Power Rankings: Episode 14

Teutonic Order

Msurdej

Well, it's been a long, arduous process, but the Teutons are finally dead. Stuck in the middle of Europe, Hermann had his hands full almost immediately, losing much of his empire to the USSR. Bottled up between Lenin, Wilhelm, and a few smaller but still savvy civs, The Order found itself spending multiple turns at the bottom. Their rise above that was not due to Teutonic triumphs, but everyone else’s failures. In the end, the Teutons came from a drawn out, tag team, one two punch, delivered by the unlikely combination of Sweden and Kosovo. But take heart those three people who supported the Teutonic Order; you did better than expected.

Hejaz

Msurdej

Hejaz was as good as gone when the part was nearly over. But at the last moment, Ali pulled some magic out of his hat, and recaptured the city of Taif. While this is a miracle, it will be a short lived one. With enemies abound, a city with half health and no defenses, Hejaz’s last act seems to be more his dying gasp than his second wind. Let this be the last chance to get your stocks in order before the power of Hejaz falls for good.

Jerusalem

Knot

Praise be to Hejaz for keeping Jerusalem from sinking to last place in the PR despite Jerusalem losing the city of Aleppo. Praise be to the Teuton Knights for propelling Jerusalem up a spot in the final ranking, and praise be to all Jerusalem’s neighbors for being terrible at fighting wars good for so long. May Jerusalem’s death be swift and painless

VOC

Vihreaa

Contrary to popular belief, VOC is still alive! After managing to evade Hawaii, they have narrowly managed to avoid death, after peacing out with Hawaii. Now, will a declaration of war from Malacca end their entire game? Yes. But that doesn’t mean that Malacca is guaranteed to declare war on them anytime soon.

Hawaii

Knot

You had one job, Hawaii. One job! End the VOC! It wouldn’t have improved your chances of winning at all. Heck, it probably would have gotten you killed, but it would have made you memorable, but nooooooooo! You had to peace out, and leave them to limp along another day. Ugh! I hope the Chukchi devour you for your mediocrity.

Namibia

Cloudberg:

This episode marks four consecutive episodes in which I ranked all the civs, realized I was missing one, then discovered it was Namibia.

Neutral Nation

Knot

You know, when the Neutrals finally kick the bucket, I will miss them. I could care less for a lot of these bottom feeders, but the Neutrals have just seen so much. They’ve seen almost every North American civ rise and fall. Dene, Chinook, Mississippi, New Netherlands, Dene again, all held in high regard and the top dog on the continent, and subsequently saw their hype evaporate into the aether. Rio Grande now remains the main attacker on the continent (if you don’t count the Chukchi, I suppose.) Some of those other civs may attempt to rise again, and perhaps the Neutrals will live to see even the Rio Grande fall in a new world, or perhaps they will be extinguished before they see the end of the story. Perhaps, a power will rise that the Neutrals will fail to know.

Burkina Faso

Vihreaa

Remember when these guys were ranked number 1? Me neither… (right power rankers??) Burkina Faso has had a great rise and fall throughout the game, not dissimilar to what we saw in Askia in the last royale. After being effectively rolled by the technologically superior Nigeria, Burkina Faso’s chances of winning are effectively destroyed. Northwest Africa just seems to not be a good place to spawn for the long game.

Yuan

Cloudberg:

Yuan jumps an impressive five ranks as everybody else near the bottom is fuckin dying. Yuan, on the other hand, is not at war with any of their neighbors and anyone who does try to kill them needs open borders with the Chukchi, so they’re liable to survive quite a while.

Olmecs

Rosé:

I honestly cannot say anything about the big head boys tbh besides how much of a disappointment they've been this season. Seriously there were no mentions of them this part and their ONLY mention by the PRs is Aaron saying their stats are doo doo. Rio Grande or Marajoara, please eliminate them for the good of mankind.

Georgia

Vihreaa

Georgia, a lower tier power, has a unique special ability: 2 cores. This comes in handy when they are declared war on by a higher power, like, say, Uzbekistan. Now even if they lose their core, they have an entire other core that they can fall back to. Excellent! Georgia will continue to live.

New Netherlands

Vihreaa

The New Netherlands lost another city to Rio Grande, but fortunately the last of their cities are in more defensible positions. Once a well known regional power, the New Netherlands have now fallen from grace because of the Vandal invasion, and now are barely bigger than the Neutral Nation, a civ whose capital they captured.

