Episode 44: In The Glow Of Hellfire – S4

Hello once again it is I, Orangechrisy here, Bora-Bora fan extraordinaire and creator of that one comic (please guys I need you to also make comics even one-offs they are always so wonderful to see!). I’m in a new place yet still can’t even get an interview for a job with my degree, which means I have all the time in the world to do a narration. Yet still I have started on Saturday rather than earlier despite Coiot getting out the images on Tuesday.

With that said, I hope I don’t lose people when I do a fair bit longer narration than episode 43, sure this may just be an episode filled with the barren irradiated wastes of what was once a world of great civilizations (not you Wahgi), but within each bombed out husk of a city stands the history of people who have been given the unfortunate position of existing in our little war game. So I hope you’ll enjoy.

Things are looking significantly emptier on the map this time, Africa, South America, North America, Southeast Asia, all hollowed out. The slaughter truly is on.

I should note that Gogurt remains remarkably un-hollowed out. This uh, bodes well for them I’d say.

Something something good job me something something I haven’t done it yet something something. You know how it goes by now, just a nice pat on my own back. But on the topic of my comics, I’m always envious of the comics others make, like NopeCopter’s, because they’re always so great and it’s so nice to see what other people do. Feel like I need to get a better grip on my humor next mk. Though ideally one of my own civs gets in again (pls) and I can once again do a more focused comic rather than an area wide one. But I don’t even know if that would be better, who’s to say. Why are you still reading my messy self reflective thoughts?

Keeps the website running and whatnot, ain’t that just the best?

Look I’m not the biggest fan of Singapore it’s gotta be said, they feel like just a worse Timor-Leste it’s gotta be said. But you know what I do love? Someone kicking in the teeth of Wahgi. So here they are, fallen only 4 places down to 7th, when really, with that performance, they should be dropping much faster. 50 cities down. How many this time? They can’t hold on. They have no tech. They are still deeply in debt. They only exist through a UAV carpet. You best believe I’m gonna dance on their grave.

>ERROR LOG: MISSING TURN [Searching for “Turn 815” returned a NULL response] || IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUESTED

>…

>run shutdown

>SHUTTING DOWN…

>...

>…

We start the episode with a glance at the Namibian Desert, where the ruins of Khami stood. The city was destroyed in the last few slides of the last episode, but here we can see the proof. The blacked out ruins of the Khami Customs Houses sticking out of the dunes like a foreboding eulogy to an empire still standing. Yet it also is one of the last cities that will be destroyed at the hands of Sierra Leone, as they have only a single nuke remaining (sure they can build more, but y’know how fast they use them). Nzinga is still holding on to 15.

As a sidenote, imagine whenever I do the > bits as if it's in a terminal, pretend there’s a cool text animation where the lines come in letter by letter like it’s being typed. And then be like “Whoa Coiot was able to make the site do crazy text stuff like that?!” and tell him that he’s cool.

Despite the 127 nukes Sierra Leone dropped, Ndongo is now the ones on the offensive. In the last two turns they pushed north and grabbed Aden and Azeba, asserting themselves on the coast of the Red Sea, and cutting off the last of SL’s Arabian holdings.

In addition to their emptying of their nuclear arsenal, Sierra Leone also lost 70% of their army, putting them at the tiny strength of only 73k. This is in comparison to Ndongo gaining 15% to get to 118k, and well, the Faroes still well above 400k. SL is also still at 100 techs, 7 behind Ndongo and 25 til the end of the tree where the Faroes are at. Their city defenses are also abysmal. So with all that, we see the Faroes retake Iberia and XCOM drop into Marrakech. Things ain’t looking good for them, and it’s a wonder how anyone thought they would be getting through this.

Checks my own rankings for last episode

…Why did I put them 6th? Boy do I feel stupid now.

Now you may be asking yourself “Why is that Latvian settler near Ingolstadt?” or “How did that settler even get there?” or “Why didn’t they just settle in one of the bombed out ruins?”. All of these are good questions, but they fail to really get to the heart of the matter. That being, why hasn’t the Faroes taken Munch yet? It’s been in the black for four turns now, at least. Why haven’t they just walked into it? So many mysteries, so little time…

When the people of Jiellevárre saw the bombs coming down they didn’t hide, they didn’t run, they hardly even cared. They knew how they got into this mess, following the orders of Great Queen Rijkuo-maja, the laziest leader of them all. Despite the claim made last time, Ume-Sámi did actually take a city before total war, a shocker I know. But they took a single city off the Faroes in their war back around turn 100. The city was immediately recaptured and Ume-Sámi lost that war, but yeah. Possibly the laziest civ in the royale. And thus the people were also lazy, refusing to leave, perfectly content watching the flashes of light flatten their cities bomb by thermonuclear bomb.

If you were looking at the minimaps lately, Gogurt’s been doing a funky thing up here in the Selkups land. Partially a result of the heavy usage of citadels of course, but it’s an actual pincer move. They’re running at the capital from the northeast and the southwest. With the size of the two armies, I think it’s pretty safe to say that the Selkups are about to be utterly trounced.

Okay so the stats page’s city captures haven't been fully updated yet, it’s up to like 2/3rds through last epiosde as I write this, and I can’t tell city captures for tiny islands in the Pacific for shit, so I don’t know if Tata-whatever fell and was retaken or not. Piwangka was taken by Wahgi back on turn 810, maybe it got flipped a couple times it’s hard to say. Nonetheless, Palawa does seem to generally have more units here, just that, well they have even worse tech than Wahgi does (96 vs 100) and submarines can’t even attack cities. So, I guess we’ll see what the villain and their toady til war end up as. Don’t you guys just love the trope of enemies and lovers? I sure do but also I hate these two.

After their disastrous start to the war, New Holland has managed to claw their way back to controlling nearly all of South America. Their fleet retook the cape while their army of a settler and three workers have somehow liberated Patio. Seeing how weak Wahgi is now, Maurits decides to send his southern army at the Palawa cities instead. They will definitely be able to fight in the area much better than the former toady can, unless Palawa decides to dedicate some serious troops to the east, and knowing Palawa, they suck ass so won’t.

New Holland also nabs San Antonio from Wahgi up north, but the Yellowknives are trying to build up a small army in the area and can threaten it. On the other hand, New Holland could just new Monterrey to dust and then resettle it with that settler on Cuba. Food for thought right there.

>ATTEMPTING TO ACCESS FILE SYSTEM OF [Agent 513] THIS IS A PRIVATE SYSTEM

>ENTER PASSCODE

>**************

>ACCESS GRANTED

>open travellers_log_44.txt

>ATTEMPT TO OPEN “travellers_log_44.txt” FAILED: SPECIFY KEYWORD FOR DESIRED ENTRY

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “Empty”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “Empty”

>“Empty doesn’t begin to describe it. It feels surreal. One second you’re walking through the metallic grave of a sprawling metropolis and the next the lands feel untouched, as if no one had even stepped through them. I see this everywhere, it’s unnerving. Surely nations of these sizes would utilize every inch available to them?”

The frontier cities of the Yellowknives, and one Faroe snipe, find themselves destroyed under that all too familiar orange glow. Kanawagas, Genundowa, and Kaoto’ all perish under the power of the atom. All that remains of these lands is the endless maze of citadels that dot the landscape. These fortresses go on for hundreds of miles, one of the first superstructures of the future age. Now they sit abandoned, lost just as their people were.

The entirety of the Yellowknives army is here, attempting to take Necha Go Do. All these cities are down to the black so just need a single melee unit to walk in and rescue the coast for YK, and well there are a few down near Baaxawuaashalíiko, but they are blocking Necha Go Do with units that can’t take cities. This would be the one time splitting the army to try and take multiple cities would actually be useful, gives a path in for melee units.

Nzinga is too busy cleaning up the Wahgi UAVs to go send that Missile Destroyer into Hluti, but they are sending a settler to go resettle Madagascar. Maybe it’ll be able to sneak through the drones, but really they should’ve waited like, two more turns.

