Power Rankings: Episode 11 – S2

Knot:

Ok, this has to be the end, right? The Tuareg just got coalitioned by almost every one of their neighbors. Freaking Zaire is right next to them and out for blood. There’s no way they can survive this. We’re gonna have a eulogy to write next part, right? Right? Please?!?

Random Strategy

Jerusalem is under attack! Defend the walls! Rally our entire army of, er... 3 pikemen, 1 composite bowman, 1 catapult and 3 great generals. Yeah Jerusalem is fucked. They can't possibly defend against the larger better equipped Kurdish army. Unless the Kurdish army forgets to bring melee units! Which looks like it's happening! Enemy incompetence is certainly a powerful defence, but when it's your only defence... well, let's just say it's not ideal.

Vihreaa

The Teutonic Order, the first civ to be rumped, places 52nd this week, unchanged from last week. Fun fact; 52nd is the second highest rank that they have reached through the entirety of the royale, with their highest being 42nd. With just one city remaining, our friends in Eastern Europe can only hope to fly under the radar of the bigger powers in Europe and not get eliminated before any other civs.

Msurdej  The Neutral Nation gets a bit of a bump this week as their war against New Netherlands comes to a close.Now, the closest enemy they have is the Dene, who are on the other side of the continent...and still sending an army to them! While they are holding out for now, with only a single city and a dozen or so troops, time is not on the side of the Neutral Nation.

Cloudberg:

I just feel really bad for Namibia. What did they do to deserve this?

Doom:

No news is good news for the Olmecs.

LonelyRS

My advisor told me it was the year 1920, last week. I had him hung, drawn, and quartered for the insult.

I’ve found that it’s easier for me to unmoor myself from time entirely, here. Leave the world and all its foibles behind, throw away those imaginary concepts of value and rot, victory and defeat, which poisoned my thinking so completely back when I was still a dry old fool and hadn’t been blessed with the vision to see what was in front of me.

I don’t know what flag we fly, now. It could be that of my people’s. It could be the Kulin’s, or Malacca’s, or even those Dutch people I spat peas at whose country I’ve now forgotten. It’s to be expected. After all, it’s become harder and harder for me to remember the last time I left this shore.

It’s nice here. There’s no judgement, for one. The wildlife doesn’t care where you sent your armies when your neighbors came knocking down your front door. There’s a turtle I’ve named Horseradish who comes by here once every blue moon who I cherish deeply. He’s the second to bear that name, now. The first one was run over by a jong.

All I see are jongs, now. The ocean is filled with them. Occasionally they run ashore. When I close my eyes, I see them scuttling about at the edges of my vision like particularly large and annoying mosquitoes. But I don’t mind. After all, I don’t know what flag we fly now. For all I know, these could be my ships I’m staring at across the sea. I think I like that thought. Better than thinking about how they could kill me at any moment, at least.

It’s been a while, and Horseradish is back and demands my attention, so I’m afraid I must depart. Perhaps I’ll send this letter to one of the jongs, by way of carrier pigeon. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to give them orders. My orders are for them to tell me if I’m supposed to give them orders. My orders are for them to have fun.

I like having fun. This is fun. I’m feeling good about myself.

-Tjilpi

Doom:

Tahiti lose a measly 3 ranks this parts, showing that when you're at the bottom already there's not far to fall. The Mapuche finally sent a few units over and as expected, Tahiti totally folded and only held onto their capital through a lucky peace deal.

Doom:

Hejaz holds steady at 46 this part. They managed to fend off Lesotho but it's only postponing the inevitable. While they still have 4 cities, none are particularly defensible and all the coast leaves them vulnerable to a Somalia style death. A sad fate for the only vaguely interesting middle east civ this BR.

Vihreaa

45th is the highest rank that Hawaii has ever gotten in the royale! At this rate, they’ll top the leaderboard in only a few more episodes! Right… Hawaii’s declaration of war on Tahiti has opened the window of possibility that they unite the Hawaiian islands, and this along with the fact that their empire isn’t united, which makes them already harder to kill. With a future that likely will be getting conquered by a stronger power, Hawaii has to take the victories where they can.

