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:
Pacal of the Mayans
Traits: Financial, Expansive
Starting Techs: Mysticism, Mining
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Three Championship losses, two playoff round eliminations, two opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 4 Second Places 
Total Kills: 9 
Overall Power Ranking: 37 points, tied 4th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Pacal has a top tier trait combination, with the amazing Financial and the good Expansive, allowing him to get those Financial cottages up and running even faster. He also gets the bad Holkan unique unit and the good Ball Court, which adds a nice boost to happiness in the midgame. Lastly, Pacal gets Mysticism and Mining for his starting techs, a pretty crappy pair only useful for chasing a religion out of the gate. Pacal is a pretty standard economic AI in most ways, with a low aggression rating (2.8/10), though his unit preference (4/10) isn't as suicidally low as some of the leaders like him. His flavours are Culture and Growth, and you can usually expect Pacal to pursue an early religion right out of the gate. Pacal is one of the two leaders (along with Huayna Capac) who combine a low peace weight with a heavily economic style of play. With a peaceweight of 2, 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: he's the only leader so far to manage the twin achievements of five playoff appearances and three Championship appearances! Pacal has shown convincingly 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 considerably behind and somewhat lucky to be advancing at all. Those show his low peaceweight at work, though, allowing him to slip on by even if it's not his game. 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. He thus has similar strengths and weaknesses to other major economic leaders, but his peaceweight has allowed him to enjoy the consistent success that most of them have lacked.
Darius of Persia
Traits: Financial, Organized
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Hunting
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Two Championship losses, two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, two opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 8
Overall Power Ranking: 29 points, 10th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Darius has arguably the best pure economic traits in the game, with Financial and Organized. While he's stuck with the weak Immortal and Apothecary, he also gets fantastic starting techs in Agriculture and Hunting, allowing him to improve his food resources quickly. Darius has one of the better set-ups overall, and thanks to his traits and starting techs, begins the game already slightly ahead of the field. Darius is clearly an economic leader in most ways. He has Gold and Growth flavours, and those combined with his traits mean 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 target for attack from the more aggressive leaders. Lastly, Darius himself isn't necessarily going to build in peace, he actually has an average aggression rating (5.2/10), and he can 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 established a reputation as one of the more sluggish, incompetent AIs out there. It's common to see him given a decent or even great starting position, only for him to fail to do much of anything with it and get outscaled somewhere along the way. At the same time, though, Darius is a seeded leader who has made the playoffs more often than not; 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 in the Championship for an early exit. On the other hand, Season Six showed him at his worst; he had an amazing starting situation, only to just sit on it all game and take Second Place by default. Then in the playoffs, he had a very sheltered position and easy ticket to the Championship, but contented himself with four cities and actively avoided bettering his position the entire game. Outings like these have made him fairly unpopular in the community, yet it cannot be denied that if he has a decent position and bothers to expend the effort, Darius is a serious threat to win.
Asoka of India
Traits: Spiritual, Organized
Starting Techs: Mysticism, Mining
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 2
Overall Power Ranking: 16 points, tied 25th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Asoka plays with Spiritual and Organized for his traits, a decent pairing with strong economic benefit but of no use militarily. As an Indian leader, Asoka gets the above average Fast Worker and Mausoleum combo, and his starting techs are Mining and Mysticism, a pair good for chasing religions and not much else; Asoka can struggle with improving his land in the early game, though the Fast Worker at least helps him catch up. Asoka is a generally peaceful leader, but is less polarised than his counterpart Gandhi. He's got a pretty low aggression rating (3.7/10), unit build (2/10) and tribute demand (1/10) preferences, but a high wonder (8/10) build rate. With religion and science flavours, you can count on Asoka to consistently build up a strong economy as long as he's left alone. Asoka places a strong emphasis on faith, but unlike a lot of the other religious zealots, he's actually pretty easy to get along with, with a minor penalty for differing religion but a huge bonus for shared faith. In theory, Asoka should find it easy to make friends and he's unlikely to get involved in too many wars unless he finds himself in a particularly hostile world.
