One of the small annoyances from the past few AI Survivor seasons was the leader profiles, which I had written for the first competition back in Season One. Although I had tinkered with a few of the profiles around the edges, they had become badly outdated as a group and were ripe for updating to reflect the greater knowledge that the community had gained over time. The driving force behind this concept was Ghostpants, one of the community members who had the idea to update the format for these leader profiles. He came up with the new setup and wrote about 20 of the leader profiles for Season Five while I filled in the remainder. Then the Past Performances section was updated again for Season Eight by Eauxps I. Fourgott who went through all 52 leaders and re-wrote their descriptions to reflect another year of competition. Unfortunately each new season of competition requires updating the leader previews, and this whole section was reworked again for Season Nine by Eauxps and TheOneAndOnlyAtesh. This was a lot of work to put together and major thanks need to be sent to Ghostpants, Eauxps, and Atesh for helping to improve this part of the AI Survivor setup! 
As of Season Eight, the average AI leader has appeared in 13.11 different games (with a range from 9 games up to 18 games) with an average of 20.26 total points scored. It's more accurate to look at the median score of 18 points, however, as the ranking list is somewhat top-heavy with the strongest leaders monopolizing the bulk of the total points. As an example of this, the top 15 leaders have a combined 540 points and the bottom 37 leaders have a combined 533 points. (Things were significantly more lopsided before the top leaders had a rough collective outing in Seasons Five, Six, Seven, and Eight.) There was a separate tier of the top two leaders going into Season Nine, with the pair of Mansa Musa and Huayna Capac notably outpacing the rest of the field. They had 58 and 55 points respectively with Justinian the next-closest at 43 points. The total list of all 52 leader profiles are listed below in alphabetical order as a reference, and each individual game preview will draw from this list as the leaders are filled into the bracket.
Peaceweight: A number from 0-10 that determines a leader's predisposition towards his/her fellow peers. Although there are exceptions, leaders with lower peaceweights tend to be the "tough guy warmongers" while higher peaceweights tend to be more "enlightened" (or "wimpy" depending on who you ask). Think of it as like a bunch of Mean Girl-esque high school cliques that want to absolutely murder each other. You have the jocks like Shaka and Alex, the wannabe jocks like De Gaulle and Pacal, the nerds like Darius and Lizzy, and everything in between signifying more neutral peaceweights – the gospel gang like Justinian and the Burger King, the artsy fartsy types like Pericles and Ramesses, the class clowns like Bismarck and Wang Kon, and so on and so forth. Note that every leader can roll at least +2 above their base peaceweight in any game. This means that PW2 Cathy could roll a peaceweight from 2 to 4 in any given match, and yes, PW10 Gandhi can roll up to PW12.
Plots at Pleased? In Civ4, there are five relationship statuses: "Furious", "Annoyed", "Cautious", "Pleased", and "Friendly". One of the most important diplomatic indicators is a leader's willingness to attack someone they like, or are "Pleased" with. The keyword is "plot", which essentially means the moment an AI chooses a war target. This means that two leaders could in theory become Pleased/Friendly but still end up at war (assuming no Defensive Pacts or bribes) because one leader already decided to attack before improved relations and did not cancel plotting for whatever reason. ALL leaders, including Gandhi, can plot at Cautious or lower, and no leader, not even Monty, can plot at Friendly - even Cathy needs to be bribed to attack when Friendly. Leaders can therefore be grouped into two categories: those that will plot war at "Pleased" relations, and those that will never start a war with leaders who have reached that level of diplomatic favor. This has a very, very big impact on how AI Survivor games play out.
Flavors: A leader's research flavors are a key factor in their chosen tech path. There are seven research flavors in Civ4: Growth, Production, Science, Culture, Gold, Military, and Religion. Every tech in the game has differing "point values" applied to each of these seven categories, and a leader's research flavor serves as a point multiplier that impacts his/her next choice of tech. Naturally, a higher score indicates a higher likelihood to research or beeline certain techs. There are three levels to each flavor: "Secondary" (2x), "Primary" (5x), and "Pure" (a whopping 10x). When trying to make predictions or analyse games, it is advised to put the most weight on "pure" and "primary" research flavors, as investigations have shown that "secondary" flavors do not hold major significance when determining a leader's overall research strategy. With that said, if one has questions about why certain AIs seem so predisposed to gaffes like T0 Archery, ignoring Mysticism or Wheel tech for 100 turns, and researching Combustion before Rifling, their research flavors may provide some critical clues.
Warmonger Respect: This is a rather self-explanatory extra diplomatic modifier that ranges from 0 to 2. WR improves relations between two leaders by the LOWER of the two modifiers. Two leaders with +2 WR (say Alex and Shaka) will automatically gain +2 relations with each other. Augustus (+1 WR) and Ragnar (+2 WR) will only gain +1 with each other. Of course, there will be no increase in relations between a pair of leaders if at least one leader has 0 WR. This is one of the few ways that the violent, militaristic leaders can build diplomatic favor with one another... though almost all of those leaders will also declare war at "Pleased" relations so it tends to be hard for the true warmongers to stay peaceful with anyone for very long.
Base Attitude: This is essentially a measure of how "xenophobic" an AI naturally is. For those who play with the BUFFY/BUG mod, they can see this through the hidden diplomatic modifier "A first impression is a lasting one". This number goes from -1 to +2 (although human players playing at higher levels will see this range from -2 to +1 because above Noble difficulty the human automatically gets a -1 "first impressions" tacked on). You can ALWAYS add +2 to any base relations Gandhi has with any other leader at T0, and you can ALWAYS subtract 1 from any base relations for Tokugawa.
First Impressions: The AI also gets "A first impression is a lasting one" with each other based on peaceweight, warmonger respect, and base attitude. For any given AI X and Y, here is how AI X's "first impression" modifier for AI Y is calculated:
X_PW = X_basePW + (random value from 0 to 3), and X_PW is set to 10 if the previous expression is higher than 10
Y_PW works similarly to X_PW
WR = lower of X_WR and Y_WR
BASE = X base peaceweight
First Impressions = 4 - [absolute value of X_PW - Y_PW] + WR + BASE
This is why for example Gandhi and Genghis Khan will hate each other out of the gate. Assuming base peaceweights, Genghis gives 4 - [10] + 0 - 1, or a WHOPPING -7 FROM TURN 0. Like, Genghis could literally be "Furious" with Gandhi the turn they meet. Yeah. Conversely, here is how Qin feels about Hannibal, assuming base peaceweights: 2 - [0] + 2 + 1 = +5. Hannibal has 0 base, so he starts at +4 with Qin. Hannibal cannot plot at Pleased, and Qin is not super aggressive, so these two have already secured rock solid friendships if they end up in the same field. This is why peaceweight is so, so, so important. You need friends to win in civ, and good luck making friends when you start at -5 and the friends are all +5 with each other.
Culture Traits: If you were wondering why certain leaders are much more predisposed towards culture victories than others, well, most of it has to do with their trait pairing. Of the ten traits, these five are considered "culture" traits:
Financial
Creative
Spiritual
Industrious
Philosophical
There are two other factors that affect culture victory likelihood: the number of Holy Cities controlled and a random value that is determined by map positioning. However, under AI Survivor settings, most importantly Aggressive AI, leaders with two culture traits are FAR more likely to pursue Culture as a victory condition than those with one, and those with zero cultural traits will literally almost never go for Culture. In fact, with Aggressive AI checked, leaders with 0 culture traits are hard-coded to NEVER plan culture victories unless they somehow are able to control ALL SEVEN HOLY CITIES. This is one of many reasons to switch on Aggressive AI - when a CFC forum AI Survivor superfan attempted to run test games under normal AI, he abandoned his experiment after just TWO games after being subjected to a post-Turn 400 Shaka Culture victory.
This is why leaders like Mansa (Financial, Spiritual), Louis (Industrious, Creative), and Gandhi (Philosophical, Spiritual) are always sure bets to go for Culture and why guys like Pacal (Financial, Expansive) and Zara (Creative, Organized) don't seem to switch on the slider nearly as often. Being predisposed towards Culture is hit-or-miss - the three double-culture leaders listed above have had some smashing successes, but they have also had equally low lows, and a big reason for this is that pursuing culture is a risky strategy. Note that when a leader with just one culture trait flips on the slider extremely late (for example Creative Kublai and Financial Victoria) and either throws or nearly throws, chances are that said leader had enough Holy Cities to at least begin considering winning through that avenue, a foolish decision when a spaceship is a few techs away. Keep that in mind when analyzing one-culture trait holders who have the means to net extra Holy Cities either through teching or conquest. Additionally, leaders with the "Theocracy" favorite civic are even less likely to pursue cultural victories, which means you can effectively consider Saladin, Zara, Izzy and Justinian as "zero cultural trait" leaders when it comes to likelihood to switch on the slider.
I hope this overview helps with leader previews and with making predictions! Enjoy the Season Nine AI Survivor previews.
Alexander of the Greeks
Traits: Aggressive, Philosophical (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Fishing, Hunting
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Vassalage
Zealotry: Low to Medium
Past Finishes: Four playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 12 
Overall Power Ranking: 26 points, tied 14th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: While not quite as extreme as some of his compatriots, Alex is still a hardcore warmonger: he has a very high aggression rating of 8.6, a high unit build rating of 8/10, a primary research flavor of Military, is willing to declare war at Pleased, has the lowest possible peaceweight, and will sacrifice units in low-odds combats to achieve his goals. This fighting spirit is his biggest asset, too, as he doesn't enjoy much in the way of inherent advantages; his traits of Aggressive/Philosophical are unremarkable at best for AI Survivor, and he's saddled with the below average Greek civilization with a bottom tier Hunting/Fishing tech pairing and a unique unit in the Phalanx that doesn't do much given the balanced stacks the AI tends to build. Coupled with his militaristic bent, he is frequently slow out of the gate economically, especially if he starts away from the coast, and he's never going to take the time to do much about it. Alex isn't quite as one-note as his fellow warmongers - he's willing to build wonders for instance, and does have a secondary Growth research flavor to complement the Military flavor - but don't be fooled. The only game he knows is one where he tries to conquer the known world just like his real-life counterpart.
Past Performance: Eight seasons in, Alex has been the most successful of the hyper-warmongers to the point of having the highest aggression rating of any seeded leader. It wasn't that way at first, as in the first four seasons he was just another failed warmonger with just an "only leader to not get beat up" second place finish to his name. That all changed in Season Five, though, when circumstances lined up right and he managed a blazing fast Turn 80 conquest of Ethiopia - the earliest kill in AI Survivor history! He rode this to an astounding 4-kill Domination victory in just 253 turns, the greatest tour de force of a snowball that any warmonger has ever put on. Alex then proved he wasn't just a one-hit wonder by scoring a strong second place finish in Season Six and another Domination win from a poor start in Season Seven, catapulting him into the ranks of the seeded leaders where he's managed to stay with the help of a couple of kill steals. On the other hand, when Alex doesn't get the snowball rolling, he tends to not accomplish much of anything; he's been first to die four times, typically in embarrassing fashion (in one case getting run over early by Mansa Musa in Season Three), and had several more pathetic games where he only survived to the end because nobody ever bothered to polish him off - his two Season Eight games fall into this boat. He's probably the most likely seeded leader to fall completely flat on his face... but he's an incredibly dangerous foe who will at the very least drag someone down with him.
Asoka of India
Traits: Spiritual, Organized (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Mining, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Religion, Secondary Science
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Free Religion
Zealotry: Medium to High
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, two playoff round eliminations, two wildcard eliminations, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 2
Overall Power Ranking: 16 points, tied 30th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Asoka (pronounced with an ‘sh' sound, not an ‘s' sound - i.e. not like the Star Wars character) is one of the game's less distinguished cultural leaders. As one of the two Indian leaders, he does get the always-useful Fast Worker as his unique unit, although his starting techs of Mining/Mysticism aren't the greatest and have led to growth issues in the past. He also gets the Spiritual/Organized trait pairing, which is a big problem as although his playstyle is best suited to a Cultural win condition, he only has one cultural trait which makes him far less likely to actually try to win by Culture - a defect that literally cost him a victory in his AI Survivor debut. Asoka will usually seek to form a religious bloc as he likes to use the starting Mysticism tech to found Buddhism out of the gate, gives a high diplomatic bonus for shared religion, and won't attack his allies who have attained Pleased status. However, with a favorite civic of Free Religion, he'll also happily abandon those bonds later in the game. Beyond that he plays a builder's game, with a high wonder build rating but low unit build rating, and Religion and Science as his tech flavors. He's not as extreme as some, with a 3.7 aggression rating, but nonetheless he generally prefers to sit back and pursue an economic victory condition in peace.
Past Performance: Asoka has a pretty spotty track record across the competition's history. He's had one truly successful season, Season Five, where he picked up both of his career wins - the first in a largely friendly field where he never came under serious threat and the second in a hostile field that somehow never attacked him - and was less than 50 turns away from becoming Champion via culture when he finally collapsed in the face of multiple attacks. Beyond that, he's collected a couple of runner-up finishes from friendly fields and otherwise come up empty. Earlier in his career, he could at least use the excuse of military pressure, as he often faced multiple attacks and eventually crumpled under the pressure despite a valiant effort. Lately, however, he's simply given underwhelming performances, like in his Season Six opener where he failed to settle more than five cities, or the Season Eight Wildcard where he was ravaged by barbarians and food woes, founded just three cities, and failed to grow them past size two. With a mere two kills across eight seasons, he's also proven to not be much of a threat on the battlefield. While his potential for an early religion and ability to defend himself makes him more viable than some builder AIs, by now it seems clear that his insufficient trait combination for culturing renders his ceiling too low to be a noteworthy leader in these contests.
Augustus Caesar of Rome
Traits: Industrious, Imperialistic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Mining, Fishing
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Production, Secondary Military
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Representation
Zealotry: Low
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 22 points, 22nd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Augustus is a pretty middle-of-the-road AI, albeit one who loves wonders (8/10 wonder rating), which can sometimes get him into trouble. On the other hand, he does have the Industrious trait to help with his wonder-building alongside Imperialistic to quickly settle the map when he puts his mind to it. While Augustus isn't particularly focused on economy, with Production/Military tech flavors and moderate unit build and aggression ratings of 4.6 and 4, he does fall under the peaceniks' camp with a high peaceweight and refusal to declare war at Pleased. He has two secret weapons that make him more viable than usual in low-peaceweight fields, though: a hidden "warmonger respect" rating of 1 that has sometimes helped him maintain cordial relations with the wolves of the world, and Praetorians. The mighty Roman unique unit can be one of the most impactful in the entire competition, and has probably made the difference between mediocrity and the playoffs for Augustus multiple times by now. Taken as a whole, Augustus's package does seem to be stretched in too many directions, but it is one that lacks any glaring Achilles' heels and can take advantage of a favorable start - especially if it lines up with his heavily situational Fishing/Mining starting techs.
Past Performance: Let's just say that Augustus followed his contemporary Horace's advice of "carpe diem" to the letter, as all of his best games have seen him take full advantage of good starting positions. Whether it's a capital location that works particularly well with his starting techs, or a scenario where he can put his Praetorians to good use, or just a nice isolated position where he can expand to a big size while building all the wonders at his leisure, when an opportunity is there Augustus usually seizes it. His latest season was his best yet, as he leveraged two strong capital locations to dominant wins, then amidst a formidable economic Championship field scored the game's only conquest en route to a strong fourth place finish that came closer than expected to a Diplomatic win. He's also proven capable on the battlefield despite his low kill count, having a fair share of kills sniped from him after he did most of the work. On the other hand, when he's not putting up a top-two worthy performance, he's generally not doing anything of real interest; he's been involved in a couple of cases of trolling where a warmonger was body-blocked by closed borders from finishing off their defeated opponent, but that's about it. Pay special attention to his starting location when assessing Augustus's prospects; he has real potential if it's good and situated in a corner, but if it isn't, he's probably going to be stuck playing a mediocre builder's game.
Bismarck of Germany
Traits: Expansive, Industrious (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Pure Military
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Nationhood
Zealotry: Low
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 10
Total Medals: 1 First Place
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 40th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Bismarck is an aggressively average AI save for one quirk: he has a pure Military tech flavor, causing him to put maximal priority on the latest and greatest weapons. The rest of his package isn't especially militaristic, or anything else, though; he only has an average unit build rating (and is just as likely to go after wonders), an average aggression rating, cares an average amount about religion, likes espionage an average amount... you get the drift. He's even in the middle of the peaceweight scale; tack on a warmonger respect rating of 1 and he is one of those "true neutrals" who can align with (or fail to get along with) any faction. His bonuses are nothing exciting either, with Industrious and Expansive a nice human pairing but extremely middle-of-the-road (see the theme?) for the AI; his unique unit, the Panzer, being theoretically useful as they are very good at killing non-Panzer tanks, but typically appearing too late in the game to have much of an impact; and the rather mediocre Hunting/Mining tech combo. Without any other focus, Bismarck's best bet for success in the competition is to go on the warpath, and he is at least willing to declare war at Pleased relations, keeping that door more open than it would be otherwise. Still, he is generally regarded as more of a troll than an actual warmonger, having garnered himself the nickname "Clownmark" through his bizarre and aimless playing.
