Civ Battle Royale April 28, 2026
Koizumi Yokumo
Eternal wars end in surprising and mysterious ways as eternal truths are similarly upended by the dawn of the Really, Really, No, Seriously, Really Big Boat
Good tidings to you, fellow cylinder enthusiasts. My name is Koizumi Yokumo, former Power Ranker, creator of two of our immortals from previous seasons, and all-around curious human being with a lot of opinions about Japan. I have a feeling that particular archipelago won’t be the attraction here, though.
Coiot: moop moop
Coiot: comic comic
Ah, the Ko-Fi slide. We, of course, live in a society, and specifically, one that requires passing around collections of zeroes and ones meant to represent shiny round thingies in order to do literally anything, up to and including meeting basic survival needs. Nonetheless, you have decided to use some of your weird almighty data packets to keep this show on the road and make my dear friend the gamerunner a bit happier. I am forever in your debt. Not literally.
At the same time, half the people here being officially registered as Pomo supporters just gets more confusing every time I look at it. Why was the default Pomo, given that the person who made the decision is (whisper it) not from California? Why are half of you still set to Pomo, despite being reminded of this state of events every week? Does everyone secretly love Pomo? Am I even sicker than I thought for looking at this every week and slowly becoming more of a Pomo detractor out of pure underdog worship? Maybe nobody knows. Maybe somebody knows. Maybe that somebody is Essie Parrish.
While not the biggest delta in this episode - that would be Potiguara’s drop of eight places - I’ve chosen to highlight New South Wales here, mainly because Archimedes wrote a writeup for them that’s longer than some things I’ve submitted for your actual university. Comfortably the most controversial civ amongst the top five, Macarthur’s drunken convicts have been turning many a Power Ranker head as of late, notching up several global number ones including largest army. The reason they’re not first is because, well, they’re Aussies, and CBR’s Aussies tend to comfortably sail into the top ten and then proceed to do precious little. However, many CBR watchers, including the writeup’s author and increasingly myself, are wondering whether the streak will finally be broken.
We open this episode with an update from Lennart Meri in his valiant crusade against the combined forces of rugby. Over the last few years, Lennart has suffered increasingly vivid hallucinations of unknown origin, images flashing before him of Estonian cities raising the colours after being visited by singing human chains. His advisers have found it impossible to explain to him that humans don’t like getting their feet wet, especially while being pelted with assorted bric-a-brac from a nearby enemy city’s walls. Thus, yet another line is taking shape from his southern border to Vassa.
In all seriousness, Estonia has managed to land some bowmen near OTL Stockholm, and the attack on Vassa is looking a little less pathetic than last episode. He’s also in with a shot at Rostock, albeit not the best one.
Rouran has an unusual approach to fighting, sort of the opposite of the usual AI thing of failing to bring more than one man to a winnable front, no matter whether that man is of the swords, horse, or pike variety. Only after the enemy city is completely swarmed with centipedes does ‘Lulu ‘Gulu go in for the kill.
While heavy on resources, this worked perfectly well in Iman. He seems to be having trouble getting into a comfortable enough position, though, to properly try the same thing in Nikolaevskoe. Could be a lack of non-mounted melee units - reminder, the Wriggling Rider replaces the Horseman.
The Tang governor of Nanzan has a strange reputation. While associates from her time in Zhengzhou paint a picture of an inoffensive, competent bureaucrat, she began acting oddly shortly after taking office in Nanzan. She tore up the city’s self-governing treaty to let her troops search the entire city for… something. Now her advisors were treated to a fevered rant over their supper of calf brains: she must, must get to Shuri, for… some reason.
Taizong had little choice but to bend to the local bureaucracy’s wishes and send the navy in.
Auguste Rodin, mid-ranking military strategist of the Kingdom of Turtle Island, was not a happy man. Every day saw news of more effort being spent capturing useless fishing colonies, or worse, good men losing their lives in the farcical campaign to push through the fabled River of Karens. Absent-mindedly whittling arrowheads in his designated map-staring hour, he finds the simple action clears his mind, and a plan forms in his mind.
Asking his closest comrades to cut down a sturdy tree and carry the logs to the middle of Conestoga’s town square, he begins to carefully cut the wood, working night after night until a scene began to take shape: a man in military gear, looking towards the royal palace, surrounded by horses - so, so many horses - and holding his head in his hands at the futility of Susquehannock military orthodoxy.
The statue became popular enough that Old Sheehays was forced to recognise its significance, relieving Rodin of his miserable duties and commissioning him to build a permanent, stone version in its place. To this day, visitors to Conestoga first ask to see the monument to their own leader’s incompetence: Rodin’s Thonker.
A shot of Greenland reveals the sort of thing that made Rodin wonder if he was the only one around with a brain: a Susquehannock colony named “Wysox”, in memory of the hapless guy setting sail from the warm eastern seaboard who didn’t understand why everyone around him urged him to pack some good, warm foot coverings.
We also see the Scottish colony of Ayr, a town seemingly entirely built inside one grounded trireme. Ayr’s sturdy surroundings have clearly invoked a certain jealousy amongst the Onondaga generalissimi in their completely invisible villages, though, and the entire rest of Greenland declares their intent to march on the boat.
At long last, the southern front of the Pomo war actually moves, and Bida’miwina, which a lot of us expected to fall many years ago, flips to the flag of the cyan and blue.
Wait, hang on, what do you mean, “wrong cyan and blue”? Yep, I was about twenty more slides in before I realised that this wasn’t Teotihuacan. It’s Cebu, single-handedly making the Filipino TSL cool again, and what’s more, the borders have been confirmed by an unusually well-timed peace deal. Seriously, is this still the Civ AI?
