One of the recurring features of past seasons of AI Survivor have been our "alternate histories", running additional iterations on the same maps to see if the same events would play out again. Game Two had one of the closest finishes we've ever seen in AI Survivor, a same-turn Spaceship arrival between Victoria and Joao where the tiebreak was settled by Joao's spaceship exploding in flight. Was that something which would unfold in each game? This was a topic that called for more investigation with alternate history scenarios. Following the conclusion of previous seasons of AI Survivor, I had gone back and investigated some of the completed games and found that they tended to play out in the same patterns over and over again. While there was definitely some variation from game to game, and occasionally an unlikely outcome took place, for the most part the games were fairly predictable based on the personality of the AI leaders and the terrain of each particular map. Would we see the same patterns play out again and again on this particular map?
The original inspiration to run these alternate histories came from Wyatan. He decided to rerun the Season Four games 20 times each and publish the results. The objective in his words was twofold:
- See how random the prediction game actually is. There's a natural tendency when your predictions come true to go "See! Told you!", and on the contrary to dismiss the result as a mere fluke when things don't go the way you expected them to (pleading guilty there, Your Honour). Hopefully, with 20 iterations, we'll get a sense of how flukey the actual result was, and of how actually predictable each game was.
- Get a more accurate idea of each leader's performance. Over 6 seasons, we'll have a 75 game sample. That might seem a lot, but it's actually a very small sample, with each leader appearing 5-10 times only. With this much larger sample, we'll be able able to better gauge each leader's performance, in the specific context of each game. So if an AI is given a dud start, or really tough neighbours, it won't perform well. Which will only be an indication about the balance of that map, and not really about that AI's general performance. But conversely, by running the game 20 times, we'll get dumb luck out of the equation.
Wyatan did a fantastic job of putting together data for the Season Four games and since then we've continued to use the same general format. First we'll post the resulting data and then discuss some of the findings in more detail. Keep in mind that everything we discuss in these alternate histories is map-specific: it pertains to these leaders with these starting positions in this game. As Wyatan mentioned, an AI leader could be a powerful figure on this particular map while still being a weak leader in more general terms. This particular set of alternate histories were run by TheOneAndOnlyAtesh - many thanks for spending so much time on this task! 
Now on to the results:
Game One | Game Two | Game Three | Game Four | Game Five
Game Six | Game Seven | Game Eight | Game Nine | Game Ten
Game Eleven | Game Twelve | Game Thirteen | Game Fourteen | Game Fifteen
Game Sixteen | Game Seventeen | Game Eighteen | Game Nineteen | Game Twenty
(Note : "A" column tracks the number of war declarations initiated by the AI, "D" the number of times the AI is declared upon, "F" the points for finish ranking, and "K" the number of kills.)
TheOneAndOnlyAtesh: Considering this fascinating mix of crazies, economic leaders, neutrals, and cream puffs, I was expecting a fun and unpredictable set, and I was not disappointed. This map was utter chaos, with First To Die being a tossup and dependent on which leader either got dogpiled or caught with their pants down (more than half of these leaders at some point got crippled due to having no metal units to defend themselves with), no leader surviving more than 60% of the time, and every single leader having some chance here - including the winless Lincoln. These were also some bloody games, with war counters unheard of for a post-Apostalic Palace Era game. Unusually, it was the crazies who ruled the roost, with Ragnar and Alex combining for half of the podium finishes and just generally being the two most important players on the map, every game revolving around their successes and failures.
There were several geopolitical factors that made the Ragnar-Alex duo so much stronger despite going up against some stiff economic competition. First, their starting positions were a warmonger's dream, combining early game tempo with excellent conquest potential. Many, myself included, thought Alex would have an incredibly strong Pool 1 debut due to what looked like really high quality territory alongside a free meal in Lincoln, and the Alternate Histories backed up this perception, with literally all of Alex's victories starting off with him killing Lincoln. Ragnar's strength, the most surprising aspect of these games at least for me, was less obvious, probably due to the lack of rivers in his territory and the Viking leader's less-than-stellar track record. As it turned out, the Vikings had a similarly fast start as the Greeks, with a Financial oasis and a decent amount of city spots with early foodhammers, alongside some juicy targets in the form of his Hannibalized jungle neighbor (whose land was INCREDIBLE post Iron Working) and the extremely weak Vicky.
