First, my choices to advance and win the tournament. (I'll forego using birth names, pet names, and alternate spellings at least in my bolded picks from here on out; sorry for being confusing. Blame Otto.)
Not much to say here as I'm pretty much voting according to rooting interest on this one. I do think most of these are strong leaders with good chances to advance, but they're not necessarily the very best, and the chances that I'll be right on them without seeing any of the maps is even smaller than with my usual wild swing in the dark. When I see the first playoff map in a moment, I may end up reluctantly betting against myself in the very first game! (I hope not though.)
I'll edit in my crazy predictions for Playoff Game 1 in spoilers [EDIT: Here, now that!] I've had a look at the map.
...
...
Oh. Oh ... no.
...sigh...
Poor Figchen*. At least you'll have my hopeless Silver Medalist vote to console you. Or, from a more selfish point of view, at least I didn't pick you over Bess to win the whole thing.
So yeah, she's going to wind up in an early war with Rome right around the time of Praets, and be lucky if she survives to get 'phracted back into the stone age. But you know what? I don't care. She's Yekaterina, Tsarina of Russia, she led one of the largest and mightiest nations on earth through its golden age, she has traits that do terrific jobs of papering over some of the game's biggest AI weaknesses, and her AI personality is one of the best-suited to winning a BtS game. (Some of the top competition for that role is up against her in this game though, on the eastern edge of the continent.) I'm sticking to my guns and (extremely foolishly) predicting:
Winner: Catherine in a huge upset! She'll call on friends for aid when she needs it most, conquer most of Persia, wait to go after Rome until Praets are obsolete, and reach Rifles before the Byzantines can 'phract her! It could happen! I'm imagining Rome and Byzantium warring early over the rich floodplains between them here or ... something. It's a possibility!
Runner-Up: Suryavarman wins a thrilling duel with the Incans for the "second-place" finish! Totally not for the win! Sophia's got this, everybody!
First to Die: Cyrus crumbles under the Tsarina's mighty war machine! With help from the Khmer. Totally not the other way around. Praets might even play a role thanks to a timely request for help or something. Anyway, no way am I predicting Figchen in the first-to-die spot. No way!
Survivors: 3. I'm tempted to guess two and an early domination win just to ensure I wind up with an even zero points for the game, but I don't feel like throwing my score away completely!
Victory: Domination, circa Turn 300.
So yeah, probably not a perfect zero: I should get a point or two for being vaguely in the neighborhood of the ballpark of the victory date this time anyway.
*- Figchen was the childhood pet name of Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, who adopted the name Yekaterina Alekseyevna when she joined the Russian Orthodox Church. We now know her in the West of course as Catherine II of Russia or Catherine the Great. And she is known in this particular game as totally not the first to die, especially not to Praets!
[...Annnnnd one more EDIT after looking over other predictions: Huh. So apparently Catherine's a really popular choice, and a victory for her would be sort of the diametric opposite of a "huge upset." In fact ... my picks look almost identical to ASM's and Ceiliazul's! Is everyone ignoring the neighborhood peace weight situation? Has everyone forgotten what happened with Ragnar? Or are we all just counting on the fact that Figchen is smarter than the average AI? I hope you're all right about this and that it's my picks that are spot-on while my analysis is crazy!
I'm most impressed by Molach though: Unlike me, he spelled Yekaterina correctly!]
* The 6 leaders who will make the championship game (10 points each): Huayna Capac, Cyrus, Lincoln, Mao Zedong, Boudica, Stalin
* The overall runner-up (25 points): Stalin
* The overall winner (50 points): Mao Zedong
Unfortunately, I predict communist victory in this alternative history of competition.
- Winning Leader: Catherine
- Runner Up: Huayna Capac (I'd personally prefer Justinian more, but I need to double down on something to maintain the lead considering how many are doing it.)
- First to Die: Cyrus
- Number of Leaders to Survive: 3
- Victory Date and Type: Domination, T307
Bah Cyrus, why did you have to get stuck on such sucky position.
My prediction is nearly at odds with my prior pick, at least I'll be guaranteed points
Just a reminder that the first playoff game should be closing sometime this evening, in about 8-10 hours from this post. There's still time to get in predictions for the first playoff game, or the overall playoff bracket.
