Power Rankings: Episode 21 – S3

Emu

I didn't really expect any of the dynamic trio to take each other out, but Mori has to get their mid-game turnaround up and running somehow. Ainu performed exactly to expectations, to the point where my part 0 ranking for them is exactly where they died. They're no disappointment, but they're certainly no appointment either. North Honshu exile will do that to you.

Emu

I take back everything I have ever said about you Bulan pleasepleaseplease live. You know I didn't mean it, I enjoy writing about you every week. You even have carracks now! You can't go out now, just take out that one line infantry.

Emu

Good old Monty is bleeding maple syrup today, the green of the mountain republic wilting as FDR decides to clean up his borders. The capture of Burlington way back when precludes any hope of escape, and the green mountain boys are a few eras behind and in an indefensible position. The Neutrals held out around here for forever, but Ethan Allen doesn't have the same advantages as them. A historically awful AI and a fairly bad start mean there really wasn't much of a chance for these guys to start.

Emu

Central America is more interesting for who their death gives the advantage to than anything they actually did. They fumbled the entirety of Mexico to Mohave, and now their former lands are set to become a crucial chokepoint in the building Mohave/Muisca rivalry. At the beginning of the game, we all expected Muisca to melt away and CAm to become the first power to arise south of the border and north of the isthmus. No such luck this time. The atheist civ better start praying.

Msurdej:  Good news Thy, you don’t have to write about Egypt today! In other news, Egypt made peace with Vermont. Akhenaten really doesn’t have that much going on, and is still just waiting for the sweet release of death.

Altima

The Massagetae go up three ranks in the wake of their Massa-cre at the hands of Tuva and Perm, mostly for reasons of statistical noise. There’s not much Tomyris can do to improve her circumstances; at some point, someone, probably Afghanistan, is going to pull the plug and end her city-state life. Best she can do is make friendly and pray.

Altima

It’s a holiday in Cambodia,

Where the neighbors want your blood!

It’s a holiday in Cambodia,

Where you’ll do fuck and all!

Rosay:

You know what in a weird way Tetouan kinda lucked out. I mean yes Mali got everything they wanted out of the war, and Tetouan is never going to rise again, but You know what Tetouan has now? Stall time. Yup, ol teto is now going rump stall their way to the upper 40s and be, by technicality, a massive over performer. Course the Normans could finally use their giant navy and wipe Tetouan off the map but let’s just selectively forget about that.

JDT:

Welp, pack it up Vladimirbros, its joever. Once upon a time they were the plucky underdogs of eastern Europe, slowly growing and plucking away cities from much stronger opponents, scraping by with their teeth, grit and tactics. That time has now elapsed, as not only have they lost the lucrative city of Tver to Lithuanian incursions, they opted to throw their 2nd city of Suzdal away for peace. With their military all but dead and their prospects all but sealed,we will now unfortunately have to relegate them to the “rump” tier.

Reformer:

Level-up! Uganda makes its way to FORTY-TWO! That’s worth celebrating!

Cloudy:

As expected, Castile lost Burgos to Mali, and slightly less expected, they permanently ceded Oviedo to Ireland. The question now is whether Mali has what it takes to push further—and for that matter, whether Isabella feels any lingering influence from Maria the Mad and decides to give away a city in a peace treaty. You never know, Iberia does weird things to the brain.

Reformer:

Turkey is still prodding poor ol’ Olga. Not much else to report. No, wait. Vladimir, eager to spite poor ol’ Olga, has given away Suzdal and thus the primary border with Kyiv, to Lithuania. Last we saw, Lithuania was burning the city, but it is very unlikely they’ll burn it all the way down, meaning Kyiv is surrounded by far stronger powers, out of options quite decisively. Soooo……yeah.

Rosay:

Due to recent events, Ainu has been kicked out of the three stooges of East Asia. For the sake of prior contractual agreements, the show must go on until 07-06-2023. In order to fulfill these obligations the show runners would like to introduce audiences to the newest member of the stooge family: Ming.