Past Performance: Bismarck is one of the competition's one-hit wonders, winning a single crushing Domination victory from a fantastic starting position in Season Six and otherwise accomplishing nothing save for a smattering of random kills. Additionally, he has had a number of comical follies over the years, most recently throwing away a playoff spot by attacking a runaway Justinian for no reason. One particularly embarrassing opening in Season Five spawned the "Bismarck gambit" trademark of completely ignoring The Wheel and never being able to connect his resources or cities. He's had a few promising starts where things ended up swinging against him - especially on the diplomatic front, where he's never quite fit in with the true warmongers - but just as many games where he was never that important, and his First To Die rate is embarrassingly high for a neutral militaristic leader. His results paint him as a "lite" version of your standard hyperwarmonger, with less mindless aggression but the same general pattern of usually either steamrolling the world, or else not getting much of anything done. Although who knows - some Alternate Histories have suggested that he may be more competent than we think...
Boudica of the Celts
Traits: Aggressive, Charismatic (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Universal Suffrage
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: Three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 12
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 9
Overall Power Ranking: 18 points, tied 26th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: If you start at the top of the aggression scale and work your way down, Boudica is the first leader you'll come to that doesn't embody mindless aggression quite so much and could conceivably play nice with others. This is mainly because she has a less-extreme peaceweight and will not declare wars at Pleased. Other than that, though, she certainly fits the bill of a warmonger: while her unit build rating is average at only 6, she has a very high aggression rating of 8.8, will throw a lot of units at her foes regardless of odds, has a primary tech flavor of Military, and has one of the most combat-oriented trait combos in the game with Aggressive and Charismatic - one that is so tilted for offensive warfare that some players consider Boudica to be an above average human-played leader despite her distinct lack of economic tools. If you get on her bad side, she will sic a ton of highly-promoted units at you. While a secondary tech flavor of Growth suggests a somewhat more economically-adept warmonger, what tends to matter more is her crummy Celtic civilization: her starting techs of Mysticism and Hunting offer her little economic benefit beyond guaranteed culture (especially since she's not especially likely to go after one of the first faiths), and her unique items - the Gallic Warrior (swordsman) and Dun (walls) - pull her to beeline techs at the bottom of the tree that stunt her early game even more. As a result, Boudica is likely to start behind the economic curve and will have to rely on finding a soft enough war target to rebound and get back in the game.
Past Performance: Boudica appeared to be one of the strongest fighters in AI Survivor's early days, but it's very likely that she benefitted greatly from Deity starting techs and favorable starting positions. Since the Season Four removal of the extra Deity techs, she's just been another blah warmonger. Boudica's slow-starting package paired with an unhealthy number of ill-chosen wars has gotten her into a lot of trouble, and while she's still managed to secure multiple kills over the years, a very distant second place is the best finish she has mustered in the modern Survivor era. While she did come tantalizingly close to victory in her Season Seven Wildcard game before being brought down by a particularly devastating backstab, her most recent appearance brought her crashing back down and really exposed her weaknesses as a competitor: saddled with commerce-poor land, she crashed her economy right out of the gate and was consigned to also-ran status by the end of the landgrab. It's clear by now that unless she rolls a starting position that can accelerate her early game, and chooses her wars wisely, Boudica is going to struggle to make a lot of noise.
Brennus of the Celts
Traits: Spiritual, Charismatic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Religion
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Organized Religion
Zealotry: Extreme
Past Finishes: Three playoff round eliminations, two wildcard eliminations, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 7
Overall Power Ranking: 16 points, tied 30th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Brennus is one of several leaders with the "religious warmonger" personality type, but he's a far cry from the cream of that crop. A big part of this is a particularly bad early-game setup that will often slow his initial development: Brennus has the poor economic starting tech duo of Hunting/Mysticism, he has Military and Religion research flavors that cause him to prioritize archers and holy cities above worker improvements, and he has two unique items that make him prioritize Masonry and Iron Working over Pottery and Agriculture. Once he gets past that, there isn't anything really special about his personality that gives him an edge. He is a strong religious bloc member who gives large shared faith bonuses and refuses to plan wars at Pleased relations, but his rock-bottom peaceweight (not helped by a further -1 "first impression" demerit) still threatens to crack apart any religious alliance with the wrong leaders. He's aggressive and builds units, but not excessively so (7/10 and 6/10 ratings, respectively), and while he is willing to press low-odds attacks more than some, there otherwise isn't anything very notable about his personality. His traits of Spiritual and Charismatic also aren't anything to write home about; basically, this guy fights and cares about religion, but also can be a very slow starter, and it always seems like he's too passive when he should take some initiative and too aggressive when he needs to show restraint.
Past Performance: Brennus has a thoroughly mediocre track record in the competition, despite having regularly drawn friendly fields of low peaceweight competitors to play with. The latter factor and his not-too-aggressive personality in particular have helped him be a good survivor, having only died in 5/14 games played, but those survivals haven't translated into any real accomplishments. There's a lot of third and fifth and distant second-place finishes on his record, and he has largely been forgettable from both an accomplishment and an entertainment standpoint. Brennus finally had his day in the sun in the most recent season, where after an admittedly impressive recovery from a poor start in a hostile field to get another chance, he took advantage of a commerce-heavy starting position in a highly militaristic field to win a commanding Wildcard victory. Sadly, he followed that up with perhaps his worst performance ever, where he was back to his typical slow-starting ways, recorded his first First to Die result, and was a troll kill snipe away from laying an egg in the Alternate Histories. This made it immediately clear that instead of someone we've been underestimating all these years, he's just a mediocre leader who got lucky once, and barring a similarly good start, he should be expected to be a scrappy but ultimately unsuccessful competitor.
Catherine of Russia
Traits: Creative, Imperialistic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Culture, Secondary Military
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 7
Overall Power Ranking: 24 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Catherine has arguably the best traits for rapid expansion in the game, with Imperialistic for building settlers quickly, and Creative for foolproof settling. She also gets the powerful Cossack alongside the too-late-to-matter Research Institute with the Russian civ. Lastly, Catherine gets the mediocre Hunting/Mining combination, meaning she has to research a few techs before she can get her food resources up and running. Catherine is one of the more unique personalities in the game, with traits perfectly suited to her boisterous style of settling in everyone's faces and then deciding to murder them on a whim. In particular, she is the only AI leader in the game who can be bribed to join a war against someone she is "Friendly" with! Her aggression rating is quite a bit lower than one might think (6.7/10), although perhaps it had to be that way so that she wouldn't just be a female Shaka. Other than that most of her numbers are fairly average, including unit (4/10) and wonder build (6/10) ratings. She also has a fairly unusual flavour combination, being inclined towards Culture and Military, and that in combination with her Creative trait has helped her avoid common warmonger pitfalls. Catherine is one of the most likely AIs to claim a large portion of the map peacefully, and her moderate aggression rating means she can sometimes get the snowball rolling, but if she falls behind she usually makes too many enemies to get away with it.
Past Performance: Cathy is a fan favorite who's repeatedly been a major player in her games. She's won with very strong performances in three different openers, and she's still important when things don't go her way. A perfect example is her appearance in the Season Six Championship, where she was the score leader after the landgrab and primed to be a top competitor for the title, only to get attacked on the exact same turn that she launched her own war, get trapped in a 2v1, and eventually become the first eliminated. Unfortunately, last season was her least remarkable one, as she barely clung to a Wildcard spot from a horrible Opening round starting position, before aligning herself with the wrong religious faction in her Wildcard game to become First To Die. It does seem like Cathy's more likely than some of the other low peaceweights to get trapped in too many fights at once, resulting in her spotty record - perhaps that's her feisty AI personality coming into play. Regardless, it's rare indeed to see her completely falter and be a non-entity, for her premier landgrab traits almost always result in her being one of the strongest leaders after the early game, and she's fun to watch and root for.
Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire
Traits: Protective, Imperialistic (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Religion
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Vassalage
Zealotry: Extreme
Past Finishes: Season Four Champion, one Championship loss, one playoff round elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 4 Second Places
Total Kills: 8
Overall Power Ranking: 26 points, 11th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Charlemagne (aka The Burger King) gets one fantastic (Imperialistic) and one poor (Protective) trait. It's a similar story for his uniques, with the amazing Rathaus and the horrible Landsknecht (which at CivFanatics has been referred to as the "Landcrap"). Unfortunately, his civ is dragged to bottom tier with the horrid Hunting/Mysticism starting tech combo, which, in combination with being a Protective leader, is the reason why he is widely regarded as the weakest leader in the game for human players when not playing Unrestricted Leaders. At least he can found a religion straight away because as an AI Charlemagne is a pretty good template of your typical zealot. He gets military and religious flavours, like the rest of his bunch. He has a higher than average aggression rating (7/10) and a neutral peace weight of 6, so his diplomacy tends to fall along the religious lines. His unit build preference (6/10) is slightly above average, while his wonder build preference (3/10) is below average. Other than that, Charlemagne has average numbers in basically every other category, and he's actually a fairly bland AI, even though he can be a tough nut to crack and scary if he gets going.
Past Performance: Charlemagne is the controversial champion of Season Four, where he secured two straight game wins in the same fashion: watching the game leader throw away the victory on a distant Cultural attempt, allowing him to crawl to a "tortoise and the hare" Spaceship victory (and the entire season title) from an otherwise second-place position. Whether this is funny or frustrating depends on the viewer. Charlemagne then went on to secure a long-term position as a seeded leader by returning to the Season Five Championship off a pair of actual second-place finishes. His other notable achievement is blowing what should have been an easy Space victory in his Season Three opener, coming in second place instead due to forgetting to add an engine to his spaceship. Otherwise, Charlie has generally struggled with slow starts before getting hounded by early wars into early eliminations - in fact he came in dead last place in the previous season. Overall, he's established himself as a decent second tier kind of leader in the right circumstances, but is perhaps the least likely of the former champions to repeat his feat because his horrific traits and Holy Roman civ too often leave him behind the eight ball in the early game.
Churchill of England
Traits: Protective, Charismatic (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Gold
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Nationhood
Zealotry: Low to Medium
Past Finishes: Season Six runner-up, two additional Championship losses, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 15
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 5 Second Places
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 25 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Churchill has arguably the second-worst trait pairing in the game, with the below-average Charismatic and the terrible Protective. The English civilization with its high potential starting techs and strong uniques help compensate, especially since Protective and Charismatic can combine to make some pretty scary Redcoats. Churchill is unique in the sense that he has a low score in basically every category. He doesn't build a lot of wonders (2/10) or units (4/10) and he has a pretty low aggression rating (4.3/10) too. In fact, the only thing this guy really cares about is espionage (7/10); that's literally the only number above a 5/10 in his personality. He also has a neutral peace weight, so Churchill is fair game to fight the good or evil leaders. Lastly, his flavours are Military and Gold. It all makes for an uninteresting personality that's more likely to brood in a corner than anything else.
Past Performance: For the longest time Churchill was a nobody with zero accomplishments to his name. However, he has gone on an absolute tear over the past few seasons, so much so that he is now a seeded leader. He first turned heads in the Season Six opener with a shocking upset against a hostile low-peaceweight field thanks to a setup that was perfect for his favored strategy of "turtle up with his defensive traits then run over the map with Cha/Pro Redcoats". He would eventually sneak into the Championship game, where he claimed two scalps en route to a season silver medal. He then cemented his "scrappy high peaceweight" status by quietly returning to the Season Seven Championship off a pair of second place finishes. However, he found his way back into the win column in the most recent season; following a lucky Opening Round second place finish, he grinded out a playoff victory against a weak playoff field (despite nearly messing up by forgetting to bring siege units in the era of castles) to qualify for a third championship in a row! To be fair, it took him five seasons of failure to reach this point, alternate histories have indicated that some of these results were rather unlikely, and Churchill's incredibly slow starts have proven to be his Achilles heel. However, he's quite dangerous once he unlocks his Redcoats, and over the past few seasons has established himself as a sort of higher peaceweight Mao.
Cyrus of Persia
Traits: Imperialistic, Charismatic (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Hunting
Peace Weight: 3
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Vassalage
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: Season 2 runner-up, one additional Championship loss, one playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 6 Second Places
Total Kills: 10
Overall Power Ranking: 27 points, 13th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Cyrus has Charismatic and Imperialistic for his traits, a high synergy combination both for warfare and expansion. While he has very good starting techs with Agriculture and Hunting to help him quickly improve basically any food resource he has, his uniques are bottom-tier for AI Survivor due to Immortals; while most AI cannot plot war until they unlock metal units, the Persian leaders can plan disastrously early wars with just strength four Immortals. This is due to the AI needing at least two unit flags to plot: while regular Chariots only have the "mounted" flag, Immortals have both "mounted" and "anti-archer", giving their wielder enough to be coded to plot wars. This is especially a trap for Cyrus as he has a pretty high aggression rating (7/10) and builds a fair number of units (6/10). Interestingly enough, he loves wonders (8/10), cares an average amount about religion (big bonus for sharing, small malus for difference), and his flavours are Military and Growth. It creates the image of another one of the snowball leaders, and Cyrus' game plan seems to be building a lot of cities with Imperialistic, getting them tall with Charismatic and his Growth flavour, and then crushing a neighbour or two once he has an advantage in food and production (and hopefully stronger units than Immortals).
Past Performance: Cyrus's AI Survivor career got off to a promising start, as he followed up a Season One playoff appearance with a breakout Season Two, outputting three strong games and falling just seven turns short of being the champion! Since then, he's had a much rougher go at it, failing to make it out of the Opening Round in four of the past six seasons. He rediscovered some of his spark in Season Six, his best season in years where he returned to the Championship off a pair of second place finishes, but he finished the final game in a distant third. Most recently, he bungled what should have been an easy Season Eight opening round victory with a poorly thought out Immortal rush of Julius Caesar and then was a complete no-show in his Wildcard Game. His struggles have shone a light on two significant flaws: 1) he's a warmonger with not particularly great economic tools who cannot plot at Pleased, and 2) he can plot with four-strength Immortals, which are terrible units to rush with in Survivor games. Don't be fooled by his rocky history or the solitary win, though - while he's had a tough time finding lasting success, Cyrus is almost always a major player in his games. No one will be surprised if he undergoes a renaissance.
Darius of Persia
Traits: Financial, Organized (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Hunting
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Free Religion
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: Two Championship losses, two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 16
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 8
Overall Power Ranking: 29 points, 11th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Darius has arguably the best pure economic traits in the game in Financial and Organized, two traits that provide both economic tempo and lategame scaling. While he's stuck with the poison pill Immortal and weak Apothecary, he also gets fantastic starting techs in Agriculture and Hunting, allowing him to improve his food resources quickly. He has Gold and Growth flavours, which means Darius should almost always be able to construct a good economy. He loves building wonders (8/10), and unlike many of the other peaceful leaders, he builds enough units to defend himself too (6/10). That's lucky, because he also has a high peace weight of 8, and will often be a target for attack from the more aggressive leaders. Lastly, Darius himself isn't necessarily going to build in peace, as he actually has an average aggression rating (5.2/10) and will claim more land by the sword if necessary. On paper, Darius probably has one of the best setups in the game; he's a peaceful leader with amazing economic traits, but he's also willing to defend himself and fight for more land.
Past Performance: Darius has been one of the most frustrating and disappointing leaders in AI Survivor. It's common to see him given a decent or even great starting position, only for him to completely forget to expand, fall flat, and get outscaled. Indeed, he often gets tied up on early wonder builds and can be prone to ignoring other sources of culture, leaving him with a pathetically small empire struggling to establish its borders after the crucial first 50 turns. At the same time, though, Darius is a seeded leader because one would have to try in order to fail with his package; his economic setup is legitimately great and allows him to be a dangerous techer even when playing from behind. Darius has had two really successful seasons, Four and Seven, which followed similar trajectories: he played strong games to get out to winning positions in his first two outings (while throwing away one of those wins in Season Four), only to get ganged up on a hostile Championship for an early exit. On the other hand, Seasons Six and Eight showed him at his worst, where he was blessed with excellent starting positions and diplomatic fields but just stagnated. Outings like these have made him fairly unpopular in the community, and the general consensus is that no leader is more undeserving of the Financial trait than Darius. Nevertheless, his traits are so good that you cannot count him out ever, and no one will be surprised if/when he continues to be a wrecking ball in prediction contests.
De Gaulle of France
Traits: Industrious, Charismatic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Production, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Nationhood
Zealotry: Low
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 11
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 12 points, tied 36th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Both De Gaulle and the political entity he represents (post World War 2 France) were rather polarizing during Civ4's development and that is evident in his joke AI personality that is given a "demonic evil" peaceweight of 0. His trait combination of Charismatic and Industrious is underwhelming for AI Survivor purposes, lacking synergy outside of the occasional Stonehenge build which is not particularly likely due to his 2/10 wonder emphasis. De Gaulle does get to take advantage of France's excellent starting techs and solid Musketeer unique unit but that's about all he has working in his favor. Moreover, he displays obnoxious behavior towards his peers, being one of the biggest backstabbers in the game whilst being unable to get along with anyone save for the most vicious warmongers, but he's also a complete coward - another relic of the questionable stereotypes that seep into his design - and if he does not have any easy ways to grow strong he usually just sits there doing nothing and going irrelevant. It's a confusing and incoherent AI personality which not only lacks the requisite ruthlessness needed to be a true conqueror but also displays average-at-best economic skills.
