Capria/Bannor to win
Hannah/Lanun second
Cassiel/Grigori first to die
Victory...no real idea if any of the AIs can manage a non-time victory. Or how long it would take.
Non-spoilery stuff:
I am not sure if the AI can play the Kuriotates well. Early game should be great (big cities! lots of culture!), and mid-game decent (large cities growing out). But later the AI will not be able to maximize the potential of the mega-cities well wnough to make up for the limited numbers.
Okay, let's give this a try and show off my cluelessness about FfH2:
Winner: Capria - basically because, unlike just about every other civ in the game, the AI might have some inkling of how to play this one. Also, Ind is a nice bonus because it gets Wonders out of the build queue (and provides better fail-gold rewards) than other leaders, so there'll be hope that the Bannor won't stagnate forever on whatever wonders they decide to pursue.
Runner-up: Valledia - Firebows provide renewable collateral (in the form of fireballs) with fewer moving parts than anything most other civs get: There's plenty of time to build Archery Ranges in time to actually be able to produce the firebows, and even the AI can understand "cast the unit's only available spell every turn and attack with the disposable unit." She'll get off to a slow start though (and may not live to see her firebows at all) and she may stall out by the end, especially if her units end up with a wide range of spells on which to waste their time instead of fireballing everything.
First to Die: Cassiel - His Adventurers will win one or two combats apiece before dying, he'll have no culture outside of his capital until he's roadkill, the AI has no idea how to use Adaptive, and he's unlikely to survive long enough to use it anyway. The actual first to die is whoever runs afoul of a couple of lizardman lairs early on, but Cassiel's as good a guess as any, and would be a pretty good bet for the first to die to non-barbs in case everyone does live that long.
Number of Wars: 25. This is assuming FfH2 AIs actually ever make peace with one another (I don't really remember) but I'm expecting absolute chaos here. 25 might be high, but especially if the barbs don't get any kills, it might be low!
Victory Type: Domination. The only real alternative is Tower, and only because it's getting an (enormous) artificial boost in World Builder.
Victory Date: Turn 400? Absolutely no clue here.
Well, I thought I'd have the Game 1 report ready by tonight, but...
...the FFH2 AI is so damn idiotic, it can't bring the game to any kind of conclusion! And oddly enough, the Time Victory only kicks in at Turn 690 (whyyyyy???). I'm serious, the FFH2 AI is so dumb. [Redacted] has had a stack of 350+ [redacted] ambling around their territory for 150 turns now, despite being in two active wars the whole time. Even if the FFH2 AI knew nothing about how to use the new mechanics and just threw its units against the enemy (in other words, even if the FFH2 AI just copied Civ4's AI), it would still be making more progress by now!!!)
Although I'm not even finished with Game 1 yet, I'm gonna go ahead and upload my reports so far. Don't look at these if you haven't made informal predictions yet and still want to!
Here's Part 1:
(By the way, the reason I'm doing these as PDFs is because photobucket doesn't work anymore, and I haven't found another free image hosting site to fill the gap. So, if anyone knows of one, let me know, and that way I don't have to clog up the Realmsbeyond servers with these PDF files).
