Civ Battle Royale May 04, 2024
Power-Rankers
Power Rankings! The rankings…of power! Dun dun dunnnn!
Emu:
Shawnee are still fucked. Their 61st ranking is nearly unanimous, and we all agree they're dead the first time a serious war comes around. Their situation is not changing, has not changed, and will never change until the moment they're plowed under. If they're not the first to die it'll be a stroke of luck.
Cloudy:
According to the latest data, Rozvi still sucks.
JDT:Watching the Finns is like watching a Fear and Hunger playthrough where someone just runs over a nail in the second room multiple times and slowly dies of tetanus after having to amputate both legs.
Leman:
Look, we didn’t have high hopes for Eswatini, but our hopes were higher than this.
Emu:
Tehuelche....... come on. No one expected much from you in the first place, but that just makes this all the more embarrassing. What are you doing. Where is your production going. Why are your stats like that. Please do ANYTHING. The bar was and is so low. Eh, you're fucked anyway. Someone has to be forgettable.
Msurdej:
While the Mamluks made a fourth city, it wasn’t the “WOW” factor the PRs were hoping for as their third city had been. Mansoura is a paltry city smack dab in the Sahara, and won’t be much use to them for ages. Worse still, they are now at war with Pontus, which could cause them to lose a city or two.
JDT:Lets be real here - you and I know that Gregor Mcgregor ain’t in the game no more. He’s not even in Miami Beach or somewhere good like that, he took your money and ran to Galveston, where he’ll probably be more boxed in than he already is.
Cloudy:
Rio Grande has made peace with Bora-Bora without losing any cities. Big win!
JDT: The Kalmyks rise by 5 as a seemingly atrocious war against Pontus ends in white peace and a settler of theirs waffles about with a bit of leeway to settle. They’ve decided to try to take their hubris against Makhnovia, a war that will probably end in a stalemate given that they are roughly equal to Makhnovia on units, but the future isn’t looking quite as bleak for them as we thought it was. Don’t get it twisted though, it's still bleak. Just not a solar eclipse.
Leman:
Royal Hungary has connected their cities and stopped starving their citizens. They still suck.
Altima:
Taino? Mo’ like Tainwho. Mexico has at least provided them an interesting opportunity—the Taino have a navy, and the Mexicans don’t, so the recent Mexican settles are open goals so long as the Taino at least take a shot. Which, judging by the past, they won’t, but hey.
Orange:
What a climb! At this rate Osage will be in first in uhhhhhhhh 13 parts. Keep it up!
Pueblo making peace is a saving grace for Osage, maybe now they will have a chance to get their bearings, maybe settle a bit, who knows. They’re safe for now, and that’s all that matters, well that and that they’re still stronger than Shawnee.
Rosay:
Rome did nothing of note this part, except likely failing to settle a single city in North Africa. When it becomes official and all of the Mediterranean coast is occupied however, buckle up because it's only downhill from here.
Cloudy:
Vijayanagara founded another city off screen this week, bringing them to four, which is still extremely shitty compared to damn near everyone else. They’re also trying to force their army around Harappa somehow to do god knows what. They’re just lucky Siam didn’t use those two settlers that were hanging around by Sri Lanka earlier, or else we’d have ranked them even lower.
Msurdej:
Святе чорт! It seems our favorite anarchist isn’t going down as easily as we thought. Ekaterinoslav and Rezekne are solidly in control of Makhnovia, giving Nestor a solid core again. But he’s not out of the woods yet. The Kalmyks have moved against him, putting him in a two front war. Once he does that though, he’ll be in a far better position to bring anarchy to the cylinder.
Leman:
Kazan seems unfortunately boxed in now. Latvia, despite losing cities to Makhnovia, has settled a lot of the territory that I had hoped Kazan would be able to snap up. Given that, I think it’s gonna be hard for Kazan to really settle more than a couple more cities, and when you’re neighbors with Kazakhstan and Latvia, that sounds like a big problem to me.