Once the Cebuanos have finished making karaoke versions of the Bole Maru sacred texts, they should be in a very good position to capitalise on the incompetence of their new neighbours.
Yunnan already has the word “south” in its name, but its entire empire lies south of Kunming. Would southern Yunnanese be Yun-nan-nan-ese? Figuring out the answer is apparently hurting enough people’s heads that they’d rather throw themselves against the walls of Dagon, despite that city also being south of Kunming.
The super-rough terrain and the spear-on-horse matchup makes me think this isn’t curtains for Pegu, but I’ve been wrong before and Yunnan at least has the raw power to prove me wrong this time as well.
The city of Liverpool is an odd place. Founded by John Macarthur in honour of the organ that lets humans drink glorious, glorious booze, it has become home to the quietest sunsets in New South Wales, as travellers gaze out to sea and decide to give their organs a break, just for that one night.
This phenomenon even had an impact on the very architecture of the city. New South Welsh towns often appear to have their city plans drawn out in drunken stupors, and that impression is often accurate, but the builders of Liverpool built district after district that became almost spookily orderly in their stone cold sobriety. The nickname of Stone Town came soon after.
The Estonians continue to stretch their amphibious singing lines towards Vaasa, now in the red, as they achieve a breakthrough in Rostock, which now seems pretty even.
One day, thinks Lennart, these crazy westerners will stop going on about “fly-halves” and “scrums” and adopt a real sport, like doing a full 360 on a modified playground swing (no, really, that’s what they do in Estonia, more power to them!). He can’t lose track now, though, as neither front is even close to secure. Some might even say he hasn’t yet converted his try.
Tish is in the black, and there’s even an empty tile next to it in Pakistan’s direction should Jinnah wish to take one step closer to the legendary Sumerian hot wife. Alas, with the nearest pikeman three tiles away behind hills blocked by his own bowmen, he does not appear to realise what’s going on. I guess some guys really can’t pick up on the subtle signals.
Meanwhile, OTL early 1900s Eastern European artist Kazimir Malevich is sent to the “Empty Quarter” of the Arabian Peninsula by his Seychellois patrons. Taking one look at the uniformly beige landscape, he decides he’s had more than enough of realism, thank you very much, and that it’s time to go abstract.
Pakistan immediately realises its mistake and moves a horseman into position to take Kish, giving us an excuse to stay in this part of the world and gaze upon the Pakistani core. It looks like a rather comfortable place to live - sprawling cities, rich religious culture, mountains, sea, fertile river valleys, and no war.
If they decide to change that, I could imagine Euthydemia changing hands if they played their cards just right. Any eastern front, though, just like OTL, would be a nasty meat-grinder between two statistically almost-top-tier civs.
Oh yeah, there’s a South America, I forgot.
Guaycuru and Potiguara are pretty evenly balanced, all things considered. The former has a larger military, while the latter has a tad more production and science. Honestly, though, I haven’t been paying attention to this front much, so don’t have much instinct for which way it’ll go.
The red tides of the Mediterranean shift ever so slightly and Castel Gandolfo is reoccupied by the Aures. There are still a few flips left in this judging by the navies and catapults, so final control will probably depend on peace deal timing. What’s new?
This slide, by the way, is a good reminder that Wallachia, while famously bankrupt and scientifically behind, isn’t actually the weakest civ around. Look at the Pope’s army and tell me it doesn’t seem weaker still. Maybe Vlad just doesn’t like cheese. Maybe it doesn’t pair well with blood or something.
![CBR In-Game Screenshot of For the Grace, For the Might of the [Deity Not Found]](https://cdn.civbattleroyale.tv/cbrx-season5-episode14-scene19.jpeg)
The Wassoulou gird their collective loins for the umpteenth time as Dihya’s black magic legions once again crash against the last few free blue cities. With no religion and seemingly no organised government, the Wassoulou people have long ago forgotten exactly why they’re fighting, or why they have to do it every day. They just do, because the Aures exist, and Aures are there to die. They just know that. That’s all the truth there is in Wassoulouland.
Umhaill Inc. slowly expands its asset portfolio into the Massive Boat sector as Robespierre looks on, perplexed. Ironically, though predictably, it is the latter that could actually do with carracks around now, both for their war with the Pope and for any chance they might have of a random detached flotilla sniping a city off of Wassoulou after some well-timed open border treaty with Portugal or another.
France, statistically, are stronger than any of their neighbours, bar Scotland, whom they only border through an exclave. Only Ra knows whether Robespierre will actually capitalise on that.
The craze for Massive Boats has not escaped the attention of Joao. Ever the trend-setter, he ordered his best naval minds to design a Massive Boat of his own, a uniquely Portuguese take on the craze. However, Portugal being Portugal, their idea of a unique Massive Boat is a unique Massive Boat with a cross lazily painted on.
The Nau is faster than a regular carrack, which is always useful, and shares its movement with embarked units on the same tile, which I’m not sure the AI is smart enough to know how to use. It can also gain gold and culture the first time it’s on a tile bordering another civ. I’m not sure if the AI can use the button.
White Eagle seems to be trying out the Rouran strategy of swarming the enemy territory with units before attacking. However, the second bit of the formula is proving elusive. I do hope the slowly encroaching yellow army can turn things around. Ponca are my favourite North American civ, because of course they are, I’m a Ryukyu fan and just generally cursed with these things.
Rapa Nui has declared perhaps the smartest war it could declare. Ma’in, while one above Rapa in the InfoAddict scores, is nonetheless the closest Rapa can get to a fair fight, given the one civ that’s below them is landlocked Pegu. Smart mo… oh, who am I kidding. Akamatsu Mitsusuke, I’m sorry, I know you didn’t assassinate the shogun as part of a gay love triangle for this.
