Power Rankings: Episode 4 – S4

Shaggy:

Reduced to one city with barely enough units to half-fill their paltry borders, Shawnee may be our first exit on the cylinder this season. They’ll need a gift of a city or the luckiest snipe I’ve ever seen to dig themselves out of this hole.

Cloudy:

Rozvi looks just as screwed at the end of this episode as they did after episode 3. Granted, only ten turns have passed. But still, they have virtually no settling options left, their stats are in the mariana trench, and both of their neighbors are still picking up steam. The only real question is whether they’ll meet their end at the hands of Ndongo or Eswatini.

Shaggy:

When all your neighbors are doing well while your military gets stuck in the woods and your cities are like a 30 year old fuckboy contortionist (slow to settle and oddly positioned), you go to the bottom 3. They aren’t Finnished yet, but how much time do they really have?

JDT:Remember when we praised the Mamluks for that forward settle with the implication that would translate into some aggression? Remember when they actually showed promise in this royale? Yeah, me neither. What a waste.

JDT:

The Tehuelche rise 2 ranks, due to other civs falling off harder and them settling a single city. Additionally, it's not impossible for them to still snag those relatively undefended Bora Boran settlements. Maybe then they’ll at least not be the most boring South American civ in history?

Reformer:

Quiet episode for the Kalmyks. They’re mostly sitting around for the end of the world. But they did found a religion! It’s…pretty bad. About the same as their chances of victory. See you next episode for more of the same for Kalmyks!

Reformer:

Well, they held on! Sure, the city flipped into oblivion, and Osage’s stats are getting kneecapped as they muster every possible man to defend the nation, but they held onto their cities, and even settled a new one to the north! Sure, Pueblo hasn’t given up, and while the war rages on, Pueblo can still afford to pump out more settlers than Osage can - including one that is brazenly walking to the Gulf of Mexico - but Osage is still in this! Yeah…still in this…

Cloudy:

Rio Grande is now at war with Bora-Bora, but it’s not because they’ve made an opportunistic attack on the colonies, but rather because Bora-Bora declared war on them! The war declaration presents no real risk to Rio Grande, but the cities aren’t totally undefended and so far it doesn’t look like Bento Gonçalves is likely to take them.

Cloudy:

Please, for the love of god, play the game. Why are the Qarmatians, who are supposed to be lusting for blood, just playing sim city? The Afsharids are going to settle all their rightful land!

Cloudy:

Makhnovia regains six lost ranks thanks to their fairly beefy looking army, which would easily retake Yekaterinoslav if they decided to throw down with Latvia for round 2. So there’s no real danger to Makhnovia at the moment, but it’s also unclear who they could attack besides the strongest civ in the region, and when you only have three cities, that’s not exactly what I’d call a great position.

Msurdej:MacGregor is almost back at the rank we put him at in Episode 0, even though they are still languishing behind. This is mostly due to other civs failing though. Still, if MacGregor builds a few more cities on the East Coast, it might take them over the Seneca.

Leman:

Don’t let the large rank rise fool you, Eswatini is still in a bad place. They’re in a cramped spot, with low population,  poor stats, and no room to expand. What Eswatini does have is a little bit of time and a couple of opportunities. Rozvi is weak enough to be killed off, Madagascar is wide open and its unlikely anyone scary can get to them in the near future. If Eswatini uses these opportunities presented I can see them making it out of here in good shape.

Cloudy:

Rome is still in a shitty position, with few remaining expansion options thanks to Sierra Leone and the Alaouites gobbling up the North African coast. Even though Sierra Leone attacked them, leaving those cities undefended, Rome has failed to capitalize due to their focus on the Visigoths. So it’s not at all clear where Rome goes from here other than down.

