Power Rankings: Episode 45 – S1

Release Date:

May 11, 2020

Narrated by:

PowerRankers

Viewing: Vertical

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Vikings

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1: Vikings

Vihreaa

Ah, the Vikings, our newest rump state. I must admit, I found myself forgetting multiple times that the Vikings had land holdings in Greenland, but it appears that they will continue to live on after they lose all of their holdings in Europe, remaining as a small greenland country. In another timeline, this may have been a eulogy, or even a testament to their strength and success, but here we are. Though Ragnar may be bottom of the scoreboard, he will at least be able to watch the royale continue from a city he can call his own.

2: Yup’ik

Random StrategyThe Yup'ik gain 1 rank as the Vikings plummet below them. The most interesting thing that happened this part was that one of their spies stole a renaissance-era tech on turn 265, but I don't know which tech it was. The options are Astronomy, Acoustics and Banking since those are the only renaissance-era techs they have the prerequisites for.

3: Haida

LacsiraxAriscal

Haida begin and end another war with their fellow rumplings the Yup’ik. In one CBRX test, the Haida took out the Yup’ik in 40 turns, one of the most incredible starts I’ve ever seen in an AI game. They had two whole chances to replicate that in the real thing, but both times Koyah turned up mildly inebriated and completely incompetent. As a Haida fan since day one… Riel, please, spike Koyah’s salmon and put them out of their misery.

4: Nepal

LonelyRS

Quick question: what’s the best way to summarize the state of Nepal since Endgame began? If you said “dissolving in slow motion,” then congratulations, you’re (probably) correct. Nepal’s been doing better here than they had in the final days of the main game, but the difference is hardly noticeable when the situation’s essentially the same in both games. Without the Himalayas to hide behind, Nepal would be long since dead, repurposed into a lovely carpet fit for use at the coronation ceremony of India’s new ruler. Even with the mountains there essentially cutting off the nation from the rest of the world, Taungoo’s still been slowly wearing down Kathmandu. Despite all the praise given to them for how they’ve been handling things, Nepal’s situation is the same as it ever was. The instant an enemy with planes turns against them, they can kiss their hopes of making it to the world war goodbye. Endgame may have been a mercy for Nepal, but it’s nothing more than a small one. All Nepal’s been granted, after all, is a stay of execution.

5: Prussia

Rosé

You are one of the remaining citizens of Königsberg, and all you see from day to day is warfare. Your once proud city with a population in the millions has been reduced to a couple hundred of scattered people. Eventually, a group of soldiers in black come charging into the city centre claiming victory over the invaders, and for some reason or another, you think it’s safe to head outside, to see your once great city burnt to cinders all around you, almost like a ghost town of sorts. You say “excuse me, sir, are we finally free from the Vikings’ rule?” To which what seems to be the leader of the group says “Yes, but you’re not exactly going to be under PRUSSIAN rule anytime soon.”

6: Nubia

Knot

Ok, Nubia. Time to die. We’ve indulged your existence as a civ just slightly above a rump long enough. The ship has long since sailed on you being able to affect the game, came back into port for endgame, then left again leaving you in the dust. You had your chance to do something relevant, and what few cities you have left would be much better used by civs that stand any chance against the blue horde in the east. Good Game Nubia. Get on the sub.

7: Madagascar

Knot

There’s some discussion on whether Madagascar or Nubia is more screwed. Normally being an island civ would keep Madagascar safe from the civs on the continent for quite a while, except Zimbabwe has one of the most effective navies on the cylinder, so much so it took cities from Australia. Yeah, if Zimbabwe even looks at Madagascar, they are toast. Luckily, thanks to the actual war that Zimbabwe is having with Nubia, The power rankers have spoken and decided that Madagascar is in a slightly better position. Their reward is an existence of fear hoping that Zimbabwe never looks their way. Good job guys!

8: Manx

Altima

I’ve never been a Manx supporter, but this has been a hard part to watch- after valiantly fighting the current, history seems poised to repeat itself upon the Manx, as they have both successfully bunted a power out of Scotland only to be runt’d by a stronger, oranger-er power out of nowhere. They haven’t even taken the northern Moorish cities, the one front they should have had the edge. I doubt we’re in F territory, but we’re definitely saying goodbye to Manx relevance as a European power.

9: Canton

Knot

Good news for Canton! Their mortal enemy, and presumed cause of death, the Qin, have been kicked off the continent! The bad news is that their new neighbors are the Kazakhs who are about ten times scarier. Canton better start being friends with the Kazakhs quickly, but if they continue to stay out of trouble, they might outlive their former “Rival.”

