Power Rankings: Episode 36

Uganda

Reformer:

This fucking civ. This absolute pitiful burden of a civ! I know we had civs like Comanche and Qocho that actively sent their first settlers to certain death and then barely built more, and civs like Assyria and Anglo-Norse that barely stood a chance, but Uganda was simply stagnation incarnate, never achieving anything beyond taking up space and preventing better civs from having a chance. Anger and wrath are justified! May I never have to be reminded of you and your failure ever again! May your presence tarnish this plane of existence nevermore! The cylinder is a better place without the stain that is you, and at last we will be able to move on, to war un-ending, which is still preferable to a world that involves you meandering about, lumbering in your catatonic, half-awake state, achieving nothing and plaguing even those near you with your wretched degeneracy.

Anyway, Kilwa was my favorite civ at the start of the season. Completely unrelated.

Lithuania

Altima:

Lithuania finally dies for real. Their empire was 90% based on vultury, on picking off those crippled by greater powers, but it was an empire nonetheless, and vultury is no less honest than any other act of murder. And hey, their survival as one of the very same corpses they fed on is poetry amplified by the bizarre circumstance that led to it; you couldn’t write that shit. Welcome to the sub, Gedimas.

Cree

Altima:

Cree’s fucked, yo. Not necessarily immediately, though. They may linger on for surprisingly long, the remoteness of their grave serving to let them outlast more accessible rumps like Lithuania, and maybe even full civs like Kokang. Last run’s USSR survived surprisingly long after their evisceration for similar reasons; their Norwegian holdouts were remote enough to provide a form of protection. They could also just accidentally die from Gok boats. Who knows!

Normans

Reformer:

Well that’s not a pretty situation you’ve gotten yourself into is it. No sir. But a handful of scattered cities remain of the former Mediterranean power, most of these cities originally founded by other civs. Honestly, though it may be sad, I think it’s a fun state to end up in. Or maybe funny is more accurate. Either way. At the start of the season, Normans were one of the civs I was PARTICULARLY invested in, and though they didn’t really do much besides be silly every now and then, I’m glad they were in. They were a fun lil Mediterranean power, and you know what? Sometimes that’s all I can ask for. It might be an ignoble end, but it could’ve been much, much worse.

Greenland

Emu:

Greenland is kind of a strange artifact of how this season has gone. They were always a middling civ, but they somehow managed to just.... slip under the radar. Maybe it's something to do with the fact that no one really bothered with an Atlantic navy this game, maybe Hans was just hiring god-tier diplomats, but either way, Greenland has made it far further than they have any right to. I'm not really sure if congratulations are in order, but it won't matter much before too long, will it?

Yugoslavia

Rosay:

There are a lot of civs screwed over by total war and Yugoslavia is probably one of them. Now it’s not a 100% locked in one part doomsday moment given that they fought off Brandenburg rather efficiently, but now they need to finally worry about an actually competent civ, Turkey. Now civ ais really suck at multitasking but given the immediate threat Turkey poses to Tito, gg man you’re bout to die.

Chad

Msurdej: Chad’s done well to make it to Total War, but their time is coming to a close.Their army can’t stand up to Yemen, Angola AND Turkey. Sure Angola’s nearby cities don’t have too much defense around them, but those mechs and defenses will be hard for Idriss Deby to crack, especially while Chad is being invaded. He may not have the win,or where we predicted he’d be in Part 0, but Chad gave a good performance.

America

Reformer:

Still in the top 20 baby! And if our predictions are anything to go by, it’s where their final resting place will be, too! But it’s close. Any of the other rumps surviving a bit longer than expected could kick America out of the top 20. That would be awfully embarrassing at this point. Pretty much just pray that Arapaho is feeling like kicking Mohave out of North America first and foremost. That should do it. As for being memorable, well…they were pretty unhappy for most of the game until they became fascist, which is when they became one of the happiest civs on the cylinder. Proof that fascism works if I’ve ever seen one.