Reformer:

Crow takes another stumble in the ranks - and I mean a sizable stumble - this time, on account of getting DoW’d by Yellowknives. It’s unfortunate timing, because as far as I can tell, the Crow military was positioned to attack a Puebloan forward-settle which was settled within four tiles of the Crow capital. It does not get more insulting than that. But let’s take the good with the bad. Despite the overwhelming Yellowknives presence near Bahkisee, Crow managed to hold onto the city, and didn’t seem to even struggle all that much while doing so. Obviously, you’d prefer to be doing something other than defending yourself when you’re already doing very poorly, but beggars can’t be choosers. Crow fans ought to be happy that this episode went as well for them as it did. Still, it likely does mean that Crow is ultimately about to become a non-contender, even if they continue to hold on.

Altima

They chillin’.

Emu:

Kazan's not looking so hot. They're getting more war declarations than any other civ right now, and while most of them aren't terribly relevant, it's not a great sign that their international relations are in such a state. Combine that with the fact that they're not really settling in such a space-heavy area as Central Asia, and it really looks like these guys are just going to be food for whoever ends up succeeding here this time around.

Reformer:

Royal Hungary is still eating their citizens, and thus their very prospects. This episode, the primary victim of Bathory seems to have been Regensburg, which I’m pretty sure constitutes genocide. I mean, we have plenty of genocide over here on C B R, but this feels different. The lore implications, brother. The lore implications! Anyway yes, besides the lore, they are brutally fucking over their chances at winning the game. The civ has been stagnating below total 20 pop for, what, half the game now? That’s rough, buddy. At least they have a strong military poised to attack Bavaria again once their military is exhausted in the war against Burgundy. Terrain might make the odds unlikely, but hey, it’s something.

Reformer:

What do you want me to tell you? They still suck complete ass. Hey, they’re not bottom 10 in stats anymore! Because they’re now only 11th worst in stats. That’s the category of complete failures like Makhno, Eswatini, Rio Grande, Kalmyks. They cannot settle their way out of the box. They cannot fight their way out of the box - Harappa has a far greater military, and it goes without saying that Harappa has a greater production base. Maybe they could beat up the demilitarized Siam at some point? Better hope you can build a navy strong enough to do that. Might be tough when they have twice the coastal cities, but oh well. Oh, hey, they did found a religion this episode! A+ for that.

Leman:

Four average cities are not good, but the African interior is wide open, meaning KB has more than enough space to settle a half dozen cities and really make something of themselves. It’s a bunch of shitty desert land, sure, but desert land is better than no land, so good luck Kanem.

Shaggy:

The eastern parts of Africa have been surprisingly quiet so far, which is amazing for Saba-D’mt and their slow settling strategy. Mogadishu and the Mamluks seem reluctant to settle anywhere away from the coast which leaves a lot of land for Makeda to snap up still. And snap they will, the Lake Victoria settlement of Sana’a should set them up well to keep grabbing land in the middle of the continent.

Reformer:

Dai Viet had an okay episode. They’re still pretty ass in terms of stats, but they’re working on it, I guess. They defended against Zheng just fine, wonder why (terrain). They are sending out tons of missionaries to spread the good word of Mahayana, mostly towards Siam (fuck you Zheng, you don’t deserve enlightenment). Dai Viet and Siam becoming religious brothers in arms could be interesting for the geopolitics of the wider region. The two are part of the demilitarized triangle with Singapore, so they certainly weren’t going to fight one another anyway. But maybe they’ll fight together in the midgame…? Might be too distant to prognosticate, but Holy Wars should enable something fun to happen.

Reformer:

So, another fruitless war, huh? At least they settled a new city finally, bringing them up to four - sort of respectable. Still, I have to point&laugh at the second attempt at war. What’s the point of all this aggression? Build up a powerbase first before you start flailing around, motherfucker. It’s embarrassing, really. See you next episode, when Faroes are even further ahead.

Shaggy:

There are less violent ways to gift cities than the Bavarian Method, did you know that? Bavaria has quite the carpet within their current borders but that isn’t where they are needed. Losing Asturica was always in the cards in a European B-list war, but maybe they can take Beaune in exchange. Or maybe Bavaria will just send their two settlers to Denmark, draw the ire of the Ume-Sami, and citadel some more land in mainland Europe to piss off all their neighbors. That’ll show them!