The Republic of Anangu

Altima

To my constant moderate miffdom, the Republic of Amata continues to exist. I do have to respect their shrewd diplomats- while their cities are all in the process of horrible hell bombing, no marines stand on their shores, and the Kulin continue to stay satisfied with the chunk of Australia they already have. As greater powers die around them, the Amatan rank can only rise.

At least until the Kulin awake and they violently stop rising.

Palmares

Knot

Funnily enough, Palmares has a strangely large army. Like it’s certainly not a big army, but it’s only slightly smaller than Japan at this moment, and definitely higher than a lot of their rump counterparts. I doubt they can do anything with it, but if Palmares suddenly decided to snipe some cities from Chinook, or the Olmecs next part, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Tahiti

Rosé:

Do not let the rise in ranks fool you, Tahiti might be in serious danger for the first time in forever due to its war with Marajoara going south. If they leave the war a city ahead then that's good for them, but the living second that the South American empire decides to bring its actually advanced navy into the pacific, then it's a wrap. Also they lost Fa'a'a to Chukchi.

Spain

Vihreaa

Spain has risen 5 ranks this week by effectively doing nothing. Incredible! With a fragmented empire surrounded by either a regional or world power, Spain is essentially just waiting to be declared war on, but perhaps they will choose to go out how the Teutons did, by choosing their own fate, which one can only respect them for.

Laos

Random Strategy

Laos moves up 2 because Georgia and Burkina Faso move down. They are now at war with Taiping but due to the mountainous terrain and reliance on open borders this isn't particularly worrying.

Chinook

Rosé:

Damn must suck to have your only remaining accomplishment of the game reversed when Tongva, despite just recovering from a Malaccan invasion, can retake their former cities. Due to terrain advantage, Malacca should not face too much more damage from Tongva, but the mental toll of the once great empire losing to Tongva should be enough to put even the proudest people in the nation to shame.

Iceland

Lacsirax:

Iceland are lucky their land is so barren and cold, because they’re apparently not worth finishing off. Mississippi and Germany have both backed off from completing the conquest now. Who knows - maybe they’ll make it to Endgame on disinterest alone.

Japan

Cloudberg:

Japan’s brief rise into the 20s has been quite rudely dashed, as Northern Yuan—a civ which has lost its capital—takes Kakuei’s boastful letter and shoves it back down his throat. Japan was briefly able to take the former Manchu capital, Mukden, but Northern Yuan soon swept back and took Mukden, Nagoya, and Osaka. Japan’s last remaining mainland city is threatened as well. Sadly, the days of Japan’s Siberian empire are over, and it’s probably going to be all downhill from here.

Kurdistan

Random Strategy

Oh no! The presidential peacekeeping divisions of Zaire are attacking, together with strange men somehow dropping in from the sky! They have already managed to capture 2 Kurdish cities! Kurdistan is still in the process of researching rifles right now so doesn't really have anything to fight them off. The good news is that the Ptolemies are in between them and the Zaire core so should be a really good distraction. And the Ptolemies do have the tech required to fight them off (even if they don't have the production) so that should probably delay Zaire long enough they peace out with Kurdistan before any major damage. Hopefully.

Ptolemies

Random Strategy

So the Ptolemies finally managed to peace out with Nigeria, at the cost of basically everything that wasn't originally owned by Hejaz. That was to be expected and did leave the Ptolemies in a tolerable position where they could still defeat most of their neighbours thanks to their modern army. However, it seems that Cleopatra's woes are not over. One of those easily defeatable neighbours was Hejaz, and as Cleopatra already owns their capital and their territory, it's only natural that she would lay claim to those lands. So when Zaire declared war on Hejaz, Cleopatra quickly did the same to try grabbing the cities before they were gone. Unfortunately, Zaire did not tolerate this and quickly declared war on the Ptolemies in turn. Now Zaire haven’t actually managed to even damage a Ptolemy city yet, and previously back in Africa, Zaire completely failed to make any impact, so you might think this isn’t scary. But that was then; now Zaire has paratroopers and their presidential UU (which in this situation are just basic machine guns). What the Ptolemies need in order to survive this is to kill the presidential divisions in Arabia, then abuse Zaire's pathetic navy and lack of airforce to contain them on the other side of the red sea. Then they only have to deal with the paratroopers who will be dropping without any siege equipment which should be manageable.

Bhutan

Lacsirax: Yes, you read that right… Bhutan is officially in the top 30. Things have gotten that rough for the civs below them, that they’re being outclassed by this game’s token Himalayan turtle. And Bhutan’s probably the weakest example of such a turtle yet, not having the promising start of Nepal or the plucky tenacity of Tibet. But the Himalayan start is what it is: if Punjab can’t break them, no one can yet.

