Episode 30: My Boomerang Won’t Come Back

1: Insert Meta-Title Here

Greetings, People of Submarine, and moukarimakka? This is Homusubi, ex-modder, ex-power ranker, recently ex-gaijin, and hopefully, at some point in my life, something that starts with a different prefix. I’ve been inactive recently but was persuaded to come back, and what a ride it’s been; I hope you enjoy your weekly Turks and Timorese session as much as I do. I think it’s this point where I’m supposed to say “let’s get right to it”, but you know as well as I do that there are four more slides before we do. So without further ado, let’s move vaguely in the direction of It.

2: Remember, OTL Europe is Even Smaller

We start, of course, with this week’s sole map, courtesy of Vihreaa. What stands out to me here is just how small Europe is, frankly. We see our top-tier powers - essentially, anyone beginning with T plus the Mohave - span across most of a continent each, while civs like Ireland and the Anglo-Dutch that may seem pretty notable are actually not that much bigger than Rumpo de la Plata. I guess the sea helps, to be fair, but still.

3: If I Say It’s Original, It’s Original, OK?

I’d like to use this slide to highlight ECH’s Seabricks Schoolhouse series. Sure, it’s not actually him doing the videos, but apparently finding decent-quality ones about obscure civilisations that aren’t inaccurate or varying types of questionable takes work, and I’ve gotta admire the sheer perseverance involved in doing both something like this and various statistical analyses at the same time without getting many comments or anything in return. So go on, watch them, get educated, and let us all know what you think. I know I’m a hypocrite, sorry, I just have an awful lot going on.

4: Arigateaux

Obligatory, but at least in my case actually heartfelt, shoutout to CBR’s patrons, here to make sure we build a CBR that stands the test of time. No really, I consider some of these people to be friends in their own right, and you should absolutely make their job easier via Ko-Fi if you have anything to spare. Why all donations have to go via the former UN secretary general beats me, but who am I to question it?

5: Chieftains of Confusion

The top three are Turkey and Timor, staying where they are, followed by Mohave, up two from last week. I’m going to show Kayapo’s slide, though, to highlight the fact that the PRs after twenty-nine episodes still have no idea what to think of these guys - you can tell confusion levels by the “deviation” score in the top row. Now, this time for real, let’s get into it.

6: E Pluribus Three Quarters Or So

America, 2023. The once great power is facing existential crises on all fronts: increasingly powerful fascists, dangerously surging levels of public happiness, and unceasing artillery bombardment from Arapaho forces. You know, just like every other timeline. The invaders pretty clearly have the upper hand here, the air supremacy making the tricksy Great Lakes terrain easier to handle, although I do wonder about their decision to build a vanguard out of anti-aircraft guns when fighting an enemy without any aircraft.

7: No Franco, Much Prussian

Brandenburg take a leaf out of their OTL successors’ book by plonking down a citadel and pinching some of Burgundy while their weaker neighbours were distracted. However, Willy has gone back to his old habits here, forgetting he’s not a Viking and pouring hammer mana into an almost entirely destroyer-based carpet while letting Yugoslav peacekeepers flood Westphalia just in case Tito feels like round two. To be fair, though, I would be terrified were I Ireland or King Billy - not to be confused with Willy - to his west. Nobody can accuse the Prussian Beige of lacking melee units, after all.

08: Feel the Burm

Olive Yang sends Han a three-city three-fingered salute, capturing Longbian and Kaifeng while reclaiming the apparently flipped Wanchanshu. The Maroon Mountain Tomboys’ strategy loos to hold the Han infantry back with row after row of artillery and hope the superior Han production base doesn’t eventually overwhelm them. I could make an OTL reference here, but I’m actually backing Kokang, so best not artillery my side in the foot here. I fancy Olive’s chances more around the increasingly shaky Chongjin.

09: El Pueblo Vencido… Um That’s Not Right

After years of war, the newly rekindled fire in the hearts of the Popular Chilean workers’ front starts to sputter. With each flip of Rancagua, the balance of forces around it looks increasingly rainforest green, and the situation doesn’t look too different at sea, where the Chilean navy of privateers - I guess that’s one way of seizing the means of production? - cower off Santiago, praying that Allende doesn’t give the order to face off against Kayapo’s latest abominable innovation. I am talking, of course, about what is perhaps a CBR first - aircraft carriers with actual aircraft on them. Who’d have thought it?

10: Apopkalypse Now

The Arapaho tank battalion’s commander looks around at the smoking ruins of the once-great city of Apopka, taking their seconds of respite while they could, in between preparations for the inevitable assault by their American counterparts over the vast business complex southeast of the fires. Perhaps, they thought, these were built by Roosevelt in a moment of forgetfulness, failing to remember that there are no walls in Wall Street. The strict scheduling also makes sure they don’t question their mission too much. Gross national happiness in the hundreds, they remind themselves as they pet their beloved nationalism prairie dog, cannot be allowed to stand. It’s just not right. It’s just not neutral. Resolve strengthened, they return to directing the construction of earthworks salvaged from the flaming rubble, each worker in the Arapaho empire’s newest regiment making sure to keep the line of their mouth as straight as an emoji.

11: You OK There, English?

Only about two and a half of the remaining empires can be called anglophone, although perhaps on the cylinder anglo- is not the correct prefix; hibernophone might be a better word, a language standardised to the texts of Oriental Orthodoxy and the immortal Mick Collins’s Cork accent. Either way, every other civ is probably laughing at this language’s way of doing things, especially when it comes to the latest in naval melee technology. “Mohave Destroyer” sounds like an appellation given to hopeful Arapaho generals, but in fact it means precisely the opposite. Why am I rambling? Cause there’s not much else to say, is there? Sure, the Gokturks declaring on North Korea would be big, at least for the latter, but since when do these plotting things actually mean anything?

12: ‘Murica, F*ck Meh!

FDR isn’t going down that quickly. His tank-based army has set up a line outside occupied Chicago to defend the heartland, and it looks like Apopka and Holsteinsborg are still heavily contested. America also seems to have been investing in an air force, although given the state of Windsor, it may be too little too late to keep the hope of the Brown New Deal alive.

