Hello civ fans- like many of you, I've been a constant fan of the battle royales. However, I also feel that, with the same map all the time, coverage can sometimes feel a little dry. And the good thing is, with Season 4 surely on the horizon, this gives us a chance to review and try some new things.

From least to most controversial, my hot takes:

-Episodes should cover more turns and be more action-packed. Every episode should at least cover some wars (that's a given) but also capital snipes, massive invasions of territory, etc. There should never be a dull slide. I do love that we are able to describe a kind of expanded universe in some slides- but the secret of great writing is to only show the tip of the iceberg, not the base. We could absolutely have our narrators give details that suggest an evocative BR world, while also having episodes more geared towards the action, which is what we're really here to see.

-For the next CBRX, the civs need to be more memorable. I'm thinking back to the glory days of the CBR Mk.II. In that, the civs in North America included: America, Canada, Mexico, the Inuit, the Blackfoot, and the Buccaneers. All flavourful, colourful civs, and it was immensely fun to watch them, because it evoked ideas of pirates duelling with eskimos, etc. But compare that to Season 2, which I just finished watching. The most memorable North American civ was... probably the Chinook? And who even were the Tongva? It was a good matchup, but it lost something in that I didn't know anything about any of those cultures. Whereas you can't say the words "Canada-Inuit war" without picturing hockey sticks and snowballs. Therefore, Season 4 should have a mix of civs which everybody knows, in other words: a) unmodded civs, b) Colonialist Legacies civs, and civs from past BR games, and c) civs which are distinctive in the real world- ones like New Zealand, Norway, Bulgaria, Italy, etc. Including more memorable civs has another advantage: it means that we see fighting over cities whose names we know- we care more when London, Chicago, Cairo or Madrid are under threat, compared with places we've never heard of.

-The map should change, and so should the placement of civs on it. This is necessary because, now that we've had a few battle royales, a few things are foregone conclusions. We know that Siberia becomes a powerhouse, in which 2 or 3 civs hold 200 cities between them, all with impossible-to-remember names. We know English and Japanese civs never do well. And we know whoever holds Australia becomes a world power. So to shake things up, I suggest two alterations:

-First, the Central Asia and Siberia regions should be covered in mountains, completely unsettle-able. This simply makes the game more interesting. It means civs in Europe and in South and East Asia can compete. It also dampers any runaway superpowers in the early game, like we have seen with the Punjab, Yakutia, etc. Now, I'm not saying we should have zero civs there- but, we should only have a couple, and they should only have as much space as the European civs.

-Second, we could only include civs from the Northern Hemisphere, and leave the Southern Hemisphere to be colonized. Yes, this would be a wild break from tradition- but it would also create a game we haven't seen before, and unpredictability is what we need. To ensure that whichever civ holds Australia or South America did not immediately gain a game-winning advantage, we could even fill the interiors of these continents with mountains too. Another idea would be to only include Old World civs, and leave both Americas to be colonized; however I'm less of a fan of this, because Drew Durnil already did that in his AI-only Youtube series. I would also absolutely be a fan of leaving out other continents- Eurasia, for instance- but Australia and SA are the obvious choices to leave out for a first game.

I hope these suggestions are seen as the constructive criticism that they are. I'm a big fan of the BR games and have been since Mk. II, the amount of work the community puts in is incredible and I really hope that the Blue Cassette can give us another banger.