Tongva

Msurdej

Tongva had a solid part this week, picking up a pair of cities from the crumbling Chinook. While it's unsure for certain whether Toypurina will hold them, it is pretty likely. From here though, it doesn’t seem likely they will eliminate the Chinook, or even take their capital. But regardless, it’s still hard to see Tongva continue to rise. Rio Grande is a wall to the east, the pass to Mississippi is small and mountainous, and Malacca and the Chuckhi would always love to muscle in on Tongva. Is it possible for Tongva to keep winning? Maybe, but the outlook ain't great.

Great Perm

Vihreaa

Great Perm has had one of the quietest games of all of the empire’s in this royale, considering their size. The last time they changed their number of cities was part 5, and they have done just about nothing since. With a war with Georgia, maybe they will do something in this royale before they are wiped out by either PARG or the USSR.

Zanzibar

Msurdej

I’m still trying to figure out when and how Zanazibar got into this place. They have 8 cities, more than half of which are one tile island cities or Antarctic posts. And yet, they persist.So I will reiterate the wishes of my fellow PR Knot, and ask that Zanzibar end its pitiful existence.

Sweden

Cloudberg:

Sweden reaches a new high of 26th this episode (not counting episode 0) by continuing to do nothing while other civs that were above them, such as Burkina Faso, plunge into the nether rankings. It’s a solid strategy, and at this rate they might just make it to Cycle 2 (endgame) by avoiding all war, which is, well, let’s just say compared to what we expected of Karl, it’s a disappointment.

Kosovo

Knot

Can we get a sitcom of Kosovo, Finland, & Sweden living in an apartment together? Call it “the mid carders” or something. You know, Kosovo keeps trying to go out and become a big civ on the cylinder, but is clearly inadequate to the task all while Finland and Sweden watch pityingly on a couch? Like Kosovo says, “Look, Sweden and Finland! I have decided to eliminate the scourge upon the capital: the Teutons! This will finally give me a seat at the big table in Europe, and then Germany will finally respect me,” and then Sweden and Finland just sigh and shake their heads.

Finland

Msurdej

Gonna continue Knot’s previous sitcom idea, because let’s be real, it’s more interesting than everything Finland has done this game.Finland ends up being the laziest one who we see maybe once or twice an episode, usually responding to one of Kosovo’s latest schemes with a sigh. While they wouldn’t do much, even when compared to the e-catboy streamer Sweden, Finland would probably be the emotional heart of the trio, picking Kosovo up when their plan inevitably failed with a rousing war on “Country too far away for it to matter.”

Northern Yuan

Lacsirax: Japan really saved Mandukhai from an embarrassing episode. There’s no way of sugarcoating the bad news: Northern Yuan lost their capital, relocating to Ordos north of Lake Baikal, and a fair chunk of their former core to a technologically superior foe. They did a decent job to stem the bleeding before it got much worse - I don’t think there was much stopping Kolchak from ripping straight through the centre of their remaining territory, but Mandukhai managed to wriggle out without ceding a single city in the peace treaty. Still, it’s a serious knock to Northern Yuan’s stocks that would have played out much worse if it wasn’t for Japan’s misguided gambit in hitting them while they were down. Tanaka’s DoW allowed Mandukhai to sweep through the majority of Japan’s long-held Siberian claims, with only Yokohama remaining (and the war still raging). Northern Yuan are probably the lowest ranked civ that it’s still reasonable to have expectations for; neighbours like Taiping and the rest of Japan are not unthinkable targets in the future, and as long as they can avoid bleeding too much more territory before Endgame, it’s too early to rule them out from a solid showing there.

Paraguay

Lacsirax: Paraguay didn’t turn up much in this episode; the action of South America is very much happening around them. We came into CBRX solidly expecting them to be at the forefront of every war on the continent, at least until they were inevitably torn apart, and bizarrely they’re instead playing one of the most neutral games on the Cylinder. The Marajoara offensive on Mapuche is a mixed blessing; their scary northern neighbour now has a substantial border with their core, but on the other hand, invading the Mapuche would now be much more straightforward, which is essentially Paraguay’s only path into relevance.

Taiping

Altima

So Holy China has open borders with Malacca. That’s neat; it points to the idea that they may be buddy enough to avoid a potential Third Ruining War. They’re using that open border agreement to funnel their men into a killzone in the vain hope of invading Laos, but hey, those who get bunted out of the Potential Great Power Club will take what they can get.

