloodyAltima:

Once upon a time, the Mississippi were the pre-eminent power of North America, boxing in Rio and warring upon all comers. And then it all came crashing down. Rio teched right up as the Mississippi stagnated, and managed to push back against the Mississippi. And then, of course, Rio became completely invincible for the rest of C1, and the Dene decided to make this the game where they Do Shit. Thus, through the course of several episodes, the Mississippi were torn apart from all angles, the fighting eventually grinding to a brutal halt on a peacekeeper infested island for several episodes until finally dying at the hands of the Dene. Still, as I said then, they died better than many- Finland may have died far later, but no-one ever feared Finland. At their peak, the Mississippi were a power to be feared.

52: Rio Grande

ItsTruckMonth:

Every great story has a great villain, and as CBRX2 was a great story, it too would have a star villain: Rio Grande (or Big River). They were seen as a volatile civ going in, known for their aggressive AI and the fact that either NA would revolve around them, or they’d die with a LiveLeak watermark on their final slides. Initially, it was looking to be the latter: Mississippi split their empire, their stats were laughably bad, and expansion attempts were less than productive, constantly failing in wars with the Olmecs, Tongva and New Netherlands. Tides would eventually turn, however, with Big River sending the Olmecs to the rump zone by taking their capital, and even reuniting their empire through the recapture of Saltillo (and a little extra from Tuskalooska for his troubles). It seemed like Big River was on the cusp of an underdog story, a totally fair and deserved route to the top of North America.

Then it happened, a day that will live in CBRX2 infamy: a glitch in their UB’s code left Big River with insane city defense levels, leaving Rosillo’s cities unconquerable. They were essentially the unchallenged kings of North America for a time, and had begun further pushing into Mississippi. They had found a new rival in the Dene however, whose technological superiority stopped the River’s flood in its tracks. They would soon stagnate, and their inability to wipe the Dene before Cycle 2 would come with dire consequences.

Cycle 2 left Big River in a difficult position: they lost their funny defense bug, their starting bonuses were nerfed, the Dene had been buffed, and the Marajoara had a whole continent to themselves down south. That wouldn’t stop them from trying though, wiping the floor with the newly revived Neutrals and building a strong core. Good times wouldn’t last, however, as the Marajoara would storm through their Southern holdings and rump them after a long stalemate. While they would be slowly stripped of cities by the Kulin and Vandals, Big River would manage to survive until the dawn of Total War 2: Electric Boogaloo, where P’kuee would finally finish the job. While many people saw them as a villain, there were some who rooted for Big River from the beginning, including me. Your volatility and overall goofiness would lead to entertainment and memes that few civs this season could match. In the words of a great ending screen: See you Space Cowboy…

CBR In-Game Screenshot of New Netherland

53: New Netherland

JDT:

Across the CBR series, there have been certain nations that managed to exceed expectations, yet still somehow found their existence damp in the public consciousness. Given the grand and unique series of events that occurred across their existence, it might be a surprise to see the New Netherlands as one such civilization. At the start of the game, New Netherlands were seen as a fairly weak civilization, being squished in between the perceived much stronger Mississippi and Neutrals, with their more expansive AI’s and better starts, and getting a meager ranking of 50th. Though their initial settles didn’t inspire much confidence, they quickly turned that around to one of the most impressive starts for an Atlantic Seaboard nation in a CBR, forward settling the languishing Neutrals and creating an empire that would stretch down the entirety of the Atlantic coast. They would seize the Icelandic colonies in Newfoundland, split Jamaica with Gran Colombia, rump the Neutrals even further and become one of the most consistent powers in the new world, often standing toe to toe with the Mississippi and Rio Grande.

And then it all came crashing down.

