This summary for the Season Eight Championship was written by Eauxps I. Fourgott with some assistance from TheOneAndOnlyAtesh. Many thanks for volunteering to put this report together! 
It's been another wild ride, but we've finally reached the latest Championship. The most notable thing about this year's final field of leaders is that it's the first time we've ever had a high peaceweight majority in the Championship; it's almost always the low peaceweights who have the advantage of numbers, or barring that, it's an even matchup. However, through this entire season, often against the odds, the peaceniks have prevailed, and thus for this finale, they held the 5-1 majority, painting this match as a build-off moreso than a brawl for it all. Even the only low peaceweight leader, Qin Shi Huang, is more of a builder than a warmonger! Speaking of Qin, he was clearly a dead man walking on this map. His status as the peaceweight outcast marked him from the start; he was virtually guaranteed to have to fight early on while others got to tech up, and seemingly had no way to come out on top. The other contender whom the community had already dismissed was Churchill; even though this was his third straight championship appearance, he was clearly a weaker AI than his high peaceweight compatriots, and his economic weakness in particular seemed to be fatal in this field. Churchill and Qin had together advanced from a Playoff Game 3 that had featured a notably low-talent group of leaders, and it was generally agreed that they were out of their league here, and the real competition would be between the other four leaders.
Of those four, the favorite was unsurpisingly Mansa Musa, who is once again the #1 ranked leader in the entire competition after winning two games to get here. The economic titan had a friendly field for this map, and his position next to Qin could translate to easy gains if China was dogpiled; it was a much better setup than the one from which he won it all back in Season 6, and about half of all picking contest entries had selected him to win and become AI Survivor's first two-time champion. The secondary favorite was Gandhi, finally making his first appearance in the Championship after previously falling in the playoffs five different times. While this game would be far from a cakewalk for him given the tough economic competition he was up against, his famous single-minded focus on peaceful building made him a serious contender, especially for a Cultural victory, and after surviving two tough fields to reach this point, a lot of people thought he could pull it off in this comparatively favorable setup. While not attracting as much attention as these two big names, Elizabeth was also a serious threat to win this game thanks to her own Financial trait and economic focus. She was finally back in the Championship after last making it all the way back in Season 1, and having never even made the playoffs since then until this year. She'd outlasted Mansa back in the original finale: could she outdo him again here, and make this her season of redemption? Finally, the darkhorse candidate for this game was Augustus Caesar. While not boasting the economic heft of the Mansa/Gandhi/Elizabeth trio, he was one of the most militaristic leaders in this field, and bordered the unpopular Qin for a potential conquest. A number of people had picked him to leverage this to control the largest nation on the map, and pull off a Diplomatic victory at the end.
After the last four championships had all been run on the same map, there was a general feeling that it was time for a change of pace, and community member Cuthraxys stepped up to design a new map for the Championship. The result was a great-looking map that set aside the wrapping design of our previous arena, going back to a Pangaea-style continent. This continent was reminiscent of a starfish, with six arms extending from the center, each arm hosting one civilization. The contenders would thus be somewhat isolated from each other at the start of the game, and get the chance to pursue their early settling and development in peace. While the six arms were not perfectly mirrored, the quantities of terrain and resources on them were, and each capital had the exact same twenty tiles in its city radius, balanced so that no starting techs were particularly advantaged or disadvantaged. This continent would accentuate the peaceful bent of this game, ruling out early conflict and making it easier for at least some contenders to stay out of the way and simply tech up, but the race to settle the land in the center - the one place where leaders could really get a size advantage by peaceful means - would be one to watch as well. The map design also resulted in a lot more coastline than in most maps, which would increase the value of any bonuses - like the Great Lighthouse or Financial trait - that impacted coastal cities. We'd spent the entire season in anticipation of this map's debut - it was time to see how it would actually play out. The Championship was on!
