Published in Sweden - Political debates and analysis - 13 Sep 2026 02:41 - 0
The biggest empire isn't necessarily the richest one.
Two weeks after the shuffle, the map has already changed dramatically.
Ukraine holds 101 regions.
Serbia holds 82.
Italy and Sweden hold 45 each.
Together, the two largest flags already control almost 31% of the entire 594-region world.
But after looking at what those countries actually collected, we found that region count tells only half the story.
Because Ukraine may have won the land race.
But it didn't win the resource race.
·
◆ WHO WON THE LAND RACE? ◆
Let's start with the obvious measurement.
1. Ukraine — 101
2. Serbia — 82
3. Italy — 45
3. Sweden — 45
5. China — 30
5. Iran — 30
7. Saudi Arabia — 23
8. India — 19
8. Peru — 19
10. Argentina — 15
Ukraine's lead is enormous.
It currently holds 88 regions outside its original territory, spread across 25 original countries.
Serbia follows with 74 foreign regions, Sweden with 37 and Italy with 32.
If we're measuring expansion, Ukraine won.
Now let's count something else.
·
◆ 101 REGIONS DOESN'T MEAN 20 RESOURCES ◆
There are 20 different resource types divided between Food, Weapon, Navy and House production.
Multiple copies can make a country's position safer, but they don't add new types to the collection.
And suddenly the ranking looks very different:
Serbia — 20/20
Sweden — 20/20
Iran — 16/20
Ukraine — 16/20
Argentina — 12/20
Italy — 12/20
Canada — 10/20
Peru — 10/20
Saudi Arabia — 10/20
China — 9/20
India — 9/20
Indonesia — 9/20
Turkey — 9/20
United Kingdom — 9/20
There are already several stories hiding in that ranking.
The first is at the very top.
·
◆ TWO COUNTRIES COMPLETED THE COLLECTION ◆
Serbia and Sweden are the only countries currently holding all 20 resource types.
And both currently have enough connected copies and airbases to reach:
Food — 100%
Weapon — 100%
Navy — 100%
House — 100%
But even these two collections look very different.
Serbia holds 82 regions, including 60 resource regions.
Sweden achieved the same 20/20 collection with only 45 regions, 43 of which contain resources.
So Sweden's collection is considerably more compact.
Serbia, meanwhile, has accumulated far more duplicate resources.
That raised another question:
How easy is it to actually knock those 100% bonuses down?
·
◆ 20/20 IS ONE THING. KEEPING IT WORKING IS ANOTHER ◆
We tested individual non-capital region losses to see what actually happens to the production network.
The result is useful because it separates impressive-looking territorial losses from losses that actually affect production.
Serbia has 81 testable non-capital regions.
Only 12 can individually lower at least one of Serbia's current production bonuses.
That means 69 of 81 can each be lost individually without lowering a single industry from its current bonus.
And some of those economically harmless losses can look anything but harmless on the map.
One Serbian loss can disconnect 46 surviving regions, including 27 resource regions, while Serbia still remains at:
Food — 100%
Weapon — 100%
Navy — 100%
House — 100%
Duplicates and airbases simply keep alternative supplies working.
Sweden's territory produces much smaller single-region cascades.
Its worst tested cut disconnects only four resource regions, compared with Serbia's maximum of 29.
Yet the same rule applies to both:
The number of resource regions disconnected is NOT the number of bonuses lost.
What matters is whether another connected copy survives.
So reaching 20/20 is only the visible part of the achievement.
The redundancy underneath it matters too.
·
◆ ALL EIGHT VERY RARES ENDED UP IN TWO HANDS ◆
Every experienced player already knows the four very rare resources and that only two regions of each exist.
The interesting part after the shuffle is where those eight regions ended up.
Fruits — Serbia 1 / Sweden 1
Rubber — Serbia 1 / Sweden 1
Uranium — Serbia 1 / Sweden 1
Granite — Serbia 1 / Sweden 1
Four for Serbia.
Four for Sweden.
Everyone else: zero.
Even more interestingly, these aren't currently hanging helplessly at the end of vulnerable corridors.