Cloudy:
The Crow hold steady this week as they peace out with the Yellowknives and send some settlers east. Their status is kind of in limbo right now, because they haven’t actually settled, and they still only have a pathetic four cities, but if they do start settling eastern Canada they might be in a much better position. No new Faroe cities have popped up, and Seneca is still shit, so their only competition seems to be, oddly enough, Thule. Anyway, there are a lot of random elements factoring into Crow’s future right now, so we’re going to wait and see before we move them.
Shaggy:
Seneca drops two ranks this week as their war with Osage “rages” on. It’s mostly just skirmishes in the Tennessee/Kentucky area at this point. Shawnee is doing a great job of being an early game rump state sitting in the middle of the action and kind of hindering it. Good job, Shawnee, Cornplanter owes you all a drink.
Shaggy:
Madagascar? More like MOGagascar (I'll see myself out). Yes, they have finally settled everyone's favorite south African island landmass and will use it as a springboard to dominate the Indian Ocean... or at least I can hope that's what they want to do. They've proven to be quite useless in wars on land with their neighbors so far, maybe some seafaring violence towards someone further away could be the kick in the pants that they need.
Emu:
Dai Viet aren't looking so hot. They're not doing *badly* per se, but we find ourselves at the stage of the game where civs like this are getting crowded out by competitors that are just..... better. Siam, Maguindano, Zheng...... They're just straight up outmatched on every side. That's not saying a turnaround is impossible, or even unlikely, but a turnaround of some sort is definitely needed if they want to be anything at all, let alone a Trung repeat.
Rosay:
In my humble opinion, Bavaria is kind of slept on. Now are they good? Don't make me laugh. But they do have actual options at least compared to the rest of their little league of a region. With Royal Hungary having to divert troops to Latvia, Bavaria has an opening to take some of those border cities off of them. Their situation to the west isn't all that bad either, with Burgundy having to hold back England making a second possible expansion opportunity. With that said Bavaria has 3 ways to improve their current position: going east, going west, and using the opportunity to gain a small science lead. If I had to choose, I'd personally go with option 2, but there's nothing wrong with 3 if Bavaria thinks it doesn't have the opening.
Emu:
I forget the Khoshuts exist usually. They're a lot worse and less interesting than anyone else in the area. I don't even really have a whole lot to say about them. They were barely even *in* this episode. Anyway, they're fucked. Or maybe not, I didn't pay enough attention to them to say for sure.
Rosay:
The Visigoths are in one of the most unfortunate positions right now, as despite their decent enough stats they have literally nowhere to grow. Like I guess Burgundy is an option just due to Western Europe being relatively weak but even then it's an uphill battle and, oh what's that? They lost a city to Burgundy despite being in a better position? Huh, well damn welcome to mediocrity I guess, Visi.
Leman:
I said this last week, but I am so impressed by Saba’s recovery after what was one of the worst opening episodes. Their stats, especially science, leave a lot to be desired but there’s more than enough potential here for Saba to grow into a decent regional power and rival Ndongo and its other neighbors.
JDT:
Playing tall. Guided democracy. High tech yield and cultural diversity. Being fairly peaceful in the middle of the Molucca straits. Yep, Lee Kwan Yew is in the house. Singapore is literally larping right now, and we all know that will probably lead to mass mediocrity given that their current stats aren’t even that good. They did show signs of aggression with their assault on Dai Viet, but it's not very likely that they can take Bac Giang given that it's an inland city. Maybe it's time they hold some Teh Tarik talks and reconsider their objectives?
CelestialDalek:
Despite all of the wars, Burgundy is doing acceptable. All they have to worry about right now is England trying to invade them from York and Norwich, which is going well: they’re stalemating at York and pushing back slightly at Norwich. The city of Amiens is the only one that has taken damage thanks to a English naval attack, but the force of that naval attack is a few badly damaged triremes. What could really hurt them right now is a Bavarian war declaration, but that has yet to come. Presently, just a mediocre civ in the middle of a mediocre continent.