10: Goths

Msurdej

Alaric was something of a mixed result this part. On one hand, they gave away Gothiscandza to Benin, in a move that would make even Maria from Mk 2 go ‘WTF?”. But on the other hand, they managed to grab Koingsberg, the former Prussian capital. With their only current war being against the Vikings, it’s a possibility that Alaric can take Hebedy off the floundering Ragnar. But even then, The Goths have little to no chance of dealing with the constantly expanding Kazakhs, who could steamroll through the Goths in a matter of turns.

11: Parthia

Knot

Parthia? Who? Oh, you mean the land Mithridates is holding onto for the Kazakhs until they want it later. Yeah, if super powers like the Qin are evaporating, why would Parthia have any chance? Parthia continues to climb solely because most of the civs below them are either actively dying, or incredibly likely to die in like two turns. One quick DOW, and I’ll be writing the eulogy for them next part.

12: Qin

Knot

Oh Qin. What happened to you? You were a major threat not two parts ago. You had excellent stats, you were taking advantage of weak neighbors. You had the entirety of India and North Siberia to expand into. The future looked so bright, but instead your future turned out so blue. Literally, as the Kazakhs painted all your mainland cities teal. Now you sit on the island of Japan, hoping and praying that Ablai Khan doesn’t build a navy to finish them off. Where did it go wrong? By all accounts, you did exactly what a top tier civ is supposed to do, the Kazakhs just happened to do it better. Maybe there was nothing you could do. Perhaps the Khan was destined to win in the end. Regardless, you might be able to rebuild, but your days as a major power are over. All you can do now is bide your time until the Kazakhs come to finish you off. Maybe you can at least put up a fight.

13: Maratha

Rosé

Martha is the name of Batman's deceased mom and Superman's living mom and plays an inportant and equally stupid role in Batman Vs Superman. However, just like Batman Vs Superman, Maratha the civ has performed mediocrely and has contributed nothing exciting or interesting to endgame, with the exception of a couple of spicy memes about them. The thing is Maratha COULD hypothetically have gone on a little last stand awhile ago, slowly taking chunks off of Palmyra and Parthia(see shikoku for reference), but they instead chose to fail an invasion into India and Nepal repeatedly, and had Zimbabwe of all civs cut out a decent chunk of India. Now, Maratha has been reduced to essentially a fence, blocking of expanisons civs who are actively taking names like Zimbabwe and Taungoo. Ironically enough the fence is not even small enough to make fun of, or close to the Kazakhs to say they are doomed, theyre just there, doing nothing as the world around them is set them is on fire, knowing that they could have been something great, just like Batman V Superman

14: Sami

Random Strategy

Oh no. The Sami are the next target of the big blue rectangle. They have already lost Romsa while Snaase and Leavdnja are now flipping. And Sami military has dropped below 10k, in particular it is now lower than Parthia's, the Goths' and Canton's military. After seeing what Kazakhstan did to the Qin, a civ that used to have more than twice Sami's military and production, Eadni should be absolutely terrified. They basically need a very fast peace deal if they don't want to lose everything. The fact that the Vikings are about to be exiled to Greenland is not a consolation prize. And nor is the 1 Shetland isle they got from the Manx because the Manx are about to be swallowed up and replaced by the vastly more powerful Moors. Even if the Sami somehow survive the Kazakhs, they'll be squeezed between two more powerful empires with only a few Prussian and Goth cities to expand to which won't be enough.

15: Shikoku

Rosé

I know that the trend of comparing CBRX civs to Mk 2 is long gone, however I believe that in the game's current climate that certain comparisons are definitely valid. Shikoku for example, are resemblant of Kimberly within Mk 2, a civ who is actually decent on its own, but entirely overshadowed by the two monstrosities surrounding them. Can Shikoku win the game from here? Most likely no, but they could still pull off some neat little feats of their own. There are two relatively underpowered civ to their south, so they could continue their streak of dominance that they pulled off at the start of endgame before the Kazakhs and Qin ripped apart their empire. The war on Metis might complicate things, sure, but we are just getting into the age where cross-continental naval wars are feasible, so hopefully they peace out sooner than later.