Past Performance: Asoka has seen reasonable success in the competition, with his results generally depending closely on how much he has to fight. His successful outings have come from friendly maps where he never came under serious threat (or, in one case, a seemingly hostile map where nobody ever declared war on him, allowing him to waltz to victory). On the other hand, most of his defeats have come from games where he suffered repeated attacks and simply couldn't hold up under the pressure - only a couple of times has he legitimately played poorly and screwed himself out of a chance of victory. His most successful outing by far came in Season Five, where he picked up both of his career wins and was less than 50 turns away from becoming Champion via culture when he finally collapsed in the face of multiple attacks. With only two kills to his name, Asoka isn't much of a threat on the battlefield, but he's shown he knows how to play the economic game, and if he draws a map where he can sit back and build relatively undisturbed, he'll be a serious threat to win.
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.
Hatshepsut of Egypt
Traits: Creative, Spiritual
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One wildcard elimination, six opening round eliminations
Total Medals: No first or Second Place finishes
Total Kills: 0
Overall Power Ranking: 0 points, 52nd place (out of 52 leaders - dead last place)
Personality: Hatshepsut is a great leader for a Single Player game of Civ4 and a horrible leader for AI Survivor purposes. She has good traits in the Creative/Spiritual combo and a great civ in Egypt with Agriculture/Wheel starting techs and the War Chariot unique unit. The problem comes in the form of Hatshepsut's AI personality which is little short of suicidal for these matches. Hatty is almost as pacifistic as Gandhi, with a low aggression rating (3.7/10), a high peace weight, and a dangerously low build unit preference (2/10). She loves to build wonders (8/10) and heavily 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 draw a field of high peace weight leaders where she can leverage her religious and cultural sensibilities to good effect.
Past Performance: Hatty carries the ignominious distinction of being the only leader in AI Survivor to never score a single point. She's never gotten a kill, and a pair of survivals as an irrelevant in Season Two are the most successful results she's ever achieved. Some of this has been her own fault; she's consistently proven to be a poor fighter, losing several protracted 1v1 conflicts, and one game in particular saw her attack a stronger rival early in the game en route to a quick exit. However, it's also worth recognizing that she's had some of the worst luck in terms of starting positions, routinely starting in positions that are central, border multiple hostile neighbors, or both; she hasn't gotten the same chance to thrive that other leaders have enjoyed. The past couple of seasons have been particularly brutal for her: Season Six saw her saddled with a central starting position, surrounded by six low peaceweight leaders, with predictable results. Then it looked like she would finally get her big break in Season Seven, with a great position that she leveraged to economic dominance, only to see Montezuma of all leaders grow to unstoppable runaway status off the ineptitude of his competition, then rampage through her territory right before she would have won by culture. Hatty's last-place position shouldn't be taken to mean that she's clearly the worst leader - rather, it reflects that she needs fairly narrow conditions to come out on top, and she has yet to see those manifest.
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.
Here's what the community was thinking based on the prediction contest before the game took place:
Going into what was expected to be a peaceful buildfest, Darius and Pacal were the two community favorites to take the first place spot, with Darius having a small but clear advantage. No one else attracted more than token support to secure the victory. The Runner Up category was about as evenly split as I can ever remember seeing, with no one getting more than 25% or much less than 10% of the contest entries. An exact 6-way split of the voting would mean 16-17% of the ballots for each leader and this wasn't far off that ideal. For First to Die, the community favored Hatshepsut to continue her streak of zero AI Survivor points, with Brennus as the only other leader getting any kind of support. As for the victory type, unsurprisingly the community leaned towards Spaceship and Cultural over a Domination finish.
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!
Myth: Can't wait for Darius to disappoint me with his performance once again.
TheOneAndOnlyAtesh: This is the perfect opportunity NOT to go HUR DURRR FIN/ALIVE. Why? Cuz Brennus looks like he’s in a damn good position to eat Hatty, and all the seafood in the world isn’t going to save Pacal when UGE Brennus stuffs him into a lobster or something. Asoka 2nd due to space and Ramesses surviving but having like four cities.
