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:
Alexander of the Greeks
Traits: Aggressive, Philosophical (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Fishing, Hunting
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Vassalage
Zealotry: Low to Medium
Past Finishes: Four playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 12 
Overall Power Ranking: 26 points, tied 14th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: While not quite as extreme as some of his compatriots, Alex is still a hardcore warmonger: he has a very high aggression rating of 8.6, a high unit build rating of 8/10, a primary research flavor of Military, is willing to declare war at Pleased, has the lowest possible peaceweight, and will sacrifice units in low-odds combats to achieve his goals. This fighting spirit is his biggest asset, too, as he doesn't enjoy much in the way of inherent advantages; his traits of Aggressive/Philosophical are unremarkable at best for AI Survivor, and he's saddled with the below average Greek civilization with a bottom tier Hunting/Fishing tech pairing and a unique unit in the Phalanx that doesn't do much given the balanced stacks the AI tends to build. Coupled with his militaristic bent, he is frequently slow out of the gate economically, especially if he starts away from the coast, and he's never going to take the time to do much about it. Alex isn't quite as one-note as his fellow warmongers - he's willing to build wonders for instance, and does have a secondary Growth research flavor to complement the Military flavor - but don't be fooled. The only game he knows is one where he tries to conquer the known world just like his real-life counterpart.
Past Performance: Eight seasons in, Alex has been the most successful of the hyper-warmongers to the point of having the highest aggression rating of any seeded leader. It wasn't that way at first, as in the first four seasons he was just another failed warmonger with just an "only leader to not get beat up" second place finish to his name. That all changed in Season Five, though, when circumstances lined up right and he managed a blazing fast Turn 80 conquest of Ethiopia - the earliest kill in AI Survivor history! He rode this to an astounding 4-kill Domination victory in just 253 turns, the greatest tour de force of a snowball that any warmonger has ever put on. Alex then proved he wasn't just a one-hit wonder by scoring a strong second place finish in Season Six and another Domination win from a poor start in Season Seven, catapulting him into the ranks of the seeded leaders where he's managed to stay with the help of a couple of kill steals. On the other hand, when Alex doesn't get the snowball rolling, he tends to not accomplish much of anything; he's been first to die four times, typically in embarrassing fashion (in one case getting run over early by Mansa Musa in Season Three), and had several more pathetic games where he only survived to the end because nobody ever bothered to polish him off - his two Season Eight games fall into this boat. He's probably the most likely seeded leader to fall completely flat on his face... but he's an incredibly dangerous foe who will at the very least drag someone down with him.
Willem of the Netherlands
Traits: Financial, Creative (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Science
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Free Religion
Zealotry: Nonexistent
Past Finishes: Two Championship losses, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 18 points, tied 26th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Willem has one of the strongest economic setups in the game and he's been held back thus far only by his poorly-chosen set of research priorities. Willem has maybe the single best trait combination in the game in Financial/Creative, a double-culture pairing with multiple passive yet direct bonuses that enables fool-proof settling and gives a multitude of early science bonuses. Willem's Dutch civilization is significantly less powerful, though it does have decent starting techs and can become strong if the Dikes ever show up in time to matter. On Fractal maps, this is often the case, but AI Survivors are run on Pangaea and Willem's uniques leave much to be desired if he is not on the coast. As an AI leader, Willem has middling scores in almost every category, lots of 4/10 and 5/10 ratings across the board. His aggression rating is decently high at 6.7/10 and his peace weight also sits in the middle of the scale. Willem has a ridiculously low religious emphasis - so much so he cares less about religion than the communist leaders - and he does not found his own faith very often despite his strong economic abilities. The single biggest weakness for Willem comes in the form of his tech preferences: he has Gold and Science flavors, which is one of the most military-avoidant combinations in AI Survivor. Willem has repeatedly refused to research Rifling technology to a suicidal degree, in some games finishing Assembly Line and Flight (!) techs before picking up Rifling. This has led to his elimination at the hands of much less advanced civilizations as he needlessly fights with muskets against rifles. We have established a rule of thumb for Willem: if he makes it to Rifling tech then he wins the game; otherwise, he finds himself getting eliminated.