The fall of the New Netherlands was one of the most shocking, dramatic and sudden developments in CBRX2. In a handful of episodes, a mighty empire, spanning a whole seaboard, from New Brunswick to Jamaica, was eviscerated by a single pirate empire from the other side of the world. The Vandals, seeking to pick up where Iceland failed, launched a gigantic armada to conquer the new world. They successfully consumed most of the New Dutch empire in one fell swoop, a sudden development for literally everybody, including the New Dutch and the viewers. It was a spectacular sight, to see an empire that once was fairly dominant, disappear in a handful of episodes, as the Vandals ravaged and pillaged through the New Netherlands coastline. An instant capitulation of the capital soon devolved into the New Dutch being corralled into a handful of Appalachian strongholds and the capital of Swanneadal in Havana, left at the complete mercy of the Vandals, Mississippi, Rio Grande, and eventually Marajoara. They did attempt a couple of valiant efforts, such as trying to conquer Niagara and end the Neutrals, but it was all for nought. Soon after, they were defeated once in for all by the Vandals, mere turns after the first death of the Neutrals. Though they might’ve been trampled by the annals of time, Peg-Legged Pete definitely has left a peg-legged mark on this world, and may he never be relegated to a stanza in a They Might Be Giants song.

CBR In-Game Screenshot of The Neutral Nation

54: The Neutral Nation

Dawkinzz:

In a competition such as CBRX, there are those who impress us with their strength, scientific achievement, and strategy. There are those who bore us with mediocrity or poor decision making, frustrating us eventually just by existing. Then there are those who ascend beyond petty things and demonstrate themselves with sheer gumption and likability. If the CBRX had a “Miss Congeniality”, I think it would certainly be awarded to the Neutral Nation.

The Neutral Nation was ranked high at the start of the season, only to fall into a rump state and eventual defeat at the hands of the Vandals in episode 17. But like Sitting Jesus before them, Tsouharrisen returned like a shining beacon of hope to secure their spot in cycle 2. Continuing to live against all odds - and doing nothing else besides - is the Neutral way. So although they weren’t the ones to conquer the world, they’ll continue to live on in our hearts.

This has been your daily Neutral Nation update.

55: The Olmecs

BloodyAltima:

Central America is an utterly awful start location. I genuinely think it may be worse than a Polynesian one. No amount of big-head memes could have saved the Olmecs, not when they were doomed to be trapped on both sides with no-where else to go in the middle of awful hell terrain. Their complete passivity besides that was honestly probably academic; even if they had the drive, what could they have done? To the north, they had C1 Rio Indestructible, to the south, they had the admittedly inept but still stronger Colombia. They tried the waves once, even managed to snipe a Jamaican city, but stronger naval powers would render continued efforts impossible. The most notable Olmec contribution was when the Palmares got stuck in an unliberated Olmec city for a while. That, at least, was funny.

56: Jamaica

CelestialDalek:

The first of the meme stocks, everyone was excited about Jamaica’s performance after Episode 1. Jamaica got 2 cities on the mainland, but it seemed dangerous. But… Gran Colombia completely screwed up and lost a lot of their military and settlers to Paraguay! $JAM truly was going to the moon! Spread it on your toast! Put it in your dodgers! Make a crumble! Or, sell it. They’d peaked. By the end of the second episode, one of their mainland holdings, Spanish Town, was endangered. By the end of the third, taken. End of the fourth, in a war with Olmecs. End of the fifth, city taken by Olmecs. End of seventh, their final mainland holding of Montego Bay was down. End of eighth, capital down. End of tenth, dead.

Jamaica’s rise was meteoric. Everyone cheered them on when Paraguay had seemingly neutralized Gran Colombia. The $JAM TO THE MOON fans made boatloads of money. Unfortunately for them, a meteoric rise gave way to a meteoric fall. What enabled the fall? It’s simple: Jamaica forgot to make military units. Even though Gran Colombia was spayed and neutered by losing their first settler, they bounced back and built units. Even though you probably forgot that Olmecs existed, they actually built a navy enough to take an undefended city. When Jamaica built units, which was rare, they were the wrong type. Jamaica overcorrected for the Olmec mistake by spamming (read: making a few) triremes. These were not useful defending Montego Bay. Jamaica was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong civs and building the wrong units. Though they didn’t get 61st, they deserved their initial ranking.

57: Gran Colombia

JDT:

Gran Colombia can be considered by some as the biggest disappointment in this iteration. Pre-royale, Bolivar was seeded 10th, riding high off the coattails of consistent good performances in other royales, the fairly decent spot that northern South America gave and the perceived lack of consistent challengers in South America. They promptly started off off the royale with the equivalent of walking into a door and having your foot slammed by it before tripping into said door and smashing it to pieces, falling through and riddling your body with splinters. In one of the most bizarre and iconic moments of the mark, Simon Bolivar lost a starting settler to an itinerant Paraguyan scout and got forward settled by bottom-ranked Jamaica, resulting in this once greatly anticipated nation (the only true veteran in this whole royale) getting clowned on by the community.