Reformer:

What is going on? Why is Pandya basically dead? This isn’t what we were promised! This is bullshit! I demand a refund! I demand to see Civ 5’s manager! I will get you fired. I swear to all that is good and holy on this cylinder, you will never be included in a single AI game again. You’re done, buddy.

Cloudy:

For the first time in a while, North Korea is engaged in a major war as they throw everything they have against Mori Motonari. But where the war will go is anyone’s guess, and at the moment, it seems like the most likely outcome might be a stalemate. North Korean carracks are dealing damage to the Mori capital, but can they keep it up? We have our doubts. Furthermore, in the Sea of Japan to the north, the odds look a little more even. So there’s not much we can do except wait and see.

Cloudy:

In an unexpected coup, once left-for-dead Rio de la Plata has actually taken a city from the Inca, and between Tupac’s reluctance to commit his forces to the war and the city’s position isolated from the Inca core, it doesn’t seem like there’s an immediate threat of it being taken back. This has earned RDLP an impressive 6-rank rise, because suddenly they look a lot less screwed than some other civs with similar stats. It just remains to be seen how long this honeymoon will last.

JDT:

Sometimes pictures speak better than words.

Msurdej:  The good news is the Mori have all but eliminated the Ainu, their once northern neighbor relegated to a swordsman and a settler.The bad news is that North Korea is now attacking them.

Orange:

The war with Yugoslavia has taken hold of the presses, mothers and fathers solemnly watch as their sons march off to fight, church leaders give sermons attacking the Yugoslav invaders. The atmosphere in the Western European civ is bleak and dreary, drenched in the tears of those who have lost loved ones, drenched in the blood of those who were loved.

Oh wait hold on nevermind, the war hasn’t gone anywhere. A-D is just still chilling doing nothing while a civ fails to send units at them.

Msurdej:  The Maori had a pretty quiet part this time around. They're still in a rough spot, where their best chance of gains are either people dying around them, or being really good snipers.

Emu

Greenland overall lost this part, but it wasn't really by that much at all. They lost a distant outpost, Ireland bulked up some, and America will perhaps be a bigger threat after Windsor goes down, but all in all this was kind of an uneventful part for old Hansy.

Cloudy:

Kilwa has a decent fleet of frigates and privateers now, which is good. Now if only they would use it against the Zulus before they develop ships that are equally advanced (assuming they haven’t already...)

Reformer:

Eehhh…we saw them once on the edge of the screen this part. See image. But no worries, the whole continent is sleepy. Besides Mali. And we love Mali over here. Honestly, looking at Africa just makes me wish Egypt had held on. They were the only fun civ around and they died for it. They sacrificed themselves for our entertainment. While half the civs on the continent prefer to slowly wither away. Including Zulu. I hope you get killed in an entertaining way at least. Naval invasion from another continent sounds fun.

JDT:

“The Luck of the Irish,” is an idiom that's known to have multiple meanings. The phrase originated as a self-demeaning idiom, meant to show the poor fortune of the Irish since the middle ages ended. Then, as Irishmen immigrated into the USA and Irish symbols began disseminating across the nation, and as the nation began to bloom, it became an idiom wishing of great luck and good fortune. The Irish have shown the latter side of this idiom after showing the former side for 3 or so episodes, and have gotten some of the craziest runs of good fortune in a good while. They managed to get out of their wars with the USA and Castille without losing anything, and in fact gaining 2 cities, including a foothold into mainland Europe. With their military ambitions fulfilled, now seems to be a good time for Michael to step up and lick his wounds, because their remaining opportunities aren’t going to bend over backwards. Lets see if their precipitous fortune continues, and until then, they rise 3.

Leman:

Yugoslavia slips down a spot but mostly maintains the late twenties spot Yugoslavia has occupied for the past half-dozen parts or so. That’s mostly because, well, Yugoslavia hasn’t really done anything. They spent the last part defending against Mali in the Sahara, which honestly has more to do with Mali’s strange inability to find a melee unit, than Yugoslavia’s military prowess. That being said, what can Yugoslavia realistically do anyways? Attack Kyiv? A war with any of their other neighbors, Normans, Brandenburg, or Turkey, would obviously be an unmitigated disaster, so I guess that’s what we’ve got to hope for from Tito.