Past Performance: "De Lol" has a pretty unremarkable track record and is rarely one of the more interesting figures in his matches. He was infamous for his terrible ranking in the competition's early days thanks to suffering very early exits in the first two seasons, but since then his performance hasn't been notably bad - just mediocre, such that two or three other leaders are usually doing better in any given game. He had a single strong performance in an ideal setup leading to a win in his Season Three opener, but his subsequent outings have proven that this was simply the game where everything lined up right, and his only other playoff appearance in Season Six was of the "last on the lunch menu" variety. In all fairness, he has looked a little better in some Alternate Histories and has been cursed with poor starting positions and diplomatic fields - his ultra-low peaceweight has generally proven to be a major liability. However, with no particular strength or strategy he likes to follow, De Gaulle is unlikely to play a notable role in most games.
Elizabeth of England
Traits: Financial, Philosophical (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Culture
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Free Religion
Zealotry: Low to Medium
Past Finishes: Season 8 Champion, One Championship loss, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 12
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 20 points, tied 23rd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Elizabeth is an easy AI personality to understand, a pacifistic economic leader who will always seek out some kind of non-military victory condition. Elizabeth has one of the best pure teching trait combos in Financial/Philosophical, and while it's true that there's some anti-synergy there between running cottages and running specialists, there's little doubt that this setup will output a lot of beakers and Lizzy is the rare leader who can utilize Philosophical competently. Moreover, it gives her the magical double-culture pairing that establishes an immediate ticking clock in any game she is in. Her biggest weakness comes in her almost total lack of anything that helps with the first 100 turns, a major reason why she is not considered a top-tier leader in human hands. However, if Elizabeth survives the early game and ends up with a solid portion of the map under her control, she's one of the toughest leaders in the game to stop, especially since she has Redcoats to establish herself militarily and prevent her from attempting Willem gambits. She has struggled in AI Survivor precisely because this happens so rarely, as Elizabeth has an exceedingly low aggression rating (1.9/10) and a low build unit preference (2/10). Surprisingly, she will indeed plot war at "Pleased" relations, but in most games you're more likely to see someone else invading England as the Virgin Queen ignores military to her detriment. In summary, Elizabeth performs far better in games with other high peace weight leaders where she's left alone to build in peace. She's a far better version of Frederick and a weaker version of Mansa Musa.
Past Performance: Elizabeth looked like a formidable leader in Season One, riding a wave of near-victories to the Championship. She was still credible for the next couple of seasons as well, starting strong in Season Two only to lose to a two-front war, then losing a heartbreaker in Season Three when Julius Caesar conquered one of her big three Cultural cities when she was a mere five turns away from winning. For the longest time, that tragedy seemed to shatter Lizzy's spirit, and she ran into a multi-season long dry spell where she was frequently saddled with garbage land, hostile diplomatic fields, and pure rotten luck (like in Season Seven where she lost a major city to the barbarians in a low-odds combat roll). By Season Eight, she had rolled yet another crappy start amidst a field of warmongers and was written off as an afterthought... only to shock the community with a masterfully played Opening Round upset. In her subsequent playoff game, her SPACESHIP effectively tied with MANSA MUSA'S CULTURE (seriously, that's insanely impressive)... and then she EMERGED VICTORIOUS IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME to become the first female AI Survivor champion. Mrs. Sullla's namesake has by and large proven to be one of the best pure techers in Civ 4, but at the same time her expansion and fighting can leave much to be desired, making her into a classic boom-or-bust economic leader. As her defending champ status shows, she booms pretty hard.
Frederick of Germany
Traits: Philosophical, Organized (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Pure Production
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Universal Suffrage
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 11
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 40th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Frederick is yet another peaceful AI leader, albeit one lacking most of the tools necessary for that to be effective. His trait pairing of Philosophical and Organized, while excellent for a human, is lackluster for the AI because they don't know how to use the Philosophical trait and Deity bonuses (maintenance and building cost) greatly mute the effects of Organized. There's nothing here to help Frederick get off to a fast start and also little scaling. The Hunting/Mining combo is mediocre, and Germany's uniques are not only too late to matter but a terrible poison pill for Frederick and his pure Production tech flavor that can lead him to insane Rifling-avoidant beelines (I've seen the guy beeline Panzers, only to forget to tech Rifling and be unable to build Panzers) and undergo major Factory starvation. Frederick's AI ratings are generally average across the board, with scores of 4/10 in seemingly every category. He has a high peace weight, he doesn't train a lot of units (2/10), and he doesn't start many wars (4/10 aggression rating). He's generally a pretty boring AI overall, trying to pull off one of those pacifistic "sit in the corner and tech to a victory" strategies but with neither the traits, research priorities, nor civ choice to pull it off.
Past Performance: As it turns out, "hope to not get attacked and win a Turn 375 Spaceship victory after choking all my citizens to death with smog" is not a winning strategy. Frederick has the double whammy of being both incompetent and dull, scoring all of his points in merely two games while accomplishing nothing else in his other appearances. Occasionally he can be a decent meatshield, but that's all he's been good for. Even his two best games haven't been very impressive, both seeing him make gains in a single war but doing nothing else of note; he barely won a Turn 400 spaceship victory in one game, and then somehow lost to a Cultural victory from Sitting Bull of all leaders despite being a tech runaway with half the map under his control. Speaking of which, he advanced with the Sioux chief in both games and they're the only two games in which either leader has ever tasted success. As for his other games, he has suffered from some legitimately hopeless starts, being in central positions surrounded by enemies, but he's also had several serviceable starts that he simply failed to do anything with. To highlight two especially bad outings: in Season Seven, he completely tanked his economy with just five cities and rendered himself a dead man walking without any outside intervention, while his Season Eight playoff appearance saw him squander a triple gold start with multiple conquest opportunities, somehow still have a shot at advancing, only to blow a Championship spot through his patented Industrial starvation spurred on by his obsession with production at the expense of literally everything else. As it turns out, playing like Darius, fighting like Gandhi, and teching like Stalin will rarely if ever be a recipe for success.
Gandhi of India
Traits: Spiritual, Philosophical (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Mining, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 10
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Pure Culture
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +2
Favorite Civic: Universal Suffrage
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: Season 8 Runner Up, Five playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, one opening round elimination
Total Games Played: 16
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 4 Second Places
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 32 points, 10th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Gandhi is without a doubt one of the most unique leaders in Civ4. He gets to utilize the excellent Fast Worker and Mausoleum, although considering his extreme pacifism the Mausoleum is not as useful. His starting techs are Mysticism and Mining, a weak pair useful for pursuing an early religion and not much else; like many religious leaders, Gandhi often takes a long time to improve his tiles and connect his resources despite his Fast Workers. Furthermore, he gets the Spiritual/Philosophical pairing, which nets him a ton of important half-cost cultural buildings, speeds up his Great Artists, and, crucially, grants him two cultural traits. Lucky him, because Gandhi spends the entire game laser-focused on one thing: CULTURE. With his pure Culture research strategy, he pursues religions like a man possessed and puts his production bonuses and traits to extremely effective use. Gandhi is truly a hyper-pacifist who entirely neglects his military and prays it won't come back to bite him in the rear, with zeros for both aggression and built units. Surprisingly, Gandhi is also quite unlikely to build wonders (2/10), and there is a possibility that this has helped him as he has proven more adept than other peaceniks at defending himself despite his ultra-low militarism. He is a prime example of why AI Survivor disables vassals; in pre-Sullla attempts to run AI tournaments, Gandhi won literally every championship because he would constantly vassal (or be vassaled) and then be left completely unbothered to win a cultural victory. Without a powerful benefactor to hide behind, Gandhi is probably the most feast-or-famine type leader in real AI Survivor. If he is not attacked by his neighbours, he can rush out a cultural victory like nobody's business, but he can collapse very quickly if attacked, and with a peaceweight of 10 he is prone to getting attacked a lot. An early war declaration from a neighbor can ruin any chance of a Gandhi victory on the spot.
Past Performance: Gandhi has long enjoyed a position as a seeded leader thanks to consistent success in the opening round, having made the playoffs in 75% of all seasons (including a consecutive four season streak!). In fact, his only career opening round elimination took place in the inaugural season in a game in which he was a marked man the moment his opponents were selected. His wins followed similar patterns: he was allowed to culture in peace for long periods of time until the machine became unstoppable. On the other hand, things haven't been so rosy in the playoffs, where he routinely finds himself up against fields full of warmongers who freakin' hate his guts merely for existing. He finally threw the playoff monkey off his back once he got a workable playoff field in the Season Eight builder bonanza, but even then his land was bad and his Championship qualification was insanely lucky, requiring tactical and strategic blunders from almost all his rivals in order to secure his first shot at a trophy. At least he gave it his best shot with a legendary Championship performance where he not only nearly won, but also morphed into Nuclear Gandhi at the end of the game. With that said, it is tough to determine his true skill level, as he has proven a tad fraudulent in some Alternate Histories, his non-Championship games last season were pretty mediocre despite his scoring finishes, and he seems to have an inner Wang Kon streak as seen in a Season Seven opener that saw him throw away an easy victory by inexplicably attacking and crippling his religious ally early in the game. But while he might not be quite the unstoppable juggernaut that his opening round stats suggest, he clearly has something figured out, and he is easily the most likely non-Mansa leader to win if left untouched. That is a big if: as we saw in last season's Championship game, it's hard to make friends with a peaceweight of 10, especially when, to paraphrase Amicalola, he becomes the "least mostly good leader" in the field.
Genghis Khan Temujin of the Mongols
Traits: Aggressive, Imperialistic (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Hunting, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Pure Military
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Police State
Zealotry: Low
Past Finishes: Two wildcard eliminations, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 10
Total Medals: 0 First Places, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 6 points, tied 48th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Temujin is a comically over-aggressive leader who routinely self-destructs with ill-advised military ventures and overexpansion. His Imperialistic trait is good for expansion but the pairing with Aggressive carries no economic benefits at all, leaving Temujin to crash his economy in game after game. The Mongolian civ is a good fighting civ with Keshik and Ger unique items, and we have seen Temujin's grandson put them to good use, but the O.G. Khan himself is undercut by his obsession with all things involving war. He has an exceedingly high aggression rating (9.5/10), he builds tons of units (8/10), and he has the lowest peace weight in the game. Temujin only has a single flavor for his tech research, Military, and he'll go to great lengths to beeline Military Science for his grenadiers while still lacking Aesthetics. His uber-militaristic bent routinely causes him to fall behind in tech, flame out, and lose to more advanced neighbors in the later stages of every match. Things would be even more dire if this guy did not have The Wheel as a starting tech! This is not a complicated leader to understand: Temujin is going to attack his neighbors early and often, and either reinvent the Great Mongol Terror or become a footnote in history.
Past Performance: Genghis has had really lackluster results even by the standards of the crazies, being one of two leaders to have never made the playoffs. He frequently ends up as a runt civ, failing to develop well enough to become a serious power, fighting and fighting but accomplishing little, and eventually getting overrun or simply forgotten. He has had a couple of more successful outings, though: in both Seasons Five and Six, he successfully got the snowball of conquest rolling in his opener and became a major world power in a clear top-two position... only to throw it all away in a lategame attack against a technologically superior foe, as he never did get around to building a good economy. Genghis does at least have a respectable kill count, better than some of his aggressive peers, and alternate histories have proven that he absolutely has the ability to win a game if things go right. But it will be tough to know when things do go right, especially after he proved to be so ineffective in a promising-looking Season Eight setup.
Gilgamesh of Sumeria
Traits: Creative, Protective (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Culture
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
Zealotry: Medium to High
Past Finishes: Season 5 runner up, one additional Championship loss, one playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 16
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 14
Overall Power Ranking: 35 points, 7th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Gilgamesh is a highly aggressive warmonger who finds himself bizarrely paired with defensive leader traits and an economic civilization. His trait combination of Creative + Protective is an odd grouping, but it does grant him the best early game defense of any leader. The Sumerian civilization is quite a bit better, with excellent starting techs and a useful building in the Ziggurat. The Vulture is easily the weakest part of the civ as despite its higher strength, it is not much better (and sometimes worse) than a regular axe due to losing half its melee bonus. Gilgamesh has a strangely high wonder building preference (8/10) and an above average interest in religion. He's also one of the most likely leaders to launch new wars (8/10 aggression rating) and he emphasizes military techs in his research. Moreover, he has Culture as his other flavor alongside that Military preference, and he can't seem to decide if he wants to be a culture/wonder leader or a military leader and often struggles to reconcile these competing impulses. He can be quite successful when it all comes together but we've also seen a lot of helpless flailing in multiple directions at once.
Past Performance: While his track record is a bit inconsistent, Gilgamesh has nevertheless established himself as a noteworthy leader. For the first three seasons, he was just a nobody, stuck in unfavorable starting conditions and unable to break out of them. That all changed in Seasons Four and Five, though: both seasons saw him play a solid second-place game in the opening round or Wildcard (sneaking in a Diplomatic win in one of those games) before stomping all over his playoff round game after favorable dogpiles. Those dominant wins fed into two straight Championship appearances, and he further bolstered his credentials by finishing Season Five in a very close second place. But while still being an important figure in most of his subsequent games, he's cooled off a bit: although he hasn't been eliminated in the opening round since Season Three, he has been consigned to the Wildcard in three of the past five seasons, and has been winless since Season Five. He did return to the playoffs in Season Eight in a setup where success was handed to him on a silver platter, but in a reverse-Gandhi conundrum was unable to hold up in a hostile high peaceweight playoff field. In sum, Gilgamesh is a capable and dangerous warmonger, but has had issues leveraging his advantages and strong starts into real wins.
Hammurabi of Babylon
Traits: Aggressive, Organized (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Pure Culture
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Bureaucracy
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: Three playoff round eliminations, two wildcard eliminations, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 18 points, tied 26th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: It is a valid question to wonder if Gilgamesh and Hammurabi had their traits switched by accident, as the warmonger-focused combo of Aggressive/Organized would fit Gilgamesh far better, while the defensive Protective/Creative has far more synergy with Hammurabi's Babylonian civ. While he does have the top tier Agriculture/Wheel starting tech combination, that's all he has going for him. Unfortunately, the Aggressive trait is wasted on a leader who loves to build wonders (8/10), claims a defensive archer unique unit in the Bowman, and tries to cosplay as Gandhi with his PURE CULTURE research flavor. Hammurabi will obsess over anything associated with cultural output and stands a good chance of founding an early religion despite not starting with Mysticism tech. Unfortunately, Hammurabi is a completely stunted leader, doing nothing except sitting in the corner of the map trying to develop his culture but never actually going for a Culture victory due to holding ZERO cultural traits! He will never turn up the slider unless he has all seven holy cities, and he will rarely obtain all seven, for he has a high peace weight, a low aggression rating (5.5), and won't plot war at "Pleased" relations. He is the AI Survivor equivalent of a poor sap who thinks he's the next great rockstar, but who cannot sing in tune to save his life.
Past Performance: Hammurabi has a well-established style of play: not doing much of anything. His games typically consist either of sitting back in a corner and twiddling his thumbs, or else fighting minor skirmishes that do nothing to substantially improve his position. This has predictably resulted in a lot of unsuccessful games where he eventually gets eliminated, whether militarily or by surviving in some sort of distant 3rd or 4th place. Granted, there's been times where he was a bit more successful, and he has won the previous two season openers... but the first was less than impressive, taking over 400 turns to win by spaceship, and while he did put on a legitimately great performance in the second one to win a Domination victory despite being attacked NINE times, this was later proved to be an extremely lucky result. In both of his following playoff games he was back to his usual turtling ways, watching more dynamic leaders succeed in his stead. Hammurabi also holds the "least impressive 2nd place finish of all time" award from Season Three, only making the playoffs due to Mansa wiping out the seemingly entrenched Lincoln on a whim post Spaceship launch. While he has played a more important role in recent seasons, Hammurabi plays exactly like a poorly thought out leader with a confused design, forever destined to be the bridesmaid instead of the bride.
Hannibal of Carthage
Traits: Financial, Charismatic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Gold
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Free Market
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: Four playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 10
Overall Power Ranking: 24 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Hannibal is a highly dangerous contestant with a variety of helpful military and economic tools in his package. Hannibal has the excellent Financial/Charismatic combination, which not only helps with the happiness issues the AI frequently struggle with but also gives him an extra Financial tile to work in the early game. In the rare case where Hannibal manages to build Stonehenge, he'll be off and running against the rest of the field. Carthage as a civilization is notably weaker, with subpar starting techs for anything other than a coastal start and a horse archer unique unit that takes a strength hit compared to the base unit, even though it has been proven to generally be better than its replacement. In terms of personality, Hannibal is a militaristic leader with a fairly high aggression rating (7/10), low peace weight, and Military for his research flavor (paired together with a lesser Gold preference). However, his build unit rating isn't quite as high (6/10) and Hannibal is undercut to some degree by failing to plot war at "Pleased" relations. When Hannibal does well, he's able to conquer additional territory and then make it economically profitable through use of his Financial trait. However, he will also sometimes pick foolish conflicts and stall out his economy with too much warring in a way that even Financial cottage cheese can't rectify, or have the opposite issue of being unable to act until it's too late.
