Magick, if you could just humour me for a little while I'll explain why some of this is perhaps not so off-topic, before really getting back on topic.
People are criticising HG's strategy as fundamentally boring and negative, and in that they're absolutely right. However, these same people are also being hugely hypocritical, because all she's done is copy what they've been doing for ages, the now-standard EN plan. Makes no difference to me which side employs it (or both, as on several servers), it rather spoils the fun for the majority of players, whilst being undeniably effective. Inno to their credit have recognised that, and have made certain changes to WWs to eliminate the worst excesses of these plans.
What is now happening, which is where it starts being directly relevant to Nagidos and the top 12, is that groups of players are making multi-server deals for crowns - agreeing to support one alliance in one world, in exchange for reversed roles in a future server. So here we have quite a few alliances who were pledged to take certain roles before the server even started. What makes this server really interesting, though, is that a couple of these groups have conflicting multiple agreements in place, and further that quite a few of the key players in alliances with these agreements are not at all happy with them. It's all a recipe for huge internal conflict, as we've already seen with some alliances, and it's far from clear at this stage which alliances will stick to which agreements.
This is also a very interesting world in that there are so many potentially decent alliances - at least 20 who have a realistic chance of making a mark on this world, without counting academies.
Anyway, that's the background to the politics that will shape the server. At this stage I'm not going to second-guess some of these relationships, so will do a fairly straight top 12 based on their players and positioning, rather than politics. As things crystallise, I will do future top 12s based on political facts as well, but for now the alliances themselves don't know which promises they'll be keeping. Even if they think they do.
1. Show Me Your Noobies - Swim. Tight core, good players, nice position.
2. Enough is Enough - Sink. Name change from a highly inappropriate one tells the story clearly Enough - there's been more than enough Drama already. If they can put their internal issues aside, they have the core, players and position to do well, but at the moment, my money is on them not being able to, but who knows for sure?
3. Caustic Soda - Swim. Again, tight core and good players, position is interesting...
4. Devil's Advocates - Sink. I don't think they have the maturity in leadership that's required to make a go of it in the long run on such a tricky server, especially given their position. But they will go down all guns blazing, that's for sure.
5. Hydra - Float. Tricky position, slightly more spread out, their diplo will be very busy.
6. PIED - Sink. Just way too spread out for this server.
7. Backdoor Bandits - Sink. Caustic Soda's academy.
8. Winter Knights - Float. At least in the far north-east.
9. Anonymous - Sink. Too spread out for this world.
10. Symmetry - Sink. Again, too widely distributed.
11. Check Mate - Sink. Famous name, nice players, horrible position and spread.
12. Hydra 2 - Sink. Academy.
But so much depends on the politics - deals the diplos can do, and what the membership is prepared to take. I expect a lot of alliances to break up and new ones form, especially in O54.
giving predictions whats your alliance