Leman:
England had a fairly mild part overall. They didn’t settle any cities and fundamentally that is bad. They should settle cities. But the Faroes are off celebrating Leif Erikson Day and settling Quebec instead of the Isles, so luckily, England might have a little bit of time to get those cities out.
CelestialDalek:
Massive props to Bukhara for completely bleeding the Kazakh army in their heroic defense of Herat. Unfortunately for them, the hammer is starting to fall, and their army is exhausted and has left Herat ending this episode in the yellow. Without the city, their empire will become one long, mediocre snake. And not one of the fun ones like a boa or a viper or anything. Just a dull, run-of-the-mill, boring, non venomous snake.
Cloudy:
The fact that the Qarmatians only fell one rank this week despite making no more new gains just goes to show how well they’ve already consolidated their position. The fact that they even attempted to take Kermanshah was also really impressive. However, some of their neighbors, such as Pontus and Saba-D’mt, are starting to move into the Arabian Peninsula—and if al-Jannabi wants to keep his current position, he’d best start thinking about cleaning them up.
Orange:
Okay so apparently on the stat sheet Kanem-Bornu is at like, 53rd. They’ve got basically no army, and are at 10 effective science despite not yet being bankrupt yet (-15 gpt but still got 100 gold in the bank). I don’t know how they are that low without being bankrupt, but yeah. Uh, no army, no money, no science, Alaouite army right outside their lands. Hmm, wonder what will happen next… Maybe I should’ve looked at stats before ranking.
Altima:
Mongolia gains a rank solely off of statistical noise. Make no mistake, Mongolia is the Empire of Mid right now. Surrounded by powers with bigger armies and better core stats, outsettled to lands that should have been theirs parts ago, holding on to a decent little country solely because they’re still far enough from their rivals cores that it’s not worth their serious efforts. If they can somehow unfuck enough of their stats to build back up a real military, they might be able to exploit the anti-Shang coalition and retake their lost lands. Maybe even threaten some other border cities. But that’s a real maybe for the Empire of Mid.
Leman:
Bora-Bora takes a heavy dive in the rankings. This is sort of because they seem to have lost a lot of settling momentum after dropping two cities on South America and aren’t really keeping up the South American settling spree, and are not settling the Pacific Islands. It seems that other powerhouses like Wahgi, Palawa, and Tiwanaku might be overpowering them in the near future.
Shaggy:
Sierra Leone’s settling strategy is comparable to me playing Mortal Kombat, just randomly doing stuff and hoping it works. They rise a whopping 8 ranks this part due to their ability to just shit out settlers and stick them in places that are inconvenient to their neighbors. Well, that and stats growth, but let’s focus on these new settles. Koidu is an early game coup of a city, to be honest. It effectively turns Sierra Leone into the gatekeeper of the West African coast, hindering Ndongo’s potential to invade them from the sea until ocean tiles are traversable. Kenema is yet another a thorn in the Alaouites’ side. Sierra Leone has been snapping up land around their borders and hemming them into a small spit of coast in North Africa and Kenema just tightens the noose. It also has a number of desert hills and resources, so it isn’t a total waste of an early settler for Sierra Leone. Can’t wait to see the Sahara become a new flashpoint on the cylinder.
Cloudy:
Zheng continued to hold their own against Shang this week, but probably only because Goguryeo and Ikko-Ikki joined the war on their side. They’re up to six cities but they’re basically out of expansion options, and that’s bad news considering that none of their neighbors look easy to crack. All in all, we kept Zheng near the middle, but I don’t envy their position.
CelestialDalek:
I don’t know what the Alaouites’ game plan is anymore. I don’t even know if they have a game plan. Throw darts at a map of the Sahara and settle there? Wander their army through a perilous desert to just loiter around Fez? Are they going to use their military, their production, or their cities? Capture and raze Kenema so that they can make a better-looking empire thanks to the Orwellian three-tile separation policy? I don’t know and I don’t care. Guy with a lot of kids funny.