Two Sicilies

Rosé:

The Two Sicilies/Germany war finally happened, only problem being that the Alps are hell to cross. A bunch of back and forth occurred , Two Sicilies lost Italy proper, and here we are now. Unfortunately, Sicilies insistence on filling the entire Mediterranean with low level ships is coming back to bite it, as Germany's land based army seems to be on the constant offensive. Sure the Adriatic sea is off limits, but when your enemy has a little thing called raw technological and numerical advantage, they can just brute force their way through.

Lesotho

Cloudberg:

Lesotho drops a couple ranks, almost falling out of the top 20, as Africa continues to consolidate and Moshoeshoe continues to watch from the sidelines. Lesotho looks increasingly vulnerable; in fact, Zaire looks like it could pretty easily do to lesotho what Nigeria did to Burkina Faso. Which makes Lesotho a bit of a risky stock, considering that they could drop 20 places the second Zaire declares war. For now though, the fact that everyone else is even worse keeps them up here, alongside other civs that once looked good but aren’t anymore, like Taiping and the Mapuche.

The Mapuche

Altima

Well this has been a mixed bag for the Mapuche. On the one hand, their naval supremacy in theater has flipped a few islands their way; on the other hand, they’ve continued to lose inland cities despite the hell terrain of the Amazon. Net loss IMO, although the falling fortunes of others and the relatively small size of the exchange either way leaves them gaining a rank regardless. Still, the war is not over yet; navally, P’kuee has opened another front in that theater, so while she may still be able to continue her inland push, the sea still belongs to the brown and yellow.

The Mississippi

Msurdej

Tuskaloosa had a middling part this time around. He managed to pick up a city from the Tongva, who had taken it from Chinook, which is good. But they did lose a core city to The Dene, which is bad. For now, Tuskaloosa should refocus on building up his armies and cities before going to war again.

The Gauls

Random Strategy

We're finally in the era where European powers can meddle in the middle-east and fight proxy wars there! Hooray! That's just what everyone loves! And since nothing is happening at home for the Gauls, I'll talk about this instead. Middle-eastern meddling got started when the Ptolemies gave away a few cities to both Nigeria and 2 Sicilies. Oh but the Ptolemies were tricksy, and gave away cities in a pattern so as to create exclaves and bordergore. So when Germany declared war on 2 Sicilies, the KGL (German foreign legion) also managed to capture the Hermoupolis exclave. Zaire is of course also participating heavily in the bordergore by having their paratroopers capture Kurdish cities and attacking the Ptolemies. Georgia, Kosovo and the Nigerian exclave are murdering Jerusalem. Chola and Punjab spent the part fighting over Oman. And of course despite being on opposite sides of the conflict, the Ptolemies, Zaire and the KGL are all partitioning Hejaz, since nobody likes Hejaz. In all this the Gauls are also having some fun by attacking the Ptolemies, though unfortunately the Gaullish foreign legion seems to comprise of just a few cuirassiers. They are unlikely to be successful. TLDR: the Middle East is in utter chaos and is a right mess and the Gaullish foreign legion are going to have a horrible time there.

The Dene

Altima

Solid part for the Blue and Green flag, as they finally break the North American stalemate to conquer a core city off the Mississippi and pillage another to irrelevance. They still have far to go, and they still have a limit as to how far they can go given the big river in the living room, but progress is progress and progress gets ranks.

Chola

Random Strategy

It finally happened! The conflict we've all been waiting for! Chola vs Punjab rematch! And it looks like Chola came off slightly worse by the end. Both sides keep the same number of cities, but Chola had some of their cities flip. But really this outcome was predictable and why I was not rating Chola as highly as others in the past weeks. Punjab is an (almost) landlocked civ that has beelined land military while ignoring navy. Chola is an (almost) entirely coastal civ that has gone hard into boats. The expected result of this conflict is the civ with the good land military can't defeat the enemy navy and the civ with the good navy can't defeat the enemy ground forces, so they just end up flipping all the coastal cities. Now here's the issue: “all the coastal cities” means all Chola cities, not any Punjabi ones. And that is pretty much what happened here. However, there was another problem, and that is that all of Chola's good boats require coal, and they just didn't have enough of it, which means most of their navy was still outdated frigates and privateers. Meanwhile, Punjab does have ironclads (the boat that is unlocked by land military techs instead of naval techs for some reason) and does actually have the coal to power them, which has meant that Punjab performed better than expected at sea, and even crossed the Persian Gulf to flip cities in Arabia!