Castile

Msurdej:

With total War starting, Castile finds itself in a peculiar position in Antarctica. Most units cannot reach Burgos, enshrined by ice as it is. However, a few units, like Nexuses and XCOMs are able to. Castile’s days are numbered, but out of the many rumps, they MIGHT have the longest lifespan due to how hard it would be to kill them.

Anglo-Dutch

JDT:

The Anglo-Dutch did well. Unfortunately, they did not do well enough. Their core is small and vulnerable. Their tech is pretty backwards. They are unhappy and bankrupt. Their army is backwards and relatively miniscule. The one good thing is that their neighbours are kinda shit and will probably be distracted themselves. Mali has Angola, Brandenburg has Turkey, the Arapaho… don’t really care and they’re a big threat but yeah. And they are better than the last few civs, who are all but guaranteed to die frame one. So yeah, next narrator, get the eulogy ready.

Muisca

Orange:

Poor Muisca, you could’ve been a lot better but alas, you didn’t do shit when you had the chance. Currently Muisca’s best chance at getting as highly ranked as they can is to try and hope the Mohave and Kayapo don’t invade them too hard while they can take stuff from America before America gets completely run over by others. Look, things aren’t looking good when you’re this far behind, they best hope they can stay out of focus for as long as possible.

Gokturks

Leman:

So. Total war is here. Gokturks are the, in my opinion, the weakest civ that could, maybe, potentially, possibly, survive to a peace treaty. Whatever civ that was just before Gokturks, they’re screwed. Dead. Gone. Write a eulogy. But Gokturks, maaaaaybe they’ll survive? I don’t think they will, but I think they could.

This is what I think is going to go down. I think first the Gokturks are gonna kill the Cree. I think at the onset of total war Gokturks are going to get quickly overwhelmed by Tuva and especially Han are gonna rush a million units into Gokturk territory, while Gokturk’s own fairly sizeable army is going to slow them down, I don’t think Gokturks have a chance. However, I’m not sure if Han and Tuva are going to be able to finish Gokturks off. I think Han and Tuva will have trouble taking on all of Gokturk’s islands in the north Pacific. Neither Han or Tuva have much of a navy and I think they’ll run out of military before they can take all these islands.

I think at the same time Mohave and Arapaho will be moving in. However, because both North Americans have a really short border with Gokturks I think the AI will prioritize the longer borders the two civs have with each other. That being said I don’t think Gokturks will have any ability to resist the North American powers, especially if Tuva and Han crush them earlier, and I expect one of the two to finish Gokturks off. Probably Arapaho.

I think this might take a little while, so I think there is a sliiiiiiight possibility that maybe Gokturks are able to peace out before Arapaho kills them, but I wouldn’t bet on it. In fact, I think it’s more likely that maybe Arapaho opens total war by dropping 40 nukes in Gokturk territory. Or Han and Tuva just kill Gokturks outright. Or maybe Turkey nukes Tuva to the stone age and Gokturk reverse sweeps. I’d like that.

Kokang

Altima:

Good news for the Kokang Krew: the Han no longer have an absurdly overkill amount of military score! Bad news for the Kokang Krew: the Han still have twice the military score they do. Kokang may well limp out of this alive, but sandwiched between Han and whichever of Afghanistan and Bengal comes out intact, they don’t look great. Best bet: stall out and hope they can last long enough that Han’s tech deficit comes to bite them in the ass. And also pray that Timor Leste is too busy with the Inca to come in with a steel chair.

Bengal

Leman:

I hoped my favorite civilization would have had a more commanding position when total war hit. Instead, on the eve of total war, Bengal joins a small cohort of civs that are screwed, but not immediately screwed. They managed to hop ahead of Kokang, almost solely on the fact that Kokang is closer to Timor-Leste and Hand and therefore, probably going to die first. Bengal’s larger army and distance from the superpowers probably means that, unless Afghanistan goes nuts (and I believe in Afghanistan) Bengal is probably going to survive until Timor-Leste comes knocking. Or maybe they can get a peace treaty first. Or maybe they can smash Afghanistan. Probably not, but I can hope.

