A few people have gone through all sixty-one voting districts and made their endorsements public, but nobody, so far, has aped the legendary Lacsirax Long Post from the previous season and gone through
every vote, even if next week is now primaries-only week. I don't know what possessed me to go through every primary, especially seeing as there are (by my count) one hundred and sixteen of them (yes, there will be over a hundred votes next week),
Let me know if I've missed someone and if there's a primary that I haven't realised is happening. It is equally possible that I've identified a primary that actually won't happen, because the rules for what does and doesn't go into a primary are a bit different from last time (plus, there are more civs). So, for example, I already know that Nasser (modern Egypt) isn't going into the ancient Egypt primary despite having the same five-letter civ name, instead progressing directly to the general.
I reserve the right to change these endorsements if more evidence comes about, especially in the field of AI tests, but I'll be transparent about it if I do (I'll use strikethroughs and so on on my edits instead of just editing things out that turned out to be wrong).
Here goes.
DISTRICT 1 ICELAND
Our first vote is one with a repeat in it, and as you will soon find out, I'm not that keen on repeats. Ingolfur's Iceland, at least, was one of the more entertaining civs in Mk2, though, and made the very most it could out of a frankly terrible TSL. Therefore, unlike other primaries featuring repeats, I won't judge you if you vote for Ingolfur. Nonetheless, I'll be voting for
Kristjan Eldjarn, a civilisation from the Cod Wars (no, not Call of Duty, I mean an actual war over the actual fish) with nicely fishy uniques to match.
SCOTLAND
The best Scotland mod is
Alba under Alexander III, no question about it. Its uniques are pretty good, with plenty of passive production and naval bonuses that sound useful in a Royale, but what's more, it has input from our resident Scottish power ranker Lordie, and also has an absolutely
beautiful colour scheme. AI-wise, it performed semi-decently in the Elimi-Nation AI game before getting voted out in favour of Northern Ireland. The only catch is that Alba might not be in the Scotland primary in the first place due to its separate name. In that case, of the two James VI's, I would recommend voting for LastSword's James, as I've seen the JFD one plenty of times in AI games and it has never impressed me.
DISTRICT 2 IRELAND
Ireland has got far more interesting since the S1 vote, in which there were only two options - contemporaries of each other - and one was disqualified for being in Mk2. We now have four, more diverse, Irelands. I'm not particularly thrilled at the thought of Malachy again or Brian Boru, not least because they didn't actually rule all Ireland even though they claimed to (afaik). Daniel O'Connell is a more interesting choice, an influential politician who never actually ruled Ireland but secured greatly expanded rights for his people, and is also a rather nice shade of blue. However, his AI is pretty lacklustre, which leaves us with Easter Rising hero
Michael Collins and his pub UB (not kidding). None of these leaders achieved lasting Irish Unity as some might claim, but either way, I'm voting for Mick.
CORNWALL
I'm quite fond of Hiram's mods. We started modding at around the same time as each other, after all, and it took ages for either of us to learn Lua. Having said that, I don't think I can back him here. His Cornwall, nice colours notwithstanding, is a fairly awkward mixture of uniques that includes a rather incongruous vanilla Celtic UA. Therefore, I'm going for Senshi's
Gwendolen, which includes both a rare female leader and plenty of well-integrated tin mine mechanics.
LONDON PRIMARY (UK/BRITAIN/ENGLAND)
My current home region and one of four primaries in which I am fielding a mod. No surprises, then, that I am giving my endorsement here to the wonderful
Clement Attlee, living proof that sometimes it's best not to have a strong leader so much as a good one. His historical record and general status as an oddball choice for a Royale leader would make for a decent reason to endorse him on its own, but his AI is at least decent and his uniques are more relevant to a Royale setting than their peaceful economic nature may suggest at first - including a way to use all that gold. If for some reason you hate Attlee and would rather have a more Conservative choice here, I recommend Theresa May, who is in every way the Millard Fillmore of the Isles.
WALES
I am very much struggling to see the difference between the two Waleses, other than slightly more Welsh language used in Glyndwr's unique names than Llywelyn's (which must surely be a good thing). Civ AI Games's archive suggests that
Llywelyn has the better AI, though, so I guess I'd go with him.
