Power Rankings: Episode 31 – S3

Altima

And thus falls Kyivan Rus’ into the long night. They did not go gently; for centuries, they held off Turkish assault after assault, completely stalemating the current #2 civ at the shores. But that could never last; they lacked the cities to build the science to keep pace with Turkish technological advances. Their home region is too dense, too competitive. The Turks eventually broke through, landships blasting through cavaliers, frigates destroying earthenworks. At that point, all that they could do was sue for peace and hope the Turks would busy themselves elsewhere, which hey, they did for a bit. But eventually, the Turks returned to finish the job. And so, having outlasted other, stronger civs, Kyiv goes into that long night.

Rosay:

Due to a mix of bad start location and REALLY bad play, Ireland has been eliminated. While they never really had a chance to be, say, a top ten power, getting slowly bodied by everyone really didn’t help their case. Lets real quick go to everyone who took a piece off of Ireland at some point: Brandenburg, Understandable; Anglo-Dutch, really thrived when Brandenburg decided to play incompetently but Ireland could have taken the mainland at least for a little bit; America and Greenland, on the opposite side of the map and really had no right to be there. But in order to avoid making the longest sentence in PR history I wanted to highlight one civ in particular that took land off of Ireland: Castile. Castile has been nothing but a joke this entire game, and not like a “wow you just can’t take ‘em down” joke like Cambodia, I mean like throughout every single part of this cycle so far, Castile has had no redeeming moments except for taking out small portions of Ireland, that should tell you the incompetency we’re dealing with here. Could they have won? Probably not the British isles is kinda a screwed start. Could they have at least been relevant? Fuck yes they could’ve been.

Orange:

And with this, we must bid farewell to the civ who stood atop the Part 0 rankings. There were so many hopes and dreams for you Jose, and you achieved none of them. The only time you did well was that time when the Inca attacked you and you took two cities off them, good job there, terrible job everywhere else. Pour one out for the one who had disappointed us so hard.

Leman:

I think Kilwa failed to kill Zulu. Isn’t that cool?  Was that this part or last part?

Altima:

North Korea still exists. Other people have ceased to exist. Thus, North Korea rises commensurately to the number of people who have ceased to exist. End recording.

JDT:

Tetouan has successfully cheated death by peacing out with the Normans and pestering Castille before they can move in. Feisty bastards.

Rosay:

Castile is still stuck except now Anglo Dutch can now be considered a “threat” to places not named Castile. Same goes for Mali being a threat.

Emu:

I'm going to make a bold prediction here: Cambodia will make it to Total War. I know, I know. But every single one of their contemporaries in rumpdom are dead at this point, who's to say they won't outlast this new generation too?

Cloudy:

And just like that, Chile is the latest civ to join the city-state club. Norodom Sihanouk welcomes Allende to the exclusive conference: “It’s not that bad,” he says. “After all, you could be dead.”

And that’s Chile’s situation right now: not dead, but the game’s over.

CelestialDalek:

Uganda is still around. Quite unfortunate, really. It would probably be funny if Timor killed them. It would probably be funny if anybody killed them. They have the same problem as Cambodia: really needing to die, but never hurrying up and dying. Please die faster, Uganda. You only make us rankers need to write up more paragraphs about how you and other rumps are inevitably going to die, some day, when another civ gets up off its ass and murders you. Toiling over you is a waste of time, Uganda. You are a waste of time for the army that eventually kills you.

Emu:

In a cruel twist of fate, the former winner-by-default of the Australian continent is banished to the same islands they conquered at the beginning of this war. Really, I can't say they don't deserve it. Wiradjuri is the most incompetent Eastralian civ to date, and they absolutely do not deserve to rule an entire continent just for being better than Yolngu. I think we're all glad that Timor has come in to sweep aside this absolute nothing of a great power.

Leman:

Did you know Indonesia has more troops than every city state combined? 17,415 vs 16,253. Very cool.

Emu:

Chad has escaped total annihilation, but they seem destined to live the rest of their days as a buffer between the Angolan aggressors and the Turkish titans. Once a top contender in the continent that still doesn't contain a wealth of great powers, now Deby sits waiting to die like an old Klingon. The most interesting thing he can do at this point is die to Mali instead of his much stronger northern and southern neighbors.

