This summary for Game Four was written by TheOneAndOnlyAtesh. Many thanks for volunteering to put this report together! 
After last week's primarily low peaceweight lineup, this one lurched to the complete opposite direction, with five smug high-on-their-horse types casting great judgement on the two poor saps who had committed the terrible crime of being evil. Perched on the highest of horses, with the biggest stick up his bottom, was this game's Pool 1 leader Darius. While he had played terribly from a central position in the previous season, he had a seemingly spacious corner position in the Southwest, which in combination with his diplomatic position, was precisely the type of setup where he had succeeded in the past. From here, he had to buck the trend of Pool 1 leaders being First To Die, right?
On the complete opposite corner from Darius was the Pool 2 leader, our Unholy Frankish Pauper Charlemagne of the Unholy Frankish Slums, whose best seasons, including his scam Season 4 title, were recent enough for him to secure a seeded status despite his very unremarkable recent track record. Unlike Darius, sadly, his land was quite a bit drier and more cramped, and he would need to spread Christianity and expand well to do something of note here. The unseeded leaders consisted of a hodgepodge of misfits. To Darius' north was Ramesses, fresh off of one of the biggest playoff chokes in recent AI Survivor history, where he was handed a lush and spacious spot and proceeded to play one of the worst attempts at a Cultural victory ever seen. He needed to utilize his strong capital to at least temporarily silence his critics this season. Culturing was going to be easier said than done, however, due to the presence of Hammurabi, a man who once wished upon a star that he was a culturephile, although alas, he had no cultural traits to utilize! Aptly described by community member JackRB as a "useful idiot", the Hammur had often been a great asset for more dynamic leaders, even if he himself often came up short. With that said, he has been to the playoffs in the past two seasons, the latter one in miraculous fashion, and he was blessed with BEAUTIFUL starting territory, possibly the most overpowered starting position so far this season.
Occupying the three more central positions were perhaps the three most poorly fitting misfits. Located in the Central Eastern region were Roosevelt and Peter, both of whom have had extremely unremarkable AI Survivor careers. While they had interesting capitals, Roosevelt with a nice Fishing start and Peter with the ever-so memed double plains cows, a lot had to go right for them to succeed against their competition here. Saving the best (or in this case, the most interesting) for last, smack dab in the middle of the map was Boudica, who had the best possible capital for her starting techs, guaranteed elephants, and lots of room and potential conquests. Despite her spotty economic track record and rough diplomatic positioning, her land definitely meant there was a glimmer of hope for Team Badass here.
Darius and Hammurabi were the two community favorites, both combining for nearly 70% of the first place votes. Darius was no surprise, but many hardcore fans caught the immense potential of Hammurabi's position. Only Boudica and Ramesses had any relevant community support. Furthermore, many saw Darius and Hammurabi as strong 2nd place picks, with Charlemagne being the only other leader to get any outsized support for the Runner Up slot. There was no overwhelming consensus on First To Die, with Boudica (central position, peaceweight), Peter (land quality, peaceweight), Roosevelt (local diplomacy, land quantity), and Ramesses (concerning strategic situation, Boudica breathing down his neck) all getting some chunk of community votes.
Fantasy wise, this was a big game for Kjotleik and Lobster667, who both had two leaders in this game for sizable chunks of their bids. In particular, this game was likely to determine Kjotleik's chances of defending his fantasy crown. This was also pivotal for maniamuse, who sorely needed a good outcome from his most expensive draft pick Ramesses if he was to rebound from his rough start. Jol Nar Binks and Kuro also had smaller stakes in this game. We'll see who can establish themselves as a frontrunner alongside me!
For this game, the key questions were:
1) How would this very large map, large even by seven player field standards, impact the overall map dynamics here? Particularly regarding barbarian cities and expansion in the middle of the map?
2) Which leader would benefit the most from whatever bloodbath was likely to take place in the Western region of the map?
3) In the west, would Darius' Financial/Alive, Hammurabi's land, or Ramesses' culture win out?
