Episode 44: Raoni’s Revenge – S3

Hey gamers, Emu here, PR extraordinaire and person who’s been waffling about eventually doing a narration all this season ordinaire, popping in to watch our second-to-last episode pre-rebuild. I would say a slow episode calls for a creative narration, but I haven’t actually read the episode yet so I’m not sure if that applies here.

Here we have yet another edition of the long-running American Dreams, and this time Pretty Nose finally realizes the Gokturks aren’t dead.

Coiot: Going to highlight once again our wonderful audio narrations. If you're like me and has a busy schedule, listening to the episodes or power rankings while multi-tasking is a treat.

Thank you to all our lovely patrons, the people who funded the almighty CBR machine and continue to keep the sub supplied with cheese puffs and soft pretzels.

Here we have Afghanistan truly securing their place in the upper echelons of the cylinder for the first time. Proud of you, Durrani.

And to start us off here’s Yemen, the civ that habitually refuses to do anything predictable, deciding the next best thing after getting kicked out of Arabia is Timorese Africa. Of course they’re trying to flip Kilwa’s old capital as always, but here we see them taking out the island possessions too. Timor’s famous navy is nowhere at all.

Timor’s reply to that devastating blow is of course to push up into Mali. Mali replies to that by pushing into Turkey, and Turkey pushes into Yemen. The vicious, pointless cycle of Total War continues, only Raoni standing in the way. Worth noting Timor is getting close to Mali’s unpuppeted core here.

Former Gokturk land is probably the strangest front we have right now. It’s on everyone’s periphery, between four civs who have absolutely no business being here, and Afghanistan is the only one really winning. This is also no doubt the worst place on the Cylinder to live.

In the desolation of old Mohave Mexico, there are no winners. That one city whose name is too covered in blood to read is about to flip, but there’s no real possibility the conquest lasts. A few episodes ago this front was down in old Central America, but that doesn’t really matter to anyone except the Incan propaganda department. Timor and Afghanistan want out. We have a different opinion.

The Turkey-Brandenburg front looks the same as ever. Brandy chooses a weird time to suddenly be competent, their meager stock of power armor is slowly yet inevitably crushed by the uncaring Turkish offensive, you know, that kind of thing. The Brandenburger culture, historically heavily geared for war despite rarely actually fighting, reaches its zenith here. Father passes down his post to son over centuries. There is no culture but war. Raoni finds as little purchase here as the abortive Brandenburger resistance attempts find in Berlin.

Timor pushes north into territory Mali was recently fighting Turkey over. Mali prepares a counteroffensive. Peace breaks out. The war continues.

Mali continues to batter much stronger power Turkey, taking Salerno almost completely uncontested and preparing a massive push north to Amsterdam. It seems like the underdogs are the few civs who don’t want peace.

The Siege of Oranienburg enters its third or fourth episode, and despite having had the city completely surrounded that whole time, Turkey still has a strong grasp on the little salient they snuck into Sweden in the last round of TW.

Two Advanced Destroyers stride into a Melanesian island. Timor doesn’t really care. I wonder if the captains are friends?

The slow conquest of Mohave Polynesia continues. They were overdue for a capital change anyway, If I’m not mistaken, it goes to Hawaii next. Irataba refuses to focus on defending the last remaining native Mohave territory, having been consumed by lust for conquest.

There is a melee unit within two turns of the last gokturk city this is not a drill this is not a drill

Mali meets next to no resistance in their ongoing sweep of North Africa, beating TImor back to N’Djamena and leisurely striding towards the Levant. This does not bode well for Turkey’s #1 spot.

Afghanistan gains a significant amount of ground around the Persian Gulf, securing the north side and even sneaking a flip in on their old Arabian city. All in all this is more a sign of Afghan strength than Turkish weakness. Also, the Gokturks are called the Turkic Kingdom in game? That must get confusing.

And here on the other side of the world’s longest border, Afghanistan pushes yet again, taking arctic wastes and citadels by the bushel. Mohave looks weak here, but I think it’s just this shot.

Timorese troops in the Sahara heat push back to the gates of Moundou. Pretty much every active front has got to be terrible to fight on at this point, but this one is definitely up there.

Irataba tries to cut his losses. Tries.

Why not at this point? There aren’t really any troops around from either side so this might actually stand for a while.

The major world leaders yet again hear Raoni’s call and try to end the bloodshed. Mali makes preparations for a new push into France. We smile on one of these developments.

Wait, Raoni isn’t completely exiled to Antarctica? Did they ever lose this island in the first place? There’s no damage on it so any recapture can’t have been too recent. How did I miss this? Anyway, the Atlantic is empty enough that I don’t see this changing.

