This summary for Playoff Game One was written by TheOneAndOnlyAtesh. Many thanks for volunteering to put this report together! 
The regular season was over, and it was time for our Elegant Eighteen to prove their mettle in the playoffs, where legends are truly made. Of all the playoff fields, this one was perhaps the most consequential, as it was likely to determine the peaceweight balance of the Championship. While Playoff 2 had a 5-1 split in favor of the lower peaceweights while Playoff 3 had the same 5-1 split (or possibly 4-1-1) in the opposite direction, this was the most balanced field, with this peaceweight hoedown: 2, 2, 6, 6, 8, 8, and it was likely to determine if our champion was going to be a low, mid, or high peaceweight. Of course, to qualify for the playoffs, each leader had to have managed a top two finish in the Opening or Wildcard round.
In the Northwest corner was the Game One Winner, Asoka, who had kicked off our season with a shocking upset where he technologically trounced the likes of Mansa Musa, Elizabeth, and Hatshepsut en route to an ultra fast Spaceship in an economic display that is yet to be topped this season. His corner here was quite a bit drier, however, and with Creative/Imperialistic Cathy already breathing down his neck he was going to need to spread Buddhism well in order to come close to recapturing that magic.
In the South Central location was our Game Four Winner, Ramesses, who had kind of lucked into a Cultural win in his opener, nearly losing or being relegated to the Wildcard on multiple occasions while leveraging his Industrious trait to clutch out some crucial wonders for his cultural gameplan. While his territory here was quite rich, his central position was dangerous, and with religion he had potential enemies on nearly every side. He was for sure lucky that he could count on his Western flank being secure, with fellow PW6 [peaceweight 6] Joao helming that region. We'll see if he can put his awful Season 8 playoff choke behind him and return to the Championship Game. The last, but certainly not least, of the winners here was Gilgamesh in the Northeast corner. Gilgamesh's path to glory was quite different from the others though, as instead of playing Sim City or eking out a culture victory, Gilgamesh had won Game Seven through unadulterated brute force, and he was going to have to do more of the same to advance to his first Championship since Season 5.
The remaining three leaders got second place in their respective games. The first of them was the Game Two Runner Up, Joao, and that feels fitting as he had put out a winning performance, only for Victoria to input the "Financial/Alive" cheat and beat him to space while the Portuguese spaceship, missing three casings, exploded at the end of its journey. With that said, his position here in the Southwest corner was a nice consolation prize, as in a game with FOUR Fishing starts, Joao's was not only easily the highest quality but also the Portuguese leader was the only one to start with Fishing here, giving him a significant leg up on his competition. With how spacious, secure, and synergistic his position was, he was certainly one of the favorites here.
Next was our Game Five Runner Up, Wang Kon, who occupied the cold Southeast corner. Wang Kon was the Cleveland Browns of AI Survivor, a poverty franchise known more for his antics and controversies rather than his actual performance, but this season he managed to do just enough in his opener to make his first AI Survivor playoff appearance in nearly a decade. Would the Troll King finally find a reason to be remembered for more than his blooper reel? Finally, in the North Central spot - which, despite being a central starting location, had a coastal capital - was the erratic yet lovable Catherine, who had leveraged a spacious starting location and some opportunistic wars into a dominant snowball in Game Eight... only to completely bungle her economy, take way too long to research Assembly Line, and lose technologically to fellow countryman Stalin despite having over half the map under her dominion. Her start here was quite a bit more cramped, and she was going to have to show way more economic competence to pull off an upset here.
The community consensus was on the murkier end here, as although Joao and Ramesses were co-favorites, the former due to his land quality and the latter due to his fast win-con in a friendly looking field, neither leader managed to eclipse even a third of the support in the picking contest. Joao had a more sizable grasp on the Runner Up votes, but every leader had decent support for the Championship spot. The community, however, did agree on one thing: that Cathy and Asoka would fight early, and the loser of that battle was likely to be First To Die.