DISTRICT 3 DENMARK
The AI record of the Denmarks does not show any mention of a universally strong or weak variant, so let's go with history and all the other factors. I'm not the biggest fan of vanilla civs, so I'd rather not vote for vanilla Harald here despite their nice colours, so I'm going to go with
Struensee, mainly because he's (imho) a more interesting historical figure than the other two; a doctor who was able to seize unofficial power in Denmark for a time, rather than 'just another monarch'.
NORWAY
The mod I've been working on recently has been quite close to Norway and includes quite a few references to it. Over the course of my research, I've encountered both Olaf II and Haakon VII, and I can think of worse leaders than both. Haakon IV, Mk2's Snoreway, is not really an experience I'd like to go back to. Of the other two, though,
Olaf II edges it for me, although I'll be honest, most of that is voting for the modder. In this case, Lungora, best known as the creator of the maps on which the Royales are run.
SWEDEN
Back to politics on this one. Although he does not yet have an AI record that I know of, I'll most likely be voting for
Olof Palme here, and hoping that whenever another civ does badly at something, I can do what I normally do and unfavourably compare them to the Swedes. Also, the
last time we had a late-20th-century Scandinavian politician leader, it was brilliant. My second and third choices, and my recommendations for an older Sweden, are Karl XII and Birger Jarl, both of whom have excelled themselves in past AI games.
DISTRICT 4 PORTUGAL
How am I to know which Portugal to vote for? There are eight of 'em, and most of share about three names between them! Five of them have unfavourable comments in the CAG archive, leaving me with a choice of Afonso de Albuquerque, Antonia Salazar, and LS's Maria. The latter is city-state based, Salazar depends on whether you like dictators or not, and Afonso seems like a fun civ but not an easy one for the AI to use... y'know what, stuff this, vote for
Firaxis's Maria aka the Mad from Mk2. Because why not.
SPAIN
Carlos III is the only Spain which has been campaigned for so far, and is also the only one of the earlier Spains not to have a leader which I've already grown bored of from either Civ 5 or Civ 6. However,
RanseStoddard's analysis of AI values suggests that it might not be that good, which would leave us with General Franco. Personally, I'd vote for Carlos, but vote for Franco if you will. Just make sure not to vote for any Spain in the general, because #NeverSpain is way too entertaining to abandon now.
DISTRICT 5 BELGIUM
Leopold II is my choice here, for two reasons. One, because it has had a better AI record than Albert, for a civ which I particularly want to see competitive in the general for the 5th district. Two, because not every mod has the balls to reference Congolese atrocities and chocolate-making in the same set of uniques. You do you, Leo.
BRITTANY
This might be surprising to some, but I'm voting for
Anne here. Although Nominoe is a much more polished mod, I haven't seen them do much AI-wise, and their uniques are very much orientated towards human play. So, Gedemo's sole European mod it is.
FLANDERS
Flanders memeage doesn't really dictate which Flanders it has to be - after all, the name is the important thing, so I doubt that the primary here will get as much attention as the general. The AI record favours LastSword's Flanders (Robert III) over JFD's Flanders (Rorbrecht III) while saying nothing about Moriboe's Flanders (Filips van de Elzas). I don't feel strongly about this primary at all, and it's worth pointing out that Robert might have the ability to polder one or two gulf water tiles with his UI, but at the end of the day, i'll vote for
Filips van de Elzas. Modder diversity, and a mod I remember playing with a very long time ago.
FRANCE
Mon Dieu, fourteen kinds of France? Luckily, not too long ago there was an AI game which was pretty much nothing but Frances. The winner (spoiler alert, sorry) was
Louis XI, who immediately rockets up to near the top of my list. The other standout one for me is Clemenceau, who I like mainly because of the weirdly large amount of First World War-era history I've had to study and thus the soft spot I've developed for leaders from that era. However, that's personal, so I feel more inclined to 'endorse' Louis (and his S-tier UA name,
The Universal Spider), even if I might give my own vote to Clemenceau
SWITZERLAND
How are Switzerland mods supposed to fight each other in a primary? They're supposed to be neutral, aren't they? Either way, I'm backing
LastSword's Dufour here, because I've seen JFD's plenty of times and its AI has never impressed.
