This is a continuing feature for Season Nine 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:
Qin Shi Huang of China
Traits: Industrious, Protective (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Mining
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Production, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Bureaucracy
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: One troll Championship participation trophy, Three playoff round eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 0 First Places, 5 Second Places 
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 13 points, tied 34th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Qin Shi Huang has the unfortunate penalty of carrying the worst trait combination in Civ4 for AI Survivor purposes. The Industrious trait causes the AI leaders to tie up their cities on wonders in lieu of expanding out across the map, while the Protective trait offers virtually no advantage save for "dying slower". Qin's saving grace is the Chinese civilization, with its amazing starting tech combination and powerful Cho-Ko-Nu unique unit that does redeem Protective somewhat. Qin's AI personality is mostly that of a peaceful builder, as he has a low aggression rating (3.9/10), a dangerously low unit emphasis (2/10), and a fairly high wonder emphasis (6/10). This economic setup is oddly paired with a low peace weight and the ability to plot war at "Pleased" relations. This is likely the reason why Qin has outperformed his terrible trait pairing, as being an economy-focused leader who gets a seat at the table with the big baddies is generally a good thing. It's too bad for Qin that he doesn't get more useful traits to pair with his otherwise promising setup - imagine if he had kept his pre-expansion Financial/Industrious trait pairing!
Past Performance: Qin has never truly risen to greatness, most of the time churning out middle-of-the-road performances, not playing really disastrously or sinking his own game (with a couple of noteworthy exceptions), but also never enjoying any great successes. He's managed to complete a few joint conquests to build into decent positions, but that's it - none of his games have seen him really pull out in front or become a dominant leader. One key obstacle that has prevented him from ever translating early advantages into wins is a tendency to avoid vital military techs in the Renaissance Era, something that wrecked his Season Two game that he probably should have won. Qin's ability to easily get along with warmongers (+2 warmonger respect, plus his base +1 relations) has perhaps been his biggest asset, helping him to hang around and secure some second place finishes that he otherwise would not have gotten. With that said, his more recent showings have been more buzzworthy for a variety of reasons. There was his awful Season Six opener where he overexpanded and crashed his economy. He then somewhat redeemed himself with a strong Season Seven opener where he took the majority of cities from an early dogpile and rode that to a competitive second place, and his Season Eight journey to the Championship game saw him execute to perfection a seemingly risky backstab of his religious ally Saladin to secure 2nd place behind Mansa. Unfortunately, his mediocrity has been especially apparent in the playoffs - four appearances, and there is very little to remember about most of them. I guess in the Season Eight playoffs he seized the moniker of "least impressive Championship qualification of all time", where he once again crashed his economy from a bad start before somehow advancing by virtue of being the only leader whose beaches a runaway Churchill did not land on, and, well, he was obviously the imposter among the Season Eight goodie two shoes championship lineup. Don't be surprised if he manages to slip through, but don't expect him to be one of the big movers in his games either.
Gandhi of India
Traits: Spiritual, Philosophical (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Mining, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 10
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Pure Culture
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +2
Favorite Civic: Universal Suffrage
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: Season 8 Runner Up, Five playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, one opening round elimination
Total Games Played: 16
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 4 Second Places
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 32 points, 10th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Gandhi is without a doubt one of the most unique leaders in Civ4. He gets to utilize the excellent Fast Worker and Mausoleum, although considering his extreme pacifism the Mausoleum is not as useful. His starting techs are Mysticism and Mining, a weak pair useful for pursuing an early religion and not much else; like many religious leaders, Gandhi often takes a long time to improve his tiles and connect his resources despite his Fast Workers. Furthermore, he gets the Spiritual/Philosophical pairing, which nets him a ton of important half-cost cultural buildings, speeds up his Great Artists, and, crucially, grants him two cultural traits. Lucky him, because Gandhi spends the entire game laser-focused on one thing: CULTURE. With his pure Culture research strategy, he pursues religions like a man possessed and puts his production bonuses and traits to extremely effective use. Gandhi is truly a hyper-pacifist who entirely neglects his military and prays it won't come back to bite him in the rear, with zeros for both aggression and built units. Surprisingly, Gandhi is also quite unlikely to build wonders (2/10), and there is a possibility that this has helped him as he has proven more adept than other peaceniks at defending himself despite his ultra-low militarism. He is a prime example of why AI Survivor disables vassals; in pre-Sullla attempts to run AI tournaments, Gandhi won literally every championship because he would constantly vassal (or be vassaled) and then be left completely unbothered to win a cultural victory. Without a powerful benefactor to hide behind, Gandhi is probably the most feast-or-famine type leader in real AI Survivor. If he is not attacked by his neighbours, he can rush out a cultural victory like nobody's business, but he can collapse very quickly if attacked, and with a peaceweight of 10 he is prone to getting attacked a lot. An early war declaration from a neighbor can ruin any chance of a Gandhi victory on the spot.