Spain

Hey, everybody, Spain made a friend! Yes, thanks to the successes the Vandals are having in North America, the “civs that had a decent chance of winning the CBR until the Vandals completely crushed their dreams” now has two members. Aren’t you happy, Spain?

LonelyRS

The dream of an Icelandic Europe may have died a long, long time ago at the end of a German bayonet, and the dream of an Icelandic Northern America never did quite manage to get up off the ground, but at least, Eldjarn might have thought privately in his most optimistic moments, he could secure an Icelandic Newfoundland. For as long as it took for a civ that was actually worth anything to start coveting his land there, that is. Now, his empire already split in two finding itself bound to a table underneath Mississippi’s swaying axe, it’s become apparent that the bill’s finally come due for Iceland’s last remaining ambition to be anything more than a minor player in this game. And, judging by how Iceland’s already been reduced to a skeleton navy in the region while Mississippian cannonballs fly proudly over the arctic wastes, it looks like it’s going to cost an arm and a leg. Ingolfur Arnarson must be turning in his grave.

LonelyRS

It’s the Rocky Mountains that got Comcomly into this hole, so it’s only fitting they seem to have conspired to keep him alive as long as possible. Those who’ve kept up with the salmon fishers’ performance in the BR to date have gotten well acquainted with the mountain range in question - one tends to, after all, when it blunts all your strikes and forces your numerologically superior army to come away from an attempt to finish off Four Bears’ Three Affiliated Tribes with zero additional cities and one new source of national humiliation. Given the complete and utter evisceration of the Chinook by their other neighbors that followed, I’m sure Comcomly’d appreciate the irony of one of his last few cities being Sepoosha, now that he’s essentially stolen Four Bears’ skin and is wearing it like a coat.

So, why bring up that mountain range both beautiful and a shared source of national trauma again? Simple: because soon the Chinook will be on the other side of a fight for their lives, and what was once their greatest foe has now become their most key ally. Any attempt on Mississippi’s part to make real inroads into Chinookan territory would begin with the capture of Nemah just three tiles out from Catalan Springs, but a maze built from mountain peaks and Old Faithful will give Tuskaloosa only one melee tile to work with. Chinook is horribly outclassed by all their neighbors now, yes, but the geography that once hindered them has now returned to bless them with a defensive stand that is trivially easy. Well, until artillery comes, that is.

Random Strategy

The VOC have still not been eaten by Malacca. They had a small war with Laos, which they were losing until Kosovo's UA forced Chola into the war. I would suggest trying to conquer the Anangu instead but they tried that last episode and it was a dismal failure (if you weren’t aware that the VOC were at war with one of their neighbours last part, don’t worry neither was I till writing this). So I guess they just carry on being irrelevant and hoping nobody notices them?

LonelyRS

Ha, ha, ha, oh, shit. This is not how Simon Bolivar’s bid to recover from his early-mark blunders was supposed to go. Less given a slap on the wrist of his killing of Jamaica than having his hand cut off, on the wrong side of the most improbable coalition since Professor X and Magneto teamed up that one time (it made friggin’ Solano Lopez a team player, for Christ’s sake), Simon Bolivar is, ah, not having a very good day. Or week. Or month, probably, before long, given the loss of Quito and how thorough Marajoara’s beatdown of Gran Colombia has been thus far. Make no mistake, Bolivar’s still not out of it yet. Far from it, in fact. All he needs to do is peace out with Marajoara… and the Mapuche… and send Solano Lopez some flowers in the mail and hope the chihuahua of South America doesn’t decide to restart its ill-fated campaign in the near future… and, hm, we’re three apology letters and already Gran Colombia’s road back to where they were not thirty turns ago seems rocky, treacherous, and filled with potholes. Simon Bolivar isn’t throwing in the towel just yet, but the next few parts might just be better for him if he does, huh.

Altima

Georgia technically did a thing this episode, departing from the Conquest of Jerusalem after throwing bodies at the walls of Aleppo to no effect. That’s not great, especially for a runt of a civ that’s getting runtier by the day as the giants get bigger by the day.