DISTRICT 6 BOHEMIA
Vaclav (JFD's Bohemia) has a mixed AI record, but perhaps the most relevant one in a crowded European setting is its Groundhog Day performance, which was... not great. Therefore, I'm voting for
Charles IV. His uniques sound fun - they'll either doom him completely or win him the game, admittedly most likely the former.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Didn't we already do th... oh wait, Czech
oslovakia. Pretty torn on this one, honestly. Both the Uighur and SabyZ versions have good and bad points on their uniques, and the Uighur one has such a mid-tier AI that I can't even predict whether or not Saby's is better or worse. Uighur's is the only one which conforms to orthodox mod structure (Saby's two uniques are a UB and a UI), but I'll probably vote for
SabyZ's Czechoslovakia, purely because I like voting for civs made by CBR fans, and Saby made the previous Czechia.
GERMANY
I want to endorse Merkel. I
badly want to endorse Merkel. The trouble is, her uniques make that very hard to do. Her UA is city-state based, and her UU might actually be a debuff for an AI, as she can only use it properly when she
purchases it. Her saving grace is the UB, which provides extra production and culture based on events which are common as muck in a Royale. I'm not really feeling it with Wilhelm, despite his WWI connections, because I can't really look at him and think something other than "worse Bismarck". Moving on to actual Bismarck, although the JFD overhaul gives me a way out of voting vanilla, once again, it's city-state based. So I'm back where I started. I'm going to do it. Vote
Angela Merkel. Imagine how fun it'd be if she started ruthlessly conquering like mad.
LIECHTENSTEIN
This one isn't even close. Johann I (QQQ) is one of those very old mods made by one-shot modders which might or might not work.
Johann II (DuskJockey), on the other hand, is a very new mod with a creator still hanging around the place, and more complicated uniques to boot. Its AI record is mixed, but you can't have everything. Except when you're voting for Kakuei's Japan, of course.
SAXONY
This one's a toughie. On one hand, JFD's Saxony makes tourism actually useful, and has a more Saxon colour scheme. On the other, Firebug's mod makes
faith useful, by making cities that look as if, were they given time to build up and get a few faith buildings going, they'd be entertainingly hard to capture. I think I'll vote for
JFD's Saxony (Frederick Augustus I), though, as Mitteleuropa is not a forgiving region for late-developing civs, and Frederick Augustus I (aka Augustus the Strong) is the more entertaining historical character.
DISTRICT 7 GENOA
I'm going for
LastSword's Genoa here. Why, you ask? Simple. Stronger crossbowmen which can
automatically attack when embarked. What with the pivotal importance of the crossbow in many Civ games, and the embarkation-friendly Western Med, that could be a unique that - shock horror - actually does something.
ITALY
This comes down to whether you want to vote for Mussolini because Mussolini, or vote for not-Mussolini because not-Mussolini. It's a personal choice and not one I want to go into because I'm pretty sick of this argument (I'm not going to be disappointed if either wins by a landslide). However, I did promise I'd endorse someone in every primary. So, on the basis of a slightly better AI record (although both are mid-tier) in a difficult TSL,
Victor Emmanuel III it is.
PAPAL STATES
Unsurprisingly, all three Papal civs are faith-based. The AI record only mentions one of the three, and so a lot of this comes down to who makes the most use of that faith outside of religion. I'm going with
Innocent III, partly because his unique Great Generals make faith a bit more useful in military matters, and partly, of course, because he's the Battle Pope with the decidedly non-turtley AI record. Deus Vult and all that!
ROME
Whoever I pick here, I'm going to make someone angry. So I'll apologise in advance and say that, one, I know embarrassingly little about most of these leaders, and two, my choice isn't based on history. It's
JFD's Julius Caesar. This is partly because they have been known to perform very admirably in AI games, unlike most of the other Romes, and partly because their icon and colour combination are very classic Rome and get me into that S.P.Q.R. state of mind more than most of them do.
DISTRICT 8 ATHENS
Ugh,
both of these have bad AI records. MC's Athens has the classic colour scheme and is the one probably more familiar to long-time watchers. LastSword's, however, has the more intriguing uniques, including an interesting degree of freedom when researching techs and Civ 6-style cities that aren't coastal but can still build naval units. So
LastSword's Athens it is.