Past Performance: Hannibal was in the driver's seat to win his AI Survivor debut until the Apostolic Palace completely wrecked his game, a wacky event that foretold the rest of his AI Survivor career. In Season Two, he flubbed a war against Izzy and required a runaway Shaka to save him, and then could not break through a poor diplomatic setup in a gigantic Wildcard game. His Season Six opener saw him choose a terrible second city site that, due to the quirks of the AI, resulted in him taking nearly a hundred turns just to settle his third city! Finally, in Season Eight, he suffered from a cramped and low-hammer starting position exacerbated by both of his neighbors settling holy cities in his face. With that said, he has had flashes of brilliance, with a strong breakout game in the opener of Season Three and an even more impressive Season Seven opener where he successfully broke out of yet another highly cramped starting position to conquer half the map and win. His Financial trait has let him tech better than most warmongers and he's been solid on the battlefield, and he has a good chance of hanging around even in his weaker games, but there's also been quite a few matches now where he squandered a solid start, failing to perform well enough and finishing in second or third place. As a result, while he's made the playoffs half the time and was briefly a seeded leader, he is still yet to make the finals, which feels disappointing for a strong military leader with such excellent traits. His two highly dominant wins and strong kill total speak to his astronomically high potential, but so far a combination of bad luck and the "warmonger who cannot plot wars" trap has led to a puzzling level of inconsistency for the man often referred to as Chadnibal.
Hatshepsut of Egypt
Traits: Creative, Spiritual (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Culture, Secondary Religion
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Organized Religion
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: Two wildcard eliminations, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 10
Total Medals: 0 First Places, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 0
Overall Power Ranking: 0 points, dead last place, 52nd out of 52 leaders
Personality: Hatshepsut is a top tier leader for a human and a poor leader for AI Survivor purposes. She has excellent traits in the double-cultural Creative/Spiritual combo and an amazing civ in Egypt with Agriculture/Wheel starting techs, the War Chariot unique unit, and the Obelisk that has incredible synergy with Hatshepsut's religion + culture emphasis. The problem comes in the form of Hatshepsut's AI personality which is little short of suicidal for these matches. While her aggression rating of 3.7 is not that much in the grand scheme of things, it is quite high when compared to many of her cultural peers and has gotten her into unnecessary early tussles that come back to bite her. She combines that with a high peace weight, and a dangerous combination of a low build unit preference (2/10) and a high wonder rating (8/10). The latter rating is the key difference between her and fellow culturemonger Gandhi who seems to defend himself more competently because he is not tying up all his cities on wonders in an all-out war. Furthermore, she emphasizes religion in her diplomacy, with a big shared faith bonus and a major differing religions malus. Hatshepsut favors Culture and Religion for her research flavors, neither of which tends to contain much in the way of units, and Hatshepsut often finds herself an era behind in military tech despite good overall research. She will typically find herself serving as the "worst enemy" of all the low peace weight leaders and overrun with invasions from hostile neighbors. Hatshepsut needs to either draw a field of high peace weight leaders or a sheltered starting position for her wacky gambits to succeed.
Past Performance: Hatty carries the ignominious distinction of being the only scoreless leader in AI Survivor, and at this point her stepson with mummy issues and her no good dirty rotten pig-stealing great-great-grandfather must have put a massive curse on her. She's never gotten a kill and has only survived to the finish in a mere three games, being relevant in just one. Some of this has been her own fault; her dogged pursuit of all things culture and religion related has not only hurt her militarily, but in extreme cases hurt her economy as she pursues Music and Divine Right beelines over Currency and Education. However, one must acknowledge that she's suffered some truly horrible luck across the competition's history. Her earlier seasons saw her stuck in positions that were central, surrounded by multiple hostile neighbors, or both. Things have taken a turn for the ridiculous in recent years: Season Seven saw her on the cusp of a cultural victory before she was taken out at the last minute by a runaway Montezuma, in what alternate histories showed was an exceptionally unlikely outcome caused by her best meatshield (Lizzy)'s poor handling of the barbarians. Meanwhile, she was in a top two spot for the entire game in her Season Eight opener, only to fall to third place on THE LAST INTERTURN OF THE GAME, and in her wildcard match, she missed out on her first kill credit due to turn order before once again getting defeated militarily when she was about to win by culture. This was particularly sad because she would have been a scary contender in the year of the high peaceweights. Sorry to kick a woman while she's down, but even the long-defunct Apostolic Palace has outscored her. To be fair, she's definitely not the worst leader in the competition, for she almost always starts well and does have a gameplan that is capable of delivering fast victories. However, it should be abundantly clear that she has serious military and diplomatic weaknesses that have so far prevented her from accomplishing anything.
Huayna Capac of the Incans
Traits: Financial, Industrious (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Production
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: Season 2 champion, one Championship loss, three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, two opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 17
Total Medals: 8 First Places, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 15
Overall Power Ranking: 55 points, 2nd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Huayna Capac is one of the strongest leaders in Civ4 and brings a frighteningly powerful total package to the competition. He has the always-excellent Financial trait, and while Industrious is typically weak, it still functions as a second culture trait to help Huayna win lightning quick victories. More importantly, Huayna Capac is the only leader who gets to take advantage of the overpowered Incan civilization, with the single best building in the game coming in the form of the "granary that also produces culture" Terrace. The infamous Quechua is also surprisingly useful for AI Survivor purposes, as the AI leaders can at times struggle with barbarian archers and this unit allows Huayna Capac to roll over them without issue. (Most importantly, Huayna will not attempt ill-advised Quechua rushes, a problem with some other super early unique units.) Huayna has the total package, as he holds outstanding economic abilities, a dangerous aggressive streak (an aggro rating of 6.7, plus of course he can plot at Pleased), and major diplomatic insulation stemming from his low peaceweight, his Hereditary Rule favorite civic, and +2 warmonger respect. His weaknesses are an excessive love of wonder-building (8/10), although he's better able to afford this thanks to the Industrious trait, and a heavy emphasis on religion. On the rare occasions where Huayna falters, it's due to tying up too many cities on wonders and/or getting stuck in destructive religious conflicts. More often than not though, Huayna Capac will found his own religion and use it to dominate the diplomacy while scoring every wonder on the map and running over a bunch of scrubs who can't keep up with his teching prowess.
Past Performance: Huayna Capac is an undisputed titan of AI Survivor, succeeding time and time again and in all sorts of ways. From crushing Domination snowballs - including the fastest victory of all time (Turn 252) - to being a tiny nation pulling a Cultural victory out of a hat (which was how he won his Season Two trophy), from taking perfect advantage of strong starts to coming back from poor starts, from converting the entire world to successfully warding off three enemy civs at the same time... this guy has done it all. As a result, he's averaged a win per season, and has double or more the wins of every single other leader save for fellow titan Mansa Musa. Huayna's only been killed in the opening round twice in eight games, as even his weaker performances have usually seen him slip by for another chance in the Wildcard. Now, with all that being said, Huayna is still an extremely fallible AI, and we've seen him fail in all sorts of ways, most recently getting run over early by Sitting Bull of all leaders in Season Eight. In fact, ever since a poor showing in the Season Six Championship Game, the Incan leader has had a cold spell, allowing Mansa Musa to eclipse him atop the AI Survivor all-time points leaderboard. Furthermore, he has lacked consistency in the playoffs with only two successful playoff round games in five appearances. Realistically though, while Huayna is far from invincible, he probably is the leader most likely to be our first repeat champion.
Isabella of Spain
Traits: Spiritual, Expansive (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Pure Religion
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Theocracy
Zealotry: Extreme
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, seven opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 9
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 9 points, tied 36th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Religion, religion, religion. Isabella is a religious zealot and cares more about her faith than just about any other AI leader in the game. Her "Spain on a Lake" techs are good for founding one of the first two religions and pretty much nothing else on non-coastal starts, but they will ensure that she'll get some kind of religion and then defend it to the death. Either you are a treasured practitioner of the one true faith or you are heathen scum that must be wiped from the earth; there's little subtlety or nuance to Isabella's diplomacy. Although her starting techs are subpar, her Expansive/Spiritual traits helps make up for it somewhat, and her Conquistador and Citadel unique items, if used properly, are powerful militarily, although they are counter-synergistic in that one can only take full advantage of one unique item per game. Similar to how certain leaders are too imbalanced in the military or culture direction, Izzy is too psychotically obsessed with religion for her own good, delaying her development in favor of religions (and the wonders she encounters en route to said religions) and launching ill-advised crusades against rival faiths, and sometimes her own brethren as she can plot at Pleased. She's essentially a Flanderized cartoon character who, despite her neuroticness, is so one-dimensional that she tends to be more annoying than entertaining.
Past Performance: It's safe to say that Izzy has been one of the worst performers in AI Survivor, scoring eight of her nine points in a single game. That game, her Season Four opener, saw her profit nicely from two dogpiles before killing her closest competitor head-on, but the rest of her career has exposed this performance for the outlier it was. Izzy's early-game performance has varied: sometimes she does poorly and fails to expand due to focusing more on Priesthood and Temple of Artemis than on Pottery and settlers, but at other times her early religious focus has allowed her to get off to strong starts and be one of the better leaders early on... only for her to make too many enemies, stall out, and later on get conquered. In fact, outside of her one win, she has died in every single game she has played! Most recently, she failed to take advantage of a self-destructing Suryavarman (even losing a war to him) before suiciding herself into Lizzy Spanish Armada style. Her style of play is just too all-or-nothing, and until she can balance her priorities she will continue to flail about in these games.
Joao of Portugal
Traits: Imperialistic, Expansive (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Science, Secondary Military
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
Zealotry: Low to Medium
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 13 points, tied 34th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Joao is theoretically the best leader at rapid expansion in the game, with his combination of Expansive (cheap workers) and Imperialistic (cheap settlers) traits. However, in practice the Deity AIs tend to be more limited by their economies as opposed to their capacity to train more settlers, and Joao hasn't stood out as being especially good at expansion. As a matter of fact, he hasn't really stood out at all, aside from having a name that's difficult for non-Portuguese speakers to pronounce, and Joao mostly sits in the middling portion of the AI category ratings. He trains units at an average rate, builds wonders at an average rate, cares about religion at an average rate, declares wars at an average rate, and so on. In an alignment table, Joao is the no-brainer pick for the "true neutral" leader, as he combines a peaceweight of 6 with lowish zealotry and +1 warmonger respect. He does not even have an interesting civ to play with - the water-based Portuguese civ would still be mediocre in an Archipelago map. This is a guy with little in the way of a distinct personality, yet funnily enough the combination of his name, his sheer mediocrity, and his leaderhead portrait/animation have made him somewhat of a meme in the Civ4 community. Step aside Salieri - the new Patron Saint of Mediocrities has arrived!
Past Performance: Joao's had a pretty unremarkable career overall. He's won two games, both legitimately strong performances where he used his traits to expand well and clearly deserved a top finish, but beyond that has failed to make a splash. For a while, there was a strong case to be made that this was largely a result of lousy starts, as he was routinely stuck trapped against a smaller edge of the map, surrounded by hostile leaders, or both, and when push comes to shove, Joao's not a dynamic enough leader to overcome such starts. However, in recent years, he's gotten some more favorable starts, and gone on to leverage them by... expanding too quickly, crashing his economy, and being ruled out of contention from an early date. This is a key weakness of his traits, as rapid expansion means little without the ability to maintain one's new holdings. His most interesting moment to date came in the most recent season, where he somehow froze, was completely unable to build anything, and then hid in a corner as two faraway leaders engaged in a deathmatch over his former cities. By some miracle he made the Wildcard only to churn out an equally pathetic performance, failing to conquer a hopelessly weak Asoka despite having more than twice the number of cities. J-man clearly requires a rather narrow set of circumstances to succeed, as he otherwise feels like a leader destined to finish in an irrelevant fourth place for all of eternity.
Julius Caesar of Rome
Traits: Imperialistic, Organized (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Production
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Representation
Zealotry: Low to Medium
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 15
Overall Power Ranking: 37 points, 6th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Caesar is given the Imperialistic and Organized traits, a nice pairing as more land = more everything in AI Survivor, and Organized helps Caesar pay for his expansion. His unique items are the busted Praetorian unique unit alongside the poor Forum, but the 8 Strength Praetorian still makes this a top tier combo. Lastly, Caesar has the boom-or-bust Fishing/Mining starting techs. Caesar, more than most leaders, depends on having the right starting resources, as seafood, iron, and precious metals all greatly speed up his snowball, as in his dominant opening game of Season Four. And make no mistake, Caesar's game plan is to snowball. With an above average aggression rating (7.6/10), unit preference (6/10) and military/production flavors, Caesar is far more likely than not to start an early war, and with a neutral peaceweight (4), all opponents are fair game for an attack. However, in early wars Caesar has a serious ace up his sleeve: praetorians. These guys are so strong that they almost break the game, often barging their way through city walls like no other unit can. Caesar depends heavily on an extremely successful landgrab using Imperialistic, an early conquest using praetorians, or both. From there, Caesar's gameplay looks similar to many other militaristic AIs, using his extra land to out-produce everyone else. If Caesar is unable to get his snowball rolling, his poor economic skills and aggressive personality usually mean he will fall behind and get himself killed, making him another feast-or-famine type leader.
Past Performance: Caesar is still riding a high from the early days of AI Survivor, where he was the most feared of the warmongers and scored enough points that, even with nothing in the last few seasons, he'd still be a seeded leader today. While he did win a game in Season Two, the true highlight of his career was an exemplary Season Three where he scored two strong wins, a bronze medal (which was close to gold or silver) in the Championship, and SEVEN kills across the season, one of only two leaders to ever accomplish this feat. That was the high water mark however, and Alternate Histories have since cast doubt on Caesar's Season Three games. Since the Season Four removal of Deity starting techs, he has lost his spark, and these two events may be correlated. Season Four saw Caesar adopt a different approach, going pacifist for a game and succeeding thanks to a lovely starting location, winning another dominant victory but with zero kills. Season Five saw him return to the warpath with modest success - his first second-place finish and four more kills - but it was still a far cry from his earlier successes, and he's come up completely empty in the past three seasons. He's also had trouble with very different fields lately, first being unable to keep up in tech with peaceful groups for two seasons, completely failing in two warmonger-filled games in Season Seven, and then stagnating from a high quantity but low quality start in a more balanced Season Eight field. As a result, despite his high all-time ranking, Caesar is increasingly feeling like a has-been whose glory days are long past. Can he ever recapture that magic, or is his economy simply too weak to reliably compete in the modern landscape?
Justinian of Byzantium
Traits: Spiritual, Imperialistic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: The Wheel, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Religion, Secondary Military
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Theocracy
Zealotry: Extreme
Past Finishes: Season 1 champion, Season 3 runner up, two playoff round eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 5 First Places, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 12
Overall Power Ranking: 43 points, 3rd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Justinian is the Civ4 leader that best combines religious and military pursuits together into a dominant total package. Justinian benefits from a strong trait pairing in the Spiritual + Imperialistic combination, routinely securing a larger-than-average share of the available land while never losing Anarchy turns when switching religions and civics. He is tied to the Byzantine civilization, which has foolproof AI Survivor starting techs and perhaps the strongest unique unit in the game: the Cataphract. (For what it's worth, the Hippodrome is also quite strong.) Knights with Cuirassier-level strength are enough to win many games of their own accord and Justinian has put them to good use in many of his victories, even if he takes a while to research Guilds which do not correspond to his Religion + Military tech flavors. There's no question that Justinian is an aggressive leader who leans towards conquest, with a high aggression rating (7.6/10), heavy unit emphasis (8/10), and a moderately low peaceweight of 4. Unlike the game's most insane warmongers, however, Justinian largely limits his aggression to competitors outside of his religious bloc. He will strongly favor leaders who share his religion and hate those who don't. Justinian also will not plot war at "Pleased" relations, which is probably a good thing because it serves as the best of both worlds. If Justinian has many friends it usually means his religion has spread all over and he can run away economically with shrine income. If he has many enemies, well, they will usually all be crushed to death under Cataphract hooves.
Past Performance: Justinian was an AI Survivor megastar from its inception, winning the inaugural Championship before adding a Runner Up trophy two seasons later, making him one of two leaders to have two overall season medals. 7 placements and 9 kills in the first four seasons established him firmly as a top-tier leader, as he was important in game after game after game. Since the removal of the Apostalic Palace, a wonder that felt especially unfair when under Byzantine control, he has endured tougher times: he was felled in the Opening Round of Seasons 5-7 while only scoring one kill, one of the least successful seeded leaders in this stretch. In all fairness, Season Five saw him with a terrible start that was right in the middle of a guaranteed-to-be-a monster Alex, and Alternate Histories showed he was quite unlucky in Seasons 6-7. Indeed, he returned to form in Season Eight, winning a dominant victory from a mediocre starting position in the opening round, although a difficult diplomatic landscape in the playoffs stopped him from returning to the Championship - which he was, once again, proven quite unlucky to miss out on. Still, Justin is one of the few truly elite leaders in the competition, and any season could give him strong odds to reclaim his crown from the first season.
