This summary for Game One was written by TheOneAndOnlyAtesh. Many thanks for volunteering to put this report together! 
As the sun dawned on the ninth installment of AI Survivor, we were blessed with perhaps the best possible follow up from the previous season, a primarily economic field that contained some of the biggest stars of the "builder's revenge" season, not the least of which was our DEFENDING CHAMPION, Queen Elizabeth I, who rolled a luscious flood-plains start in the North Central region. After a long period of struggle, the Virgin Queen finally got a chance last season to prove her economic prowess and break the glass ceiling, being our first female AI Survivor Champion. To her east was our Pool 1 leader, the man, the myth, the MANSA, who had wrested the "AI Survivor's all-time scoring leader" title from Huayna Capac last year with an equally impressive Season 8 run where he nearly became our first repeat champion. Funnily enough, this was his third game in a row against Lizzy, and it seemed that a friendly rivalry was beginning to form between the two.
The other Season 8 superstar in this field was our sole remaining scoreless leader, Hatshepsut, but she was noteworthy for completely different reasons. The gods clearly did not smile upon her, for last season she found some incredibly comical ways to miss out on scoring points, particularly when she fell out of second place IN BETWEEN TURNS when she had a playoff spot in her grasp for the whole game. Unfortunately, it appeared that her unlucky streak might continue, for despite a favorable diplomatic setup, she had rolled a low quality coastal spot in the Northwest poor in resources yet filled with flat desert.
Our final high peaceweight leader was Asoka, who occupied the southern central spot. Unlike his pals, however, he had a rather ignominious Season 8 where he struggled with two food poor spots and was just generally irrelevant. Many considered him a safe write-off, not just due to his formidable economic and cultural competition, but also due to the two low peaceweights who sandwiched him. To his east was Kublai Khan, who had fallen to Pool 2 due to our new weighted seeding system that meant that two of his Championship qualifying seasons no longer counted towards seeding. The Yuan Emperor had fudged his previous season opener against a friendly field, and now he certainly had a major uphill battle in this one. At least he had some help in the form of Cyrus, who occupied the other coastal start in the map. The two would certainly have to work together in order to get past the economic buzzsaw they were up against. With that said, this overall was a talented field, one where all the non-Hatshepsut leaders have either been champions or came quite close to a title.
We had an incredible 366 contest entries, a new record. You'd think the prediction contest would overwhelmingly support Mansa Musa, but he did not come particularly close to 50% of the votes, as there were concerns about the quality of his land. He still had the plurality by a decent amount, with Lizzy and Kublai also getting relevant support, as many either liked Lizzy's land or thought Kublai could work together with Cyrus to take out Asoka and snowball. There was far less consensus over the Runner Up spot; the only thing the community really seemed to agree on was that Asoka was hopelessly doomed, as he was not only the runaway First To Die pick, but also had a paltry two entries (one of them by me) that declared him the winner, and his Runner Up prospects did not seem much better.
For fantasy purposes, this was a pivotal game for Lobster667 and Maniamuse, as Lobster would immediately find out if her 65 gold bid on Mansa Musa was worthwhile while Maniamuse had three leaders in the game for a combined 58 points. Jol Nar Binks and I also had some interest, due to our respective cheaper bids on Lizzy and Asoka.
Overall, it seemed the game would hinge on the following factors:
1) Asoka was the only leader in this game to start with Mysticism, and seemed guaranteed to found Buddhism. The question was, who would found the other ones, and how would they shape the diplomatic landscape? Hatty, Mansa, and even Kublai are all leaders with tendencies towards religion.
2) Can Mansa out-Mansa his seemingly commerce poor land, and will it be enough against some strong techers?
3) The tech pace is going to be quick, but Cyrus (unless he Immortal-decs) and Kublai won't have metals until Iron Working. Will their window be too small before someone is too far ahead to be stopped?
4) Would Hatty and Liz's security prove better than Mansa's and Asoka's potential to benefit the most from a Kublai dogpile?
After taking some schadenfreude at the fact that Civilization 7 had only four Twitch viewers, we finally embarked on the first turns of this young season. Outside of Kublai going for the infamous Turn 0 Archery poison pill, the leaders made sound initial tech choices. Asoka, as expected, immediately went for Meditation while Hatty opened with Mysticism to found her own religion; however, since she was also beelining Meditation, she switched out of it when Buddhism sprouted in Vijayanagara. It was quite a nice spot for the Indian Holy City, one that established firm Indian control over the river valley between Asoka and Cyrus. Further helping matters was the fact that both Kublai and Cyrus settled away from the Indians, reducing the likelihood of early border tensions that could incite conflict. In the North, Mansa and Lizzy settled towards each other, kickstarting an expansion race over the northeastern section of the map. Although the Malinese and the English were natural allies holding identical peaceweights, they both could plot at Pleased, meaning a future conflict was not entirely out of the question. Meanwhile, Hatty's poor land quality was already apparent with her second and third cities, the latter of which she had to settle on gold. (This was the correct location, as her alternative was ruining a higher value fish tile.)