Rosay:

Wow Burgundy good job you actually took a low pop undefended city, that will show the world you’re relevant. In all seriousness Burgundy is contributing towards making Europe interesting even if it’s the little league compared to the rest of the world’s series. Maybe in a coalition war they could take a few cities off of the Visigoths or the Romans, but first they would need to peace out with Bavaria, because let's be honest between the current tech level being early classical and the region being covered in forests, neither side is going to make any significant advancements.

Altima:

So getting it out of the way: the Seneca are fumbling an open goal in their inability to actually commit to attacking the otherwise open and overextended Osage. That’s bad. You know what else is bad? The Seneca science and production values. The Quarmatians have more production, and those guys have half the cities! But fine, the game is young; there’s still time to salvage this. Honestly, if they aren’t gonna commit to the fighting, it’d be better to fully peace out and just start focusing on building themselves up; they’ve got space east and north, to say nothing of actually developing their cities to not have garbo stats.

Reformer:

Singapore sits still in the rankings this episode, having done nothing much but improve their existing cities. Admirably, they no longer have a bottom 10 military…barely. They are lucky that Siam and Dai Viet aren’t particularly militarized either (both below Singapore), and Maguindanao has turned against the reckless expander to the east. Singapore exists in one of the most peaceful areas, thus. Shame about the lack of expansion last episode, this would be a great time to expand like crazy.

Altima:

Bukhara rises up eleven ranks as they build up their stats, their military, and begin bloodying their blades with a very actionable declaration on Kazan. The approach is a somewhat awkward two-tile affair but it’s all flat, undefended, open terrain, so it could go either way. Long-term, they need to settle while they still can- as dense with fuckers as their region is, the space they still have open won’t be open for long, and at this point in the game conquest can only carry you so far before you overstretch. Their science is also mid, but that’s fairly workable.

Emu:

Ecuador is still a completely average civ. In this season's South America, that's not bad. I will say it's impressive that the range of their ranks so far is only 4, which I believe is the lowest of any civ on the roster. Unremarkable they started, and unremarkable they have stayed.

Leman:

Zheng is Zheng. They missed a settle this episode and that doesn’t really bode well for them since they only have a mediocre four cities. With powerful Zheng and Goguryeo up north, it seems like Zheng is poised to getting boxed in just like Ming was last season. Getting pretty worried about them.

Altima:

Not much changes for the Visigoths besides a torrent of mostly irrelevant wars. They’ve got Hispanolia pretty well settled down, they’ve got their natural barriers of sea and stone, they’ve got functional enough stats minus their middling science. Still, their failure to claim clay past the mountains puts them back down into the middle of the pack, as they stand on the precipice of losing their chance to expand out of Spain and maybe actually be a player in Europe.

Leman:

Siam is okay. They have decent enough stats, a solid city count, and have done an excellent job blocking Vijayanagara and the other Indian civs from moving into South East Asia. But then again they’re low on space, low on prospects, and I’m not really sure where Siam goes from here.

Cloudy:

The Dzungars so far are like the Timurids of season 4. Can’t name a single thing they’ve done so far. So it’s only fitting that we put them smack in the middle.

Leman:

Mongolia retakes Old Sarai from powerhouse Shang, but the loss of the city is still a pretty hefty setback. They have enough room and space to rebuild and restore themselves, but with powerful neighbors at every border, I’m not sure how I like Mongolia’s chances going forward. They’ve got potential to go either way.

Reformer:

Not a whole lot happened over here. Noongar settled a bit, Palawa settled a bit. Wahgi settled on Australia…but Wahgi is also getting whacked by Maguindanao. The politics are getting interesting, but on the other hand, Noongar sucks compared to Palawa, Palawa even has double the military of Noongar, so trying to do what Mag is doing…it ain’t gonna work out. Build up some military first, we’ll see after that.

Altima:

The Ume-Sami drop a few ranks as a white peace envelops them and the Finns. Realistically, the terrain made that war a hard one for the AI, but it’s still time lost stumbling while others have started to stride. They’ve still got time to build up and space to settle (even with this little tumor on their elbow), and the Finns have such garbage stats that they’re well set-up to just build back up and kill the fuckers later, so they get to keep the middle regardless. All told, not an ideal position for the Ume-Sami, but not a terrible one either.

