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:
Ramesses of Egypt
Traits: Spiritual, Industrious (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Culture, Secondary Production
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Organized Religion
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, two playoff round eliminations, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 12
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places 
Total Kills: 1
Overall Power Ranking: 15 points, tied 32nd 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 - and with a double culture pairing Ramesses is naturally one of the biggest victory threats in any game. The AI loves to waste turns in Anarchy flipping civics and it helps save them from their own follies. Ramesses is further bolstered by the powerful Egyptian civilization, which has excellent starting techs, one of the game's best unique units in the form of the War Chariot, and a unique building that is amazingly synergistic with Ramesses' traits - if he can get an early shrine rolling from Stonehenge Obelisks, he can quickly run away with the game. 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 his Egyptian counterpart in 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, but with his starting techs this rarely if ever sinks his game. He is capable of ridiculously high highs, but his wonder-whoring makes him equally capable of some very low lows.
Past Performance: Ramesses' AI Survivor career has mostly been an ignominious story of military defeats. Like his Egyptian counterpart, 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 hung on for a couple of tenacious 2nd place finishes, including what should have been a Season Three win in a hostile field had the UN not intervened, and he had a breakout Season Seven which included a dominant Cultural victory, his one career kill, and his first appearance in a championship game. This plus some favorable results in alternate histories had begun to rehabilitate his reputation, especially once he pulled off another military success followed by a Cultural victory in the opening round of Season Eight. Unfortunately, all that goodwill momentum came to a screeching halt when he followed that up with one of the most incompetently executed cultural gameplans ever in the playoffs, completely neglecting expansion and development and torpedoing his own game without ever being attacked. This was a performance so terrible that a hobbled Gandhi WITHOUT THE SLIDER would have outraced an untouched Ramesses WITH THE SLIDER AT 100% to Culture. Now, once again this was proven to be a low odds outcome in repeat playthroughs, but in classic fashion, he blew it when the lights were the brightest. On average he's probably a middle-of-the-spectrum leader if not better, but it should still be apparent that being a non-Financial hyper-cultural leader is a risky existence.
Joao of Portugal
Traits: Imperialistic, Expansive (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Science, Secondary Military
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
Zealotry: Low to Medium
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 13 points, tied 34th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Joao is theoretically the best leader at rapid expansion in the game, with his combination of Expansive (cheap workers) and Imperialistic (cheap settlers) traits. However, in practice the Deity AIs tend to be more limited by their economies as opposed to their capacity to train more settlers, and Joao hasn't stood out as being especially good at expansion. As a matter of fact, he hasn't really stood out at all, aside from having a name that's difficult for non-Portuguese speakers to pronounce, and Joao mostly sits in the middling portion of the AI category ratings. He trains units at an average rate, builds wonders at an average rate, cares about religion at an average rate, declares wars at an average rate, and so on. In an alignment table, Joao is the no-brainer pick for the "true neutral" leader, as he combines a peaceweight of 6 with lowish zealotry and +1 warmonger respect. He does not even have an interesting civ to play with - the water-based Portuguese civ would still be mediocre in an Archipelago map. This is a guy with little in the way of a distinct personality, yet funnily enough the combination of his name, his sheer mediocrity, and his leaderhead portrait/animation have made him somewhat of a meme in the Civ4 community. Step aside Salieri - the new Patron Saint of Mediocrities has arrived!
Past Performance: Joao's had a pretty unremarkable career overall. He's won two games, both legitimately strong performances where he used his traits to expand well and clearly deserved a top finish, but beyond that has failed to make a splash. For a while, there was a strong case to be made that this was largely a result of lousy starts, as he was routinely stuck trapped against a smaller edge of the map, surrounded by hostile leaders, or both, and when push comes to shove, Joao's not a dynamic enough leader to overcome such starts. However, in recent years, he's gotten some more favorable starts, and gone on to leverage them by... expanding too quickly, crashing his economy, and being ruled out of contention from an early date. This is a key weakness of his traits, as rapid expansion means little without the ability to maintain one's new holdings. His most interesting moment to date came in the most recent season, where he somehow froze, was completely unable to build anything, and then hid in a corner as two faraway leaders engaged in a deathmatch over his former cities. By some miracle he made the Wildcard only to churn out an equally pathetic performance, failing to conquer a hopelessly weak Asoka despite having more than twice the number of cities. J-man clearly requires a rather narrow set of circumstances to succeed, as he otherwise feels like a leader destined to finish in an irrelevant fourth place for all of eternity.