After Hatty cancelled her religion bid, instead going for a rather bizarre Fishing-Pottery beeline (with her land, early Pottery was not all that useful) the second religion remained up for grabs for some time. Eventually, Hatty put her hat back into the religion game, this time racing against Kublai. This had quite the stakes for the rest of the game, as religion could easily drive a wedge between the high peaceweights, or allow Kublai to make some more friends while bolstering his landgrab. Near the finish line, it seemed Kublai would be able to edge out Hatty due to being seeded, but the Egyptians pulled ahead at the last minute to found Hinduism in her third city. While it was a bad location for a holy city (towards the West coast), Hatty was able to get an early leg up in spreading her religion through her Obelisks, giving her a ludicrously early Turn 35 shrine. Considering her land, the first phases of the game were going about as well as it could for the Egyptians.
Overall, the first fifty turns turned out disastrously for the low peaceweights. Unfortunately for the evil duo, Cyrus' start was turning out to be quite ugly. His capital had too much food, causing him to grow into unhappiness without good tiles to work, and with Asoka locking him out of the center of the map, his expansions were quite sad; his third city was afflicted with jungle fever from the moment it was settled. Making matters worse was an abject refusal to research Mysticism (which he would avoid for the first 100 turns), further exacerbating the uselessness of his expansions, and Cyrus was struggling to tread water economically, his GNP briefly dipping below Observer civ levels. Kublai's start was not quite as pathetic, but he had greatly hampered his early game with some suspect research choices, as after missing out on Polytheism, he went for Monotheism... only to LOSE YET ANOTHER RELIGION RACE TO HATTY! He was also lagging behind in expansion, as he was the last leader to four cities and had not claimed any central territory. A slow early game had proved the Mongolian's undoing last season against much weaker economic competition; he could ill afford such delays against this bunch.
Conversely, the four goodie two shoes were all in decent shape. Hatshepsut had already racked up two religions and an ultra early shrine, and even with her land she had a booming priest economy that allowed her to essentially break even at 100% research. Lizzy was expanding well and also had a robust early economy, her only flaw being an unusual Mysticism avoidance, but no one was calling her out on it. Mansa, meanwhile, had seemingly played his first fifty turns to near perfection, making on-point research decisions and nabbing Stonehenge to establish his borders. His economy was surprisingly not great, but he's Mansa - he will figure it out, amirite? Perhaps the biggest stock jump relative to Turn 0, however, went to Asoka, who had established a strong Buddhist base and settled some excellent defensive fortresses in the event of a Mongolian invasion. The primary concern for India was an iffy metals situation, particularly since he only had Iron yet was avoiding Bronze Working (despite a forest heavy capital), but with how slow his neighbors were, his position seemed quite secure at the moment.
That was the first fifty turns, but a LOT can change in the next fifty. The expansion race was by no means over - while Cyrus was too weak to matter and Hatty was more focused on building the Oracle and siccing War Chariots at barbs instead of settling, the remaining four leaders were all competing for what was a vast amount of open territory. By Turn 65, Kublai had officially lost this race, as Mansa and Asoka had completely boxed him into his own corner - he was going to have to fight his way out to salvage any dwindling playoff prospects.
The most pivotal expansion race took place in the middle of the map near the sole source of gems in the world. Lizzy and Mansa were both rushing a settler there, and the results of this race would have great ramifications for the rest of the game, as the winner would effectively secure all the remaining quality territory in the central portion of the map. The English and the Malinese were gunning for the same spot; while Lizzy had a head start, Mansa had the turn order advantage, and if one leader got too greedy the other could snipe the spot right under their nose. Who would win? Who would establish themselves as the ultimate winner of the expansion phase?
As it turns out, NEITHER! Asoka snuck Madras into that area, and in one fell swoop, established himself into a game leading position. The English and Malinese were forced to go home, and Asoka had become the emphatic winner of the expansion phase. On Turn 50, he had four cities and was just another pack member; less than thirty turns later, he had doubled his empire size, still had high quality tundra cities with two extra luxuries to backfill, and had secured one of his flanks by spreading Buddhism to Cyrus, who cannot plot at Pleased and thus would be friendly to the Indians, even though one of Asoka's cities was literally three tiles from Persepolis.