13: Thermal Discouragement

Surrounded by a grand assembly of turrets, androids, and of course companion and edgeless safety cubes galore, Prince-Comrade Irataba swings his katana and ceremonially cuts the ribbon in front of the mountain tunnel leading to the Mohave’s new Enrichment Centre. The commissar he has delegated to run the facility is said to have some interesting ideas for new siege weapons; some locals swear they saw him close to the site of a major conflagration on a citrus farm in the Californian Central Valley a few weeks before the Centre commenced testing.

14: Pampan Circumstance

As the sub’s periscope swivels round to point at South America once more, we see peace has finally been declared between the OTL non-aligned leftists playing in dark red and their green and yellow clad opponents… wait, why are the Chileans and Kayapo still fighting? Oh. Right. We can see here that Raoni has all but united Argentina, a feat that Jose de San Martin was never able to achieve.

There’s not much else to say here, this is going about as one might predict from the last slide of this war, so may our eyes drift to the top left of the screen and our minds wonder how exactly a progressive nomadic horde works - or rather, looking at the Kilwa’s happiness problem, doesn’t.

15: Myanmore

Kokang peaces out after a Han counterattack half-reverses previous northern advancement, leaving everyone’s favourite opium-pipe-toting girlboss up three cities. I really don’t know how to feel about this, I’ll be honest. Maybe it’s my inbuilt pessimism speaking, but it feels a lot like Olive has just pulled off a perfect midgame war when it’s long past the midgame. Taking three cities off a larger power and then peacing out before the tide turns, especially when the gains may have put Kokang on a track to technologically eclipsing Han given enough time, that’s good behaviour.

The trouble is, as we’re seeing with America on the other side of the map, it just doesn’t cut it to be a medium-sized power any more. Kokang needs to go big or go home to avoid getting blindsided by the Timorese or even by a king from across the water. Go on, eat Bengal, you know you want to. I, for one, am sick of hearing the phrase “paper tiger” used in like every power rankings episode.

Side note: did you know Olive Yang was alive right up till 2017? Confused? OK, good, let’s move on.

16: Memo: Founding Vilnius was a Mistake

In a somewhat amusing albeit predictable development in eastern Europe, the only civ around to have a properly carpetty carpet is the Kyivan Rus’, who are still using muskets as their scouts report what appear to be giant mushrooms occasionally spawning around The Turk’s military installations.

Here to distract the Kyivans from their inevitable fate is Burt Bacharach, who Wikipedia tells me was OTL an important figure in mid-twentieth-century American pop music, known for unusual chords and choices of instrument. Hang on, if he’s pop, the things he does stop being unusual, don’t they? Beats me. No pun intended.

17: Windradyin’

Xanana Gusmao shows us what Kokang should have done by continuing, against all odds, to push deeper into the Australian bush in the hopes of claiming the fertile land at the end of the rainless rainbow. Like last episode, Pukearuhe is proving a surprisingly tough nut to crack for our boys in red, while the south, despite its bays and inlets and Wiradjuri reinforcements, looks to be ripe for the Timorese taking.

Even leaving aside the whole 61st thing, it’s worth pointing out that the locally victorious Australian civ last time around, the Kulin, made it to fifth place by maintaining their continent as a fortress until the very end. This time, no such luck for the Wiradjuri. Australia bodied before turn 500? What is going on?

18: Now You’re Thinking With…

The inhabitants of Wiradjuri Narrungdera had been curious for a while now about the glowing orange ellipse that had appeared on the white walls of their commercial district when a Mohave convoy had passed by to the southwest. Some, but by no means all, of their questions were answered in July 2026, when the ellipse turned hollow and some confused Central American-looking people in regulation Mohave garb wandered out. They proceeded to camp just outside of the city; Wiradjuri spies listening in on their conversations in heavily-accented Mohave report a lot of hopeful discussion about Timorese arsonists.

19: I Gander, You Gander, He/She/It Ganders

Emperor Idi Amin wakes up with a start. Not, in the usual way, from a misfired musket outside the door, or his own stomach rumbling from a lack of fallen enemies to eat various limbs off of, but with the realisation that he is actually relevant for the first time in many centuries. Before anyone gets too excited, though, this is only indirect relevance. Two civs have declared war on Idriss Deby, and one of them is Kilwa. Two medium-sized powers in Africa going to war might be quite interesting on a good day, certainly more than the steamrolls we’ve been expecting, but unfortunately, Uganda separates the two.

What else is there to say? Oh, Mbarara, the city on the Indian Ocean coast famous for having been flipped approximately 6.02 times ten to the 23 times before Yemen got tired and nicked it off both flippers, is now almost twice as big as Uganda’s largest remaining city. Take from that what you will.

20: Mobile Musical Municipalities

FDR’s happy fascists have seemingly stabilised the frontline for the time being, managing to push back to the extent that Holsteinsborg is on the front and Apopka is behind it. They seem to have lost a few planes, unless they’re in Cuscowilla again, but apart from that, not bad, Frank. Help might be coming from Laibach, which I thought was the German name for the capital of Slovenia (if America can get towns to move and shield their troops from Arapaho fire, we really shouldn’t be counting them out), but is apparently a Slovenian band that formed in the late 20th century. Think, what happens when you fool around with totalitarian imagery Rammstein-style but do it in an actual authoritarian country. Kinda interesting. I will leave this slide with an actual quote from Laibach’s Wikipedia page:

“The performance was eventually interrupted by the police, forcing the group to leave the stage after the appearance of a penis and Josip Broz Tito at the same time on the screens.”

21: +2 Great Windmill Points Per City

We get a shot of the almost-empty Tuvan core, including what was once a deadly battleground before the Tuvans rolled over a former #1-ranked power. There honestly isn’t anything else to say, so let’s just ramble about Tuva for a bit.