16: Benin

LonelyRS

On paper, Benin would seem to be one of the better also-rans in the tourney, with military, effective science, and production numbers solidly within the second tier of powers. In practice, however, Benin lives a rather unenviable life: they’re the meat in the Moorish/Zimbabwean sandwich that at this point encompasses damn near all of Africa, and they’re in the Sahara to boot. They’re doing rather great so far, of course, but it’s more a matter of when they’ll get annexed into some larger empire in a curb-stomp battle rather than if. Still, though, they do seem to be well-suited to delay the fall of the executioner’s axe; If nothing else, the taking of Gothiscandza in a peace deal proved that they’re at least mildly adept at diplomacy. It’s hard to see Benin growing much larger than they already are, however. Between the size of their larger neighbors and the awfulness of their smaller ones, the winning move here may be not to play.

17: Australia

Random StrategyGuess what time it is? No, it's not Tonga time, Tonga has just been captured by Venezuela. It's coalition time! Venezuela, Uruguay, Zimbabwe and Taungoo are all joining in to prevent Australia from getting that coveted 2nd place by doing nothing. And this is a pretty serious problem because Australia's navy is not up to task of defending them. Australia favoured going economics at the cost of all the good naval techs - a mistake when you're on an island. To Australia's credit, they did upgrade their navy from the medieval era to the renaissance this part but the problem is that Uruguay upgraded from renaissance to the enlightenment era at the same time, while Zimbabwe has had an enlightenment era the whole time, so they are still at a tech disadvantage. Taungoo is equal to Australia in terms of naval tech but have just gained the numbers and production advantage (mostly due to Australia losing lots of cities). Venezuela’s navy was the weakest of the 4 but it has now left the war; I guess that's still a good thing because it's one less thing to worry about. Still, they have Zimbabwe establishing a foothold and landing ground troops in Western Australia, Taungoo grabbing Indonesia and Uruguay flipping New Zealand and the East Coast of Australia with just a small handful of ships. The Australian navy has been beaten down and is now about the same size as the Goths’ army. It just can't fight large armadas of frigates. This isn't the first time that Australia has managed to claw its way out of a massive coalition against them and it can yet repeat its performance. But one thing for sure is that being coalitioned and having enemy forces land on your shores is not a situation you want to be in.

18: Palmyra

LonelyRS

Oh, how lovely it is, to rise three spots without having to do anything. Zenobia may be running back her old pre-E strategy of taking no prisoners early then resting on her laurels for all eternity thereafter, yes, and her civ may be arguably the highest-ranked civ on this list whose chances of victory are almost completely shot, and she may have chosen the worst goddamn tech path imaginable, but hey, at least she isn’t Australia! Doing just about nothing and hoping that the weakness of your neighbors will keep you from feeling the consequences may be an abjectly horrible way to go about doing things, yes, but Zenobia’s neighbors are somehow horrible enough to justify her status as a major power despite her simply horrific choices as of late. Unlike pretty much every other civ which does this terribly, Palmyra still has a viable road to victory, with a few lucky aggression rolls and rebalancing of their tech tree all it would take to launch them firmly back in the limelight. But to be able to pull that sort of thing off would be an impressive feat for an AI-led nation which seems quite content to sit around and watch as Zimbabwe and Kazakhstan slowly circle it like sharks around a bloodied surfer. Palmyra can achieve victory from here, yes. Stranger things have happened, after all, and their crop of neighbors still somehow leaves even more to be desired than they do. But if you were to count Zenobia out now, nobody would raise much of a fuss.

19: Taungoo

Knot

And Australia and Taungoo continue to play musical chairs with each other, as Taungoo comes back out ahead of the green giant. The possible destruction of Australia is the best possible outcome at the moment for the Goo. Before this part, Aussie and Taungoo were fairly evenly matched, so it wasn’t really tenable for the Goo to take more than a few cities off of Australia. Now that the Aussies are besieged on all sides, this is Taungoo’s best chance to finally expand and be a serious contender to win. Unfortunately, it’s also probably their last chance considering their new neighbors to the north.

20: Venezuela

Vihreaa

Venezuela, I have been by your side since day one. As possibly Venezuela’s biggest fan, creator of their civball, creator of their shitposts, I am proud to say that Venezuela has reached their record highest rank of all time this week, placing seventh in the Power Rankings. Venezuela at first appeared to be stuck between two world powers, Uruguay and the Iroquois, but things may be looking up for them, as they begin expanding into the Pacific. With a weakened Qin and bogged down Australia, Venezuela may find their niche with a Pacific empire.