Msurdej: The Ikko-Ikki and Goguryeo are trying to team up against the Shang. The Ikko-Ikki are definitely the junior partner in this group though, having the weakest army of the three, not to mention all the other stats they are lacking. But with so much going on, even if they end up with Yanshi, they still have a lot of work to do if they wanna catch up to the other powers in Asia.
Shaggy:
Ecuador rises in rank mostly due to stat shifts this part. They had a pretty quiet part where they got shut out of the Caribbean by Mexico and… not much else. I think they’re fighting with New Holland but they both seem lost in the rainforest down there.
Emu:
Nivkh continues to sit there........ menacingly. They haven't been doing much at all externally, but they've built a solid enough core that even with the rise of Goguryeo another Chukchi-type rise is a definite possibility. They seem the type to know a decent opportunity when they see one and seize it. It all depends on what goes on around them, when and where their opening comes. Whether they're a dud or a conqueror, their crucial position between the strong powers of Arctic Canada and the even stronger powers of East Asia and Siberia is sure to give whatever happens up here an outsize impact on the rest of the game.
Msurdej: While Muhammad Kudarat wasn’t able to hold onto Korn during this episode, he made a fine show of the war. Taking on a Top 10 civ when you're in the 30s is usually a recipe for disaster. But Maguindanao is holding on, and expanding his empire with new settlements all the time. But while they’ve beaten the Wahgi for now, there are still options for them to grow. Like Singapore, or possibly Siam.
Cloudy:
Siam sees a big rise this week as they continue to found more cities and their stats continue to improve. Siam is now significantly bigger and better than its neighbors Dai Viet, Singapore, and Vijayanagara, and they are far and away in the best position to dominate Southeast Asia. Siam has even made it into the top 10 in one crucial statistic, finishing 7th in effective science. And with more settlers still on the way, we don’t think their growth is even close to over.
Leman:
Oof. This was not a great part for Latvia, and they have slipped out of the top 20 because of it. Losing the city Makhnovia gifted them was a given – that city was undefendable and not very good. Dropping a second city that they founded themselves is unexpected and rough. That being said, not shown on screen is that Latvia founded three cities this episode, meaning that despite dropping two cities to a bottom-tier nobody Latvia did end this part with more cities than it started with. In the long term, this is still not overall great, but Latvia is definitely not in a terrible position.
Orange:
The Yellowknives, having utterly failed in their war against the crow, at least manage to keep all their cities as they keep settling. Up to nine now, what they really need is an army. Both to take on Crow again maybe, but more importantly to take on the soon to exist Thule cities just to their east, or wherever those Thule settlers are going.
Orange:
Now, you may be thinking “Hey, when did Harappa get 6 cities? I don’t see 6 cities in the Indus Valley.” Yes, you were definitely thinking that. But it’s actually true, they do have 6 cities. The trick is that the last city is actually in the Maldives! Somehow Siam just ignored both Sri Lanka and the Maldives to go to, who knows, Arabia? Are we getting Siamese Arabia? Maybe…
Rosay:
Ume-Sami spent this part spreading their gospel and churning up an army to take on the Finns (cause lets be honest they ain’t sending that shit across the Baltic to take on Royal Hungary.) While they still need to make sure that their army is sufficient enough to wipe the Finns, Sami needs to keep in mind that, especially with the settlement of Vagur, Faroe is going to come for them eventually and Sami needs to act fast in order to ensure that they have the production base to defend themselves. Now granted there still is some space still open for settling, but that's running out, and it would probably be more efficient to just take the already developed land from the garbage tier Finns.