AUSTRIA
Austria is one of my favourite vanilla civs, but unfortunately, its star attraction has to do with city-states, which don't exist here. A nifty UU that's one of the few to fall in the Enlightenment Era seals the deal for me, then - JFD's
Joseph II it is. It's also yellow and black, for all the history nerds frustrated by the constant use of white and red for Austria in everything despite the precedent.
BULGARIA
Six Bulgarias? Seriously? And quite a few of them have badass UA names to boot. One of them even seems to be led by a Harry Potter character. I'll follow the lead of colour schemes, very snowbally-sounding UAs, and endorsements from ExplosiveWatermelon, and pick
Ferdinand I, but this is not a primary I'm sure about my choices in at all.
GREECE
I'm not sure whether or not this primary is going to happen, as one civ is vanilla Greece and the other is an early 20th-century
modern Greece. If it does come to this, though, despite their moderate AI record and very peaceful unique set, I'll be rooting for
Eleftherios Venizelos, purely because a modern and real-life Greek hero makes a nice change sometimes from most of the civs in this region.
HUNGARY
Another primary in which the AI record becomes king for my decision - my Hungarian friend's favourite leader doesn't have a mod, if I recall correctly - and it's driving me towards
Miklos Horthy. The three other Hungaries, which also have less militaristic uniques. The AI record says negative things about three of the civs here, see, and the fourth one is Horthy, who has performed well in Elimi-Nation so far. Another vote for a rather different Mi(c)k to the last one.
ROMANIA
I don't know that much about the Balkans, OK? Please stop throwing primaries at me. Another AI one, then, I guess.
Carol I has been entertaining - sometimes successful, sometimes not, but never
sleepy - in AI games in the past, so I'm leaning towards him. But again, don't take my word as gospel here, especially seeing as DJSHenninger's Mihai Viteazul has the wonderful UA name
The Eagle, Aurochs, and Seven Hills. That's right up there with
One Million Elephants and a White Parasol (that's Laos) for the "Best UA Names Involving Random Animals and Objects" competition.
SERBIA
Another AI-performance process of elimination jobby here. Stefan Dusan (Discord emoji loyalty) and Peter I Karadjordjevic (WWI character loyalty) are both net positives for a Serbia civ imho, but this is another example of a civ being beset with bad AI records. The exception, with no record whatsoever, is
DJSHenninger's Peter, whom I thus reluctantly endorse.
THEBES
I'm backing
LastSword's Thebes here, despite it having the worse colour scheme by some distance. Firebug's uniques, while easier to understand than the competition, are CS-based, and what is more, their performance in Elimi-Nation was decidedly mediocre.
WALLACHIA
The EU4 fans' favourite and home to Dracula, Wallachia has two leaders and three mods to choose from. None of them have a good AI record, other than the mystery Mircea Wallachia with no record, but you can't
not vote for Vlad in Wallachia. So of the two we're left with, I'm going with
DJSHenninger's Vlad, with its unusual light-green-on-black colour scheme and steamrolly UA with the potential to make enemies adjacent to the vampire army
25 percent weaker by the end of the game.
YUGOSLAVIA
I'm voting for
Tito here. It's mainly because I find him to be a more interesting figure than yet another Peter, and because the Non-Aligned Movement is criminally underrated. Don't worry too much about the UA being city-state based, as his UU and UB do not mention them. Seriously though, why would you want a Yugoslavia that
isn't Tito?
DISTRICT 9 LITHUANIA
Before I start this write-up, I would like to thank the people of Lithuania for looking at the countries to their south and west, seeing a veritable sea of Peters and Stephens with numbers after their names, and deciding, no, we're giving our monarchs uniquely Lithuanian-sounding names and not repeating them. Anyway, AI. Gediminas's Lithuania seems to have a consistent record of starting out strong but collapsing, so take from that what you will. Vytautas is a unique sort of civ that benefits from having
no religions (presumably a reference to Lithuania's unusually long history of paganism) and
no city connections. Last but not least is Mindaugas, who doesn't seem to do much with his uniques if he isn't lucky enough to get a religion, so I'm not particularly confident. I think I'll just go with
Gediminas. It's the Lithuania we all know and love by now, and at least it tries hard.
