Seeding Watch:
The top-ranked leader in this group is
Suryavarman II. He needs to score only a single point in this game to climb back into Pool One, which would finally push Stalin down to Pool Two. If he manages to win, he jumps all the way up into the middle of Pool One with potential to climb even higher in the playoffs. Big potential here! I would like to see him get that one point.
Alexander and
Cyrus both have a lot to gain as well. They are tied at 25 points, with Cyrus barely in Pool Two and Alex barely out of it. Again, just one point for either would get them back in that pool, and with some degree of security. (If Alex jumps back in, then Louis is guaranteed to be unseeded next season.) And a win for either would put them right at the top of the pool and secure for another season or two. As with Sury, I'd like to see Alex score at least one point to maintain his seeded position.
But wait, there's more!
Willem van Oranje is also within spitting distance of the seeded positions. He's much farther behind with just 18 career points, but if he manages a two-kill win or better then he leaps up into Pool Two.
The other three, though, probably need to win the entire season to have a hope of cracking the ranks of the seeded.
An interesting map and an interesting group. Between the raging barbs and the lack of economic focus from this field, there's a good chance that it will be quite a long game. I've also had a tough time reading the map dynamics and have gone back and forth a few times in my assessments of who's likely to take that final spot in the playoffs.
Let's start with the easiest one, the very obviously dead leader in this group:
Washington. I mean, this
is Season 8, where the high peaceweight leaders always beat the odds and come out on top, so
maybe the others will just fight amongst themselves and Washington will be able to choose his battles, gradually grow to a position of strength, and win as well. But it's far more likely that he just gets dogpiled quickly, or if he doesn't, that he faffs around and fails to take advantage. It would take everything lining up just right for him to come out on top in this field; I suspect that his true importance will lie in the question of who uses his land to fuel their own snowball.
As of this writing,
Suryavarman II is the heavy favorite in the picking contest. But I actually really don't like his chances to win! That capital gold won't mean a whole lot with the raging barbs in play. All that empty space around his start might, though, and if the barbs do affect the game in a predictable manner, part of that will be him being crippled by them. Barbs or no barbs, though, this is going to be a slow start; lots of forest and jungle, and it will take a lot of time and work to make it all productive. I doubt the barbs or the other leaders will just sit back and let Sury build into a truly strong position. Plus I think that Sury himself is overrated in this context; he can be a fearsome leader, but in my experience that's usually when he gets out to a strong start and can snowball off of that. From a slow-starting position like this, I doubt that it's in the cards. I could be wrong! But I don't think Sury will be all that strong and there's too many ways it can go wrong for him with such a central position. I don't think he's going to win the game.
Brennus is another leader whose position looked nice at first glance, but I'm more skeptical of on further examination. The biggie here is the floodplains-heavy nature of the start; we've seen in recent seasons that the AIs can struggle with the low production of those starts, and in a Raging Barbs context that could prove a critical weakness, causing Brennus to get out to too slow of a start to be able to compete (and he's not that good at competing for a win in the first place). He might not have it too bad with his coastal start, but there's enough space around him, especially to the south, that we can't assume that will be the case. Even after that phase, Brennus lacks early happiness resources (although Charismatic will help offset that) and has no great path to victory - he's not in position to benefit from a Washington dogpile, or to snowball through anybody else, or to tech ahead of everybody else. Second place I could see for sure, but winning? Seems pretty unlikely.
Alexander has only a single, narrow window of opportunity.
If he connects his copper right away, and
if Willem misses his for long enough, and
if Willem also ignores Iron Working for long enough, and
if Alex can capitalize and roll over a metal-less Willem early - then he can get a quick contest of the Dutch and snowball from there. This is what I really want to see from this game, honestly. But if Alex can't accomplish that, then he's doomed. Even in this economically weak field, Alex stands out as being particularly weak. He has zero nearby happiness and lacks the Charismatic trait that much of this field has, he's far away from Washington, and once his neighbors have metals, any conquest will be a tall order. I originally liked his odds, but not so much anymore.
That leaves three whose prospects are, I think, a bit better.