Orange:
Mexico’s doing quite well for themselves, nice big core of cities, plenty of influence in the Caribbean, safe from any sort of naval attack from Ecuador. Now, their own city over in Venezuela may be a bit in danger but that’s it and honestly it's pretty defendable. So for now, Mexico is just chilling, growing, and seeking to get enough power to come out on top of North America.
Leman:
Thule is being quietly very solid. While it’s not quite as aggressive as Osage or even Yellowknives and doesn’t have the raw stats of Pueblo, Thule’s stats are definitely decent. They have a huge army, a solid production, and a decent city count. They are lacking population, which is weirdly low (41 tied with Ikko-Ikki), but that’s to be expected from a tundra civ that lacks Lighthouses, so expect that trend to continue. Still, Thule is looking strong and the ranking reflects that.
Shaggy:
OOOOOOOFFF, that war went about as poorly as it could have for Palawa. Noongar solidifying their grasp of the borderlands between the two definitely doesn't bode well for Palawa. So naturally the PRs... raise them 1 rank. I guess giving up a couple cities doesn't matter when you can just compensate by fully settling New Zealand and having good infrastructure. I just hope Tarenorerer can find a copy of How To Fight Wars Good at their local library.
Altima:
The Afsharids hold onto to the top twenty despite losing two cities to a random underdog on the back of still having a decently expansive empire. Their science is a Lot Lacking, hampered greatly by the nonexistent food yields of their native hills and deserts. Those two lost cities, as breadbaskety as they were, would have been great for counteracting this, but they are still farming the hell out of the barren grasslands near Mashhad. This is a stumble, but perhaps a correctable one, so long as they can infrastructure their way past “having fewer techs than some four city runts.”
CelestialDalek:
Now at peace with Palawa, Noongar is undoubtedly the top dog on Australia. How long can this last? We all know Australian civs’ difficulties of getting onto another landmass, but the difference between Palawa and Noongar is that Palawa has already gone on a settling spree in New Zealand. Despite their abysmal military, they seem to know how to break out. It’s entirely possible that Palawa could swing back in a battle for the history books in a few parts, but for now Noongar is a civ with theoretically infinite opportunities hampered by being Australian.
Altima:
The Selkups are currently having what we call a “Siberian Moment.” They’ve got great stats in most places- except in the twin tyrants of Science and Population, where the abysmal food yields of their homeland leave them lagging hard. This is made worse by the fact that other powers are starting to creep into their theater, and are doing so harder than they are. There’s still time to swing things back into their court, but the way things are going, expect a death spiral of collapsing tech competition sooner than later.
Rosay:
Pontus rises a few places this part as now they are competing with the weaker Qarmatians instead of a strong Afsharids for middle eastern territory. They still have plenty of room to expand, so there's still room to grow without being aggressive, though Pontus isn't exactly scared of being aggressive right now either as seen with their war against Makhnovia (which will probably unfortunately be a nothing burger due to their lack of a navy in the area but it's still a nice thought). They definitely have their flaws keeping them out of the top ten however, mainly being that all of their cities are not really populous so they aren't really getting their bang for their buck out of them, but nothing a little turtling cannot fix.
Altima:
As the Wahgi-Mag war stalemates out, the Wahgi lose a few ranks to their bad military and production, and their closing settlement options. They’ve still got solid stats everywhere except their Production and Military, but those are two rather important fields to lack in. With their solid science, they may well tech up a solution to that, but they have to get there first. But then, at these early hours, that option does still hold their rank up a fair bit.
Leman:
Kazakhstan had a solid part, though this is the first part where they have to prove themselves. Kazakhstan has spent the last five parts settling nine cities and turning itself into a solid, but relatively uninspiring central Asian blob civ (think S1 Kazakhs, S2 Uzbekistan). This part ended with Kazakhstan in their first relevant war with their southern neighbor, Bukhara. Kazakhstan is definitely stronger, they lead in city count, production, and military manpower, but I’m not sure if it’s overwhelming enough to crush Bukhara and transform Kazakhstan into a top 5 powerhouse. Then again, that might be asking a lot for a civ that’s already comfortably top 10. Kazakhstan’s in a good spot.