Fantasy wise, this was quite an important game for all the primary contenders. I was looking to at least maintain my lead with Asoka, while Vincarius, who was not far behind, could easily catch up with a strong Joao performance. Kuro, meanwhile, needed Wang Kon to pull through to truly be on the same level as Vincarius and myself, while Lobster667 and LinkMarioSamus sorely needed their representatives to win to maintain their outlier chances. Unfortunately, maniamuse has been all but eliminated as Ramesses is his only remaining living leader and he has yet to reach double digits points wise, and a strong Ramesses outcome was effectively a win for both the top two, that being Vincarius and myself.
The key questions for this game were:
1) With so many coastal or coastal-adjacent starts, which leaders were going to manage the best, and which ones were going to get squeezed into their corners?
2) Can the two Creative low peaceweights work together, or would border tensions cause them to fight each other out of contention?
3) Could Ramesses balance the fine line between culture and everything else, especially in his central position surrounded by potential peaceweight and religious enemies?
Asoka, Ramesses, and Wang Kon were all predisposed to religion, and how that would play out was one of the more unpredictable aspects of this game. In particular, there were worries that Ramesses, who does not start with Mysticism, would waste many turns on failed religious bids. To the chagrin of all those who were rooting against a Cultural ending, however, such concerns were rendered moot with the opening tech choices. Wang Kon started with Fishing (like all the other non-Fishing leaders with coastal starts), Asoka opened with Polytheism, while Ramesses secured the other opening religion with a Meditation beeline, his strong second city placement allowing him to beat out Financial Wang when the Koreans attempted to circle back to religion after Fishing. Asoka would found Buddhism as was typical, and Ramesses would choose the way of the Yin and Yang for his path to enlightenment.
It cannot be understated how huge of a win this was for Ramesses, who had a well-placed Holy City in the middle of the global river system, and whose only religious rival for the time being was Asoka in a faraway corner, whose Holy City was positioned in a dry grassland/tundra region. Being the Industrious ruler of Egypt, perhaps the best synergy in the game for spreading religion, was the cherry on top. By Turn 25, Ramesses had queued up an early Stonehenge, and that in combination with Obelisks meant he was going to have an ultra early shrine for even more religious momentum. By Turn 45, Ramesses had the Taoist shrine, and soon enough EVERY non-Indian leader in this game would have Taoism, rendering any concerns about his central position null and void for a long time. So far, so good on the Gandhi playbook.
Meanwhile, Joao put his second city in a rather unexpected place, going north instead of claiming the contested double gold/flood plains region with Ramesses to his east. While in the livestream we had initially looked at Oporto with great consternation, we were immediately fooled, as Joao got Pig Iron, he got Pig Iron, he got all Pig Iron, and was already using it for Imperialistic hammers, and his third city would go on that gold and floodplains spot. Oporto would absolutely turbo charge his early game, and hilled pigs remain one of the most underrated resources in Civ4.
Meanwhile, the Creative warmongers were having solid, if not spectacular openings, doing the best they could with expansion and internal development. The same could not be said for the Troll King, who on Turn 30 had already found himself trolled by the barbarians; Zapotec had spawned on one of his few viable city locations, instantly consigning him to irrelevant status. It did not help matters that Ramesses had settled his initial cities towards the Koreans, leaving them even more squeezed than expected.
By Turn 50, each peaceweight faction had their own tier. The mid peaceweights were anything but mid here, already looking like runaways, Joao through expansion and Ramesses through culture AND economy - Ramesses already had 32 beakers, while no other leader was doing better than 12-13. Next was the low peaceweights, who at least were trying their best. Cathy and Gilgamesh needed to work together to take out Ramesses and Wang Kon to establish themselves here. Smack dab at the bottom were the two high peaceweights. Wang Kon had neither the quantity nor quality of cities to compete. Somehow, Asoka was even weaker. The Indian leader's land was really bad, and he needed to repeat his Game One expansion pattern to contend. Instead, he just sat idly for too long (in particular getting held up by the Temple of Artemis poison pill) and paid dearly for his unambitious settling patterns when Cathy settled right under his nose and pretty much blocked him off from the central portion of the map.