The mountains that kept Kokang so safe for so long now shield a conqueror from the south from the relentless tide of the only major power that continues to put his all into the war. This is one of the few places Total War has changed very little for the locals. Xanana deploys his few units in the area to protect the unshielded cities around Hainan.

Irataba takes care of any talk of him faltering in Korea by sending out one of the highest concentrations of troops we’ve seen this episode to clear out any resistance around Chenxian and probe out the rest of the line to find weak spots. Arapaho aerial bombardment weakens Koshoy behind his back.

After getting pushed out of the Horn of Africa earlier this episode, Al-Sulayhi decides that the fact that she’s not in range of fighting for Sana’a anymore doesn’t really matter and continues to throw the youth of Madagascar at a very old conquest.

Well, so much for that. Pandya dies again, to the surprise of absolutely no one. This will probably not be the last time.

The great orderly Mohave advance devolves into a bloody melee, which is a bit of a bold move for a civ that’s badly outnumbered, but it seems to be working out for them. Chenxian is toast, and if they decide to take a stab at Romitan they’d probably flip it.

Oh fuck he’s right there gaochang watch out

It’s been a good long while since Afghanistan got pushed back much of anywhere, and Mohave is thematically the perfect civ to do it. This is fundamentally a duel between an old underdog and a new one.

I don’t think Durrani is losing much sleep about it though, he’s more focused on his troops flowing through the once-impenetrable mountain passes

Oh fuck it finally happened. I think I’m going to be sick. The Gokturks’ story is mostly composed of being second fiddle to Tuva. It didn’t look like this was going to be the case at first, with their strong Northwest Asia start landing them 4th in the Episode 0 rankings. This didn’t last though, by episode 5 they’d dropped out of the top 20 entirely thanks to an unsuccessful war with Han and an ascendant Tuva. Nevertheless, they kept going, and a strong performance in the next dozen episodes propelled them all the way back to the top 5, but from there they failed to capitalize and their tech deficit eventually left them boxed in by Tuva. That’s not to say they were completely inactive in the interim, though. They ventured south against Ainu and Mori, and their weakness was the avenue Irataba needed to establish Mohave Japan. Their most notable achievement as of late is having exactly zero military but still not dying to Arapaho for several dozen turns.

The most notable thing that’s ever happened here was that time Wiradjuri was resurrected. There have been plenty of battles here, but always on the periphery of some greater war. So it is today, few troops patrol the calm waters.

The Timorese navy sets out for Ryukyu with nothing but ranged ships. Best of luck to them.

Xanana gives up hope on those islands. The war continues anyway.

Here we see a rare glimpse of the calm before a major offensive, fresh Malian troops lining up directly north of the old Chadian palace, looking through their HUDs at the heat signatures of the Timorese defenders. In times long past this might be an occasion for reflection, even poetry, but aside from the occasional defective unit, psychologically and genetically conditioned soldiers know no such thing. Today they are dead. They go into battle to reclaim their lives.

Pretty Nose doesn’t even try to get her Greenland city back. The Brandy navy is somehow bigger than hers. They don’t really look to be gunning for Godthab or Egedsminde, though.

Raoni sighs. Yet another round of peace deals shattered. Of course he knew this was going to happen at this point, but it at least buys the devastated peoples of the various powers 6 months to rebuild their lives before the world erupts in flame again. It also plays the role of a diversion from his real plan, which is going swimmingly. All of the great powers except Afghanistan and some of the minor ones have realized that the destruction of Total War disappears if they simply refuse to build units. He knows Nebuchadnezzar is trying to contact him again, but he has nothing more to say to the ur-warmongerer. There are certain limits to Babylonian control over the free will of the people of the cylinder, and Nebby appears to have run right up against one.  

Afghanistan casually takes back Chenxian, but what’s more important is the other side of the front. The farthest reaches of the Turkish empire shatter like glass in the face of the one great power still trying to actually win the game.

I can’t tell if the front is stabilizing or if this is the breakthrough that finally does it. Either way my eyes are bleeding. The balance of power holds.

In a huge middle finger to Fred-Willy, Mali decides the move is to bring Regular Willy back from the dead in hopes that the perennial orange menace (the Dutchman, not the Mohave enjoyer) will be a thorn in Brandy’s side for at least enough time to get reinforcements into the area.

It barely makes a difference whether or not this peace is allowed to stand. Both sides (and for that matter, Inca and Arapaho) are so sparse on the ground that you can’t really tell Total War has reached the peaceful Polynesian waters. But reached it it has, and any civilian craft that passes too near a stray unit or automated city defense system still gets obliterated.