They also had another crucial advantage: ironically, the crazies happened to be the only functional diplomatic faction in this game, the only one capable of working together effectively. While they fought often, it was almost always as either the final showdown or when one of them had already run away. Conversely, the high peaceweight trio of Lincoln, Joao, and Victoria were on corners far away from each other, and it was ridiculously easy to divide and conquer them as a result. The high peaceweights were only ever able to work together once, in Game 19, where they unusually dogpiled WILLEM of all leaders, and then from there picked off the rest of the warmongers one by one.
Meanwhile Willem and Joao, the two more neutral peaceweight leaders who should have been expected to work together, were actually bitter enemies, coming to blows nearly every replay like they did in the Actual Game, and their inability to coexist really hampered their efforts. (As a reminder, I loaded every game from a WorldBuilder save to reset peaceweights, so it was not like I happened to roll a special diplomatic setup.) In the rare instances they did work together, they were a strong duo, but it was much more likely that one would either succeed at the other's expense, or they would pummel each other out of contention. Religion was a key factor for why these leaders could not get along well, as Lincoln, Joao, and Willem liked to follow their own faiths. It was pretty easy for the warmongers to conquer when their targets were already divided.
Finally, like we saw in the live game, the man behind the recently coined "Hannibalization" moniker started catastrophically behind due to that trap jungle city, and while Hannibal, was somehow not completely out of contention, partially because of the astoundingly slow tech pace of this game, partially due to his land being excellent once chopped down, and partially because he was not 100% guaranteed to Hannibalize himself (more on that in his section), the best he could usually do was to play a supporting role to the crazies who he had natural kinship with, either through helping out in their wars or effectively donating his lands to them.
Overall, these games would split into two theatres, with Joao, Lincoln, Willem, and Alex duking it out for supremacy of the West while the Financial Fishermen of Ragnar, Hannibal, and Vicky (and Willem once in a while) fought for dominion of the East, with the strongest leaders in each hemisphere generally advancing to the playoffs. Over 80% of these playthroughs, including the livestream, saw a Western and Eastern leader constitute this game's playoff ticket. In nearly every game Alex attacked Lincoln before Turn 100, and unlike in the Actual Game, he tended to crush the Americans. From there, he would stomp over the Joao/Willem duo, both of whom struggled with prioritizing military techs and who were often weakened through fighting each other, and coast to a successful finish. Occasionally, Willem and Joao could help Alex with his American campaign and be rewarded by being next on the chopping block, or, like in the Actual Game, they would gang up on Alex (who did replicate his First To Die result four times), which was the correct move for their playoff prospects.
The Eastern theatre was quite a bit simpler, with the three leaders fighting early and often until there was only one strong leader left in that hemisphere. Most of the time, that leader was Ragnar, which should not come as a surprise considering he was the only Eastern leader not to get screwed by his starting position, but Hannibal (and rarely Vicky) could come out on top once in a while. The rule of thumb for this part of the map was whoever could control most of Carthage's lush territory by Turn 200 or so was going to have a very successful game.
One quirk of this map was just how slow these games were despite the presence of four Financial leaders. These Alternate Histories had an average length of nearly 355 turns, and included a 455 Turn Domination victory that could have ended with a Time victory if Alex did not finally get over the hump. That game ended so late, it finished nearly a year after the publication of this writeup! (September 2026) As it turned out, the worst techers had the best land, there were endless stalemated wars, and this was quite a large map, which made even quick Domination victories difficult to pull off. Despite these long games, however, these were some of the best games I have ever had the pleasure of watching, with nearly every game going down to the wire or seeing multiple leaders grab the game lead. The two 400+ turn games, for example, did not have a single moment where I was ever 100% certain who would win. It was really exhilarating to watch the game or tech leader on Turn 150 find themselves wiped off the map within 100 turns.
The victory conditions were generally dependent on the winner, with Alex and Ragnar predictably almost always winning by Domination, while the others tended to win through the Spaceship. There was one Diplomatic win in the outlier Game 17 where an unusually strong Vicky who was about 20-30 turns from winning by Space and she had formed an unusual alliance with Willem, and Culture was only relevant twice, in Game 1 where Hannibal threw a victory by turning up the culture slider late and the wacky Game 12 which had gone on so long, JOAO had become a Culture Victory threat due to sheer game length, although he was eventually dispatched by the Greco-Nordic alliance. After having to sit through a multitude of undeserved Cultural victories while running the Game One Alternate Histories, this was quite refreshing to witness. Regarding cultural victories, the religions were too split and these games were too violent, and Willem, the sole double-cultured leader, never once showed an inclination towards that victory condition. On this map, that was a good thing for him.