Of course, you could not declare the game over just yet, as Ramesses was lagging behind in one aspect: expansion. It really is one of the major weaknesses of the glass cannon cultural playbook, as it is difficult to expand when there is so much priority placed on wonders and missionaries. For now, the tall strategy was going well (his capital was already approaching size 20 in the BCs), as he had leveraged a Turn 73 Oracle for an ultra early Metal Casting slingshot, but still, it was not a good look for a community that constantly lambasts Civ5 for promoting a tall style of gameplay. Let's just say, many were rooting against yet another cultural win where poor civilization fundamentals somehow goes unpunished and the game ends early. Joao also experienced a slight setback, with Wang Kon showing his trolling chops by sniping the Great Lighthouse wonder away from Joao, denying an economically sketchy leader perhaps his greatest source of economic fuel. [Sullla EDIT: This is incorrect, Joao built the Great Lighthouse in this game though Wang Kon certainly did make a nuisance of himself.] Wang would continue to troll the field by sniping a central barb city with a stray wandering warrior and also somehow winning the Pyramids race despite his low production land. This was good news for Ramesses, as Wang was the perfect decoy against two warmongers who would in theory be more than happy to go after the Egyptians despite shared faith bonuses.
Interestingly, the leader most hampered by the barbarians was Joao, who saw two barb cities spawn on the west coast, but his setup was so strong it was merely a minor nuisance, and Joao would eventually seize one of them, the EGYPTIANS using an exploring Medic II (lol) war Chariot to snipe the other. The West coast was a bit of a mess, as Joao, Ramesses, and CATHY had all staked some major claims to that region, and without the Yin and the Yang bringing balance to the global order this game would have become a powder keg. Cathy was definitely a major contender here, as she had ten cities and counting and a free meal in the form of Asoka. She had to kill Asoka, however, as many of her cities were Arctic iceballs, and the quality was just too low for the quantity to matter all that much.
Unfortunately for the Russians, Joao had also realized that India was free real estate, marching a shockingly massive army to take those holdings for himself. Despite the cross map nature of the war, the Indians were effectively just purple barbarians here, instantly melting to the Portuguese army. Cathy quickly launched her invasion of the Indians, but she just did not have the production to outrace Joao and all she did was soften up those cities for Joao to seize for himself. While Cathy got the kill credit, Joao seized by far the most territory and had established a stranglehold on this game. In hindsight, Asoka's land was so bad that he did not have much of a chance here. In fact, it was so awful, a good chunk of the Northwestern tundra would remain unsettled FOR THE ENTIRE GAME. The Civ4 AI are programmed to eventually find every possible open spot to settle; when they refuse to do so for ages, you know how poor its quality must be. Combine this with his proximity to two Imperialistic leaders and his only religious rival having a complete monopoly on religion, and he was pretty much screwed in this game.
As Asoka was dying, RAMESSES was also planning to vulture some cities and purge all traces of heathen Buddhism from the map, amassing a large force in Assyrian, the western barb city he had captured. While Asoka died too quickly for this war to materialize, this left his mainland perilously undefended, and Gilgamesh was gearing up to make his move, building up his forces in the border city of Ur. The game had already reached a critical inflection point, as Ramesses was extremely vulnerable and Gilgamesh, who had become third strongest leader in the map at this point, would immediately become the frontrunner if he rolled over the Egyptians and their rich cities. In fact, Memphis, the Taoist Holy City with its 32 GPT shrine was being dangled RIGHT in Gilgamesh's face. He would make the obvious correct decision, right? RIGHT?
TROLLLLLLLLLLLLLL IN THE DUNGEON!!!! TROLLLLLLLLL IN THE DUNGEON!!!!! 