King France-Albert René seeks to prove his piety to the enlightened Pakistanis by building a giant temple at the closest point in his empire to the holy city of Karachi. He justifies this to his advisors by claiming that their faith would help them when pacifying villages on the far outskirts of their settlements. Those advisors came out of the meeting wondering if their dear leader actually realised that there wasn’t any frontier land left.
Angkor has a wonder score of 2. Stone Town, with its bonuses to trade routes, manages a whole 5 out of 10. Somehow, the one civ that’s built a 10 out of 10 wonder so far has been Pegu.
Phoenicia attacks Ma’in. Hey, have you heard this other news about where bears defecate?
Clearly, Ngarranggarni is the one true religion and directly references sinister undersea submarines, because there is no other explanation as to why Bunuba has found itself in a position to redeem itself after doing such a pathetic job striking north. Caral have a more advanced navy, so I’m not gonna count on Jandamarra going further than Dodinga, but surely, surely he must have what it takes to recapture that one city.
The Ket engage in some soul-searching, trying to find more details of the path towards Samanistic enlightenment. The soul-searching can’t have been triggered by their raw power - they’re holding the cylinder-wide bronze medal in production, despite all the horse tranquilliser they’re on.
No, I can only presume they’re looking for answers to why their very real paths are getting blocked so often. Notice that not one, but two key roads for Ket are in Qara-Khitai territory, the borders of Illiq having expanded in just the wrong way despite the lack of citadels or relevant unique components. Rouran must be wriggling with laughter over to the east.
Essie Parrish, having signed a peace deal with Hawaii’s new Filipino overlords, is free to crash the full might of the Pomo’s theocratic orange order into Tlingit. Unfortunately for Essie, I don’t see this going the way she wants. While the current Tlingit army doesn’t look like it can halt the advance at any point before the first line of cities, the geography from there on in favours the defenders, and Tlingit’s frightening production score implies they can pump out more crossbowmen. They will likely become positively miffed bowmen at the sight of the rampaging Pomo.
Olgit, not content with prescribing a complicated worship routine for his citizens alternating between attending synagogues and gurdwaras, has added icon worship to the list, blessing sites where particularly notable ancestors once K-holed. It doesn’t seem like the worst reformation belief in game terms, but it’s hardly a game-changer, either.
The Cebuano governor of Shuri watches the Tang fleet through a telescope. Noticing their panicked behaviour and how quickly they appeared, he begins to realise what might be going through their minds, and thus, what might happen if they take Shuri. The panic concentrates his mind, and that of others in Shuri, and they methodically pick off the actual naval units around the city, leaving it with a real chance of staying blue. Just to hammer the point home, he calls for aid from Mandawili. In short order, Songzhou is besieged, although Cebu, like Tang, seems to have a shortage of boats in the area, especially of the all-important Massive variety.
The Estonians take Vaasa, and this time, it looks very safe in their hands. To cap things off, they move back into Rostock on the same turn. I am slightly worried about their lack of a carpet, though, especially given how long their border with Scythia is.
Oof. OOF. This cannot be a happy sight if you’re a Zazzau fan. A much-needed assault on Ethiopia that looked like a slam dunk at the start of the war has completely flipped on its head. Ethiopia has now taken an originally Zazzau city, and the territory north of Lake Chad seems pretty easy for Zara to march through if that takes his fancy. The Zazzau army was larger than Ethiopia’s at the start of this episode, but given how much effort it took for Amina to take even one Ethiopian city, I’m not counting on a glorious resurgence.
The people of Sydney are known for delusional screaming, especially near the end of the night after they’ve had a couple too many. In particular, it’s a common belief in the city that, more than the Bunuba and Lanfang empires to their north, the real threat to the city will come from the large, apparently uninhabited islands to the south-east. Macarthur, having been drinking with many a proponent of this theory, decides to build an armada of Massive Boats - but of course! - and have them patrol the Tasman Strait, and be very, very careful of anything that glows in the dark.
After the loss of Danggu, the second Bunuba settling party to brave the Polynesian waters decides to bury their city underneath a medium-sized island to avoid detection. They name the new city, fittingly enough, Biridu.
A third settler is being harried by a Massive Boat from Caral and presumably having a few choice thoughts about the timing of Jandamarra’s war declaration. The rest of Caral’s force in the area includes a settler ready to go and an inquisitor on a desert island, presumably checking for heretical coconuts.
Red alert, red alert, ochre yellow with red bits alert. Rouran seems to have run out of centipedes. I repeat, Rouran seems to have run out of centipedes. The last chunk of the carpet is on its way to the irritatingly sturdy Nikolaevskoe, and in a turnaround from what I said at the start, the carpet is woefully short on ranged units. Could Grukraine be about to turn this around?
Dodinga falls and Jandamarra wonders what to do next. He has also added the island of Timor to his empire. One can only assume it to be a good omen after a certain previous Royale, although this time, the Bunuba appear to be focusing their efforts on the lesser-known western half of the island, building a citadel to garrison their, um, navy?
I don’t know what’s going on, there isn’t a Bunuba UC that explains it, but given Jandamarra’s already had that stroke of luck with Dodinga, I wouldn’t rule out him being an (ironically) upside-down Jesus as well.
Two Herero archers position themselves on the outskirts of the Maravi city of Tete, occasionally firing arrows through the rugged terrain and shrugging as they once again miss. They turn to each other, making small talk, asking what brought them to the front. For fame, money, family, or the glory of the something, asks one.
“The… Something?”, asks the other.
“The Herero Somethingdom, you fool, our very nation”
“I thought it was a monarchy?”