In spite of this early setback, they didn’t do too bad throughout most of their existence, regaining a power base by episode 7 (thanks to Peru-Bolivia’s and Jamaica’s incompetence and the mercy of Marajoara, Paraguay and Palmares) and becoming a fairly respectable mid tier power. They had a powerbase roughly equivalent to most of the other powers on Mesoamerica and had a fairly decent army that wasn’t that far behind on tech. They eventually conquered Peru-Bolivia and got their revenge on Jamaica, seizing the forward settles that plagued them in episode 1 and killing both nations. Then, they collapsed, a sudden rapid subjugation from the Marajoara that on reflection has some merit. As time passed, Bolivar unfortunately chose to ignore science, falling into bankruptcy from his conquests. Warmonger penalties also accrued, bringing the ire of his neighbors. This unfortunately meant that when the Kulin and Marajoara invaded, Gran Colombia turned into easy bait, especially for the latter, their desperate defense turning into another stepping stone in the fiery books of fate as the Marajoara armies ravaged across the land.

58: Marajoara

Coiot:

Who says religion founders cannot compete? Cornered in an unenviable location in the Amazon, Marajoara prospects did not look good as their neighbors were settling well and P'küee’s only respite was that Jamaica opened up the the Caribbean to her, and even then that avenue came under threat from the Vandals. But Marajoara had a hidden power that is worth mentioning tied to their religion; an enhancer that greatly heals their units adjacent to religious cities and provides their cities with additional ranged strength. Turtling whilst South America routinely descended into chaos, Marajoara is one of the few civs that could grasp time and again the right opportunities presented to them outside their protective shell.

Even so, their path in Cycle 1 was not easy. Each new victory seemed backdropped by an even bigger threat in the horizon. From Gran Colombia’s unexpected bounce back, the arrival of and ever present threat of the Vandals, the unpredictable Paraguay, the roadblock that was Rio, and an ascendant Kulin which would have surely overcome them had it not been for the need of the reset. Another nearby competitor always seemed stronger, but Marajoara would persist and keep defying expectations.

The opposite is true of Cycle 2, in which hidden potential was swapped for near instantaneous favorite status to win the game. Kulin having left Marajoara to their lonesome in an entire continent, and Rio having struggled against both Dene and the Neutrals, meant that it was an effortless climb to the top for P'küee. Once the Vandals hit the limit that their party boat could take them, Marajoara was the true claimer of the spoils and was able to secure Europe, the Americas, and quite nearly all of Africa. Progress only matched by the Chukchi doing the same in Asia.

Everything seemed to be going right for them before the final showdown, and we might have crowned our first female winner of the tournament as their hail mary plan of going for the jugular of Chukchi’s heartland might have crippled the Chukchi war machine as Marajora would have had an unrivaled collection of Future World wonders that would permanently shift the tides in their favor. Alas, in the decisive moment, AI will do AI things and shift their strategy altogether as Marajoara would spam out the artillery FW unit Crawlers which significantly slowed their march and the Chukchi were able to recover their loses and push back Marajoara’s progress. It could have been a very different outcome; any further delay from Chukchi’s factories and if Lesotho could have capitulated earlier and freed up an important front could have resulted in the cylinder being in a different color. In the end, second place is still a fine consolation from a competitor that never stopped pushing their limits.

CBR In-Game Screenshot of Quilombo dos Palmares

59: Quilombo dos Palmares

Lunar:

Paraguay remained the thorn in the neck for these Brazilian ex-slaves who found their every moment being declared and weakened by their neighbors to the point they got sniped by the Vandals' massive modern navy, reducing them into a rump of total irrelevance. It's sad, because frankly I was hoping for them to do more, but when Paraguay attacked again, they shattered their army in less than an episode's time. They would have been eliminated in that war had it not been for a bizarre peace deal with the Olmecs just earlier that saw them holed up in a hotel as the makeshit in-exile headquarters in a forever puppeted city in Central America. With little land to expand due to Mara's quick settling and the constant war, their fate was determined by Episode 2, not even deserving a mention for multiple episodes before their untimely death. It's a shame to see them go down, but considering they gave their capital to Vandals - their impact on the game was to enable Vandals to eventually engage in attacks in the Americas (with the Palmarian former captial unflipped after its intial Vandalii capture). A death of one is the fruit of another I suppose? F.