Onto the individual leaders!
Ragnar of the Vikings
Wars Declared: 75
Wars Declared Upon: 29
Survival Percentage: 60%
Finishes: 4 Firsts, 5 Seconds (30 points)
Kills: 28
Overall Score: 58 points
I do not think anyone was expecting Ragnar to win an Alternate Histories! Ragnar may have scored the most points due to his large kill count, but, as the finish results indicate, he was more 1B than 1A, with Alex being the stronger party. In fact, Ragnar had a decent amount of kill steals, with a good chunk of them swiped from Alex, and if kills were awarded based on who did the most work, Alex would have been sitting pretty at the top here.
However, Ragnar's placement at the top does accurately reflect the fact that, believe it or not, Ragnar played the most impressive series of games in this set. He had some brilliant games, namely Game 10 where he killed four players (and would have notched a fifth if he had not reached the Domination limit) and Game 14, where he won off of some expertly timed backstabs and proved he could win without his southern neighbor Hannibalizing himself. Everybody could sense from a mile away that Alex's setup was strong, and CFC data strongly backed up the belief that Alex was handed a fantastic starting position. Ragnar, on the other hand, had quite a bit less to work with, of everything really, commerce, resources, space, you name it. Nevertheless, Ragnar really maximized his starting position, and was capable of playing both the Batman and the Robin role, either helping Alex with his campaigns or leveraging an early conquest of Hannibal and/or Victoria to become a runaway. He was especially adept at utilizing the Construction window, with nearly all his successful games coming off the initial foundation of a well executed Elepult attack.
Ragnar's weakness, and the primary reason why he was a rung below Alex in effectiveness, was that he HAD to have some sort of early game military success or he would falter, go irrelevant, and have to hope to get backdoored into the playoffs. This makes sense considering his land, which was somewhat cramped and did not scale particularly well due to its lack of rivers, even if it did offer a decent amount of tempo. Alex, conversely, was much more resilient to stalemates, because his land was that good. Nevertheless, I have always thought Ragnar to be a better leader than his results, mainly because he has been saddled with a lot of poor starts, and this set overall was a good snapshot of how Ragnar could one day surprise us. I am a little sad that we did not get an opportunity to see Ragnar in one of the really insane looking playoff spots that this game offered as a reward.
Loki's Spaceship Award: Winning Game 11 despite having been irrelevant for the whole game... because Alex and Hannibal, the two contenders, had nuked each other out of contention.
Ragnarok Award: In that same Game 11, I had a scenario I have never seen before: Alex had achieved the LAND AREA to win Domination, BUT NOT THE POPULATION! So, even with a launched Spaceship, Ragnar's win was not certain. However, post Spaceship launch, Ragnar, in a 400 IQ move, DECLARES WAR ON ALEX AND THEN RAINS NUCLEAR HELLFIRE ON THE GREEKS, successfully keeping Alex's population low enough to cement his victory.
Alexander of Greece
Wars Declared: 68
Wars Declared Upon: 27
Survival Percentage: 60%
Finishes: 6 Firsts, 5 Seconds (40 points)
Kills: 17
Overall Score: 57 points
Despite his livestream faceplant, it was pretty obvious that Alex would be one of the strongest leaders, and there was a reason there was decent demand for him in the Fantasy contest. In fact, Alex was the definition of a "perfect" Fantasy pickup, one who was highly likely to score points no matter if it was as First To Die or from a top two finish. He was poised to absorb his nemesis, prove to the world only one blue civ is allowed to exist, and stomp over the rest of the map from there. He was excellent at killing Lincoln, being able to do so without help (although help was not hard to find) and at equal military tech levels. More impressively, Lincoln often had metal units to defend himself with, and yet Alex was still often able to brute force his way with just Swords and Axes.
With that said, Alex bungled this position in many ways, mainly due to his disastrous economic management. Seriously, he should have won way more than six games, and one could argue he only had these good results because the rest of the field was also a disaster economically. I have firsthand proof of this, running several extra test games with Justinian and Gilgamesh in Alex's spot. Justinian had three wins and two runner ups, and the only reason he did not win every game was that Ragnar liked to bumrush him super early, putting him in some precarious positions (and when not attacked by Ragnar, he completely ran away with the game). In fact, Justinian's second place finishes were impressive in their own right, seeing him come back militarily after looking completely dead in the water. Gilgamesh was utterly dominant, winning five times in all manner of ways, and it was not even close; the Gilgamesh games were the only ones I ran where I ever saw a game end before Turn 300. It took a sixth replay for a different leader (Willem) to win, and Gilgamesh was still a VERY close second place. Nevertheless, that was a 100% playoff advancement rate, and in eleven games these two probably outscored Alex in twenty attempts. If a competent Pool 1 leader like Gilgamesh or Pacal had rolled this spot, they would have won at least 15 games.
