This is a continuing feature for Season Eight of Civ4 AI Survivor: a preview of each game before it begins, providing a quick summary of the leaders involved and how the community expects the game to shake out. We start as always with an overview of the map:
We've had requests in past seasons for an overview screenshot of the map with the resource icon turned on:
It's hard for me to see much of anything with all of those little icons but you guys asked for it, you've got it! Now for a look at our individual leaders (note that all stats are from before the start of Season Eight):
Justinian of the Byzantines
Traits: Imperialistic, Spiritual
Starting Techs: Mysticism, Wheel
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Season One champion, Season Three runner up, one playoff round elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 3 Second Places 
Total Kills: 10 
Overall Power Ranking: 36 points, 6th 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. He is tied to the Byzantine civilization, which suffers from terrible starting techs but benefits from one of the game's most overpowered units in the form of the Cataphract. Knights with 12 strength are enough to win many games of their own accord and Justinian has put them to good use in many of his victories. (He's also sometimes refused to research Guilds until a very late date, as it doesn't correspond with his Religious + 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 somewhat low peace weight. 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 simultaneously keeps him from backstabbing his allies but also sometimes limits the gains that the Byzantines could be making with more decisive action. Justinian will typically found an early religion and use it to make some friends, then go on the attack against those who are outside his religious bloc. He does this well enough to make up for his lackluster performance on the economic side of the game. Research doesn't matter if everyone else has been crushed to death beneath cataphract hooves.
Past Performance: Justinian was one of the best leaders of the early seasons. Not only did he win the inaugural Championship, he followed it up with a second-place overall finish two seasons later, and is currently the only leader to finish in the top three overall on two separate occasions! Seven placements and nine kills in the first four seasons established him firmly as a top-tier leader, as he was important in game after game after game. More recently, he's fallen on hard times: he's scored no survivals and only a single kill in the past three seasons, one of the least successful seeded leaders in this stretch. But if you look more closely, he has good excuses: his starting position in Season Five was terrible and left him with no hope, and the past two seasons have seen him get off to strong starts where alternate histories indicate he was the best leader on the map - only to see somebody else snowball ahead and plow into him at the worst possible times. As a result, while Justinian has largely fallen into "old legend" status by now, he continues to be an imminent threat to take the world by storm again, and one of the top candidates to become the first two-time champion.
Ramesses II of Egypt
Traits: Industrious, Spiritual
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, one playoff round elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 1
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 33rd 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. The AI loves to waste turns in Anarchy flipping civics and it helps save them from their own follies. Ramesses is further helped by the presence of the powerful Egyptian civilization, which has excellent starting techs along with one of the game's best unique units in the form of the War Chariot. 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 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. Only in the rare situation where Ramesses is somehow able to acquire additional territory does he start to become a threat to win the game. His wonder-heavy gameplan simply doesn't work very well for AI Survivor purposes.
Past Performance: Ramesses has failed to accomplish much through most of his career, his AI Survivor story instead largely one of military defeats. 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 managed to hang on for a couple of Second Place finishes now, and his recent appearance in the Season Seven playoffs featured a very strong start from which he was able to put on a dominant Cultural victory, while scoring his only career kill. Recent alternate histories have also suggested that Ramesses might be better than his results indicate, and his reputation might be on the upswing... but he still has a long way to go if he wants to be a real success story.