Emu:

Mogchamp continues to rule East Africa for lack of any better competitors. They're not doing badly by any stretch, but Ndongo's rise in the west may be cause for concern sometime in the future, even if their current war doesn't really look likely to go anywhere. This is the point at which Mogadishu decides whether they'll be a power or not. Any successful move, and they're in the game. No move at all, and they languish until death.

JDT:

The Ikko Ikki rise up a whole 15 spots courtesy of their recent settles and their strong stats. While their core is fairly disjointed, they have a top 10 military, top 10 tech count, and are top 10 in science and production. Additionally, their bold forward settles against Shang and Goguryeo show that they are more than willing to butt heads with bulls for potential growth. The peasants may not be so docile anymore, people.

Msurdej:  Harappa has a problem, and its name is Nader Shah. The Afsharids are expanding rapidly, and their gains means Harappa’s loss. The east is blocked off now, making the north the only viable way Harappa can expand with military action. And while their military is decent, all previous military attacks didn’t amount to much except underwhelming peace. Just another thing that needs to change if they want to win.

Orange:

Khoshuts are getting stuck into the Himalayas here, not much pop and missing out on crucial settles. So they fall a bit towards where the stat sheet says they should be, but they are still quite high up. Still safe, a nice number of cities, still good potential. Just gotta use it.

Rosay:

Nivkh, you have one chance to prove me wrong and its next episode. Either you beat the sleepy allegations and actually attack Goguryeo or you end up in C-tier hell for the rest of the cycle until you fade into irrelevance. If you fail to move now you will be outshone by Goguryeo and Thule permanently instead of presumably.

Reformer:

Wow! Right before the end of the episode, everyone’s favorite wonder-whore declares a very brave war against the local juggernaut! I certainly did not have this one on my bingo board. For the time being, this looks like it’ll turn out to be an EXCELLENT decision. Kuno should be a freebie, though pushing further than that might be difficult. Mag and Wahgi are approximately equal in military, but Mag’s is of course more concentrated, while the Wahgi military is spread out throughout the vast empire. In a prolonged war, Wahgi may be able to push back and even retake Kuno, but I don’t foresee this war lasting very long. Meanwhile, Mag is at no risk of getting stabbed in the back, considering Singapore and Dai Viet are some of the least militarized nations on the cylinder. The war declaration was ultimately the best decision they could’ve made - just get out of the war in good time, please!

Msurdej:  The Yellowknives take a small tumble this week, mostly from their lackluster performance in the war against the Crow. Akaitcho should have had a slam dunk capture of Bahkisse, but by the episode’s end, his army was smaller, and the city walls were still in the green. Still, it wasn’t a total loss for the Yellowknives this time. They made another city, and still have room to grow in Northern Canada. So all in all, not a great episode for the Yellowknives, but they’re still a regional power in North America.

Emu:

Fan favorite Bora Bora continues to quietly settle into a weak South America. This is the absolute perfect play for them right now, steering clear of the stronger Australian civs while jumping at the chance to rush into low-competition Patagonia. We're looking right on track to finally get a strong Pacific civ.

JDT:

The Alaouites catapult 9 ranks up as they gobble up the Sahara, birthing cities like ibn Sharif did children and butting heads in the growing settle war against Sierra Leone. They’ve also declared war on the Visigoths, but we all know that's not going anywhere. While many of their cities are new and weak, and aren’t in the greatest terrain, they have quite a bit of land around them to settle and relatively poor competition. Past the sands of the Sahara, lies a golden crown for ibn Sharif.

Reformer:

Pontus is quietly building up a top 20 empire in the middle east. Not a whole lot to worry about. Except…you know…the Afsharids next door about to have double Pontus’ cities. Pontus is still quite lucky to find that Mamluks and Qarmatians still haven’t figured out how to build settlers. Pontus notably has one of the bigger armies on the cylinder, and it would be nice to see that get put to use. And, of course, they settled the Bosporus! That should’ve catapulted them into #1, honestly.