NotSpamBot: This looks frightingly like the previous game. ANYWAY, Ramesses, Asoka, Pacal, Darius, and even Hatty all have a real shot of winning by Culture here. Ramesses however is easily the most crowded leader on the map, Hatty offended the Deity setting with her last season so she has Brennus in her face, and I don't like Pacal's capital. So I am closing my eyes and hoping that Darius decides to put in some effort this game.
Ambassador Pineapple: Really feel Mansa lucked out in the last game, would love alternative histories for that game. Im hoping this will be Brennus time to shine. Great land, phants and Hatty next to him. He could easily get dogpiled, but i dont care about that. I vote for what want to see happen and not what i think will happen. Brennus snowballs off Hatty and Pacal tags along as a distant second.
Henrik: Hatty and Asoka will consume Brennus and eventually pacal giving hatty a huge score but ultimately Darius wins space with all that strong land and FIN/Alive. Pacal is crippled with coastal start, limitted space, bad diplo long term and is not a great expander. He is also possible FTD candidate. Hatty culture chances are less likely due to splitting wonders with Rameses and Asoka. Low wars due to all similar pw and being pleased with organized religion and PW.
JackDRB: 4 high pw creampuff economic leaders, 1 low pw creampuff economic leader and Brennus... there have definitely been more riveting opening round games here. While I would dearly love for Brennus to go on the warpath on these lightweights, he's not all that good himself and lacks a good secondary low pc warmonger to create a tag team, Pacal certainly does not count. He will cause trouble though, likely for poor Hatty. So if its going to be a boring builder lovefest, well I can see no further than Darius. He has the best traits, a decent river-rich capital with copper and potential to gain territory with a copper-less Pacal, later Brennus. It also solves the issue with the game being boring, not from the slight risk of the Brennus romp or Ashoka culture - but that I'm going to be invested in seeing the new, exciting and innovative ways Darius finds to utterly screw up his start and disappoint me... once again.
moweb: I like Ramses position the most. He is shielded by Ahsoka and Darius from the low peace weight AIs. He has got the power of the plains-cow and a really nice golden river valley nearby. It is only contested by Darius the disappointing. I am also rooting for Hatshepsut. I am sure she can beat Brennus to score her first point and secure a second place.
danjuno: I have no faith in this set of high peace-weights. I'm gonna say Pacal techs off his seafood buffet while Brennus game-ruins most of the others.
Dagoth Gares: This game being a pile of second-rate builders (and Brennus) makes it really, really hard to read. The tea leaves, rolling bones, and alignment of the stars were all inconclusive, and the magic 8-ball just told me to try again later. So, that leaves me with a very tepid Darius-Pacal pick, which I absolutely expect to burn me forty turns into the game when they both stop building settlers. Also Hatty ftd because she's 1) bad at warring and 2) the only civ in arms' reach of Brennus, who in turn will die second.
GreenJacket: Will the villainous Brennus and his forces of darkness overrun this world of peace-loving AIs? Or will the heroic Darius with his mighty Economy of Light triumph over evil and restore order to Civ4? Or... will the AIs let their religious flavoring turn them against each other? Find out next week on Civ4 Ai Survivor!
arlind: It seems unlikely that there will be any dominant leader on this map, so it's kind of a crapshoot. Here is a way I think it could play out: I hate Pacals start, with way too much time going to be sunk into workboats for an already bad expander + for once a disadvantage having a low peaceweight. I think he is most likely to end up 2v1ed. Ramses has a great diplomatic position, but terrible land. Asoka has a good position and a chance to win a war with Brennus who is always going to have a slow start and a competing religion. Hatty has good space to expand, especially with a slow Pacal. Likely to share religion with Brennus & Darius, making Brennus more likely to attack Asoka. Finally Darius is well positioned to become the biggest in score, but I'm banking on Hatty winning culture before Darius or Asoka launch.
delan: I can't quit you, Pacal.