Despite what this might look like, Tuva’s army isn’t that bad for a top 10 power, if you discount the top 4, steaming ahead of everyone else by quite a way in most things if you look at the stats sheet. Tuva is fifth and is roughly in the middle of the large gap in power between fourth (Mohave) and sixth (Arapaho). Tuva is a relatively high-skilled, low-population economy; it has the highest production per citizen of any civ on the cylinder, and the highest gross production to boot, but it actually has a very low population by great power standards, and their food output doesn’t look like it’ll remedy that any time soon. This has a ton of knock-on effects, but the most notable is their sub-Bengal tech level. Paradoxically, unpopulated Tuva may be turning into a zerg rush civ.

22: Steppe a Bit to the Right

This is a similar thing to the last slide, except aimed further to the east and showing two civs instead of one. There’s also less to say about the civs, even though there are two of them. The Han, sitting at tenth in the stats sheet, don’t really have a particularly strong or weak point: they’re just, there, with a weirdly mixed military record. The Gokturks, meanwhile, are in every way a worse Tuva: same tech deficit, same relatively low population, but without the sheer productivity of their western neighbours.

23: 99 Red Alerts

Here we see a selection of mechanical Turks, largely piloted by real ones. We were talking about statistical rankings for the last two slides, and well, Ataturk is way out there on top in that regard, and according to ECH they apparently had 99 nukes at the start of this episode. Here to support them is Faust, not the literary antihero but a seventies band active in the newly divergent contemporary West German musical movement that later became known as Krautrock.

24: Who’s Sticking Flags Into Beaches Now?

The Mohave have sent a large party of scouting units armed with long thin retractable thingies to explore the distant, mysterious island of Further North Holland. The curious Dutch locals keep a close eye on the newcomers and especially their devices - various radio signals from around the world have told them to paint over any white surfaces they can find in response. While this work is undertaken with the aid of massive paintbrushes, ordinary-sized ones have also become popular in the Anglo-Dutch despotic tribal confederacy, thanks to the work of OTL Indonesian expressionist Affandi.

25: Lovelace, Actually

Heil Frank! The Americans are pushing back the Arapaho! Holsteinsborg is slightly less damaged than last time we saw it, Apopka appears to still be flying the white and blue (the red will get added by this war, no doubt), and most impressively, despite overwhelming Arapaho air superiority, the plucky little fascists have broken through the lines and rolled their tanks back into Chicago. Maybe their troops are a bit more advanced than the enemy now; Ada Lovelace OTL was a computer scientist in the early 1800s who wrote what would now be considered programs for Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, a feat rendered all the more impressive by a) the Engine not physically existing at the time and b) Ada being female in the early 1800s with all that entails.

26: Putting the “Oh!” in Camb-oh-dia

Sihanouk looks over the bay from the Arian monastery that serves as his palace. Idly staring at Timorese merchant convoys and Afghan citadels, something occurs to him, and he jumps up in excitement to tell his closest advisors.

“You know what you kept saying before?”

“That we’re screwed?”

“Yes, about that! I’ve had a revelation!”

“Your Holiness, this is an auspicious day! This could be the start of a new era of enlightened rule in Cambodia!”

“Well, we’ll see about that…”

“Pray do tell then, what sacred truth have you uncovered?”

“That we’re really screwed!”

27: Putting the “Oh.” in Chi-cag-oh

While the Americans are still putting up way more of a fight than I expected, the Arapaho have now secured the Chicago salient once more, although the area looks to still be contested. The Arapaho’s answer to Ada Lovelace is seemingly John Andrews - fittingly, given that the two civs are fighting over the Ontario Fish, the architect of Toronto’s CN Tower.

28: Z is for These Guys

As Afghanistan does a bit of diplomatic housekeeping, we get a shot of the remnants of the Zulu kingdom. I wonder what the Zulus are feeling now. Are they envious of their compatriots under Timorese occupation, living in more advanced, populated and better defended cities than Ulundi? Or is it the opposite, are they living out their last days in quiet contentment, knowing - to paraphrase a Scandinavian adage - that the point isn’t to win, but to beat Botswana?

29: Ode to Anxiety

We come back to Europe, with several powers staring each other down over the citadelled and occasionally smoking hills and plains of Burgundy. Is this a great person slide? No? Well, OK, a mountain is like a really massive pointy thing made of rock… wait I only need to do those when it’s highlighting great people, got it. The Anglo-Dutch are no longer at war with Yugoslavia, although hands up who remembered they were at war anyway, and there seem to be almost as many German peacekeepers around Zagreb as the other way round.

30: Moose on the Loose

The people of Matimekosh are used to their dark Januaries. Many a night goes by without anything, except the occasional neighbour’s window, standing between them and some of the clearest skies on the cylinder. Recently, though, things have been different; people have reported brilliant flashes on the horizon, and a deep sense of foreboding whenever they ponder what happened. The locals soon learnt not to report anything to the junta-controlled local media, however, as the whereabouts of anyone who mentioned the happenings had a tendency to morph into just another unanswered question.

31: Teh Gubmint!

We see our first government slide of the episode now, confirming that the Cree really are as I predicted. Yugoslavia, among other civs, is apparently a progressive military dictatorship, while Idriss Deby, OTL a general in the Toyota War before taking control of Chad, has allowed his government to become influenced by virulently anti-car forces. I can only presume that he misunderstood and thought they were anti-C.A.R. forces.

32: Moar Gubmint

More governments, including the Gokturk Grand Old Party supporting their monarch and a suspiciously Polish-sounding Law and Justice Forum in charge in Brandenburg - maybe the other half of Prussia is more powerful than we thought. The sub appears to have been taken over by Mohave left-wingers, perhaps with the aid of another portal gun. Perhaps most amusingly, however, is Yemen, where frustrations over Turks moving south to seek a lower cost of living have led to the rise of the Anti-Immigration Society of Yemen. The Turk has apparently responded to this by pinching bits of land off of Yemen with citadels and chuckling “who’s the immigrant now, huh?”.

33: Ideological Pick ‘n’ Mix

Here we see a collection of combinations of government types that show you really can be anything you want to be on the cylinder. We have left-wing monks, right-wing monks, and just plain old monks; progressive nomads, but also two types of conservative nomads, including the Gran Maestro Warlord of Kilwa himself.