4) Do the eastern leaders have enough to contend especially with the positions of the western leaders?
5) Most crucially, there were four leaders with religious inclinations or tech preferences here (Charlie, Boudica, Ramesses, Hammurabi). While so far only the first two religions have been relevant in this season's games, that was likely to change here. What, if any impact would religion have on diplomacy?
Although FIVE out of the seven leaders opened with religious bids, Charlie and Boudica were the only two to start with Mysticism, giving them the inside track to found Christianity and Islam. Unfortunately for the Burger King, he had settled his 2nd city in a backline coastal spot, greatly muting his Holy City potential. Boudica, conversely, had a much better Holy City placed alongside the global river system. She definitely had the upper hand to make religious allies and boost her prospects in this rather hostile situation she found herself in. For Ramesses, Hammurabi, and FDR, missing out on the earliest religions was not a setback at all, for all three of them had good capitals for their starting techs and could still shoot for Monotheism (or even Code of Laws in this setup) at a later date.
Of the two leaders who had eschewed early religions, there were rather divergent outcomes. Darius' first tech choice was a POTTERY beeline, which was an excellent choice for getting on a head start economically with his three capital flood plain tiles. On the other hand, Peter started with a questionable Bronze Working research. With how slow and commerce poor his immediate land was, he could ill afford to throw away nearly 20 turns on what was not a useful Worker tech for his capital, which did not even have that many forests.
The overall community read that the eastern leaders had uphill battles was proven to be pretty on point, as Peter, FDR, and Charlie all proceeded to settle the same Eastern jungle region, crowding each other out while leaving even more room than initially thought for the four Western leaders. Charlie and Peter in particular already seemed out of contention. Their land was just too slow, and Charlie already found himself somewhat squeezed on territory with just two cities. Just compare these leader's capitals! Charlie had ZERO capital tile improvements in the Turn 25 capital check, not even a road! Maybe researching Meditation into Archery with Hunting/Mysticism starting techs was not a good idea. Peter's was not much better, as he had shown exactly why ultra-early Bronze Working is a poison pill for the AI, as he had whipped Moscow completely to the ground! Bronze Working is the most critical tech in the early game for human players, but the AI really has a hard time utilizing its bonuses well. Meanwhile, the other five leaders had already connected or were about to connect their capital resources and were generally hitting their early game milestones that much faster.
However, the most notable aspect of the early game was the barbarians. They established their first settlement of Vandal near Babylonian territory at the ludicrously early date of Turn 24! This, alongside some weird settling patterns from Hammy, had really ignited livestream chatter about the notorious Sullla's Curse, as our prodigal son had chosen the Babylonians to win this game. Over the next ten turns, Scythian and Harappan would spawn smack dab inside some absolute fortresses in the Eastern section of the map, which served to further kick the Eastern leaders down the ladder of contention as compared to the Western ones, especially since two of them had early unique units that were quite nifty for killing barb cities. By Turn 38, the Glorious Barbarian Empire had FIVE CITIES! No civilized leader had more than three. It was as if the barbs were trying to compensate for their almost total no-show in last week's game.
The West vs. East divide had become quite stark by Turn 50. All four Western leaders were outpacing the Eastern leaders in research and expansion. Only FDR was having a workable start amongst the East, but even then it seemed he already had run out of room that was not desert or jungle. Charlie's land just had too little quantity AND quality to contend while Peter's economy was drowning below the Observer civ. With that said, it was a WIDE open game. Boudica had expanded the best so far, but she was avoiding Wheel tech in her typical Boudica Personality Disorder fashion, and of course there was the elephant in the room that was her peaceweight situation - with the caveat that she had likely gotten a best case scenario peaceweight roll as her diplomatic screen was actually not that bad. Ramesses was actually the second lowest leader in score so far, although in general he was keeping pace in all benchmarks - but he needed to try and rack up religions fast for his Cultural victory before Darius and Hammurabi scooped them up. The two co-favorites definitely had a slight edge, but Darius had completely avoided culture (although he was five turns from Writing, making that a moot point) and was in danger of being confined to his peninsula if he did not expand, while Hammurabi had just played a very mediocre opening, making rather dubious settling decisions that failed to contest the middle of the map while somehow avoiding vital happiness resources in the BFCs [big fat crosses] of his settlements. The only reason he was currently a frontrunner was his land was THAT good.