In the live game, Alex had launched his attack too late on Lincoln due to some atrocious (and very un-Alex like, as if Pericles were playing instead) tech pathing, where he did not even have Mining tech on Turn 50, and then got dogpiled by Willem and Joao to be First To Die. He definitely outputted his worst possible performance in the livestream, with Alex playing a lot better even in the games where he was First To Die. His other weakness was that his victory chances were solely predicated on him killing Lincoln. Any other outcome - Alex killing someone else, or building up too long, or stalemating in his first war while another leader made a conquest - and Alex would not win. Conversely, in the Justinian and Gilgamesh test games those two were capable of winning regardless of who they attacked early, or even if they fought early at all. Alex was a one trick pony on this map who happened to roll the perfect setup for that one trick, and yet it was still effectively a coin flip whether or not he could utilize his privileged position.
Idiocracy Award: Taking 350 turns to research EDUCATION in Game 3.
Giving Abe The Full Zara Experience Award: Alex's best game by far was Game 9, where he caught Lincoln without metals and rolled over him en route to an easy Domination win.
Willem of the Netherlands
Wars Declared: 44
Wars Declared Upon: 41
Survival Percentage: 45%
Finishes: 4 Firsts, 4 Seconds (28 points)
Kills: 11
Overall Score: 39 points
While Willem turned out to be a second tier leader here, his status as the picking contest favorite was not entirely unreasonable. As the only truly viable economic leader in this setup, it would have been a stunning indictment of his capabilities if Willem did not perform at least decently. However, the AI Survivor community did overrate one aspect of Willem's setup here: his land. My guess is people saw he had a lot of rivers and believed his land was strong, and I am guilty as charged here, but while the Dutch territory had rivers, it was somewhat lacking in resources, especially food, and that greatly negated the benefits of having lots of cottageable tiles, because it is not easy to grow cottages without the food to work them!
When juxtaposed with Ragnar's success despite starting territory nearly devoid of rivers, one of the major takeaways I got from running these games was to not overestimate the effect of rivers (or lack thereof): oftentimes, resources and foodhammers are as important, if not more, to the quality of one's start. Furthermore, while Willem had a lot of quantity, the quality of his available territory was rather lacking:
With a rather large yet low quality empire to maintain, alongside an inability to benefit from Financial riverside tiles, Willem's economy was shockingly mediocre. While Willem did have some egregious games blown in classic Willem Syndrome fashion, there were as many games where his teching was not good enough for it to really matter. Take note of Willem's Spaceship finishes - you would not think he was a Financial leader.
I say all this, yet Willem was still the third strongest leader in the set and could have been on par with the top two if he did not Willem away games. This was because, while not an effective economic leader, Willem did an excellent job adapting to the dynamics of this map. In a map ruled by crazies, it paid to be a crazy, and indeed Willem found success by morphing into an orange Alex, fighting his way to the top. Most of the time, this was by dethroning Alex and taking the most Greek cities from a dogpile, followed by running over whoever stared at him for too long; three of Willem's four victories saw Alex become First To Die. (The fourth one in Game 1 was more flukish, with Willem running over a metalless Victoria, and he only won that game due to a Hannibal throw.) Going crazy did have its limits, however, as Willem VERY frequently attacked Joao - that aspect of the livestream turned out to be common - and that rarely went well for him, as it gave Alex all the room to run roughshod over the map. This was a classic Willem set, one that showcased all his strengths and weaknesses as a leader, but nonetheless, he churned out a respectable set of results considering how much the deck was stacked against him.
Willem Gambit Accepted, Trojan Airship Variation Award: Willem should have been the runaway in Game 11, except he teched PHYSICS before GUNPOWDER. Alex had Cannons. We all know how that ended.
Evil Mansa Musa Award: After having worked with Lincoln the entire game in Game 15 to partition the map, Willem thanked his buddy by... betraying him at the very end, allowing a Joao who had done absolutely nothing to backdoor into second place.