Altima:

Kilwa once again declares war upon their Zulu technically-neighbors. Unfortunately, as stands it’s just as pointless as the prior ones as they refuse to actually embark an expeditionary force to finish the job. Thus, they sit stagnant at 25, with no change in rankings.

Msurdej:

If you had asked me a few parts ago if I thought that Greenland or the Anglo-Dutch would have taken out Ireland, I would’ve bet on Greenland. And I would’ve been wrong. Hans gets Tralee as a consolation though. This puts Greenland in a tenuous position, one they’ll be hard pressed to get out of.

CelestialDalek:

We all had fun with Tito’s plucky story about taking on Brandenburg, but after that disastrous peace deal a few parts ago, it looks like it’s all Josipver for him. With the tech difference more pronounced now that Brandenburg has time to upgrade units, it looks unlikely he can pull off capturing Potsdam again, so his best hope is against the Normans. This *could* work. But with the Turks on the horizon, Tito will need to be on his diplomatic peak to avoid getting wiped out.

Orange:

William III should be proud of himself for the empire he has, the Anglo-Dutch were ranked 60th in the first power ranking and here they are taking out Ireland and almost uniting the Isles. But now comes the harder part, as all of William’s weak neighbors are gone he has to figure out how to keep his little empire alive. I would say step one would be to start building up a carpet, the amount of units there currently is way too small. Next, attacking America or Greenland is probably their best bet. America just has the outpost of Leon and is currently struggling in a war already, but the city is hard to get to and has quite a number of units around it, but nothing that can’t be wiped away. Greenland has both Oviedo and Tralee available and taking them would give A-D a much needed Atlantic passage, but Greenland isn’t distracted and can focus their whole force on A-D, albeit a force that is 1/3rd the size of A-D’s. The time is now willy, keep up the momentum or you’re toast.

Msurdej:

Yemen loses three ranks for becoming an ultranationalist and adopting fascism. That, and being boring. Them’s the rules folks.

Leman:

Gokturks are well, well past their prime now, to the point where it’s kind of sad. There was a brief resurgence a few parts ago when Gokturks conquered most of the Mori, but now they kind of feel like they’re waiting for death. Like what’s the plan for Gokturks? Invading Cree? Would that even work?

Wrong! That’s the wrong answer! The answer is Gokturks need to invade Tuva. Now. For the first time in a while Gokturks have more military than their eastern neighbor. Yes, they’re behind two techs and 900 production, and yes, a good chunk of that Gokturk military is locked up in their Pacific fleet, but this is probably the actual last opportunity Gokturks are getting unit Arapaho goes after Cree of Tuva and Han declare on each other. The longer Gokturks wait, the large the gap between them and their neighbors gets.

MSurdej:

Guiscard failed again to take Toledo this week, though I remain unconvinced the Normas can actually take the city. Not because they aren’t stronger than their opponents, but because the geography and politics of the region is a snarl of border gore and mistrust. But with Angola growing ever stronger, perhaps the Normans should focus on southern fortifications.

CelestialDalek:

Want some uncomfortable news? Muisca has more military than Kayapo. Obviously this isn’t to say that Muisca could take them in a war, but based on the Muisca-Kayapo war record, I think Kayapo’s military would probably still be fucking around enjoying the beaches of Argentina. But I will take every chance to diss Kayapo that I can get. A lot of this military strength comes from their navy, so their best hope for now would probably be to eat America’s Caribbean holdings, build a carpet, and then take on Kayapo again, and all of the other rankers would finally see my point that Kayapo is still overrated. I’ll get to explain why I think this some day when I finally get the Kayapo slide, but I guess the delusional ranting about how Muisca could in an alternate universe take them on is enough. There’s just not much else to say about them.

Orange:

What a fucking part holy shit. FDR woke up and decided “Fuck that” to Arapaho’s invasion and pushed them back, even taking an originally Arapaho city. I don’t think anyone expected that counterattack, we all thought America was dead meat but here they are, ending the part with the same borders they started the part with. That takes some serious skill.

But now for the less positive side of this write up: America is 5 techs behind, has less than half the production, and less than 1/5th the military. The only saving grace there is that Arapaho’s military score is largely nukes (which it seems they spent the part building instead of units), and the Appalachian mountains still stand as a border. FDR’s counterattack force has been destroyed and he will need to rebuild quickly before Arapaho’s overwhelming advantage catches up to him and moves past the mountains.