34: Apostrophe Catastrophe

Principality time, and we see that the leftists controlling the sub are in fact from the same party as the Mohave government itself, and seemingly on good terms with Kokang. The Anglo-Norse have accidentally let slip that they only have one surviving citizen (and he’s immortal), while despite all the progressives in power across the cylinder, the supposedly Popular Chileans are reactionary.

35: Here’s how Ethan can Still Win

It looks like South America as a whole has taken a rightward shift, a sort of reverse pink wave, as the formerly progressive Kayapo are now under the influence of the ominous-sounding Brotherhood Partnership, while the Incas are now controlled by the even more ominous-sounding Modern Interest Party. Meanwhile, the Chadian anti-car movement may have been Modoc in origin, while Ethan Allen appears to be spending his retirement as an anti-immigration agitator, perhaps funded by Al-Sulayhi.

36: Apostrophe Catastrophe Mark Two

Damn, the Kilwa are in an even worse position than I thought. Not only do they, like Chile, rely on a privateer carpet (although there are one or two ironclads in there), it’s split in half by a one-tile gap between Yemeni and Timorese territorial waters. Here to distract the Swahili on the Swahili Coast are Dexys Midnight Runners, an eighties band from Birmingham. One could assume that the gap between the Y and S here, far from being the fault of a misplaced end single quotation not supported by the Civ font, must be an artistic flair designed to give Dexys a more alternative image, but no: OTL Dexys actually doesn’t have an apostrophe at all. So this may be a double failure. And yes, there is an argument that the apostrophe or lack thereof is more interesting than Kilwa at the moment.

37: In Soviet Australia, You can Kill Everything

Slowly but surely, the red tide washes over Australia - ironically with the nationalists in red and the commies retreating - reducing front-line cities to one population in the process. The Wiradjuri, appropriately, have plenty of ranged units with scorpion-shaped icons, but I don’t see the Timorese stopping any time soon. Pukearuhe is still stubbornly holding out, though.

38: Destroyer of Worlds, World of Destroyers

Ethan Allen of the Anti-Immigration Society of Yemen waves to cheering crowds from a podium constructed out of obsolete bits of ironclad, standing above the main bazaar of Sana’a. “No more will the Turk boss us around with their nuclear bombs, supposedly without equal! Our patriotic Yemeni scientists have been working day and night in the Somali desert, bravely defended by tanks and musicians alike, and today, the Kingdom of Yemen is proud to announce that we have successfully split our own, proud Yemeni atoms!”. Raucous cheers from the assembled onlookers.

Ethan continues: “Those Turkish immigrants won’t know what’s hit ‘em!”. The cheers grow louder and more sustained, and only stop when Ethan signals to quieten down, shortly after an advisor pulls him to one side and whispers a reminder that immigrants, by definition, live in Yemen’s own cities.

39: Rock of Gibraltar, Roll of the Waves

A shot of the Norman core reveals the naval tech gap between Ghiscard’s forces and the Turk is narrowing, with both sides now sporting destroyers as the backbone of their navy. On the ranged side of things, though, Ataturk still has the advantage due to his state-of-the-art battleships. Performing live on the eternally popular Radio Sardinia is Bo Diddley, an American blues musician who some claim later became one of the founders of what we now know as rock ‘n’ roll. The Yugoslavs are left with their one trump card in terms of cultural influence in the area, namely, the city still being named Titograd.

40: In Xonouu’oo’ did Pretty Nose…

Iniocl, be honest. Did you want the Arapaho to win this war quickly in order to ensure that such cities as Xonouu’oo’ never got close enough to the front to be directly relevant? Well, I do apologise, but FDR is making a proper go at this, and now Wox Noho’kuhnee-t is being thrown into question. Three tanks don’t look like they’ll do much versus nine planes and a bunch of assorted ranged units, but if those lines can be reinforced, wow.

41: Marching Through South Georgia

The Kayapo, after a brief flirt with far-right government, have decided that it’s all a bit much and gone back to people they know they can trust with their precious jungles. Huh, what a coincidence. Meanwhile, on the war side of things, Raoni has locked down the entirety of the eastern coast of Patagonia, including La Plata, to the extent that he feels comfortable stationing planes there; Maipo would be next, but the ships aren’t yet in position. Meanwhile, sixteen planes are seemingly out of action on the continental front due to being assigned to faraway island cities, seemingly to bombard the tiny Antarctic colony of Copiapo. Um, kinda overkill, no?

42: Deja Antananarivu

We return to yet more Kilwa, as the ascendant Swahili Law and Justice Party manages to muster enough support to do away with the purely communist ways of the old nomadic horde and switch to the cylinder’s trendiest ideology, simultaneous communist nationalism. “Furthermore”, proclaims Khan Hassan, “everyone other than Kilwa must be destroyed!”.

43: Ozpenheimer

Pushed back by the Timorese, the Wiradjuri state makes preparations to build an emergency war bunker far from the front lines, high up in the mountains of the south island of New Zealand. To the officials’ surprise, they find that the Maori have beaten them to it; their downfall apparently came just too quickly for them to actually use their complete purpose-built bunker, but it withstood the elements well, to the point that the old Maori documents scattered around the floor are still legible. The Wiradjuri forces are particularly drawn to some schematics sellotaped to a concrete wall that show a large egg-shaped contraption supposedly designed to wipe out entire cities. They get to work reverse-engineering one for the Wiradjuri’s own purposes, making sure to change the coordinates the Maori recommended for their deployment before telegraphing the plan’s outline to Wahluu.

44: The Virgin Chad vs. the Chad Angola

“Masaka!”, in Japanese, is an exclamation meaning something like “surely not!” or “how dare they!”, and so it is perhaps an ironic name for a city on the Chadian frontline, suddenly threatened by Angola. I guess the previous meaningless war declarations might have given us a clue, but this is still big. Chad is roughly level with Angola in tech terms, but is utterly outclassed in both military and production and is sort of surrounded thanks to the Benguela salient. Also, that tech parity doesn’t actually mean much if they can’t upgrade their carpet, and as of the start of the episode, Deby’s empire is losing hundreds of gold per turn while Angola is comfortably in the black. Advantage Angola, but you never know with these civs, I guess.