After a rather slow and quiet first fifty turns, the game started to pick up. For one, Hammy started to wake up from his slumber, finally picking up the Monotheism religion (for this game, Hinduism) while doubling his empire size in less than twenty turns. While he was looking scary, Darius was also extending his lead, winning a decisive settling race against Ramesses and forcing the Egyptians to resort to the Arctic to expand their holdings. The Persians were sure to have enough cities to get their Financial machine roaring. Now they just needed to take their Immortals and seize some barb cities, but for whatever reason they were sitting idly and twiddling their thumbs. Overall, this game was a disasterclass in capturing barbarian cities - the entire barb empire was still holding strong over fifty turns after they had spawned.
With Hammurabi taking Monotheism and Darius outsettling Ramesses in their contested region, it looked like the Egyptians were out of it, but then Ramesses brought himself back into the game by sniping the Oracle from everyone else, using it to slingshot Code of Laws and found Taoism, the first of at least three religions that he would need to be willing to consider a Cultural victory. We often dunk on the Industrious trait, but it was proving a vital asset for Ramesses, who was winning a series of extremely close wonder races and powering a global economy based around failed projects. Perhaps the biggest loser of these developments was Boudica, who despite her size had been too slow to connect metals and had completely failed to spread her religion despite her massive head start. (I personally suspect that the barb cities greatly screwed up her ability to spread her religion). She was going to have a good Elepult war against an equal size and strength foe to keep up here.
Over in the East, FDR and BK [Burger King, aka Charlemagne] had banded together to form Chuck Fil-A as Christian brothers. Soon, they invited Peter to their Christian Chicken establishment, and showed once again exactly why they were written off - it seemed they would either fight each other into irrelevance or just stand there as fellow Christian rump states while the rest of the world moved on. They did get one first, however, with PETER drawing first blood against the barbarians, sniping Harrapan after Charlie had done all the work! Good job, I guess? With that, the barbarian dominoes finally began to fall, with Hammurabi seizing Vandal while Ramesses once again boosted his stock by sniping Zapotec from the Persians, a major failure as the Persians had sat for too long with a stack in their easternmost city. Indeed, Ramesses had clearly grinded out Sniper Elite before this game, as he also swiped the Theology religion from right under Darius' nose and would later found the Philosophy religion to get three, enough to be willing to go into Culture mode. It was rather amusing to see him turn into the game troll, endlessly same-turning his opponents on multiple key wonders and "first-to" prizes when everyone was overlooking him. Boudica and FDR took the final two barb cities, and the lines were effectively drawn for the entire map now. While Ramesses was firmly back in contention after a rough start, Darius had ten cities, which was perfect for Financial/Alive, while Hammurabi had a dozen extremely high quality cities and still had room for more. Egypt, Persia, and Babylon; a trifecta of some of the greatest ancient civilizations in human history, and it was increasingly looking like one of them was going to win this game.
The first 100 turns were shockingly peaceful, as most of the aggressive leaders with Copper had started too slowly to launch any early war, and these leaders were more interested in filling out the map and building wonders than in fighting. However, Peter quickly found that the waffle fries at Chuck Fil-A were lacking and switched religions, converting to Hammurinduism. This of course drew the ire of FDR, who launched the first war of the game against the Russians. With that said, almost immediately afterwards a FAR more consequential war was launched, as Boudica decided to use her Elepult window to attack the worst possible target: monster HAMMURABI. Not only was Hammurabi the strongest military leader, but he was not even a viable dogpile candidate, as all of his neighbors had already reached Pleased status! Boudica was essentially gambling her entire life insurance on 00 at the roulette wheel. With that said, they were evenly matched in military tech and generally stalemated near their borders for a while until Boudica eventually handed over her border city of Isca for peace. This was great for Hammurabi, but disastrous for Boudica whose chances were effectively shut and whose relations were completely poisoned by her ill-advised war.