POLAND
Twelve! Twelve Polands! Much of this is thanks to the (elected) monarch of this part of the world, LastSword, who has eight Polands under his belt. I know that a fair few people are taking my lead on Japanese affairs, and, grateful for that as I am, it seems only fair to return the favour for other modders with a clear 'capital' to their mod empire. So that's Pilsudski out, despite his being an interesting and impressive historical figure. It has to be an LS Poland.
Put all eight above the rest - this is a joint endorsement. As for which one to put first, there was an AI Game of Polands ages ago, but the winner... um, wasn't a Poland. The only one recorded as being a dominant power is John III Sobiesko, a vaguely sciencey cavalry civ. The other two I would prioritise are Sigismund III, the sole blue Poland, whose laissez-faire management promoting UA gives literally free happiness when it's being played by an AI, and which also gets stronger ranged attacks from cities; and Stephen Bathory, who inherits vanilla Poland's strong UA and has strong-sounding musketman and zoo replacements.
DISTRICT 10 FINLAND
I loved Top Kek, but especially seeing as I have already endorsed Olof Palme in Sweden, I wonder if it's time to let the other Finland shine.
Mannerheim, hero of the Winter War, makes culture useful in war with unique promotions, and also has a sauna as a UB in true Finnish fashion, which automatically heals all your units trained in a Sauna city every turn. Honestly, even writing this has made me more enthusiastic about Finland, Monty Python/Scandinavia and the World references and all.
RUSSIA (ST PETERSBURG)
Especially if you discount the boring Civ 5/6 leader choices, this primary for me comes down to two choices. Alexander Nevsky can force peace with certain civs by sending three trade routes to them, which could either be very crafty or irritating depending on how the AI uses it. Alternatively, there's Tsar Nicholas II, known to be good with his big carpets and who won a hotly-contested Arctic AI game not too long ago. On balance I'm probably going with
Alexander Nevsky, a more historically successful figure and one that makes a nice change from the normal Russias, but feel free to vote for Tsar Nick, especially if you also want a Soviet Russia in the 11th and are anticipating the rematch of the ages.
DISTRICT 11 KIEVAN RUS'
The famous Kievan Rus' mod, Tomatekh's Yaroslav, has a very mixed AI record and one CS-based unique. The unknown challenger, TarcisioCM's Olga, on the other hand, has a set of nifty uniques based around various kinds of diplomatic deals, and they're more useful in an AI game than that sounds. To be honest, Olga sounds like a better AI bet, but I'm an old modder, and we look out for our own.
Yaroslav was one of Tomatekh's first mods at a time when Lua modding was in its infancy, and I'll be voting for it so we can be reminded - in the words of Emperor Meiji from
The Last Samurai - who we are and where we come from.
USSR
Lenin or Stalin? It's up there with "Mario or Luigi?", "gif or jif?", and "one horse-sized duck or twenty duck-sized horses?". It's a question that's echoed down the ages anywhere with a decent enough communist presence - I say 'decent' because every
proper town has one - and now it has come to CBR. However, the historical version of this question is a much deeper one than the CBR version, as the latter essentially boils down to whether or not you want a repeat of Mk2's USSR, which was Stalin. I don't, particularly; I'd be perfectly happy with more Soviets, but that can be achieved without the full repeat. I'm voting for a combustible
Lenin that burns life's house down.
DISTRICT 13 BYZANTIUM
I said STOP THROWING PRIMARIES AT ME, BALKANS. Weren't you listening? And this one's Rome all over again. The Lacs Long Post from last time recommends DJSHenninger's Basil II, but the AI record seems to lean more towards JFD's Justinian I. There's also DJSHenninger's Justinian I, not just there to make the last two choices more confusing, but also there because its background is
shocking pink, which in my humble opinion is a reason to choose it in itself. Ultimately, though, I'm picking another mod. Although I do like voting for modders in their strongholds, and this is DJSHenninger's, this time I'm going for
EnigmaConundrum's Basil II, as this is the more likely of the two of (CBR fan) EnigmaConundrum's mods to qualify. The other one, after all, is an America.