“No, we just heard there were government reforms. I’m from Otjandjomboimwe, nobody bothers to tell us things because the road from the capital goes halfway across Africa and back.”
“Well, I’m not sure how I feel about fighting for a Something, if I’m honest.”
“Yeah, let’s give it a break. My arms are tired anyway.”
I can’t think of any other reason why Herero is listed as having “Some Government” in the spreadsheet or why the two ranged units outside Tete are defending. Maybe it’s a rough terrain thing, but that’s not an excuse not to at least move them.
I was wrong, Rouran’s carpet is alive and wriggling, just on the other side of the map, next to some (appropriately) vaguely Fergana Valley-shaped bordergore with Ket and Qara-Khitai. The three civs seem well-matched technologically, despite their differences on the production front. However, the terrain is wall-to-wall hills, and so I expect the horse-heavy carpets of all three to be a mistake.
We also see the Rouran Nönör, which despite its circular unit icon is a Great General replacement, one which can attack in its own right if near enough to another Nönör. It can also upgrade to a more powerful Khan if it captures an enemy general.
Europa Universalis 4’s alphabetically final country tag puts up a fight in the battle for Lake Chad, retaking Fatika and making the Ethiopians appear to be on the back foot once again. It’s still an active front and both sides have plenty of units in the area, although it is noteworthy that Adama has managed to recover to full health.
John D. Rockefeller was the United States’s first billionaire, making his fortune off of creating the infamous Standard Oil monopoly in the early 20th century Gilded Age.
He appears here in the territory of the Hyksos, a civ playing in two shades of bloody red, boasting a leader sharing a name with a largish asteroid that was once predicted to hit the Earth in 2029, and a capital that literally sounds like “Avarice”.
Sometimes the agendapost writes itself and it’s beautiful.
We have a spy! It’s not entirely clear who’s responsible, but it looks to be either New South Wales or Bunuba. Meanwhile, neither party in the anti-cheese coalition appears able to deliver the killing blow - while Castel Gandolfo has been in Aures hands for a few turns now, there’s still a few papal triremes in the area and neither side has the all-important Massive Boats.
Shi Lang, in our timeline an important figure in the Qing conquest of Taiwan, finds himself in the Karankawa navy. He might want to pull a Chiang Kai-shek and overrun Xaragua or something to get Karankawa away from the scary mainlanders. Not that the Ponca are that scary at this point in time.
I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be looking at here, so I’ll just spitball a bit about the civs on this slide.
Caral seems to be making good, almost too good use of its two-in-one workers and work boats, but there don’t seem to be enough coastal resources for it to make the best use of its UA. Maybe colonising Polynesia might be better for Caral than for Rapa.
Despite being the Amazonian civ, the Xavante are cutting down more trees than their neighbours. Dunno why, you’d think a jungle would be a great way of avoiding stupid noise complaints when you’re practicing metal.
Guaycuru seems to have fallen back a little against Potiguara. Xavante should strike soon and catch the warring civs off-guard via their well-placed citadel by Mision el Toba.
Here we see the statistically strongest South American civ, the Chono, looking appropriately powerful, and sporting some Massive Boats in the southwest. Like the Xavante, the Chono could make gains against Guaycuru if they struck soon. It’s South America, though, so forgive me for not expecting action soon from this season’s ‘nothing ever happens’ continent.
Espionage, noun, an arbitrary number of Eevee evolved during the day.
Peshgaldara Dot Dot Dot - I can only assume the Dot Dot Dot is a Babylonian licence to kill - steps out onto the cylinder for the first time, and is given the first in what will become a millennia-long sequence of cryptic instructions. The first instruction sends them to Karachi, so it may well have been “await orders at the largest city on the cylinder” or something of that ilk.
Vyatka are looking a whole lot healthier than one might expect from a civ that just got utterly bodied by Scythia. Sure, they’re a shadow of their former self, but they aren’t hopeless, and their war to the east is low-key and fairly well-matched. Does that mean they’re gonna win? Oh hell no, they’re surrounded by civs actually doing good. But at least it’s not embarrassing.
The intensely surveilled Nanzanese had had enough. Fed up with waiting for the supposedly impartial Tang bureaucracy to build a courthouse and integrate the city into the justice system, they build their own in an abandoned Ryukyuan guard tower, and drag various local government officials to it, kicking and screaming. The kangaroo court that followed began to reveal a frightening picture of life within the governor’s mansion: an increasingly mad, increasingly determined ruler seeking to find the answer to - something - in former Ryukyuan territory. This may have been new to the Tang, but to the Nanzanese, the answer was obvious. Their governor had been infected by whatever dark magic had reanimated the shambling Sho Shin, and was trying to bring back her master from beyond the grave.
The Tang, aware of the diplomatic damage such a resurrection would bring, moved swiftly, legitimising the “courthouse” in Nanzan and making peace with Cebu so the mad zombie governor would be forced to abandon her plans.
Rodin’s Thonker set off a craze for building projects around the Susquehannock empire. The most notable of these experiments was the Palisade Farm, pioneered near the provocatively-named city of Attaock.
The Palisade Farm is similar to a regular farm, but one single base food is replaced with production, and the tile gets fortlike bonuses. Could be pretty nifty.
The Bjarmians have lived up to their heritage, and gone berserk, setting themselves up for a two-front war. The news is greeted with hearty battle-cries from the port of Vinuskógr to the hamlet of Malangen. The news is helped along by the efforts of Mary Katherine Goddard, in our timeline a printer from Baltimore, Maryland, and friend of the American Revolution.
