Episode 49: From Sunset to Sunrise – S1

My apologies for the lateness of the hour. Proper social graces can be most difficult to observe during wartime. I’m /u/EndlessVoid0, and I do stuff, occasionally, I guess. As a former and probably-still-current lurker, it’s kind of scary, at times? Whatever. We’ve got a good part ahead of you. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

Another week, another fantastic piece of original content. /u/ARedundantSofa detailed the probable thought process behind Parthia’s suicide run with this lovely treat for our eyes, though I can’t help but feel like the artist is perhaps downplaying the Kazakhs’ power here. I don’t know, it just feels a little… wrong, seeing them as an actually physical being and not some omnipresent force.

Ever wonder what Uruguay’s cursed face would look like on the flags of the cylinder? Ponder no longer with Sebscobar’s collection of occupied territory flags, with both Kazakh and Uruguayan editions out as I write this. This one’s the flag of Uruguayan Papua, a beautiful piece of work that incorporates both good aesthetic design and the face that I’ve had taped to my eyelids for the past few months.

And finally, for those of you just looking to quantify the scale of the cylinder, Vihreaa’s hand-drawn maps consistently provide that refreshing sense of awe, pride, and “Jesus, I really wasn’t as emotionally prepared for so little Palmyra as I thought” that accompanies the best kinds of OC. Never before have we seen so many city-states and so few powers. If the rate of culling we’ve been seeing continues, we might never see the likes of it again.

Ah, the Power Rankings. Kazakh first place is a take, and I say that being one of the ones who put them there. But even with their being coalitioned by two of the strongest civs in the game, they’re still just about stalemating, and they’re not even at full strength yet. If you’re looking for someone to support who’s not going to let you down, Ablai Khan’s as good a pick as any.

Today’s part starts out with a view of the Zimbabwe/Taungoo war, and, well, you sure can’t say that Bayinnaung is just rolling over and accepting his fate. Bago’s flipped back and might just stay that way, but there’s a lot of Zimbabwean units lurking on the edge of this shot, and not a whole lot of Taungoo units to compensate. They might be able to hold out for a few turns, but it’s only a matter of time before they buckle under the pressure only a superpower can exert.

Meanwhile, in Acarigua, the worst has finally come to pass: Hugo Chavez has died as he lived, stubbornly fighting a losing war against an existential threat. Sure, the Taungoo are probably a good deal weaker than Uruguay right now, but the story’s remained the same for him nonetheless; he clung to life as long as he could, but was eventually overwhelmed by sheer numbers. If it’s any solace for Venezuela fans, consider this; it took the combined power of three of the best six civs on the cylinder to bring him down, and even then he still held out a surprisingly long time. Maybe Venezuela was never meant to be a power in either America, but if there’s anyone that could be a worthy successor to the Buccs in Central America, it’s Hugo Chavez.

Somewhere in the deepest, darkest regions of South America, alone in a heavily reinforced bunker miles underneath the cylinder’s surface, Juan Antonio Lavalleja twists the cap off of his favorite red marker and defaces a portrait of happier days.

The Bering Sea’s really outdone itself when it comes to providing intra-continent conflicts this mark, and this current war is no different. The Iroquois, despite being hilariously outnumbered, have managed to push all the way into Japan thanks to their tech advantage and the element of surprise, but with a Kazakh helicopter fleet that’s that big, one can’t help but wonder how long it will take for this offensive war to become a defensive one.

While Taungoo’s mission to rid the world of rump states in the east has been a wild success, on the west things are going far less smoothly. Bago’s continued freedom has come at the cost of Sagaing and Inwa to the south, and while there are enough Taungoo troops in range to keep the cities flipping, there aren’t enough to keep them under the brown and black banner indefinitely. If it wasn’t guaranteed already, it sure is now; Taungoo isn’t coming out of this war with more cities than they came into it. All they can do now is pray that they’re able to mitigate the damage.

Now, sure, Uruguay’s carpet looks imposing, on the surface. But then you take a closer look, and, hey, are those lancers? Line infantry? Lavalleja may be strong on his own continent, but if he wants to project his power such that he can actually win his current war against a fellow superpower he’s got quite the science deficit to make up.

As Zimbabwe and Taungoo continue to battle amidst the rapidly decomposing ruins of Indochina, some other corner of the world, one we’d thought already decided, deigns to speak its mind. For, you see, Alaric, being an absolute master of surviving situations he has no business surviving, has somehow managed to buy a reprieve from the Moorish menace, with a little help from a few Taungoo diplomats who are in for a nasty shock once they head back home. One can only wonder what the Goths had to pay to make that peace deal a reality.