Kublai Khan of the Mongols
Traits: Aggressive, Creative (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Hunting, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Culture
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Bureaucracy
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: Season 4 runner up, two additional Championship losses, one playoff round elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 16
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 5 Second Places
Total Kills: 13
Overall Power Ranking: 38 points, 5th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Kublai Khan has a personality far more conducive to success than his grandfather. His warmongering benefits from the Aggressive trait while the Creative trait helps to push out early game borders and provide at least some degree of research support with cheap libraries. It is no accident that the historically most successful warmongers have held the Creative trait, and Kublai in particular comes out of the gate shielded from a warmonger's worst instincts, as alongside being Creative his Mongolian civ gives him The Wheel to prevent him from crashing his economy. Outside of starting techs, however, Mongolia is more hit-or-miss, as while the Keshik and Ger are strong for warmongering, Keshiks can prove to be a poison pill for the AI if they build too many of them, fail to utilize them properly, and try to slam them against enemy Elephants. As his traits suggest, Kublai Khan's style is to balance cultural and military goals, generally doing a pretty good job at this. He has average ratings for training units, building wonders, and aggression (6.4/10). Kublai's tech preferences are expectedly Military and Culture in nature, and he lives up to his Mongol heritage by plotting war at "Pleased" relations. Long story short, Kublai Khan is the military + culture leader done correctly, unlike several others who try and fail at this combination.
Past Performance: Kublai has been one of the most consistent leaders in these games and as a result is one of the highest-ranked in the entire competition. His resume is absolutely loaded - he is one of three leaders to have played in three Championship games, he has scored at least one point in six out of eight seasons, and was the only seeded leader to win a game in an upset-filled Season Seven. Almost always, he is a leader of note exiting the landgrab phase and can typically maintain a solid empire for much of the game, vying for a second-place position if nothing else. With that said, he is as notorious for his disappointments as he is for his achievements. Multiple times, he's failed to conquer a much smaller and weaker foe for ages on end, or taken what should have been a great position and failed to accomplish anything with it, like last season where he culture-flipped a rival's core city and yet still completely stagnated en route to an eventual elimination. He does carry the typical economic weaknesses of pure warmongers and can have a lot of trouble keeping up without a snowball - he for sure has benefitted a lot from friendly diplomatic fields that do not call him out on his deficiencies. By far his worst fumble came in the Season Four Championship, where he committed the biggest championship choke since 28-3: in the driver's seat with the win right there for his taking, he inexplicably switched up the culture slider instead and let a backwards Charlemagne walk home with the trophy. This seems to have broken something inside him, because he's had quite an unremarkable track record since then save for his Season Seven victory. Still, his ability to put himself in the mix time and time again cannot be denied, and he'll virtually always be an expensive Fantasy draft pick due to his sheer consistency.
Lincoln of America
Traits: Philosophical, Charismatic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Science, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Emancipation
Zealotry: Low
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 12
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 40th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: While not to the same degree as Gandhi, Lincoln is (very inaccurately from a historical standpoint) a hyper-pacifist through and through with an exceedingly low aggression rating (0.8/10). Unlike the Indian leader, however, he lacks the tools for this to be effective. Like most AI Lincoln doesn't use Philosophical properly, and with that being his only culture trait alongside his late-game focused Science and Growth research flavors, he lacks the cultural ace up his sleeve like Gandhi or Lizzy. The American civ with its uselessly late unique features does not help matters, but at least his starting techs are fine and the Charismatic American leader will rarely have difficulties growing and developing his cities. He will at least train an average number of units (4/10) and therefore doesn't collapse instantly when attacked. It all adds up to a mixed bag, as while he has been a surprisingly decent techer considering his complete lack of willingness to expand, whether peacefully or through more violent means, he just lacks the tools to fully optimize the Darius or Elizabeth playbook.
Past Performance: Lincoln has been a routinely unimpressive leader, scoring nearly all of his points in his debut. That was a mostly-friendly field where he smartly and atypically joined in on two separate dogpiles of some bad guys, then sat back with his cronies and coasted to a strong but unreplicable win. Outside of this game, he has largely served as fodder for the bullies of AI Survivor. Sometimes his lack of success has been beyond his control, of course - most notably in his Season Three opener, where he was a shoo-in for second place for ages until a runaway Mansa ran him over at the end of the game for no reason - but there's also been plenty of games with decent starts where his extreme passivity comes back to bit him. Most tellingly, he put up one of the worst defenses we've ever seen in his Season Seven, allowing a small-sized Carthaganian empire to quickly conquer his best cities without catapults and completely altering the course of the game in the process. While he finally returned to the playoffs off of an unlikely second-place finish in Season Eight, it's more than clear by now that Lincoln's complete inertia as a leader brings him to the bottom rung of AI Survivor leaders. To paraphrase JackRB, he frequently manages to disappoint despite already low expectations.
Louis XIV of France
Traits: Creative, Industrious (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Culture, Secondary Military
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +2
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
Zealotry: Medium to High
Past Finishes: Season 7 champion, two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 25 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Louis XIV has a strange personality that mixes together a heavy emphasis on wonders with military aggression. His wonder obsession creeps into the deranged category, sporting the rare 10/10 rating in that category, and he has a Culture flavor for his research and tends to spend a lot of time at the top of the tech tree grabbing stuff along the Aesthetics line. However, he pairs all that with a Military tech flavor, a fairly high aggression rating (6.3/10), and a very low peace weight of 1. This does not always form a winning combination, and Louis is prone to biting more than he can chew. The Sun King has the Creative and Industrious pairing of traits, a setup that's good for claiming land and then transforming it into a tourist paradise. More importantly, Louis gets two cultural traits to be a rare low peaceweight Cultural ticking-time bomb, and he is always a major threat to win given good diplomacy. He furthermore benefits from the strong French civilization, with its excellent starting techs and the useful Musketeer unique unit. However, Louis largely wastes these positive features with a destructive AI personality that pulls in too many directions at once. He tends to make for a bad neighbor as his borders are always intruding on the other empires and he will backstab anyone at any notice. Needless to say, his strategy of picking fights with all his neighbors while simultaneously locking his build queues on wonders and cathedrals has backfired more often than not.
Past Performance: While Louis can boast about having one of the best single-seasons in AI Survivor in Season Seven, where everything came together and he shot out to large leads in score and land before cashing in with three straight Cultural victories en route to a title, it's mostly unrepresentative of the entire rest of his career. To his credit, Louis usually runs a credible nation after the landgrab phase and rarely is a non-entity, but in terms of being able to translate that into actually coming on top? Before Season Seven, the best he could muster was a pair of distant second-place finishes. His championship run also showed his flaws, as these games often saw him change strategies mid-game and betray his indecisive nature, and despite being a fairly aggressive leader, he only scored two kills during his Championship run. The alternate histories from Season Seven also suggested that Louis' triple victories were pretty lucky and not something that was sustainable. His subsequent title defense was pitiful, with the Sun King declaring two fruitless wars before being dogpiled as the first to die while catapulting his conquerors to the playoffs. So while Louis is a credible threat and has good odds to be an important player, he has proven to be his own worst enemy over and over again. Chances are, his Season Seven title will just be a mirage.
Mansa Musa of Mali
Traits: Financial, Spiritual (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Mining, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Religion
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Free Market
Zealotry: Extreme
Past Finishes: Season 6 champion, two Championship losses, one playoff round elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 17
Total Medals: 10 First Places, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 8
Overall Power Ranking: 58 points, 1st place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Mansa Moneybags is the best AI leader in the game when it comes to pure economy and it's not a close comparison. He is an absolute fiend with research even under our settings where Mansa's well known propensity to engage in tech trading gets disabled. Mansa Musa also benefits from an amazing pair of cultural and economic traits, Financial for endless cottage cheese and Spiritual to avoid ever wasting turns with the AI's frequent civic shifts alongside cheaper temples to really get the culture train rolling. The Malinese civ has the premier defensive unique unit in the Skirmisher (which is important as he is an ultra-high peaceweight) and a decent building in the Mint. The unique Mining/Wheel starting tech pairing is also not half-bad, but if Mansa overprioritizes religion (due to a heavy religious emphasis + a secondary Religious flavor) he can lock himself out of connecting early food bonuses for quite some time due to not starting with Mysticism. On that note, Mansa has a dominant Gold flavor that serves to turbocharge his economic capabilities. Mansa's strategy is as effective as it is predictable: blanket the landscape in cottages and tech like a banshee. He's extraordinarily good at doing this even with a limited number of cities; we've repeatedly seen a Malinese empire with five cities still leading the pack in tech. If Mansa ever manages to amass a large amount of territory, may god have mercy on your soul, because he will plot war at "Pleased" and isn't afraid to lay the smack down despite his 1.6/10 aggression rating. Mansa Musa is always a formidable opponent and will usually win the game if he doesn't get roughed up by his neighbors.
Past Performance: Mansa is widely recognized as the premier economic leader in this competition, and his overall prowess and achievements are only rivaled by those of Huayna Capac. Aside from Huayna, no other leader has won more than half of the games Mansa has! Mansa was especially strong in the early seasons of AI Survivor before the free Deity starting techs were removed, making the playoffs in three straight seasons and reaching the Championship twice. He was denied a full victory in these seasons, however, thanks to playoff or championship fields full of low peaceweight leaders who wanted a piece of him. Since his first three seasons, he has been about as boom-or-bust as one can be. His highs - including three economically dominant wins en route to a Season Six ring and a bronze medal near-victory in Season Eight despite terrible barbarian luck - have been astronomically high, but he's also failed militarily and thus died in the Opening Round three times, a stretch that included two straight First To Die eliminations. The removal of the free techs seems to have hurt him a fair amount, making it much harder for him to survive an early assault. Recently, community members have uncovered another flaw - Mansa needs a high food start, as without it his starting techs can slow him down and he can have difficulty working enough cottages to truly get the machine going. With that said, Mansa Musa is the first leader to ever sweep an entire Alternate Histories set and then some - it took 27 map reruns for a different leader to win his Season Eight opening round game - and nobody else can technologically torch the competition quite like he can.
Mao Zedong of China
Traits: Expansive, Protective (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Mining
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Growth, Secondary Production
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: State Property
Zealotry: Almost non-existent
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, four playoff round eliminations, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 16
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 5 Second Places
Total Kills: 10
Overall Power Ranking: 25 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Mao Zedong has been surprisingly successful at AI Survivor despite having relatively little to work with. His trait combination is simply bad, with the terrible Protective trait combined together with the AI's poor handling of the Expansive trait. Mao does get to take advantage of the Chinese civilization though, with incredible starting techs (Agriculture/Mining) and the strong Cho-Ko-Nu unique crossbow to make the Protective trait much more useful than it usually is. Mao's AI personality is best known for placing very little emphasis on religion. He doesn't gain much of a benefit from shared religion and attaches little penalty to practicing a different faith, and this has usually been beneficial to him as he won't allow blind religious fervor to guide him towards ill-advised decisions (or non-decisions). Mao's ratings are fairly average aside from his hefty emphasis on espionage spending (8/10). He's only average in terms of aggression (a good thing considering his tech preferences sometimes cause him to delay military techs) but has a low peace weight and will happily plot war at "Pleased" relations. Mao's middle-of-the-road ratings reflect a leader who often seems to lurk under the radar until catching others by surprise.
Past Performance: Chairman Mao is one of those leaders who is very good at hanging around even if he's not in great shape, and that's resulted in a consistently solid performance that's helped him maintain an above average ranking in the leaderboard. He's one of only five leaders to have made the playoffs in five different seasons, as even when he's not very strong, he can tag along behind one of his low peaceweight buddies and slide by in second place (or to the Wildcard - he's made the playoffs through that game multiple times!) While the map generation has been somewhat kind in that Mao usually has a lot of friends on the map, these results also speak to his tenacity and decent play that avoids any major blunders. The flip side of this is that Mao rarely excels; his only career win came at the ludicrously late Turn 433 from an unusual Season One map, and while he "should" have won one more game in Season Five (which was instead sniped via a Diplomatic victory), it's still clear overall that he lacks the traits or skills needed to really dominate. His biggest weakness by far is his refusal to tech Mysticism early - this weakness rearing its ugly head in a dud Season Eight performance - and the fact he's only been to the Championship game in one out of five tries also speak to the fact that he's a step below the top of the competition. However, compared to the field of competitors as a whole, Mao has proven himself to be a balanced leader and multiple Alternate Histories have suggested some yet-to-be-unlocked sleeping giant potential in the chairman.
Mehmed of the Ottomans
Traits: Expansive, Organized (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Culture
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Vassalage
Zealotry: Medium to High
Past Finishes: Season 5 champion, one Championship loss, one playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 5 Second Places
Total Kills: 13
Overall Power Ranking: 28 points, 12th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Mehmed is a typical militaristic AI leader. He's not quite as crazy as some of his shared rivals in the Montezuma or Shaka mold, but he still acts predictably aggressive and causes a lot of trouble for his neighbors. Mehmed does have a pair of good economic traits in the Expansive/Organized combo, albeit ones which the AI does not leverage particularly well. His Ottoman civilization is top tier in almost every aspect, from the Agriculture/Wheel starting techs to the Longbow-shredding Janissary to the well-rounded Hammam. Mehmed's biggest problem is similar to other warmongers who cannot plot at Pleased - he's too militaristic (7.8 aggression rating) when he should not be while also paralyzed in inaction at the worst possible times when considering his insane 10/10 unit build tendency that can cause him to waste his funds on a massive army he won't use. His research flavors are Military and an odd Culture, once again reinforcing how Mehmed tends to neglect economy in favor of more and more units. Mehmed has often been a popular pick from the community because he looks like he should be strong on paper, and yet he's struggled more than he should.
Past Performance: Until his shocking Season Five title run, the conqueror was derisively referred to as "Meh-med" for good reason, but upon finally proving his mettle he's been far more consistent and competitive in these games. The biggest blemish on his record is that he's only won a single game, albeit at the best possible time! The fact that he's a former champion is thus clearly a case of "right place, right time", as he reached the Season Five championship off a pair of unimpressive second place finishes, only to come out on top of a war-filled game and take the title. He had another chance to do the same, reaching Season Seven's championship off two more second-place finishes, only to play a terrible game that time and finish irrelevantly. Still, Mehmed has now racked up more than a dozen kills over the years, and while he never accomplished anything for the first four seasons of the competition, he's finished in the top two six times in the past four seasons - although the Deity starting tech removal may have helped immensely, as it turns the Agriculture/Wheel combination from a weakness to a major strength. He further bolstered his credentials with a very good Season Eight, nearly winning his opener and then nearly making the Championship in the playoffs from an extremely tough land and diplomatic setup. If he continues on this trajectory, he's going to establish his place into the top echelons of AI leaders sooner rather than later.
Montezuma of the Aztecs
Traits: Aggressive, Spiritual (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Hunting, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Religion
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Police State
Zealotry: MOAR SACRIFICIAL CAPTIVES
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 10
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 2
Overall Power Ranking: 7 points, tied 47th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Anyone who's played even a little bit of Civ 4 probably already has a pretty good idea of the Montezuma AI. Let's just say he is, well, Monty. To start, Montezuma gets the Aggressive and Spiritual traits, a good-but-not-great combination for these games. Unfortunately, his unique items are the Jaguar Warrior and the Sacrificial Altar. While they hold great utility for the human, they are awful for the AI, and one can at least partially attribute Monty's issues to trying to bumrush his enemies with strength 5 Swordsmen instead of strength 6. Lastly, the Aztec emperor starts with Hunting and Mysticism, and although Monty certainly likes himself some religion, his starting tech combination otherwise does not help him much. But it's not the traits or unique stuff that makes Montezuma so well-known in Civ 4; it's the man himself. Sullla described Montezuma as a "rabid dog let loose in the streets to cause as much trouble as possible before being put down", and considering that Montezuma is still a strategy game AI, that's surprisingly accurate. Montezuma has polarizing numbers all over the place. He has the highest aggression rating in the game (10/10); in fact he is literally the benchmark for the normalized system we use to judge the rest of this bunch, and he combines this with an endless queue of sacrificial captives and virgins to fling at whoever and whenever he feels, with an 8/10 unit build tendency. Montezuma won't bother with building wonders (0/10); he takes them instead. Monty's peace weight (0) is also the lowest possible in the game, and any cooperation between him and a "good" AI should be virtually impossible. Montezuma's flavours are Military and Religion, and his "strategy" is almost universally to found a religion, and then psychotically defend it to the death. Or just attack the other true believers anyway at the slightest whim. There's no way that could possibly go wrong...
Past Performance: Monty is bad. Like, really, really bad. He's firmly established himself as one of the biggest trainwrecks in AI Survivor, his insane overaggression coming back to bite him again and again as he's almost never able to back up his bluster. That doesn't mean he's not entertaining - viewers are always in for a treat if he's in a game. Take last season, where he proceeded to absolutely pummel an already hobbled Suryavarman and sack the Khmer capital before his game crashed as hard as it had soared. Nevertheless, he's usually been so insane and incompetent that in picking contests "starts next to Monty" is often a positive when picking a leader to succeed. Monty has proven successful exactly once, in his highly unusual Season Seven opener; that game saw him play peacefully due to not connecting metal for around 100 turns - so the sun rose from the West - then use that as a launching point to snowball off a set of enemies who had played particularly messy games. However, alternate histories later showed this to be an extraordinarily unlikely outcome, a 1 in 100 games fluke result, and he followed it up in the playoffs by becoming First to Die in a 1v1 conflict fought from a great starting position. While a couple of other games have seen him legitimately screwed by too many wars declared against him - it really feels like he's a high peaceweight leader in disguise sometimes - it's more than clear that Monty occupying a position of strength is the exception rather than the rule, and he's one of the least likely leaders to come out on top in any given match.