Past Performance: Willem is one of those leaders whose success has been very tightly concentrated, scoring all of his career points across Seasons Four and Five while accomplishing absolutely nothing in the other six seasons. Willem looked like a top-tier leader in those two seasons; he showed how economically strong he can be with the two best traits in the competition, put out three winning performances - only getting second in one of those games due to a backdoor Culture win - recovered from an early loss of his capital for another second-place finish, made the Championship twice in a row, and got out to a good start there both times before eventually getting beaten back militarily. Season Four in particular looked like it would be his title, until he showed his most infamous weakness: ignoring the Rifling tech for ages on end, allowing a foe with weaker overall tech to attack and conquer him despite his lead. Despite his successes in those two seasons, though, Willem's failure across the rest of his career means he's not even a seeded leader. Some of these have seen him just play ineffectively - in particular, he is prone to neglect expansion - but others, including Season Eight, have given more hope for a resurgence in the future, with him getting out to promising starts before getting attacked relatively early by another strong leader. Outside of his patented Rifling allergy, Willem has key diplomatic weaknesses. He has a neutral peaceweight, but does not care enough about religion to make allies in that manner. He has no Warmonger Respect to help him get along with the Kublais and Surys of the world. Moreover, his Creative trait often creates border tensions that can keep relations with his peers icy. If Willem can navigate his diplomatic landscape, get a better chance to build up, and overcome his most crippling flaw, we may very well see him return to glory and make a real run for the title once more.
Hannibal of Carthage
Traits: Financial, Charismatic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Gold
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Free Market
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: Four playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 10
Overall Power Ranking: 24 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Hannibal is a highly dangerous contestant with a variety of helpful military and economic tools in his package. Hannibal has the excellent Financial/Charismatic combination, which not only helps with the happiness issues the AI frequently struggle with but also gives him an extra Financial tile to work in the early game. In the rare case where Hannibal manages to build Stonehenge, he'll be off and running against the rest of the field. Carthage as a civilization is notably weaker, with subpar starting techs for anything other than a coastal start and a horse archer unique unit that takes a strength hit compared to the base unit, even though it has been proven to generally be better than its replacement. In terms of personality, Hannibal is a militaristic leader with a fairly high aggression rating (7/10), low peace weight, and Military for his research flavor (paired together with a lesser Gold preference). However, his build unit rating isn't quite as high (6/10) and Hannibal is undercut to some degree by failing to plot war at "Pleased" relations. When Hannibal does well, he's able to conquer additional territory and then make it economically profitable through use of his Financial trait. However, he will also sometimes pick foolish conflicts and stall out his economy with too much warring in a way that even Financial cottage cheese can't rectify, or have the opposite issue of being unable to act until it's too late.
Past Performance: Hannibal was in the driver's seat to win his AI Survivor debut until the Apostolic Palace completely wrecked his game, a wacky event that foretold the rest of his AI Survivor career. In Season Two, he flubbed a war against Izzy and required a runaway Shaka to save him, and then could not break through a poor diplomatic setup in a gigantic Wildcard game. His Season Six opener saw him choose a terrible second city site that, due to the quirks of the AI, resulted in him taking nearly a hundred turns just to settle his third city! Finally, in Season Eight, he suffered from a cramped and low-hammer starting position exacerbated by both of his neighbors settling holy cities in his face. With that said, he has had flashes of brilliance, with a strong breakout game in the opener of Season Three and an even more impressive Season Seven opener where he successfully broke out of yet another highly cramped starting position to conquer half the map and win. His Financial trait has let him tech better than most warmongers and he's been solid on the battlefield, and he has a good chance of hanging around even in his weaker games, but there's also been quite a few matches now where he squandered a solid start, failing to perform well enough and finishing in second or third place. As a result, while he's made the playoffs half the time and was briefly a seeded leader, he is still yet to make the finals, which feels disappointing for a strong military leader with such excellent traits. His two highly dominant wins and strong kill total speak to his astronomically high potential, but so far a combination of bad luck and the "warmonger who cannot plot wars" trap has led to a puzzling level of inconsistency for the man often referred to as Chadnibal.
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.