By the looks of it, the Iroquois could use a little of that good old-fashioned Gothic diplomatic genius too. The Kazakhs are turning the tables on this war like an experienced DJ, taking advantage of the lacking Iroquois military presence in the region to seize Tosa-Aki and Imabari. The helicopters currently descending upon Alaska may just get themselves canonized as part of the eleventh Biblical plague, but they aren’t going to be doing much city taking, being ranged units. Not that that’s even going to matter, necessarily: they’ll likely busy themselves with killing off Iroquois units first, and given how few Hiawatha has...

Never let it be said that the Great Kazakh Cudgeling is solely composed of miracle Iroquois gains and hilarious Parthian idiocy. See, the Uruguay are a part of this war too! Look, they’ve actually managed to take Dianjiang! At the cost of the entire rest of their Pacific empire’s city health, sure, but they are trying their best. The issue for them right now isn’t related to the effort that they’re putting in so much as it is the growing realization that Uruguay’s best might, for the first time this mark, not be good enough.

A few turns later, and outside of the standard set of flips that are beginning to choke the strait outside Sagaing with corpses, nothing’s really changed for the Taungoo. Which, of course, only makes their situation more dire. Bago’s falling again is the centerpiece of this slide, but there’s something far, far worse brewing for Bayinnaung here. See those Zimbabwean melee units outside Allahabad? See how close they are to that city?

Yeah. Taungoo might be able to hold off a naval invasion by Zimbabwe to some extent, but a serious land invasion would be too much for any of the non-powers to overcome. And Taungoo? Is not a power. If they keep their attention as focused to the south as it currently is, they might just not have cities pretty soon. And even if they do manage to hold back the green goons for a little while longer, it’s only a matter of time before the soap bubble that is their empire pops.

In Britain, though, a far greater battle is brewing, as two scientific powerhouses settle their differences the only way they know how: by erecting ever-more-ridiculous structures in a ridiculous game of one-upmanship. The Moors strike first, and might just clinch an edge in wonders right then and there, constructing the Enrichment Center in what I can only assume is a half-decent city for it. GLaDOS’ playpen provides one additional science for each citizen in the city, a lethal combination in a good settlement and a waste of a wonder in a failed Petra city. Still, given how close the two empires are in science right now, clear human rights violations such as this one could make all the difference.

While the Taungoo’s slow, painful, protracted fall from grace continues, a somehow even more slow-cooking standoff has just been heated up by about, oh, one tenth of a degree. Eadni, having just made peace with the Goths, teams up with her old buddy Ewuare (?) to declare war on the Parthians, with neither party evidently aware that Mithridates’ one remaining city is protected by an Indian comp bow who absolutely refuses to budge. Alaric’s not going to complain, though. Anything that keeps the tattered remains of his empire alive a little while longer is good in his book.

Having successfully gained control of these former “Nepalese” lands and uncovered the scroll of effective city defense from its location in Prithvi Narayan’s tomb, Mutota marshals his singular AA gun in the region to the main Taungoo front, drooling in anticipation at the prospect of ridding them of an air force. To be fair, if they do have one, it’s probably already in disarray, given how frequently Bayinnaung has been moving back and forth between his ostensible capital and whichever other city he’s foisted himself upon.

War! And it’s between two superpowers, so you know it’s going to be good. Also, damn, forgot how small the Atlantic is on this map. The Moors haven’t, though, and with that kind of navy they stand a serious chance of making landfall onto South America if all goes right, and if they manage to not immediately lose cities in North Africa to that token force there. They’re two whole eras ahead of Uruguay in some places. It’s kind of terrifying, and if you’re Lavalleja is probably a big hit to the ol’ ego. Still, though, I can’t help but feel like this screenshot has a bit too much going on...

Much better. Two turns later, and all the units are dead, and the Moors have, hilariously, slipped into Las Piedras while nobody was looking. After an opening salvo like this the Moors are probably not going to be taking that much, but Abd-ar Rahman III is going to be a hell of a nuisance for the cylinder’s own Hannibal Lecter, and giving how the Kazakh war is on a knife’s edge it might just slam Uruguay’s window shut for good.