Augustus of Rome
Traits: Imperialistic, Industrious
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 1
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 33rd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Augustus is one of the less noteworthy AIs in the game. His traits are Imperialistic and Industrious, which is a combination seriously lacking in synergy: Imperialistic wants you to get out there and claim the map, while Industrious wants to build wonders instead of settlers. He also gets the uber-swordsmen in praetorians and the less powerful forum, though the increased great people points do synergise with Industrious wonders. Lastly, Augustus starts with Fishing and Mining, a generally poor pair unless he starts on the coast. Augustus has a personality full of synergies and anti-synergies. To start with his synergies, the most notable thing about the Roman Emperor is his love of wonders (8/10), which works well with Industrious. He also gets the forum, which isn't fantastic but does allow him to generate more great people with those wonders. Lastly, his low aggression rating (4.6/10) means he is generally in a position where tying up his cities on large projects isn't a total disaster. However, because of that low aggression rating, Augustus typically doesn't make use of the biggest reason to play the Romans: Praetorians. Sure, they can stabilise a defence if he's attacked early, but Augustus is pretty unlikely to go on the offensive. He tends to ignore the Imperialistic half of his trait combination, and Augustus is unlikely to claim the lion's share on the map. Other than that, Augustus' numbers are in about the middle of the scale, and he has production and military flavours. He's a generally run-of-the-mill AI with a particular penchant for wonders. Augustus has a strong and mediocre trait, and a strong and mediocre unique item. Unfortunately, he focuses on the wrong half of both.
Past Performance: Augustus has had more success at reaching the playoffs than many high peaceweight leaders, but his overall performance still hasn't been very impressive. Two of his three "placing" games, including his only win, were the result of very favorable setups where he got an isolated start and the chance to peacefully expand to a large size, then enter the global stage at a time of his choosing. While he was competent enough to not screw up these opportunities, the fact that he scored only a single kill between those two games speaks for itself. His first-ever game did see him successfully use his Praetorians to stave off multiple early assaults until an ally came to help, but there he similarly couldn't actually finish off any opponents on his own. Augustus has accomplished little of note in his other appearances; basically, he has the potential to capitalize on a favorable start, but otherwise will probably not be very important.
Frederick of Germany
Traits: Philosophical, Organized
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place
Total Kills: 1
Overall Power Ranking: 6 points, tied 46th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Frederick is another peaceful AI leader, albeit one lacking most of the tools necessary to be effective. His trait pairing of Philosophical and Organized comes off as underwhelming for a builder game, lacking Financial or Expansive or Creative or even the likes of Spiritual. There's nothing here to help Frederick to get off to a fast start and also nothing to allow him to max out at a higher economic tier after the expansion portion of the game has finished. All of Germany's unique stuff comes far too late in the game to matter and the German starting tech pairing of Hunting + Mining is only mediocre. 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). Frederick is probably most notable for having only one research flavor, Production, a choice which hasn't fared particularly well in practice. 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 without the traits or civ choice to pull it off.
Past Performance: Frederick has proven to be one of the competition's worst leaders, scoring all of his points in a single game and accomplishing nothing else in his other appearances, save sometimes serving as a useful meatshield. Even his one win wasn't very impressive: he had a strong start and got just enough gains from a single war, but did nothing else of note the entire game and only barely beat out Sitting Bull of all people in a late spaceship victory. As for his other games, he has suffered from some legitimately terrible starts, in central positions surrounded by enemies, but he's also had several perfectly serviceable starts that he simply failed to do anything with. Most telling is his Season Seven outing, where he completely tanked his economy with just five cities and rendered himself a dead man walking without any outside intervention, in one of the worst performances we've ever seen. As a peaceful leader without real economic strength, Frederick simply lacks the tools to find success in most circumstances.