45: The Continuation of Austria by Other Means

Tito, please don’t let this happen. After Yugoslavia’s epic war against Brandenburg for the last couple of episodes, they appear to be surrendering in silence, allowing their land to fill up with Prussian peacekeepers while neglecting their own economy - while not as bad as Chad by any means, they are only just about breaking even, which probably explains all the riflemen they still have lying around. Here’s hoping the souffle does, for once, rise twice.

46: Nut Cracked, Sledgehammer Returning to Duty

A Kayapo Mobile SAM commander radios home, claiming soul-crushing levels of boredom due to fighting a one-tile island colony without any planes, and wise Raoni decides to put him to use before he starts taking pot-shots at his own side’s aircraft. Copiapo is swiftly captured, putting an end to the insular front of this war and freeing up planes to aid the peninsular one. Hard to say what’s going on, but Tupiza is in the green and La Plata is apparently secure enough for Raoni to use it as an airbase.

47: Giving Me the Cuscowillies

Remember when the Arapaho navy was a joke? Did you remember that the Arapaho had a navy, for that matter? Well, they do, and while Pretty Nose and FDR were sparring over Chicago - apparently back in Arapaho hands if I’m reading these borders right - a detachment of ships and subs has battered down the defences of the former Seminole capital of Cuscowilla. The headlines write themselves. “Florida Man loses fort to army he claims fell out of the sky” could be one.

48: Castro has Always Been Popular

Esteban Salas y Castro, OTL a Cuban Baroque composer mainly notable because of how rarely those two adjectives can be found modifying the same noun, floats around Polynesia in his deliberately folksy caravel, singing of the glory of whichever god the nearest island happens to worship. The section of his tour around Vitcos is one of the more disappointing ones; the inhabitants of the island, crammed into capsule hotel-esque flats, eschew religious devotion in favour of commitment to the main employer around these parts, a naval conglomerate known as Transportista Grande. Then again, this could just be an excuse on Salas’s part; maybe his marketing style, insisting he’s great and popular many times over until he actually is, might not be working that well.

49: Anti-Car Aktion

Idriss Deby is beginning to regret the handover of power in Chad to the Anti-Car Forces shortly before starting a war that cries out for a Toyota or two. The green movement’s control over Chad seems to be rather absolute, as there are no tanks or mechanised infantry anywhere to be seen and horses are still in active use on the Benguela front, but in the short term, Deby has bought time by exploiting a loophole in the Anti-Car Forces’ covenant: they didn’t say anything about aeroplanes, antique or otherwise.

50: Plane Mistaken?

Maybe I’ve been unfair on Deby. Although infernal four-wheeled engines have been spotted crossing the border from the south, this shot reveals that the Chadians in fact have air superiority, and there don’t seem to be any anti-aircraft weapons lying around Cabinda. The advantage is still with Savimbi, but could the sheer number and concentration of Chadian forces hold this to a draw, perhaps aided by a few cheeky flips of Benguela? I’d like to see the carpet move a bit further to the south, but I’m starting to wonder if I wrote one side off too soon here.

51: O Frabjous Day, Tralee, Tralay

The newly neutral Hans Egede is back for round two against the Irish, with even more privateers than last time. He doesn’t appear to have open borders with Mali, so there is a question of how much of his home fleet will be able to help with any city not named Tralee, but it’s not completely off the table. Instinctively, this looks like another flipfest. Hopefully George Dewey, decorated American admiral from the Spanish-American War, can help turn the tide a bit more than last time and help propel the Greenlanders to what is presumably their ambition: the very middle of the Power Rankings.

52: On the Borg, both Holsteins and Regular

The valiant American resistance seems to be crumbling, as Chicago and Holsteinsborg move back into Arapaho control and show a few more signs of staying there in the long term - after, undoubtedly, a few more flips in the short. Screams echo across the Great Lakes and through the forests of Quebec, but unlike most wars, they are not of agony; rather, it’s the Arapaho encouraging the Americans to let out all their pent-up anger, sadness, and general frustration at the slightly irritating things in life, after years of enforced happiness under FDR’s iron fist. Here to keep American spirits loyal is Bela Bartok, OTL a Hungarian composer notable for leading a rediscovery of Eastern European folk music in the early 1900s, perhaps on the cylinder turning songs of American workers around the ruined Arapaho citadels into national hits.

53: Elektrischer

We return to newly nuclear-capable Brandenburg to once again gaze at their fearsome naval carpet, newly joined by a smaller but equally destroyer-laden Lithuanian one that will likely only become relevant if their big brother gets seriously distracted to the west. On land, however, it looks like Willy is busy repeating the mistakes of the Yugoslav war, or else deliberately churning out peacekeepers and hoping that Tito’s economy stays screwed.

I wonder what politics a country with Brandenburg’s borders and history would have if it existed OTL. How relevant would the Anglo-Norse identity be after millennia? What about Scandinavia? Would the sheer population of the non-Norse bits of Scandinavia, i.e. most of it, eventually overpower the Berliners?

54: Am Kaput

Angola and Chad repeat the scenes we saw between Mohave and Kokang in Central Asia, and thanks to a nasty Malian citadel, this is even more one-sided than its eastern mirror. There’s even a plane in Luena. The Chadians’ only hope may be the incompetence of the enemy; a smart attack on Am Timan would not include an anti-aircraft unit and three settlers.

55: 2 Isles 5 Civs

The Tralee front starts just as we all expected it would, so let’s look at the rest of the map. Judging by the last screenshot, Baltimore has been reduced to half health by between three and five privateers previously trapped around Orkney, but without a way through the western offshoot of Das Garbage Patch it’s going to go back to green. In the south, the Irish have knocked a decent chunk of health off of O’Viedo, but have taken out a decent chunk of their own navy in the process. Sorry Collins, but embarked musicians at red health can’t take cities. This isn’t DnD, you can’t win a battle with bards.

56: I Saw the Tall Ships Come

And the Timorese march on. Moothi is on the verge of flipping, only a few turns after the front lines hung at Koonadan; Walla Walla is taking damage, perhaps from the innovative Kayapo-style functional carrier fleet off the east coast; and most notably, Tasmania is now Timorese! The lack of flames may have disappointed the Mohave settlers, however, who have portalled over to Walla Walla in preparation for plan B.