The other historical thorn in Fred-Willy’s side comes back too, but I doubt this one irks him as much. There’s plenty of melee units from both north and south here though, so I wouldn’t expect this to last too long.

A nameless GDR pilot rams into a desolate Koshoy Korgon seaport. He won’t be nameless for long, he thinks, this conquest is sure to win him some appellation or another. It’s strange, despite the fact that this land is unpillaged and sparsely developed, it’s….. Surprisingly empty. Normally there would at least be some civilians cowering in shelters or fleeing into the countryside, but he saw almost no heat signatures. But here? Just some distant Mohave battalions preparing a counterattack. They have to be up to something. Ah well, nothing to do now but raid local stores for ammunition and power cells.

Afghan troops sweep Asir in the north, while Turkish troops advance along the Persian Gulf to the south. Both stand unopposed. Of course there’s no direct communication between the opposing generals, that would be high treason, but as inducted members of the peace movement, both understood the other’s position. Deliver favorable reports to Durrani, put up a token Turkish resistance for Nebby, spare civilians. Worryingly, the Turkish navy was about to come into play. The world’s navies had always been more eager for bloodshed than the land forces. Maybe it was the distance of combat, maybe it was the structure of naval politics, but whatever it was, it had made the admirals and captains of the cylinder so ornery that after the peace movement took hold, naval budgets had gone down even more sharply than that of the armies. The Caspian navy was an even more special breed, a dumping place for hotheaded men who hadn’t seen action in years or decades. Maybe it wasn’t too late to wheel south to Konya?

Turkey takes care of the resurrected Yugoslavs (Tito dies in his own city this time), but Mali responds with a quick rez for Tetouan. Now is the perfect time to buy $TTN.

Ataturk’s general, on the other hand, was spared from the delicate balancing act by the fact that he wasn’t fundamentally against the wishes of his government. The order came down to attack, he attacked. The order to pull back came down, he pulled back. He felt a little bad about his safe, lofty position in the way the conscientious privileged sometimes do, but it quickly dissipated with the knowledge that he was doing what he could to end the slaughter. This let him safely ignore the screams of the collateral civilian casualties of Mazar-I-Sharif.

I don’t even need to really describe this one to you. Just look at it. It’s a work of art.

After many, many broken plates and a couple injured staffers in Fred-Willy’s palace, most of the Brandenburger army that isn’t busy in Oranienburg bears down on the new bastion of the House of Orange. Sundiata laughs.

A new, never-before-seen  arrangement of cities in Japan takes hold! No doubt this unprecedented- okay I can’t even pretend this slide is interesting. Note Mohave splitting their forces on the continent.

Fred-Willy’s aides breathe a sigh of relief as Normal Willy’s colors are once again extinguished from the cylinder. I’m at a loss as to what source could deal exactly that amount of damage to a 30 defense city at this stage in the game. Good going Tetouan.

Not to be outdone, Xanana decides to bring back South Indian runt Pandya yet again in one of their 4 original cities using a Biotitan that’s stronger than every unit Pandya has ever had combined. He immediately declares war on them, not because we forced him to or anything, he just did it. “lol”, he is quoted as saying, “lmao even”

What is it this episode with sieges that go nowhere? It’s worse than nothing happening at all. Massive death is only entertaining if it has some actual result. Maybe we should have just let Raoni play simcity.

Judging by Yemen’s happiness problems, even more resurrections might be on the way. Keep an eye out for Zulu, Kilwa, and Ugandan colors in the near future.

This is one of the finest examples of the peace movement on land. Troops are sparse, cities are mostly undamaged, a Timorese battalion behind what qualifies as the lines has even decided to construct a lakeside resort.

I- Huh? Who liberated these guys? I don’t see any units nearby except Nexuses, so let’s get ready for round 2 of Gaochang not dying. Honestly this is probably the best thing that has happened this episode. Also, Mohave takes back North Honshu, restoring us to the status quo in the region after so much pain. I’m sure Kayapo is behind this somehow.

Yemen are safely in control of Mbarara again. The world continues to turn. Even they have to be wondering what the point is now.

Timor’s various local officials seem to have wildly different opinions on the war, with Polynesia Command throwing what meager forces they have directly into Chan Tee Ai. It would probably work too, if they had one or two melee units. But they don’t, so nothing happens.

With a flash and a shockwave over the Siberian steppe, nukes return to the cylinder in force after a small flareup last season3-pr44-scene. This is probably the worst thing that could happen to the average Cylinder citizen right now, Wasn’t the war bad enough? Raoni’s determination grows.