I must say though, hats off to Boudica, who was going to fight till her last breath. Almost instantly after suing for peace, she turned her battle-tested armies towards Egypt to try to salvage her game. Over in the East, the Burger King piled onto the Russians and that was curtains for Peter, who had already lost a city to the Americans and would have died quickly anyways even in a 1v1. Although Sullla had correctly read the weakest leader four times in a row, only now did he finally hit his First To Die prediction, FDR netting the final blow on Turn 168. Peter was dealt a really rough hand diplomatically and land wise, and his initial Bronze Working Turn 0 tech choice had likely already sealed his fate. The fact that two other weak leaders had so easily ran him over was pretty indicative of how awful his position was here. Unfortunately, the guy had failed to take advantage of opportunities in previous seasons, and he now remains one of AI Survivor's worst performers.
Over in Egypt, Boudica immediately trampled over two cities against the unprepared Egyptians, and Ramesses was in pretty big trouble, especially since in a repeat of Hatshepsut's Game One nightmare he was building too many War Chariots in the Medieval Era. Thankfully, he had a savior, as Hammurabi immediately went back to punish the Celts the moment the Babylonian-Celtic peace treaty had expired. Boudica still had Elepults while Hammurabi had upgraded to the Engineering era, and it seemed a rout was on... except once Boudica managed to get a peace treaty with Ramesses, Hammur's offensive somehow completely stalled out despite his tech and military disparity. He just is not a good fighter. The biggest winner of this war was Darius, who despite his small size was becoming a total tech runaway. While he was not all that wide, he had executed the "tall" plan to perfection, and was WAY ahead of even Hammurabi in tech! The Babylonians needed to gain a second empire's worth of territory to catch up, but they were just flubbing the Celtic campaign. Babylon was running out of time; Darius, who was also in a score lead, was researching BIOLOGY while Hammurabi was on Liberalism, and the Babylonians were taking their sweet, sweet time in nabbing any sort of military tech that would actually push through Aggressive / Charismatic troops.
Boudica held out for a long time, but her days were still numbered. Ramesses came back for revenge, Hammurabi eventually beelined Rifling, and FDR also piled in for good measure. With Cavalry and being on the right side of a 3v1, even the useful idiot could not fail militarily no matter how hard he tried. With that, the Babylonians netted their first kill of the season, with Ramesses getting the Islamic Holy City for his troubles, a fourth holy city for good insurance purposes. Boudica expanded quite well, but unfortunately wasted her advantage by attacking the strongest leader on the map. She definitely showed why she had some support, but alas, she just did not quite make the right choices to achieve the narrow set of circumstances necessary to pull off an upset.
Now that the dust had settled, balance had seemingly been returned to the force, and it seemed that the five remaining leaders would all stand there like scarecrows and sing songs about how good life was. Darius was a complete tech runaway and everyone was preparing for yet another "Darius does nothing" victory. HOWEVER...
Ramesses continued to be the game troll, being totally overlooked in the livestream until suddenly we were shocked to find out how close he actually was to victory! Despite his military setbacks, Ramesses was also a ticking clock, as he had a crazy cultural machine going that was good enough to win around Turn 300 WITHOUT HAVING TO TURN UP THE SLIDER. We have literally never seen a fast sliderless Cultural victory (I have only gotten this a couple of times in Alternate Histories, both from Hatshepsut - these Egyptian leaders are weird, man). Was this about to be an AI Survivor first? The game would essentially end right then and there if he ever DID turn up the slider, but even without it, it was either going to take an otherworldly teching performance from Darius or some Diplo cheese to deny Rammy his third straight playoff appearance. Hammurabi, meanwhile, was pretty much locked into 2nd place, as his military successes were too little, too late to catch up in a reasonable timeframe. (He at least was hampering Darius by stealing Christo Redentor. Darius could ill afford to waste turns on civic switches here.)