Past Performance: Gandhi has long enjoyed a position as a seeded leader thanks to consistent success in the opening round, having made the playoffs in 75% of all seasons (including a consecutive four season streak!). In fact, his only career opening round elimination took place in the inaugural season in a game in which he was a marked man the moment his opponents were selected. His wins followed similar patterns: he was allowed to culture in peace for long periods of time until the machine became unstoppable. On the other hand, things haven't been so rosy in the playoffs, where he routinely finds himself up against fields full of warmongers who freakin' hate his guts merely for existing. He finally threw the playoff monkey off his back once he got a workable playoff field in the Season Eight builder bonanza, but even then his land was bad and his Championship qualification was insanely lucky, requiring tactical and strategic blunders from almost all his rivals in order to secure his first shot at a trophy. At least he gave it his best shot with a legendary Championship performance where he not only nearly won, but also morphed into Nuclear Gandhi at the end of the game. With that said, it is tough to determine his true skill level, as he has proven a tad fraudulent in some Alternate Histories, his non-Championship games last season were pretty mediocre despite his scoring finishes, and he seems to have an inner Wang Kon streak as seen in a Season Seven opener that saw him throw away an easy victory by inexplicably attacking and crippling his religious ally early in the game. But while he might not be quite the unstoppable juggernaut that his opening round stats suggest, he clearly has something figured out, and he is easily the most likely non-Mansa leader to win if left untouched. That is a big if: as we saw in last season's Championship game, it's hard to make friends with a peaceweight of 10, especially when, to paraphrase Amicalola, he becomes the "least mostly good leader" in the field.
Sitting Bull of the Native Americans
Traits: Philosophical, Protective (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Environmentalism
Zealotry: Nonexistant
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 10
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 1
Overall Power Ranking: 8 points, 46th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Sitting Bull is stuck with the Philosophical and Protective traits; in other words, the two worst performing traits in the entirety of AI Survivor, although one can argue that Philosophical performs badly because it is foisted on leaders like Frederick, Lincoln, and, well, this guy. Sitting Bull also gets the terrible (for AI Survivor) Dog Soldier - the last thing a militaristic high peaceweight leader needs is weaker Axes - and the Totem Pole, which is like having double the Protective trait. At least he won't avoid Mysticism for ages on end and has above average starting techs, but his overall tools nevertheless leave much to be desired. As a personality, Sitting Bull is a series of absurd contradictions. He builds a lot of units (8/10), doesn't bother with wonders (0/10), and has Military and Growth research flavors. This all sounds like the makings of an aggressive leader in the vein of Ragnar or Alex, and yet, Sitting Bull has a lower than average aggression rating (4.3/10). He simply doesn't attack very often - he can't even plot at Pleased. He also has a high peace weight, preferring the likes of Gandhi and Elizabeth to Montezuma and Shaka. This, along with his traits, largely leads to an AI that constructs a strong military that he doesn't use, and a weak economy to boot, with Sitting Bull struggling to keep up in tech with even the rabid warmongers. It doesn't paint an impressive picture, and as a general rule Sitting Bull doesn't just start in a deep hole; he's unwilling to dig himself out. Even worse is that outside of his peaceweight, he has difficulties making friends in the harsh world of AI Survivor - he does not care at all about religion, he won't join coalitions, he doesn't get any warmonger respect ratings, and his favorite civic comes way too late to matter. Making matters worse is that Sitting Bull LOVES Espionage, and if he survives for a while, a humongous IF, he will often, erhm, poison his relationships with his peers. He is essentially the Karen of AI Survivor, demanding you stay out of his business while snooping into yours at the first possible opportunity. Most of the time, "Sitting Duck" usually just goes irrelevant, antagonizes everyone, and waits to be taken out of his misery.
Past Performance: Heavily armed pacifism has not proved a winning strategy in these games, and there's a legitimate case to be made that Sitting Bull is the worst leader in the entire competition. He's only finished off a single opponent in the course of eight seasons despite his militarism, and his two highlights are losing a space "race" to Frederick and an unusual Cultural win where he somehow steamrolled three more technologically advanced Financial leaders at the same time to claim his one victory (ok, that one was impressive). To be completely fair to the guy, he has gotten a pretty bad set of map draws, frequently surrounded by hostile foes that tear into and cripple him before he has the chance to do anything for himself. However, his performances when this hasn't happened haven't suggested that we've been missing out either, typically featuring... not much of anything. Even games where he starts strong tend to see him eventually fall behind maintaining a large army without properly leveraging his strength. His only good games so far have come together with Frederick, so the two leaders seem to have some bizarre synergy, but barring them starting on the same map, history suggests that neither is likely to accomplish anything of note.