While the individual arms of the continent may not have been perfectly mirrored, they were still similar enough that the six contenders made a lot of similar moves in the opening turns. Five out of the six leaders chose the same general location for their second city - one with pigs, wines, and horses in the city radius - and most of the field sent their early settlers in towards the center of the continent instead of filling in their backlines. Almost everybody pursued the same early research priorities as well, helped further by the fact that there were a lot of similar starting techs in this match (all six leaders started with Mining!). There was lots of early research of Hunting and Fishing and Animal Husbandry, with nobody doing anything crazy like early Masonry. Still, while trends were overall similar, not everybody's start was identical. Qin broke from the rest in his early settling patterns, putting all of his early cities on the coast, while Gandhi was the only leader to pursue an early religion, teching Meditation out of the gate to found Hinduism. Nobody else would even so much as research Mysticism before around Turn 50, making Gandhi the only leader with a religion, or indeed with any means of producing culture at all, for a significant portion of the early game.
As the settling phase continued on, the leaders' paths diverged more and more. Gandhi continued his strong start to the game, becoming the first leader to found five cities, then easily landing Stonehenge due to everybody else's avoidance of Mysticism. While his expansion would slow down after this point, he remained decently competitive on that front, and the Stonehenge build plus his Philosophical trait allowed him to get the Hindu shrine up around Turn 70. He was spreading Hinduism far and wide from an early date, causing the shrine to be quite profitable indeed. Gandhi was certainly looking better early on than Mansa Musa, who had some of the slowest early expansion, and then suffered a major setback when he founded his first city in the center of the continent - only to have a barbarian archer walk into the empty city and autoraze it!!!
We didn't see for certain, but it looked like the settler for this city may have originally had an escort, who then foolishly attacked out of the city and got killed by the barb archer, who was then free to walk into the city. That loss stunted his growth and ensured he would not be one of the early frontrunners. Meanwhile, Churchill soon started expanding at a breakneck pace, only to go TOO fast and crash his economy. He thus was forced to halt his expansion to nurse it back to health, despite not having even reached the center of the continent. Qin's opening was generally weak, as he didn't expand particularly fast or tech particularly well. About the only notable thing he did in the early game was build the coveted Great Lighthouse, which was more desirable than normal on this map due to all the available coast. Elizabeth and Augustus Caesar were performing rather better, and as the landgrab stretched on, they seemed to clearly be doing the best job of sustained expansion. Liz's economy remained strong throughout the expansion phase, as she was working a lot of water tiles which coupled well with her Financial trait to keep her tech rate up.
Augustus wasn't teching as well, but he was avoiding total stagnation while making good use of the fact that he was the only Imperialistic leader of the bunch. He just kept going, going, going, throwing down cities left and right as long as there was room to fit them in, and became the first leader to break ground in the center of the continent - yet he was also able to avoid crashing his economy the same way Churchill had. At one point he was forced to turn the science slider down to just 10% research - yet his sheer number of cities meant that he was still making about 40 beakers per turn even at that tech rate, running even with the rest of the pack.
Thanks to the map's large size, this game's landgrab phase went on for an especially long time, well over 100 turns without any wars being declared. Several barbarian cities appeared in the center of the map, and for the most part didn't have too much effect on the game - but the one leader who was significantly impacted was Gandhi. In a reprise of his critical move from his playoff game, he managed to win the sweepstakes and capture the nearby barb city of Parthian with a single warrior after other leaders had done most of the hard work, and he later managed to capture a second barbarian city up in the north, by Qin and Augustus, with a more respectable stack. These captures let Gandhi break out of the arm of the continent where he otherwise would have been stuck, and establish a significant presence in the center. As a result, he was one of the top leaders on the scoreboard by the end of the landgrab, and with a competitive economy thanks to his successful Hindu shrine. Augustus and Liz were the other score leaders, and the competitors with the biggest share of land in the center. Liz still had good tech and had been able to build the Hanging Gardens, a major boost given her large number of cities, while Augustus had managed to land the Mausoleum. He also had the lead on clearing the jungle out of his cities in the tropical center of the map, which helped to counterbalance the slower development that he'd suffered for a while from a long delay of Mysticism and culture.