Lincoln of America
Traits: Philosophical, Charismatic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Science, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Emancipation
Zealotry: Low
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 12
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 40th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: While not to the same degree as Gandhi, Lincoln is (very inaccurately from a historical standpoint) a hyper-pacifist through and through with an exceedingly low aggression rating (0.8/10). Unlike the Indian leader, however, he lacks the tools for this to be effective. Like most AI Lincoln doesn't use Philosophical properly, and with that being his only culture trait alongside his late-game focused Science and Growth research flavors, he lacks the cultural ace up his sleeve like Gandhi or Lizzy. The American civ with its uselessly late unique features does not help matters, but at least his starting techs are fine and the Charismatic American leader will rarely have difficulties growing and developing his cities. He will at least train an average number of units (4/10) and therefore doesn't collapse instantly when attacked. It all adds up to a mixed bag, as while he has been a surprisingly decent techer considering his complete lack of willingness to expand, whether peacefully or through more violent means, he just lacks the tools to fully optimize the Darius or Elizabeth playbook.
Past Performance: Lincoln has been a routinely unimpressive leader, scoring nearly all of his points in his debut. That was a mostly-friendly field where he smartly and atypically joined in on two separate dogpiles of some bad guys, then sat back with his cronies and coasted to a strong but unreplicable win. Outside of this game, he has largely served as fodder for the bullies of AI Survivor. Sometimes his lack of success has been beyond his control, of course - most notably in his Season Three opener, where he was a shoo-in for second place for ages until a runaway Mansa ran him over at the end of the game for no reason - but there's also been plenty of games with decent starts where his extreme passivity comes back to bit him. Most tellingly, he put up one of the worst defenses we've ever seen in his Season Seven, allowing a small-sized Carthaganian empire to quickly conquer his best cities without catapults and completely altering the course of the game in the process. While he finally returned to the playoffs off of an unlikely second-place finish in Season Eight, it's more than clear by now that Lincoln's complete inertia as a leader brings him to the bottom rung of AI Survivor leaders. To paraphrase JackRB, he frequently manages to disappoint despite already low expectations.
Ragnar of the Vikings
Traits: Financial, Aggressive (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Fishing, Hunting
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Pure Military
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 10
Total Medals: 0 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 5 points, 51st place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: If you like insane seaborne invaders with funny hats and scraggly beards, Ragnar is the guy for you! This lunatic has never met a war that he didn't like and any game with Ragnar present is sure to have some spicy moments. Ragnar's Viking civilization is really, really good on water maps, but he struggles to have the same effectiveness on AI Survivor Pangaeas, and Trading Posts can cause Ragnar to waste precious early beakers on Sailing even when it is not particularly useful. Furthermore, he combines together the Financial and Aggressive traits, which theoretically should make him better than the average warmonger in terms of managing his economy. That largely doesn't happen in practice though, as Ragnar takes every single lever available for managing his civ and turns it to the military setting, then dials the strength up to 11. Ragnar's AI personality is completely one-note: all military all the time. His aggression rating is essentially at Monty levels (9.9/10), his train unit emphasis is maxed out (10/10), and he only has one tech flavor - do I really need to say it? Ragnar will fight war after war after war — if he has to march to the opposite corner of the world, he will — while neglecting internal infrastructure, which typically leaves him far behind in tech by the latter stages of each match despite being Financial. This often causes him to get eliminated at the hands of more advanced rivals, although sometimes he can ride the coattails of other low peace weight leaders and survive to the finish. Perhaps someday we'll see Ragnar snowball out in front of the rest of the field and then ride his Financial trait to a position of tech dominance but that hasn't happened thus far. Instead, Ragnar has mostly spent his days dragging other leaders down into the cesspit with him.
Past Performance: Ragnar is another piece of evidence that in AI Survivor, as in life, hyperaggression is not a good thing. Time and time again, we've seen his constant attacks fail to get him anything except elimination. Ragnar is frequently a slow starter in these games, consigning him to also-ran status from an early date. Admittedly, a lot of this is because he keeps drawing poor starts squeezed against the edge of the map, but he also tends to make bizarre early game moves that further slow him down, like Turn 0 Sailing into Archery without coastal starts. Most notably, he bungled the opening to the Season Four Wildcard so badly that his capital was captured by the barbarians! Even in the less common games where Ragnar is able to get a solid start and build his empire up, there's always another nation out there growing even stronger who Ragnar would inevitably pick a fight against, leading to a predictable downfall. Even in his only second-place finish spurred on by an early conquest, he was actively getting conquered at the end and barely clung to his playoff spot. The very low number of kills for a warmonger further reinforces that he simply isn't that effective most of the time, and the Financial trait has not moved the needle for him at all. While Ragnar can be dangerous if he gets off to a good start, let's just say that's a massive if.
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.