Rosay:

I feel like bengal gatekeeps what civs can be considered “passable” and what civs are failing. Of course there are always gray areas, but as a rule of thumb, if you can’t beat bengal, you really can’t have any game impact at this stage of the game. As for Bengal themselves, well they have a good natural position and can still take out Indonesia but they’re really just reliant on one of their neighbors failing in a war then becoming the kingmaker of said war so long as one of the participants is Timor Leste.

Leman:

I’m writing this right after writing the Gokturk writeup and honestly I feel like Lithuania is in the same boat as the Gokturks. They’re running out of time, falling behind, and Tuva is shockingly weak at this point so Gedimidas probably should jump on the opportunity before Turkey or Brandenburg kill him.

Or he could send more armies to kill random city states. Lithuania is at war with Tetouan, so you know.

JDT:

Kokang drops by 5 as they unfortunately stumbled into a threat just as dangerous as the Han - the Mohave. While the Mohave aren’t as active or geographically well-positioned as the Han, they are currently taking out Kokangs pacific exclaves with impunity, and have way more planes, bombs and boats to give a loving into Yang's arms. Kokang has a very strong statline, sure, but if Olive doesn’t thread carefully, they might just find themselves being handed a can of whoopass.

JDT:

Mali rises by one as Kokang falls. They are in a similar spot with practically the last 5 civs. If they wake up and choose violence, they may just be able to be relevant. Their statline is frankly, fairly decent! Good tech, good army, good production, it’s all going well! The issue is just… well… where to go from there? Angola, Chad, the Normans and Castille all show promise, but will they be enough with the Turks and Timorese breathing down your neck, and the first one trying to heave its own weight around as well? Only time may tell.

Msurdej:

Cree did next to nothing in this part, their rank only increasing with how much Kokang is dropping. Unlike Mali though, Pundmaker has much fewer options. Where Mali could gain some land from Castile, Tetouan and even Angola and the Normans, Cree is far more boxed in. The Gokturks are really their best bet, and even that is a hard sell. Their last war with Araphao was a failure, and the Mohave still have enough strength to deal with them. The Cree’s only real shot is a Mohave-Arapaho war, taking sides with the winning team, and gaining the lion’s share of the rewards. Possible? Yes. Likely? No.

Cloudy:

Afghanistan looks decent on paper, until you look at them in real life. Their army is much too small to have any hope of fending off Turkey, and they would probably struggle against Bengal. Their opportunities for expansion are limited or non-existent, and one can’t help but feel that all that land sporting Afghan colors is just waiting for someone else to roll over it.

Leman:

Brandenburg is doing wellish. They’re kind of in a weird spot. Like their stats aren’t bad but none of them are great? Like their military, production, and tech are all solid but a notch behind the top players like Mohave, Turkey, and Timor-Leste. Then at the same time, Branden’s stats absolutely dwarf all of their neighbors. Anglo-Dutch, Greenland, Lithuania, Normans, Yugoslavia, - in theory, Brandenburg could flatten any of them in an instant. But then again, the last time Brandenburg went to war with one of its neighbors, they lost two core cities and only got them back in a peace deal. Then there’s the economy situation: Brandenburg is gonna be broke in 13 turns and that might turn off their science.

I dunno, Brandenburg confuses me. If they point that navy at the Anglo-Dutch next part I’d have more confidence in them, but if they continue to play the way they’re playing I wouldn’t be surprised if they turned into a Turkish speed bump in a couple episodes.

Orange:

Angola pushes their way into the top 10 for the first time since Part 5. They got 5 cities out of Chad, literally taking half the country. Angola finally stands as the premier civ of Africa rather than just one smaller power, but that still doesn’t put them near the super powers. They still are 20 techs behind the Mohave and 10-15 behind the other superpowers, in addition they are at 73 compared to their rival Mali’s 80. Mali is going to be the ultimate test for Savimbi, can he beat up his sleepy western rival or will he succumb to his technological backwardness and be doomed to lose the continent?