Knot

Sigh. This is how you know the list of civs that can go all the way is getting smaller. We got freaking Zanzibar at 38th. That number is too small. They deserve to be lower, and yet, paradoxically, they don’t deserve to be lower, because at least they aren’t actively on fire. Thus, I say again, Sigh.

Altima

The conquest of Vietnam has done little to fix Laos’s lousy position. They still can’t conquer the VOC peninsula, as they don’t have a navy or naval access needed to cut off the naval forces, so their larger and more advanced military doesn’t even matter. Expect this to continue for a few parts whilst Pontianak flips back and forth for no-one’s benefit.

Msurdej  

Well the Palmares get out of the war they were with Nigeria,leaving them one less enemy. But that’s about the only good news Zumbi is getting. The Marajoara are getting stronger, and the Mapuche, while the weaker of the two, is still strong enough to deal with Palmares. Both civs are citadeling Palmares, cutting off a few resources from the civ that soon may fade if it's not careful.

Knot

Did anybody have “North African civ demolishes a pretty sizable North American power” on the bingo card? I certainly did not, but we live in the world with the idiot superpower that is the Vandals, so sucks to be you, Peter. Now, there is a bit of debate just how much it actually sucks to be Peter. They lost five sizable cities, one of which being their capital, and the war’s not even over yet. That military record basically took Spain from superpower to irrelevant space filler, so it’s very likely that New Netherlands never does anything of note ever again after this. That said, the war not being over yet gives Peter a small chance to fight back, and he does still have forces to take it back with. He could pull off some incredible comeback, but he’d need to have the mind of MK2 Mao to do it. Only total reconquest will do.

Msurdej  

Deep in the mountains, Bhutan has a lot going on. They find themselves in a bevy of battles, but only two opponents truly matter: Chola and Taiping. The war against Chola has one clear goal in mind, recapture the city of Sarpang. Whether or not Jigme will be able to do it remains to be seen. To the east, the Taiping war could’ve devolved into bloody mountain fighting. But a peace deal between Taiping and Malacca effectively cut the border in half, leaving Jigme much less to defend. Bhutan should be able to hold, but its still up in the air whether they can succeed.

Doom:

Great Perm continue to be one of the most forgettable civs on the cylinder with a grand total of 2 mentions in the last part, both for peace deals. This seems to be paying off for them as they rise another 3 ranks anyway. Not that it will matter if Lenin notices them.

Altima

Well this plan backfired. Now that Purple Yuan is no longer distracted by Bluan, the full force of their army has been diverted onto Osaka- and it turns out that an entire mid-powered nation state does in fact have more production than half of a weak one. Half of the Osakan colony has already fallen, leaving it even more likely that the whole will collapse within the next part, and leaving it more likely that Japan itself will die soon as their butchered army becomes blood in th water for all the sharks they neighbor.

Doom:

This chapter of the eternal war between the Yuans has finally ended with neither side having much to show for it beyond a few less troops. However, that doesn't mean that the Yuans are equal. Northern Yuan should be able to grab a few cities from the Japanese colonies in Siberia, furthering the production gap between them. It's also worth pointing out that Yuan's science is truly atrocious. Despite having a science UA they have fallen behind such titans of the cylinder as VOC, Bhutan and Kurdistan in tech. Their only saving grace is that Northern Yuan also have garbage science.

Knot:

So there’s good news and bad news. Good news is that Tongva has broken into the top 30 for the first time this whole season! Bad news: I think this is the beginning of the end for them. Yeah, the Rio Grande probably aren’t gonna do a ton of damage to them this time, but they’re gonna start chipping away at their sizable but mediocre empire. Eventually, through enough poking and prodding (and better guns,) somebody is gonna finally put enough damage on them to make them crumble. Probably not anytime soon, but we’re gonna begin to see the cracks form.

Random Strategy

Kurdistan did something for the second week in a row! Woo! They declared war on Jerusalem! Now Jerusalem is utterly useless and should be very easy to kill. However, I am noticing a lack of melee units in Kurdistan's army. If the Kurds fail this attack because of no melee units, that will be embarrassing.