Elizabeth of England
Traits: Financial, Philosophical (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Culture
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Free Religion
Zealotry: Low to Medium
Past Finishes: Season 8 Champion, One Championship loss, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 12
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 20 points, tied 23rd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Elizabeth is an easy AI personality to understand, a pacifistic economic leader who will always seek out some kind of non-military victory condition. Elizabeth has one of the best pure teching trait combos in Financial/Philosophical, and while it's true that there's some anti-synergy there between running cottages and running specialists, there's little doubt that this setup will output a lot of beakers and Lizzy is the rare leader who can utilize Philosophical competently. Moreover, it gives her the magical double-culture pairing that establishes an immediate ticking clock in any game she is in. Her biggest weakness comes in her almost total lack of anything that helps with the first 100 turns, a major reason why she is not considered a top-tier leader in human hands. However, if Elizabeth survives the early game and ends up with a solid portion of the map under her control, she's one of the toughest leaders in the game to stop, especially since she has Redcoats to establish herself militarily and prevent her from attempting Willem gambits. She has struggled in AI Survivor precisely because this happens so rarely, as Elizabeth has an exceedingly low aggression rating (1.9/10) and a low build unit preference (2/10). Surprisingly, she will indeed plot war at "Pleased" relations, but in most games you're more likely to see someone else invading England as the Virgin Queen ignores military to her detriment. In summary, Elizabeth performs far better in games with other high peace weight leaders where she's left alone to build in peace. She's a far better version of Frederick and a weaker version of Mansa Musa.
Past Performance: Elizabeth looked like a formidable leader in Season One, riding a wave of near-victories to the Championship. She was still credible for the next couple of seasons as well, starting strong in Season Two only to lose to a two-front war, then losing a heartbreaker in Season Three when Julius Caesar conquered one of her big three Cultural cities when she was a mere five turns away from winning. For the longest time, that tragedy seemed to shatter Lizzy's spirit, and she ran into a multi-season long dry spell where she was frequently saddled with garbage land, hostile diplomatic fields, and pure rotten luck (like in Season Seven where she lost a major city to the barbarians in a low-odds combat roll). By Season Eight, she had rolled yet another crappy start amidst a field of warmongers and was written off as an afterthought... only to shock the community with a masterfully played Opening Round upset. In her subsequent playoff game, her SPACESHIP effectively tied with MANSA MUSA'S CULTURE (seriously, that's insanely impressive)... and then she EMERGED VICTORIOUS IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME to become the first female AI Survivor champion. Mrs. Sullla's namesake has by and large proven to be one of the best pure techers in Civ 4, but at the same time her expansion and fighting can leave much to be desired, making her into a classic boom-or-bust economic leader. As her defending champ status shows, she booms pretty hard.
Hammurabi of Babylon
Traits: Aggressive, Organized (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Pure Culture
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Bureaucracy
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: Three playoff round eliminations, two wildcard eliminations, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 6 
Overall Power Ranking: 18 points, tied 26th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: It is a valid question to wonder if Gilgamesh and Hammurabi had their traits switched by accident, as the warmonger-focused combo of Aggressive/Organized would fit Gilgamesh far better, while the defensive Protective/Creative has far more synergy with Hammurabi's Babylonian civ. While he does have the top tier Agriculture/Wheel starting tech combination, that's all he has going for him. Unfortunately, the Aggressive trait is wasted on a leader who loves to build wonders (8/10), claims a defensive archer unique unit in the Bowman, and tries to cosplay as Gandhi with his PURE CULTURE research flavor. Hammurabi will obsess over anything associated with cultural output and stands a good chance of founding an early religion despite not starting with Mysticism tech. Unfortunately, Hammurabi is a completely stunted leader, doing nothing except sitting in the corner of the map trying to develop his culture but never actually going for a Culture victory due to holding ZERO cultural traits! He will never turn up the slider unless he has all seven holy cities, and he will rarely obtain all seven, for he has a high peace weight, a low aggression rating (5.5), and won't plot war at "Pleased" relations. He is the AI Survivor equivalent of a poor sap who thinks he's the next great rockstar, but who cannot sing in tune to save his life.