Seven of the eight have their own active airbase, while Sweden's remaining Granite stays connected through every other tested non-capital single-region loss.
So for now, cutting a road isn't enough to remove connected access to any of the eight.
The resource region itself has to change hands.
·
◆ IRAN QUIETLY MATCHED UKRAINE ◆
Then we reach perhaps the most overlooked result.
Ukraine:
101 regions
84 resource regions
16/20 resource types
Iran:
30 regions
28 resource regions
16/20 resource types
Same resource coverage.
Less than one third of the territory.
Ukraine obviously possesses vastly more duplicate resources, which has value of its own.
But if we're measuring how much of the resource catalogue each country managed to collect, Iran has been remarkably efficient.
And Ukraine's enormous empire comes with another curiosity.
Its 101 regions are currently spread across 17 separate territorial components.
Its largest connected territorial component contains only 31 regions.
That doesn't mean the other 70 regions are disconnected from production.
Without a verified current Ukrainian capital, we can't calculate that properly.
But we can see the shape of the empire.
Ukraine won the land race by a huge margin.
It didn't build one continuous 101-region block.
It built an archipelago.
·
◆ SMALL DOESN'T MEAN POOR ◆
Then there is Argentina.
It doesn't appear particularly impressive in the land ranking:
15 regions.
Look at the resources instead:
12/20.
Italy also has 12/20.
But Italy holds 45 regions and 26 resource regions to get there.
Argentina has 15 regions — and every single one contains a resource.
That's an exceptionally efficient little collection.
And Argentina isn't alone.
Canada — 13 regions, 10/20
Peru — 19 regions, 10/20
Saudi Arabia — 23 regions, 10/20
Canada is particularly tidy structurally: all 13 regions form one component with no single-region territorial chokepoint.
Argentina has the same property.
So does Romania with its 11-region network.
Their weakness is different: many of their resources exist in only one copy, making direct loss more important than cutting some distant corridor.
Expansion helps.
Useful expansion helps more.
·
◆ MORE THAN HALF THE MAP NOW FLIES A FOREIGN FLAG ◆
Now we can pull the camera back.
The world contains 594 regions.
313 are currently held by a flag other than their original owner.
That's 52.7% of the entire map.
More than half.
And this isn't simply a few giant empires distorting the number.
44 different flags currently hold territory.
Meanwhile, 32 original countries have none of their home regions left under their own flag.
Germany — 0 of 13
Russia — 0 of 12
South Korea — 0 of 9
Japan — 0 of 8
Mexico — 0 of 8
Australia — 0 of 7
Portugal — 0 of 7
And the map isn't settling down yet.
There are currently 170 regions showing an ongoing battle.
That's almost 29% of the world.
·
◆ SO WHO WON THE FIRST TWO WEEKS? ◆
That depends entirely on what we count.
Ukraine won the land race.
101 regions and 88 foreign holdings put it comfortably ahead of everyone else.
Serbia and Sweden won the complete-resource race.
They're the only countries at 20/20, and between them they currently hold every very rare resource region in the world.
Iran may have won the efficiency surprise among the larger powers.
It matched Ukraine's 16/20 collection with only 30 regions.
And countries like Argentina and Canada show that you don't need an empire covering half the map to build a useful resource base.
That's probably the most interesting result of the shuffle so far.
The map gives us three different rankings:
How much land did you collect?
How many different resources did you collect?
And how difficult is it to break the production network you built from them?
Those rankings are not the same.
Ukraine has the most land.
Serbia and Sweden have the complete collections.
Iran is punching far above its territorial size.
Argentina somehow walked away with 12 different resources in 15 regions.
And with more than half of the world already under foreign flags and 170 battles still open...
we probably aren't looking at the final rankings yet.
·
◆ ABOUT THE DATA ◆
Snapshot: September 13, 2026
Foreign territory means a region currently held by a flag different from its original owner. The map cannot tell us whether that happened through battle, transfer or agreement.
Connectivity simulations use verified supplied capitals for Serbia and Sweden.
Ukraine and other countries without a verified current capital are only given capital-independent structural results.
A disconnected resource remains owned. Duplicate connected copies and active airbases can preserve production bonuses even when other copies lose their normal route.