57: Watt Irony

Charles Augustin de Coulomb, a physicist who discovered a fair chunk of the mathematical laws governing the electromagnetic force and got the metric unit of electric charge named after him for the bother, has appeared in the eastern borderlands of Idriss Deby. Sitting in his mountain lair, one can only presume he is frustrated at the lack of demand for his innovations - electricity would be quite helpful at this point, except that Deby is up to his eyeballs in debt, and as a metalloid, antimoney is only a mediocre electrical conductor.

58: Claret Caterpillar Convoy

Another Lithuanian detachment slowly makes its way east, between the neatly regimented, fully solar-powered yurt camps that dot the countryside of our #1 empire. One can only assume that their target is Asir, but only Allah knows if they will succeed where so many others have failed.

OK, that’s a lie. I, and presumably Lacs, know too. Unless one of us is Allah. That would be a lark. Imagine being able to cause a deep theological conundrum by taking a selfie. Incidentally, look at how neat the Turkish tank formations guarding each of their core cities are.

59: The Pro-Immigration Society of Turkey

Here we see a close-up shot of Ataturk’s spiky concrete middle finger to the Anti-Immigration Society of Yemen, garrisoned by what appears to be a Cambodian crossbow regiment here to add to the immigrant fun. I’m sure you’ve all got a bit tired of everyone saying how interesting Yemen’s position is, so I’ll make it brief: Yemen is pretty cool, but check out the defensive stat of 46-pop Sana’a and compare it to 11-pop Mersin on the other side of the border.

60: Can we Make a Pointy Opium Pipe?

Kokang and Han alike begin reconstructing their border territories after the lightning-fast conquest of Fujian and Ryukyu, although Kokang’s population growth may be affected by the perfect triskelion of citadels east of Fuzhou. Kokang seems to like pointy things; there are the citadels, true, but also the civ’s icon, the icon of their UU which is itself almost a citadel, and even the mountains that make up most of their border. Here to add at least one more pointy thing to Olive’s empire are Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, a trio of architects whose company designed the Empire State Building. Don’t ask me why three people were combined into one Great Engineer. Maybe this is Civ’s version of the Ice Climbers.

61: Des-what now?

Am Timan does what Am Timan was expected to do, helped by three Angolan planes. There really isn’t anything else to say here other than, imagine being that Cree explorer and having to explain to your arctic bosses what the Sahara is.

62: Come Out ye Beige and Tans

Welp, the Ireckoning is upon us. Just before reaching this bit of the narration I happened to be reading the Discord’s CBR channel and saw a lot of people using Ireland as a benchmark for where civs deserve to be on the Power Rankings. Well, looks like your comparisons just got a bit trickier, folks. The Anglo-Dutch, despite their technological advantage, wouldn’t usually be in steamroll territory given these carpets, but Greenland is determined to make the land less green, so… yeah. Oh, and the Mohave have joined in, perhaps wondering if they can sail ships through portals without shifting the entire ocean in the process.

63: Where’s Walla?

The previously impenetrable Pukearuhe has flipped at least once, allowing the local Maori to attempt an uprising, while further south, the Timorese advance is as relentless as the cylinder’s very spin. Moothi is the latest city to fall to the Timorese paratroopers, while Walla Walla is in the red and Tasmania remains hotly contested. The Timorese appear to have a complete lack of reinforcements anywhere west of Gulgong, but I wouldn’t put it past them to barely finish the job with what they have.

64: Florida Damn!

FDR is having decent luck in the north, managing to retake Chicago after all seemed lost, but in the south, the Arapaho have seized the key city of Cuscowilla on the same turn as they retook Apopka. Both look poised to flip back, but it’s worth keeping an eye on navies at this point; America looks set to defend the east coast to the last while the Arapaho could probably pinch Loxahatchee if they wanted to. Interestingly, neither seem to want to make any moves on Cuscowilla itself, which was captured by a land unit.

65: Toyotair

Idriss Deby makes his decisive stand, atop the air traffic control tower in N’Djamena, in the absence of any Toyotas. Artillery spread out behind him as far as Moundou and beyond. Abeche may have fallen, and Masaka appears - masaka! - to be next in line, but the continued stationing of Chadian planes in N’Djamena implies a certain confidence from Deby that precious few power rankers shared.

66: Lundenburh Calling

The Germans and Yugos appear to have carried out something of a population swap, removing large numbers of peacekeepers from each other’s lands while maintaining the open borders agreement. There is precious little else to be said here. I’ve forgotten what the big deal is with this Beyonce character (note to iniocl, the missing apostrophe is deliberate, please pronounce it to rhyme with “ensconce”) but she’s Lithuanian apparently.

67: Lithobrake?

As the Turk fills in the gaps in the neat tank rings, the Lithuanian forces attacking Asir scatter, dealing decent damage to the carpet while looking unlikely to deliver a killing blow. More artillery would help. Reinforcements are on the way, but such a literally and figuratively scattergun approach might not get them very far.

68: Ireland Beyond the Wall

First non-Traleesian blood of the partitioning of Ireland goes to the Anglo-Dutch, who have broken through the Fenian defences and captured the city of Cork. Note that the Anglo-Dutch have ten planes here while Collins has none - that could be the deciding factor in where the front line eventually ends up being. The Greenlanders don’t seem to be doing too much other than holding O’Viedo and flipping Tralee, but that battalion on the Lleyn Peninsula looks menacing. One more nail in the Irish coffin: yes, that is a Kayapo battleship.

69: Code Off-Blue, I Repeat, Code Off-Blue

One of Chad’s greatest musicians has been sighted driving one of those unholy four-wheeled vehicles through the city of Moundou, prompting a political crisis around the limits of the Anti-Car Forces’ power. Deby is forced to abandon N’Djamena to attend talks in Moundou. Unfortunately, the Angolans, fresh off their conquest of Abeche, decide to use this as a perfect excuse to blitz N’Djamena from land and sky.