BigBlueBen: I'm going for the low-odds play and picking someone who has yet to win a game... but not Hatty. I'm going with Brennus, he has capital copper and ivory and a near-guaranteed conflict with Hatty. Sure Hatty has horses for war chariots, but how many will she actually build? Maybe Brennus gets an early enough kill for a true snowball (and plenty of targets later on). Maybe Pacal and Darius can fight each other to a destructive draw instead of snowballing off one another's land or peaceful development. Maybe Asoka and Ramesses will build ALL of the wonders instead of expanding (OK, that one's pretty likely). Maybe Brennus will notice someone going for a culture victory and stop it in time instead of falling too behind in tech to remain relevant.
Smelly Mildred: The conditions just seem perfect for an Asoka cultural victory amidst a lovefest between these relatively peaceful leaders. Although Brennus - the smelliest of Mildreds - could foil these damn hippies!
swagalina: Pacal's starting position is fantastic. Not just his insane starting town, but his unmitigated access to the east coast. He will expand in a beeline straight up to the weak Hatty, consume her, and go on to create a dominant navy that will win the game. Boats!
LinkMarioSamus: If this seems like a whacky prediction, hear me out: Asoka's starting position is so ridiculously lush (especially for something with no floodplains!) that I think the worst that could happen is he keeps pace with Ramses in the settling race at first and then decisively outdoes him later on. Asoka's traits will definitely help him stay ahead of Ramses economically and I also think Ramses has the worst starting position on the map. Ramses I think will play the worst game of any leader on this map, and I'm picking him FTD hoping that the two low PW guys stall out their defeats long enough while Ramses inevitably clashes with Asoka over border tension once shared religion and civics bonuses are gone and I don't think it will be pretty for him.
Vesper: I bet on Brennus getting a religion and sharing it with Hatty, thus shielding her for cultural runaway. Asoka will get another and get jihaded off by Celts, while Pacal would try spaceship run while being teched up enough to be a military threat to either. Ramesses has a weaker start and no iron, this can spell his doom in medieval, unless he'd eat Asoka which he will likely not do. Also Brennus has one of only 2 ivories on the map, leaving Darius exposed for another quick downing, the other ivory would likely be grabbed by Pacal for his possible runaway. The other likely options is Pacal/Domination with Darius FTD, but I really would prefer Hatty FINALLY getting points.
blindeli: On a map filled with peaceful builders, poor Hatshepsut just has to get the spot next to the one warlike leader whose peace weight is on the opposite end of the scale :( I expect everyone to mostly sit around and do nothing. Brennus murders Hatty, then promptly suicides into a technologically superior Darius. After that it's just waiting until somebody goes to space.
Keler: Society's double standards. If that was Mansa Musa in Hatshepsut's position, at least 50% of the votes would go for him to win but instead almost half of it goes for Hatshepsut first to die. Sigh.
SirSystemError: If Sitting Bull can sit on some heads in dominant fashion this season, then SURELY we can have a Hat party this time round. I call the funny one with the two cola cans on the side.
Zalson: Can I pick no one to win? What a terrible field. Picking Pacal because I think he and Brennus join up to attack Hatty, but ... no read, at all, on this game.
smithy: Ok children, gather round. Let's agree on a few things for today's class. So everyone gets their own religion today to keep us all happy. Issy- go away- you are in class 7, even if you want to be in this one. Noone declares war at pleased? OK Pacal, I know you 'can' but you really don't want to , do you? It's the truth- please don' t get angry... actually carry on; it's funny. Noone is to tech rifles today. Brennus- we know you want to, but the game ends at turn 500. Ramesses, stop sulking- in this class we share out everything equally, including wonders. Alright- back to your corners. Noone is to leave their corner, noone is to start a fight. We all just sit there doing nothing and see who wins by culture. I want to see Headmaster Sulla have a meltdown in the staffroom about how on earth he is going to fit everyone into the wildcard class for summer school.