There we go, the first elimination of the episode. Mog stayed alive pretty well, but they just could never build up enough of a base to take on their neighbors. I was really rooting for them to beat Saba, they could’ve. They could’ve also done something about eSwatini, or the Qarmatians. They had options, but they were just lazy about it. Failing to make moves when they needed to, never expanding beyond what was comfortable. And so here they lie, in off-brand Belgium (which is already off-brand Netherlands and France) and a city whose name I’ve used to make a joke about gay sex. Is it a fitting end? Maybe. Up to you.

No this is not Ume-Sámi taking cities in a last ditch effort to stay alive. They are dying, they will die, they are very soon to be dead. If they wanted to increase their city capture count maybe they should’ve thought about that 500 turns ago.

The first real proper fighting between Gogurt and Wahgi is here, in the middle of the Himalayas. And well, it seems Wahgi is soundly losing. They lost Dam (another capital to Gogurt) and are about to lose Lhasa and Nakchu, probably the other two as well right after. Wahgi’s great South and Southeast Asian paradrop play is evidently not winning for them in the long run. They really tried, and did take a lot, but uh, just sucked, and are now losing badly. Lmao.

Singapore nabs Simuay, Amulibanth, and Ero’ara off of Wahgi and starts pushing onto the homeland, Papua New Guinea. These are some absolutely massive cities with some really good wonders such as: Orbital Refinery, Gate of the Sun, Red Fort, and the Pena National Palace. Which give some very nice bonuses (especially the last two there, giving a total of +45% defensive strength for buildings in the empire). Simuay also contains a bunch of nice wonders thanks to Maguindanao, namely the Pyramids and the Great Lighthouse, allowing Singapore to repair and build their improvements real quick, and to move on Wahgi even faster.

The whole left side of the screen is covered in that sickly purplish green also known as Wahgi. But they are really just throwing themselves to their deaths as UAVs can not at all take cities, neither can those 7 subs near the top. It’s free target practice for New Holland as they take Ichabamba and force Wahgi down to only a couple cities in the south.

The Selkups' capital falls to Gogurt, and they;ve cut off Hsia completely. They probably don’t need to turn every single unit involved in the pincer attack towards Hsia but like fine I guess, leave your new conquests less defended, it’s not like the Selkups can do anything about it. From previous slides it seems the Selkups are much more interested in fighting their weaker neighbors to the west than to defend their own lands. Or maybe they’ve just gone fishing and haven’t come back.

So these were all kinda seen a couple slides ago, but Badjaling fell and the cities of Kombulno, Wabag, and Minj were eviscerated by hellfire. Last time we had seen them they were both around 30 pop, or about 13 million each. Singapore marches onwards.

Unlike the board game, the Faroes make the campaign go really quick, as they swoop into Waterloo, Mandimansa, and Aquilea. Now, the Faroes are pretty dry on land units, but they do have XCOMs, so they can pop an army into view whenever they want, so better hope they want.

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “The Sahara”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “The Sahara”

>“The Sahara is a hot place, but it feels so much hotter now. The rampant path to progress has done little to quell the desert heat, and every H-bomb that goes off pushes a bit more heat into the air. It never goes away. I was moving through Nevers, the people here seemed scared. There was a protest last night -feels like there’s one every night- but as always it was slow and weak as these tired and weary citizens struggled against the sun. It feels like proper defenses will never come to this city, the government doesn’t need to worry about discontent when those damned rays are shining down. They don’t understand the threat soon to arrive. Next place I go I’ll make sure it has one of those cyber-based ice generators.”

And the Ume-Sámi are kicked out of their capital, and send to the east where they still hold a few cities, but not for long. They still have a solid shot at outliving eSwatini, but like, it’s getting close. I can only see 3 military units of theirs here and I doubt there’s much more beyond that. C’mon Latvia crush them quick so you can actually go use those units to defend against the Faroes who took Rapolan.

The Pontus capital also fell while we weren’t looking, and so did Themiscyra. Pontus is running out of cities but hey, they still got some solid stuff. I’m surprised the Afsharids have been able to get this far honestly, didn’t feel like they had it anywhere in themselves, and really I’ve been rooting for Pontus over the Afsharids for a long while now.

In the midst of the wastelands, new life can still happen, maybe even flourish if it’s lucky. Lee Kuan Yew realized this and settled Orchard on the east coast of India. Nader Shah evidently was thinking similarly as he also prepares to settle the subcontinent.

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “New life”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “New life”

>“New life has sprouted up in India. It was fun to watch them rebuild after all the destruction. As the ruined buildings get cleared away they do impromptu funerals to honor those lost, whether or not they had any clue who those bodies used to fight for. It’s a nice sight for once.”

Well, they haven’t quite beaten Gogurt, but they are surrounding Thang Long and look like they can take it. But will they be able to go further? Harder to say. Gogurt is still very very strong, and should be able to pretty quickly bring an army down to defend their recent conquest of Zheng. But personally? Gogurt’s gonna be okay, I don’t think they’re gonna get slowed down by this, they are still by far the strongest, and Singapore has other fronts they need to focus on more (like Wahgi). And hey, they’re gonna settle Hainan and really new settles are the true indicator of success.

Sandur in the bottom left is wiped out, the rest of these barren tundra lands remain empty save for the remains of mines dotting the landscape. Deep chasms into the earth for what was once one of the mineral hubs of the Faroese. Now they sit with only the melting snow to be found within.

The resettlement of the western Pampas continues with Arraial Do Bom Jesus, and two more settlers along the way. Maurits must’ve realized that Wahgi doesn’t actually have any sort of melee units to take cities so he’s free to build fresh cities (with nearly 200 defense though…) wherever he wants. Though, he really should go take Maguinchao already…

The waters of the Hudson Bay heat up from the whirring of like a million Nexuses and Nanohives. The Yellowknives have kicked the Faroes out of the west coast of the bay, and are now moving on to Vidarhdi and Eidi. Neither of these cities look like they’ll last. Is this finally the Yellowknife comeback? Ignore the nuked cities they lost elsewhere, they are retaking the Hudson Bay! I’m still hoping they can be a solid number two instead of languishing at home.

Here’s the Selkups’ army, it’s down fighting the Afsharids. The two have swapped a couple cities (Afsharids lost Astrakhan and Elista in the west but gained Bukhara and Herat here in the east). So the Selkups are trying to gain control over Central Asia instead of defending their core, only issue is that while they do have Battlesuits, they also are fighting with Marines, while the Afsharids’ army is much more fully up to date. But hey they’ll probably retake Herat and Bukhara but yeah, they really should defend their homeland…

Looking back at the end of the last episode, I think the Bermuda city was destroyed at the end of it? But it’s hard to tell, it at least existed a few turns before the end but I think the minimap is just slightly different there. Nonetheless, the Bermuda Triangle has taken another victim, strangely through the medium of nuclear fission rather than mysterious fog and ghost ships. In turn, the Faroes who evacuated the area go north and take Chenussio, probably won’t last but might provide enough of a distraction for the Yellowknives to finally take Nundawao.

That’s right, just the Pontus lands left, then, finally, for the first time this game, we will have the whole Med united. Can the Faroes do what Rome both achieved and failed to achieve (IRL Rome and CBR Rome respectively)? I mean at this rate probably, not like Pontus is gonna do much. With that said, this also means the Faroes will have a much easier time convoying units over since the passage has been made pretty safe, and keeps their western European holdings very safe from threats.

It seems Ume-Sámi’s laziness is also passing to their enemies, as Latvia and the Selkups struggle to take the last two cities. Kalliomaki and Vent Spies (? Amogus sus!?) are both retaken, at least I think Vent Spies was retaken it might’ve just not fallen in which case the Selkups are even lazier than I thought.

The Gogurt war machine marches west, each step of the mech artillery crunching into the grass and dirt and metal. The old Kazakhstan capital stands unguarded save for a single pilot. The declarations from Vonya continue to assert the need to send the army south. There’s little that will save them now.

The Singaporean onslaught of Australia continues, and it is really looking like actually, they will be the ones to unify the island. Not Palawa (lmao as if), not Noongar (sadge), and not even Wahgi (fucked themselves), but Singapore.