Emu:

Tuva looks to be falling victim to a bad case of that old Siberian disease: stagnation. Their empire looks just as impressive as it once did territorially, even if recent developments mean its size is no longer unique on the Cylinder, but they're starting to fall badly behind the top powers in stats, with a military smaller than famously-empty Kayapo and equivalent tech levels to the just-above-rump tiers like Muisca or the Anglo-Dutch. Not all is yet lost, though; they're indisputably stronger than all their neighbors except Turkey, and even they would be fighting far from their core. It's certainly possible they go conquering soon and rise back to their former glory, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Altima

After a whole part of vicious warfare, Arapaho finally winds up back where they started the part; knocking down Apopka and holding the north. Certainly, their American adversaries are more spent now, their counter-offensive having failed and cost them severely in manpower, but the lost time and energy while other powers continue rising has cost the Arapaho significant confidence in the eyes of many PRs, knocking them down four ranks. They may well regain some of that ground depending on how the coming part favors them; we’ll just have to see.

Cloudy:

Han regains two places after an episode of intense unit building. Han now has one of the world’s largest militaries, and in fact the largest conventional force, minus nuclear weapons. Large contingents of mobile SAMs and rocket artillery sprawl across the landscape, and the only question is who Wu will decide to use them against. Clearly the Kokang debacle has scared him into drastically increased military spending—but will he use it? At the moment, any of Han’s neighbors could be ripe for the taking.

Leman

Kayapo finishes up cleaning up Chile and as an afterthought decides to kill off Rio de la Plata. Something they honestly should have done two parts ago, but hey, turtles are slow. Kayapo is now up to 28 cities (tied for fifth with Afghanistan!), back up to second in population as all those conquests come online and has gained 1000 effective science in the last episode, putting them at third! See! Slow and steady does win the race! Kayapo’s great! Inca sucks!

I will say that there is one thing that does make me, and the rest of the PRs, nervous for Kayapo and that’s the military manpower, especially compared to Inca. Kayapo is still on 190k which is a lot smaller than Inca’s. I know Kayapo’s style is building a few units and killing someone three eras behind but that doesn’t work against Inca or any other civ that’s on tech parity. Inca has triple the military. And while I think most of that is in navy and they should be equally matched on land, Kayapo’s got a lot of new Pacific coast it needs to fortify.

But Kayapo has time to build some units, defend from Inca, and then murder Muisca or something.

Cloudy:

The Inca are back in the top 4 after a 10 episode absence, thanks to their excellent stats and commendable militarization, with a land army having appeared seemingly out of nowhere in territories that were once criticized as too empty. With the forces Tupac has in place, it’s hard to see Kayapo kicking him off the continent any time soon, and if war were to break out between them right this instant, the Inca would probably win, which is right where they want to be. The question is: can they keep it that way?

Leman

Mohave vs Kokang is not really a war I really thought about being very impactful, but it really is. Mohave is kind of monstering Kokang, despite the distance. Our tech leader is bringing future-worlds ships to the battlefield and they are paying off quite well as Mohave captures several of Kokang’s border islands, and honestly, I’m not really sure if Kokang can stop them.

CelestialDalek:

Turkey retains 2nd place with much more unanimity among the rankers than last week. They’re still as powerful as ever, with massive amounts of planes, nukes, and plenty of land weapons. They can flex their muscles over absolutely anybody, but the Kyivan Rus’? Really? There’s better options, Ataturk. Any other civ you border would completely collapse at your fingertips into a fine dust as your planes rage along the skies, bombing their cities into oblivion as a horde of units follows. Lithuania or Yugoslavia would fold like a stack of cards, Afghanistan and Tuva are no slouches but would still get murdered, and Chad is just a walking blob of artillery after their war. The sky is absolutely the limit, and Turkey just needs Timor’s streak of bloodthirstiness to claw back the top spot.

Cloudy:

For the first time, Timor-Leste retains the top spot following Xanana Gusmão’s brutal smackdown of Wiradjuri. Although he didn’t prosecute the war all the way to an elimination, he did kick Wiradjuri off Australia and gained several cities in the peace treaty, enough to make Timor the largest civ in the game by number of cities. Timor’s stats dominance in other areas is equally impressive, with the most production on the cylinder by far, even with most of their Australian cities only just beginning to come online. Timor-Leste has in fact yet to reach its current potential, which is a really scary thought given how strong they are already, but it’s obvious that for our boys in red, the sky's the limit.