Turns out, all Zimbabwe needed the whole time was a few slides’ worth of time out of the limelight. Who knew? With the fall of Gorkha and the near-levelling of Bhamo, not only has the coastline been all but secured, but the army proper is finally making inroads into Taungoo territory. And it’s not hard to see why: while Taungoo’s south might be well-populated, their north is barren, and their production numbers weren’t enough to hold the line against the full brunt of Zimbabwe’s forces on their own. Bayinnaung’s probably still going to be alive after this part, but any hope of him making an actual imprint on this game has gone completely out the window.

In the Atlantic, Las Piedras is traded for Barinas and Santa Teresa Del Tuy. If you’re an Uruguay fan and you like suffering, try comparing the two civs’ navies in this screenshot. Lavalleja, likely at this point drowning his sorrows and wondering when his invulnerability wore off, is employing a token defense force largely comprised of embarked units and privateers. Abd-ar Rahman, meanwhile, has only a few land units in sight, is many, many techs ahead, and most importantly, is using his massive navy, slowly and inexorably moving it to the front. Uruguay may be keeping even on this front for now, but if they don’t want to fall victim to the same fate they subjected Australia to they’re running out of time.

Meanwhile, in the sidebar, terrible, terrible things are happening. Parthia has made peace with the Kazakhs, and thus, thanks to the heroic efforts of one Indian composite bowman, has been spared. Truly, this is the darkest timeline.

The most humiliating part of this: in those final days, Parthia was protected not by the composite bowman of legend, but by the untimely teleportation of that one Indian settler. I feel sick. I’m sure Ablai Khan, who bombed Zadracarta into oblivion and knocked at its gates for dozens of turns, feels immeasurably worse.

Porlamar falls the next turn, but the warm, fuzzy, pleasant feeling that accompanies news of Uruguay being humiliated isn’t quite enough to wash the bitter taste of that last peace deal away. If this is how Parthia makes it to the end of the game, was it ever really worth it in the first place?

And yep, Taungoo’s in wholesale collapse now. Bhamo, Bago, and Sagaing all join Gorkha in what is fast becoming Bayinnaung’s elevator pitch to the Order of Rumps, as Zimbabwe doesn’t quite sweep across the landscape so much as lazily poke at it. Taungoo might be able to flip one or two of these cities if things really break their way, but their chances of getting out of this with some manner of dignity left without a prompt peace deal are near nil, and the slowly-advancing green wave in Allahabad has essentially put a timer on the remainder of their stay in mainland Asia. They need their diplomats to come through, and they need them to come through now.

Meanwhile, in the Atlantic, Uruguay’s finally gotten their turn at the wheel and has used it to seize the only two Moorish cities they could realistically take. Though their chosen units for those endeavors do seem to be leaving a lot to be desired. Enlightenment era horses are all well and good in the era they’re made, and still serve a purpose on land, but on sea and against units that hopelessly outclass them they become considerably less effective.

Though, you never really know with the CBR. Sometimes, a force of wildly outdated embarked units is the best navy a country can have.

Dagon goes green thanks to the efforts of a bored AA gun operator, but look! Over to the right! It’s the Kazakh-Uruguay war! And it remains as stubborn a testament to the adverse effects of meleeitis as ever. Just think: if Ablai Khan hadn’t built his army out of the most omnidirectional vehicles he could find, he’d probably have claimed the entirety of this theater by now. As it is, Uruguay stands a startlingly good chance of winning this war handily, and the big bad Khan has only himself to blame.

Perhaps to vent his frustrations, he proves that the Kazakhs can, in fact, into space. I wonder if they know that cheese is a low-potassium food?

Pyay is the next Taungoo city to fall to the executioner’s axe, and while it will almost certainly flip back, it represents a crushing blow for Bayinnaung nonetheless. Now the city that’s the namesake of his empire, the metropolis of Taungoo itself, is on the front lines, and boy, is it going to be tough explaining that one at the United Nations.

I think there’s a phrase for what’s happening on the sidebar. “Crushing disappointment” sounds apt.

Perhaps realizing that despite his overwhelming technological advantage his chances of seizing any more than like three cities were infinitesimal, Abd-ar Rahman makes peace with Lavalleja. It’s a questionable move on the part of the Moors, but a lucky escape for Uruguay, who despite being thoroughly humbled in terms of tech and having their veneer of invulnerability now get a chance to restock in preparation for hostilities to come at full strength.