Vihreaa

Finland finds themself at 28th this episode, which, woohoo, is their highest rank so far in the royale, but also doesn’t change the fact that they have next to no roads to success. They only border Sweden and the USSR, a power that is essentially equivalent to their own, and a civ that outclasses them in just about every way. With so few cities, despite Finland's overall decent stats, they really just don’t have any way to break out of their corner of the world.

Cloudberg:

Sweden didn’t have a good time this week, losing Konigsberg to an advanced Soviet army. But the narrow passage through the Baltic all but ensures that Sweden’s losses will be contained to this one city, unless Lenin beelines paratroopers, which I guess isn’t totally out of the question in the next couple of episodes. Still, we already knew Sweden would lose Konigsberg, so it was already baked into their current ranking. In fact, Sweden even went up a bit. Yay?

Rosay

Given that Kurdistan is actually somewhat of a player now, Kosovo has realized it has no clear path to victory, and has resorted to nation ruining and declaring war on the last slide. Germany and the Soviets were never an option to begin with, but considering the other options are heavy naval powers strong in their own right, the only option left was to take Jerusalem (deus vult) and share a larger, mountainous border with Kurdistan. Granted the new Ptolemies war is likely gonna only take a few cities if any, but yeah kinda a bad move.

Cloudberg:

Taiping is a bit of a statistical anomaly this week, rising two ranks despite giving away several major cities to Malacca in a peace treaty. Why? There’s really a very logical explanation. You see, the Power Rankers already expected Taiping to get fucked, which is why we dropped them all the way down here to the approximate half way point, meaning that their further losses to Malacca were already baked in. At the same time, New Netherland and Gran Colombia, both of which started the episode above Taiping, got fucked even harder and ended up below them. So Taiping rises two places. 25th isn’t really as high as it used to be, but even so, their relatively light drop compared to certain other civs reflects the fact that they were still stronger than Yuan and could use them as a potential route to claw back an empire.

Vihreaa

In 24th this week, Paraguay watched as Marajoara slapped the shit out of Gran Colombia. (thank god i sold my stock for them last week) In a continent that is rapidly moving towards what looks like could be a 2 power continent, Paraguay needs to make use of the power they still have to ensure that they aren’t swallowed up before it’s too late. Declaring war on Palmares or taking Colombian cities would help their situation, without a doubt.

LonelyRS

On the most basic, simple, and unsophisticated level, it’d be hard to imagine Thomas Sankara fighting a cannier pair of wars than the ones he’s launched against Namibia and the Tuareg. The two weakest civs in Africa, after all, are not only both within his sphere of influence but also provide adequate staging grounds for him to throw his hat back into the ring in what may be the most competitive continent in the game. And, really, a part like this, picking off the easiest kills in the continent and making new friends along the way, would be a home run… If this was Nigeria. Unfortunately, Thomas Sankara is not the leader of Nigeria. He is the leader of Burkina Faso. And what that means is he’s going to send some fifteen privateers one at a time to the Cape of Lost Hope to die an ignoble death while in the north he slowly, gradually chips down the Tuareg’s final remaining city inch by painstaking inch only to peace out right before claiming the prize. Still, can’t fault the sixth best civ in Africa for trying to amount to something more.

Knot

Ok, you have my attention, Northern Yuan. Not only was this war with Japan a good move, but you’re actually executing the war way better than anyone would expect you to be. There’s decent odds you take all of Japan’s mainland cities next part if you’re quick about it. I should be clear, I have no expectations or hopes behind this attention yet, Northern Yuan. Your stats are still horrendous. You have fewer techs than the civ you are demolishing, and if PARG starts catching on to your games and declares war, I’m dropping you like a stone, but for now, I’ll keep an eye on you. Maybe give me something fun to see.

Vihreaa

Two Sicilies are in a rather unique position in the royale. With a solid sized navy and military, they are completely capable of defending themselves from outside attackers, but they also have complete control over the Mediterranean sea. This means that they could feasibly capture the entire North African coastline of civs like the Vandals and Ptolemies, whos navies are dwarfed by Two Sicilies in the region. If they want to rise out of the second tier of civs in the game right now, they need to start carving out more cities for themselves, before the bigger civs become too strong to overcome.