Cloudy:
The Dzungars have rocketed up into the top 10, fairly unexpectedly I’d say, after having one hell of an episode. Their first big win was obviously receiving Lhasa in their peace treaty with the Khoshuts, and then on top of that they also settled two more new cities, bringing their total to 10, right up there with the other top dogs. They’ve also risen to 6th place in the info addict rankings—the largest rise of any civ this week—and they rank 7th in production and 6th in military. Overall I would say we did not expect a Tarim Basin civ to ever do this well, but somehow, it’s starting to look like the Dzungars are the civ to beat in Central Asia.
JDT: Ndongo got away with assault through the theft of Malkerns and drops one for committing a crime. In seriousness, not much changed for Ndongo. They’re still the ire of Africa, still the strongest by far in the region, with no real threats around them in spite of the many wars they are undergoing. Mogadishu is a joke who made peace with them, Kanem-Bornu and Saba aren’t in a position to threaten them, Rozvi and eSwatini are memes who aren’t at war, and no one else is anywhere near them. The only potential concern would be their UA not properly working, but in the grand scheme of things it's a minor deal that doesn’t hinder them too much. People, I think it's finally time for Nzinga.
Leman:
Pueblo continues to coast on strong early settling and excellent stats. No cities settled this part is a bit of a bummer, especially given how much room Pueblo has, but I have no doubt that Pueblo will manage to fill out their lands and continue to be powerful for the foreseeable future.
CelestialDalek:
Tiwanaku didn’t really do anything this episode. However, their stats are solid, their position is solid, and they’re not pressed for space. It’s hard to see a real threat on their horizon: New Holland is above them, but separating the two coasts of South America is the Amazon, known for its infamous meatgrinders in the BR. Funnily enough, probably the worst thing that could happen would be declaring war on Rio Grande and not defending Pokotia well, but the tech difference shouldn’t make that defense too difficult.
Shaggy:
New Holland spent this episode enhancing their stats and their religion. They are getting comfortable up here in their top 5 spot, but hopefully not so comfortable that they forget to exert their will on the South American continent and then the world
Leman:
Gogouryeo keeps on rising and have finally entered the top three. They’re the third civ to have double-digit city counts, after Shang and Faroes. All their stats are stellar, none of their wars have been embarrassing, their neighbors, while strong, are not immediately threatening, and Goguryeo still has a lot of room to settle in Siberia and, if they’re feeling bold, Japan.
Shaggy:
I know I joked about Sierra Leone dropping cities on the cylinder like they’re hot potatoes but now we get to this season’s current master of “hey, that land is mine!”, Shang. The burgeoning war they are fighting with Goguryeo and Ikko-Ikki looks to be one of the more interesting ones in the early game this season. Xinxiang and Yanshi have already been blockaded and damaged significantly, revealing a weakness of Shang’s: they have a “density” problem. If you think of density as a ratio between a civ’s military strength (mass) and its production capacity (volume), you can do some fun stats work to see how good a civ is at filling its borders with effective units. I tend to use this stat to try to figure out if a civ is building up for an invasion or if it would be susceptible to one from a neighbor. And, interestingly, Shang has the lowest density of any civ in their vicinity other than Mongolia. In fact, they have one of the lowest densities of our top 10 ranks this part! Only New Holland, Kazakhstan, and Wahgi have lower density numbers and none of them are in the midst of a multi-front war that includes another top 10 civ. I’d think about shorting Shang in the stonk game but I still haven’t implemented derivatives in that.
Msurdej:
Continuing their reign at the top, The Faroe Islands take another round in the top spot. But this time, it’s their first undisputed, 0 deviation top ranking. And with stats as high as theirs, it's easy to see why. One thing to note however, is the small dip in production they saw from the end of last part, from 136 to 129. They’ve also never gone to war, and such pacifism will never win them the CBRX.