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “Uluru”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “Uluru” || WARNING: SOME TEXT HAS BEEN REDACTED BY AN AUTOMATIC ENCRYPTION COMMAND: ADMINISTRATOR IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR FULL ACCESS

>“Uluru was nice to see, I haven’t seen it in probably █████████? It’s been a while since I really had the chance to just, relax a bit. It’s a bit sad to see the surface littered with the dents of bombs, but at least there aren’t any building ruins up here. You don’t get to do this much when you’re a ███, but hey, there’s not much work for me when the world is at war like this. It sure makes things lonely though…”

>ENTER ADMINISTRATOR PASSCODE FOR FULL ACCESS:

>...

Gwanggaeto decides Singapore can’t be the only one to get anything from Wahgi, and goes right into the core by taking Goroka. And he’s brought Caetano Veloso in to make a fantastic tropicália hit and invigorate the rest of his army. And by “brought in” I mean kidnapped from his house in Goroka during the capture of the city, but y’know, same thing really.

Wahgi does have a Battlesuit nearby to take it back, but the entire eastern half of the screen is completely useless, it’s all UAVs and not a single melee unit.

The Yellowknives gain three cities, none of which are Nundawao, because they are all newly settled cities in the wastelands of the American south. Ekáti Ndi, Burwash Point, and Kwe something all get plopped down in the effort to rebuild what was lost, or at least to serve as air bases for their military effort to take the coast.

So Palawa did retake their capital last time but now it’s in the hands of Singapore. They should really secure Pataway first before they try to secure Mutawaynatji, but that’s just the way it is. Either way it remains as a huge blow to Palawa, and just a big sign of how their empire will quickly crumble once Singapore brings their navy around.

Yes here we go now we can start to find random Korn song titles to use as slide titles >:3 Well, I mean unless Wahgi just fails to retake the city at all in which case it’ll just be the once. But just think about Korn songs in your head now so you can identify them later if they come up. And by think in your head I of course mean check Wikipedia, I sure as hell don’t know Korn songs I’ve never listened to the band before. With that all said though, yeah Banz is gonna fall soon and Mount Hagen is now in Yellow and Goroka still hasn’t been retaken. The island is gonna fall fast.

Gogurt skips past Hainan to go for the Philippines, settling at the top of it and getting another settler on the islands to get a second city soon. There’s another settler off on the left of the screen who might also come over or might go for Vietnam.

On the minimap, if you were paying attention, Singapore failed to take Thang Long, and all but one city of the Wahgi colony got yoinked. (Lhasa and Dege to Gogurt, Chamdo to Afsharids, Nakhon Ratchasima to Singapore, and Nakchu left alive).

Okay as soon as I notice it then we get the slide with it so just like read what I wrote above, you can see the results of that here. Nakchu is about to fall, and the Afsharids have settled Tehran, but Singapore has a few units prowling the area. For now though, India remains pretty split.

And a disappointed and disapproving look while I shake my head. Why are Ume-Sámi back to four cities, one of which they resettled, and they have another settler up in the north? Can they just die already? Please just die. You don’t deserve to live this long. Just picture the Kill Yourself Now with lightning meme.

Ndongo is now joining in the meta of Settlers on the frontlines as they go to settle in the ruins of the Sudan. Azeba could still fall back given the lack of defenses, but they are pushing on Nkongsamba and really, Sierra Leone doesn’t look like they have much fight in them here. Really, I’m just continually impressed by Ndongo in this total war, they’ve held on remarkably well despite their disadvantages and now seem quite safe (since no one is really crossing oceans yet) and can just push north to their weakened rival.

Well Astana fell, also looking at the minimap the Afsharids got some gains against them as well. But at least they finally brought like, a couple troops over to fight Gogurt. Now, what I really want to ask is: How much further in this attack would Gogurt be if they weren’t diverting most of their army on this front to go fight Hsia AND THEY STILL HAVEN’T TAKEN IT YET. Really, does Gwanggaeto want those r/hoi4 karma points that bad?

As their cities fall, the Faroes nuke out a couple cities, somehow remain in Vidareidi, but lose Eidi and Vágur. Vidareidi, Porkeri, and Pituffik are definitely soon to fall, but they do finally have another settler out to resettled Quebec. It does feel like the Yellowknives are finally stepping up and being able to flex their muscles again, they spent the start of total war losing to everyone, only slightly, but still losing.

This is probably a result of the Pontus UA, I don’t know how exactly, but it does stuff like this, and is a bit bugged, so is probably the culprit. But nonetheless, the entirety of the formerly Boran cities are up in revolt, preventing Wahgi from doing anything in them. With this chance given to them, Palawa sends in a couple subs and a settler…

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “Resistance”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “Resistance”

>“Resistance is not often seen this much, but it seems the people of Bora-Bora are an especially revolutionary bunch. They’ve had the islands at a standstill for ages, I was only able to get in because, well, y’know. [Yes this is my personal journal but if I read it again later it’ll be like I’m talking to myself.] I’ve been out by the docks watching the protests, they really are never ending. From morning till the night, they are out here preventing any work from happening. Always nice to see some real solidarity in these times, usually the cities are split between the doomers, fighters, fake-fighters, tired, dead, and broken. But here? They’re acting as one sophisticated hammer smashing the production capabilities of the Wahgi military.”

Is that city really just called Ogre? Cause it sure looks like it. Anyways this turn the Faroes took Munich, Csejte, and Ogre all at once, with some units starting to attack Komárom and Gaziura. Meanwhile Pontus founds Eupatoria and Latvia founds Krustpils with another settler soon to follow. Things are not looking good for our boys in pink, their cities are being bombed out and squeezed on both sides. Maybe they’d be able to mount more of a defense if the Selkups weren’t so intent on abandoning their core.

Maybe hover units should be able to take cities.

The Arabian Desert is filled with the rhythms of Al Green’s Shiraz soul. They call him “The Last of the Great Soul Singers” due to the fact that so many of them have died in the war. So here he stands, performing for those working in Al-Ahsa, helping them feel a bit better as they repair the mess that is their home.

The greatest competitor is back, the Kalmyks return once more! Who could’ve possibly seen this one coming? Really, this has gotta be one of the greatest religions to be made. The UA says when first converting a city, so every time they come back it’s because a new city came under the domain of Vajrayana, and it seems there’s an endless number of new cities for them to gain knights off of.

Latvia is making a play for Saratov for some reason, maybe they think it’s a bit defensible, and the Afsharids are making a strong push against the Selkups, though slightly interrupted by our faithful friend.

The Faroese push more against Pontus who is down to 8 cities? The five we see here and three more just off screen by my count. And no doubt the Faroes are gonna nab these before the Afsharids do, they already have the border cities starting to be bombed while on the Afsharid side Sinope stands undamaged.

There’s not much going on here other than noting New Holland’s pretty well built up Taino holdings. So I’ll use this time to note some map changes not shown that I missed so far because I was lazy:

Faroes took another city in Morocco from Sierra Leone.

Ndongo flipped a city with Sierra Leone.

Pontus took the Mamluk capital off Sierra Leone.

A Singaporean city in Yemen got wiped.

A Wahgi city just north of that city Gogurt yoinked got wiped.

One of New Holland’s cities in Bolivia got wiped (the larger one of course).

Ndongo settled a city in Madagascar.

Singapore burned down Korn (Rip no more Korn song titles…)

The new largest city as best I know is here, a bit off the coast of the Singaporean core in the Indian Ocean. Standing at a whopping 77 population this city is chock full of the refugees of the bombings to the east.

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “Crowded”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “Crowded”

>“Crowded isn’t even really the right term here, but it’s hard to find one better. Cramped? Crushing? Stuffed? The island is so full of people it’s hard to even move around in. They’ve even been putting apartments on the carriers in the port in the quest for just a little more space. It makes me paranoid that someone will see me writing, I have sensitive information here! I’m getting on the next plane out of here, this place is just giving me anxiety.”

Please you have a Mechanized Infantry and even a Battlesuit right there, just use them to take the city. Please don’t move that Mech Artillery southwest of the city, please don’t. Just take the city, you can do it. It’s not that hard. Don’t do Hsia or whatever the last Dzungar city was again.

