Power Rankings: Episode 29 – S2

Lacsirax: On the one hand, I feel I should write a detailed and emotional eulogy for the dogged Neutral Nation, an empire that truly lived up to their name throughout the entire game, only to be gradually eroded by their neighbours, outlasting so-called greater powers in the process. But like. I don’t want to waste a solid ten minutes work on that when I’m still pretty convinced they’ll be resurrected again. So, er, let’s call a moratorium on this one. It might be the last we see of Tsouharrisen, or it might just be another little holiday away from the action before a triumphant return.

Msurdej  

With the Neutrals eliminated and the Gauls making peace, Finland finds itself at the bottom of the proverbial barrel. But good news Mannerheim, you have a new friend in the city state club! That’s literally all you can have going for you at the moment Finland fans.

Lacsirax: Hyping up an African civilization to be the unbeatable titans of the game, only to see them fall in the final furlong, is a seasons-old CBR tradition. But Nigeria’s sudden fall from grace might be the most dramatic of all of them. These guys monopolized the top of the rankings for weeks, and until pretty recently too! What happened?

Well, the problems all started with the reset. Nigeria had fantastic stats right from the off, but by chance they lacked something that civs like the Marajoara and the Chukchi had: free space. Most of the nearby territory was useless Sahara, and with the Vandals and Lesotho both settling confidently they found themselves a bit contained early on. Still, that wouldn’t really have been an issue had they used their impressive tech and production leads to their advantage… but beyond a two-sided takedown of Zaire with Lesotho, they failed to successfully engage their neighbours until it was far too late. Instead they went for the same strategy they used in the first cycle - expand peacefully and turtle up to the modern era. But on this much smaller map, that wasn’t nearly as viable an option. Still, they could definitely have held out longer if they hadn’t surrendered their ENTIRE EMPIRE to the Vandals in a peace treaty. Welcome to the one-city club, Awolowo. I wouldn’t count on your stay here being that long.

Random Strategy

It is the year 1916 AD. All of Galia is occupied by the Vandals. All? Not exactly... two small inland villages of indomitable Gauls still hold out against the invaders. And life is not easy for the Vandal legionnaires who garrison the surrounding cities. In fact, they have recently had to sue for peace due to how badly they were getting beaten up constantly. Now the Vandals are normally really scary; they are a large empire that control the entire mediterranean as well as multiple colonian territories; and they're not totally incompetent at land warfare either: only just this part they succesfully conquered Nigeria. How do the Gauls do it? The answer is simple: magic potion, brewed by the druid Panoramix. It gives the Gauls superhuman strength and is why they are gaining 2 ranks, placing them above Finland and Nigeria (who, unlike the Gauls, decided to concentrate on science and technology instead of magic potion and were therefore unable to resist against the Vandal invasion)

Cloudberg:

The Dene have been absolutely destroyed, decimated, rekt, whatever you want to call it. After losing several cities to the Chukchi in battle, they decided to give away six more in the peace treaty, apparently for fun, because to be honest they had fought the war to a stalemate and didn’t really need to do this. And looking at Rio Grande’s carpet immediately to the south, Thanadelthur is a sitting duck, and she might well be wearing pink and maroon sooner rather than later...

Altima

So Germany’s sorta low on good opportunities right now.The Bulge gives them a good avenue for an initial strike into Russia, but that would require fighting against a strong technological and industrial disadvantage. The naval assault on Rio isn’t going anywhere with the Vandals in the way. The Vandals are *probably* not an option (look, I don’t estimate the Vandals, over or under). They could maybe finish off the Gauls for an extra two cities, which while not nothing, is less than they need. Still, the utter collapse of two powers puts Germany up two ranks. Chaos is a ladder, and survival can help one climb it even if one never does anything for oneself.

Rosay: Kulin is a bit of an oddity right now. Like there's no feasibly way I could see them getting eliminated anytime soon, but they sure aren't pushing past Australia anytime soon. It appears that Kulin has realized this too and has flipped to a state of communist isolationism. I imagine that the nation will continue to be this way until either Malacca or Marajoara get 2000s era navies and send a giant fleet to flip the continent. Damn my top 2 prediction for them is not looking good.

Vihreaa

PARG continues to hover around the 9th place position, dropping one spot from last episode. This episode, they lost some ground in war with the USSR, but still retain almost all of their core. While PARG is in now way a weak nation, the growing consolidation of powers in the world puts them in a less than ideal position. With the undisputed most powerful nation to their east, and the consistently 5th strongest power to their west, PARG could likely be one of the first mid-tier powers that meet their end in this cycle 2.