PARG

Altima

Finally, the axe-crazy white Russians have actually fought a war competently and walked away with a capital. It only took a few Uralic meat grinders. For now, they are at peace, likely consolidating their new acquisitions. For the future, they still have issues. Their tech is the big one, it makes them very vulnerable to their southern neighbor, who has like twice the effective science and twelve techs on them. They need to do some teching up, lest they find themselves in a Iroquoi-Metis scenario.

Kulin

Random Strategy

The Kulin continue to slowly grow, keeping up with Malacca by settling every island possible. And they have been very successful at converting their large population into science, now a sizeable amount in the lead in terms of effective science and on par to start outteching Malacca next part. Now how well is the Kulin prepared for a fight with Malacca? The Kulin have gone for the interesting (read: bad) strategy of avoiding navy. They did FINALLY get Navigation this part, but that's only useful for taking out someone like Tahiti; it does nothing against a modern navy. They have instead invested into land units, such as anti-aircraft guns to deal with the Malaccan airforce, and paratroopers so that they can attack cities without touching that icky water, though without oil or planes themselves, it's difficult to imagine what the paratroopers can hope to achieve. The Kulin also got the Manhattan project which certainly has a possibility of being interesting... And speaking of attacking Tahiti, that is something the Kulin should definitely consider, before the Chukchi and Marajoara conquer everything.

Punjab

Knot

Soooooooo, I'll be honest. I expected Punjab to do better in their war with Chola. It’s probably debatable that they did eventually “win” the war. They ended up eating through a lot of Chola’s navy, but you could honestly make the same argument the other way around. Chola ate through a ton of Punjab’s resources. Really, this whole war produced only losers, and that is quite bad for Punjab because Chola is kinda their primary expansion target. What else do they have? Bhutan: A rocky turtle they have had no luck overcoming, and the Uzbeks: a giant green wall that Punjab would have to be incredibly lucky to even chip a city or two off. Chola is kinda their best option. They better come back with better weapons next time, or they may not ever move beyond their current borders.

Rio Grande

Cloudberg:

Big River hits the top 10 for the first time since episode 0, as their neighbors continue to screw each other and another New Netherland city starts flying the pink and magenta. Of course, all Rio Grande really needs to do is sit pretty, because it’s not like anyone can touch them. Anything else they capture is just a bonus.

I will also take this moment to mention that Rio Grande has their UU, the Vaquero, which replaces the cavalry, has a bonus attacking across rivers, and can be expended to create an improved source of horses.

USSR

Msurdej

With the Tuetons eliminated, the USSR might be moved to action to avenge them, move against Kosov, and end their long nap. And maybe they’ll unban Splinter Twin in Modern. Or bring back Firefly. And maybe scallops’ll fly outta my pants! Heck, if we’re still wishing for things that ain't happening, I’ll take a million dollars USD as well!

Zaire

Lacsirax: Arguably Zaire’s best episode yet. The game always changes when paratroopers join the fray, and Mobutu’s deployment of them exemplified their utility, taking core cities from Kurdistan, a nation half a continent away, while simultaneously able to bully the remnants of Hejaz off of Africa. So why no rank increase? You probably know exactly why: Nigeria’s increased domination of the top half of the continent is starting to turn them into less of an annoying neighbour and more of an existential threat. It’s currently difficult to call a theoretical war between the two, but Nigeria’s techs are increasing at breakneck speed, and if they strike at a time of serious tech advantage they could cut a serious chunk out of Zaire’s core. That is a big if; in all likeliness, we won’t see the border change too much before Endgame. Zaire’s best bets are to consolidate their Arabian gains with an evisceration of the Ptolemies, before finally turning on their feeble neighbours to the south: Zanzibar, Lesotho and Namibia, all of whom would now quickly fall to Mobutu’s mighty armies.

Uzbekistan

Altima

Finally. The superior might of the Uzbek production base has ground Georgia into a fine Siberian paste. The question is, where shall they go now? Were I them, I’d hit the PARG now, as our boys in green have a substantial tech, production, and manpower lead, and Kolchack is still busy rebuilding his new conquests. That manpower lead in particular is crucial- PARG has barely 1/3rd the pointy sticks as the Uzbeks. Naturally, A’s gonna Aye, but they do have a strong option should they decide to press their momentum.