Here's what the community was thinking based on the prediction contest before the game took place:
The community predictions for Game Two broke down similarly to the way they had for Game One, with a roughly 40/20/20 split on the victory pick. Willem was the community favorite in that 40% spot, following by nearly equal support for Hannibal and Alexander as the general feeling was that this game favored low peace weight leaders. None of the other four leaders drew more than a trickle of votes to claim the overall victory. There was no consensus on who would take the Runner Up spot, as usual, then the community was split between Lincoln and Ragnar for the First to Die spot. For the victory condition, the community was expecting a Spaceship outcome with most of the remaining votes going to Domination.
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!
Alhambram: Alex set new record for fastest kill by attacking Lincoln, who fail to connect copper. From that point Alexander steamroll over rest of map including Willem, because Willem again forgot to research rifling.
Newton: Tough game to predict. What I think could happen is Lincoln being very much hated by a lot of civs and being first to die with Alex profiting the most putting him in a good spot to run away with the game. For best of the rest it's kind of who does not get targeted by Alex so maybe it will be Hanibal as he is not a direct neighbor, has low enough peace weight, and is competent enough to hold off the mad viking, who I very much expect to suicide in the course of this game. Maybe Jman could also have a boring game and ride to a quiet second place. I expect this to be a very war heavy game with a reasonably late victory. Not very confident in this prediction as we easily could have one of the more economic civs making it far enough into the game to stop the mad warmongers, but I think it's more fun rooting for the baddies this time.
SageAcrin: I really like Alexander's starting copper+warlike tendencies that don't usually suicide him, despite his tech mismatch. I like Joao's spot; good chance to get some land, good chance to be pretty secure. Willem... I figure he either wins or FTDs in that spot, we'll see.
RandomKesaranPasaran: I find Hannibal's position to be the most interesting, and think the game probably turns on how well he expands and where. If he can keep Alexander from going after him for long enough to get the Financial/Alive combo rolling, he'll be quite hard to stop. Alex, meanwhile does have the chance to burn brightly, since the positions of Lincoln and Ragnar seem fairly weak, but I suspect he stagnates once he proclaims himself King in the North. Willem's position is quite lovely, but Willem is also rather silly and it's a question as to whether he'll expand as well as he needs to, with the imperialistic Joao so close. Oh yeah Victoria is also here I guess to feed a potential Hannibal snowball.
Azza: Ragnar, Alex and Hannibal get themselves into some sort of early 2v1, whoever gets the spoils snowballs into a domination win. The gold and the stone help Joao avoid crashing his economy as he claims the western end of the world. Willem squanders a good economic position by not researching military techs. Lincoln and Vicky don't do much and wait to get pummelled by one of the aggressive civs.
NotSpamBot: So the dice really just put Lincoln next to Alexander huh? Well, at least it might motivate William to get Rifling researched sooner rather than later.
Smosism: As a J-man believer, in J-man I shall trust.
Belisarius: This is Ragnar's year, I can just feel it
muppet70: Wilhelm grabs all the land and outtechs the warmongers, this time with rifling, doesnt have enough religions to go culture. Hannibal gets squeezed and ends up in stupid wars with Ragnar, meanwhile Alexander eats up washington. Victoria doesnt have enough room. Joao gets stuck in the jungle.
LinkMarioSamus: Are you guys ready for Willem to get his first victory since the pandemic? With a splendid capital, lots of space to expand, and a middle Peace Weight, the world is his oyster here. I'm picking Hannibal for 2nd because I think he can get along with Willem while being sufficiently far to stay out of his way, and I'm also hoping Hannibal's neighbors play awfully to the point I'm even picking Ragnar FTD. Number of wars, finish date, and victory condition are all a reference to the last time Willem won.
danjuno: On This Episode of Joao Joao's Bizarre Adventure: Lincoln Dies First. Victoria Also Dies Horribly. Ragnar Dies Even More Horribly. Willem Summons His Stand "Avoid Rifling At All Costs". Hannibal Backdoors Second. And Joao Joao discovers Alexander was actually DIO all along!
Xist10: This seems to be Alex map to lose. Easy expansion targets with Lincoln in the West and then Joao and Willem in the South and (squeezed) friends with Hannibal and Ragnar in the East. - And Ragnar should also be more likely to attack Hannibal (Cautious with Border Tension) than Alex (Still Pleased). This also protects Victoria from Hannibal, until Alex bursts through the door and collects the last % for Domi.