Hannibal of Carthage
Wars Declared: 31
Wars Declared Upon: 30
Survival Percentage: 45%
Finishes: 2 Firsts, 3 Seconds (16 points)
Kills: 11
Overall Score: 27 points
The remaining four leaders can best be summarized as such: if the early game diplomacy went their way, they had some shot. Hannibal was the best of the rest, however, because while he may have been screwed with his jungly start, he had favorable diplomacy, and that combined with having the Financial and Reasonable (i.e. not plotting at Pleased) traits (and a couple of games where Vicky inexplicably gifted a city to him) was enough for some scattered successes here and there, particularly in games where he did not Hannibalize himself. Honestly, some small tweaks and Hannibal would have been the strongest leader in this setup.
Ultimately, winning essentially three games was pretty impressive considering what Hannibal had to deal with, and he usually was a tech leader despite his awful start... that is, when he was not punished for it early, as Vicky and Ragnar did frequently sandwich him into an early demise. Let us hope Hannibal's Season 10 start is one that gives him a better chance of showcasing his talents.
Hannibalization Rudyard Kipling Edition Award:
Silence of the Lambs With A Side Of Worcestershire Sauce Award: Hannibal's most impressive game by far was Game 3, where he rebounded from Hannibalizing himself by solo-conquering a larger Victoria en route to a triple kill victory.
Joao of Portugal
Wars Declared: 25
Wars Declared Upon: 38
Survival Percentage: 45%
Finishes: 2 Firsts, 2 Seconds (14 points)
Kills: 7
Overall Score: 21 points
Joao was the biggest disappointment of this set. I thought he would be a top three scoring leader, as his corner was high quality and tucked away from the action, and surely he could have teched away while everyone else beat each other senselessly, or at the very least, backdoored into second a few times, right? Initially, this setup reminded me a lot of Season 8 Opening 6, a similarly volatile field, and Joao performed very well in its Alternate Histories. Instead, Joao was, like the other corner high peaceweights, a sitting duck waiting to get dispatched by stronger, more dynamic players. While he was one of the best techers, it just was not good enough to overcome the Greco-Nordic (and sometimes Dutch) apocalypse.
So what happened? Turns out, Joao had major diplomatic issues here. Everyone expected Willem and Joao to work together well here, but instead, due to a combination of Creative border tensions and religion, these two were at each other's throats all the time, and this left Joao without any friends. If Lincoln were not already Alex's cup bearer, he was just hiding away in his corner, (and Joao often attacked the Americans anyways) while Vicky was too far and too weak. But the bigger issue with Joao was that he just had no real win condition. He has no cultural traits, no economic traits, and no military emphasis. He does not even have an overpowered unique! All he has is rapid expansion, and as human players can attest, that is not enough. His path to success was to benefit the most off of a dogpile of Alex, like he did in the livestream - this happened in his two wins - but such opportunities were much rarer than one may expect. Joao was very lucky that Willem only backstabbed him after Joao had already absorbed most of Greece, instead of when he was only in his corner and still trying to recover from overexpansion. Turns out, this seasons' silver medalist was pretty lucky to even get out of this game.
Cherrypicker Award: Very rudely sniping Alex's kill of Lincoln in Game 8, and getting ruefully punished for it as he was the next target of Alex's rampage.
Victoria of England
Wars Declared: 16
Wars Declared Upon: 41
Survival Percentage: 10%
Finishes: 2 Firsts, 0 Seconds (10 points)
Kills: 3
Overall Score: 13 points
No, we were not crazy to write off the actual winner. Indeed, her diplomatic situation was awful and her land was somehow worse, so bad that, like we saw in the livestream, she trekked her third city settler across the vast desert to found Nottingham right in Hannibal's face:
Vicky's woes did not end with her overabundance of flat desert. As it turned out, Vicky had an EXTREMELY precarious metals situation!
Vicky's early tech path did her zero favors in that regard, as she struggled with the Suryavarman special of avoiding Archery for a long time while dragging down her economy by building too many Warriors. Things got so ugly, there were games where she WAS ONLY DEFENDING HERSELF WITH WARRIORS, especially Games 1 and 18. She usually melted in an instant if attacked early, and was often a springboard for the best games of Ragnar, Hannibal, and Willem. (One of the Gilgamesh test games saw her dead by Turn 105, as well.) Furthermore, Vicky also struggled immensely with the barbarians, and if this were a Raging Barbs Wildcard game there was a chance she would die to them.