While Lizzy gathered herself together and pivoted to settling the Arctic, losing the Gems spot seemed to have broken something in Mansa. On Turn 60, Mansa had six cities, and that was all he would settle, completely ceding the Arctic to the English. Although most of the time he could get away with this due to being Mansa, his land quality in this game was atrocious, and he was in grave danger of fading into economic irrelevance. Asoka and Lizzy had established themselves as the game leaders, Lizzy through economy and Asoka through, well, everything else. The Indians had also spread their religion to Kublai and Mansa, and even if he were to get teamed, it did not matter for once he hooked up metals, his power level and production capacity had rocketed ahead of his rivals. The only other leader who seemed to have a shot now was Hatty, who had converted Lizzy to her Hinduism and was quietly racking up religions as if she were General Grievous collecting lightsabers. With two strong leaders to hide behind, she could definitely muster up some sort of cultural machine.
In a shocker, the first war of the game was kicked off by... MANSA?!? 
This was no seeded-leader showdown between two heavyweights; rather, it was two tired has-beens arguing about the sizes of their monster pickup trucks. If Kublai's chances were not already shot, they certainly were here, but there was the tiniest glimmer of hope for Mansa: Kublai LACKED METALS! It turned out that, despite his Creative trait, Kublai had fumbled his expansion enough that all his available iron was outside his borders! At least he had Keshiks, but nevertheless there might be some avenue for Mansa to seize Mongolian territory and get back in the game. This was the longest of longshots however, as both scrum participants lacked Construction and Asoka and Lizzy were free to continue running away in tech.
The next few turns served as a calm between the storm, notwithstanding the stalemated Eastern slapfight. Amusingly, we witnessed Lizzy spawn a random Great Prophet, and, instead of waiting to found the Philosophy religion and build a shrine, she SETTLED IT IN ON SOME RANDOM ARCTIC ICEBALL. At least the Bishop of Newcastle doubled his city's production by 200%!
Then, Cyrus, deciding to remind the world he still exists, launched the next conflict, sending a ragtag group of Immortals and Swords to bang themselves against Hatty's Longbows. Hatty in theory should have had the technological edge, but in classic Hatty fashion, she was more interested in Divine Right than in upgrading her military. She would have been well served to at least research Guilds so she stops being so obsessed with War Chariots, which were fast becoming obsolete. While she had five holy cities and was a true victory threat, with only seven shoddy cities she was playing a dangerous game. Although Cyrus and Asoka were Buddhist buddies and Lizzy and Hatty were Hindu sisters, the two real power players, for the time being, decided to stay put, opting for prayers as they happily continued to steamroll through the tech tree.
Mansa eventually grinded through Old Sarai and then peaced out. This was not at all a victory, and the only noteworthy event from the conflict was an AI Survivor first: the Observer Civ accidentally declaring war on Kublai Khan at Mansa's behest! (I was wondering when that would happen.) Naturally, Sullla reloaded the autosave. The two leaders were so crippled by this conflict that they had collapsed to Cyrus' tier, and indeed were about to fall BELOW the Persians in score. Soon afterwards, Hatty and Cyrus ended their own insignificant slapfight. The world was at peace, and there soon began rumbles of this being the first ever game in AI Survivor History with zero deaths!
By Turn 150, Asoka was the clear frontrunner. While his economy was only slightly lagging behind Lizzy, he had established an insurmountable food and hammer lead, and if the status quo continued that would probably outscale even a Financial leader. Moreover, the Buddhist shrine had become THE global hub, with Buddhism spread to nearly every city in the world, netting him an over 40 gold/turn shrine. This kept the Indians competitive for all the main Renaissance prizes, and over the next turns the Indians and English would synchronize their tech paths, engaging in a friendly competition over the big Renaissance prizes. Lizzy won Liberalism while Asoka won Economics; the two also competed over the main wonders, with Lizzy winning some by getting to them first while Asoka leveraged his production to secure others, particularly a Mausoleum-boosted Taj Golden Age. It was quite nifty to see the Taj Mahal built in Agra, where it is located in real life.
The two clowns in the East were back at it, with Kublai instead kickstarting hostilities, taking back Old Sarai, and then promptly losing it again. We get it guys, you can stop embarrassing yourselves! It seemed like Mansa was finally breaking through, especially after being the first to Knights, when he made an unfathomably stupid decision: HE HANDED BACK OLD SARAI FOR PEACE. With that, his miniscule playoff chances were slammed shut, and he was going to have to hope to make it to the Wildcard Game.