LonelyRS

It’s really not Mississippi’s fault, honest. Well, okay, maybe it is their fault, ultimately, but it’s not like Tuskaloosa’s been resting on his laurels over the last part. He’s gutted the western half of Iceland’s empire, insofar as it can be called that! He fought an inspiring battle against the swooning Chinook! Not that the Rockies’d allow Mississippi to gain anything from that venture, but still, it’s the fault that counts. Really, in a vacuum, this looks like a pretty alright part for Mississippi. Maybe not deserving of an olympic vault into the top flight, but a meager rise, certainly, and stalling out seems a bit harsh.

But that’s just the thing: Mississippi’s not in a vacuum. They’re in North America, a thunderdrome from which only shattered bits and pieces of former worldbeaters and a pervading sense of hopelessness in the face of the Vandals escapes. And, well, they’re certainly doing better than New Netherlands is, but the Dene also had a nice part of coring up, and Rio Grande’s already proven themselves a nation capable of turning the tables on Tuskaloosa in a hurry. Mississippi, in a word, simply isn’t getting any respect. And until there’s real, hard evidence that something’s changed, there’s always going to be a limit on how high they rise, and it’s somewhere around the realm of the also-rans. Change may come to North America one day, but unless Tuskaloosa does something real drastic, it’s probably not going to favor his empire.

Rosay

So there’s a bit of a turning point going on in North America, with Dene in the middle of everything and what they do may change the entire outlook of the North American continent. Option 1 is that Dene continues doing what they're doing, sending men to die in Niagara and inevitably getting squashed by Chukchi, creating a continent where an Non-American power has control over most of America and a couple of leftover civs like Rio Grande and maybe New Netherlands serve as hurdles. Option 2 is to block off as much as possible from Chukchi to prevent option one. Chinook and Tongva are more or less non players, and Mississippi is kind of a hot mess. Basically what I’m saying is Thanadelthur needs to get her act together for the sake of North America.

Knot

What does Nigeria need to do to be successful? That’s an honest question. I’d love to hear an answer. Can they be successful? Probably. They are the resident turtle of CBRX. They outmatch a ton of the civs in Africa on tech, and their army is pretty bulky for the small amount of land they have. What should they do to be successful? I have no idea.

I mean, there’s Burkino Faso who is continuing to stagnate a bit, so maybe they should sink their teeth in now, but that’s not gonna be an easy battle. It’s gonna be a slog even with their advanced tech, and it’s only gonna open them up to being coalitioned, so then do they just wait for a golden opportunity? Some sort of coalition war, or for them to get even better tech than their neighbors? They can’t be a turtle forever. Zaire is knocking on their door, and slowly overcoming their tech lead. Once that happens, Nigeria is pretty dead in the water. It feels like it’s time for them to do… something. I just couldn’t tell you what.

Random Strategy

The 3 rank drop is not caused by anything that happened to the Mapuche, but by what happened to their continent. Marajoara are annexing the entirety of Gran Colombia, making them the new top dogs of south america, and relegating the Mapuche to only 2nd best. What do the Mapuche have to do to regain their top spot? Well they should probably think about conquering Paraguay and Palmares. There are a lot of cities to be gained there. Secondly they need to improve their science. South America is an entire era behind the rest of the world on average, with Marajoara the only civ of the continent actually doing OK. The Mapuche are on the same level as Sweden or Bhutan. They need to do better, not just to defeat Marajoara, but also to defend against opportunistic colonists.

Msurdej  Lesotho has a problem that can be summed up in one word: Zaire. Overall Moshoeshoe I has good stats, but when compared to Zaire’s they’re not great. They have a few opportunities to expand, like Namibia and Zanzibar, but doing so may set off Zaire. They tried to go into Arabia and conquer Hejaz, but it went nowhere. All paths leave Lesotho with a Zaire sized mountain to get over if they ever want to win.

Msurdej  Speaking of getting over mountains, let’s go to America and look at the Rio Grande. Rosillo is doing his best to bring Tongva to their knees,and with the Rockies as a buffer much of the fighting has been centered in Baja California. It looks like Yaanga could fall soon, but who knows how the battle will go from there. Otherwise, Rosillo has good defenses, making the best civ in America....or at least the best civ that started there.