JDT:

The Wiradjuri rise one, as the feared Sunrise Invasion of the Inca failed to materialize thanks to hard-to-traverse borders, the incursion of the Argentines and said empire is forced to deal with growing revolution and discontentment, preventing much focus onto a front they’ve won an all-but-decisive victory in. Real talk, I personally believe the Wiradjuri still have teeth in the game if they peace out soon. All their stats, while hamstrung, are still serviceable. Their army is the only really lacking thing, and with some time that may be resolved. The question now remains - will Windradyne get some breathing room to actually do so? And will he actually make an army to break out?

Leman:

Chad is a disappointment. Yeah, 25th is not terrible, it's smack dab in the middle of the rankings now. But we had such high hopes for Chad. What I thought was an extremely powerful UA turned out to be a little too much for the AI to handle. Chad gets a bunch of population in all of its cities whenever it advances to a new era. The problem is, if you don’t have the happiness to support 20 new pops in one turn, you’re going to have a big problem on your hands. As a human player, it was easy to manage, but AI Chad is struggling. They spent all of last part, and most of this part starving and stagnating, to the point where Chad actually has less population than they had at the end of part 19. With Mali surging ahead and Angola still looking fine, I’m not loving Chad’s chances in the battle for Africa.

Leman:

Yemen is cool. They’ve got a solid seven city core, solid technological stats and a metric fuck ton of trade routes, and while none of that really pulls Yemen out of the middle of the pack, it gives me plenty of hope that Yemen can use those stats to take out some of its weaker neighbors or maybe get the jump on some of its stronger ones.

Unfortunately, it seems Yemen is content with simply throwing its navy at Pandya unsuccessfully. Shit.

Orange:

They’re doing it! They are doing the thing! Maybe this war won’t have been a waste afterall. I would also like to note that the Normans have twice the army as Chad, which means it's possible that even if they fail to take any cities, they may still get something out of the peace deal. Keep it up Robert.

Msurdej:

Chile is (still) probably the sleepiest of the South American at the moment. While Inca, RDLP, and Muisca are all at war, and Kayapo are busy building, Chile is (still) living up to its namesake and chilling. While biding their time may seem silly, if Allende can strike when Rio De La Plata has exhausted its army, they might be able to sweep their enemy’s holdings.

Cloudy:

With Indonesia now wielding the cylinder’s third largest army, Bengal has even more reason to be worried. We can’t help but feel that their clock may be ticking. On the other hand, if they attacked Pandya right now, they would absolutely crush them, so that’s a possibility at least.

Rosay:

I’m convinced that both Mail and Angola have money on the other one winning Africa because up until recently, both civs did absolutely nothing. Back in the early game Mali literally just sat there as the Angolan troops surrounded Mali and guaranteed a top position in the world, hell I was foolish enough to rank Angola #1 at some point. Now the exact opposite seems to be the case with Mali sliding through the one gap in the Angolan defenses to threaten a vulnerable Western Europe, allowing for a fast Castile capture, then Anglo Dutch, and oh look where we’re going. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on Angola for just letting this happen, after all they only had ONE HUNDRED TWENTY turns to damage Mali enough to not worry about this later. Honestly Angolan incompetence is one of the major reasons I’ve been the singular hype man for the Normans despite them being a B tier civ at best. If Angola does finally get off its ass next turn I’d say Botswana is the best target but I’m sure Angola will find a way to screw that up.

JDT:

The Muisca rise 2 this week, for reasons I am not fully aware of. They continue to stay on the down low, but with Kayapo bulking up and Centroamerica all but lost to the Mohave, their region is probably gonna get a helluvalotmore hectic. Better step up to the Mui-sic!