Cloudy:

For a far flung tundra civ, Thule has surprisingly good stats. They’re 8th in production, 11th in military, and keeping up with the top quartile in tech. These are all good signs considering they still have room to expand and their only neighbors, the Yellowknives, are currently fumbling an invasion of the Crow. With this in mind, we’ve decided to catapult Thule into the top 20 for the first time.

Msurdej:  Maximilian takes a small dip this season, mostly because the gap is starting to close. Pueblo has effectively blocked off any Northern expansion (not to mention any way of reaching the Osage), leaving Mexico only Central America and maybe some South America to grow. That being said, if people start to gang up on the Pueblo, those southern colonies could be easy pickings.

Reformer:

Sierra Leone didn’t actually do all that much this ep. In fact, they went so far in doing nothing that their stats took a massive nosedive. Don’t get me wrong, 6 cities is pretty good right now, but they’re not doing much. The Alaouites, SL’s direct and main competitor, are getting much more mileage out of their six cities, and the Alaouites started expanding later! And just like before, I have to point out that SL’s farflung colonies are still vulnerable. Rome realized as much. Not that I expect Rome to deal any real damage, but it’s indicative of the problem at hand. If Rome didn’t just spend their navy whacking at Visigoths for no gain, SL’s colonies could be in more genuine danger right now, and there’d be sweet little SL could do about it. I don’t envision things are about to get better particularly soon. If war is on the way, let’s hope SL builds a military.

Reformer:

Tiwanaku finally had a good episode! This is the Tiwanaku that we expected to see. Expansive with good stats. Obviously a bit earlier would’ve been better, but it’s not like South America is a particularly rowdy continent - moving out a bit more slowly is fine. They sure looked ass at first…awful stats, no expansion…but that’s all in the past, and considering their reputation, we expect this episode to be indicative of their performance going forward. It helps that Ecuador is only doing mildly okay at best, New Holland is mostly hugging the coast and not doing any bold forward-settles, and Rio Grande of course just sucks bollocks. Good tidings for the Andes civ, as the gods intended.

Orange:

The Selkups stay pretty steady, we still got confidence in them, and that Kazakhstan war just isn’t going anywhere. But really, they could still be doing better. They aren’t as expansive as expected, and are really letting Kazakhstan settle too much. Vonya needs to do a little less fishing and a little more aggressive expansion.

Reformer:

Wahgi takes a gentle plummet out of the top 10 as they get suddenly attacked by Maguindanao. I mean, seriously, who could’ve seen this coming. Expand recklessly, including within four tiles of Mag’s capital, and then don’t build a good military to defend the forward-settle. Honestly goofy behaviour. Regardless, I figure they will come out of this war quite fine - and my fellow rankers agree, hence them still being up here. Losing one city is expected here, losing more than that is unlikely. They’ll still be in a strong position sans a single city. Just, uh, build more troops next time, will ya?

Reformer:

Ndongo makes peace with Rozvi, avoiding repeating Rozvi’s mistake of keeping up the fight against Eswatini, and there’s no actual punishment in sight for Ndongo. Eswatini and Mogadishu declared war on Ndongo? Makes no difference, they can’t get to Ndongo. Ndongo is settling another city within the next few turns, too. Which Rozvi forwent in favor of tunnel-visioning on the Eswatini capital. Ndongo really took notes on Rozvi, and just modified the plan to avoid all the mistakes. Including the bit where Rozvi is sitting on fairly flat terrain and thus is more vulnerable to conquest. That’s how good Nzinga is, even picking good terrain to surround her core.

Cloudy:

Latvia reaches their new highest ranking yet, although they didn’t actually do anything this week. Still, they’re the strongest civ in Europe (unless you count the Faroes) and our hype knows no limits.

Cloudy:

Goguryeo maintains its top 10 position despite a failed attack on Shang that has left their army looking somewhat thin. Their rank remains heavily dependent on their stats, which are excellent; they also have 7 cities out and two more settlers on the way. Their settlement in southeastern Korea also puts pressure on the Ikko-Ikki, who also have a city in Korea that could be ripe for capture later. On top of that, plenty of room to expand remains in Siberia. Put all this together and you have a major contender whose chances have hardly diminished.