The Vandals

Altima

It is a worrying trend of the Vandals to not finish their meals. Sure, they took all the coastal cities and a few inland ones from former #1 BF, but they peaced out essentially just in time for the Nigerians to swoop in and damn near kill them. The most problematic part of the whole exchange is that this puts them with a real border with a #1 contender, and a real land power at that, and that border is just a huge green tide at the doorsteps of their core. This is not unnavigable, but it does represent a major potential future problem- the Nigerians have made their bread by rumping major power potentials, after all.

Germany

Knot

If you came up to me, threw your hands dramatically in the air, and said “I give up! Everyone in Europe is a sloth never to awaken again,” I would be slightly mystified how you found me IRL, but I wouldn’t exactly blame your lack of confidence. Like what’d Germany do last part? Wage their seven millionth useless war on Two Sicilies. What’d they do this part? Continue to wage their seven millionth useless war against Two Sicilies with a bonus capture in the Middle East for some reason! It’s really no surprise that as stars on other continents begin to rise, Germany starts to slip from the top tier of civs.

That said, I would advise caution about forgetting about Germany. They might be in a better position than they’ve been in a long while. They still have Kosovo, Sweden, Finland, and possibly the Gauls as potential invasion targets, and even if they continue to throw their troops against the rock that is Two Sicilies, they do appear to be finally gaining traction. They might be able to actually make some decent gains after forever. The bottom line is Germany still has monster stats, and somebody has to break through the European stalemate eventually… Well, unless Endgame resets the board.

Marajoara

Rosé:

So Marajoara has clearly not followed my advice and went on the warpath. Did it work out for them? ehh kinda? Like they got Temu Ko despite the city being a living fortress, good job, but they may lose their cities in the Pacific to Tahiti. Due to their actually existent naval tech they'll probably take them back in the near future, hell they might even take the Tahitian capital all things considered, only time will tell. I will still stand by the fact that Marajoara needs to peace out and core up but what they are doing now is clearly working.

The Chukchi

Vihreaa

Though the Chukchi this week may have fallen a spot, they are doing fine. They have been building up their strength and are surrounded by empires that they have advantages over, to both their east and west. With a strong navy, they could conquer many coastal cities in the Pacific.I have high hopes for the Chukchi, and I’m confident that they can deliver on those hopes.

Malacca

Rosé:

The mighty have finally fallen, although it's not entirely their fault in all honesty. Sure the lack of land units to take the Anangus and not securing Tongva are both blunders, and Chola is still a viable threat under proper strategy, but neither compete with the fact that Nigeria is just too damn good right now. Of course Malacca can always respond in kind to regain its number one spot, a swift Taiping invasion would probably achieve this so long as a coalition doesn't occur. Regardless, the fact that the reigning champion of the cylinder has finally been challenged should cause some alarm in Malacca, Malacca; the capital of Malacca.

Nigeria

Lacsirax: Shooting from their previous all-time high of 7 to the top spot, Nigeria are also the seventh nation to top our rankings thus far in CBRX2. How fitting that they achieved it by demolishing our most notorious #1, Burkina Faso. But this has been an incredible effort far longer than one mere episode, from dealing with Sankara’s expansions way back in Episode 2, then taking time out to successfully turtle their way into a science lead (and picking up a lot of wonders in the meantime). Their subsequent reawakening to conquer the Ptolemies - in a war we thought Zaire would take most spoils from, remember - cemented them as a real threat. but immediately turning around and capitulating their old rival Burkina Faso is what’s given them their gold medal here. Suddenly the Vandals look very vulnerable; suddenly Zaire looks less invincible, and suddenly the fate of an already weakened Middle East looks to be in Awolowo’s hands. Of the other continents, only small Australia and the still-much-weaker South America have a similar clear frontrunner - but Nigeria need no such qualifiers. A deserved #1 from a civ that has thus far played a perfect game

Power Rankings: Episode 14 – S2

Abstract

Teutonic Order

Hejaz

Jerusalem

VOC

Hawaii

Namibia

Neutral Nation

Burkina Faso

Yuan

Olmecs

Georgia

New Netherlands

The Republic of Anangu

Palmares

Tahiti

Spain

Laos

Chinook

Iceland

Japan

Kurdistan

Ptolemies

Bhutan

Tongva

Great Perm

Zanzibar

Sweden

Kosovo

Finland

Northern Yuan

Paraguay

Taiping

Two Sicilies

Lesotho

The Mapuche

The Mississippi

The Gauls

The Dene

Chola

PARG

Kulin

Punjab

Rio Grande

USSR

Zaire

Uzbekistan

The Vandals

Germany

Marajoara

The Chukchi

Malacca

Nigeria