Cyrus I might still be overrating (he was my original favorite for this map), but he at least has a couple of distinct factors in his favor. His position
should be the most sheltered from the raging barbs (assuming Pericles things don't happen this time), which in a best case scenario means that he gets off to a stronger start than most of the field. He lacks early happiness sources but Charismatic should help offset that. He also has ready access to Washington, which could be a big deal; indeed, depending on where he settles and what he researches, there's the possibility of getting that copper midway between the two and leveraging it to wipe the Americans out at a very early date, which would be a great way to start a snowball. The big downside is that his land is pretty commerce-poor, which might combine with his tech preferences to cause him to crash his economy and knock himself out of contention in record time. My sense is that it's a fine line Cyrus has to walk, and there are some games where he does it successfully, with better tech choices and a perfect snowball off of Washington, and wins. But there are also some, probably a majority, where he doesn't and crashes and burns instead.
Then there's
Willem van Oranje, whose advantage is extremely obvious: he's the best economic leader from this bunch by a mile! None of the rest have any economic focus, much less Financial/Creative traits - the two best traits for AI Survivor, and he's the only one on this map with either one! (ETA: Silly me forgot about Sury being Creative as well, but the overall point still stands.) If this game stalemates for a while without anybody knocking him down or snowballing ahead, he's the default winner, and he even has a pretty good position for avoiding too much barb aggression to boot. Now, there's also very obvious issues for him. He's far and away the most likely first target for Alexander, and if he doesn't defend well than that could tank his game. Even if he does well to start with, there's danger for a good while with this aggressive field; Willem won't be blending in too well in terms of peaceweight, and failing to tech Rifling could well be his undoing. Is it as simple as "Willem wins if he reaches Rifling intact and otherwise dies"? I think it might be! Willem also has pretty jungly land, which will exaggerate his strengths and weaknesses here. It will take longer for him to get going, which will leave him more vulnerable until that point - but once he reaches it, his economy will be disgustingly good. Extremely feast or famine setup here; we'll see which way it plays out.
And then there's my favorite overall position on this map, one that I overlooked both in my first impressions and in my second analysis, and only surprised me by becoming apparent on my third pass:
De Gaulle's! Yes, really, and I think I'm pretty alone in liking it - does that mean I'm crazy?
We'll see, and I could have missed somebody talking about it, but I haven't seen any love for it and he has almost no votes in the picking contest right now. But it has a lot of rivers for good commerce potential; only a single rival who's likely to be that strong economically; two early happiness resources close by + Charismatic for a high early happy cap; no early copper for stupid wars; a position near Washington for good potential to get spoils from his demise; access to Willem to knock him out and not have to rely on others to do it; and no really dangerous neighbors close by. The biggest potential issue is barb activity, especially from the northern ice plains, but I'm a bit less worried about that after last week's game. The other biggest potential issue is that this is De Gaulle - but even De Gaulle can do well with the right setup, and I think this is the right setup. I get the feeling he might surprise some folks.
My stab at the overall dynamic of "who wins this game", across a larger alternate histories set, is that there's some rare games where everything lines up right for Alex or Cyrus and they snowball across the map. Barring that, it becomes a question of who can build up the best, and Willem wins that if he's left unmolested, and De Gaulle takes his place otherwise. Wins from Washington, Suryavarman, or Brennus with any kind of frequency would definitely count as me misreading this map.
Finally, my official prediction. I'm not doing anything crazy this time, especially after I actually guessed the winner right last week for the first time all season! I am following my analysis and picking
De Gaulle to win by space, with Washington as the obvious first to die (the only way I think that's particularly likely not happen is if Alex rolls through Willem first - though there's probably another result somewhere there I'm missing!) Second place is a bit of a toss-up in this scenario, although probably not Washington (duh) or Willem. I ended up going with Brennus, the idea being that he takes some good land from Suryavarman down the road and prospers that way, but I really don't know about that one. As for the random.org prediction, it went with a Washington Domination victory. (Of course!
) To be fair, it did predict Hammurabi domination for Game 1 and I thought that was silly and look what happened... Cyrus second and Brennus first to die rounds out the interesting parts of that prediction.
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