Oh, look, it’s the Iroquois’ core! The war with the Kazakhs is bleeding them dry, but they’re still in good shape, with plenty of high pop cities and—wait, is that fallout

Ah

Well

I mean, if you want to make more mutants, that’s a pretty surefire way of doing it

Excuse me, just give me a moment

Hold on

Well that one guy who predicted it’d be dropped over Japan is probably pretty disappointed

In mildly less batshit news, the Kazakhs’ counterpush has allowed them to once more make landfall on North America. It’s not that good of a counterpush, admittedly, with Iyo-Saijo and Cev’aq likely to be the extent of their ambitions for now, and given how Ablai Khan has 229 shots of the nuclear cannon to go and how eager he seems to be to use it, tech inferiority and stupid levels of city spam might not even matter once he gets a head of steam going.

the f*ing kazakhs, man

Oh, would you look at that, things somehow got even worse. One turn later and the Zimbabwean horde has officially arrived, but not before letting a single anti-aircraft gun seize Taungoo’s namesake city under heavy fire and under Uruguay’s peacekeepers’ noses. The majority of Taungoo’s units in this screenshot are carriers without planes or submarines, and given their rapidly-filling land, they might not even have enough space to put their units places when they produce them.

Meanwhile, Hiawatha, rightfully intimidated by Ablai Khan’s willingness to drop nukes on cities that aren’t even that important, sues for peace with the Kazakhs. When asked to weigh in on Khan’s actions from his wine cellar, Lavalleja states simply “Dude, even I’m not that evil.”

Sukumo would be a hell of a problem for mapmakers, but given that it’s in the ocean, I’m pretty sure it’s out of Vihreaa’s jurisdiction. If Ablai Khan decides to renew his commitment to murdering the Iroquois in the near future, however, it’s certainly not going to be any safer than the currently besieged Uruguayan city of Ninstints is, or, hell, the entire rest of Alaska. This war may go down in the books as a win for Hiawatha, yes, but it could have gone so much better.

Pyay is the next city to fall to the Zimbabweans, and it’s not flipping back, despite those great peoples’ best wishes. The south is marginally more contested than the north, but any enthusiasm there fades at the sheer number of Uruguayan peacekeepers overrunning the remains of the Taungoo in this screenshot, trampling upon a grave that’s already been dug. Lavalleja wants to out-Madagascar Madagascar, and he’s goddamn committing to it.

Seriously. God. Damn. Taungoo seems doomed to go out not with a bang but a whimper, slowly worn down under the weight of a thousand Zimbabwean units, drowned by their own ostensible allies. And after their rapid takedown of all those Oceanian minnows back in the day? I cannot think of a more karmic end.

While this is going on, apparently still influenced mentally by the radiation emanating out of Battleford’s mountains, Hiawatha unveils Jurassic Park to the general public. The park provides your empire with a lot of extra gold, a lot of extra science, and dinosaur barbarians. Hell yes.

Yeah, that’s about what I expected here. Ninstints doesn’t look long for this world, and while it is for the moment merely an isolated colony of Uruguay’s that probably never was going to amount to all that much under than a nice and pretty extra number in the capitals column, it’s kind of illustrating a more troubling problem for Lavalleja right now. Namely, his status as the sole person fighting the Kazakhs right now after a war with the Moors that was more like a vaudeville sideshow. Nukes are a start, but he’s still wildly out-teched, and if something doesn’t change soon he’ll start losing city after city.

While this is going on, the Kazakhs elect to make peace with the Vikings, in a move that is little more than just good political hygiene for Ablai Khan and quite the relief for a Viking nation increasingly worried about weird men backed up by poofy clouds landing out of the sky and killing city-states with ease.

Against a backdrop of slow, gradual Taungoo destruction, Uruguay pushes about as far as they’re going to get and slides into Luoyang. They are doing pretty well right now, yes, but their units are horribly, horribly outdated, and the Kazakhs’ are much deadlier, and have more friends. A quick peace deal a la the Moorish war would be very, very prudent for Lavalleja right now.

Meanwhile, the Iroquois seize the lead in the building silly buildings competition with the completion of the Shanghai Financial Center, a building which gives flat gold and improves merchants, which makes it kinda nice for humans and pretty useless for the AI. Still, you can never have too much gold, I suppose.