After the first sixteen replays, I was completely flummoxed at how Victoria ever won in the livestream. She was horrific in those games, dying every time and never looking strong even once, and the closest she came to winning over that stretch was the 455 turn slog in Game 12 where she was only in contention because the game had gone that long, and she still eventually died. Then she won twice in the final four replays to show that there indeed was a scenario, however narrow, where she could have won. To win, Vicky needed three factors to go her way:
1) She needed an especially strong expansion phase
2) She needed to skirt early wars, or execute 1) well enough to survive the first wave of fighting
3) She needed to take most of Carthage and thus benefit from the best scaling land in the map
Factors 1 and 3 took place in the livestream, and while she was attacked early by Ragnar, the Vikings were FAR weaker than usual and thus she easily managed to hold. For whatever reason, Victoria always seems to show up when the stakes are highest, and her luck over the past few seasons has reached Gandhi levels of absurdity. Can she please give my Philadelphia Phillies some of her juju so that they do not choke in the playoffs?
As a side note, Vicky also won one of the Justinian test games I mentioned in Alex's section while being relevant in another, so yes, she did show enough for me to conclude that she did have some tangible chance that she hit on in the Actual Game.
God Did Not Save The Queen Award: Losing her CHRISTIAN HOLY CITY OF YORK to the barbarians in Game 16:
New New New New New New New New New York Award: In Game 18, Vicky once again lost York to the barbarians. Then York was Dutch, then barb, then Dutch again, then barb again, then PORTUGUESE, then BARB AGAIN... and FINALLY, at LAST, it was English. And soon thereafter, it was Viking.
Lincoln of America
Wars Declared: 6
Wars Declared Upon: 59
Survival Percentage: 20%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 1 Second (2 points)
Kills: 6
Overall Score: 8 points
Lincoln was quite unlucky to not have scored better than this, at least in the games I watched, which his six kills should hint at. This included a triple kill game in Game 15, where Lincoln and Willem worked together... except Willem betrayed Lincoln at the very end, running him over and knocking him out of the podium. Lincoln also nearly won Game 19, except Vicky was able to use the Financial cheat code to win, while Joao edged out Lincoln for The Internet, relegating the Americans to the Wildcard Game. I am being very kind to Honest Abe however, and the real story of this set was his nearly 1:10 offensive to defensive war ratio. Lincoln was battered so often he did not declare a single war in 80% of these replays! The guy was screwed with his diplomacy (and doubly screwed by religious diplomacy as he was the most likely leader to found a religion but also be totally unable to spread it) as well as being right next to the strongest leader on the map, but truth be told this set displayed all the crippling flaws in Lincoln's personality. Without Financial, a double-cultured trait combination, or a strong early game civ, a leader cannot run the Hatshepsut playbook. Even Hatshepsut struggles with the Hatshepsut gameplan! Did Lincoln really think he could do better? He was quite lucky that the livestream turned out to be a high peaceweight scenario, allowing him to sneak into the Wildcard when he probably should have become Alex's personal looksmaxxing expert.
New York Testament Award: Capturing the Christian Holy City of York from the barbarians for himself in Game 16.
Other Than That, How Was Thor Ragnarok, Mrs. Lincoln Award: Later in Game 16, Lincoln, a strong leader in his own right in this game, tried to attack the equally strong Vikings. His army was vaporized. Poor guy.
The live game was one of the greatest games in AI Survivor history, seeing a spaceship tie, and that was fitting for a map rife with potential. I highly recommend you read the Appendix A game summaries, because many of these games would have been all-time classics in their own right. Of course, this is what happens when crazy warmongers happen to be the strongest leaders, and there were many instances of Alex or Ragnar straight up smashing their way through foes 1-2 eras ahead in tech by just having 3-5x the number of units. This was an important game as well, as both playoff spots were very strong; the Runner Up's spot, in Playoff 1, looked particularly overpowered. I really wish we saw some lower peaceweights occupy those spots, however. Playoff 1 would have been a heck of a lot more riveting with Ragnar or Willem or Hannibal in that really overpowered start!
This set should also impart the importance of a leader sticking to their identity and playstyle. Full blown aggression may not be the most effective playstyle, but it is one nonetheless, and the primary reason Alex and Ragnar completely faceplanted in the livestream to hand the game over to the high peaceweights was that they tried to play like peaceful religious leaders for the first fifty turns, and were too far behind by the time they had woken up from whatever enchantment had fooled them into thinking they were hippies. Even Archery was a better first tech for them. While these two did found religions in the replays, it was almost always after they had first teched development or military techs, and thus had a better foundation for religious distractions, and some of their weakest Alternate Histories games came when they went religion first. AI Survivor is always better with a diverse mix of leaders.