Mansa Musa was slightly lower in score than the top three, thanks to having less territory in the center of the map; multiple barb cities had spawned near his arm of the continent in the early game, which combined with his razed city to limit how far he could settle. Still, he was only behind by a little bit, and still very much in the hunt. His slower expansion had come with the benefit of reduced city maintenance, which sped up his early teching and made him tech leader by a small margin at the end of the landgrab. The leaders who were really out of it at this point were, as expected, Churchill and Qin. They had both expanded poorly, been locked entirely out of the center, and were now behind both in score and tech, with no edge over their competition. Already their shots at the title were over. Meanwhile, the game's early religions ended up being split between the three leaders who might go for the Cultural victory, leaving none of them ahead in that regard: Mansa eventually picked up Islam at Polytheism, then Liz beat him to Monotheism by a single turn to found Christianity. It was Gandhi's Hinduism, however, that ended up spreading throughout the world; at the end of the landgrab, everybody except Mansa was practicing it. Given the peaceful bent of this field, this didn't necessarily spell doom for Mansa, but it was certainly not great for him, while Gandhi was now mostly safe from attack thanks to all of his religious allies. In general, between the shared religion and shared peaceweight, the leaders on this map largely liked each other by the time they might consider going to war, and that would result in this largely being a peaceful game.
The game wouldn't be entirely peaceful, however, as Augustus finally kicked off the fighting by attacking Qin on Turn 120. This was a time in the game when Rome was at its most powerful:
Augustus had Praetorians on the board, and Qin had not yet reached any techs that would unlock medieval military units. The first border city Augustus targeted, Shandong, was stuffed with Protective archers, stationed on a hill, hiding behind city walls, and without catapult support it should have been impossible to capture. The Praetorians didn't care, though, as they bruteforced their way through those stout defenses, wiped out the garrison, and captured the city just a few turns into the war. By the time Augustus was ready to attack the next city, Tianjin, he had catapults as well, and that city too fell after a big siege. While the large map meant that Qin still had a good number of cities to get through, he was clearly doomed, and the real question now was how long Augustus would take to conquer him, and if he could stay competitive with the others while he did so.
As Augustus and Qin continued their fight, the other four leaders were content to sit at peace, and so the game went on for quite some time with this as the only active conflict. But while they might not have been doing much on the military front, Mansa, Liz, and Gandhi were still engaged in a tight struggle, as they competed economically in a close race. All three had done an excellent job of internal development - Elizabeth's capital was even size 20 by Turn 136! - and so they were all racing through the tech tree and each building a good number of wonders. Mansa boosted his economy by building the Colossus, which paired well with his healthy number of coastal cities, while Liz was able to grab the Sistine Chapel, which could prove critical in a potential cultural race. The three leaders also remained as even as possible in the other critical factor for culture: holy cities. Mansa gained a second religion by taking Code of Laws with the Oracle, while Liz later founded the Theology religion, and Gandhi was first to both Philosophy and Divine Right to eventually end with a 3-2-2 majority. This left none of the trio as a clear cultural runaway, keeping them close in that regard as well. Later on, Liz was able to win an early Liberalism race, grabbing Nationalism and turning that into a successful Taj Mahal build, while Gandhi ended up with another key midgame wonder in the Statue of Liberty. But whatever advantage one of the three seemed to get, the others would remain right behind, and all three were still extremely close to one another by the time the 200s rolled around.