Msurdej  Chola continues to fend off its attackers, and rises in the ranks. Laos and Bhutan have launched offensives, but so far, Rja Raja is holding them off. But this rise in ranks mostly comes a new power: the power of Ideology. As one of only a dozen civs to reach and Ideology, Chola chose Autocracy, joining with nearby powerhouse Malacca. This should give them some level of protection for now, but should Punjab choose Order (which will learn next part most likely), it could spell trouble for Chola.

Random Strategy

The issue the Gauls have at the moment is they are lagging behind a bit in tech. They delayed scientific theory until last turn, and as a result did not have appropriate science yields. Once they finish building their public schools they should be back on track, but even so, it's dangerous to drop behind, what with Germany unlocking cruisers right now - and cruisers could make very short work of the British isles if Germany wanted. For defence against this, the Gauls appear to be using a mutually assured destruction strategy: their army is complete glass cannon - it is almost exclusively composed of cannons with a few knights behind. That army can blitz 1 undefended city (say for example, Berlin) but will then die at the first whiff of resistance since cannons are not a particularly good front line unit.

Altima

I flip back and forth on the PARG, and their comparison to the Metis of S1. They’re certainly big! They certainly grew big in a similar unsustainable manner! And like the Metis, of all the civs in their theoretical weight class, they have among the worst tech (even Zanzibar has more techs!) and a pretty mediocre army size. The problem is that other civs have grown larger than them while still keeping up a solid enough scientific base. PARG are just a mediocre civ, not a repat of someone else. They could absolutely recover from this, but well, as good a start as they had handed to them, they shouldn’t have to be recovering from anything.

Altima

Kulin’s vibing to the beautiful sounds of the trapped Tahitian navy wailing in sorrow at their fate. It’s honestly hard to find much to say about Kulin right now, they didn’t do anything this part except quietly build up a bit. Their problems haven’t changed- the Damoclean Malacca hanging over their head if anything just got stronger, and they still haven’t made a landfall on a real continent- but they at the very least they haven’t grown in number either. The tick tock of the clock is painful, but there is still time for William to do what he has to.

Random Strategy

Science turtling pays off! In the space of 1 episode, Marajoara have nearly doubled their city count, and look set to increase it even more. Gran Colombia was unable to resist the more technologically advanced Line Infantry, Cuirassiers and Ships of the Line. Thanks to this war, Marajoara are now the most powerful South American civ, and favorites to win the continent. Their main rival is the former favorites, Mapuche and the Vandal colonists. The latter are currently not a threat due to not having any good boats, but may become one in future if they get their act together. The former are still bigger than Marajoara (though finishing off the rest of Gran Colombia will change that) but have the disadvantage of having very bad tech. That is something they could fix in the future, but in the meantime it gives them a big disadvantage in any conflict. But anyway Paraguay and Palmares need to be cleaned up before that happens.

Altima

Quiet part for Cleopatra. No real declarations of war, just a turn spent building and rebuilding. Got pretty good stats, that science could use a bit of bulking though. Most notable thing to happen this part is that they got out of the great Kosovar flipfest finally, and good for them, that’s some production they won’t be wasting, production they’ll need for the coming days. They do still border the Big Brain Brigade.

Msurdej  

Ok USSR fans, let me explain. Sure, Lenin was able to grab the city of Konigsberg off of Sweden, but with such a disparity between the two, you think he’d be able to grab more. But the Soviet navy doesn’t have much of a hold on the Baltic, so it will be some time before the Red Navy stalks Swedish shores. With decent stats, Lenin has a chance of being outpaced by other civs. But if his war with Karl is any indication, Lenin ain't going down without a fight.

Vihreaa

Punjab’s lack of action is proving to be their downfall, as they drop to 7th place, their lowest rank since part 2. Though they had some of the highest stats earlier in the game, their lack of acting on this, declaring wars and expanding their empire, has allowed their neighbors to catch up. With Uzbekistan to their north, who wield formidable stats across the board, and the Chola, who already have a solid sized frigate navy, Punjab has lost what could be their best chance to expand their empire easily. They still have opportunities to expand, but it will not be as easy as it was while they were still ranked #1.

