I actually just contacted the vote site admin about this very thing, Ruthless. I am going to see if I can edit the options to display a #1, #2 etc for easy reference.

Awesome idea!

Please, remember that you can vote on ALL the options! You're merely scoring each one of them individually, and the option with the highest score will be used as orders for the turn.

As per R's post -- I voted five stars on the last choice. Which has been the least popular thus far (although I feel better about it knowing that R picked it too).

As a side note, all options have been randomized in an attempt to remove ordering bias.

I actually screwed up my voting. I just redid the whole thing. I didn't realzie we vote on every option and only picked one.

Oh. So saying you gave five stars to "the last one" is meaningless?

I gave 5 stars to the one with India as choice #1.

Scratch that -- looking at it some more I don't really like that one. Changing votes.

I think I like the current concensus first choice best:

Central America
Antarctica
West Russia
South America
West Africa
India

You don't need to vote on every option. Each option defaults to 0 stars, which is lower than 1 star. Voting 0 stars is appropriate for options you really don't like.

Also, you can revert back to 0 stars by clicking the same star again (it will clear it.)

is it a bad sign, I wouldn't do any of them?

What a fun idea! Kudos to whoever thought of it. (btw I love SnappyVote - political elections would be better off with this type of voting system :)

Sweet P - no, it's not bad. Just let us know what you would choose and why you feel it's better. I'm sure if the selection is compelling enough is could be added.

What time do we have to get our votes in by?

Gaia: End of the day on Thursday would be best!

Also, it would be great to have the map image side by side with the selections. Like if there was a way to load an image on the SnappyVote site or something that would be cool, or alternately the selection options posted here.

My first choice of those options is in last place. India Central America Antarctica Indonesia West Russia West Africa.

There's no way you're getting India, Central America and Antarctica. Picking India first, you get it unless he also has it as his first, in which case you get Central and Antarctica, which is a fine booby prize, especially if you also get fourth choice Indonesia, where you will likely have a turn one bonus to use to spoil India on him. And if he gets India and Indonesia, then you know two of his starting spots, which is good because he knows two of yours. I'm fine with not getting both Central and Antarctica, because you can't take both of them turn one, and one counterpick in South America can really ruin your day. You'll probably still get one of them, which is a good foothold against him having the other.

Assuming you get something like your first, second, and fourth selections, you'll have a quick bonus, be able to fight off the South America counterpick with a 7-8 armies while you use your leftovers to take India turn two, and have 11 income to use regardless of how things work out. And if you get Antarctica instead of Central, you don't have to put all your eggs in the "i hope he doesn't come south from South America to break up my bonus" basket turn one, because you can take India instead.

If you get India but don't get Indonesia, you know he's counterpicked, which is very useful information because he's going to waste a starting spot and waste armies turn one. In that case, West Russia or West Africa should be open for business without any neighbors, because he's not likely to be in any of the nearby areas except maybe scandinavia.

I like it because you will almost certainly have a presence in both of the major arenas (Asia and the Southwest corner) on this map, you should be able to get a turn one bonus and probably get a turn two bonus easily, and you should be able to defend whichever bonus you get and/or bring the fight to him. The only way you get locked out of being able to go on the offensive is if he gets both central and ant, but in that scenario you have india, indo, west russia, scand, and caucusus to expand into and you're well suited to get most of them by turn five or so when you finally meet.

fred, I initially had the same reaction and picked that one as my favorite, but then I got a bit skittish about the possibility that we would get our top 3 picks. You say there's no way it could happen but I'm not so sure. He could very plausibly have some combination of Scandanavia/West Russia/Indonesia/South America as some of his top picks. He wouldn't have to have completely different picks either. For example, if he gets first pick and he's got South America as his top choice, and he has Antarctica as #6 or not listed, then we get our top 3 choices. And that would be a huge problem for us because we'd have no idea where his counterpicks might be.

I'm just not a big fan of India, is the only reason i didn't pick that one. I find it's way to easy to bust between indo, EC, Causacus and WC. Once I mvoed India out of my top 3 or 4 the choices got easier.

I think a lot of these would be good. this is very wide open board with all 3 3 pt bonuses open and WR, WA and SA to choose from, none of the choices are really bad ones. Imp will definitely go for spread out picks, beyond that I doubt it matters much.

If you get all three of your top picks, you take central america turn one, and move from antarctica towards south america to find out if he's there. Turn two you'll probably have a bonus, and he can't have a bonus and be in south america, because you have all of the turn one bonuses (since you know he has south america). So it's not really a disaster no matter what he does turn one.

Well, you can try to take Central America turn 1. You've got a 53% chance of success. And if he's in South America he can show up on your doorstep with a bunch of armies ready to bust into Panama. I don't know, I guess every combo has problems with counterpicks. But I think my favorite is:

Antarctica
South America
India
West Russia
Scandanavia
Central America