Meanwhile, Augustus was falling behind. Oh, sure, he was still easily beating Qin - there was no question of that - but he wasn't doing the fastest job of it. Qin did have a lot of territory to chew through, and furthermore Augustus hit a big snag when he reached the Chinese capital. Two separate sieges of Beijing failed, as Cho-Ku-Nus had entered the scene to nullify the Praetorian advantage, and afterwards Augustus spent some time throwing siegeless stacks at the walled defenses, where they accomplished nothing. Eventually he was able to assemble a proper stack again, and broke through to take the capital, but he'd lost a good 20 turns or so in the process, and was still investing a lot of resources into this fight while the Teching Trio continued to sit at peace. As he kept fighting, he also started to rack up a significant amount of war weariness in his own cities, and once the other leaders started to reach Democracy, Rome was further hampered by Emancipation unhappiness. While Augustus now had the largest nation in the world, he was falling badly behind in economy, and any snowball was clearly out of the question by now. He would have to hope for a Diplomatic finish if he wanted to win the title.
Speaking of diplomacy, while everybody remained at peace, the broader diplomatic picture remained in flux, with alliances growing stronger or weaker as the leaders reconsidered their religious affiliations. Elizabeth switched to her own Christianity after a while, losing the bonus from shared Hinduism - but Mansa had already practiced a different religion, Augustus and Qin were busy fighting, and Churchill and Gandhi still liked her, so this wasn't a very dangerous move. Later, leaders started to swap into Free Religion: first Augustus via the Shwedagon Paya, then later Elizabeth and Churchill as well. The overall effect seemed to be to smooth over any existing diplomatic tensions, with Churchill in particular now Pleased towards everybody on the map and thus locked out of war, although Augustus dropping out of Hinduism opened up the possibility of him fighting his former religious allies in the future, after he was done with Qin. For the time being, though, no further hostilities opened up, and for over 200 turns the Roman conquest of China was the game's only war. Elizabeth and Mansa both separately started plotting war at different points, but neither one ever actually declared, eventually setting their plans aside instead and returning to peaceful teching.
Eventually, Augustus reached a tipping point; the addition of rifles to his forces about 60 turns into the war may have been what he needed to really accelerate his conquest. In any case, China started to disintegrate faster and faster, and after over 80 turns of warfare, Caesar finally completed his job, finishing Qin off on Turn 203. This was a clear case of getting the inevitable out of the way; Qin was lucky to have made it this far in the first place, and never had much of a hope in this field. It wasn't his game to win; instead, his real significance was in allowing Augustus to expand to the largest size on the map by a good margin. With Qin out of the game, the top four leaders all were still very close in score, with only Churchill as an irrelevant. Augustus had the biggest and most powerful nation on the map, growing into the score lead over the turns following the end of his war, but he was far behind in tech.
The other three were all still racing up the tech tree; Mansa and Liz were continuing to leverage the great power of the Financial trait, while Gandhi was making a surplus of over 200 gold per turn despite running 100% on the science slider, thanks to his Hindu shrine that made a base income of 65 GPT. That allowed him to continue running even with the Financial heavyweights, as it was still very much anyone's game between the three of them. There were ominous signs for Gandhi, though: both Churchill and Augustus had fallen to just Cautious towards him, while they were still Pleased towards everybody else. If either one decided to go to war now, it would be against him.
The next big milestone in the game was related to the Cultural victory condition. Most of the time, if an AI is going for this victory condition and turns on the slider, it does so once it starts researching Plastics tech, and as the Teching Trio hit the early modern era in the early 200s, that milestone was fast approaching. Liz was the first to hit that point... and she did not turn on the slider. Mansa was next... and he didn't either. Gandhi was the most likely to go for culture, with three Holy Cities and all of the modern cultural wonders thanks to an early Mass Media beeline... but when he hit Plastics, he ALSO didn't turn on the slider. So nobody was going for culture! It would instead be a three-way space race. And as it turned out, it wasn't to be an entirely peaceful one:
Finally, a second war! After spending over 200 turns inactive aside from settling his arm of the continent, Churchill was ready to do something! Gandhi was forced to fight while Mansa and Liz got to continue teching. However, this was not a fight that Churchill was going to be able to sustain. Sure, he had some spiffy-looking redcoats and cavalry... but Gandhi had infantry. And planes. And tanks. Churchill's first attack came up short, never a good sign even in the best of times, and his power rating quickly started to plummet as Gandhi's superior forces cleaned his army up. Soon Gandhi was on the offensive in English territory; Churchill had clearly CHOSEN UNWISELY, and things would only get worse for him moving forward. Gandhi was also able to keep up in tech despite this inconvenient conflict; it seemed that Mansa and Liz were both suffering from Industrial era unhealthiness, while Gandhi had prioritized the health techs and thus didn't have the same problem - plus, he was now starting to add cities to his empire. The space race remained tight.