Yemen

CelestialDalek:

Thanks to a whole game of doing nothing but accruing science and navally picking off African rumps, Yemen finally reaches total war in an ok position. The good news is that they have XCOMs, which no other civs are currently fielding. This will be very good for when they rip into the neck of Angola. The bad news is that they border Turkey, who have enough military to nuke Yemen six feet under. They’ll need to play catch-up, taking enough Angolan cities to outpace the Turkish giant lumbering towards them. Unfortunately for them, they can’t play that game forever. However, I think that’s for the better, because it would be really disappointing if a civ that was even more passive than Kayapo managed to win.

Kayapo

Emu:

Kayapo is playing a different game than everyone except maybe Castile. Raoni doesn't really seem to care about his chances in total war, instead choosing to play a very successful game of Simcity to pass the time. And you know what? I respect that. The Kayapo know they're in a simulation and are either fatalistically doing what they want with it to stick it to us or furiously researching in order to break out and throttle a half-dozen trans women on a strange spherical world for doing this to them. When they manage either goal, let it be known that I supported them all the way.

Afghanistan

CelestialDalek:

Afghanistan got out of their war with Tuva way too easily. Come on, Donduk, you should have gone for more cities! This war really shows Afghanistan’s limitations, and Bengal looks to outnumber them right now as well as flank them due to open borders. Tuva can strike the hammer down again, so can Han, so can Turkey. Afghanistan borders many of the best civs in the game, and lucky for them they have enough production to keep up for some time. But ultimately, I don’t think that’ll be enough, and neither do the rest of the rankers.

Angola

Cloudy:

Going into total war, Angola is in trouble. They have control over the lion’s share of Africa, but probably not for long, given that they have almost no units to speak of. On their various borders, they’re outnumbered by Mali, Yemen, and even Chad, and unless they turn things around shockingly fast, various civs might take too much of their territory for Savimbi’s superior production to turn things around. His number one priority is going to be not letting that happen.

Brandenburg

Cloudy:

Brandenburg’s position is not exactly enviable. They have a respectable army, but it’s nothing compared to Turkey, which has much more advanced units, dozens of planes stacked on the border, and cities with defense strengths north of 250. At the same time, Brandenburg will be distracted handling a large number of stray units in and around its territory, belonging to various civs including Greenland and Tuva. Furthermore, if Brandenburg starts to collapse, then other, smaller civs might try to get in on the action and pick up some of the pieces, which could make things even worse.

Or Brandenburg could surprise us, cleaning house in Europe and holding off Turkey. We’ll see. But I’m not holding my breath.

Han

Msurdej: On the Eve of Total War, Wu has a good place to be. With one of the strongest armies on the cylinder (2nd if we don’t count nukes), Han can give a good push into neighbors like the Mohave and Kokang. They have two big problems they must solve though if they want to survive. The first is Tuva, their northern neighbor with a larger army and production base. The second is their smaller production base, which could lead to problems with reinforcing their army once it starts to become ragged. With all that in mind, expect to see a lot of Han shots next episode.

Mali

Orange:

Mali continues to climb higher despite doing nothing as their build up of tech and units shows some promise. I’m still holding out on them doing anything, but it’s safe to say they are in a much stronger position than Angola despite all the work Angola has put into expanding in recent parts (seriously Mali took Tetouan barely after failing so much while Angola conquered a ton from the Normans, Chad, Uganda, Kilwa, Botswana, and the Zulu, and yet Mali has better stats still in everything but number of cities and degree of bankruptcy). If they can start off strong and just immediately push into Angola, then they might actually have a shot, but uh, still 24 techs til the end of the tech tree and making 0 science…

Mohave

Rosay:

There’s a lot of differing opinions on how Mohave is going to do in the upcoming total war to end all wars but if you want my two cents, Mohave is definitely getting the short end of the stick here. Arapaho has repeatedly proven that they’re not to be messed with and now that Cree is basically dead and America and Greenland are not issues, all of their energy is going to be focused on Mohave. Now the mountains do protect Mohave a little bit and an empire as large as them isn’t falling overnight, but I fail to see a win condition for them against their main rival let alone winning the game. And as always, I am more than willing to be proven wrong.