On the eastern flank of the Bjarmian empire, the voices calling for a good old-fashioned harrying of the neighbours, while just as loud as in the west, are met with nothing but open air, as the attackers have failed to put almost any units here to capitalise on their war declaration. Even the citadel northwest of Polyany is completely undefended. If the Vyatkans redeployed their army, they could easily take back their lost city.
Both Bjarmia and Vyatka need to vanquish the other one in order to have a shot at wider relevance. Unfortunately for both of them, this is a fairly narrow front. Godspeed.
The Hansa are making a serious play for Rostock once again. It’s Grukraine’s turn, which means that the League will move before Estonia does, implying the red-health catapult will be able to fire, and thus the two pikemen on the front line will probably capture the city even across a river. Estonia, for their part, has their own cat and two swordsmen ready to flip it back.
The real story here is the Union’s new fleet of sufficiently Massive Boats, floating ominously off Rostock harbour as their captains debate whether they could make their own city, bigger than the burnt-out shell Rostock has become, by grounding their ships on the Curonian coast, in the manner of the Ayr-esque non-floating floating boat city of Rauma. The fleet could just as easily make a play for Vassa, but there are a lot of Estonian cities and units between them, and I’m not convinced AI Margarethe is on strong enough ADHD medication to sail all the way up the Gulf of Bothnia without losing focus.
In organic chemistry, the prefix eth- denotes molecules or molecular groups containing two carbon atoms. Ethiopia is beginning to look like it might actually hold Fatika while regaining Adama. Surely the amount of burnt-out carbon Zara would find himself ruling over were this to hold, would warrant a name change to Propiopia, Butiopia, or if he manages to snag the undefended Kusheriki as well, even Pentiopia?
It might be happening. It might just be happening. Then again, given how the AI seems to dislike taking cities with mounted units, it might not be. I will use the rest of this description to say that I don’t know why there aren’t more centipedes in heraldry. Centipedes are low-key badass.
Luba has discovered a new way of cramming cities into the Line, or at least, close enough to the Line to not be heresy. The new settle of Musumba is notable for being only three tiles away from its purple neighbours, meaning the rules for settling have officially changed and that we’re probably going to see a rush of in-settling soon enough. I think that’s a potential spot north of Katende which a band of delineated heretics is making its way towards as I write.
Caral looks to be making a serious play to defend its overseas holding of Papua New Guiana, sending Massive Boats, alongside the similarly impressive Medium-Sized Boats That Don’t Need To Ram Straight Into Cities To Attack, in large numbers to defend against Bunuba. They’re making easy work of the opposition, a single swordsman flinging himself against the walls of everyone’s favourite Cockney tuber.
THE MASSIVER BOAT HAS LANDED. I REPEAT, THE MASSIVER BOAT HAS LANDED. The Hansa one-up the competition with their Cog UU, an early Caravel replacement that just has to wait a bit to cross oceans. Luckily for the Hansa, though, they’re playing in the Baltic, so this is a pretty perfect UU for their situation. The question, as ever, is if they’ll actually try and use it against anyone, especially as Kalmar might be about to steal their thunder with regards to Estonia.
It’s wet Braveheart time as Scotland, having been attacked by half of North America, finds itself on the offensive, surrounding Shis’g’i with a few spare triremes from the Shetland war. The city has three naval tiles adjacent to it, compared to the well-fortified Ayr’s one, so it’s not out of the question that Scotland could take the city, but the Tlingit galleass might prove a major headache for the invaders.
The Herero Horse Horde - or should that be the Drakens-zerg-rush? - finally do a thing, as Tete, a city which Morenga already half-controlled anyway thanks to a coastal citadel, falls from red to black to glorious pink. Up next is Sena, once again surrounded by rough terrain and an entirely horse-based invasion force. Sigh.
Guaycuru make a breakthrough around Catu, reducing the city to half health and lining up a pikeman to take it. It’s Guaycuru’s turn before Potiguara’s, so I see it flipping very soon, although I also see it flipping right back in short order. Come onnnn, Xavante, strike while the iron is hot. Or at least, once it heats up after a few turns of meatgrinding from the neighbours.
Self-help publishing pioneer Leon Shimkin emerges in the Xavante Principality. The metalhead bureaucrats, seeing his bestsellers all boil down to lessons on how to be a goddamn poser, immediately give him a job of questionable importance in a post in the most miserable place in the Principality, a river valley of burnt-out ash along the Caral border.
Vyatka signs a peace treaty with Scythia, ending perhaps the single most humiliating war on the cylinder so far. No cities change hands on either side, so Vyatka is finally free to rebuild in its northern remnant. It can hardly be a good sign, though, that they’re apparently so scared of frozen berserkers that they’re refusing to advance their army towards the lightly defended Bjarmian cities they border.
Sheiyksh builds a holy site in the holiest place he knows, the heart of the Arctic Line. He feels oddly worried about it catching fire one day, so just to be on the safe side, builds the whole thing out of ice. Tlingit citizens the empire over feel just that little bit more relieved at the thought that they are being watched over from the north by Our Lady of the Igloo.
Oh lord. Oh lord. This can’t be good. While half the Ponca carpet is busy failing to make headway against Karankawa, the stronger Anishinaabe decide to strike with their pike-enabled carpet. While I’m not sure that it’s a big enough army to take Nanza, the three cities on the front line could make it big enough very quickly if they played their cards right.
So, I’ve just come out of this class on anarchist sociology, and there was a passing reference to evidence that humans are often violent not because of some innate quest for power, but just for the hell of it. If that is indeed the case, Civ 5 is an uncannily good simulator, for the Bjarmians, faced with opportunities to fling themselves at useful city captures in multiple directions, have instead decided to rush a city which has a grand total of two land tiles in its working range, both of which are snow.