21: Moors

Rosé

Guys, I can’t believe that it may come to this, but The Moors might be the last stand against the Kazakhs. I know some of you are thinking “but what about Zimbabwe and the Iroquois they’re a lot stronger than the Moors”, to which I say you’re right, but they are too far to attack. By the time the baby blue blob reaches them, it is likely that the blob will have carpeted nearly all of Asia and likely parts of Europe and North America, being too big to contain. The Moors, however, are actually close enough to the Kazakhs to actually make a stand against them, while not too close, giving them time to build up. The Moors have actually gone to work this part too, making the Manx look like a tool this part and possibly taking the entire British Isles. The Moors actually have a couple of advantages over the Kazakhs too, having an actual navy is the obvious one, so at the very least naval support is possible, along with proper defensive terrain like their many seas, rivers, mountains, etc. that the Moors can use for a proper defense of their homeland. Furthermore, the Moors actually have a significant tech advantage of the Kazakhs, and that will likely only expand when they put their newly captured cites to use. Moors, we’re rooting for you baby.

22: Metis

Lacsirax

The Metis hold tight in fifth place. It’s not a surprise that they don’t move in rank this week, given they weren’t mentioned once. Seriously! Haida got called out three times, but the big blue behemoth that devoured them didn’t merit a mention this ep. The real story’s in the stats then, as Riel’s production begins to pull away from Hiawatha (that tends to happen when you found a lot of cities). On the other hand, their effective science is just over half of the Iroquois’ (that also tends to happen when you found a lot of cities). There’s already a huge tech disparity, so don’t expect the minor production edge to hand the continent to Riel any time soon. Still, there are opportunities on other shores - with Qin and Shikoku recently runted, a decent naval buildup could see an unlikely transpacific empire emerge. Hey, naval supremacy isn’t exactly a trait of the Metis, but then it isn’t what you’d expect of Zimbabwe either, you know?

23: Uruguay

Knot

I guess when we all thought the only possible expansion route for Uruguay was through Venezuela, we should have considered that they would randomly steal cities from Australia with magic ghost powers. Silly us. On a more serious note, the war with Australia could either go very well or very poorly. With the growing problem that is the Kazakhs, Uruguay really needs to focus on bulking up, and eating Venezuela. Throwing resources away on a useless war with Australia could result in them stagnating, and not being able to push through Venezuela before it’s too late. On the flip side, if they do manage to make gains in this war, it could be exactly what they need to push past Venezuela and finish them off. Regardless of what happens, Uruguay needs to break the stalemate soon before other blue nations leave them completely in the dust.

24: Iroquois

Msurdej

Hiawatha is in a peculiar position. They’re still in third place, but the gap between Iroquois and the other top two civs is growing. Zimbabwe has begun a semi-successful war against Australia, building more of a beachhead in Western Australia. The Kazakhs, well.... They’re the Kazakhs; and they’ve just subsumed most of the Qin. The Iroquois, meanwhile, managed to take a pair of cities from the collapsing Sami. If this keeps up, Hiawatha won’t be able to keep up, and probably surpassed by other civs like Uruguay who keep their gains up.

25: Zimbabwe

Altima

Zimbabwe does the unthinkable and successfully prosecutes an intercontinental naval war upon Australian, violently breaching the Fortress Continent with the aid of powers north and south of it, and has more forces on the way. However, the war is far from over, and if Mutota looks to take on (or at least not die horribly to) the rising Khan, he needs to win this war faster and harder than his teammates so that he can claim enough of Australia to turn it’s sizable industrial potential to his advantage.

He also really needs to finally get around to killing Nubia- seriously, how has he managed to outperform traditional AI naval incompetence to take out Australia, an actual contender, while still failing to take out a three-city nothing state that has never not been in a war that could kill it? Get it together, Mutota, you don’t have the time for this.

26: Kazakhs

Knot

Last part, one of the only hypothesized ways to possibly stop the Kazakhs happened, where two of their strongest neighbors, the Sami, and the Qin went to war with them. The end result of this is that the continent of Asia can basically be referred to as Kazakhstan now, containing the nation of Kazakhstan, and that’s it. There is absolutely no contest about who’s number 1 right now. They have almost twice the production of Zimbabwe, and 22 more cities than the Metis, and the scariest thing is that they aren’t done with the Sami yet, and haven’t even started on Europe. The game is not over. There’s still time for another power on a different continent to rise, and maybe the Moors can slow the Kazakhs down, but the number of civs who can still win at this point comes down to who could possibly catch up to the Kazakhs? And that list is getting smaller and smaller.