Napoleon of France
Traits: Charismatic, Organized (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Gold
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Representation
Zealotry: Low to Medium
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 11
Total Medals: 0 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 9
Overall Power Ranking: 11 points, tied 38th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Napoleon is a deeply militaristic leader who will emphasize unit production over everything else. While he doesn't have the Aggressive trait to bolster his Grand Armee, at least they can rack up Charismatic promotions considering his 10/10 boldness rating that will make him sic his armies anywhere and everywhere no matter the practicality. Organized, in theory, can help him recover quicker if he does manage to get a conquest off. France is a great civ choice as usual, with excellent starting techs and a useful unique unit in the Musketeer. Napoleon himself has a one-track mind as an AI leader: he loves to start new wars (9.1/10 aggression rating), he will train oodles of units (10/10), and he has the lowest peace weight possible to cause him to hate the "Good" leaders and see even the heads of meaner leaders as fine additions to his collection. To tack on, Napoleon doesn't care a whole lot about religion and he doesn't waste time building wonders. It should come as no surprise that Napoleon has Military as his primary research flavor along with a lesser Gold emphasis, and of course he will plot war at "Pleased" relations. Overall then Napoleon is pretty similar to Shaka and Ragnar and Boudica, albeit with a slightly more economic bent.
Past Performance: Napoleon is a rather interesting case in these games, as he's racked up an impressive kill total akin to that of a seeded leader, yet has never won a game and only placed second a single time. While he's had a few games that didn't amount to anything, he's usually able to serve as something of a credible threat and at least help to roll over a weaker neighbor, but when it comes to converting this into a real advantage and snowballing ahead, so far he's failed to get it done. The closest he came was in his Season Six opener where he was able to find sustained success on the warpath, only to get repeatedly backstabbed and kept from properly converting it into a win, having to settle for second place instead. This was not his fault, and neither was his fall in the playoffs which came as a result of triggering a defensive pact that was signed on the SAME INTERTURN that he declared war. He's actually been pretty unlucky in general, including last season when he got bumrushed by a psychotic Stalin on Turn 52 to ruin what was looking like a promising start. With that said, when you look back at Nappy's track record, he still falls short of being a truly good competitor even though he is more of a threat than your typical crazy warmonger.
Pacal of the Mayans
Traits: Financial, Expansive (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Mining, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Culture, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: Three Championship losses, three playoff round eliminations, two opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 18
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 5 Second Places
Total Kills: 9
Overall Power Ranking: 39 points, 4th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Pacal has a top tier trait combination, with the amazing Financial and the strong Expansive to help him get those Financial cottages up and running even faster. He also gets the Holkan, which helps his early defense, and the excellent Ball Court, which adds a major midgame happiness bonus. Lastly, Pacal gets the below average Mysticism and Mining for his starting techs, which is only useful for chasing a religion out of the gate. At least it has a higher ceiling than the Mysticism/Hunting combo that many religious leaders are cursed with. Pacal is a peaceful economic leader, as he holds a shockingly low aggression rating (2.8/10) and unit-build tendency (4/10) while his flavours are Culture and Growth. He's not as suicidally insane as other peaceniks, however, as he will defend himself and attack leaders he is "Pleased" with. You can usually expect Pacal to pursue an early religion right out of the gate and to try to rack up more religions later on, although with only one cultural trait he's not nearly as likely to pursue a Cultural victory as say Huayna or Mansa. He is one of very few low peaceweight economic leaders however, and indeed the best answer to "what if leaders like Hatshepsut or Darius had a low peaceweight" is probably Pacal. He's not as diplomatically safe as fellow Financial PW2 Huayna in warmonger fields because he has no warmonger respect, but with a base attitude of +1 he does sometimes get more diplomatic flexibility, plus having Hereditary Rule as a favorite civic doesn't hurt. An ideal Pacal game probably sees the warmongers and peaceniks fight it out amongst each other while he sits back and builds an insurmountable tech lead.
Past Performance: Pacal's combination of economic focus and low peaceweight have proven highly effective at moving him through the tournament, and he's one of only two leaders to have reached the playoffs on six separate occasions. Pacal has convincingly shown that he's able to play the economic game and play it well, using that avenue to pull out to an unstoppable tech lead in all of his wins. His second-place finishes have been considerably less impressive, generally coming when he's far behind the winner and somewhat lucky to be advancing at all. One notable exception to this was in his Season Eight opener, where Pacal rebounded from a slow and ill-fitting ultra-coastal start to snipe 2nd place from right underneath Hatshepsut's nose despite being surrounded by peaceniks. That said, when Pacal fails, he can fail hard - there's been multiple games where he was attacked before even connecting metals, leading to very early exits, and he followed up his Season Eight opener by blowing a beautiful playoff start when he foolishly attempted a Holkan rush on Hammurabi's hard-countering Bowmen and almost immediately started LOSING cities. Overall, he has similar strengths and weaknesses to other major economic leaders, but his peaceweight, favorite civic, and a general understanding of when to and when not to attack has allowed him to enjoy the consistent success that most of them have lacked.
Pericles of Greece
Traits: Creative, Philosophical (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Hunting, Fishing
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Production, Secondary Science
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Representation
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 20 points, tied 23rd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Pericles is decent at pursuing a Cultural victory and that has historically been his best avenue to success. Pericles has an excellent trait combination for chasing after cultural pursuits with the Creative + Philosophical pairing, combining cheap libraries and universities and theatres while also granting him the ever-so important double culture trait pairing. He is saddled with bad starting techs and the iffy Phalanx, but the synergy that Creative Odeons provide is easily the saving grace of his Greek civilization. Pericles the AI leader has a peaceful bent in general, with a low aggression rating (3.3/10) and a modest build unit preference (4/10). Pericles would clearly much rather spend his time building wonders instead (8/10), which he'll do with great frequency in each game. Unlike many of the other peaceful leaders, Pericles doesn't place much of an emphasis on religion and rarely founds one of his own faiths. His research flavors are Production and Science, which makes him a bit of a strange bird since he doesn't have a Culture or Religion tech, and this has been a hindrance as Pericles can find himself unable to cash in on his biggest strengths in more cultural leaning fields. Overall, he's a leader who wants to be left alone (and has a neutral peaceweight to somewhat help in that regard) and can become very dangerous if he gets that wish.
Past Performance: Pericles's career got off to a promising start. Both of his first two opening round games ended up being largely controlled by high peaceweight leaders, allowing him to cash in with Diplomatic and Cultural victories, and a second place finish from a more hostile playoff field in Season Two seemed to confirm his aptitude. But then he just kind of... stagnated, scoring a single point over the next five seasons. His failed performances have varied; some really were beyond his control, especially when some psycho named Mahatma Gandhi attacked him early in Season Seven, but there's also been several games where he messed up himself or simply failed to accomplish anything. The Season Six opener in particular saw him gifted a great start, only to lose one of his first cities to the barbarians for an extended period of time and never fully recover. (This was very unlucky as he dominated the alternate histories for that game.) He appeared to hit rock bottom in the Season Eight opening round, where he torpedoed his game by atypically spending his early beakers on a religion despite an ill-fitting start, catastrophically delaying his development. However, despite having Alex breathing down his neck, he somehow survived to the finish and then trudged his way to his first victory since Season Two in a winner-takes-all Wildcard game. Although his position was too squeezed to do anything in the playoffs, perhaps last season can be the start of an Athenian reemergence. Overall, it seems that while Pericles is capable enough to sometimes get it done in a favorable situation, he lacks that special spark needed to be a truly good or interesting leader, in part due to being given cultural tools while having completely non-culture related research priorities.
Peter of Russia
Traits: Philosophical, Expansive (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Science, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Bureaucracy
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, three wildcard eliminations, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 0 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 7 points, tied 47th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Peter the Great is an AI leader who seems to be pulling in six different directions at once, leaving a bit of a confusing mess as the result. Peter has two traits that lack any clear synergy, with Expansive theoretically being useful for growing outwards while Philosophical develops upwards. Neither of these traits is particularly strong in the hands of the AI and Peter, while a fantastic leader for humans, feels lacking in AI Survivor. The Russian civilization is... fine, with ok starting techs and a powerful but late unique unit in the form of the Cossack. As for the leader himself, Peter's AI personality is all over the place in terms of what it emphasizes. Peter would appear to be your standard militaristic AI, with 8/10 aggression and 6/10 unit build ratings, a low peace weight, and a willingness to declare war at "Pleased" relations. However, Peter has tech preferences that don't match a conquest gameplan at all, instead using Science and Growth flavors for his research, plus an above average desire to build wonders (6/10) and spend on espionage (7/10). At least he doesn't get distracted by religion. It's not particularly clear what goal Peter has in mind for any particular game and the AI often seems confused as well.
Past Performance: Peter is a chronic underperformer who always manages to come up short despite surviving more than half his games, as he frequently tries to be a builder and a warmonger and falls flat in both. He has sometimes fallen to inopportune backstabs (like in Season Four and the Season Seven Wildcard), sometimes just gotten off to a poor start and been always weak (like in Seasons Two, Six, and his Season Three playoff participation), and other times garnered himself a workable setup and then just lacked enough initiative to make anything of it (like in Seasons One, Seven, and Eight). A pair of distant second-place finishes has been the best he can muster, and despite being a frequently-surviving leader with an aggressive streak, he has a paltry three kills to his name. While Alternate Histories have suggested that Peter could be a strong leader, until he shows it when it actually matters he will continue to be an afterthought in these tournaments.
Qin Shi Huang of China
Traits: Industrious, Protective (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Mining
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Production, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Bureaucracy
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: One troll Championship participation trophy, Three playoff round eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 0 First Places, 5 Second Places
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 13 points, tied 34th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Qin Shi Huang has the unfortunate penalty of carrying the worst trait combination in Civ4 for AI Survivor purposes. The Industrious trait causes the AI leaders to tie up their cities on wonders in lieu of expanding out across the map, while the Protective trait offers virtually no advantage save for "dying slower". Qin's saving grace is the Chinese civilization, with its amazing starting tech combination and powerful Cho-Ko-Nu unique unit that does redeem Protective somewhat. Qin's AI personality is mostly that of a peaceful builder, as he has a low aggression rating (3.9/10), a dangerously low unit emphasis (2/10), and a fairly high wonder emphasis (6/10). This economic setup is oddly paired with a low peace weight and the ability to plot war at "Pleased" relations. This is likely the reason why Qin has outperformed his terrible trait pairing, as being an economy-focused leader who gets a seat at the table with the big baddies is generally a good thing. It's too bad for Qin that he doesn't get more useful traits to pair with his otherwise promising setup - imagine if he had kept his pre-expansion Financial/Industrious trait pairing!
Past Performance: Qin has never truly risen to greatness, most of the time churning out middle-of-the-road performances, not playing really disastrously or sinking his own game (with a couple of noteworthy exceptions), but also never enjoying any great successes. He's managed to complete a few joint conquests to build into decent positions, but that's it - none of his games have seen him really pull out in front or become a dominant leader. One key obstacle that has prevented him from ever translating early advantages into wins is a tendency to avoid vital military techs in the Renaissance Era, something that wrecked his Season Two game that he probably should have won. Qin's ability to easily get along with warmongers (+2 warmonger respect, plus his base +1 relations) has perhaps been his biggest asset, helping him to hang around and secure some second place finishes that he otherwise would not have gotten. With that said, his more recent showings have been more buzzworthy for a variety of reasons. There was his awful Season Six opener where he overexpanded and crashed his economy. He then somewhat redeemed himself with a strong Season Seven opener where he took the majority of cities from an early dogpile and rode that to a competitive second place, and his Season Eight journey to the Championship game saw him execute to perfection a seemingly risky backstab of his religious ally Saladin to secure 2nd place behind Mansa. Unfortunately, his mediocrity has been especially apparent in the playoffs - four appearances, and there is very little to remember about most of them. I guess in the Season Eight playoffs he seized the moniker of "least impressive Championship qualification of all time", where he once again crashed his economy from a bad start before somehow advancing by virtue of being the only leader whose beaches a runaway Churchill did not land on, and, well, he was obviously the imposter among the Season Eight goodie two shoes championship lineup. Don't be surprised if he manages to slip through, but don't expect him to be one of the big movers in his games either.
Ragnar of the Vikings
Traits: Financial, Aggressive (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Fishing, Hunting
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Pure Military
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 10
Total Medals: 0 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 5 points, 51st place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: If you like insane seaborne invaders with funny hats and scraggly beards, Ragnar is the guy for you! This lunatic has never met a war that he didn't like and any game with Ragnar present is sure to have some spicy moments. Ragnar's Viking civilization is really, really good on water maps, but he struggles to have the same effectiveness on AI Survivor Pangaeas, and Trading Posts can cause Ragnar to waste precious early beakers on Sailing even when it is not particularly useful. Furthermore, he combines together the Financial and Aggressive traits, which theoretically should make him better than the average warmonger in terms of managing his economy. That largely doesn't happen in practice though, as Ragnar takes every single lever available for managing his civ and turns it to the military setting, then dials the strength up to 11. Ragnar's AI personality is completely one-note: all military all the time. His aggression rating is essentially at Monty levels (9.9/10), his train unit emphasis is maxed out (10/10), and he only has one tech flavor - do I really need to say it? Ragnar will fight war after war after war — if he has to march to the opposite corner of the world, he will — while neglecting internal infrastructure, which typically leaves him far behind in tech by the latter stages of each match despite being Financial. This often causes him to get eliminated at the hands of more advanced rivals, although sometimes he can ride the coattails of other low peace weight leaders and survive to the finish. Perhaps someday we'll see Ragnar snowball out in front of the rest of the field and then ride his Financial trait to a position of tech dominance but that hasn't happened thus far. Instead, Ragnar has mostly spent his days dragging other leaders down into the cesspit with him.
Past Performance: Ragnar is another piece of evidence that in AI Survivor, as in life, hyperaggression is not a good thing. Time and time again, we've seen his constant attacks fail to get him anything except elimination. Ragnar is frequently a slow starter in these games, consigning him to also-ran status from an early date. Admittedly, a lot of this is because he keeps drawing poor starts squeezed against the edge of the map, but he also tends to make bizarre early game moves that further slow him down, like Turn 0 Sailing into Archery without coastal starts. Most notably, he bungled the opening to the Season Four Wildcard so badly that his capital was captured by the barbarians! Even in the less common games where Ragnar is able to get a solid start and build his empire up, there's always another nation out there growing even stronger who Ragnar would inevitably pick a fight against, leading to a predictable downfall. Even in his only second-place finish spurred on by an early conquest, he was actively getting conquered at the end and barely clung to his playoff spot. The very low number of kills for a warmonger further reinforces that he simply isn't that effective most of the time, and the Financial trait has not moved the needle for him at all. While Ragnar can be dangerous if he gets off to a good start, let's just say that's a massive if.
Ramesses of Egypt
Traits: Spiritual, Industrious (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Culture, Secondary Production
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Organized Religion
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, two playoff round eliminations, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 12
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 1
Overall Power Ranking: 15 points, tied 32nd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Ramesses is best summarized as a peaceful leader who loves to build wonders. His traits are well suited for this, with the Industrious trait granting additional production for wonders and Spiritual serving as a useful all-around development trait - and with a double culture pairing Ramesses is naturally one of the biggest victory threats in any game. The AI loves to waste turns in Anarchy flipping civics and it helps save them from their own follies. Ramesses is further bolstered by the powerful Egyptian civilization, which has excellent starting techs, one of the game's best unique units in the form of the War Chariot, and a unique building that is amazingly synergistic with Ramesses' traits - if he can get an early shrine rolling from Stonehenge Obelisks, he can quickly run away with the game. Unfortunately the whole is less than the sum of its parts as far as Ramesses is concerned, as his traits and AI personality contribute to one of the worst expansion rates in the competition. Ramesses is so busy building his wonders (10/10) that he forgets to train units (2/10) and struggles to get settlers out on the map to claim territory. He's helped here by a peace weight in the middle of the spectrum to prevent him from being quite as much of a sitting duck as his Egyptian counterpart in Hatshepsut, but the low aggression rating on Ramesses (3.7/10) makes it unlikely that he'll be able to snowball ahead from conquering territory. Ramesses also heavily emphasizes religion, strongly favoring his religious compatriots and disliking his rivals. With his Culture and Production tech flavors, he's another leader who's likely to found a religion despite not starting with Mysticism tech, but with his starting techs this rarely if ever sinks his game. He is capable of ridiculously high highs, but his wonder-whoring makes him equally capable of some very low lows.