HITTITES
These Middle Eastern regions are irritating for me, because I know that the region has a shitload of history, but I am equally aware that I don't know much of it at all beyond modern times. The Hittites are a prime example of this. I know that they lived near and interacted with ancient Greeks and Egyptians, and that they left behind a decent amount of archaeology, and that's... it, really. So if you know who Suppiluliuma I or Mursili II are and think one's cooler than the other, vote for them. As for me, if I even vote at all in this primary, I'll vote
Suppiluliuma I, because Mursili crashed and burned in Elimi-Nation.
ISRAEL
Two Israels, hmm, I'll definitely go for... oh phew, they're both the Biblical sort of Israel. David was the one we had in Mk2, and although he'd be welcome to come back, I wonder if Solomon might be worth a look-in here. If you want more Israeli scouts, Mk2-style, then David is the one to pick, and besides it's quite a nice civ to look at imho. I might go
Solomon, though, for his better AI record and not-repeat-ness.
JERUSALEM
Neither has that good an AI record, so I'm going on uniques, not least because even the names of these two are the same but for one having a larger Roman numeral suffix.
Baldwin III it is. Its uniques, with their talk of unique 'crusading orders', are reminiscent of a LastSword civ, odd seeing as the LastSword Jerusalem is the
other one. Anyway, although Baldwin IV has a lovely white and gold colour scheme, its uniques don't really come into play when there aren't any holy cities nearby (so 95% of the time), so I'm going for the more versatile MC option.
LYDIA
The two Lydias don't have much between them. Neither has an AI record, and all three uniques reference the same things, although the CurlySnail version has more interesting specific effects for the bonuses. It's down to modders, then, and although ryanjames deserves credit for being the creator of the Manx, I'm going for
CurlySnail's Lydia, not least because it's clear from the campaigning that he cares about getting his civs in.
OTTOMANS
I feel like I'm going through Death by Mediterranean Primary right now, and the Ottos, with their seven civs to choose from - even
after JFD's Mehmed was removed for being an immediate repeat - aren't helping one bit. Being judgemental about AI history eliminates Mehmed V, Mahmud II, and vanilla, but we're still left with four. I'll pick
Mehmed II (note, do not confuse with Mahmud II) by LastSword, which at least looks like a strong scientific pick, gaining science when building a military and featuring a semi-liberalised observatory UB.
PHOENICIA
We've reached the Land of Purple, however much these interminable Med primaries are reminding me that Pokemon teaches us that purple means poison. Nonetheless, I'm immediately biased against LastSword's Pygmalion due to lack of violet. That leaves us with the two Hirams, neither of which was made by his modder namesake. Sukritact's Phoenicia underperformed in Elimi-Nation, but has a decent AI record in general, and was responsible for a brief if entertaining game of cat and mouse before their demise in the aforementioned game. I'm still going with the apparently "militaristic" AI of
MayorS's Hiram, though, albeit partly because their colour scheme is
double purple. Well, pink on purple. Close enough.
UMAYYADS
Last one in the 13th! This one is fairly close, both of them have mid-tier AI and pleasant enough colour schemes. The uniques, too, aren't too far off from one another in quality, but I'm giving the edge to DJSHenninger's
Al-Walid I, which can make faith output actually useful by passively spawning military units based on said statistic. Put this in the "I don't know really" pile, though. Al-Malik's looks quite fun to play as, at least.
DISTRICT 14 GEORGIA
I don't want Georgia. Like, seriously, I don't want Georgia. Tamar fans feel so entitled sometimes, especially when the competition in this famously diverse part of the world is so fierce. Abkhazia! The Khazar Khaganate! There are so many better options! Therefore, I'm backing
David IV in the primary, mainly to reduce the chances of Georgia winning the general. I encourage anyone else who wants a non-Georgia civ in this district to do the same.
DISTRICT 15 AYYUBIDS
This is another one where I need to search a bit to find excuses to back one civ over another, given that the repeat/not-repeat question is going to loom more over this primary than the actual relative merits of the two Ayyubid civs. Neither has a good AI record. The MC one, which is the one from Mk2, has the nicer colour scheme by some distance (imho), but its uniques are a bit more situational and a bit more dependent on the religion game. Therefore - and this is very much a tentative thing, I know 95% of people will ignore this one way or the other, which sounds OK to me - this is one of the rare times I'll back a repeat, of a civ that we didn't see much of at all in Mk2 at the end of the day.