Gogurt is looking to send in a small attack force through Alaska to try and Catch the Yellowknives by surprise. And well, there certainly aren’t too many YK units around so they can probably take a city or two if they tried. They already had some pay off with Kuganajuup falling this turn. Though while we’re here, since we haven’t really been here yet this episode, the Yellowknives did retake the PNW cities, so that’s something. Maybe the Gogurt forces are just a scramble for defense rather than a new attack operation.

The Latvian push is a success and we’re even alerted by the game itself! They’ve taken the just settled Eupatoria and the mountainous Saratov. But they didn’t even try to take back Ogre, guess they really did stay out of the swamp. Also the Selkups’ attack up north is weak and not really working.

Nzinga nabbed Ndjamena earlier but now they also take Nkongsamba and settle Mapolo (while a Pontus settler heads towards the singular allowable city location left there, two tiles southwest of it). Nzinga also has amassed quite a strong army here around Kindonga and Ndjamena, and with no nukes on Sierra Leone’s side to deal AoE damage it seems like there’s gonna be a real nice push here. Maybe they can take all four of these border cities within the next few turns?

We get this nice shot of the desolate ruins of SEA. Bac Giang used to be here but was destroyed back on turn 817, and neither side seems like they want to resettle the area. We also have proof of the Thang Long attack disintegrating just like Bac Giang did. Singapore and Gogurt both have much greater enemies they need to deal with.

Palawa retakes their capital of Mutawaynatji and the city of Pataway from Singapore, and also nabs Ballardong from Wahgi, all will probably fall to Singapore soon, so thanks to Palawa for clearing out more of Wahgi’s UAVs. They also have a settler here I guess aiming for the former Minj lands, but I doubt it’ll get there. The Singaporean army moves forward.

The Faroes scramble to get their single land melee unit, an XCOM, over to Agadir to take, next stop either Ctesiphon or Mansoura. They should really send over a few more of these guys, they’re pretty strong I hear. Nonetheless, Sierra Leone has little in the form of resistance to the Faroese push. So they will continue to lose cities one XCOM at a time.

They really are pushing for that full Roman control of the Med, taking Amastris and dropping Pharnacia to black. Only a few more until the sea is fully engulfed in the maws of the northerners. The Faroes also take the last city in Sweden.

New Holland did a good job clearing out the rest of the Wahgi cities on the continent, and there’s a big hole where Koluel Kayke was, but they have no fallen into the classic trap of only having ranged/hovering units around Pampa Koani. C’mon Maurits you can’t unite the continent if you’re doing this! Send in a melee unit!

Okay so I think the island here is supposed to be Ascension not St. Helena, but St. Helena isn’t on the map so close enough. There used to be a New Holland city here but Sierra Leone in their panic probably took it out, but I don’t think that’s gonna save Freetown which is now on the verge of death and a lot of these NH ships are Advanced Destroyers, melee ships.

Wahgi really only has UAVs around, they are gonna be absolutely wiped out. Here we see confirmation that SIngapore took Banz, Mount Hagen will fall as soon as they get a melee unit onto land there. Singapore also took Nannup, though none of the more southern cities, as instead they are making a play for Boyagin.

Goroka remains in Gogurt’s hands, unbothered, moisturized, happy, in their lane, focused, flourishing.

It’s amusing to go back like two slides and see the Afhsarids take cities in every direction. In this direction though it’s Sinope and Amisos. Saratov is surrounded in the north, the Kalmyks still exist (maybe they got resurrected again this turn it’s hard to say), and they liberated the Mamluks down in Africa. Presumably we’ll see the eastern gains soon™. But regardless, the med is back to being split between three people, will the Faroes be able to project their power this far? Who’s to say, their army in this frame is practically nonexistent.

Nakchu still hasn’t fallen.

Elsewhere, the Afsharids took Chamdo from Gogurt while Singapore nabs both Tehran and Mehrgarh, giving them the whole of the southern part of the subcontinent. Though that Battlesuit (and the second behind the city banner) does look to stand in the way, luckily for Singapore they go first in the turn order so maybe they will be able to kill them in time.

Gogurt drops another settlement into the Philippines, and does in fact get a settler over to Vietnam to start refilling that lost land. Though I do have to note that the new Gogurt settles are remarkably low in defensive strength, especially compared to the new cities of Singapore which are around 200. They are filled up with planes so should be able to defend themselves decently well at least, but I don’t know how many attacks from an Advanced Destroyer the cities can take.

The Yellowknife outposts were quickly decimated by hellfire from the Hollanders, who in turn send out their own men to claim the land. It is currently the Yellowknive’s go so maybe they will do something here will change in a couple slides.

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “The citadels”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “The citadels”

>“The citadels between the Yellowknives and New Holland are once again uninhabited. Can’t believe I missed my chance to go see them in that short period between abandonments. Now it’s all just empty halls connecting the endless miles of stone and metal ramparts. At least the quiet is nice, in comparison to that horrendous monolith in the Indian Ocean. But the more I walk here the lonelier I get. Maybe there’s a curse on these lands that causes men to leave, a curse beyond the bombs.”

eSwatini has not in fact fallen yet. Somehow. The city has 24 strength, I’m fairly sure that that 100 strength Advanced Destroyer of Singapore’s could walk in and take it without any help. The Ndongo colony failed and their army torn apart and yet nowhere in the chaos did anyone just accidentally trip into Hluti. So it continues to stand there, a beacon of ineptitude, waiting for someone to put this resurrected rump out of its misery.

Like come on why are they still here how have those cities not been taken why do they have another settler out potentially able to settle another city? At least the one on the peninsula got bombed out but they still have two more come on guys through your units at them but include some melee units I’m tired of seeing these guys.

Herewe can see how the Yellowknives have fully regained control over their western coast, and even more so the cities are all nice and full health, at least the ones on the coast are. They also have quite a few planes here, all bombing the Hawaiian islands and any attempts by Gogurt to cross the gap and invade again. Maybe with a little more consolidation YK can finally bridge the gap themselves and take Hawaii for themselves.

Ndongo sneaks into Bornu, cutting off the eastern Sierra Leone cities, while at the same time putting pressure on Yao. They are in a really nice spot here, the Sierra Leone army is practically gone, and SL is fighting against the Faroes in the north (who still doesn’t have more than the one XCOM for melee units). Nzinga can probably grab Yao and Minya immediately with easy access to Granville Town and Ngazargamu.

In addition, we can see the Pontus settler has finally found its way to the singular spot it can settle, and we can finally get a glimpse of the long forgotten Mamluks.

And there it is, the Sierra Leone capital has fallen with their only defense right now being an embarked great artist. Just an episode ago it seemed like Sierra Leone was on the up and up and now they have only two cities left which have avoided the horrors of war. New Holland will probably also be the ones to take Tangier given the lack of Faroese melee ships, but the Faroes are about to take Kenema so that’s something.

In the midst of the bombs, a lone Ndongo settler passes through Sierra Leone’s territory on its way to the Ivory Coast where it has a solid chance to settle. Sierra Leone makes no play to just, take the settler, for some reason.

Sierra Leone over in the east gets their turn and manages to retake Bornu with it, however instead of keeping it they decide to just liberate Kanem-Bornu. This will do little to stop the Ndongo push. But if there is one thing going for them, it’s that they have a lot of melee units over here. Lot of Battlesuits and Special Forces, unlike the Faroes who have a singular XCOM. They even used one of the Battlesuits to take the barely just founded city of Dioscurias from Pontus, good job on settling that buddy hope you enjoyed your time with it. Ignore that your time with it was literally not even enough for a slide.

Pretending we don’t see the alerts at the top, Singapore here has taken Ballardong and Boyagin, as the Wahgi UAVs get further thinned. Ballardong might get retaken by Palawa, and Singapore didn’t take any of the southern cities so I guess you can count this as a Palawa win.

Out on the minimap, Singapore takes two cities from Gogurt in SEA.