However, something must have snapped in Gandhi, because his behavior started to become unhinged. Upon building the UN, he was easily elected Secretary-General over Augustus, but then chose to abuse his power: he bribed Mansa into his war against Churchill, but just a few turns later, trolled him by proposing a Stop the War resolution that, upon passing, forcing Mansa and only Mansa out of the conflict. Then the real trouble began: Gandhi built the Manhattan Project, and a longstanding Civilization meme came to life. Ever since an urban legend painted Gandhi as a nuclear psychopath in the original Civilization game, everybody has joked about his love of nukes, to the point where it was deliberately programmed into his AI personality in Civ 5. Technically, nothing in his Civ 4 AI personality makes him any more likely to use nukes than any other leader... but now he was at war, and could build nukes, and you better bet that meant he was going to start using them!
Nuclear Gandhi thus became a real thing in this game, as he started lobbing the warheads into English territory to provide some totally unnecessary aid to his conquests. This also started to sour his relations with the rest of the leaders, all of whom added a -1 "You nuked our friend!" malus for each missile that Gandhi launched. The impact first became clear when Gandhi held a diplomatic victory vote, and Mansa refused to vote for him at all, abstaining with his ballot instead. Augustus and Churchill had enough votes to block a Gandhi victory in any case, but his declining popularity was starting to make itself felt, and as he kept nuking England, that wouldn't get any better. Yet for all this, Gandhi remained in the thick of the space race, and even in the lead. How close was this race? At Turn 251, Gandhi had a total of eight techs left in the tree. Mansa and Elizabeth each had nine remaining. That close. Gandhi then gave himself an extra advantage, beelining Computers and Robotics before the others and building the Space Elevator... and the Internet! While this particular project is often useless, here in a tight three-way race it could make all the difference, especially if Gandhi chose his techs well. One or two free techs could be a critical advantage in an endgame this close.
With this finale starting to descend into madness, Augustus now chose to throw another wrinkle into it, deciding he'd had enough and attacking Gandhi himself. However, he too was badly behind in tech; his cavs and infantry were facing Indian mechs, modern armor, and nukes. While Gandhi was disoriented enough in the opening turns for Augustus to swoop in and take several ex-English cities, Gandhi reconquered them soon enough, and his core was clearly in no danger. But this was yet another distraction for him in the space race. The three competitors now diverged on the tech tree, each pursuing the end of it from a different angle. Gandhi foolishly chose to prioritize Composites, Stealth, and The Laser; these would help him in his ongoing wars, but not in the space race, and he would have to rely on the Internet to make up the lost ground. Mansa hit the bottom of the three, prioritizing useful techs in Ecology, Superconductors, and Genetics, but Liz made the wisest move by going for Fiber Optics and Fusion first. Getting the expensive engines out of the way early would be very helpful, and she further used the free Great Engineer from reaching Fusion first to pop a late Golden Age! Turn 261 hit, and all three leaders had a mere five techs left on the tree. It was really coming down to the wire now. And to add one more variable to the equation, when the next Secretary-General vote came in, Augustus won in a landslide! Gandhi had by now thoroughly trashed his international reputation; would this be enough for Augustus to sneak out the Diplomatic victory? We were in the endgame, with four different leaders still as legitimate contenders to take home the title. This was as close as it gets!