Cloudy:

Kokang peaced out with Afghanistan without losing any cities, but for a minute there it looked like Durrani was actually giving Olive Yang some trouble. And that’s really not a good sign, especially when Kokang is increasingly surrounded by civs that look like they’re doing better. Kokang has the stats of a top 20 civ, to be sure, but where do they go from here? Who do they attack to claw their way back into this? There isn’t a good answer, and that’s bad news.

Reformer:

America’s had nonstop activity in recent parts. A war with Cree, a war with Greenland, a war with Seminole, a war with Ireland, and now a war with Vermont. A neighbor after neighbor has felt American steel. And though these wars have a questionable track record, killing a city-state rump right on their border is something they seem capable of, at least. Vermont is not long for this world, but should still be a tougher nut to crack due to the horrid terrain around Windsor. But at least the city is in range of Frigates, even if Privateers cannot hit the city, so realistically, I’d give it a 100% chance of falling. Overall, America’s proactivity gives me hope that the depressed civ can fight through its problems and become an empire worthy of the strongest in North America, even if that is still a while away.

JDT:

Mali has gone down by one as they peter out in momentum a little bit. The war with Yugoslavia would be a rousing success… if they didn’t do the classic AI game move of not having any melee units to take the cities (those horsemen are actually ranged units!). Aside from that, their stats remain alright, and they are invading Castille with thus far little progress (though that strait crossing kinda hamstrings troop movement just a bit). On the bright side, they got a new exclave in Ireland with the conquest of Christenshab!

JDT:

Kayapo news: They’ve finally been overtaken in Science! The Turks now lead them by a 200 beaker margin, and are rapidly catching up in tech. However, as of now, they retain a 5 tech lead to the upstart Turks, and retain great cultural dominance across the cylinder. They’ve truly become irl Venice, with some better tech. And they still lead everyone else in science.

Oh, you wanted other news? Too bad, this is the Kayapo we’re talking about.

Rosay:

The Permians were having a really good part, taking a few cities off of Lithuania preparing to potentially take a couple more, then the final slides happened. In the closing slides of the part we learned that Tuva, who despite all flaws is still really freaking scary, is plotting against the Permians. Now as a guy who's run a couple of AI-only games I know very well that Tuva can pull the “umm actually plans can change” card when plotting future wars, but this then prompted the sim-runners to pan over to the Permian-Tuvan border and oh good lord. There are more rebels east of the Urals in that final slide, hell there's enough rebels in that slide to potentially take Pyras. Assuming for a second that Tuva's plots are acted on, there is a completely unguarded pathway into the Permian capital of Pelym, Pyras, Vilyada, and Beshbaliq, which constitutes basically the entire Permian core. The Permians better speed-build a military or else they could easily be rumped for real as soon as next part.

Altima

Lithuania drops another rank this part, as their war against Perm drags on in Perm’s favor and their Vladimiric conquests fail to measure up quite enough in the eyes of the rankers. Now, they are still actually in a pretty good position all told; Perm is under a happiness malus that may well distract them, and Tuva may well be sizing Perm up themselves, which would give Lithuania an in to reverse their losses with despite the current balance of force favoring the bears. Ultimately, the war’s still going on; we’ll have to see how things go in the coming part to say too much.

Reformer:

Imagine being a top 20 civ and having nothing redeeming about you. That’s pretty much all I have to say about them. All other civs on the continent are active and lively. Just stop taking space already.

Altima

A quiet buildup

The seas are silent for now.

Please do something again.

Reformer:

Timor was quiet for most of the part, but closer to the end sent a real banger our way: A war with Mohave! Though for now this is just a war for some Pacific islands, remind yourself that Mohave has four cities on the Hawaiian islands, and those are actually worth something. We can expect the two maritime empires to PROPERLY clash next part, and we’ll see if this is just a waste of lives or if Timor can actually move into the Mohave sphere of influence. Just don’t leave your backside open for too long, Suharto’s a bloodthirsty man.