Region counts are not weighted by geographic size.
Two weeks after the shuffle, the map has already changed dramatically.
Ukraine holds 101 regions.
Serbia holds 82.
Italy and Sweden hold 45 each.
Together, the two largest flags already control almost 31% of the entire 594-region world.
But after looking at what those countries actually collected, we found that region count tells only half the story.
Because Ukraine may have won the land race.
But it didn't win the resource race.
·
◆ WHO WON THE LAND RACE? ◆
Let's start with the obvious measurement.
1. Ukraine — 101
2. Serbia — 82
3. Italy — 45
3. Sweden — 45
5. China — 30
5. Iran — 30
7. Saudi Arabia — 23
8. India — 19
8. Peru — 19
10. Argentina — 15
Ukraine's lead is enormous.
It currently holds 88 regions outside its original territory, spread across 25 original countries.
Serbia follows with 74 foreign regions, Sweden with 37 and Italy with 32.
If we're measuring expansion, Ukraine won.
Now let's count something else.
·
◆ 101 REGIONS DOESN'T MEAN 20 RESOURCES ◆
There are 20 different resource types divided between Food, Weapon, Navy and House production.
Multiple copies can make a country's position safer, but they don't add new types to the collection.
And suddenly the ranking looks very different:
Serbia — 20/20
Sweden — 20/20
Iran — 16/20
Ukraine — 16/20
Argentina — 12/20
Italy — 12/20
Canada — 10/20
Peru — 10/20
Saudi Arabia — 10/20
China — 9/20
India — 9/20
Indonesia — 9/20
Turkey — 9/20
United Kingdom — 9/20
There are already several stories hiding in that ranking.
The first is at the very top.
·
◆ TWO COUNTRIES COMPLETED THE COLLECTION ◆
Serbia and Sweden are the only countries currently holding all 20 resource types.
And both currently have enough connected copies and airbases to reach:
Food — 100%
Weapon — 100%
Navy — 100%
House — 100%
But even these two collections look very different.
Serbia holds 82 regions, including 60 resource regions.
Sweden achieved the same 20/20 collection with only 45 regions, 43 of which contain resources.
So Sweden's collection is considerably more compact.
Serbia, meanwhile, has accumulated far more duplicate resources.
That raised another question:
How easy is it to actually knock those 100% bonuses down?
·
◆ 20/20 IS ONE THING. KEEPING IT WORKING IS ANOTHER ◆
We tested individual non-capital region losses to see what actually happens to the production network.
The result is useful because it separates impressive-looking territorial losses from losses that actually affect production.
Serbia has 81 testable non-capital regions.
Only 12 can individually lower at least one of Serbia's current production bonuses.
That means 69 of 81 can each be lost individually without lowering a single industry from its current bonus.
And some of those economically harmless losses can look anything but harmless on the map.
One Serbian loss can disconnect 46 surviving regions, including 27 resource regions, while Serbia still remains at:
Food — 100%
Weapon — 100%
Navy — 100%
House — 100%
Duplicates and airbases simply keep alternative supplies working.
Sweden's territory produces much smaller single-region cascades.
Its worst tested cut disconnects only four resource regions, compared with Serbia's maximum of 29.
Yet the same rule applies to both:
The number of resource regions disconnected is NOT the number of bonuses lost.
What matters is whether another connected copy survives.
So reaching 20/20 is only the visible part of the achievement.
The redundancy underneath it matters too.
·
◆ ALL EIGHT VERY RARES ENDED UP IN TWO HANDS ◆
Every experienced player already knows the four very rare resources and that only two regions of each exist.
The interesting part after the shuffle is where those eight regions ended up.
Fruits — Serbia 1 / Sweden 1
Rubber — Serbia 1 / Sweden 1
Uranium — Serbia 1 / Sweden 1
Granite — Serbia 1 / Sweden 1
Four for Serbia.
Four for Sweden.
Everyone else: zero.
Even more interestingly, these aren't currently hanging helplessly at the end of vulnerable corridors.
Seven of the eight have their own active airbase, while Sweden's remaining Granite stays connected through every other tested non-capital single-region loss.