With all three frontrunners now down to their last few techs, Mansa Musa made a critical mistake: he went for Composites and Stealth after picking up Genetics, and with the race as tight as it was, this was a diversion he couldn't afford. By the time he finished Stealth, the others would have finished the remaining spaceship techs while he still had two - including the most expensive one of them all - to go. Mansa thus fell out of contention at a very late date, leaving the race down to Gandhi versus Elizabeth. Liz had taken the smarter tech path, following up her Fusion research by pursuing Ecology and Genetics. By saving Composites for last, she completely ruled out the possibility of going for Stealth until she'd finished all the necessary techs - she'd learned her lesson from the playoffs, where Stealth tech cost her the win! But Gandhi still had an ace up his sleeve in the form of the Internet, and as Liz hit those techs at the bottom of the tree, she was putting in beakers for both of them. He foolishly invested some turns into researching Superconductors and Genetics before pushing for Fusion, reducing the benefit, but when Liz reached those techs first, he did still gain some research for free, saving about three turns alltold on those techs, and he further got Ecology without investing any beakers into it at all! Thus we reached a point, while Mansa was still working on Stealth, that Liz and Gandhi each had only one tech remaining to research: Composites for Liz, Fusion for Gandhi. This was it. As long as the Diplomatic victory didn't intrude, whoever finished their tech and the associated spaceship parts first would win the championship.
Longtime Civ 4 players can probably see where this is going. After all, while ostensibly Liz and Gandhi had the same amount of work to do to finish their spaceships... one of those techs, and the spaceship part it unlocks, is significantly more expensive than the other. Accordingly, it was no real surprise when Liz was the first one to finish the tech tree (or what of it was needed to finish the spaceship), beating Gandhi to the mark by just one turn. Nor was it a surprise when, after all the spaceship parts had been queued up, Liz was projected to gain one more turn as Gandhi worked on the expensive engines; the production disparity was one that not even the Space Elevator could fully make up. What Gandhi now needed was for something to go wrong for Liz at the last moment: a part to be sabotaged, or her to be hasty and launch her ship with one or two casings missing. No such event took place, though. Liz was willing to wait and ensure that every part was complete, and that there would be no nasty surprises on the trip to Alpha Centauri. And she'd been an excellent neighbor for the entire game - nobody had any interest in sabotaging her spaceship at all, unlike Gandhi who had attracted a lot of ill will for his nuke-happy ways. So she finished the ship off without a hitch, and was the first to launch, on Turn 273. Gandhi's ship was finished a mere three turns later, delayed one more turn as he had to rebuild a sabotaged stasis chamber. He had come close... but not quite close enough.
The fireworks weren't quite over yet, though. Gandhi was continuing his run as the world's villain, still raining nukes on a clearly defeated England, and defying a UN resolution that would have stopped the war and saved Churchill. While he wasn't making any inroads into Rome, he was starting to rapidly take Churchill's remaining cities, threatening to eliminate him before the end of the game. Eventually he knocked Churchill down to his last city... only for Augustus to call another Stop the War resolution. This time Gandhi did not defy, and peace was thus enforced with Churchill, who would survive the championship with a single city. Not that it made this any less of an embarrasing performance by Churchill, who had utterly failed to accomplish anything in this Championship and proven himself a lesser leader compared to the other high peaceweights. With that, the game was almost over... but not quite done yet. With just a few turns left, Gandhi's nuke habit came to bite him in the rear once more, as Mansa Musa joined Augustus in attacking him. This time, Gandhi did not have an edge in unit quality, as Mansa had also finished the tech tree. India was quickly nuked and her armies decimated, as Malinese units started to move in and take cities. Second place was suddenly in the balance: Gandhi had moved into a solid score lead after knocking Augustus out of it, but he was only about 400 points ahead, and Mansa was making up that ground quickly as he took Indian cities. In fact, even our fantasy contest was being decided right here! Second place was worth two points, and those two points would either put antisocialmunkey (if Mansa took it) or Kjotleik (if Gandhi took it) in front, giving whichever coach got the points the overall win. Would Gandhi hold on in the final interturns, and at least get a medal for his impressive performance??? Or would Mansa move up at the last moment and secure the first second-place finish of his career???