In Arheimar, local buffoon Alaric was found dead in his own home yesterday, shot twice in the back then left to rot in a pool of blood. Alaric had been known as a pillar of the community for quite some time, owing to his previous conquests during his youth and his generous nature as he hit old age. A Beninese infantryman was found at the scene of the crime, and was summarily arrested for his involvement there. He faces first degree murder charges, but maintains that he did the old man a mercy, claiming that his last words were a pained cry of “I knew I shouldn’t have given you Gothiscandzia.” Those close to Alaric declined to comment.

(Also, the Iroquois built another wonder. Not sure what they’re planning to do with the CN Tower, though. Go for a low-key culture win?)

If Nyatsimba Mutota can’t slide into Mottama normally, then he’s just going to have to go around. Deftly dodging peacekeepers like a Matrix character, Zimbabwe’s units seize Adelaide, Pathein, and Queanbeyan with little fanfare and even less native resistance, as their main enemy becomes not the dying forces of the Taungoo but the roadblocking Uruguayan units stubbornly intent on keep Bayinnaung hooked up to the life support. A few more turns of this will probably give Zimbabwe those cities anyways, but when it comes to the Taungoo’s efforts to broker a peace deal this sort of interference is just about the best thing to get for keeping that particular window open.

Hiawatha’s been especially industrious of late, building yet another wonder, with the Tokyo Sky Tree’s bonuses to happiness and culture all but making it official that he’s doing something with those Broadcast Towers. What, I don’t know, but he’s definitely doing something.

Oh, dear. What’s kicking a person while they’re down for 400? The Taungoo were already on the ropes before this, and I don’t quite see how Australia’s going to get themselves anything in the way of cities with this, but given how opportunistic their play has been of late I suppose this was just inevitable. Of more concern is the Parthian DoW in conjunction with theirs, something that’s going to have little to no effect right now but could perhaps prove fatal to the little purple empire if the Taungoo somehow survive this. I don’t think they will, but still.

And that one’s going to be much more impactful than both of the last two combined, probably. The Iroquois jump on the bandwagon and declare war on the Taungoo as well, a move that while smart in theory in practice entails surviving a full-on assault by those Taungoo troops still left in Hawaii first. They’ll probably crush the Taungoo rather easily if Bayinnaung splits his forces, but a coordinated assault could make things much harder, especially given the Uruguayan peacekeepers pouring into Hiawatha’s empire to gum up the works. Lavalleja, you sly dog, you.

A stay of execution! Taungoo’s diplomats must be even better than we gave them credit for, managing to, in a cylinder where everybody and their mother’s been giving up entire empires in peace deals, convince Mutota to back down and live and let live with only four cities, and bombed out husks of cities at that. Sure, Bayinnaung’s empire may now be split into three separate chunks, but he’s alive, and given how devastating this war has been for him and his chances at doing just about anything in this game that’s something to celebrate.

In further news from the sidebar, Mithridates, aware of the fate of the Goths, starts cleaning up his mess diplomatically, and Ablai Khan throws the Hubble Space Telescope into space, providing his empire with a boost to science that should paper over the only flaw left in his game right now. Can you imagine the Kazakhs with Moors-level tech? There’d be nothing left of the cylinder to salvage.

Ah, so it looks like we’re going for the split forces plan. Lovely. Coro falls and Taungoo ships fan out, outdated yet still threatening thanks to the Iroquois’ not having a navy. This seems like a serious oversight on Hiawatha’s part. It’s probably not going to be a fatal one, but it might just set him back to boot: it’s unlikely Bayinnaung will actually flip Prince Albert or Saint-Louis de Langevin, but if he does that’s going to be a hit to population and production that can’t really be afforded right now if the Iroquois, like the Moors, are playing for a science victory.

Another thing the Iroquois are doing worse than the Moors: naval invasions. The Moors go after Uruguay again, but they’ve probably missed their shot at creating some beautiful bordergore, with their doom carpet of boats largely exhausted and with Uruguay’s renewable land forces so large as to have taken over parts of the Iroquois’ land. They might flip a city or two, and a timely peace deal could allow them to keep their gains, but they’re not going to be gaining much unless there’s a whole horde of boats waiting in the distance we can’t see from here.

That question about whether or not the Moors have enough resources to navally invade Uruguay appears to have been answered with a resounding yes. The real question now is whether they’ll have enough resources to survive Uruguay and do that at the same time, given the glut of peacekeepers Uruguay has just lying around, and while they’ll probably do the former I don’t think they’ll manage the latter. Time will be everything in this war, and skirmishes in North Africa are going to take that away from Abd-ar Rahman.