The Afsharid push north continues to see success as they take Herat and Astrakhan and put the pressure on Elista. The Selkups also lost a few cities here to Gogurt, Karaganda, Petropavl, and Turkistan. Hsia still hasn’t fallen by the way, good job Gogurt. Now it’d also be really really funny if the Kalmyks retook Elista here, it’s on no health and they do have a knight…

Here we get a good look at the Selkups core, there was a city right in the middle there east of Cheboksary but it got nuked and it’s not shown in these images and I’m not gonna look through all of last episode of this one too. We also get a better look at the capture of Karaganda and Akbalyk, Akbalyk fell a turn or two ago and an assault on Pavlodar has already begun. Now if only Gogurt could use this same logic of taking cities and apply it to Hsia. It should also be noted how every city south of Kyzylorda is in the red, only needs a few feathers to fall down for them to break.

Things are really not looking good for Latvia here as the Faroes take their capital while ignoring all of the cities around it. At least they took that Ume-Sámi city as well, so that’s something. But yeah, Latvia is getting closer and closer to death, and this is only a bit past the halfway point of this episode so there’s still a lot of time.

The Faroes also take Kenema down in West Africa in case you didn’t see the text at the top of the screen, which of course you did see it, you’re smart, good work. Proud of you.

Well they retook Riga and will probably keep it for a turn since the closest melee unit is that Battlesuit south of Liepaja, Liepaja on the other hand will almost certainly fall, or at least one of it or Mariupol. Komárom in the west also looks set to fall to a Battlesuit. There really are just so many cities here on the verge of collapse but the Faroes lack enough melee units so they are running around destroying everything they can while leaving the people clinging on to some false hope that it’ll end in just a moment. But that end is still a ways away.

This shot of southern Europe shows just how blue it is, only a little bit of pink peeks in from the east. It also shows how the Faroes have realized that the Mediterranean is another body of water they can fill up with workboat UUs! Yaaaaaaay!

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “The blue”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “The blue”

>“The blue waves are nice here in Nancy. The city has survived remarkably well through the war yet the land around it remains broken down and ruined. There’s word of the FWC slowly making their way south getting the cities back together, but for now the people here will have to wait a little bit longer in squalor. It’s hard to watch sometimes, beggars on every corner, the destitute slums burgeoning out with people. At least the beaches are nice.”

>definition search “FWC”

>SEARCHING DATABASE FOR DEFINITION OF “FWC”...

>“The FWC, or Faroese Worker Collective, is the main body representing workers in the Empire of the Faroe Islands. It is an organization run by the government, currently led by the Earth Party, as a top down union to ensure there are available jobs for everyone who enlists. Many Faroese citizens are encouraged to join through the use of posters and slogans that encourage a national consciousness. However, there is controversy amongst some Faroese circles that the FWC is not a real collective and does not fight for worker rights due to its obedience to the government.”

Proof of the Afsharid push into Saratov and Elista, as well as a Nanohive swarm heading into Latvia. They can’t take cities but they can be a great annoyance.

As an aside, as I’m writing this the ephemeral Agla just released a very cool Scythian civ that is both orange colored (very nice) and has a UU that is a trans weed priestess, basically. So all I’m saying is that it better be guaranteed in MkX5. I will fight all of you who vote against it. (You should also vote for my couple civs but those are over in California and potentially the Netherlands if they get included if the vote region borders change…)

Alternate title: Haha You’re Dead Fucker

That’s it, Ume-Sámi is officially dead, they have no melee units, somebody better kill that settler or so help me… But yes, the laziest civ in this royale has finally died in uh, 14th? Mog earlier was 15th I believe. Similar to Mogadishu, Ume-Sámi had promise, and wasted it. While Mog at least tried to do things at some points, Ume-Sámi refused to do anything ever. They notably were involved in fewer wars than the Finns and had only taken one city before total war happened, and they also lost three cities in that. It was in the early 100s, they have literally done jack shit the entire game and their only relevancy was 700 turns ago where they lost a couple edge cities and then decided that was enough fighting for the rest of the royale. I just wish Latvia had decided to take them out earlier on so they could have a stronger base going into the end game rather than being allies until it was too late. Suffice to say, I think everyone is disappointed, and they did not deserve this rank.

Singapore lands in the Horn of Africa taking the Mogadishu capital away from Ndongo. Not sure how well they can hold it specifically, and Ndongo does have a melee unit right next door, but it is a sign of Singapore’s growing consolidation of the Indian Ocean. Ndongo in turn looks to resettle the Somalian desert. We also get a view of the new Afsharid city of Hamadan. Overall I think Ndongo should be able to handle this fine, but it will be a distraction away from their main focus which should be getting as much of Sierra Leone as they can.

Pavlodar falls to Gogurt, unlike Hsia. And the army continues to move forward towards Shymkent, Tätes, and Atyrali, with plenty of melee units interspersed, unlike Hsia. With a Bio-Titan having crossed the Urals, it seems like it won’t be long until the rest of the Gogurt army breaks through either, unlike Hsia. To note, the Bio-Titan has a strength of 140, only beaten by the classic GDR at 150, making it the second strongest unit in the game, unlike Hsia. Though really the debate is between the Bio-Titan and the Nexus given the two units’ many bonuses, it has March and Volley, heals a quarter of its hp on kills, and spawns two Genoswarms (basically suicide bombs that only last a turn) at the start of the turn if it sees an enemy, unlike Hsia. the Nexus on the other hand heals and damages units within two tiles, and weakens enemy units in that same radius, unlike Hsia.

The toady continues to live. Singapore took Laylatiya, but they really need more troops focusing on securing the last quarter of the continent. Mostly because I really want them to beat up Palawa who need to be ousted. Who knows what the best plan here is, I don’t run on “best plans”, I run on spite and hatred.

The New Holland planes have been doing a lot of work on the trash pile of UAVs that Wahgi left in the area, absolutely decimating them and giving us a whole lot of fun number popups along the way. It’s now pretty safe to say that the Peruvian coast is securely New Hollands. Well I would say that but oh shit it’s Yellowknives from behind with a steel chair?!?! Well not really, but YK did take Otavalo from I presume Wahgi, and this might open up a path for them to send some more troops to Quito or something, bypassing the need to fight New Holland’s Caribbean army.

The only nearby melee unit is that Giant Death Robot and it’s very much blocked by all the Nexuses. Maybe if it embarks it can get in? That’s something at least. I suspect a similar occurrence is happening with the city just off screen to the south, the other of Palawa’s two South American holdings. But they will remain Palawa’s, if Hsia is anything to go by, for at least like 10 more turns.

The Yellowknives and New Holland seem intent on making the American south resettled and yet also a no-man's land. Both civs are trying to settle what was lost yet also keep bombing each other to pieces. The cities over near Texas got destroyed and it’s really a wonder how Kwe Ka Tszoa remains standing. Elsewhere, YK has almost taken Pituffik, and Ganondagan still remains around. Assuming we don’t immediately look in Quebec next slide I should note some of the cities up there have also been nuked out.

Pharnacia falls to a Bio-Titan, leaving just 4 cities remaining outside of the Faroese grip over the Med. Though to be fair you could also count Cairo and whatever that Sierra Leone city that owns a bit of the coast is, but like, I figure they will all fall at around the same time. The main limiting factor here really is just that the Faroese refuse to bring over any melee ships, or really any units at all. It’s mostly just workboat UUs. Meanwhile the Afsharids have two GDRs right here.

Also the Faroes take a city off Latvia and Sierra Leone.

Oh hey there it is, Ctesiphon has fallen, and what’s this? Is that, a bunch of melee units?! Why I do believe it is. 5 Battlesuits and an XCOM. Maybe that’ll finally be enough to take Nevers, and Fez, and Njimi, and Mansoura, and [every other city in Sierra Leone].

Vidareidi still hasn’t fallen as instead the Yellowknives decide to head for Porkeri. Toftir, a 41 pop city, was destroyed in the bombings, and so was Hósvík which was just a bit smaller than it. Pituffik failed to fall, Vágur was retaken, and there’s a YK settler on the bay. The Yellowknives are not doing the best at consolidating the area given how many units they had just a couple turns ago.