60: Peru-Bolivia

CelestialDalek:

Money can’t buy happiness. Peru-Bolivia learned this lesson the hard way. Their gold count went insanely high because of a variable error, getting multiple times more gold than the Vandals. They wasted all of this money almost as soon as they got it, apparently not on military units or anything that helped them in the long run. Going into Episode 2, they were one of 3 civs without a second city. They eventually decided to get one in the middle of Mapuche’s core. There were many factors that contributed to their last-place finish. This was one of the first.

It takes a special kind of stupid to declare war on a civ that has all but encircled your second city while you have no units. Peru-Bolivia had this special kind of stupid. They then lost their third city to the Mapuche too in a peace deal, while also running a meatgrinder operation against Gran Colombia with an interlude of peace. Sadly for Santa Cruz, it’s harder to grind away advanced navies than it is advanced armies. It’s often hard to say that a civ “deserves” last place in an AI game because oftentimes in the early game multiple civs form a coalition for no reason and march on another civ (see Xia last season). This didn’t happen with Peru-Bolivia. Santa Cruz’s downfall was entirely his fault from start to finish. He deserved 61st.

61: Paraguay

CelestialDalek:

Paraguay’s AI behavior has been known to be much like Solano Lopez’s real-life behavior: taking on much larger enemies than they should take on and figuring out who to denounce by spinning a roulette wheel. Surprisingly, declaring war didn’t blow up in their faces. The reckless denouncing did, though, and that hurt them the most by far.

Paraguay got off to a funny start by grabbing Gran Colombia’s starting settler. They worked primarily on expansion and carpeting, making some good exclaves in the Andes and making a rather formidable amount of units that could have taken their neighbors down a notch. Madman Lopez then took out Peru-Bolivia’s capital with a snipe for the ages and made peace, thus putting his empire almost at its biggest extent. Much later, though, Paraguay kicked out the Palmares from South America and forced them into their city-state holdout in the heart of the Olmecs in addition to snagging a random Polynesian city from Tahiti for a couple turns. Sadly, Lopez’s denouncings caught up to him. Having enraged the whole cylinder, Marajoara declared war. Against all odds, they were winning… at first. Marajoara had invested a lot into air power and ranged units, but not enough into units that actually win wars. Despite Lopez being behind, he was crushing the carpet. They’d taken three cities from South America’s top dog, but then P’küee actually got her shit together and, using the fact that Paraguayan units are actually easy to defeat when you have a large tech advantage, pushed back. So far back that Paraguay was eliminated.

What hurt Solano Lopez the most was not being Civ’s angrient AI but stagnation. Being right next to Marajoara is not an enviable place for any civ to spawn, and once they didn’t capture many cities their hope was over. Like Kosovo, Tahiti, and Yuan, other civs that came in with bombastic reputations, Solano Lopez never got to hit the gas pedal. Instead, he stalled his car in neutral and waited for a crash. Knowing how he actually was, maybe this was his grand plan all along. He was tired of losing and decided to just sit back and enjoy the view and take just a few cities along the way.

62: The Mapuche

ItsTruckMonth:

Mapuche was introduced to this game with some fairly high hopes: a good track record and starting in the birthplace of the infamous Carnival and Guay led to them being ranked fairly high initially. The early game would essentially be Lautaro swatting the flies away from his precious Patagonia, as forward settles by both Peru-Bolivia and Palmares made for some funny Patagonian shenanigans. From there they would become a decent regional power, nabbing cities from Tahiti and Palmares (again), and splitting the continent with Marajoara. For a while, they seemed like the cutoff of civs who could theoretically win the whole thing: maybe they couldn’t defeat Mara then, but if they held them off through Total War then they could come back with a favorable start, then maybe they could pull through.

Then the Aussies came. A late game declaration of war by the Kulin would see one of the most brutal wars ever seen, as they completely blitzed through the Mapuche with such speed that they would be reduced from a decent power to a resident of the sub within an episode’s time. Lautaro played well, never reaching the heights of the South American titans before him, but well enough, and for his performance he was rewarded with the greatest gift of any losing civ: a swift and immediate death.