...Their city sniping game would appear to be on point, though. Jesus fuck, how did they even manage to take Ninstints from here?

This is probably why. Aware that he’s going to need all hands on deck to have a shot at winning this war with the Moors, Lavalleja declares that there is peas in our thyme, and buries the hatchet with the Kazakhs. In good time, too. The Kazakhs were finally beginning to muster something of a force that could take back the cities they lost, and this way Lavalleja can claim that he won a war against the Kazakhs, which always looks great for the ol resume.

Second verse, same as the first. Five turns after sniping Ninstints, Abd-ar Rahman ceases hostilities with Uruguay before anything can come of them yet again, and it’s making me wonder if he only wanted them for Haida’s capital all along. I suppose we’ll need a third go to really test that theory, but that would be my completely uninformed guess as to why this border has turned into little more than an aquatic meat grinder.

Meanwhile, in Hawaii, I imagine the war between the Taungoo and Iroquois has—oh. Huh. They’re, ah, already done. Evidently Hiawatha did have something of a navy all along, because he’s torn through the Taungoo holdings in the region in only a few short turns, and now can rest easy knowing that he’s given the peacekeepers currently infiltrating his territory a bunch of nice, juicy ocean tiles to use in lieu of the land he actually likes. I don’t think that scheme is going to work out for him, but you do you, Hiawatha.

He also builds, you guessed it, another wonder. The Utsade Gene Vault boosts tile improvements that take a while to unlock in the first place, making it great for a country rebuilding after a war and merely mediocre for one that isn’t. The Iroquois will probably use this suboptimally.

Well, well, well, how the tables have turned. Ranavalona finally brings her massive army of peacekeepers into practice as Madagascar declares war on the one-city fiefdom of Parthia, in a war that would surely culminate in an eventual victory for the Mada-Viking faction were it not for the Kazakh helicopter in the east playing the “if I can’t have it, no one can” game. I’d say it’s about 50-50 that Mithridates bites it this part. Seems accurate.

Ladies and gentlemen! Please keep all hands and feet inside the vehicle and stow your tray tables in the upright position, because we have ourselves a bona fide world war! As Taungoo slowly machetes their way through their own diplomatic jungle, Uruguay (and the Vikings) plant a knife directly in the collective backs of Zimbabwe, turning their peacekeeping forces into an offensive menace hell-bent on uniting Oceania. And they’re living up to those expectations, too, immediately seizing cities as far as Dala and Cairns from the only rival they have that’s worse than they are right now. Needless to say, the situation doesn’t look good for Mutota...

...Outside of Antarctica, of course, which tells a completely different story. Zimbabwe’s ships have both the tech and numbers advantage here, and given how ineffectively Lavalleja was able to respond to the Moorish menace Mutota could just end up on the good side of this war, somehow, with a quick strike at Uruguay’s core. Time will tell.

Time, right now, seems to be saying some profoundly anti-Zimbabwean things. With the fall of Adelaide and Mottama, seven Zimbabwean cities have now fallen before the borders can change to match, but while Uruguay is in the driver's seat right now...

A few turns later, their lack of units has cost them big time. Adelaide and Mergui are the only two cities still in Lavalleja’s hands four turns after the DoW, and while there are enough Uruguayan units here to keep flipping things for some time, their abysmal tech is beginning to cripple them. Zimbabwe may have been wholly unprepared for this strike, yes, but they have a much larger margin for error, and that’s becoming clearer and clearer with every city they liberate.

In the background, the Metis declare war on the Vikings. Expect this war to not matter for, oh, about forty turns, only for one civ to suddenly sneak into the other’s capital and off them once that threshold is reached.

The bad news for Uruguay in this slide: Maldonado has fallen to the green wave. The good news: said green wave is down to just a few ships. They’ll lose Mercedes, and maybe Rivera too, but in order to launch a full-scale invasion of Uruguay’s core Mutota’s going to have to call for reinforcements. He has the troops to do it, certainly. Now it’s just a matter of getting them down here and wreaking havoc with them.

Pliny, lord and savior of us all that he is, deigns to give us an actually relevant listicle at turn 550, and boy does it have a lot to say about the state of the cylinder. The five main powers are completely dominating the tech race right now, but between them there’s a definite hierarchy. The Iroquois are on top tech-wise, the Moors a half-era down and the Kazakhs almost a full era behind. Those are your science victory contenders. Uruguay and Zimbabwe, the warring dragons, are notably worse in this department, and I can’t help but feel like it’ll spell doom for them in the long run.