Turn 283 rolled in and we had our answer: GANDHI HELD ON by a mere 44 points! But even more importantly:
ELIZABETH WAS THE WINNER OF AI SURVIVOR, SEASON 8!!!!!
This became the new closest finish in AI Survivor history, with Liz ultimately edging out Gandhi by a mere three turns; it barely beat the previous record of seven turns, back in the similarly exciting Season 2 finale, and I'm willing to bet that this particular record will never be broken. Stepping back a bit, all of the top four leaders ended the game within 400 points of each other on the scoreboard, having all played great games in their own right to deliver an exciting finale. Starting with the fourth-place leader, Augustus clearly had the worst performance here, and that was a consequence of the path he had chosen to take. Rather than sit back and tech, he tried to take the championship through conquest, but getting through Qin took so long that he had only the UN as a hope by the time his first war was over. While his conquest could have been more efficient, I don't think it would have mattered; with three top economic AIs sitting and teching in peace, going to war was simply the wrong choice in this game. Still, he did execute the best landgrab, utilize his Praetorians well, successfully conquer Qin, and later hold off a more advanced Gandhi without his core ever being in serious danger, and I think in a more ordinary game, his effort here would have made him a serious contender for the win. This was Augustus's best season by far and I think he's clearly proven himself to be relatively good for a high peaceweight leader, a step above the Fredericks and Sitting Bulls of the world.
Mansa Musa ended up narrowly in third place; he also finished his first engine on the same interturn that Elizabeth won the game, so he was only roughly 10-12 turns away from winning himself. And given he had the worst landgrab of the top four and lost a city to the barbs early, that's pretty darn good! Mansa was a beast at economy like usual, but faced stiff competition from Liz and Gandhi, which made this setback enough to ultimately cost him the win. He was still on track to win by space before Turn 300 though, a seriously impressive achievement in its own right, and has regained his title as AI Survivor's top leader (for now, at least), so at the end of the day he can still hold his head high. It was a well-played game that only looked unimpressive because others were playing just as well this time.
Gandhi finishes in second place, the multiple lategame attacks ultimately making the difference - it certainly seems like if he'd been able to pour all those resources into building research, he'd have made up the three turns and finished his spaceship first! While going crazy with nukes at the end may have cost him the game, and going for Stealth certainly did, this was in all other respects a well-played game by Gandhi, who managed to keep pace with two strong Financial leaders for the entire match and grow strong enough (though admittedly mostly through tech) to hold off multiple endgame attacks, without coming into serious danger until the third one. He essentially conquered Churchill completely while still staying in the thick of the space race, and his prioritization of the Internet was nearly a championship-deciding move. And he certainly helped make the end of the game exciting! Gandhi ultimately missed the title, and I'm not sure if he'll ever manage to win one, but he's been one of the most interesting competitors over the years, and his performance here will at least stand out in my mind as the biggest defining feature of this finale. I suspect that he may be in for some less successful outings in the next couple of seasons - but if there's one thing we've learned, it's that he almost always has a chance to slip on by, regardless of all logic.
Last, but not least, is our new champion! It's been a rough road for Elizabeth, who'd seen no success since last making the Championship in Season 1, but behind all the failures, there still lay a leader who could tech like nobody's business if given the chance, and was a true threat to win. This season, she finally delivered, winning two of her three games and coming two turns away from winning the third for a great redemption arc. This game in particular was a smashing success, as she expanded well, teched well, stayed out of war for the entire game, chose her tech path wisely at the end of the game, and made no significant mistakes the entire time; while Mansa and Gandhi kept it close, Liz ultimately played the cleanest game of anybody and thus deservedly came out on top. It was a thoroughly merited victory, and even if she goes back to struggling next season, at least now she'll always have this trophy.
Thus concludes Season 8 of AI Survivor. Click here to move on to the conclusions page...
