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

I edited each option to display a number (#1, #2 etc) to facilitate discussion. Since Snappy Vote automatically randomizes the list of options each time, it will be normal for the #s to be out of order as the #s are merely a marker to help make communication and discussion easier in these threads.

If you have more feedback, please continue to post it here.

I thought I was going crazy -- the order of the list DOES change each time.

"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."

I was experimenting with this and voting zero stars is a no vote, it has no impact on the score. I have 3 votes of one star and when I changed them all to zero stars and the scores all went up. Voting 1 star reduces the score for a given option.

I was experimenting with this and voting zero stars is a no vote, it has no impact on the score. I have 3 votes of one star and when I changed them all to zero stars and the scores all went up. Voting 1 star reduces the score for a given option.

Hmm.. I just verified this and you're right. I guess for now you should vote for every option (or at least, consider 0 stars as "I don't know about this one.")

I'm going to try and get this changed for future polls, as making you click for every item seems overkill.

I see you guys decided to take the 'what would you do' thread posts to their natural conclusion of actually having people play out a game and voting on what should be done. Good idea.

I think as someone basically suggested, it would help to have posted somewhere the list of options visually represented with the appropriate # beside them as just having a bunch of listed out options is much harder to 'see'.

So put in each order set, take a picture, save it and then make a page with all the pictures and the # beside them so people can just scroll down a page to see each option visually represented as they would in the game basically and then they can flip to the voting page to put in votes for what they wanted.

Okay, after consulting with the experts, this is how you should interpret the star system:

0 Stars means "I don't care" or "I'm indifferent to this item."
1 Star means "I'm positive we should not do this."
2 Stars means "I don't think we should do this."
3 Stars means "Maybe we should do this."
4 Stars means "I think we should do this."
5 Stars means "I'm positive this is what we should do."

lol my top pick had the lowest rating. I'm so unorthodox xD

I also picked the same one Duke and Ruthless picked, I like it's counterpicks better than the top option

How do we know The Impaller won't look at this thread?