WANG KON?!? Why? The hilarious thing is, WANG was also plotting against Asoka, and this meant Wang had a decent force ready in Pyongyang, which was the city closest to Sumeria. Making matters worse was that Wang not only had Protective Longbows, but he also had STATUE OF ZEUS and CHICHEN ITZA, the two best defensive wonders in the game. Yet again, Ramesses gets lucky in what has been one of his luckiest seasons so far. Gilgamesh and Wang stalemated for ages until Wang surprisingly gave up Pyongyang for peace, and now the world was completely locked in a religious-Hereditary Rule lovefest, as these Taoist monarchs just absolutely loved each other that much. This was all fine and dandy for Ramesses, who was building nearly every impactful wonder under the sun and who would eventually accumulate five holy cities, way more than enough for him. Do not set his victory in stone just yet, however. Ramesses was fine for the time being, but he only had eight cities - cultural leaders ideally require nine - and once some leaders eventually modernized their civics, the current state of affairs would devolve and border tensions could definitely provoke a disastrous war. He could also throw by switching up the slider too early; if he did so before Rifling tech, Cathy and/or Gilgamesh would surely punish him. The clock was ticking ever so faster, however, and this was a shockingly fast game, even when juxtaposed with last week's eleven player Wildcard slog.
Naturally, Wang Kon was not long for this world (ESPECIALLY after converting to his own self-founded religion of Confucianism), with both Gilgamesh and Cathy teaming up to attack him, and that was the end of Korea. Gilgamesh could have run over Egypt instead, but no, he had to feed the troll here. Thus ended the tale of Wang Kon, who, like Asoka, just did not have much of a chance with the ill-fitting land he had rolled. While Korea was being partitioned, Rammy once again increased his stock by beelining Rifling shockingly early and putting to bed that concern. While he was not strong enough that Rifles would have saved him in the event of a Sumerian invasion, that was a step in the right direction, and the partition of Korea was huge for Ramesses as he was able to culture flip Wonsan for that critical ninth city for the culture game.
Soon enough, Rammy adopted Free Religion and his relations with the Creative warmongers plummeted. While he was still safe from fellow PW6 Joao, who cannot plot at Pleased, there was still a real window for the Creative warmongers to knock him out. While Joao was currently the tech runaway, if one of the Creative Warmongers killed Ramesses and incorporated his juicy cities into their territory, there was a real shot for one or BOTH of them to advance to the Championship. Imagine a scenario where they partition Egypt, one of them catches up in tech to Joao, and then they work together to kill Joao with their much larger armies. Together, they could even combine to swipe a Diplo win from the Portuguese!
Sadly, these all turned out to be hypotheticals. For some unexplainable reason, Gilgamesh and Catherine chose to sit back and do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING while Ramesses inched closer and closer to victory, being on pace to win before Turn 300 WITHOUT THE SLIDER. We had literally never seen sliderless cultural victories, and now, in the NINTH season, we were about to see a whopping third one! Instead, the three other leaders were more interested in signing defensive pacts with each other, as if they were confusing the yellow Egyptian borders with the yellow Zulu ones. Seriously, Rammy was now daring ALL THREE leaders to attack him, not only avoiding Assembly Line (no matter what Infantry would secure his safety), but also allowing a spying incident to drop relations with the Portuguese to Cautious! Egypt was tethering on the knife's edge of catastrophe.
At LAST, Cathy launched her invasion, getting tired of waiting for Gilgamesh, but alas, it was too little too late. While Rammy still lacked Infantry, Cathy's econ was horrific and she still had a Cuirassier Era army. Making matters worse, instead of instantly targeting core Egyptian cities, Cathy prioritized random Antarctic iceballs instead, completely wasting her first strike advantage, and soon the Russian army got pulverized by Egypt's motley crew of SAMuels, Artillery, and Machine Guns. In fact, it was so bad, RAMESSES IMMEDIATELY BEGAN CONQUERING RUSSIAN TERRITORY. Soon, he also smoothened over the diplomatic incident with Joao, returning relations to Pleased and getting his western flank secure once again.
