Seeding-wise, there's not too much to note anymore. Pericles or Churchill could move into Pool Two with a win and nothing else would make significant waves.
More broadly speaking, I think our pools are just about set for next season; only realistic way I see them changing at this point would be if Churchill wins this week or Gandhi next week. Barring that or something really unexpected, we're done moving around.
Pool One will be the same as it was this year, except with Gilgamesh instead of Suryavarman.
Pool Two will be more different: as well as the above swap, it's dropping Mao, Hannibal, and Louis, and picking up Cyrus, Mehmed, and Zara (or somebody else if they earn the spot late in this season). Only Gandhi, Alex, Darius, and Charlemagne remain constant.
I think that our odds of having any low peaceweights in the championship are now extremely low. (Which I like; I'm excited to see how an all-high-peaceweight finale shakes out!) Qin and Mehmed are outnumbered, they're stuck on the same side of the map together, leaving the two Englands in particular unthreatened, and neither of their starts looks that great.
Qin Shi Huang's capital is all right, but his surrounding land is fairly low on commerce, and with Sitting Bull's start offset significantly in his direction, he'll be cramped. I don't think he has the heft to break out of this position, especially not through a large Sitting Bull, so he'll have to try to rely on the fishing village economy. And I don't think he'll be able to challenge the U.K. in that regard. Also, if he doesn't net the silver that's midway between himself and SB, he has no early happiness until Monarchy!
Mehmed II is also rather cramped, especially with Creative Pericles close by coupled with his own general refusal to tech early culture. (Although the last point may not come into play here, as there is no big favorite to chase the early religions; Mehmed could go for one and pick up Myst that way.) He also has a slow-starting area with a lot of jungle, including over the early gems that would otherwise be his biggest boost (and only early happiness resource). Especially against a bunch of peaceniks with better starts, this will set him too far behind at the beginning a la Brennus/Justinian last game; he'll be utterly hopeless in tech and I think too small to start to snowball. Coupled with his likelihood to get himself into trouble, I imagine he's the favorite for First to Die. I expect that either he or Qin would have to get quite lucky to even backdoor second place, and a win would be a complete shock.
So this game belongs to the peaceniks. Of those four,
Pericles I think has the worst odds as he lacks the specific advantages that the others have. I
do like his capital if he can scrounge up enough total food; the double early happiness resources alone puts him a step above Qin and Mehmed. However, the rest of his land is uninspiring; not a lot of it and not very rich. I don't think he'll be able to keep up will enough to contend for the win unless he snowballs through the low peaceweights or something. He
is best-position to gain territory from Mehmed, so depending on how wars shake out, second place and a Championship ticket could easily be in the cards for him. But he's the last peacenik that I'd bet on in this game.
Victoria's position is also uninspiring. She looks quite cramped and most of the surrounding territory doesn't look particularly great - low on food in particular, and no happiness resources until Monarchy. But she is Financial and does have one nice river, and that might be enough. If she wins, it will be because she's doing Financial things, plain and simple. She certainly should have the opportunity to do so in peace, as none of her neighbors declare at Pleased - only her. But if that just means that they take their aggression out in the west, instead, she could find herself left out. In any case, my fantasy hopes now rest entirely with her - I think I need her to win the season in order to have a real shot at winning the contest. At the moment, I'm not feeling super optimistic about that.
Then there's the two good starts.
Churchill now gets a chance to overcome the curse of the starting gold, and especially the starting double gold; can he succeed where Fred and Pacal failed? He does have a very safe position and much more room to expand than most of the field. Sitting Bull's more western position is certainly to his benefit here, and he actually has some guaranteed space to settle in every direction, which is more than most of this field can say. Most the land isn't too impressive, but it's enough. There's one good river and the double gold to get him started, and gold + Charismatic will have him ahead of most of the crew in early happiness. I think Churchill is by default one of the top two in this field, and somebody else needs to accelerate ahead in order to knock him out of that position; he should have a good run in the alternate histories. What about a win, though? It seems feasible here for once. Most of the leaders here aren't very winnerly and the couple who have a more distinct win condition also don't have great starts. Churchill's greatest weakness ordinarily is that he's a very slow starter, but if the double gold can speed him through the early techs? There might not be much to get in his way. I wish I'd gone with my original intentions and gotten him in fantasy; I think he's quite likely to join Kublai Khan in the "three straight Championships" club.
Then there's my favorite position on the map... which went to, of all leaders,
Sitting Bull! He has only one gold to Churchill's two and doesn't start with mining, but on the other hand, look at all those floodplains at the capital! There's also at least a little bit of river in every direction, plenty of room for him to expand, and his central position will be a boon on this map, not very susceptible to backstabs and giving especially his militaristic AI personality a good chance to take much of the spoils from the western leaders' demise. Sitting Bull should easily have one of the biggest nations on the map, and the scenario as a whole is somewhat reminiscent of his victory in Game 3 of this season. Could he win again? The downside to his situation, is, well, that he's Sitting Bull. Only an unlikely Cultural attempt got him the win in Game 3 and he might have trouble crossing the finish line here. We'll see.
After typing through all of that, my feeling is that we're most likely to see a Sitting Bull-Churchill ticket (in some order) for the Championship. I'm sure people will be
really excited about that!
The most likely disruptions are if Vicky or Pericles can sneak out a cultural victory, Vicky can jump ahead in economy, or one of SB or Churchill struggles more than expected and Pericles is able to take his place.
I think I'm going to predict Sitting Bull for the spaceship win, Churchill for second place, and Mehmed first to die.