Cloudberg:

Zaire slips three ranks, falling farther from its brief moment in 1st, due to a convergence of factors. Zaire’s dominance in the stats was equally brief and has now corrected to the mean (which is, to be fair, still very high). Their core appears to be relatively devoid of troops. And to make matters worse, they adopted Order while all of their direct neighbors are adopting Autocracy, which significantly increases the risk of a coalition war against them. If Zaire manages to somehow overcome that threat, they could rise again, but for the moment the danger is significant enough that we don’t feel comfortable putting them in the top 5.

Random Strategy:The Vandals are probably the hardest civ to rank. On the one hand, they are conquering New Netherland, which gives them cities on 4 different continents as well as top-tier stats. They're already up to 30 cities and still grabbing more from the ruins of the New Netherland. Surely such a display of utter domination deserves a high rank? On the other hand, they STILL have not researched any of the critically important naval techs. Their core is still defended by galleaeses! The medieval ship! The only reason they even managed to defeat New Netherland is that New Netherland are the only one of their neighbours that neglected naval tech even more than they did. If 2 Sicilies declared war right now, the Vandals would lose their entire core: everything in the mediterranean; and 2 Sicilies isn't even ranked high.  Surely if 2 Sicilies can demolish the Vandals, that must mean 2 Sicilies are more powerful than the Vandals and therefore deserve to be ranked higher than the Vandals? Eh? Look, all I'm asking is that if the Vandals do end up dying to some random civ ranked well below them, please don't make fun of the power rankers for it - we are well aware of how fragile they are.

Cloudberg:

Uzbekistan has risen to an all time high of 4th place after... doing nothing? Well, nothing obvious anyway. No big invasions, no dramatic city captures, no exciting war declarations, just a massive, consequential rise in the stats. Uzbekistan’s stats are quite simply too good to put them anywhere else. They could absolutely destroy PARG right now, and probably fuck up Punjab too if they wanted to. It’s just the “wanting to” that seems to be the hard part.

Cloudberg:

Germany rises back to third place as they continue to bulk up their army and navy, while capturing the Spanish Hebrides. Their stats remain extremely impressive, especially production, and the carpet wielded by the neighbors the Gauls consists mainly of cannons and knights, which is likely to evaporate in the event of war. If Germany decided to attack Sweden or the Gauls, they could potentially rack up some massive gains.

LonelyRS

On behalf of the Chukchi, I’d like to issue a humble apology. I was blind, you see - I disrespected the Chukchi’s UA when first I heard of it, seeing it as useful for little more than incremental gains during prolonged sieges. Now that that one little trait’s locked up the Japanese archipelago and kept Taiping on life support? Well, I’m not sure if that’s egg on my face or not, but it’s definitely some kind of dairy, and I don’t think my virgin vegan tongue can handle any more of it.

And now to look at the Chukchi’s future, rather than their past or present, for a while - doesn’t it seem an awful lot like we’re gearing up toward a BR-defining Chukchi-Malacca confrontation in the near future? Rest assured I’m not just saying that because they’re the top two civs in the rankings by a shout. They’ve got legitimate reason for friction, I swear! They’re the two biggest naval juggernauts on the cylinder, the collapse of Taiping has left them within spitting distance of each other, and, oh, yeah, they’ve got different ideologies in a game that looks like it’ll be uncommonly split between Order and Autocracy. What with their scarily even stats in most areas that aren’t simply a measure of how many jongs you have parked off the Australian shore, there’s real potential for fireworks, here. Naturally, Forgie’s Law should all but ensure such a battle will be limited to ten turns of scattered skirmishes in the Pacific, but still! Still. Allow us dreamers our dreams.

Altima

In what I think is a first for the CBR, we’ve had an oceanic civ gain a real, decisive foothold on a major continent as Malacca steals half of Taiping out from under them. The war itself was a brutal, grinding affair for both sides (how many flips for Anquing again?) but the peace was a brutal gain for Malacca. Now, we’ve seen civs squander that kinda gain before by just not building an army in their newfound holdings (hello Kazakhstan, we were just talking about you!), so they could still screw this one up, but at the very least they’ll be screwing up from a position of unquestionable strength. We should all be so lucky.