70: A Salt with a Deadly Weapon

There are now over twice as many Timorese land units in Australia as Wiradjuri ones, and the capture of Pukearuhe and Moothi has made the limits of the remaining Wiradjuri territory painfully clear. Not much else to say so here’s a Timor-Leste fact: the country’s only notable political force not tied to an old independence-era ex-guerrilla leader (like Gusmao) is an offshoot of a spiritually-inclined martial arts group which administers blood oaths to its supporters and is big on tackling - what else? - youth unemployment issues.

71: Take the Leprechauns and Run

Ships and landing craft of all colours dot the Irish Sea, firing shots at each other with guns made centuries apart. The city of Dublin is caught in the crossfire, losing most of its city defences in one go, as Greenlandic privateers bob ominously in the harbour. Collins hopes that good news from Tralee will buoy the defenders’ spirits for just long enough to get a peace deal with at least one of the invaders.

Kayapo battleship sits in harbour. Kayapo battleship immune to puny human weapons. Kayapo battleship doesn’t give a damn.

72: S.D., get out while you can

Speaking of the Kayapo, their front looks very… Kayapo. It wouldn’t take much for them to capture Maipo, or even Valdivia if that paratrooper survives another turn, but so far, they seem content to sit in the now very well-defended cities on the Atlantic coast. Then again, the other Kayapo pattern is that they spring into action the moment any narrator claims disappointment with their laziness. Watch this space. Also watch the assault on Santiago, rather unlikely to go anywhere but capable of wreaking short-term havoc on Allende’s economy.

73: Lietuva Can Into Nordic

Yes, in a twist of fate that resurrects the ghost of Exclavia past, our Baltic ballers have marched a stray rifle regiment straight into Asir, and - mild spoiler alert - they stay in control of it until at least the end of this episode. Thus, Tomyris relocates to the sub, chaperoned by Mohave lefties as is the new tradition, and receives her participation trophy from Nebby, upon which is neatly engraved the number 39.

Unlike some of the other rumps, one can hardly accuse the Massagetae of rolling over and dying. They somewhat ganked themselves early on by offering up a core city to the Permians in a peace deal, but unlike most civs in that situation managed to take it back by military might later on. Bad luck, then, that they never got a break, seeing their core territories partitioned, but they survived once more by fighting their way south and capturing a Yemeni exclave. This proved to be a trusty redoubt for many a turn, until the exclave exploiters were themselves exploited for an exclave in turn. Press F with ever-so-slightly more force than usual.

74: Feck!

Despite the Greenlanders’ larger naval presence off the Leinster coast, it’s Billy who seizes Dublin and sexually arouses any fans we may have in East Belfast in the process. Holding it seems very possible, as much as the Greenlanders coming in for another swoop at Tralee would help, but Mick seems to have some decent defences at Galway that will be hard for our orange contender to break through.

75: The Great Indian Ocean Heritage Museum

The Massagetae make peace with Lithuania; I told you it wasn’t a big spoiler. It may seem premature, but this is the surest way for Tomyris to get a peace deal and be absolutely sure her negotiators won’t give away a city. Massagetae refugees have been spotted in the Indian Ocean, presumably occupying the closest sea tiles available to the now-closed Lithucaspian, and also presumably with the aid of some itinerant Mohave.

76: Every Card a Shift of Circumstance

Speaking of the Mohave, they’re engaged in a staring contest with the Arapaho across the Rockies. Our western contender has the marginally larger land force not currently running full pelt towards the Appalachian semi-meatgrinder (perhaps we could call it a meat tenderiser?), but there isn’t much in it; in the ocean, meanwhile, the Mohave are clearly top dogs. I wonder if any of that fleet will find its way to Irish shores in the near future.

77: Xananarama

We turn our gaze to the Timorese core, swiftly confirming that yes, they could wipe out Wiradjuri Melanesia if they wanted to. We also see the entirety of rump Indonesia, which could likely take Semarang and then Phnom Penh if it wanted to - an impressive feat if they could manage it, and yet one that would do absolutely nothing for their eventual chances when Best Timor comes knocking.

78: The Raw Deal

The Arapaho army reach the Potomac, and FDR panics. The Brown New Deal was incomplete; not enough policies had been put in place to break up the might of Big Carrier, and America was paying the price for his tardiness. Chicago looks all but lost for good, and there is scant evidence Apopka fares any better. The battle for Washington commences.

79: Greenlandia’s Huns with their Naval Guns

Ireland loses Tralee but reclaims Dublin, ensuring non-ideological freedom on the Emerald Isle for a few more months to come. This gives the Greenlanders a decent shot at taking the city this time, and whoever takes it is likely to keep it thanks to the lack of Irish melee units left standing. Unless I’ve misread the unit icons, that also applies for Tralee. If this were to happen, Ireland’s last holdout would be Scotland, which would ever-so-slightly echo the latter’s OTL history.

80: A through Npium Were Prototypes

Here we see two more powers squaring off against each other, specifically, Bengal and Kokang. Kokang has more military and one more tech in hand than their western neighbours, but on most other stats - output of hammers, apples, and notably, beakers - the advantage goes to the tiger clan.

Note how Kokang, despite being one of EmeraldRange’s celebrated Burma civs, has managed not to hold any OTL core Burmese territory. Admittedly, this may be due to a Bengali citadel, which has put a poppy field under their control. Although, maybe this is Olive’s tactic to get ‘em all hooked.

81: The Age of the Country at Gore

We now take a look at the section of the cylinder which, since last episode, I have taken to calling the Land of the Rising Schadenfreude. All the civs on the archipelago have reinforced their colonies pretty well, even the Mohave, who have 20 planes stationed on Honshu alone. Our last remaining stooge is still sitting in Tajihi-Sarugake, hoping, perhaps ironically, that nobody notices his existence. Anton Reicha, an influential Czech-French classical composer and friend of Beethoven, is perhaps a fitting choice of Great Person for a silent civ, as he never published anything and was only recognised for his avant-garde musical ideas after his death.

82: IRELAAAAAAND FOREVEEEEEEER!