Past Performance: Ramesses' AI Survivor career has mostly been an ignominious story of military defeats. Like his Egyptian counterpart, he tends to have a strong early game and exit the landgrab phase in a solid position, only to see it all crashing down at some point thanks to losing a war. Whether he wars against multiple foes or just one, this seems to be a legitimate and important weakness for him, as he rarely gets the better of these conflicts and thus is eliminated in game after game - Ramesses is a rare leader who has never been to the Wildcard game. He's also thrown away multiple top-two positions with really terrible moves, such as declaring war on the dominant AI or signing away his best city in a peace treaty. On the plus side, he has hung on for a couple of tenacious 2nd place finishes, including what should have been a Season Three win in a hostile field had the UN not intervened, and he had a breakout Season Seven which included a dominant Cultural victory, his one career kill, and his first appearance in a championship game. This plus some favorable results in alternate histories had begun to rehabilitate his reputation, especially once he pulled off another military success followed by a Cultural victory in the opening round of Season Eight. Unfortunately, all that goodwill momentum came to a screeching halt when he followed that up with one of the most incompetently executed cultural gameplans ever in the playoffs, completely neglecting expansion and development and torpedoing his own game without ever being attacked. This was a performance so terrible that a hobbled Gandhi WITHOUT THE SLIDER would have outraced an untouched Ramesses WITH THE SLIDER AT 100% to Culture. Now, once again this was proven to be a low odds outcome in repeat playthroughs, but in classic fashion, he blew it when the lights were the brightest. On average he's probably a middle-of-the-spectrum leader if not better, but it should still be apparent that being a non-Financial hyper-cultural leader is a risky existence.
Roosevelt of America
Traits: Industrious, Organized (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Production, Secondary Gold
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Mercantilism
Zealotry: Low
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 11
Total Medals: 0 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 7 points, tied 47th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Roosevelt is a classic example of a peaceful builder that largely wants to stay out of conflicts. He has an economic trait pairing with Industrious and Organized. In human hands he is the single best leader for rushing the overpowered Great Lighthouse, but for the AI it lacks any of the top-tier benefits of Financial or Creative or Expansive. Roosevelt often tends to struggle with expansion since he lacks any traits or abilities to speed up his early game. The American civilization is doing him no favors here, with decent starting techs but unique features that both come far too late to ever be relevant. Roosevelt the AI is not very militaristic at all, with an aggression rating of 2.6/10 and a dangerously low train unit emphasis (2/10). Despite his Industrious trait, Roosevelt doesn't particularly emphasize wonder building (4/10) and prefers to focus on espionage spending (7/10). He also has little interest in religion and doesn't stack up much of a shared faith bonus or differing faiths penalty. Roosevelt has unusual tech preferences for his research, emphasizing Production and Gold flavors, and the expected high peace weight for a "good" leader - but he can attack at "Pleased" relations in a bit of a twist. Generally speaking what you see is what you get with Roosevelt. He's going to try and play the builder game but with militaristic tech preferences it is a tall task for him to succeed.
Past Performance: It appears Roosevelt took his uncle's advice of "speak softly and carry a big stick" a tad too literally. The American leader has proven to be one of the worst in the competition, never in eight seasons vying for a win or accomplishing anything of particular note. He tends to have a medium-to-small nation after the early game, and never does much of anything with it. A few conquests of weak neighbors (which have all failed to move him into a top-two position) and a second-place finish of the "everybody else was murdered" variety are the biggest achievements he has to his name. Even with more promising starts in recent seasons, he's come up short: Season Seven saw him given a very good starting location and the chance to finally make a name for himself, only to throw it all away on a stupidly early attack of a friendly neighbor, while he got out to a great landgrab in Season Eight before wasting his advantage on poorly chosen and executed wars, getting outscaled and eventually nuked into smithereens. Roosevelt is essentially Frederick with a better civ and slightly less suicidal tech preferences, but this still does not make for a good leader.
Saladin of Arabia
Traits: Spiritual, Protective (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Mysticism, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Religion
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Theocracy
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: Season 7 runner up, one playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 19 points, tied 47th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Saladin is one of several leaders that focuses on religion and military. It turns out the Arabian civilization is quite a bit better than initially thought for the AI, as Mysticism/Wheel automatically gives good ol' Sal two AI bottleneck techs while giving his Deity worker something to do if he pursues Meditation out the gate. Meanwhile, although the Camel Archer is pretty irrelevant in most cases, the early culture from the Madrassa can be quite useful. Spiritual is quite nice too. What really hamstrings Saladin is the Protective trait, and indeed he tends to be quite a slow starter as a result. Outside of his pious nature, most of his AI ratings are in the middle of the range of available values, such as his aggression rating (5.5/10) and peace weight (4) - indeed, he's one of the least aggressive of the religious nuts. This is a straightforward AI personality: he's essentially a more mild-mannered Justinian, someone who will try to defend himself and his allies from religious enemies much like his real life persona.
Past Performance: Saladin is a pretty solid AI who is probably a bit unlucky to have not scored more points than he has. By now he's logged quite a few games where he played solidly throughout and was close, only to either suffer a late conquest or else just barely get edged out for second place by somebody else. He might be budget-Justinian, but as he showed in his silver medal Season Seven campaign, budget-Justinian is as capable as any leader of achieving success. His most recent performance also saw him in a pole position at the midgame, only to suffer a brutal backstab from a religious ally at the worst possible time to fold and become First to Die. Saladin tends to perform quite competently, usually possessing a competitive empire after the landgrab, and has on multiple occasions won games simply by steering a steady course to prosper while his competition implodes. He's unlikely to race out to victory, but is there to take the win or second place when others mess up. Perhaps the biggest weakness we've seen from him, though, is that while he loves to found Islam, he has issues spreading it (or any other religion he ends up with) due to his slower starts. As a result, Saladin often finds himself in the role of the religious outcast, and this has gotten him into trouble several times in the past. If he can avoid that, though, he's quite capable of putting on a decent performance.
Shaka of the Zulus
Traits: Aggressive, Expansive (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Hunting
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Pure Military
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Police State
Zealotry: Low to Medium
Past Finishes: Four playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 7
Overall Power Ranking: 18 points, tied 26th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Shaka gets the Aggressive and Expansive traits to play around with, which at the very least are pretty good for the early game and for warmongering. He is also blessed with the top tier Zulu civilization, with the fantastic Agriculture/Hunting pair, the mini-courthouse Ikhanda - the only unique building that rivals the Terrace, and it probably is better for Aggressive leaders - and the much more mediocre Impi (in AI hands, that is). If you haven't picked up on it yet, Shaka is all about the big guns. He's one of the "Crazies" who cross the threshold from "aggressive" to "nuts", and his aggression rating (9.2/10) is the fourth highest in the game. Like most of the other Crazies, Shaka's only flavour is Military, and he builds units at a frenetic pace (10/10) while ignoring wonders (2/10). He's a fairly standard hyper-warmonger, although he does have a better time navigating the diplomatic landscape due to his not-so-extreme peaceweight of 2. He also seems to get along economically slightly better than expected, probably due to his cheap Ikhandas and good starting techs. Expect Shaka to spend his entire game warring on the high peace weight pacifists (or anyone else, for that matter!), and his success to largely depend on whether those wars are successful or stall out.
Past Performance: Unlike the other hyperaggressive warmongers, who just flame out over and over again and have rarely amounted to much, Shaka has managed to semi-consistently make himself a contender, reaching the playoffs as often as not and often making a significant impact even when he's not ultimately successful. While he's only fully set up a successful snowball once, in the opening round of Season Two, he's still proven consistently able to find smaller successes and avoid imploding in the same way as other warmongers, enough so to scrape by in second place several times. Even his defeats are sometimes impressive - multiple times now, he's become the largest empire on the map, and only slowly fallen once taken on by all of the remaining leaders combined, a behemoth that took an immense effort to bring down. Now, all this being said, Shaka does routinely bungle his economy (albeit not to the same extent as the other crazies), his playoff round success has been rather limited, and his most recent game where he stalled out on all his wars before getting run over by Freddie of all leaders was also one of his worst. Still, whatever the reason may be, there's a method to his madness, and he's proven to be a legitimate threat in these games.
Sitting Bull of the Native Americans
Traits: Philosophical, Protective (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Environmentalism
Zealotry: Nonexistant
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 10
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 1
Overall Power Ranking: 8 points, 46th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Sitting Bull is stuck with the Philosophical and Protective traits; in other words, the two worst performing traits in the entirety of AI Survivor, although one can argue that Philosophical performs badly because it is foisted on leaders like Frederick, Lincoln, and, well, this guy. Sitting Bull also gets the terrible (for AI Survivor) Dog Soldier - the last thing a militaristic high peaceweight leader needs is weaker Axes - and the Totem Pole, which is like having double the Protective trait. At least he won't avoid Mysticism for ages on end and has above average starting techs, but his overall tools nevertheless leave much to be desired. As a personality, Sitting Bull is a series of absurd contradictions. He builds a lot of units (8/10), doesn't bother with wonders (0/10), and has Military and Growth research flavors. This all sounds like the makings of an aggressive leader in the vein of Ragnar or Alex, and yet, Sitting Bull has a lower than average aggression rating (4.3/10). He simply doesn't attack very often - he can't even plot at Pleased. He also has a high peace weight, preferring the likes of Gandhi and Elizabeth to Montezuma and Shaka. This, along with his traits, largely leads to an AI that constructs a strong military that he doesn't use, and a weak economy to boot, with Sitting Bull struggling to keep up in tech with even the rabid warmongers. It doesn't paint an impressive picture, and as a general rule Sitting Bull doesn't just start in a deep hole; he's unwilling to dig himself out. Even worse is that outside of his peaceweight, he has difficulties making friends in the harsh world of AI Survivor - he does not care at all about religion, he won't join coalitions, he doesn't get any warmonger respect ratings, and his favorite civic comes way too late to matter. Making matters worse is that Sitting Bull LOVES Espionage, and if he survives for a while, a humongous IF, he will often, erhm, poison his relationships with his peers. He is essentially the Karen of AI Survivor, demanding you stay out of his business while snooping into yours at the first possible opportunity. Most of the time, "Sitting Duck" usually just goes irrelevant, antagonizes everyone, and waits to be taken out of his misery.
Past Performance: Heavily armed pacifism has not proved a winning strategy in these games, and there's a legitimate case to be made that Sitting Bull is the worst leader in the entire competition. He's only finished off a single opponent in the course of eight seasons despite his militarism, and his two highlights are losing a space "race" to Frederick and an unusual Cultural win where he somehow steamrolled three more technologically advanced Financial leaders at the same time to claim his one victory (ok, that one was impressive). To be completely fair to the guy, he has gotten a pretty bad set of map draws, frequently surrounded by hostile foes that tear into and cripple him before he has the chance to do anything for himself. However, his performances when this hasn't happened haven't suggested that we've been missing out either, typically featuring... not much of anything. Even games where he starts strong tend to see him eventually fall behind maintaining a large army without properly leveraging his strength. His only good games so far have come together with Frederick, so the two leaders seem to have some bizarre synergy, but barring them starting on the same map, history suggests that neither is likely to accomplish anything of note.
Stalin of Russia
Traits: Aggressive, Industrious (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Production
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: State Property
Zealotry: Nonexistant
Past Finishes: Season 3 champion, one Championship loss, one playoff round elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 10
Overall Power Ranking: 34 points, 8th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Stalin had one of the most dominant stretches in AI Survivor history, compiling a staggering track record of success that we're still not entirely sure how to explain. His traits are nothing special, with the Industrious trait largely acting as a detriment to AI performance and Aggressive never grading out as anything better than average. Stalin has undoubtedly been helped by his Cossacks, the primary highlight of his Russian civilization. Understanding why Stalin has repeatedly crushed his opponents requires a deeper dive into his AI personality. He has a low peace weight and an above average aggression rating (7.6/10) while avoiding the truly nutty behavior of someone like Montezuma or Genghis Khan. Aside from a somewhat high build wonder rating (6/10), most of Stalin's AI ratings are in the middle of the spectrum and don't stand out one way or another outside of 10/10 espionage spending. What's unusual about Stalin is the fact that he doesn't care about religion at all, showing as little interest as fellow comrade Mao with miniscule shared faith bonuses and differing religion penalties. This may be a factor in his more successful games as Stalin doesn't get hung up on religious diplomacy and can act as he sees fit. He otherwise has Military and Production tech flavors and, of course, can plot war at "Pleased" relations. For whatever reason, this "militaristic but not too much so" package has been extremely successful in prior seasons of AI Survivor.
Past Performance: Stalin's accomplishments are compressed into a single blaze of glory, but that blaze was so big and bright that he still remains Top 8 in power rankings many years afterwards despite a multi-season streak of futility. Stalin was crowned champion after an utterly dominant Season Three; throughout that season, he kept jumping into dogpiles at the perfect moments, and ended up with three wins and seven kills to attain the highest single-season score in AI Survivor history. Even Alternate Histories proved that his games, while not slam dunks, were still plausible scenarios that suggested some inner strength in Comrade Stalin. He further bolstered his reputation with a return to the Championship the next season which included another strong victory in the opening round. Since then, however, he has completely flailed around, scoring literally ZERO points from Season Five and on - which makes his Season Nine position in the leaderboard even more crazy. He's had promising starts each time, only to completely fail to accomplish anything with them and end up eliminated sooner or later; his most recent appearance in Season Eight, where early copper led him to ignore expansion to declare a suicidally early war against the worst possible target he could have attacked, was a new low for him. Stalin's history before his breakout season was also unremarkable, with just one backdoor second-place finish and one kill across the first two installments, and it's worth noting that his tendency to ignore early culture has shown itself as a serious weakness in recent seasons, one that stunts his early game and forces him to play catch-up. At this point it is valid to question whether Stalin is actually a good leader or simply got really lucky in his heyday, and with each season that he comes up empty, the latter seems more and more likely.
Suleiman of the Ottomans
Traits: Philosophical, Imperialistic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Culture, Secondary Military
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
Zealotry: Low
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, one wildcard elimination, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 11
Total Medals: 0 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 9 points, tied 44th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Suleiman is a fairly standard militaristic AI leader tied to a good civilization and an interesting pairing of traits, with Imperialistic favoring rapid expansion across the map while Philosophical works at cross-purposes through the running of specialists. That's great for humans, but countersynergistic for the AI. He also benefits from the Ottoman civ, which features excellent starting techs and two very good unique features in the Janissary and Hamman. Suleiman's AI personality emphasizes military aspects but not to an overwhelming degree. He has a high aggression rating (7/10) and does like to train units (6/10). On the other hand, his peace weight is in the middle of the scale and he won't declare war at "Pleased" relations - he can pretty easily not feel like attacking anyone. Suleiman surprisingly doesn't care much about religion at all, although he has decent odds to found one because his tech flavors are Culture and Military. His setup is a mixed bag overall, with conflicting leader traits and several different points of emphasis in Suleiman's personality. The various parts can occasionally come together into a larger whole, the keyword being "occasionally".
Past Performance: Suleiman was a part of the very first Championship, but only off a pair of distant second-place finishes. Sullla speculated at the start of that finale that Suleiman wasn't actually that strong, and he's certainly been proven right as a pair of kills are all that "Sillyman" has to his name since. There's not a whole lot in particular to say about Suleiman's performances across the past eight seasons, nothing remarkable that's happened. He's just been generally ineffective. The closest he's come to success since 2014 is finishing within 200 points of second place in a Wildcard game, and when you can say that, you know you don't have a very strong performer on your hands. Now, he has been a little unlucky - for example, despite a bad jungle start in Season Eight he actually had good odds to advance to the playoffs! He was also extraordinarily dominant in his Season Seven alternate histories which we completely missed out on seeing in the actual game that took place. Nevertheless, AI Survivor has historically not proven kind to jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none leaders, and Suleiman is no exception.
Suryavarman of the Khmer
Traits: Creative, Expansive (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Culture
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Organized Religion
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, four playoff round eliminations, two wildcard eliminations, one opening round elimination
Total Games Played: 17
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 12
Overall Power Ranking: 33 points, 9th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Suryavarman has a lot of power packed into his kit even if it sometimes seems to be pulling in six different directions at once. He has the quintessential early game trait pairing of Creative and Expansive, two traits that help to drive expansion and to claim land quickly - indeed it may be one of the best pure early-game focused parings in the game, good enough that it is sometimes chosen ahead of Financial pairings in unmodded Civ4 MP games. Suryavarman's Khmer civ is a bit weaker, with decent starting techs but mediocre-at-best features in the Ballista Elephant and Baray. The Elephant is especially sad - for replacing one of the most overpowered units in the game, it really provides no meaningful difference. At least Sury gets a pull to the essential Construction tech to protect him from too much pre-Catapult warring. As far as Suryavarman's AI personality goes, he has a surprisingly aggressive setup for someone with good economic traits and research flavors (carrying a Gold/Culture pairing). Suryavarman has a high aggression rating (7.6/10), a very low peace weight, and a fairly high emphasis on training units (6/10). However, Suryavarman also positively loves building wonders (8/10), an odd fit for someone with his militaristic bent and expansion-focused traits. He also heavily emphasizes religion in his diplomacy, and can definitely be inclined to found one despite his poor starting techs for religious purposes. Along with the Creative border pops and an ability to plot at Pleased, this is not an easy neighbor to live with. He can be a highly unpredictable leader, either charging into multiple wars or sitting back to construct wonders in peace.