Tuva

Emu:

Tuva, Tuva, Tuva. You had it all, but you've barely done anything with it since the dismembering of Perm. Tuva is sure to do fairly well in Total War, given Turkey is their only neighbor that's at all threatening, but at this point they've squandered their advantage over everyone else, and with it their best chance at winning it all.

Turkey

JDT:

Turkey enters total war in 4th, the lowest of the ones that we have reasonable confidence can win it all. The reason why? They are empty. Look at their land. Most of their military force is in nuclear weapons. They seem wide open for exploitation, especially from Tuva. Oh yeah, and keep in mind, they are neighbouring 6 civs, one of which is also a potential contender, and three, perhaps four, of which are more than ready to take a beating.

Here's the thing. The units Turkey does have are damn good. And they have enough of them to steamroll their technologically inferior foes.

They also aren’t losing any money, meaning science and production aren’t being affected. They are strong on the growth and production front in general. And they also have no major happiness issues. Sure, 4 of their neighbours may be threats. But Ataturk will reply - “Let them come, and I’ll destroy them.”

Timor-Leste

Orange:

Timor-Leste drops another rank in the lead up to total war as they don’t really do anything to prepare. Arapaho’s actions bring them up to second (and first by a lot in stats), but Timor-Leste is still number 2. We all just think too highly of the Inca right now, who knows how that will go. But for Gusmao, he’s got a nice situation going on. Bengal and Kokang in the north are gonna be pretty easy targets, the Inca don’t actually have that many units in their Pacific holdings (but T-L has less…), and no real threats to their core since the Inca will be busy in the east. All this putting T-L into a nice place going into total war, but not the best. Either way, I’m here to hope and pray for T-L to do well, they deserve it.

Arapaho

Leman:

Arapaho is a monster. I don’t know if you’ve glanced at the CBR info sheet but they have a stats score of 100. That means that Arapaho is number one in every relevant stat in the game right now. They have a finished tech tree, the largest armies, the most nukes, the most cities, the most production, the most population, the most food, the most everything. That’s not even all. They’ve already eviscerated most of the civs on the continent – America, Cree, Greenland have all been rumped by Arapaho and will probably be easy kills. They border none of the other big 4 civilizations. None of the civilizations that have been pumping hundreds of units for hundreds of turns like Tuva or Han. In fact, Arapaho’s only ‘threat’ is Mohave, and I imagine all 295 Arapaho nukes are pointed directly at them. Arapaho is a monster.

The only reason why Arapaho isn’t first is because we’re not so sure if they’ll be able to break out of North America? We’re a little worried that they’ve already peaked here. Maybe they have, maybe they haven’t. We’re about to find out.

Inca

Cloudy:

The Inca retain their number one spot going into total war, because we think they’re sitting in an excellent position, with multiple avenues of expansion and clear military supremacy over their neighbors. Kayapo and Muisca are Kayapo and Muisca, Mohave will be distracted fending off the concentrated might of Arapaho, and shots of the border with Timor-Leste suggest that the Inca have a decisive advantage there, at least for now. All things considered, the path is clear for Tupac Yupanqui, and although the Arapaho are turning into a statistical powerhouse, we still think the Inca have the best positioning.

Godspeed!

Power Rankings: Episode 36 – S3

Abstract

Uganda

Lithuania

Cree

Normans

Greenland

Yugoslavia

Chad

America

Castile

Anglo-Dutch

Muisca

Gokturks

Kokang

Bengal

Yemen

Kayapo

Afghanistan

Angola

Brandenburg

Han

Mali

Mohave

Tuva

Turkey

Timor-Leste

Arapaho

Inca