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “Snow”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “Snow” || WARNING: SOME TEXT HAS BEEN REDACTED BY AN AUTOMATIC ENCRYPTION COMMAND: ADMINISTRATOR IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR FULL ACCESS

>“Snow up here in Eidi is crunchy to step on, it makes a nice sound under my boots. I’ve turned down the thermal limiting of my ████████████ so that I can feel the chill properly, I don’t normally do it because well, safety reasons of course, but sometimes you just need a little bit of chill so that you can feel that much better when you step inside with a warm cider. Though the entertainment could be better, maybe Akaitcho sent in soldiers from the south because the cold should not be slowing them down as much as it is. Guess that’s what I get for wanting to watch some ice battles.”

>ENTER ADMINISTRATOR PASSCODE FOR FULL ACCESS:

>...

UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA

As Gogurt’s turn ticks we see they have taken Ganeriwala and are moving in on Chamdo, they are also going at Nakhon Ratchasima but have it almost surrounded by hovering units, again. Maybe that embarked Battlesuit can go on the same tile as the Nexuses and take it? Hopefully?

Elsewhere, they also retook a city off of Singapore, and took two more cities from the Selkups (not Hsia of course). And seemingly nuked a Singaporean city just east of the Philippines?

I should also note, part of why Hsia will seemingly never fall is because it is a meesely 76 strength city surrounded by 120 strength Nexuses and one 100 strength Nanohive. Nexuses heal the units around them for 10 hp every turn, and I’m not sure if that stacks? It might, but either way, it means that unless Hsia is doing at least 11 damage to that one Nanohive (assuming the heals don’t stack, if they do then the city would need to do at least 51 damage…) to eventually out damage the healing and destroy it so that a Battlesuit can hopefully be the one to sneak in, or maybe do the same to one of the Nexuses but that seems less likely and there aren’t Battlesuits behind those. Nakhon Ratchasima won’t have the same fate in part because Singapore is literally right there and can actually fight the units, rather than being too weak and getting cut off.

Ndongo ignores Bornu for now and instead takes Minya and prepares to take Yao (for real this time). That settler in the north can’t do shit but there’s another settler near the capital ready to resettle the lost lands just north of it. Also Ndongo retook Mogadishu and settled that city on the horn. Ndongo really is getting closer and closer to being the sole dominant power of Africa, imagine telling anyone that like 15 episodes ago.

eSwatini finally dies, I don’t know how it took so long, the city was so weak and there was nothing blocking it, how’d it take up to nearly slide 100 for this to happen? Singapore also retook Mogadishu along with taking a few other cities that we will probably get to in a few slides so I’ll ignore them for now.

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “Hluti”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “Hluti”

>“Hluti was a nice place, but it felt so weird, like I was transported far, far back in time. I mean, I kinda was. The administration there was grappling with a city that had a bunch of modern, or mostly modern, technology when they had not even entered the industrial world when they left. I got constantly questioned about what I had on my person because they hadn’t seen a computer before. I think Lee Kuan Yew and Nzinga let them stick around for a bit out of pity more than anything. Sadly I missed my chance to speak with Mdluli, I wanted to know what she thought about it all.”

Apparently the city didn’t get nuked, it was just captured, my bad, this is what I get for not reading ahead. But I like to keep myself spoiler free for a more authentic narration experience. It is what it is.

Mount Hagen drops to black and while Singapore still lacks any melee units nearby, Gogurt does have a Bio-Titan embarked, would be a bit safer if they had a ship over it so I doubt it’s surviving, but that is more progress than Singapore is making. All it takes is one melee unit to take the city, just one. And then all those juicy wonders will be theirs.

I’m just not gonna do it! Pontal De Nazaré was taken by Ndongo at some point proving they have some naval skills here, and giving their southern coast a bit of breathing room. In turn they have settled Angouleme and Kabasa in a bid to get more ship production up. There also may have been a city on that island up there at some point but I’m not gonna go check that either. You can’t stop me.

We get a peek at the proof that Gogurt did in fact cross the Urals (both here at Tätes and a city just south of the frame), with Atyrau looking soon to follow. Next up is to run across the desolate wastes to the western part of the remains of the Selkups. They have quite the army up here so they just have to make it move.

Okay I probably looked this up last time too, but the adjective for Bora Bora would actually be Tahitan (though the mod just uses Bora Bora) because Bora Bora is a Tahitian island and had the same language and whatnot. But whatever. Point is that Palawa took Numbkora and Pachacamac off Wahgi while all the Bora Bora cities remain in resistance, they do not stop fighting Wahgi, and they seemingly never will. Proud to be a Boraliever as always.

Also uh, the Yellowknives snuck into ‘Uturoa, somehow, I don’t know why they went for that one or how they got it low, but they ignored all the others and went for that one specifically. Well more proof for the Yellowknife comeback (but don’t call it that) and the fall of Wahgi

Simuay flips and guess who’s back? That’s right Mag is back and suddenly the number of NopeCopter civs in this game has doubled. Mag was the second civ out and now they are here getting a second chance. Will they be able to do anything with this chance? No, of course not, they never even hit gunpowder I don’t think. But still, what really matters is that they’re here. :]

You didn’t look at the minimap last slide right? Good. Here we get to see some of the fallout of said turn change. The Faroes take three cities off of Latvia, including the capital, and they surround Eupatoria with units that can’t take cities. Meanwhile the Selkups also take a city, Jelgava (north of Rezekne). This leaves Latvia with two cities cut off in the north, and five cities down here in the south. The end is drawing nearer and nearer, but who will go out first?

Here we finally get that bunch of Singapore captures I mentioned 7 slides ago, Singapore snuck their way into Hajar, Hamadan, Damghan, and even Al-Ahsa somehow. The Afsharids didn’t even manage to take that one back immediately so the unit was able to get out rather than be destroyed in the city. Singapore can’t do much more here given their lack of melee units, but it does provide a big distraction for the Afsharids and secure more of the Indian Ocean for Singapore.

The Selkups are down to eight cities, one more than Latvia, with four here and three up north, and that one that I want to forget exists.

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “The tundra”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “The tundra”

>“The tundra wastes here are a sight to behold, the remains of cities and bombs are strewn far and wide, with the signs of life being forests and the occasional plane flying overhead I need to hide from. But you can really just tell how fast everything went away. Buildings stand everywhere, scorched and crumbling with icicles hanging everywhere, yet put together enough to see inside, and see how everything is just as it should be, as if death came in an instant to only the living. And well, I guess it did. I don’t know how many died in the blasts, but these cold ruins are evidently the graves of millions.”

The Yellowknives retake Kuganajuup with a strong push along the coast, they also have managed to keep hold of Qikiqtaaluk while moving a few units towards the recent Gogurt settle of Cheongsae. Now there was a city over on the right there that got nuked and now leaves a giant empty gap. I don’t think they’ll quite be able to completely kick Gogurt off the continent given the mountainous terrain and planes, but a win is a win.

Of all the cities to be nuked off the face of the cylinder, Natal and San Antonio are not any of them. Sadly this means that the Panama Canal is still unsettleable and that settler there now will have to travel elsewhere to get its fix of canal cities.

So I guess we’re just gonna skip past the part where Singapore took one of the Ndongo coastal cities that wasn’t Mogadishu (Ndongo has now retaken it and retaken that city they settled on Madagascar), nor Ndongo taking Granville Town. Nonetheless, Ndongo did take Bornu taking out Kanem-Bornu again, but now Sierra Leone has mustered up enough forces to retake Minya, also that settlement a bit southeast of it got nuked out (and another city in Ethiopia). Mansoura in the north is surrounded by only ranged/hovering units, while Yao in the south has a Battlesuit right next to it which SL did not quite kill. The Faroes also took a bit more from Sierra Leone in the west.

Gogurt has instead opted for Nondugl, splitting the entirety of Wahgi’s empire off from its capital. But they still need to get a land melee unit onto the main island to take Mount Hagen. Wahgi does have a few melee units for once so is making an attempt on Banz, I don’t think they can do much, it'll be retaken quickly enough if it falls at all.