Leman:

Han is holding on to this top ten spot just barely. While their stats are excellent, Han has the small problem that many of their neighbors are a little more excellent, like Afghanistan, Gokturks, and Tuva. Meaning that Han will be walking on eggshells for a little while, as a war with any of those civilizations will be an absolute disaster. That being said, Han has no shortage of expansion opportunities, with the three idiots to Han’s east (North Korea, Ming, and Mori), as well as a few exclaves in central Asia that Han could easily snap up.

Orange:

LET’S GO MOHAVE FUCK EM UP! YOU’RE THE BEST!

In a less biased write up, Mohave is sitting nice. The happiness issues seem to be fixed (now up to 0), they are finally going after Central America and look to pick up both cities pretty quickly, they still hold a tech lead over Cree (54-52), and their science is only beaten by Turkey and Kayapo. However, Cree now has a larger army and with their recently conquered cities getting set up they have a solid production lead, luckily Mohave has a pretty easy defense in the north and Cree is also fighting America, so it’s still up in the air for now.

Altima

Through sheer force of indifference, the Inca have lost San Salvador to an army that includes composite bowmen. Meanwhile, in the west, the Australian front has stagnated owing to the distance involved and attrition. Still, the Inca are a powerful civ, worthy of the top ten; their drop has more to do with their cessation of immediate growth than any real loss of power. San Salvador’s fall is a pointless, stupid, avoidable loss, but an ultimately inconsequential one; they still have a massive empire with few relevant neighbors to worry about.

Leman:

Brandenburg waffles around in the middle of the top ten, something that the powerful German juggernaut is all too used to at this moment. While Brandenburg’s stats are pretty solid, they didn’t improve quite as much as some of its fellow top tiers, like Turkey, Afghanistan or Tuva, which caused Brandenburg to slide down to sixth. Make no mistake, Brandenburg is still phenomenal.

Orange:

Qaghan peaces out with the Cree too early in my opinion, they could’ve had some more gains in Alaska while preventing Cree from being able to build up much of a defensive force. But now, next time they go after Cree there will be many ships waiting for them. Qaghan might want to direct his sights elsewhere for now, perhaps he could finish off North Korea and Mori.

Orange:

FUCK THE CREE GO MOHAVE FIGHTING THE MOHAVE IS GONNA MAKE POUNDMAKER WISH FOR A NUCLEAR WINTER

Look it's not my fault that someone gave the staunch anti-Cree pro-Mohave PR the Cree write up. Cree is probably gonna be fine, they have enough production. Sadly.

Cloudy:

Turns out all it takes for Afghanistan to rise to third is to wake up for just long enough to idly swat a neighboring rump state. Afghanistan is barely even aware that it’s at war with Khazaria, but even so, the tech difference between them is so large that Afghanistan could take them out by just bashing one melee unit at a time into the city. If they succeed, it will be the first city Afghanistan has actually captured by military means so far this season. Which is honestly kind of incredible, and not in a good way, given their size and stats. I mean damn.

Msurdej:  

A spectre is haunting the cylinder – the spectre of communism. All the powers of the cylinder have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Normans and Pandyans, Metuktire and Donduk, Incan Radicals and Brandenburg police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all major powers to be itself a power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole cylinder, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in Turkey and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in all languages.- Manifesto of the Turkish Communist Party by Mustafa Kemal Araturk

Cloudy:

Tuva retains its #1 ranking in episode 21, now with less deviation than before, as the news from Agent Semiramis spurs the rankers’ hopes that they might continue on the path of conquest. Indeed, if the spy’s findings are accurate, then Tuva is plotting to attack the Permians, which would be devastating for the latter and excellent for Tuva. Donduk Kuular currently has by far the largest army on the cylinder, and the Permians are looking spent, with many of the units they have left away fighting Lithuania west of the Urals. At home, their domestic situation is increasingly unstable, as large groups of organized rebels are spawning outside Pyras. So in our opinion, the time is now. If Tuva attacks the Permians in episode 22, they will show us that they continue to deserve the top spot.