Orange:

New Holland drops as the war with Big River just goes nowhere and they are coming up against Tiwanaku on settlements. Also the jungles of Brazil are just, not great pieces of land for now. So they fall a bit, but remain in the top ten probably mostly because no one else in South America is as strong. But they need to do a bit more to make sure they don’t get pushed out soon.

Rosay:

Looking to be the Central Asian powerhouse early aren't you Kazakhstan? Kazakhstan's episode mainly consisted of them showing off their massive army by launching an offensive against the Selkups. While no territory has swapped hands, this war is definitely more costly for the Selkups than it is for the Kazakhs to simply contain them while they expand in Selkups place. Though if I were Kazakhstan, I'd just ignore the Selkups for now and focus on setting up the future invasion of everyone in Western Russia. Here's the thing, while the Selkups will likely repel the Kazakh's invasion at heavy losses, they are probably just going to expand north instead and they will still be contained by Mongolia and later Goguryeo, whereas Eastern Europe is just a power vacuum. Weird priorities aside, Kazakhstan's stats are fundamentally solid as we begin to approach the point where that actually means something, with all of their key metrics except for city total surpassing their main rival the Selkups. On top of all of this, central asia is typically one of the stronger regions historically in CBR, so having to share a bit of it still means you're sharing one of the best regions in the game.

Cloudy:

Palawa’s ranking undergoes a slight correction as the pace of their expansion slows and other civs start to catch up, but they nevertheless remain an obvious top 5 power on the cylinder. They also grabbed a religion this week, which is nice. Other than that, their situation hasn’t changed: they still dwarf the Noongar, their rivals the Wahgi remain formidable, and no one else is anywhere near them. It’s a good time to be Palawa.

Cloudy:

Pueblo went on the offensive this week, landing several heavy blows against Osage by flipping their second city several times. Although Pueblo didn’t end the episode in control of the city, they could take it back again with a little effort, and with the damage they’ve done they might get it in the peace treaty if they don’t. In the meantime, they settled more cities, claiming even more of the American southwest for themselves, while maintaining top tier stats.

Orange:

We stan foxgirls here, but sadly not enough, because Daji drops down to third as the Afsharids are just pumping out cities and the Faroes have decided that they’ll just be the best in all the stats. But they also lost Old Sarai when they had easily enough troops to reinforce and defend it, which doesn’t bode well. But as long as they keep just settling up a storm and sitting around with a giant army they’ll probably still remain up top.

Orange:

It’s Afsharids, Afsharids, Afsharids, not Ashfarids… Jk I’ve had to write that name enough for the episode narration to get it down correctly by now.

Despite being in the top 10 already, and even 5th earlier, it still feels like the Afsharids just jumped to the top out of nowhere. They settled enough to put themselves as only behind Wahgi in cities, and Wahgi is an island nation so they don’t count, and they got like two more coming soon. Really all they need right now is to let these cities get built up and we might have a really dominant Persian civ on our hands for once.

Rosay:

Of all the ”episode 0 darlings” the Faroes have been the most consistent and have absolutely delivered in the early game. First and foremost, their stats are incredible, and honestly eclipse the rest of the roster in some areas. Now my opinion on Island Civs is that the majority of them are overrated mainly because of their inability to generate a decent production and military force. With that being said, Faroe has the Largest production score by a significant margin, and a top tier classical era military. They aren't a one trick pony either, as their science output is through the roof and they seem to have avoided entering a happiness lull or bankruptcy debuff, allowing them to grow consistently. However, what really separates them from all the other top tiers (except for maybe Afsharid) is that nobody can stand up to them in either Europe or North America. Latvia is a strong contender but they're too far away, Ume-Sami has two left feet, and everyone else is boxed in or busy in the European little league (same is true in North America except switching names around). The only point of critique for me is that Faroe hasn't done much in the form of conquest but even then, you don't need to steal cities from other civs if you can easily just make your own, and they can just invade England and anytime anyway.