Ataturk breaks the siege of Benevanto for good and bears down on Salerno. All in service of the balance of power. Mali really should just get on board already, it’s starting to get a bit tiresome to beat back their puny offensives.

What appears to be Fred-Willy’s entire army has now converted central Sweden into a massive military camp where generations are born and die, complete with musicians to compose battle chants. Not that they have a lot of impact in this type of warfare, but it’s essential to keep the image of the mighty Brandenburger warrior strong. And it seems to be working, too; Oranienburg is down to yellow and still falling. One questions what the plan is after this city.

Pretty Nose scrapes up an actually fairly substantial collection of units to push south along the gulf coast. A lasting capture is certainly possible, but we’ve been disappointed several times in this area.

Turkey takes back Utrecht with apparent ease, but for the life of me I can’t tell how. No doubt Mali will just take it right back, but for an underdog like Mali, stagnation is a very bad thing.

For once, Mali is in a real bind. While they’re devoting their whole force to flipping Moundou again, Turkish forces sneak up from behind and drop Sarh into the red. This would be an absolutely disastrous loss for underdog Mali.

This is the most attention anyone has ever paid to North Honshu. Look at it. Look at what you’ve created.

It’s really difficult to tell whether this front has actually moved at all, but Durrani is pushing west and Mohave took Chenxian again. So that’s something. This entire region is part of the great sacrifice that had to be made to maintain the balance of power without giving the image of complete peace.

Yemen sends an expeditionary force out to the former Kilwa capital, and since they can’t raze this one we might just be about to see a resurrection of the one-eyes, one-eared, flying purple people eater of the Swahili coast.

Timor decides to just completely abandon their one and only interesting front. If I have to expound on this I will shove a drillbit directly into my ear canal.

For a civ that isn’t in on the peace movement, Mali is getting worse and worse at actual conquest. Don’t just fucking pass by amsterdam, kill! Dire times indeed when even Mali isn’t giving us enough blood.

Out of sheer anger, Xanana goes for a completely worthless snipe, dooming an unfortunate Bio-Titan to fight to the last man in a futile defense of the city. The propaganda spin paints Xanana as a valiant and self-sacrificing defender of the people, saving a city from Yemeni torches and explosives, but no one who wasn’t already a fanatic is buying it. Good PR is getting rarer and rarer in this world.

Arapaho makes their first breakthrough in several episodes, securing two entire Mohave cities on Honshu. This is what passes for conquest in a world where peace has finally begun to blossom after 5,000 years of constant wanton destruction. But for now, there is still war, just without victory. Raoni tells himself that it has to get worse before it can get better. If things were really as he thought they were, he might even be right.

The state of things in the Mediterranean reverts to pretty close to what it was at the beginning of the episode, and this is one of the more fluent fronts. Even where Raoni can’t manage effective peace, he can at least ensure a balance of power that leads to no one being really dominant. His goal was always to save this world, but instead he directly prompts its destruction and rebuilding in a gorier and more cramped image.

Northwest Asia embodies what we wanted the entire world to be during TW. Sorties and surprises from four powers of heavily disparate origin meet, and any true triumph is difficult to spot under the numerous damage indicators blanketing the already inhospitable terrain. Durrani rides into Chenxian, Irataba puts pressure on Pretty nose, and Ataturk is in the corner taking hits from a rare Mech Artillery. What a beautiful gory lineup.

Xanana makes a rare decisive move, presumably out of irritation with constant Yemeni raids. It looks like this will be yet another bloody- hey wait a minute is Yemen razing the city? I mean this isn’t terribly surprising given their happiness problems, and I doubt they’ll actually be able to hold it long enough to destroy it, but it’s a sign that they’re not going the liberation route.

Mali is officially far enough into Europe that they have a border with a British city. It really says a lot about the state of the game that this is in the top 3 biggest advances this episode.

Pandya dies again. I guess if you’re good at something, you’re going to want to show it off. Aside from that, we have Rangpur in the black and not much else. Even if Durrani isn’t on board with the anti-war agenda, the provincial officials here seem to be. I’m sure the people are glad. Or not, depending on the strength of the local propagandists.

And here’s where we leave off, with Fred-Willy, spurred by Malian advances in the south, entering the final stage of the Siege of Oranienburg and making a strong push into Lapland. The Turkish response is token at best; these old Lithuanian lands have never been the highest priority to them. Anyway, I have been and will most likely continue to be Emu, and this has been Episode 44 of CBRX3.