Still week one of the class, and I may have misinterpreted it, true. But it’ll take a lot for me to decide I’ve misinterpreted the Bjarmians here.
Somewhere near the Uluru salt field, two men at work meet each other’s gaze. One, white, New South Welsh, surveying salt production in the frontier land opened up by the latest citadel gambit. The other, black, Bunuba, moving the Great Wall of Kimberley, stone by stone, slightly back to the northwest for the second time in only a few years. They shrug. Neither of them wanted to be baking in the outback, securing salt for an empire that can’t even fight for pepper to go with it. Neither of them were sure about this border. The Bunuba saw, on the New South Welsh frontier, cities, mines, and endless scrubby desert farms; the New South Welsh saw, in the Bunuba heartland, quite the same vista. The people worked the same, often spoke the same, and certainly prayed the same; while the Uluru citadels were first greeted with great alarm on the streets of Junjuwa, it wasn’t long before reports started coming in that the New South Welsh were treating it with just the same reverence as the Bunuba once did.
What difference did different skin and different flags make, anyway?
Then a rusty old bugle sounded from one of the mining camps, and they knew their dream would be but a dream. Neither man could bring himself to hurt the other, even as they drew their workmanlike dirks out of duty. They settled into play-fighting, but their bosses would come eventually, and tell them to fight to kill.
Sigh.
Somehow, the Guaycuru, in one turn, have managed to vanquish the Catu defence, instead of what I’d assumed they would do, namely, take the city and watch helplessly as it flipped right back. Jacu is next, although with almost half as much defence again as Catu had, it could be a tougher nut to crack.
American railway tycoon Edward Harriman appears in Lisbon, as its folk are flocking east in huge numbers to learn the new trade of nau-smithing in Braga. He can often be found wandering around the pig-farming areas just outside the city, talking to anyone who will listen about how a functioning transit system is the absolutely necessary bedrock for a modern functioning economy. Nobody has yet been able to explain to him that it’s 1240 AD and his talents would better be spent inventing a horse that defecates slightly less often.
Agent Peshgaldara Dot Dot Dot, formally Agent Peshgaldaramesh, arrives in the sprawling megalopolis of Karachi, to find a grand palace being constructed on the orders of Jinnah. The Babylonians murmur in their earpiece that constructing the Alhambra as a Muslim nation with one border too many doesn’t tend to go well. Wonder if Jinnah will figure it out for himself. Note one of those in-settles I was talking about earlier, in the form of Hyderabad.
Agent Peshgaldara Dot Dot Dot is rewarded for their time in Karachi with another epic journey, this time to Sulomay in the Ket lands. The Discord logs implied that the one after Karachi would be “the smallest city in the game”, but a 15-pop city certainly isn’t that, so maybe I’m looking at the wrong logs.
We’ve already talked about the Alhambra, so I won’t repeat myself. Jinxed, I tell ya. I’m more interested in Karachi having got so big. 39,963,000 souls at the last count, just under this timeline’s UN population estimate for greater Jakarta, which they consider the world’s largest city. Jinnah has seemingly dealt with the sheer scale of Karachi by inventing the orbital motorway while still in the thirteenth century, although the lack of a bridge over the Indus River has gotta sting for the people stuck in horse traffic on each side.
The Massive Boat craze has spread to the Seychelles, and the local trireme industry is panicking. One fellow had the bright idea to prove to the world that his triremes could go where no massive boat could, and sailed off into the ocean just west of Grand’Anse Praslin. It would have been more impressive had the shore of his home island not been easily visible from his watery vantage point.
Both the Herero and Seychellois campaigns against Maravi are going so well that I found the above phenomenon - I believe it’s to do with René owning that ocean tile outright - to be more interesting than anything else on this slide, save perhaps for the latest boat town, Quelimane, and the Maravi road network ignoring it in favour of going right through enemy territory.
We pan north to catch a glimpse of some zerg rushin’ Russians. Koloperem is suddenly surrounded by Vyatkan units and may very well fall. The Bjarmians have belatedly got their act together and made a defensive line around Glasisvellir, but there are still enough Vyatkan troops in the area that I worry it’ll fall apart before the reinforcements arrive. Belomorje, too, looks to be particularly tough to defend.
As predicted, Pegu is, at best, lightly bothered by Yunnan. There is a certain irony to a civ based on Burma’s lowland Mon minority resorting to tactics more associated with the northern and eastern hills of the country. There is also a certain irony in Bangladesh being the civ to take their capital. If you know, you know.
Speaking of Bangladesh, they’ve silently crept up to eighteenth in the power rankings despite not having done much of late. Their core looks very solid, but I’m not sure I rate their chances of expansion when all the civs weaker than them are on the other side of hills and mountains from them.
Patka looks safely dark blue and Adama is flying Zara’s flag alongside it for now. As Zazzau reinforcements have materialised around Kusheriki, Ethiopia decides that Pentiopia has been achieved and decides to make peace. It took almost forty-eight hours before someone realised they sent the peace treaty to the wrong incompetent green civ.
The New South Welsh settler looks around the island of Te Waipounamu, not believing she’d actually made it and set foot on the source of so many Sydney ghost stories. Disorientated, not least from the thirteen pints she drank on the ship for Inverness courage, she takes a second to realise the rest of her landing party is staring at her and her flag, waiting for the colony to be officially named.
She looks south, at the slender island soon to be her friends’ home, shrugs, and describes it: “long”. Then north, at the narrow channel between the two islands, so close to a bridge but so far, and murmurs “ford”. Before she could stop them, the rest of the settling party is celebrating the founding of Longford, New South Wales’s furthest-flung village.