Eventually, Gilgamesh also woke up from his slumber on Turn 264 and invaded Egypt, like he should have done over 100 turns ago, but it was too little too late. Instead of gunning for one of the "Big Three" legendary cities like Memphis or Heliopolis, Gilgamesh's offensive went for the former Korean city of Wonsan - Wang Kon, now Ramesses' personal court jester, was trolling from a seat of elimination - and by the time his army rolled up to Heliopolis, the Sumerian army got absolutely pulverized by Ramesses' air force. The Creative warmongers had waited far too long, and that was GG. (I'm not even sure if the attack ever happened - it looked a little bit like Ramesses just destroyed the invading forces). Just like that, Ramesses won a Turn 286 Cultural victory, and Joao woke up from hibernation to discover that he was joining the Egyptians and making his Championship debut.
Putting it simply, while the two Creative warmongers had aced the expansion phase, they flopped on the military side, focusing on the wrong targets when Egypt was RIGHT there for the taking. They played like Joao, only to realize at the last second that you need Joao's quality of land to play like Joao. Speaking of which, Joao was practically handed a Championship spot and all he needed was to use his traits and get a kill and he was golden. He did the bare minimum, but his start was so strong, that was all he needed. I think the Championship map is looking really good for him due to its numerous coastal opportunities, and this may be the best shot at a title Joao ever gets.
Finally, Ramesses was lucky that his gambits went uncalled despite his dangerous game. He is quickly turning into one of the smarmy villains of AI Survivor, being fortunate to get gifted a godly Huayna Capac-tier setup for fast victories that allow him to siphon wins from otherwise poor play. While his win looked easy, he did demonstrate why there was a lot of concern about his diplomatic position, and he will need a sounder foundation to replicate this in the Alternate Histories. With that said, his easy path to a shrine in a Championship map that is greatly skewed in favor of religious leaders should make him one of the title favorites. For someone that in my view did not really deserve his two wins, I sure hope he does not get rewarded with a trophy.
This was a strong performance by the over 300 strong in the picking contest (hey let's keep up this streak of over 300 entries!) with lots of scores of 20 or higher. There was a three way tie for 26 points by Azza (a CFC regular), jscott457, and Captain_BLT. Smart Random also had a good game with 23 points, and at this point there are rumors that Smart Random is probably leaning more on the "Smart" side rather than the "Random" one. (Don't worry, we'll solve this mystery soon.) Kuro still maintains his overall picking contest lead, although Kami and Smart Random are not far behind at all. The CFC folks, like Thrasybulos and Saxo Grammaticus, are beginning to fall behind a little bit, but they are one strong picking contest performance from getting back into the lead.
Fantasy wise, the top two are all but cemented, with Lobster and LinkMarioSamus not getting the results they needed to stay in contention. Kuro also got nothing from Wang Kon, and he REALLY needs his two remaining leaders to win their games as well as the overall title. Overall, I am quite happy with Asoka, who had already done his job for me, getting two more points from First To Die, and even better was that Vincarius only got two points from Joao this game, although Joao advancing to the Championship is always good news. Vincarius' big game will come next week, as his two other playoff leaders are in that game, while the remainder of the playoffs will likely determine my fate as I have Justinian next week and two leaders in Playoff 3.
Next week, with mostly low peaceweight leaders, is going to be a spicy one. Will Justinian and Brennus demonstrate the one true faith? Will Sury fully repair his post Season 8 reputation with a return to the Championship, which he had failed to qualify for since Season 1? What about Stalin, from an ill-fitting Fishing start? Can Vicky survive, let alone advance, amidst a wretched hive of scum and villainy? Or will Louis cause us to once again rage against the unfairness of Cultural victories? Tune in next week to find out!