So for now, cutting a road isn't enough to remove connected access to any of the eight.
The resource region itself has to change hands.
·
◆ IRAN QUIETLY MATCHED UKRAINE ◆
Then we reach perhaps the most overlooked result.
Ukraine:
101 regions
84 resource regions
16/20 resource types
Iran:
30 regions
28 resource regions
16/20 resource types
Same resource coverage.
Less than one third of the territory.
Ukraine obviously possesses vastly more duplicate resources, which has value of its own.
But if we're measuring how much of the resource catalogue each country managed to collect, Iran has been remarkably efficient.
And Ukraine's enormous empire comes with another curiosity.
Its 101 regions are currently spread across 17 separate territorial components.
Its largest connected territorial component contains only 31 regions.
That doesn't mean the other 70 regions are disconnected from production.
Without a verified current Ukrainian capital, we can't calculate that properly.
But we can see the shape of the empire.
Ukraine won the land race by a huge margin.
It didn't build one continuous 101-region block.
It built an archipelago.
·
◆ SMALL DOESN'T MEAN POOR ◆
Then there is Argentina.
It doesn't appear particularly impressive in the land ranking:
15 regions.
Look at the resources instead:
12/20.
Italy also has 12/20.
But Italy holds 45 regions and 26 resource regions to get there.
Argentina has 15 regions — and every single one contains a resource.
That's an exceptionally efficient little collection.
And Argentina isn't alone.
Canada — 13 regions, 10/20
Peru — 19 regions, 10/20
Saudi Arabia — 23 regions, 10/20
Canada is particularly tidy structurally: all 13 regions form one component with no single-region territorial chokepoint.
Argentina has the same property.
So does Romania with its 11-region network.
Their weakness is different: many of their resources exist in only one copy, making direct loss more important than cutting some distant corridor.
Expansion helps.
Useful expansion helps more.
·
◆ MORE THAN HALF THE MAP NOW FLIES A FOREIGN FLAG ◆
Now we can pull the camera back.
The world contains 594 regions.
313 are currently held by a flag other than their original owner.
That's 52.7% of the entire map.
More than half.
And this isn't simply a few giant empires distorting the number.
44 different flags currently hold territory.
Meanwhile, 32 original countries have none of their home regions left under their own flag.
Germany — 0 of 13
Russia — 0 of 12
South Korea — 0 of 9
Japan — 0 of 8
Mexico — 0 of 8
Australia — 0 of 7
Portugal — 0 of 7
And the map isn't settling down yet.
There are currently 170 regions showing an ongoing battle.
That's almost 29% of the world.
·
◆ SO WHO WON THE FIRST TWO WEEKS? ◆
That depends entirely on what we count.
Ukraine won the land race.
101 regions and 88 foreign holdings put it comfortably ahead of everyone else.
Serbia and Sweden won the complete-resource race.
They're the only countries at 20/20, and between them they currently hold every very rare resource region in the world.
Iran may have won the efficiency surprise among the larger powers.
It matched Ukraine's 16/20 collection with only 30 regions.
And countries like Argentina and Canada show that you don't need an empire covering half the map to build a useful resource base.
That's probably the most interesting result of the shuffle so far.
The map gives us three different rankings:
How much land did you collect?
How many different resources did you collect?
And how difficult is it to break the production network you built from them?
Those rankings are not the same.
Ukraine has the most land.
Serbia and Sweden have the complete collections.
Iran is punching far above its territorial size.
Argentina somehow walked away with 12 different resources in 15 regions.
And with more than half of the world already under foreign flags and 170 battles still open...
we probably aren't looking at the final rankings yet.
·
◆ ABOUT THE DATA ◆
Snapshot: September 13, 2026
Foreign territory means a region currently held by a flag different from its original owner. The map cannot tell us whether that happened through battle, transfer or agreement.
Connectivity simulations use verified supplied capitals for Serbia and Sweden.
Ukraine and other countries without a verified current capital are only given capital-independent structural results.
A disconnected resource remains owned. Duplicate connected copies and active airbases can preserve production bonuses even when other copies lose their normal route.
Region counts are not weighted by geographic size.
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