Past Performance: Suryavarman has a long track record of success that has helped him maintain a Top 10 ranking in the leaderboards. He's made the playoffs more often than not, scored points in seven out of eight seasons, and came quite close to winning the inaugural season until his economy sputtered too much. Sury has proven himself quite capable of snowballing ahead and steamrolling his opposition; this is responsible for all three of his wins, and he would have secured a fourth such win in Season Seven if not for a truly remarkable performance by Hannibal on the same map alongside a strange map quirk that was causing Sury to build and maintain a grotesquely large standing army. When things don't go so well for Sury, he's still often able to hang in there, either backdooring second place or surviving to the Wildcard game for another shot. Of course, he's had his share of failed outings as well, struggling economically while still falling into the "warmonger with builder tech preferences" trap, and the most recent season has put a significant damper on his reputation. In his Opening Round game, blessed with a flood-plains start and two rather unthreatening neighbors, he for whatever reason freaked out against the barbarians and crashed his economy by building way too many warriors, all for naught as those grunts failed to protect him from the barbarians anyway. While he survived to the Wildcard Game clinging on to an empire consisting of a patch of Arctic nuclear wasteland, his next game was not much better, once again failing to properly handle the barbarians before being the first domino to fall in his conqueror's eventual snowball. When Sury puts it all together and gets off to a fast start, he is a frightening foe, but he is equally capable of terrible performances that make everyone question his overall viability.
Tokugawa of Japan
Traits: Aggressive, Protective (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Fishing, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Science, Secondary Military
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Mercantilism
Zealotry: Low
Past Finishes: Three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 15 points, tied 32nd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Tokugawa is infamous for being the most isolationist leader in Civ4. He won't sign Open Borders with anyone else unless relations warm up to "Pleased", and he generally refuses to trade or interact with anyone else unless they share a mutual military struggle. Tokugawa further suffers from one of the worst leader trait combinations in the game - who cares about a bunch of extra promotions when getting to a higher military tech 10 turns sooner is so much more valuable? He's also saddled with a below average civilization in Japan, with the nothing-special Samurai and the uselessly late Shale Plant. At least he starts with The Wheel, and for a warmonger with not particularly great economic tools that is a very good thing. Tokugawa's AI personality reflects his generally militaristic bent, with an above average aggression rating (7.3/10) and train unit emphasis. Tokugawa's best feature is probably his tech flavor, where he has the rare Science preference to go along with a lesser Military emphasis. This is likely the reason why Tokugawa has been somewhat decent at building an economy despite his atrocious leader traits. Long story short, this guy is basically an old man telling everyone to stay out of his yard while shaking a rolled-up newspaper.
Past Performance: Everyone thought Tokugawa would be a terrible AI Survivor leader, but he's pleasantly surprised the community - as it turns out, turning tech trading off is a major boon to him as it neutralizes the biggest weakness of his extreme isolationist personality. In fact, Tokugawa is near the middle of the power rankings, an okay-but-not-great warmonger who's seen modest success in the competition. His games have varied in quality: some have seen him given poor starting positions that he just was not equipped to get out of, while in others, he's able to expand to a respectable size and become a legitimate military threat in his own right. What's never happened is a true Tokugawa snowball; even though he's won one Domination victory, that was a match where he was mostly running even with multiple competitors, not pulling ahead until late in the game. While Toku is not as insanely aggressive as some warmongers and is a bit better at teching, his isolationist tendencies have come back to bite him in the past; any map where he starts in a central location seems to end poorly for him, with all three of his top-two finishes coming from starts off to the side. All in all, Toku is a scrappy fighter who's seen scattered successes here and there, but never put together any consistent runs.
Victoria of England
Traits: Financial, Imperialistic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Representation
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 11
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 2
Overall Power Ranking: 12 points, tied 36th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Victoria gets the privilege of having the two best-performing traits in AI Survivor history: Financial and Imperialistic. This should in theory allow her to get out to a fast start and have the economy to support it. She also gets the powerful Redcoat unique unit and Stock Exchange, both of which are quite good for economic AIs. Perhaps the one issue with her package is her hit-or-miss Fishing/Mining combination. Other than her amazing traits and unique items, Victoria is a relatively standard AI. Her flavours are Gold and Growth. Her ratings are about average across the board with few exceptions, including aggression (5.1/10), wonder (6/10) and unit (4/10) build preferences. She has a high peace weight, and is likely to fight warmongers and befriend peaceniks, though unlike most high peace weight leaders she can declare war at "Pleased" relations. Victoria is essentially the quintessential average personality gifted with god-tier traits.
Past Performance: Vicky is one of the biggest puzzles in AI Survivor, as she's failed to accomplish much of note despite possessing two of the strongest traits for the competition. She has only had two strong performances, and both were clearly massive outlier results through both the eye test and Alternate Histories. Her Season Six victory saw her peacefully expand to NINETEEN cities and snowball from there, while in Season Eight despite bordering Ragnar of all leaders she was never attacked until an irrelevant post Turn 300 conflict and had free reign to "Financial/Alive" while the world around her burned. She did come close to one more win in the Season Three Wildcard, assuming a winning position before squandering it on an ill-advised Cultural victory attempt - that one cultural trait coming to bite her - and getting knocked out as a result. Outside of those games, it's been a story of complete futility for her. Some of these failures have come from hostile maps where she's faced too much pressure from other leaders, but plenty of others have come from decent starts where she completely squanders her amazing traits. In fact, Victoria is a good case study in the weaknesses of both Financial and Imperialistic. The problem with the latter is that it is an "active" rather than a "passive" trait - one has to take advantage of its bonuses for said bonuses to be useful, as opposed to passive traits like Creative or Spiritual which benefits the AI in 100% of all games no matter their playstyles or situations. Vicky just doesn't expand well, making her Imperialistic trait a waste, and it is no coincidence that her two best games have been the two games she actually utilized Imperialistic. To compound matters, Financial also has a key weakness - the early economic boost it provides gives its leaders first dibs on the available wonders, which can cause them to get distracted from other important priorities like military and expansion. Vicky often falls into this trap, most recently in her playoff game last season where she threw away a strong start by stopping expansion at a mere FOUR cities to build wonders. Three solid games in eleven appearances is far, far worse than one would expect from her, and until Vicky realizes that she is playing Civ4 and not Civ5, we can temper our expectations for her.
Wang Kon of Korea
Traits: Financial, Protective (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Mining, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Science
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Caste System
Zealotry: Low to Medium
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 11
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 11 points, tied 38th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Wang Kon is infamous in AI Survivor circles for acting as the "Troll King", the one leader who will do the most obnoxious thing possible to screw with the rest of the field as well as the viewers watching the game. He has one amazing trait in the form of Financial and one terrible trait in the form of Protective, the two polar opposite traits in terms of overall usefulness in Civ4. Wang Kon's Korean civilization has an OK set of starting techs combined together with the powerful Hwacha and the excellent (if relatively late) Seowon, and it says a lot about how terrible Protective is that most only consider Wang Kon a mid-tier leader in human hands. As far as AI personalities run, Wang Kon is ostensibly a cookie-cutter builder with Gold and Science research flavor, a high peace weight, and an inability to declare war at "Pleased" relations. However, he is easily the most aggressive of the peaceniks, carrying a shockingly high aggression rating of 6.1 - for reference Cathy has a 6.7 rating - which probably is a major contributor to his "Troll Kon" persona. While his build unit rating is low (4/10) and he is not particularly zealous despite starting with Mysticism, there is a fascinating amount of neuroticism encased into his personality.
Past Performance: Wang is a massive fan favorite who has delighted viewers for years with antics that have earned him the frequent monikers of "Troll Kon" or "the Troll King". It all started in his Season Two opener, where he amused the crowd to no end by continually marching his army to the other side of the world to (successfully) harass other leaders at little gain to himself. Since then, he's been present for (perhaps incited?) further cross-map crusades; trolled a field of low peaceweight leaders by keeping them occupied fighting him, thereby letting Gandhi secure a win; trolled a stronger competitor by declaring war, buying the game's runaway AI into the conflict, then bowing out and watching the carnage; and in Season Seven trolled the picking contest by declaring a suicidal war and getting himself killed before the massive favorite for First to Die. His most infamous moment, though, was in his Season Three opener, where he was miraculously resurrected from near-elimination via the liberation mechanic, then (still in a trailing position) finagled an exceptionally unlikely Spaceship win via same-turn tiebreaker, to the point where nobody saw his win coming until the turn where it happened! Notably, one thing not on Wang's resume is real success, as the aforementioned extremely unlikely win has been his only scoring finish over eight seasons, and his most recent game was an absolute dud in all aspects. The Financial trait has helped him out a little, but not made him a real contender, and it seems he often tries to be a religious leader, a warmonger, and a peaceful builder at the same time, falling flat in all aspects while serving as yet more proof of how terrible Protective is for AI Survivor purposes.
Washington of America
Traits: Charismatic, Expansive (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Free Speech
Zealotry: Medium to High
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, three wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 40th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Washington has the Expansive/Charismatic pairing, a pretty nice early game combination that would go well with a more warmongering personality. Unfortunately he prefers to be a pacifistic economic leader, and while extra happiness and health in each city is OK and all that and Washington rarely has issues growing his cities, it is not only a zero-culture trait combination, but also just doesn't do as much for a builder's game as being Financial, or having free culture and cheap libraries, or free civic swaps. Washington certainly isn't helped by hauling around the American civilization and its incredibly late-arriving unique features. Washington the AI has a low aggression rating (4.3/10), a high peace weight, and won't declare war at "Pleased" relations, and he overall is a great neighbor to have save for the occasional spy shenanigans (7/10 espionage). However, Washington inexplicably has Military and Growth tech preferences, causing him to prioritize military techs that he won't use and ignore development-focused research. It's a bizarre tech prioritization system that badly undercuts his performance. When combined with mediocre traits and the weak American civilization, it's easy to understand why Washington has generally struggled.
Past Performance: Washington has had one strong season (Season Five) and a thoroughly unexceptional track record otherwise. Season Five was clearly a case of "right place at the right time", as a distant second-place finish managed to get him a beautiful starting location in the playoffs, which he leveraged (in a legitimately strong performance) to his only victory. Meanwhile, his failures have taken various forms: he's been stuck surrounded by hostile leaders and left without hope several times, tried and failed to fight his way into a strong position a couple of times, and in his very first appearance, successfully avoided fighting a single war throughout his entire game... resulting in him getting passed up and finishing in third place. While he is a legitimately good fighter, this is a Catch-22, as in friendly diplomatic fields he ends up with the Sitting Bull syndrome of "build an army and never use it", and he has to face diplomatically hostile fields to put his fighting skills to use. Aside from his win and one other strong but second-rate performance, Washington has never done anything very impressive. While he's not the worst leader in the competition (and easily the best of the Americans, which is a VERY low bar), his ceiling generally caps out at "wildcard elimination".
Willem of the Netherlands
Traits: Financial, Creative (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Science
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Free Religion
Zealotry: Nonexistent
Past Finishes: Two Championship losses, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 18 points, tied 26th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Willem has one of the strongest economic setups in the game and he's been held back thus far only by his poorly-chosen set of research priorities. Willem has maybe the single best trait combination in the game in Financial/Creative, a double-culture pairing with multiple passive yet direct bonuses that enables fool-proof settling and gives a multitude of early science bonuses. Willem's Dutch civilization is significantly less powerful, though it does have decent starting techs and can become strong if the Dikes ever show up in time to matter. On Fractal maps, this is often the case, but AI Survivors are run on Pangaea and Willem's uniques leave much to be desired if he is not on the coast. As an AI leader, Willem has middling scores in almost every category, lots of 4/10 and 5/10 ratings across the board. His aggression rating is decently high at 6.7/10 and his peace weight also sits in the middle of the scale. Willem has a ridiculously low religious emphasis - so much so he cares less about religion than the communist leaders - and he does not found his own faith very often despite his strong economic abilities. The single biggest weakness for Willem comes in the form of his tech preferences: he has Gold and Science flavors, which is one of the most military-avoidant combinations in AI Survivor. Willem has repeatedly refused to research Rifling technology to a suicidal degree, in some games finishing Assembly Line and Flight (!) techs before picking up Rifling. This has led to his elimination at the hands of much less advanced civilizations as he needlessly fights with muskets against rifles. We have established a rule of thumb for Willem: if he makes it to Rifling tech then he wins the game; otherwise, he finds himself getting eliminated.
Past Performance: Willem is one of those leaders whose success has been very tightly concentrated, scoring all of his career points across Seasons Four and Five while accomplishing absolutely nothing in the other six seasons. Willem looked like a top-tier leader in those two seasons; he showed how economically strong he can be with the two best traits in the competition, put out three winning performances - only getting second in one of those games due to a backdoor Culture win - recovered from an early loss of his capital for another second-place finish, made the Championship twice in a row, and got out to a good start there both times before eventually getting beaten back militarily. Season Four in particular looked like it would be his title, until he showed his most infamous weakness: ignoring the Rifling tech for ages on end, allowing a foe with weaker overall tech to attack and conquer him despite his lead. Despite his successes in those two seasons, though, Willem's failure across the rest of his career means he's not even a seeded leader. Some of these have seen him just play ineffectively - in particular, he is prone to neglect expansion - but others, including Season Eight, have given more hope for a resurgence in the future, with him getting out to promising starts before getting attacked relatively early by another strong leader. Outside of his patented Rifling allergy, Willem has key diplomatic weaknesses. He has a neutral peaceweight, but does not care enough about religion to make allies in that manner. He has no Warmonger Respect to help him get along with the Kublais and Surys of the world. Moreover, his Creative trait often creates border tensions that can keep relations with his peers icy. If Willem can navigate his diplomatic landscape, get a better chance to build up, and overcome his most crippling flaw, we may very well see him return to glory and make a real run for the title once more.
Zara Yaqob of Ethiopia
Traits: Creative, Organized (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Growth, Secondary Religion
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: +2
Favorite Civic: Theocracy
Zealotry: Extreme
Past Finishes: Season 1 runner up, one playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 15
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 9
Overall Power Ranking: 25 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Zara plays with the Creative and Organized traits, an above average pairing due to its excellent synergy, as both traits reward fast expansion while also giving the Ethiopians major discounts on a number of strong buildings throughout the course of a game. For his unique items Zara plays with the decent Oromo Warrior, a slightly better musketman, and the mediocre Stele which oftentimes only begins to become useful when it is about to obsolete. Lastly, Zara gets the Hunting/Mining combo for his starting techs, which means he can be slow to connect his food resources, especially if he goes for a religion because he is one of the most devout leaders in the game. His flavours are Growth and Religion, an unusual combination that could lead to healthy and happy cities. Outside of religion, Zara is a bit of a wildcard, holding thoroughly average ratings (5.6 aggression, 6 unit build, 4 wonder build). He can shapeshift from a warmonger to an enlightened soul from game to game. However, by being perhaps the most middle-of-the-road leader in Civ4, he turns into one of the game's most unique personalities. He is the Oprah of AI Survivor - you get a diplomatic bonus, you get a diplomatic bonus, you ALL get diplomatic bonuses! Not only is he the sole not-Gandhi leader to grant +2 extra "first impression" relations, but he ALSO has an additional +2 warmonger respect bonus. When combined with his neutral peaceweight of 6, this guy can befriend anybody from the most hardcore warmongers to the most timid peaceniks. Furthermore, his diplomatic bonus for shared faith goes up to an obscene +8 - for reference Izzy tops out at +7 - and while the penalty for religious differences is nothing to sneeze at, he is more than capable of getting along with heathens due to the other diplomatic goodies he provides. I'd venture the developers HAD to make him plot at Pleased, or else he might never attack anyone! Naturally, liking everyone too much has its downsides - Zara can maintain cordial relations with everyone, but unless he forms a religious alliance he has difficulty forming any deep bonds. We all know that one person who gets along with everyone but cannot form true connections, and it is not the happiest of existences.
Past Performance: Zara was perhaps the biggest star of Season One, rebounding from near-elimination via the Wildcard game into three straight dominant performances to come just short of winning the title. (Instead, in classic AI fashion, he sat back while slightly under the Domination threshold and let Justinian win via space instead.) However, his career since then has seemingly been dedicated to proving that this performance was a fluke. Zara has accomplished very little from Season Two onwards, failing a little or a lot depending on the game, but in any case almost never becoming truly strong or a major figure. He showed minor signs of life in Season Six, scoring a decent amount of points and kills in both seasons, but that was bookended by Seasons Five and Seven which both saw him suffer embarrassing early eliminations at the hands of Alexander; Season Five's performance in particular saw him wiped out without ever reaching Archery, for the earliest elimination in AI Survivor history. Since Season One, Zara has displayed some rather crippling flaws under AI Survivor settings. First, he is a religious leader with an ill-fitting civ for such a style, and with Deity techs removed this has directly contributed to his Alex disembowelments, as he is too slow to research development and defensive techs due to pursuing (and often missing out on due to turn order, being last alphabetically!) religions. Secondly, if he likes someone too much, he can take his sweet time making anything happen, and this particular weakness was exposed in Season Eight, where after essentially being a spectator in his Opening Round (at least he got the Alex monkey off his back), he waited too long to make his move in the Wildcard Game and ended up eliminated due to finishing in 2nd place in a rare winner-takes-all match. Unfortunately, Zara is one of the leaders most hurt by modern survivor settings. He's often on the shortlist of "best AI discussions" in many forum posts, as while being nice to everyone is amazing with regular AI and tech trading, it is not nearly as beneficial under Aggressive AI and No Tech Trading. While Zara does have the skillset and diplomacy to succeed, he will need to take more initiative and have better early games in order to recapture his Season One magic.