Victoria of England
Traits: Financial, Imperialistic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Representation
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 11
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 2
Overall Power Ranking: 12 points, tied 36th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Victoria gets the privilege of having the two best-performing traits in AI Survivor history: Financial and Imperialistic. This should in theory allow her to get out to a fast start and have the economy to support it. She also gets the powerful Redcoat unique unit and Stock Exchange, both of which are quite good for economic AIs. Perhaps the one issue with her package is her hit-or-miss Fishing/Mining combination. Other than her amazing traits and unique items, Victoria is a relatively standard AI. Her flavours are Gold and Growth. Her ratings are about average across the board with few exceptions, including aggression (5.1/10), wonder (6/10) and unit (4/10) build preferences. She has a high peace weight, and is likely to fight warmongers and befriend peaceniks, though unlike most high peace weight leaders she can declare war at "Pleased" relations. Victoria is essentially the quintessential average personality gifted with god-tier traits.
Past Performance: Vicky is one of the biggest puzzles in AI Survivor, as she's failed to accomplish much of note despite possessing two of the strongest traits for the competition. She has only had two strong performances, and both were clearly massive outlier results through both the eye test and Alternate Histories. Her Season Six victory saw her peacefully expand to NINETEEN cities and snowball from there, while in Season Eight despite bordering Ragnar of all leaders she was never attacked until an irrelevant post Turn 300 conflict and had free reign to "Financial/Alive" while the world around her burned. She did come close to one more win in the Season Three Wildcard, assuming a winning position before squandering it on an ill-advised Cultural victory attempt - that one cultural trait coming to bite her - and getting knocked out as a result. Outside of those games, it's been a story of complete futility for her. Some of these failures have come from hostile maps where she's faced too much pressure from other leaders, but plenty of others have come from decent starts where she completely squanders her amazing traits. In fact, Victoria is a good case study in the weaknesses of both Financial and Imperialistic. The problem with the latter is that it is an "active" rather than a "passive" trait - one has to take advantage of its bonuses for said bonuses to be useful, as opposed to passive traits like Creative or Spiritual which benefits the AI in 100% of all games no matter their playstyles or situations. Vicky just doesn't expand well, making her Imperialistic trait a waste, and it is no coincidence that her two best games have been the two games she actually utilized Imperialistic. To compound matters, Financial also has a key weakness - the early economic boost it provides gives its leaders first dibs on the available wonders, which can cause them to get distracted from other important priorities like military and expansion. Vicky often falls into this trap, most recently in her playoff game last season where she threw away a strong start by stopping expansion at a mere FOUR cities to build wonders. Three solid games in eleven appearances is far, far worse than one would expect from her, and until Vicky realizes that she is playing Civ4 and not Civ5, we can temper our expectations for her.
Louis XIV of France
Traits: Creative, Industrious (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Culture, Secondary Military
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
Zealotry: Medium to High
Past Finishes: Season 7 champion, two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 6 
Overall Power Ranking: 25 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Louis XIV has a strange personality that mixes together a heavy emphasis on wonders with military aggression. His wonder obsession creeps into the deranged category, sporting the rare 10/10 rating in that category, and he has a Culture flavor for his research and tends to spend a lot of time at the top of the tech tree grabbing stuff along the Aesthetics line. However, he pairs all that with a Military tech flavor, a fairly high aggression rating (6.3/10), and a very low peace weight of 1. This does not always form a winning combination, and Louis is prone to biting more than he can chew. The Sun King has the Creative and Industrious pairing of traits, a setup that's good for claiming land and then transforming it into a tourist paradise. More importantly, Louis gets two cultural traits to be a rare low peaceweight Cultural ticking-time bomb, and he is always a major threat to win given good diplomacy. He furthermore benefits from the strong French civilization, with its excellent starting techs and the useful Musketeer unique unit. However, Louis largely wastes these positive features with a destructive AI personality that pulls in too many directions at once. He tends to make for a bad neighbor as his borders are always intruding on the other empires and he will backstab anyone at any notice. Needless to say, his strategy of picking fights with all his neighbors while simultaneously locking his build queues on wonders and cathedrals has backfired more often than not.