It’s certainly spelling doom for Uruguay, right now. Zimbabwe has now fully recovered all their own holdings, and has begun to focus their efforts on adding new ones to their empire, sending a token force out to contest Australia. I doubt they’ll be able to flip much given the sheer quantity of Uruguayan units in the outback, but at the very least it’s bringing the war to Uruguay’s land as opposed to their own, and given how much smoke is rising out of Indonesia right now I can’t help but feel like that’s much appreciated.

Yep, definitely going for the science victory. Hiawatha may be the undisputed leader in tech, but he’s got barely any military to speak of, and with Uruguayan peacekeepers fighting an existential threat all the way up in Siberia I can’t help but feel like this isn’t going to end well for Hiawatha. One day, somebody will breach the Iroquois core, and if it remains this utterly barren it’s not going to be a matter of if they take any cities so much as how many.

The Pholus Mutagen sure looks exciting, and still drastically changes any given empire’s outlook, but it isn’t as game-breakingly ridiculous as it was in Mark Two anymore. Still, it does bestow the Gengineered promotion, and given how few Iroquois units there are if they do decide to rebuild their carpet there are going to be a lot of Gengineered units running around here.

For Uruguay, things get even worse. Brisbane has yet to flip back. Neither will Yangdi. Mutota has found the hole in Uruguay’s formation and is beginning to exploit it, slipping into the Uruguayan Philippines and threatening the weak Polynesia that awaits beyond it with a slowly-coming mass of boats in position to make Lavalleja’s life hell. Puyang will probably flip back many times before the wave hits here, but the fact that it’s even flipping at all is more of an indictment of how Uruguay’s been playing this game than anything else. Their total ignorance of tech has led to their being totally outclassed in the region by the second-weakest superpower in that regard caught with their pants down. Uruguay might just never win a real war again, after this.

Perhaps aware of how poorly this ostensibly offensive war has gone for him, Lavalleja sues for peace. He does it at an opportune enough time to walk away from this war with a draw, but I can’t help but imagine he expected more when he struck against the underbelly of his weakest rival. I certainly did.

Here, have an elimination to spice things up. Since his rumpification Riel always was going to last just as long as good terms with the Iroquois did, and judging by the DoW, it looks like both his time and diplomacy’s time has come. He won’t die immediately, given the riflemen, but he’ll sure as hell come damn close.

Yep. The Metis were always a sort of weird power in this game, very, very threatening on paper both in the mathematical and cartographical sense, but it never really seemed like they knew what to do with their ridiculous amounts of power. They had some good wars against the Haida and the Apache, yes, but pre-Endgame they spent most of their time just resting on their laurels, and essentially gave the continent to Hiawatha for nothing through inaction despite an incredibly auspicious start. They came within centimeters of winning the continent in Endgame, after just the kind of strong strikes they were missing beforehand propelled them to a 1a 1b style situation with the Iroquois, but their inactivity during the early game proved too much to overcome, as Iroquois’ slim tech advantage ballooned into a large one and Louis Riel became the poster child for civs undone by poor tech. Whenever you look back on the Metis from this point on, remember their victories, yes, but also remember how close they were to becoming so much more. Their beautifully wasted potential is how they ought to be remembered.

Say what you will about Lavalleja, but he certainly isn’t wasting his own. After trying and failing the same plan against Zimbabwe, he’s pulling the peacekeeper backstab trick again on the Iroquois with the moral assistance of Benin, and it might just work this time around. Sure, Central America is smaller, but it’s a lot closer to their core, and much easier to reinforce in case things go as horribly wrong as they did last go round. He won’t be getting that much, here, but he’ll be getting something, and at this point he can’t afford to be picky about the details if he wants to win.

In Europe, as their principal enemies are distracted by actual war as opposed to passive-aggressive one-upmanship with wonders, the Moors create Hatsune Miku. She’s a tourism player’s wet dream and nothing more, sure, but at least they’ll be winning the propaganda wars.

Hawaii, coming off the heels of two straight changes in ownership, seems poised to switch sides yet again. Uruguay’s blitz is having great results here, as Coro falls and San Felipe and Acarigua are threatened...