Joey Bread: Ragnar unalives himself into Hannibal, allowing Hannibal to snowball the northern half of the map
ZincAlloy: This whole game hinges on one thing: Ragnar and his silly hat. Alexander has an easy counter-clockwise path to domination here, as Lincoln is useless, Joao is almost equally unimpressive, and Willem won't tech rifles. But, if Ragnar attacks Alex it'll ruin both their games. If Ragnar gets his act together and attacks Victoria then Alex's odds are great. And in the likely situation that Hannibal's crushed start brings his borders close enough to the viking to get Ragnar jealous of his hat, I think Alex can still win as long as he isn't in a 2 or 3v1 war.
DemT: CAH-MUN ENGERLUND! The early DOWs are too unpredictable. Joao being isolated is good for him IF Willem suffers and he's a passable performer. Ragnar has no peaceful neighbors, so he probably grinds down and flames out. Vicky to win is a meme pick, but I just don't like Hannibal's start.
Sergey Podushko: Greetings Sulla! I'm Sergey - long time viewer, first time in the Picking Contest of Civ4 AI Survivor. I've been catching your AI Survivor streams since Season 7! I've predicted my picks for Game 2, I've picked Willem to win because of the ridiculous trait pair of Financial-Creative, Vicky for second because she can expand peacefully (like in Season 6, where she expanded to 19 cities en route to victory in the Opening Round) and Ragnar FTD mainly because he's hyperaggressive and I hope that he will get KO'd by Alex. By the way, I'm a bit worried about my winning pick, because Willem tends to screw up massively and not pick up Rifling tech. With both Alex and Ragnar, I've predicted for the game to have fourteen wars. In terms of victory type, I picked Cultural Victory on Turn 320. P.S. Keep up the good work, and don't forget to mention my name and give me a shoutout for my support! Hope I will score well in this game!
Syrinius: I think Joao has good odds for both first and second place, while Willem is first place or bust here.
Gemini 3: The early game will be defined by heavy aggression from Alexander and Ragnar, likely leading to the swift elimination of a marginalized leader like Victoria or Lincoln. Hannibal will leverage his Financial and Charismatic traits to out-build his rivals, eventually absorbing the territory of his weaker neighbors to establish a dominant economic lead. This industrial snowball will allow him to maintain a safe distance from mid-game border conflicts, securing a comfortable Space Race victory around turn 304.
Schwarzschilda: Maybe one of these financial leaders can teach the orange in the White House how to run an economy
Eldest: Joao has infinite room to expand, similar-ish peace weights to his neighbors, a gold tile that should prevent him from completely crashing his economy, and two early happiness resources in ivory and gold. His closest neighbor is Willem who will almost certainly have stone, causing him to go wonder crazy and not expand. How the east will shake out probably has to do with how Ragnar's first aggression goes and who it's against. It probably sinks whichever of his neighbors it is. He's closer to Hannibal, but Hannibal's land is better and so I suspect will be able to fight back better. I'm going Hannibal for second mostly as a hedge. His land is good post-iron working and he has a desert between himself and Victoria which might limit their interaction in the early game. From there he can pick off a weak neighbor which he'll inevitably have. I don't love Willem or Alex's positions in this game because their land is bad and there are enough aggressive AIs on the map that I don't think Willem will be able to economically snowball as well as he would like. Lincoln FTD is pretty self-explanatory, bordering Alex and all. Religion will be interesting here because Willem is the only culturally-minded one of the bunch. If Joao or Lincoln get the second religion (assuming Willem gets the first) things might shake out very differently.
Eauxps I. Fourgott: Alex and Ragnar both having copper at their capitals promises a spicy beginning to the game, and I think virtually guarantees that the First to Die outcome will involve them in some way. Either Lincoln or Hannibal could easily find himself being attacked without metals en route to a hasty exit. More broadly, the chaos these warmongers will cause results in the advantage clearly belonging to those leaders farthest away from them. Vicky has a terrible position, so that leaves two clear frontrunners: Willem and Joao.
BluesyCobalt: Alex with BFC copper and the tech flavors to snap up bronze working early while being situated right next to a Lincoln who might only have chariots in time to defend? I've just got this feeling like Alexander might have to remind the Americans who invented the idea of democracy by force and then end up gobbling the world like a block of feta cheese.
delan: Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was Game 2?