Past Performance: Hammurabi has a well-established style of play: not doing much of anything. His games typically consist either of sitting back in a corner and twiddling his thumbs, or else fighting minor skirmishes that do nothing to substantially improve his position. This has predictably resulted in a lot of unsuccessful games where he eventually gets eliminated, whether militarily or by surviving in some sort of distant 3rd or 4th place. Granted, there's been times where he was a bit more successful, and he has won the previous two season openers... but the first was less than impressive, taking over 400 turns to win by spaceship, and while he did put on a legitimately great performance in the second one to win a Domination victory despite being attacked NINE times, this was later proved to be an extremely lucky result. In both of his following playoff games he was back to his usual turtling ways, watching more dynamic leaders succeed in his stead. Hammurabi also holds the "least impressive 2nd place finish of all time" award from Season Three, only making the playoffs due to Mansa wiping out the seemingly entrenched Lincoln on a whim post Spaceship launch. While he has played a more important role in recent seasons, Hammurabi plays exactly like a poorly thought out leader with a confused design, forever destined to be the bridesmaid instead of the bride.
Zara Yaqob of Ethiopia
Traits: Creative, Organized (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Growth, Secondary Religion
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: +2
Favorite Civic: Theocracy
Zealotry: Extreme
Past Finishes: Season 1 runner up, one playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 15
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 9
Overall Power Ranking: 25 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Zara plays with the Creative and Organized traits, an above average pairing due to its excellent synergy, as both traits reward fast expansion while also giving the Ethiopians major discounts on a number of strong buildings throughout the course of a game. For his unique items Zara plays with the decent Oromo Warrior, a slightly better musketman, and the mediocre Stele which oftentimes only begins to become useful when it is about to obsolete. Lastly, Zara gets the Hunting/Mining combo for his starting techs, which means he can be slow to connect his food resources, especially if he goes for a religion because he is one of the most devout leaders in the game. His flavours are Growth and Religion, an unusual combination that could lead to healthy and happy cities. Outside of religion, Zara is a bit of a wildcard, holding thoroughly average ratings (5.6 aggression, 6 unit build, 4 wonder build). He can shapeshift from a warmonger to an enlightened soul from game to game. However, by being perhaps the most middle-of-the-road leader in Civ4, he turns into one of the game's most unique personalities. He is the Oprah of AI Survivor - you get a diplomatic bonus, you get a diplomatic bonus, you ALL get diplomatic bonuses! Not only is he the sole not-Gandhi leader to grant +2 extra "first impression" relations, but he ALSO has an additional +2 warmonger respect bonus. When combined with his neutral peaceweight of 6, this guy can befriend anybody from the most hardcore warmongers to the most timid peaceniks. Furthermore, his diplomatic bonus for shared faith goes up to an obscene +8 - for reference Izzy tops out at +7 - and while the penalty for religious differences is nothing to sneeze at, he is more than capable of getting along with heathens due to the other diplomatic goodies he provides. I'd venture the developers HAD to make him plot at Pleased, or else he might never attack anyone! Naturally, liking everyone too much has its downsides - Zara can maintain cordial relations with everyone, but unless he forms a religious alliance he has difficulty forming any deep bonds. We all know that one person who gets along with everyone but cannot form true connections, and it is not the happiest of existences.
Past Performance: Zara was perhaps the biggest star of Season One, rebounding from near-elimination via the Wildcard game into three straight dominant performances to come just short of winning the title. (Instead, in classic AI fashion, he sat back while slightly under the Domination threshold and let Justinian win via space instead.) However, his career since then has seemingly been dedicated to proving that this performance was a fluke. Zara has accomplished very little from Season Two onwards, failing a little or a lot depending on the game, but in any case almost never becoming truly strong or a major figure. He showed minor signs of life in Season Six, scoring a decent amount of points and kills in both seasons, but that was bookended by Seasons Five and Seven which both saw him suffer embarrassing early eliminations at the hands of Alexander; Season Five's performance in particular saw him wiped out without ever reaching Archery, for the earliest elimination in AI Survivor history. Since Season One, Zara has displayed some rather crippling flaws under AI Survivor settings. First, he is a religious leader with an ill-fitting civ for such a style, and with Deity techs removed this has directly contributed to his Alex disembowelments, as he is too slow to research development and defensive techs due to pursuing (and often missing out on due to turn order, being last alphabetically!) religions. Secondly, if he likes someone too much, he can take his sweet time making anything happen, and this particular weakness was exposed in Season Eight, where after essentially being a spectator in his Opening Round (at least he got the Alex monkey off his back), he waited too long to make his move in the Wildcard Game and ended up eliminated due to finishing in 2nd place in a rare winner-takes-all match. Unfortunately, Zara is one of the leaders most hurt by modern survivor settings. He's often on the shortlist of "best AI discussions" in many forum posts, as while being nice to everyone is amazing with regular AI and tech trading, it is not nearly as beneficial under Aggressive AI and No Tech Trading. While Zara does have the skillset and diplomacy to succeed, he will need to take more initiative and have better early games in order to recapture his Season One magic.
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Check back later for the community predictions!