And in Central America, just this once, Lavalleja catches a break. Garoga falls, the Iroquois find themselves defaulting to helicopters to even the odds, and what I do believe is the first Uruguayan infantryman makes an appearance in the Caribbean. For the first time this part, things are finally going Uruguay’s way.

A statement backed up by the seizure of both the rest of Hawaii and the perhaps prematurely named Loon Lake. Iroquois have all the advantages here, but their own unwillingness to build military units has finally bit them in the rear, as virtually all their border cities fall before they can even think about getting their paratrooper-less army to the front. Those future worlds units’ nifty extra move is nice, yes, and is probably going to be the only thing keeping Hiawatha in the war a few from turns from now, his depopulated empire’s only counter to the blitz taking place. Good tech means nothing if you don’t have any units to take advantage of it, and Lavalleja seems to know it.

As this happens, the Sami declare peace with the Vikings. Just a few parts ago, that would have demanded its own slide. Now, it’s a footnote.

Much like the Sami are going to be in a turn, after Abd-ar Rahman’s change of heart leads to their swift demise. See, this is why you don’t gift your entire empire to someone when you’re losing a war. They’ll use it against you, to devastating effect.

Hiawatha finally puts the brakes on Uruguay’s charge, now fielding merely a naval surge as opposed to one by both sea and land, but it’s still going to be a little while before he can go on the offensive. His own navy’s been wiped off the face of the cylinder, for one, and his attack right now consists more of scattered skirmishes than anything else. He’s stopped the bleeding, but the wound isn’t going to go away any time soon.

Eadni, meanwhile, already has, her Sami being the next great empire to meet an early end. The Sami were amazing during the early days of the game, settling like crazy, taking land where they needed it, and generally looking like the Inuit of Europe. But while the Inuit were able to clean house in North America, a Europe where most every civ was able to mount at least a token resistance proved unfailingly difficult for the Sami to break through, a problem that went from minor to major as, on the other end of the continent, the Moors grew ever more powerful through conquest rather than good settling. By the time Endgame hit, the Moors were the undisputed number one in the region while the Sami were never quite able to break out of their start, and after they had no choice but to run back their old strategy while the Moors reached new heights during Endgame, it became clear the Eadni’s goat was cooked. The peace deal, then, was perhaps her cleverest move in the entire game. It meant she didn’t have to suffer as long.

You know, it’s very easy to forget how small the Atlantic is on this map. Ewuare certainly hasn’t forgotten. He may be little more than the undisputed sixth placer right now, but he’s definitely got the determination of a bona fide superpower, with his conquests of Arheimar and his flipping of Puerto Cabello giving him a capture count at least on par with some of the superpowers he’s so desperately trying to emulate. He won’t ever reach their tier, not after so long in the background, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Benin in the final three.

It also wouldn’t be much of one to see them dead in twenty turns, but that’s true for just about everyone, really.

Aside from that little hiccup, though, Uruguay’s war effort is going surprisingly well. Tiohero, Ciudad Bolivar, and Saint-Louis de Langevin are the next cities to go blue, and, hell, one of those cities is actually usable! The Iroquois are probably going to take at least some of this right back once they finally get a push going, but it’s looking more and more likely that Lavalleja could actually walk away from this one with a bona fide, no strings attached W, which is huge for the power with the worst tech going against the one with the best.

Or it could just all be a ploy to give him false hope. The Iroquois damage Puerto Cabello and sweep into Porlamar, Barinas, and Santa Teresa del Tuy with all the unquestioned might of an elemental force, and Uruguay’s lacking navy on this side of Panama, already a prime suspect for why the Moors were able to strike so well twice in a row, has betrayed them once again. Embarked units simply do not make for a good resistance force against an honest-to-god navy, and those old Venezuelan lands could just be the sacrificial lambs demonstrating why.

Two turns later, Uruguay declares war on the Iroquois… again? Ooookay, sure. Less confusingly, or perhaps moreso, they’ve managed to push back once more against the Iroquois, seizing the parts of the Caribbean they’ve lost with ease, but that might not be down to them...

So much as it’s down to this. The Kazakhs, seen here with just the kind of bulky and carpeted core befitting everyone’s favorite exporter of potassium, are ready for round two with a panicked Iroquois that desperately makes peace with Uruguay in the confusion…

Lime’s note: Two negatives (war) do make a positive (peace)!

And this time, they’re the ones on the offensive. Hoo boy.

I’m /u/EndlessVoid0, and join us next time for a nuclear holocaust.