Gandhi of India
Traits: Spiritual, Philosophical
Starting Techs: Mysticism, Mining
Peace Weight: 10
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Five playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, one opening round elimination
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 25 points, tied 12th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Gandhi is without a doubt one of the most unique leaders in Civ4. For traits, he plays with the powerful Spiritual, and the terrible (for AI Survivor) Philosophical, an overall unremarkable pair that lands at about average, the most important point being that Gandhi gets several half-cost cultural buildings. He also has access to the above average Fast Worker and Mausoleum. Lastly, his starting techs are Mysticism and Mining, a generally 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. Gandhi is the leader least likely to declare war in the entire game, with an aggression rating of 0/10. He also has the lowest possible rating for building units (0/10) and demanding tribute (0/10), essentially making Gandhi a hyper pacifist who entirely neglects his military and prays it won't come back to bite him in the rear. Surprisingly, Gandhi is also quite unlikely to build wonders (2/10); he doesn't waste time with those either. Rather than units and wonders, Gandhi spends the entire game laser-focused on one thing: cultural buildings. Gandhi is a rare leader with only one flavour in Civ 4: CULTURE. He pursues religions like a man possessed and puts his production bonuses to extremely effective use. It's not uncommon to see Gandhi desperately fighting wars of survival whilst simultaneously building his third or fourth temple in each city. It usually doesn't end well. Gandhi is probably the most feast-or-famine type leader in AI Survivor. If he is not attacked by his neighbours, he can rush out a cultural victory like nobody's business, but if he is, he collapses faster than any other leader in the game. An early war declaration from a neighbour can often 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 - he's one of only five leaders to have made the playoffs in five separate seasons, and his only opening round elimination took place in the very first season. He also won his opening round game for an impressive four consecutive seasons, all in games that followed similar patterns: he was allowed to culture in peace for long periods of time until becoming 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 want him off the map ASAP. Only one of Gandhi's five playoff games gave him a position that he really had a fair chance to win, and he wasn't able to deliver in that single game. More doubt has been cast on his true skill in recent years, too, as alternate histories suggest that his successes have been somewhat lucky, and in his Season Seven opener, he threw 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 it bears remembering that if left alone to pursue his cultural gameplan in peace, he is extremely likely to win the game.
Brennus of the Celts
Traits: Spiritual, Charismatic
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, two wildcard eliminations, three opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 9 points, tied 36th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Brennus gets the Charismatic and Spiritual traits, a middle-tier economic pairing. He gets the less decent Gallic Warrior and Dun unique items, both well below average, and starts with Hunting and Mysticism techs, one of the "religion-or-bust" combinations. Brennus is less suicidally aggressive than his female counterpart, with only a moderately high aggression rating (7/10). Other than that, his preferences are pretty similar, with a moderate unit build rating (6/10) and a low wonder build rating (2/10), and Brennus is also highly unlikely to demand tribute (1/10). The other noteworthy difference between the two are their flavours, with Brennus' being military and religion. The male Celtic leader is far more likely to actually use his Mysticism start and research a religion out of the gate. He also cares a lot more about religion, with a high bonus and malus for sharing or not sharing faith with his neighbours. Brennus is basically one of the moderately aggressive, religious AIs, with an extremely low peace weight to boot (0/10).
Past Performance: Brennus has proved himself both one of the lesser and one of the least interesting of the low peaceweight leaders. He's typically ended up in fairly aggressive fields of leaders, and started games off well enough with full or partial conquests, only to see somebody else do it better, grow bigger than him, and usually fight and defeat him later in the game. He's never actually taken the lead himself or become a key player, and his best results were a pair of distant second-place finishes in the first two seasons. There's really not much else to say about this guy; he's a decent but second-rate conqueror whose time to shine has yet to come.
Here's what the community was thinking based on the prediction contest before the game took place:
Playoff Two had a heavy community favorite in the form of Season One Champion Justinian, with about half of the entrants picking him as the victor. There was also some degree of support for the two eastern leaders, Augustus and Ramesses, but virtually none for the remaining three leaders. The Runner Up category remained relatively divided as usual, with Augustus and Justinian as the two most popular choices. The First to Die category also had two big favorites, with Gandhi edging out Brennus and no one else getting more than a sliver of the community votes. Then for the victory category there was a true three-way split, with Spaceship having a modest lead closely followed by Cultural and Domination which were exactly tied at the time of this posting.
Finally, here are some of the best/craziest written predictions about what would take place during the game. There were many other excellent entries but I had to pick and choose my favorites to keep this from running on too long. Thanks again for the submissions!