Past Performance: While Louis can boast about having one of the best single-seasons in AI Survivor in Season Seven, where everything came together and he shot out to large leads in score and land before cashing in with three straight Cultural victories en route to a title, it's mostly unrepresentative of the entire rest of his career. To his credit, Louis usually runs a credible nation after the landgrab phase and rarely is a non-entity, but in terms of being able to translate that into actually coming on top? Before Season Seven, the best he could muster was a pair of distant second-place finishes. His championship run also showed his flaws, as these games often saw him change strategies mid-game and betray his indecisive nature, and despite being a fairly aggressive leader, he only scored two kills during his Championship run. The alternate histories from Season Seven also suggested that Louis' triple victories were pretty lucky and not something that was sustainable. His subsequent title defense was pitiful, with the Sun King declaring two fruitless wars before being dogpiled as the first to die while catapulting his conquerors to the playoffs. So while Louis is a credible threat and has good odds to be an important player, he has proven to be his own worst enemy over and over again. Chances are, his Season Seven title will just be a mirage.
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.
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.
Here's what the community was thinking based on the prediction contest before the game took place:
We had a clear favorite to emerge as Season Nine champion in the case of Victoria. She had been enjoying a charmed season thus far, winning twice in extremely unlucky fashion, and roughly half of the fanbase selected her to be crowned as the newest winner of the competition. Gandhi had about a quarter of the overall vote and then the other four leaders attracted little in the way of support. The Runner Up category looked to be completely wide open, as Victoria and Joao each sat around 25% of the votes but every single leader pulled at least 10% support from the community. Louis was then the clear favorite in the First to Die category, nearly as popular as Victoria was to be the winner, and Spaceship was the overwhelming victory condition over Culture. This was perceived as being a very poor map for Domination chances with a mere 3 votes for that outcome to date.
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!
Chaplain Y: Vicky will be ahead in Space, but Ramses will win culture before she launches. Louis will attack Gandhi, killing him or dragging him down at least.
penstroma: Victoria will win space, since big map favors financial and teching. Louis will place second, benefiting from two ultra-peaceful civs as neighbors. Ramesses will fall first to Zara and/or Louis. Expect few wars and a relatively quick game.
danjuno: Gandhi, you bastard, you don't deserve this. May Louis' giant wig and Joao's enormous hat smother you.
Faded_Outline: It's a cruel state of affairs when one leader you don't want to support can only be stopped by the success of another leader you don't want to support, but here we are. Not that that intervention is going to happen. Gandhi is so insufferably lucky that early French aggression is more likely to be turned in any other direction before his purely through the RNG's blessing. And later threats simply aren't going to matter because his gameplan precludes the existence of "later". Victoria offers the best hope of a non-culture victory. Is it the most likely? But she's already made it out of one impossible situation this season, why not follow it up with another?
GreenJacket: It's a hard choice between Ramesses and Louis, but because Louis has already been a champion, I think it's time for a new face. This will be a hard fought battle over religion and culture, and if Ramesses can get Louis to his religion (along with the guarantee of converting Zara), I think he will have this game in the bag.
Slashin': Once again Gandhi finds himself the underdog amongst the people. But he’s pulled a miracle twice now, and he can do it again. Amongst a sea of Joao/Vicky/Ramesses supporters, I alone herald the coming of a new brighter age. And that light is pink.
TheOneAndOnlyAtesh: I AM NOT CRAZY! I am not crazy! I know he swapped those borders! I knew it was Nanjing. The opposite of Beijing. As if I could ever make such a mistake. Never. Never! I just – I just couldn’t prove it. He - he covered his tracks, he got that idiot at the Stonehenge to lie for him. You think this is something? You think this is bad? This? This chicanery? He’s done worse. That Cordoba! Are you telling me that a city just happens to culture flip like that? No! He orchestrated it! GANDHI! He DEFECATED through the SUN KING! And I saved him! And I shouldn’t have. I took him into my own tentacle! What was I thinking? He’ll never change. He’ll never change! Ever since Season 2, always the same! Couldn’t keep his hands out of the culture slider! But not our Gandhi! Couldn’t be precious GANDHI! Trolling them blind! And he gets to be the Season 9 Champion!? WHAT A SICK JOKE! I should’ve stopped him when I had the chance! And you - (Gandhi launches a Chicago Sunroof, and it explodes!)