I really would like there to be another screenshot of the Kalmyks please. I want to do one of the narrative bits there but I keep seeing them be resurrected and killed off screen. >:(

There is a single Wahgi melee unit on this slide, the Mobile SAM in Tevaitoa. Suffice to say I think these cities are staying Yellowknives for the time being. It truly is wild to see the Yellowknives project power all the way out here when they can’t even kick the Faroes out of Ontario, but I guess they are doing fine. At this rate I figure the rest of the former Bora lands will fall to YK and Palawa soon enough, and then, well, that might be it for Wahgi.

Also a city got nuked over on the right, I got no idea which it is and I’m not gonna go check.

We ignore the city capture alerts to tell you that Saba-D’mt has returned, brought back by Singapore, here to do basically nothing but die once those Automatons get to move. What a nice time. Saba didn’t play too well when they existed, wasting the leads they made for themselves, and really just didn’t have the drive in them. I should note, Ndongo has been making good use of melee units, good on them, still didn’t take Yao though, somehow.

The Afsharids have snatched Bolgar and sadly Astrakhan (I just really want to do a narrative bit with it…). They also lost a city to Gogurt and then leveled a different city of Gogurt. And also Latvia is dropped down to just four cities while the Selkups are at five, I think, again it’s hard to tell. It’s also hard to tell how much further north the Afsharids can push as Gogurt starts to attack them more and more.

Am I going to witness like 5 civ deaths this episode? There’s still like thirty slides left and these guys are really crumbling. Pontus loses Amisos to the Afsharids and Cairo to Sierra Leone. The Faroese still haven’t realized that workboat UUs can not actually take cities, better luck next time dude.

The takeover of the Bora Bora islands continues as Anau and Vai’ea falls, with the others looking to fall soon after. Their real threat here is the few Palawa units hanging around Pachacámac, which does have some melee units, but also only subs for damaging cities otherwise which obviously doesn’t work.

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “I didn’t think”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “I didn’t think”

>“I didn’t think I would come back here so soon, but I just had to get a glimpse of these islands again. I had been surprised to hear that the Yellowknives were doing an operation down here given the distance, but then I was able to get some ‘insider information’ about what happened, and it’s more interesting than I could’ve believed. There was a huge effort to ensure concealment along the way, and they even sunk some of their own ships that had the concealment technology glitch out and break. Looking at what’s happened, I don’t think they even needed it, but that’s hindsight. The path to success is paved with unnecessary deaths.”

Have the Yellowknives success in the south Pacific finally given them the experience they needed to take cities in the north? Pituffik is surrounded with mostly hovering units but that Railgun Armor is melee! Vidareidi has two embarked Battlesuits approaching it! It’s finally happening! Vágur fell again and soon the Faroes will be fully pushed to the eastern coast. Maybe they will now be a fully fledged competitor to Gogurt, Faroes, New Holland, and Singapore.

Nicomedia falls, leaving Pontus with just two cities left, at least one of them has full health still (but we all know how fast that can drop). Polemonion looks to fall whenever that Battlesuit can just walk over, and Trapezus whenever the Afsharids decide to bomb it down. The Faroes also look to secure another Mediterranean city with that Battlesuit near Sinope.

Also the notifications on the right indicate some, revivals…

Nzinga decides to resurrect eSwatini yet again, for some reason, while also taking that new Madagascar city again. Props to Ndongo for having like, so many melee units. All those Battlesuits and Automatons, oh it’s so glorious mmmmmmmm~!

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “Mdluli”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “Mdluli”

>“Mdluli was nice to talk to. Despite the chaos, it wasn’t too hard to get access to her for an interview (and I was able to record the audio of it in full without her knowing). She had seemed greatly confused by really everything, including how I was fluent in Swazi despite my appearance (that one’s really just being judgemental). I know this process can be strange for leaders when it happens, so maybe something needs to change in regards to memory keeping. However I think overall what she most expressed was fear, she was scared of what was going on and her position in the world and how she could at all protect the Swazi people from this mess of a war, and how even Nzinga, after giving the city back, immediately declared war herself.”

>open mdluli_interview_audio.bwav

>ATTEMPT TO OPEN “mdluli_interview_audio.bwav” FAILED: FILE UNOPENABLE BY THIS SYSTEM

>definition search “bwav file format”

>DEFINITION SEARCH FAILED: NO ENTRY IN DATABASE CONTAINING “bwav file format” FOUND

New Holland takes Tangiers, limiting Sierra Leone to just one city on the Atlantic coast. They also have a GDR just waltzing around approaching Bonthe, perhaps it will be what takes the city? Or perhaps one of those Faroese Battlesuits?

We can also see here a proper look at the fact that Nevers fell, along with the rest of the northern Saharan cities, and that Ndongo has taken Yao in the corner. They also seem to have turned their settler around (or maybe it died) before it could reach the Ivory Coast and settle in that empty spot. So close but alas. I figure Ndongo will also be the ones to take Bunce since NH doesn’t have anything around, but they are also going for Ngazargamu. This really is a race to see who can get the most of what’s left. For someone ranked 8th currently in the PR they are uh, very close to death.

Latvia is now down to two cities, it looks like they will most certainly be the next to die rather than the Selkups, but it’s been a close race (well not really given H̴̛̘̗́̄͑s̵̢̼̣̱̀i̴̠̟̰̍ą̴̡̦̦̈́ but still). The Faroes have a Bio-Titan nearby and the Afsharids have a Battlesuit approaching Krustpils.

An interesting note, the Faroes seem to have like, no planes around. None on this front, none on the Sierra Leone or Mediterranean fronts, and only three on the Yellowknife front, these guys are seriously lacking, and it’ll be a fair bit harder for them to push against the other powers that have actual air forces.

Gogurt is indeed flexing their power over the Afsharids, who while they have played a strong game this episode, have not really had to take on many big powers, mainly Gogurt through the Himalayas which doesn’t really count and Singapore slightly far away from the Singaporean core. But now they do seem to be losing their recent conquests in the area, so get rekted lmao I never liked you.

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “The knights”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “The knights”

>“The knights were so wonderful! Oh I finally got a chance to be in Astrakhan when it happened! With the world in the state it’s in, it feels like this is the last truly happy place. People dress up in old knight attire and party through the streets to the governmental plaza to oust whoever owns the city at the time. And somehow, they always succeed! There’s a never ending stream of these guys, some hailing from as far as the Singapore, overcome with a unifying sentiment to ensure the city remains in the hands of the Kalmyk people. I don’t think anywhere else exists such exuberance for life.”

If you saw on the minimap, while it’s not on screen here, Gogurt took the other two cities in SEA north of the capital, and they have Nakhon Ratchasima here surrounded completely with multiple Battlesuits getting ready to run in from the sea. There’s even a settler on the tip of Myanmar ready to settle another city. This feels like the hammer finally dropping on Singapore, they could take on Wahgi but can they take on Gogurt? No, not at all.

Gogurt also makes gains in the Pacific where instead of going for Mount Hagen (though they do now have a GDR within two turns of the city) they have instead made a move on Natji, one of Palawa’s cities, just to flex. Palawa will probably take this city back given the forces they are collecting, though it should be noted they have no air or ranged support, they’d just be throwing melee units at it hoping it falls. (Unlike Ndongo’s melee unit focus, this here isn’t as good because Ndongo has air support, Palawa just has some submarines which are not very useful).

Sierra Leone uses the forces built up around Tamna to go take Hajar from Singapore rather than retake Azeba or something, and then instead of keeping the city he liberates the Qarmatians, who are here yet again for their 80th comeback. Elsewhere in the slide, Ndongo looks to resettle Ethiopia and the Mamluks have decided they might as well make a settler too and try to double their city count since it seems no one is bothering to kill them.

Also a random note: The notifications on the right just before indicated Saba being forced into wars, but they haven’t been alive this whole turn, but I guess maybe they had a little bit of time when Gogurt had moved but before Ndongo had moved to try to make peace and then be forced back to war?