RandomKesaranPasaran: heck if i know im just doing this for rome jokes
Dolwin: Augustus runs over Ramses and takes over the east coast. Justinian hates Brennus and Gandhi due to religion, ends up taking them both out. J wins by culture after capturing their holy cities and snowballs.
the_lord_admiral: Justinian has so much room (and good land, too), and for that reason alone he's a very tempting pick. Against this field I'm not going to rule out his running over the entire map. But he'll have to do it fast, because the eastern side of the map looks to be a high peaceweight builder's dream. Ramesses is going to be gunning for a fast culture win, and he's going to have Freddy, Gandhi, and Gus as meatshields before either of the warmongers ever gets to him. I think that should be good enough for a ~300 turn culture win.
NotSpamBot: The peaceweight spread for this game might be the most even we have ever had in one of these game and spans the entirety of the spectrum. Pretty interesting, and you should consider it for a moment. Done? Good, because peaceweight won't matter at all in this game. With Brennus, Gandhi, and Justinian this is a religion game and who has which religion will supersede any amount of peaceweight. Unfortunately religion is the most RNG dependent mechanic in the entire game so that makes it pretty darn impossible to figure out who will be allies with whom. However, I do belive that Brennus, Gandhi, and Justinian will be at odds in some way due to them researching the various religions and while that is going on Frederick will use his double riverside Gold + wet Corn + Floodplains + all of the other rivers to go absolutely insane.
AutomaterTeller: Gandhi is toast. I think he, Brennus and Justinian all go religion and Gandhi loses both Justinian and Brennus have rivers, so a commerce advantage. Gandhi will continue pushing for religion and not getting any worker techs. When he gets his religion, he'll have a hard time spreading it, where Brennus and Justinian are on rivers and so there's will spread. As for the winner, I like both justinian and Augustus's start, but I think Justinian will be at war early with Brennus, because they'll have competing religions. I think if augustus can not declare war for awhile, he has space to get up to 10+ cities and also build the Lighthouse, which will be good for him.
Dagoth Gares: Freddy and Augustus sure do have beautiful capitals to screw up.
Vesper: Too much land, too much impact from religion, zero creative and zero FIN/alives makes this game a very random one. I bet on Brennus to get second religion and oppose Justinian as he would backstab the celts on their crusade vs Fred, allowing Justinian to snowball, and Augustus to splat Ramesses for border tension into second place. Gandhi would either get eaten later or early by Fred and not matter much. In case Gandhi would get polytheism religion, it would be a culture win instead by someone else.
blindeli: We'll probably get a builder's paradise in the east and holy wars in the west. Justinian, Gandhi, and Brennus could easily found competing religions and hate each other's guts. Justinian should eventually triumph because one of his adversaries sucks at fighting and the other at not fighting, but his starting position seems terrible for his usual strategy. I'm picking one of the eastern leaders to win, hoping that Augustus uses his Praetorians to take land from Ramesses and uses that to surge ahead of Frederick. That said, I think Frederick, Ramesses, and Augustus all have similar chances. Frederick's start gives him far better options than those of the other leaders, but he's easily the worst leader in this game, so that balances out.
Zalson: Justinian partitions Brennus with Frederick, then eats Gandhi, Frederick (who swapped into Brennus religion) and then Ramesses and is about to start on Augustus when the game ends. Also foresee this one having a lot of prominent religions.
Blervis: Hatshepsut disgraced the gods with her disgraceful performance. Now it's up to the true King of Upper and Lower Pangea to remind everyone who invented Civilization and usher in the reign of the New New Kingdom. This gaggle of fools and usurpers would be wise to atone and beg forgiveness from the powerful bull of Ra, the protector of Egypt, beloved of the two Lands - Pharaoh Ramses II. Indeed, it is written on stones as old as time: "King of Kings am I. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works."
random.org: Brennus founds a different religion from Justinian, gets in a bitter fight with him, and eventually grinds him down and solo conquers him. Meanwhile, Gandhi and Ramesses found opposing religious blocs, convert Augustus and Fred respectively, and end up in a bitter crusade where nobody can get the upper hand for ages. Eventually Fred takes over India with the help of Brennus; this helps the two become fast friends. Augustus is able to build the UN and is nominated against Brennus; Fred votes for Brennus to decide the game and send himself to the Chamiponship in second place.