Dublin falls once more, and according to the minimap, Billy is once again the beneficiary. Collins is now banished beyond the wall - not Hadrian’s, either, but the more northerly Antonine. Whether Collins’s Fenian UUs, defensively inclined but with the offensive strength of a rifleman, can stand up to the less numerous but more advanced orange army, is an open question. Lapu-Lapu was a local chieftain from what is now the central Philippines who lived in the 1500s, slew Ferdinand Magellan and discouraged further Spanish colonisation for the next few decades. He is now a Filipino folk hero. The real question, though, is whether his island expertise will allow the Irish to make the most of the massive pile of wheat off the coast of Moray.

83: Where the Streets are Paved with Brazilwood

The Kayapo core is as it always is - silent, far more civilian units than military, well-forested, yet deadly to anyone who dares cross Raoni. For anyone welcome, though, the environmentalist horde has always struck me as by far the nicest place to live on the cylinder, tucked away from all the bloodshed. Thus, the name of the Great Musician, or rather early 90s American band, highlighted here seems delightfully ironic.

84: Ka Mate, Ka Mate

As Tasmania becomes the latest territory to start rebuilding and paratroopers come within steps of the Wiradjuri capital, yet another Timorese naval detachment casually makes its way over to New Zealand, taking a city and severely threatening one or even two others. At this rate, the Timorese may be in danger of doubling their already impressive empire within a single episode. All must cower. Except possibly Ataturk.

85: The B, Of Course, Flies Anyway

FDR pulls a rabbit out of his hat, pushing the Arapaho menace right back to the Washington-Chicago midpoint and commencing the manufacture of B-17 bombers. Could these be the machines that change the tide of the war? As much as I’d like to think so, probably not; in human hands, extra evasion might be pretty useful, but the AI isn’t known for using bombers against units, making them an offensive unit put into use in the middle of a defensive war. Ah well, the extra 5 strength doesn’t hurt.

86: La-what now?

In American Cuba, within sight of the smoke billowing out from the now ruined city of Cuscowilla, Hedy Lamarr steps up to offer her services to the war effort… no, this really happened, and yes, this is Hedy Lamarr the actress. She was one of the first, though not THE first, person to invent a ‘frequency hopping’ device used to make torpedoes jam-proof. That… actually sounds like something that could be useful against the Arapaho, fair play.

87: We’re Not in the Caspian Anymore

Galvarino Riveros Cardenas, OTL a Chilean who helped ensure Bolivia didn’t have a coastline, flies Khazarian colours on the cylinder and has somehow found himself in the Gulf of Guinea, not far from the (0,0) coordinate point on Sphereland. The (0,0) point on the cylinder, while we’re on the subject, is apparently somewhere around the Khorat Plateau, in Kokang territory. Anyway, other than Galvarino - I wonder if he’ll encounter the Massagetae ships in the Indian Ocean, and if so, what his reaction will be - the only other thing to note here is that N’Djamena is in the black and ready to fall to Savimbi.

88: A Sight for Zore Eyes

We now move north to check out the last stand of another fallen civ, this time the Pandya, in scout form and perched on the Azore archipelago. The area so far has been a perfect little getaway for a homeless scout, as it has been Muiscan since it was first settled and they haven’t engaged in any wars across the Atlantic. Come to think of it, this entire front has been weirdly quiet given how close the Old and New Worlds are to each other and how long everyone has had ocean-faring ships for.

89: Musketaholics Anonymous

The Massagetae have managed to seek refuge in both Tetouani and Castilian lands, potentially earning a degree of sympathy from both and especially the displaced Tetouanis. While this stretch of coastline is more dangerous than the Azores or Gulf of Guinea, at least the green musketmen can spend their last days with folks who will never judge them for their choice of weapon.

90: Misconcepcion

Ilya Prigogine was a Jewish chemist who received the Nobel Prize in 1977 for his work on thermodynamics, after surviving World War Two living and secretly teaching in Nazi-occupied Belgium. He is perhaps a fitting great person to be found in Jujuy, one of several Chilean cities to be relentlessly bombed by the Kayapo while stubbornly keeping their colours. Even Maipo is somehow still in Allende’s column. Elsewhere, we see the two ex-Kokang Antarctic colonies tread very different paths to each other, with Chilean Tar Shwe Htan being three times the size of its neighbour seemingly off the back of one fishing boat.

91: Wahluu Pinball

We’ve been waiting for it all episode, and it’s finally happened - Wahluu, the Wiradjuri capital, has fallen to the Timorese, with their last continental possession of Djirrildhuray soon to follow. Things aren’t looking too different in New Zealand, with Te Tokanganui already in the yellow. The Mohave settler has portalled across the ocean, still waiting for Gusmao to explore his pyro side, but no such luck yet. That he has avoided happiness problems from all this is impressive in itself: he had a relatively low 71 happiness at the start of this episode, compared to Ataturk’s 326.

92: The Penpenultimate One

Three slides to go, and we are back to Bengal, which I have already said everything I have to say about. The only development here is that the Bengalis have recruited Yoko Ono in the Isthmus of Kra. Ono is mostly known as the wife of John Lennon of Beatles fame and spends much of her time being shouted at by fans of the band, but she is also a musician and conceptual artist in her own right, and still somewhat active today at the age of ninety.

93: Yollywood

OTL prolific Bollywood composer A. R. Rahman is seen looking for inspiration in the treacherous plains of western Madagascar. The Yemeni panhandle separating two bits of Kilwa territory is heavily guarded by the Anti-Immigration Society and locals frequently petition the local government offices in Hlobane, asking for a Yemeni expedition to annex Malindi once and for all. Certainly enough happening for Mr. Rahman to get some ideas on the go.

94: You could Make a Religion Out of This

We end this episode with a look at the religion slide. Frankly, the only thing notable here is how little it has changed since the last we saw of it, in Episode 27 if you feel like checking. No religion has gained or lost more than one city since then. All things in perfect balance; Pretty Nose would be pleased.

And with that, this episode of the Civ Battle Royale comes to an end. This has been Homusubi, and it has been a pleasure as always. I may have got here late, but I am certainly looking forward to seeing what happens next. Until next time, stay perfectly weird everyone, ‘tis far better than being normal.

Episode 30: My Boomerang Won’t Come Back – S3

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