The Sullla curse did not just apply towards his predictions - after he began to muse about no deaths, the game began to completely fall off the rails. Soon after getting out of the Mali war, Kublai and Cyrus teamed up to attack Hatty. This was a catastrophe for the Egyptians, and Hatty's ugly habits were coming back to bite her: instead of researching military, she was going for a DEMOCRACY BEELINE. This meant that SHE WAS STILL BUILDING 1100 AD WAR CHARIOTS, which, at this point, is just a tragicomedy. At least go Engineering for Castles? Hatty, are you TRYING to remain scoreless? Cyrus had Elephants and Knights, and they were absolutely pummeling Hatty's army of War Chariots, courthouse clerks, and Confucian missionaries.
Luckily for her, however, she had a savior: ASOKA! The Indian leader had recently switched to his favorite civic of Free Religion, completely dashing any bond he had with the Mongolians, and Hatty used this opportunity to bribe the Indians against Kublai to alleviate some pressure. (Asoka was clearly bribed - he entered the war the same turn he switched to secularism and did not have a stack ready at all.) It took six wars for a meaningful war to take place, but Kublai's days were all but numbered, especially since Mansa seemed to be gearing up for another round, and if Asoka absorbed all of Mongolia you might as well declare him the winner then and there. With that said, his entry did not help Hatty all that much, as Cyrus still had a much larger and more advanced army going against Spearmen and Horse Archers. Heliopolis fell, and it seemed like Hatshepsut was penciled in for First To Die.
It turns out, though, that the Egyptians had another savior: Lizzy! The two central leaders had both researched Rifling (take notes, Willem!), and it was finally time to take out the chaff. The only question was, would Kublai or Cyrus be First to-
WWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTT????!???!?!!!!???? 
WHAT IN THE NAME OF WANG KON IS MANSA DOING?!? In one fell swoop, "Mansa Moron" was born. In what was maybe one of the most idiotic moves in AI Survivor history, Mansa decided to send his MEDIEVAL army over to attack REDCOATS and CAVALRY. Making matters worse was that Lizzy was done ignoring military tech; she followed up a Cannon beeline with an ARTILLERY research, and, well, there is little to say about Artillery when it goes up against Medieval units. This, of course, was disastrous for Hatty, as Lizzy's attention was now turned towards the Malinese backstab, and Cyrus was slowly conquering Egypt as Hatty was stupidly researching Education instead of, ya know, trying to get units stronger than War Chariots.
As if Mansa Moron syndrome had infected Asoka a little bit, the Indians inexplicably let Kublai off the hook after conquering a few cities. In a way, it made some sense as Asoka was not completely committed to this war, being bribed into it. Kublai used that reprieve to... get bribed by Cyrus into declaring a pointless troll war on Hatty. In a further stroke of bad news for Hatty, Lizzy peaced out with Cyrus, allowing her to direct her full wrath towards the Malinese while leaving Hatty's pen-wielding chariot-riding accountants and lawyers at the mercy of Cyrus' rifles. Lizzy was so ahead that she had ANTI-TANKS going up against Knights and Pikes, and in a stunning shocker, MANSA MUSA had somehow become the first casualty of Season 9.
This was one of the most embarrassing performances by a single leader we have ever seen, one that shows how even the best of us can falter in spectacular ways. A shame, because he had played the first 50 turns so well, only to completely give up on expansion, cede everything to Asoka and Lizzy, and throw himself at Kublai Khan, dragging both leaders down. Even then, he would have had another shot in the Wildcard, only to make one of the dumbest war declarations of all time against a natural ally. I am not sure what Monty brain prion Mansa had ingested before the game, but he for sure self-combusted in a ridiculous manner. Maybe this portends good fortune for the Koreans; CFC fan Thrasybulos was wondering if Wang Kon and Mansa switched places for this season. With yet another Championship run followed by an ignominious opening round flameout, there is now a mounting pile of evidence that Mansa is either extremely dominant or a total dud, with not much in between.
Even though Financial Lizzy had just doubled her empire size while Asoka had backed off, the Indian was still in the driver's seat due to his massive cities and production edge, particularly since he was the first to Assembly Line and thus had a head start on producing Research in his size 17-23 metropolises. Furthermore, Asoka had smartly researched Biology and adopted Environmentalism before industrializing, meaning that his cities would remain robust and healthy. The same could not be said for the English, whose relatively flood-plain heavy empire was now struggling with Factory unhealthiness. The two were pretty much locked into the playoffs, as they would never fight each other due to an iron-tight Free Religion bond, and the only questions were 1) who else was going to the Wildcard, and 2) how would the game end? Domination was out of the question, and Cultural seemed unlikely due to Hatty trying her darndest to appear on an episode of Hoarders. Speaking of which, the Egyptians had managed to stall out the Persian offensive by teching to Grenadiers to counter Cyrus' Rifles (about time, sheesh), and Hatty's survival was likely ensured when the Big Momma sent her Tanks to the rescue.