ZincAlloy: That's a lot of gold you've got there, Frederick. Unfortunately for you, this map is shaped like a fried prawn, and so the winner will be the one who starts with fishing tech - Augustus.
Plains-Cow: Can Justinian do it again? Well let's see, does he have a plains-cow start? I think that answer speaks for itself. SULLLA!! PICK JUSTINIAN TO WIN so that together we might overcome this season's curse for the glory of Rome!
Tricky: I'm banking on Brennus tanking Justinian's game, but not before Gandhi is taken out by the duo.
RefSteel: I'm seeing visions of Celtic war, Brennus leading his mighty armies against his hapless neighbor Freddy in his quest to cross the continent to reprise history with the sack of Rome. In preparing for the next step though, he figures without the other Rome: The Eastern Roman Empire transported for this playoff game to the southwest corner of the map, with nowhere to expand except straight through Celtia as religious differences help to drive them into war. With the aid of German production queues once Freddy bows out of the contest, my (quetionable) vision shows Brennus starting to gain the upper hand on his Southern front, only to finally collapse when the eastern-on-this-map civs decide they've had enough of warmongering heathens and finally settle in to a friendly three-way culture-off, with Justinian either suiciding once Brennus is gone or reduced to irrelevancy by the course of the war.
Mari/Nausicaa: By my calculations, both Gandhi and Rammy start in culture 1. Gandhi gets steamrolled by Justin (who hates him because of religion) and possibly Brennus (who hates him because of peaceweight). Justinian then eventually kills Rammy likely for religious reasons too, but is unlikely to brutalize anyone else as everyone goes into free religion by this point.
Eauxps I. Fourgott: Justinian couldn't have gotten a much better wildcard leader than Brennus next to him. He'll be the perfect meatshield - and, if he can convert him, religious ally. On the other hand, Augustus has an insane amount of beautiful green land. His friendly neighbors will give him time to develop it and the starting gems will keep his econ afloat until that's finished, and after that, good luck stopping him! Rams doesn't have a bad position himself, but somebody has to lose out. As for the others, Brennus and Gandhi are marked men on this map, and starting with double gold won't suddenly make Fred a good leader.
Sir Colville of the Dale: What is this game? NO ONE can declare at Pleased? FOUR Spiritual leaders? If any of them had Frederick's opening position, it would have been game over. As it stands, Brennus is going to win the spread race against Justinian, leaving the latter isolated and FTD. Even so, a religious bloc is not going to save Brennus ultimately, especially if Ramesses also gets a religion. With those two out, the game peace-locks. Ramesses by culture.
Colors: Give me the Champ. I think Fred is a red herring - he has a central position and historically has blow strong starts. I think Ramesses will be very strong, but I think there will be enough barb cities in the east to delay his settling and create some weird border tension. Gandhi and AC have too many jungles and not enough space. Brennus has abysmal diplo and his start is not strong enough to carry him. So, why Justinian? He has a giant back line, but should delay his first war for a bit based on settling land and lacking quick access to strategic resources.. He'll be willing to war war with his own religion and a diplo malus that isn't enough to launch crusades but is enough to stop please locking everyone. He'll have a huge production base and should have the capacity to run over Gandhi, Brennus and/or Freddy. I think Justinian has the greatest chance for a runaway win.
0urBall: Brennus takes Justinian's religion as he's off researching Fishing/Masonry/some other useless Tech. So Gandhi gets the 2nd early religion which ultimately dooms him with Justincow. Fred gets sqeezed by everyone in the west and ends up FTD while Gandhi closely follows. Caesar takes the east better then Ramesses, but doesn't go far enough to stop Justincow winning.
BluesyCobalt: I picked Augustus to win, Freddie to second, Brennus to die. Please, for the love of God, do not pick these Sullla!