Hideyoshi gets into the settling game with a vengeance after the traditional Japanese late start, settling Kauai and the perhaps ironically named Ni’ihau. The outposts could probably be taken by Cebu if the war started next turn, but once Hideyoshi gets Astronomy, the fight might well even out, so Cebu had better get a move on and not rest on its laurels after securing Baja California.
Bjarmia takes Porvoo, losing a moderate percentage of the troops it sent to attack it. Or rather, the troops that blindly decided to attack it. I still can’t believe this was a deliberate tactic, especially when a larger snow city is under huge threat from Vyatka of all people.
France declares war on Circassia, following the Seychelles two slides ago. Of course, neither are even close to relevant, but we might just be seeing a coalition a-brewin’. Meanwhile, Revolutionary forces have finally broken through the Alps and are threatening Benevento and Avignon. OK, I may be exaggerating. Lightly bothering Benevento and Avignon. But it’s more than Robespierre has managed so far. Baby steps. Baby steps, until one day, it’s off with their heads.
The founder of the first colony on New Zealand is soon dispatched once again to help with the third. Not having overcome her fear of the mysterious invisible natives, this time it takes eleven pints before she can step ashore. Standing on an unfamiliar beach, she picks up a shell, turns around to the sea, and exclaims how good the spot looks for a harbour. Another name is born.
Yelu Dashi, King of Qara-Khitai and honours graduate of the Jacob Morenga School of Military Strategy, parades his endless carpet of horses around the steppe. The only tiles without a horse here seem to be the city tiles, which, as with increasingly many of these civs, seemingly have nothing on them at all. Do people just pop into existence the moment they set foot outside these metropoli? Unless they actually have a parallel dimension in there, one thing’s for sure, though: these horses won’t reach Circassia.
Having assembled the latest report from the Avignon front, the Papal advisers try to bring it to their leader, only to hear uproarious laughter from the reception room. Pushing the doors open, they see Julius, in his finest robes, doubled down with laughter in front of an ornate document, finished with His Holiness’s signature.
“We need to discuss Avig-”
“AVIGNON? Of course you do, it’s gone!”
“Gone? No, Your Hol-”
“What about my hole? Oh, never mind. It’s gone, though! To the magic lady!”
The advisers snatch up the document from the ground, finding out, to their horror, that the Pope had surrendered Avignon to the Aures, perhaps to spite the French.
It got worse, though - Baalbek, the one true Papal success story of the last few centuries, had also been surrendered to the forces of voodoo.
“But oh, you should have seen the peace offering!” The advisors are snapped out of their stupor by the Pope’s booming laugh.
“Oh?”
“Lettuce! Lettuce, and a spool of yarn!”
“What’s so great about…”
“Should have gone with cheese, though. That’s what I would have done. Cheese! Cheese for everyone!”
There are enough people on Wikipedia named John Moore that I can’t say with any certainty which one this is, even knowing his job title. His home city of Utkholok is technically blockaded, but it only goes to show how weird the blockade mechanics can be, given the complete lack of Japanese units in the city’s territory. The Itelmen rose further up the PRs than any other civ last episode, apparently thanks to inheriting Tlingit’s religious bonuses, and they’ve decided to put the rankers’ confidence in them to the test by attacking Japan. Hiroshima is an obvious target, but I’m more interested in whether anything happens further south, in either direction.
The Scots struggle to keep their assault on Shis’g’i going as the Onondaga correctly identify that taking Ayr will need units other than naval ones. If they can only damage the city by such a tiny amount per turn, though, things might not look so bad for Scotland. Then again, if Scotland decides its priority is to attack the missionary approaching from the interior, things might not look so bad for Onondaga.
The Shrimp-Eaters peace out with both of their enemies, leaving Catu in hostile hands while leaving nothing for the Xavante. The war could have gone worse, Jacu could have fallen, but the Potiguara look open to attack from various stronger naval civs around them. They are somewhat lucky, though, that the African coast directly opposite them is not controlled by a competent civ like Aures.
Xavante decide on desperate measures to rein in the Valley of Dishonest Publishers, and gives the entire Wedeze region away to Caral. Now it’s their problem, and Xavante can send a full contingent of metal bands to their now-shorter western reaches. The trouble with this strategy is that they are now reduced to three cities, meaning they could be at risk from an attack by even the Potiguara given bad enough timing.
The leaders of Bunuba and New South Wales are disturbed by the newfound comradeship amongst their border workers, and opt not to militarise them, instead sending out mounted troops from the heartlands. Rows of horses and knights joust for victory across the burning plains. As ever, New South Wales appears to be combining a threatening naval presence with shoddy decisions on land.
I’m pretty sure we’ve seen this slide before. The average Wassoulou citizen most likely agrees. There are more than enough Aures troops to do some serious damage here, but I’m far from convinced that they actually will.
Queen Amina throws her hands up at the news of yet another Ethiopian counter-flip. “Just take me anywhere, anywhere where people understand strategy! Anywhere but here!”
She soon finds understanding strategy isn’t the same as actually doing it, as she lands in the home of the doctrine of Repeatedly Mildly Badgering Pegu.
Charles Martel, Charlemagne’s great-grandad, lands in Tang, and is set to work in the bureaucracy like anyone else. If he’s really good, he thinks, he might get a post in the Diplomatic Corps. War? What is it good for? Exorcising zombies, mostly. It’s on page 94 of the international relations textbook.
Now this is interesting. The only anti-Xavanti war that isn’t automatically a loss for them. I can imagine the lack of an element of surprise being the biggest issue here, as the rough terrain leading to Catu is harder to fight through quickly than the open terrain south of it is. I doubt the Guaycuru will be able to strike north, though.