MC's Saladin it is.
EGYPT (ANCIENT)
Ancient Egypt has perhaps the highest "total history:history Homu knows" ratio of any primary in the game. It sounds fascinating, but I still haven't got around to actually learning much about the details yet, especially seeing as
there's so much of it. Like, thousands of years. Anyway, I'm deferring to someone who knows better here - in this case, our friendly neighbourhood modding expert, TopHatPaladin - and backing
Thutmose, with Djoser a good second. HOWEVER, I know of one effort underway to do a much more comprehensive analysis of this primary, so I might hold back on full-throated endorsements just yet.
EGYPT (PTOLEMAIC)
I'm going with
Cleopatra here, because if we're going Ptolemaic, we might as well go the whole way. Yes, she probably doesn't deserve the amount of attention history has given her, but on the other hand, it's good to have a few familiar faces, and I find Cleo less boring than, say, Peter I. Probably because of the RNG biasing towards Russia the few times I played Civ 6. If you want to vote Ptolemy, I'm not going to try and persuade you otherwise.
DISTRICT 16 CARTHAGE
Seriously, I had to google which Carthage it was that was in Mk2. Turns out it was Hannibal, and I don't feel as warmly towards a Hannibal repeat as I would for Saladin or David. So we're down to Didos. So, for once, I'm going vanilla. I'm endorsing
Firaxis Dido, because JFD's edited UA, despite being further away from Hannibal than the vanilla one is, seems distinctly unfun with its gobbling up sea tiles in a crowded area.
DISTRICT 18 ASHANTI
Another repeat vs not-repeat primary, and the third one of the many primaries of this category in which I'm endorsing the repeat. Although my top choice in this region is not either Ashanti (Sankara! Sankara! Sankaraaaaaaa!), I can't help but smile if I consider a return of the civ's legendary Pikeman, this time in disembarked form. Vote
MC's Osei Tutu for old school gold stool cool.
DISTRICT 19 KANEM BORNU
A lower-mid tier AI and general feeling that Gedemo is underappreciated won't stop me in this case from going with
DMS/MC's Idris Alauma in this humdrum primary. It has a slightly-below-average AI record, but it is one with one breakout included, and although its uniques feel rather unpredictable, that's a
good thing, surely?
NOK
Again, sorry Gedemo, but I'm going with
Ultra's Nok here. I don't know much about the culture, but that's not the point here. Nok is a legend in the modding community, a mod that took so long to come out it became a meme, and then... it actually got released. Let's celebrate that and get it through the primary, shall we? (Not my top choice in the general, but still.) Also, snakes.
NRI
The bombshell here is JFD's Nri UA: civs being unable to declare war on them before the Industrial Era if they share "their" religion. While it's unclear whether that means they have to have founded it or not, that would seriously change the course of the Africa game, especially seeing as they are apparently unlikely to declare wars on their own. Moriboe's doesn't seem militaristic either, despite its UA that sucks population from other civs (again, only in "pre-modern" times), and I feel like taking a bit of a punt on an unusual Africa.
JFD's Nri it is.
DISTRICT 21 ETHIOPIA
If Ethiopia has two carbon atoms in it, what's the rest of it made from? ...Chemistry gags aside, there are five Ethiopias, courtesy of DMS, for whom Addis Ababa appears to be something of a centre of power. Of course, I'm immediately going to rule out the vanilla version, which is also a repeat. Likewise, I don't feel enthusiastic about Menelik II, who inherited the vanilla uniques in the DMS split. DMS's Haile might be worth a look with its updated uniques - including the Makonnen triplane, which I keep misreading as Harkonnen triplane - but I think I'm going with
Zara Yaqob. She's another female leader, with defensive-religious hybrid uniques that sound like they could be as awkward for would-be invaders as Gudit's were against Zimbabwe. Oh, and if you like Indira Gandhi's colour scheme, Zara isn't too far off.
SOMALIA
I'm leaning towards TopHat's
Mohammed Siad Barre in Africa's last primary. To be honest, I don't quite understand some of the uniques of the other Somalia, and although that hasn't stopped me in the past, loyalty to a modder who's helped me out on countless occasions must play a part here, along with an intriguing mixture of naval military, trade, and unique writers, and a rather nice blue colour scheme.
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