This could not have been better timed, as immediately after Lizzy reentered the Western conflict, Thebes had fallen. Naturally, Lizzy immediately took those Egyptian cities and was now in control of six holy sites, and instead of trying to race Asoka to space, she opted to win through the Culture slider. Unfortunately, this meant she would not be teching ANY growth techs (Biology, Medicine, Refrigeration), which meant her Big 3 cities were all quite small. Her third city of Nottingham was projected to be Legendary around Turn 330-340, and with how fast Asoka was zooming through the tech tree that just was not going to cut it barring a miracle. It did not help that Asoka had nabbed many of the lategame Cultural prizes like Broadway and Eiffel Tower. By the time UN-enforced Environmentalism stabilized her domestic situation, it was too little too late for her to win.
The rest of the game consisted of a trimming of the dead weight. While Lizzy mowed down Cyrus, Asoka came back with a dedicated stack to wipe out the Mongolians, and the two backwards rump states quickly collapsed. Meanwhile, the Egyptian accountants finally learned about this cool gadget called the "Rifle". There is little to say, as the two leaders both had horrific early games where they were outexpanded and outresearched. This meant they could not call out Asoka on his early farmer's gambit, and with two runaway economic leaders, it would have taken a miracle for them to get a Wildcard chance.
Soon after Cyrus' death, Asoka's spaceship launched, and it arrived at Alpha Centauri on Turn 298, an extremely impressive Spaceship date that would have been excellent for a Financial leader. This was a fantastic performance from Asoka from start to finish, where he expanded like a monster, spread Buddhism across the globe, and did an impeccable job of developing his vast empire. He did make one misstep, not conquering Kublai earlier when he easily could have, but when compared to the gaffes of his competition, that turned out to be no biggie. The AI Survivor community overall probably underestimates Asoka (and he was grossly overlooked in this setup), and he has had enough solid to great performances over the course of his AI Survivor career to gain our respect.
Lizzy also played a similarly strong game, only losing out to an Asoka who had expanded and developed slightly better. She could have been a serious victory contender in her own right, except her turning on the Culture slider may have well have been her accepting a second place finish, as there was no way a sudden lurch to Culture mode would have beaten even an average space attempt, let alone a pre-Turn 300 one. Nevertheless, our playoff ticket for this game were by and large deserving of advancing to the next round.
Conversely, Hatshepsut avoided military techs to an extent that would make even Willem cringe, and while her victory bid was a longshot due to the strength of the central leaders, she pretty much did everything she could to throw it out of the window and splinter it into pieces under the wheels of War Chariots. While the top two finishers immediately pivoted to military mode once at war, Hatty stubbornly stuck to a disastrous Democracy beeline that ensured she would be fighting with Classical Era units against a weak and backwards Cyrus for over 20+ turns. By the time Lizzy had saved her, she was a husk of her former self, forced to hope for a favorable Wildcard setup when she probably deserved to die. It was obvious throughout this game why Hatty is still scoreless, and if she plays like this in the Wildcard this trend will continue.
Despite the unexpected final outcome (who in their right mind could have predicted Asoka winning AND Mansa being First to Die in this game?), it was not a total massacre for the picking contest, with an average of 8.5 points. GMR won this one with 19 points, although there were many people not too far out with 16-18 points.
Fantasy wise, sadly this game turned out quite poorly for Lobster, who netted a paltry 2 points from a 65 gold bid. At least she was not Maniamuse, who got zero points from 58 gold from this game and who will have to hope for Hatty to do something in the Wildcard. These two will need to hope for favorable Game Four and Game Eight outcomes to salvage their opening rounds. However, this turned out excellently for Jol Nar Binks, who got 4 points from his 35 gold Lizzy bid, and, at least until Alternate Histories comes out, my 23 gold Asoka bid right now that has netted me 6 points looks like one of the biggest steals of the fantasy draft.
This was a wild and entertaining season opener. Next game, we have a Financial fiesta coming up, with two crazy warmongers to spice things up! I hope Willem van Orange takes a long, hard look at this game, especially for LinkMarioSamus' sake. LMS has 102 gold invested into this game, making it a pivotal one for his fantasy chances.