I expected the Union to take Rostock, I just didn’t expect it to take six turns since the last time we saw this area. This makes it increasingly awkward for the Hansa to join the war, especially given their precious few coastal tiles to put cogs on and threaten Kalmar dominance. Still, can’t be too hasty to draw conclusions - the Massive Boat boom does not always seem to translate into a boom in actually using the things. Hell, look at Rostock. All those galleasses and the city got captured with a trireme.
Caral doesn’t seem like the most friendly place to live at the moment. First they get Xavante posers encroaching on their borders, and now they have to deal with Edir Macedo, OTL Brazilian megachurch owner, becoming the public face of their religion. Macedo appears to be trying to set up a pirate radio station on an atoll, which incidentally, in this part of Peru, is probably made of guano. The lack of electricity, let alone telecoms, in the late medieval era makes Macedo seem ever more prophetic but ever less understandable as he screams his heart out from the squishy ground.
Fresh from the success of Our Lady of the Igloo, Sheiyksh builds another colossal holy site, the Great Mosque of Alascus, closer to home. Like the last few wonders, this one doesn’t even manage a 5 on the relevance front. It does, however, mean that Tlingit will likely soon be a Caliphate. Perhaps the etymological connection between the words “Caliph” and “California” will bode well for Tlingit’s continued southern expeditions.
Psst! The Ket only look like they’ve tranquillised their horses (and their men)! They’re actually planning something. Here, have a shot of the Tlingit instead so we don’t seem too suspicious!
Pesh Dotty receives their next assignment, the first to not be somewhere either baking hot or freezing cold. We’ll see soon enough how they get on with China.
Anishinaabe reforms their religion. The one thing we know already is that the reformation belief does not enshrine attacking Ponca as a holy act. The Anishinaabe army seems to think it can win just by walking over White Eagle’s territory. If that wasn’t the capital they might have been right, too.
Eugene of Savoy was a noted general in the armies of the Habsburgs in the sixteen- and seventeen-hundreds in our timeline. There is a feeling of so near, so far, about this one. He’s in his native Alps, but the wrong bit of them, and he’s once again fighting French Bourbons, just very much not in the way the Habsburgs intended. Anyway, he’s now in charge of the attack on the Pope, which is going about as badly as it was a few slides ago.
I didn’t realise the French carpet extended all the way through the no-man’s-land around Baden-Wurttemberg. If they played their cards right they might get a shot at Bucharest before long.
Despite the garrisoned galleass, Mary finds herself playing the pipes and crying out loud. Her triremes are set to relieve Ayr after a short rest. It will have to be a short rest in the RPG sense of an hour or so, though, because Susquehannock, while having failed to use their army to actually do anything in Ayr, still have it floating around looking menacing.
The Kipchak UU is positively good against cities, so whatever’s making all these civs spam mounted units has led to the best conclusion possible for the orange peril. However, it’s not that easy to see whom they could attack, given their recent stalemate with Ket. Reclaiming Sarai? Not impossible, at least.
We see the Methodists’ reformation belief. I imagine a society of the faithful as them all shouting at Ayr’s residents that they’re going to hell, even as the city studiously resists their every attack. Any Methodists, or proponents of whatever religion this came from more accurately, please correct me.
Michilimackinac actually sounds like a rather brilliant place to put a Japanese castle. They can use water to their advantage pretty well, and of course, like castles elsewhere, people love building them at this sort of natural chokepoint. Either way, the bonus for fighting in friendly territory gives this wonder a full 8 out of 10, so watch this space.
The city in Tohoku seems to not have been damaged by Japan yet, while Hiroshima looks in real danger. It’s safe to say that this war currently has the Itelmen as the favourites. Elsewhere, Grukraine founds the city of Blagoveshchenskoye, a bit vulnerable to the Itelmen but perhaps not to anyone else.
The Luba, after seeing Musemba and their renegade settlements, decide to create a second, vertical line. Unfortunately for Maravi, this line passes through their territory, and that can’t just not be dealt with. Let’s see if the Luba are any better at it than the Herero.
The hero of Longford is getting tired of being trotted out to every colony Macarthur founds. She looks out to land, then down at herself, unable to stop drifting. “Single!” Then out at the hefty Massive Ship that brought her here. “Ton! Singleton!” She does the same thing with Maitland, involving her mate, and some land.
The New South Wales navy looks to rip Bunuba a new one via the white-hot heat of boat technology.
OK, I did not see this one coming. Rouran successfully capture an ex-Itelmen city off of arctic Grukraine while still, somehow, failing to take Nikolaevskoe. Please tell me there’s a reason. Any reason will do.
Pakistan makes peace with Sumeria. Despite its huge population, it clearly lacks peace strategists, maybe because all the good ones have gone to work for the Tang. Uruk is a mighty prize, but I’m not sure this is a true game-changer for either Pakistan or Sumeria.
Once again, the Aures invaders of Wassoulou slightly change composition, advance that little bit further, and refuse to attack. The Wassoulou themselves, for what it’s worth, do not seem to wish to occupy themselves with such a trifling thing as them getting invaded. Maybe the high-speed rail there is just really good.
Maravi sues for peace with Herero, who despite having almost brought Jina down to the black, accepts and is forced to annex only Tete. Cleans up the bordergore, yes. Cleans up Herero fans’ worries, no.
We end this episode with that Bjarmian city falling to Vytatka while reinforcements around Glassvellir have mostly vanished. The one thing in Bjarmia’s favour is that this is an amphibious landing, a hard technique to pull off.
That’s it for me this week, I hope you enjoyed your time on the sub this week, and thank you everyone for making this weird little corner of the internet feel like home. I’ve been Koizumi Yokumo, and until next time, ja ne!
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