Vihreaa

Lesotho has managed to fail upwards this week, rising three ranks to their all time highest rank of 8th, despite losing more cities to Malacca on their eastern coast. As another mid tier power, the window that exists for empires like Lesotho to gain a realistic chance to win the game is closing. With two top tier powers as their primary neighbors in the Vandals and Malacca, Lesotho will need to finesse their way into a more favorable position if they want a chance to win it all.

Lacsirax: Punjab’s a bit weird, isn’t it? Ever since that disastrous war with Malacca, we’ve sort of been waiting for the next climactic event in their history - either a god-tier comeback, reclaiming the Chola core and/or devastating PARG… or being finished off by Malacca or the Chukchi. Instead, they’ve engaged in a few potshot border wars, taking the odd city here and there, building lots of wonders and keeping a healthy regional lead in tech (they’re currently third worldwide behind the Marajoara and, believe it or not, Lesotho). Stasis usually results in a gradual slide in the rankings for major powers, but with so much drama unfolding across the Cylinder Ranjit finds himself with a little boost up to 7th, the highest they’ve ranked since the war with Malacca.

Altima

Once, so many weeks ago, I predicted problems for the Big River because of their border with continental champion Marajoara, that bordering a superpower would limit their avenues of expansion, their growth. They needed to best and eat the Dene, who themselves had a superpower checking their potential. That didn’t happen. Now, Rio borders both the Chukchi and Marajoara. Scraps of Dene still live, so if Rio can take them and Chukchi pulls a similar stunt to a certain other big blue-ish Asian conqueror of North America from last mark and just doesn’t build units or unpuppet their NA holdings, I could see Rio pulling something off.

Msurdej  

Soviet forces continue to march into PARG territory, albeit very slowly. The Urals hold the majority of the USSR army back, with the Soviets moving around and grabbing Samara. And while they’re interested in the east, Germany has been slowly making a line of citadels into the USSR. Wilhelm now has a straight line to Moscow, so Lenin will need to watch out in case a western sneak attack comes in.

Rosay: Malacca is in a bit of a sticky situation. While Malacca is totally in the position to make gains both into Kulin and Punjab, they have to play a nice balancing act of not alerting Chukchi that they are growing fast. At this stage of the game there are really only four nations that have even a fraction of a percent to win the game, those being Chukchi, Marajoara, the Vandals, and with a very slim chance if they fix their god awful production, Malacca. If Malacca does end up fixing its production issues however, the only way i could feasibly see them winning the game is a joint coalition on Chukchi that at the bare minimum involves Rio Grande and PARG or the USSR (depending on how their little conflict goes). Oh Malacca also got some colonies for a short time so theres that.

Random Strategy

Marajoara are going all in on science generation, having beelined research labs. With Nigeria going down, there is nobody left to contest them in the science race, so are now 7 techs ahead of 2nd place. They are currently the only civ of the entire cylinder to have working planes and battleships. Marajoara is no stranger to the science rush: after all, they conquered half of south america using that strategy in cycle 1. What they need to do is convert their science lead into territory. So that means building those planes and battleships and using them on either Lesotho or Rio Grande. With the Chukchi and Vandals becoming proper multi-continental superpowers (meaning more than just a few colonies on other continents), Marajoara need to do the same.

Rosay:Goddamn Vandals, that's some rapid expansion right there. During this part the Vandals made the formerly top placing and potential game winning Nigeria and turned them into a goddamn joke. While the number one pick is obviously by a large margin and that cannot really be contested, I, along with most of my fellow power rankers and power rankettes, feel that the Vandals are the clear runner ups. While i can obviously not speak for all of us I feel like there are two major reasons for this, the first of which being the Vandal's neighbors. All of the Vandals neighbors except for maybe the soviets really have no chance at standing the test of time, while Marajoara and Malacca clearly at least have some form of neighboring competition. The other being that the vandals are clearly acting on their advantageous position by using their massive army to bully their neighbors into becoming the one nation that probably wont beat, but at least will give Chukchi something to worry about at night if the Vandals expand with grace. Speaking of which:

Cloudberg:

And in #1 it’s, you guessed it, the Chukchi again, as their streak of total dominance continues unabated. At the moment, Chukchi’s stats are about as good as #2 Malacca and #3 Marajoara put together, which raises serious concerns about how the hell anyone is going to beat them. Of course, that’s only concerning if you’re not a Chukchi stan. In which case you’ll be thrilled with Lawtiliwadlin’s evisceration of the Dene this episode, which probably just made him the top power in North America as well as Asia.