Dolwin: Religious spread is going to swing the picks wildly for me. I'm hoping Gandhi spreads his religion to Louis and Joao, but Ramses spreads the second religion to the rest of the field. Louis loses the peaceweight battle, leading to his first to die points. Victoria takes financial/alive to the championship.
the_lord_admiral: Gandhi meets his match here - Ramesses is even better at the culture victory BS than he is thanks to the industrious wonder spam. And in another likely peaceful builder game, I think we're going to see him pull it off, with the game not lasting long enough for anyone to make it to space.
Colors: I really, really want to pick None FTD but I fear that Louis will lot be able to keep his hands to himself. I like Vicky to win under you classic fin/alive condition and in a favorable field. I imagine Gandhi/Rams culture will be a favorite win condition, but I am banking on the culture leaders cannablizing each other’s builds enough that Vicky will sneak out the W. As I am writing this I can already envision Gandhi switching on the culture slider on turn 150 and cruising to an early championship belt, but why should I curse the field with my terrible picks. Welcome to the Victorian age.
El Cid: Gandhi doesn't quite have it in the bag, since I expect Louis will hate his guts. That said, Louis tends to get tied up on wonders, and I think the key to a good cultural victory in this field will be the Spiritual trait. Having multiple cathedrals in a city should make up for losing any wonder races, and the shrine income is insane. I put Ramesses second because I like to root for the underdog, and if the game goes peaceful the only other runner-up I can see is Vicky, and she's just not that great.
kcostell: Victoria edges out Zara for the spaceship in stoppage time after Joao receives an early economic red card for overexpansion.
Spanky: Louis, Gandhi and Ramesses have a culture-off. Louis attacks one or the other depending on how religions shake out, and wins. The 3 of them each get a large enough share of religions & wonders that culture victory takes too long. Joao ends up benefiting and winning by spaceship after strong initial expansion. Way too much recency bias with Victoria.
Schmun: I haven't gone wrong yet picking Vicky (in my heart if not in the actual contest...) so I'm sticking England. It's coming home, as they say. I'm hoping that Ramesses and Gandhi will split the cultural builds somewhat meaning that neither will get a fast victory (plus I also just don't want to bet on the culture game). I'm going for Joao second partly because I think his tendency towards expansion will see him well and partly because an England/Portuguese alliance is historically thematic. Zara FTD because that's just what he loves to do. Number of wars in this one highly depends on whether we get two religious blocks or if one faith dominates most of the globe.
Agni Neres: While the map is symmetrical, not all leaders have equal space; Vicky and Louis have much more land both in their backyards and along the path to the map's center than the other players. Louis has a peace-weight problem and thus is my FTD pick. Gandhi, for once will not score a cultural victory; the map's geography denies him the ice-cities he (in)famously uses to get the required temples in place for cathedrals. He also should be a bit cramped, parked between cultural Louis and expansive/imperialistic Joao. Can Ramesses get a wonder-based cultural win? Maybe, but he's next to Louis and could be slowed down enough to prevent that line of play. Zara and Joao are simply not inspiring as season champions; their roles today are as spoilers, determining which of their opponents will win. Thank you Sullla for another great AI Survivor season! Best wishes for your growing family!
RefSteel: The burning question: Will even a single Wonder be built or even one religion founded, on the eastern half of the continent before (or unless, but I can hope!) the Westward Trans-Sea-Star Conquest begins?
LinkMarioSamus: Zara Yaqob's starting technologies allow him to hook up his deer immediately, and he's easily the strongest leader with a PW of 6 or 8. Gandhi finishes 2nd because he's furthest away from Zara, while Ramses is FTD because he's sandwiched between two of the strongest leaders here and he sucks.
Eauxps I. Fourgott: If ever there was a map where a super-early Obelisk-assisted shrine could be the game-winning move, this is it. The Pharaoh's economy will be massively boosted here, and a lot of people are sleeping on him.
Plains-Cow: Gandhi will be left totally alone to win a cultural victory. How else can this season end? LET'S FIND OUT! MOO!