Well, not everyone, as we can see Singapore retook Hajar, eliminating the Qarms once again, but also retake Ratchaburi and deciding Siam is in fact worthy of being liberated. The fact that they lost these cities in the first place is really worrying for Singapore, but hey it’s a bit hard for Gogurt to move more units down here quickly to do another push. Also Gogurt settled Unju at some point, Singapore captured that settler in Myanmar, and there’s still an empty spot over south of Pyeonglo if anyone wants to settle there. Feels like Singapore really hasn’t been big on the whole “resettle shit” movement besides Orchard in India.

Singapore also retakes Banz, no shot at Mount Hagen still given the lack of land melee units. They also failed to retake Laylatiya or any of the other Palawa cities sadly. Also I should note they retook Simuay at some point, so they once again have the Great Lighthouse, which will help them a lot given they seem to refuse land units.

Okay so it does seem they have some land units fighting in Australia, they just haven’t made any progress yet. And despite Palawa taking their turn there are still quite a few of those units around and they are almost all melee, expect both Nipaluna and Pataway to fall next turn.

But Palawa is staying busy, taking a city off each of Gogurt, Wahgi, and YK, taking Natji, Piwangka, and Vaitape (off screen to the east) respectively. It seems the strategy of throwing embarked melee units at cities does in fact work.

That’s what this is, a better look at those cities Palawa took. Wowie. Please lose already Palawa you don’t deserve shit yeah that’s right this slide is now for me to trash talk Palawa. Can’t even create a navy right type loser. Never knew how to fight type nerd. Pathetic civ that has only survived by being in the corner and being a toady. THEY DON’T DESERVE SUCCESS.

Ahem, anyways.

The Yellowknives have finally, finally, secured the Hudson Bay. They took Vidaredi and Pituffik, with units marching east towards that NH city and the remaining Faroese settlements in eastern Quebec. What a nice time to be a Yellowknife fan. I hope they can push the Faroes out of North America fully soon, and also NH, really they need to just lock down the continent like the Faroes are doing and not like NH.

Map jumpscare time!

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “The map”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “The map”

>“The map is busted again. I swear they always tell me ‘the update is coming soon’ but does it? Noooo. Sure all the cities are on there, but a lot of the land remains undesignated despite definitely falling under city jurisdictions. My own personal map I keep updated fills in all these holes but is much harder to read in general. Grumble grumble.”

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “Gwanggaeto”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “Gwanggaeto”

>“Gwanggaeto is seriously the most full of oneself you can get. 17 titles, can you believe it? 17! No one needs that many titles. I was watching a speech of his one day when he was introduced to the stand with all of them. It took a whole minute to get through them all. Also gotta wait for that update here too to fix that JFD title marshal general text. Blasted software.”

>definition search “JFD”

>DEFINITION SEARCH FAILED: NO ENTRY IN DATABASE CONTAINING “JFD” FOUND

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “Bol’im”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “Bol’im”

>“Bol’im is listed as having only four titles nowadays, they got stripped from him after the recent losses. He also still presents his state as a ‘Parliamentary Monarchy’ but just one step into Wahgi lands makes it pretty clear it’s not much more than a full dictatorship.”

>open travellers_log_44.txt -keyword “Tróndur”

>OPENING TO KEYWORD “Tróndur”

>“Tróndur is an interesting fellow, as the leader of the only, supposedly, communist state he still holds himself in the same manner as all the other leaders of the world who declare themselves to be autocrats or even outright fascists. It’s all just different colors painted over the same eternal iron-fisted rule.”

Okay so you see here, settling Tabriz there is really a feint to get Gogurt to split their forces that are attacking Elista allowing both cities to then survive, trust me, it’s actually a really good play and definitely won’t just lead to Gogurt taking both.

Gogurt really is realizing they need more melee units around, getting a lot of Bio-Titans and GDRs and even Mobile SAMs coming in, good for them. They also have a settler up in the north preparing to settle the irradiated tundra.

Fez and Ngazargamu both fall while Bornu is bombed into dust. Ndongo continues to bring forth a full wave of melee units, love them for that, but don’t count the Faroes out either, they too have three Battlesuits and a Bio-Titan on the front. Nothing around Mansoura though, that one will have to wait a while to fall, plenty of time for Ndongo to secure the rest of the east in their absence.

Saba is back, and eSwatini still hasn’t died, nor have the Mamluks up north out of frame. Can we get Mog back too? Kanem-Bornu as well? What if we just brought the whole cast of Africa back for one more special.

Qarnawu by the way was taken by a Mogadishu UU that I guess was still lying around somewhere that Singapore had taken via Privateer at some point? I think? I don’t know how else they would’ve gotten it, but they haven’t had Privateers for ages now.

Latvia falls to one city, there aren’t any melee units around it right now so it may somehow survive another turn, but it’s on the brink. The Selkups also drop down to three cities, Kazan pictured, one just offscreen to the north (you can see the borders), and the dreaded H̶͔̺͎̞̱̩̲̪̭͎͉̏̀͌͒̈́̎̽͝s̷̞̬̣̻͉͌̽̈́́͊̿ỉ̸̠̤̗̺̯̺̥̽̏̓̑̄̾̈͜͠a̴͙̽̓́̅̋́.

Elista fell predictably, I mean not at all predictably who could’ve seen that coming, and Tabriz was destroyed with it.

Valmiera, that’s it. The rest of the north here has either been taken or bombed out completely. That Bio-Titan in Jekabpils should be able to reach Valmiera in one turn assuming there is indeed a road/railroad just south of the city which it kinda looks like there might be but hard to tell. Kazan can also fall to the GDR or Bio-Titan next to it, they will both crumble soon enough.

UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA UNLIKE HSIA

Hsia continues to not fall. Gogurt can not win this game they do not know how to. I have lost all faith in them.

On the note of surrounding cities with ranged units, somehow both of the two remaining Palawa cities in South America remain alive, last time we saw them they were also surrounded by hovering units that can’t take cities. Both of them are utter losers. Ndongo is gonna win this. They’re the only ones who build lots of melee units.

Nothing has changed here besides unit movements.

>ACCESSING ACCOUNT OF [Agent 513] WITH ADMIN IDENTIFICATION CONFIRMED || FULL ACCESS GRANTED

>search turndata “Turn 829”

>ERROR LOG: MISSING TURN [Searching for “Turn 829” returned a NULL response] || IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUESTED

>edit travellers_log_44.txt add entry

>“Another missing turn, ugh, I wanted to check my field notes with something from last turn but I guess it didn’t get recorded. At least that probably means nothing really happened and I’ll be okay with what I wrote down myself from my own sources, but the proper data is always nice to sift through. Oh fuck wait I need to get out of here the Faroese authorities have been searching for me and I hear boots stomping up the building’s stairway. Don’t even have time to take my full system, ugh stupid me… Just gotta save to my usb and leave.”

>...

>run b_encryption

>RUNNING BABYLON ENCRYPTION ALL DANGEROUS INFORMATION ENCRYPTED

>run shutdown

>SHUTTING DOWN…

>...

…

…

>WELCOME [Agent 513] ENTER PASSCODE:

>...

With that we reach the final slide of this episode, Palawa taking a bunch of cities from Wahgi. I think they are down to 6 now? Maybe they have another one off to the north or east somewhere, but I don’t think so… I love seeing them die, it’s so nice. Palawa doesn’t really have the tech to beat the YK units in the area, so I think this place will eventually don the brown and yellow hues, one singular Advanced Destroyer city capture at a time.

Gogurt and the Faroes have shown themselves ascendent, the Yellowknives and New Holland are struggling to secure the last corners of their continents, and Ndongo, the Afsharids, and Singapore seek out the big leagues. It’s still quite anyone’s game, well, no, but like, anyone if you happen to be one of the like 6 civs who have a chance (aka the seven above minus the Afsharids sorry you don’t stand a chance here).

I hope you enjoyed all this, I have spent probably too much time writing this it’s at like nearly 15k words and far too much time spent on it. I wonder who this mysterious Agent 513 is, I hope you enjoyed their story :3 This has been Orangechrisy, you’re eternally irreverent catgirl, have a good rest of your day.