Thankfully, the AI Survivor gods decided to spare us from such a static finish, throwing a massive wrench in the game. The Burger King, not content to continue his Chuck Fil-A establishment in the Wildcard game, MARCHED HIS ARMY ALL THE WAY TO THE WEST TO ATTACK THE EGYPTIANS!!! Ramesses was completely unprepared for this war, immediately losing the Islamic Holy City and another border, and the Unholy Frankish Paupers were closing in on Heliopolis, which would silence all talk of Egyptian victory on the spot.
However, Rammy's fellow vegan brother Hammy, who had once tolerated the Chuck Fil-A establishment outside his window, put his foot down and said enough is enough. With the aid of Hammy, Rammy got to Assembly Line in the nick of time, and Egypt's victory chances were once again intact. While Hammy's vegan vengeance started off slowly, he eventually got to Tanks and that was curtains for the backwards Chuck. In my personal analysis I had considered Charlie essentially a low peaceweight for the purposes of this setup because he was going to be at religious odds with most of the high peaceweights, and that is what happened here. As is often the case, Charlie was once again greatly hurt by his extremely slow starting package, and his land was just not good enough to recover, especially since he got even more boxed in than expected. His elimination has to be good news for Hatshepsut in the wildcard, as he was likely to be an adversary and her field is looking EXTREMELY friendly.
The warring may have stopped, but the drama absolutely did not. As it turned out, Darius indeed was putting out an otherworldly teching performance, Ramesses was limping to Plastics tech and was unwilling to turn up the slider, and before we could blink Darius had nearly completed his spaceship and was one turning most of his parts in the capital. Just like that, despite making some pointless detours from the optimal spaceship path, Darius had launched his spaceship with one engine (taking too long to build the other one) and his Spaceship was scheduled to arrive on Turn 298. If Rammy continued to be asleep at the wheel, his 3rd city would go Legendary... on TURN 298. Were we about to see yet ANOTHER same turn tiebreaker? The stakes were EXTREMELY high for this, as the loser would be consigned to the Wildcard game, as Hammurabi as the score leader was going to get 2nd place.
Well that was anticlimactic. The Troll Pharoah finally reached Plastics and switched up the slider. But WAIT! One turn before Egypt won, there was a Diplomatic victory vote! Ahh, never mind, these nice guys could not be bothered to actually love each other. Yay, congrats Rammy! You won! To be honest, this was overall a pretty lucky win. Rammy did not play particularly well (and was pretty atrocious militarily), and he won some extremely close races to key wonders and religion techs. Even then, he would have probably gotten killed, but I guess in this game the Rammy and Hammy brotherhood was unstoppable.
Speaking of which, the useful idiot turned out to be very useful, and very silly indeed. This game was a pretty good showcase of why everyone considers Hammy to be below average. The past three games saw leaders either win or almost win by leveraging massive foodhammer advantages. Hammy was blessed with the same foodhammer lead... and yet he was not particularly close to any sort of victory. His early expansion was poor, his fighting was even worse, and his overall teching and development was not much better. More competent leaders would have done FAR more with his insane start.
Hilariously, Darius probably played the best game of anyone here, even though he had to settle for the Wildcard despite being five turns from victory. Unfortunately for Persia, our scoring system uses game score instead of "who was closest to victory" for determining second place. His expansion was quite good, he did not do any silly fighting (he actually fought ZERO wars in this game), and, Financial notwithstanding, his economic performance was incredible. This is the Darius that can contend for championships, even if he is not particularly entertaining while doing so. It's not all bad for him, as he has an extremely friendly Wildcard field waiting for him that he sure is going to be a favorite in.
FDR, as he often is, was once again a bridesmaid. This was not really his fault, as his land just was neither good nor plentiful enough to compete with the Western leaders. It is quite difficult to win when you need to fight your way to the same number of cities that other leaders can just peacefully expand to. At least he did not throw away his chances like his Chuck Fil-A cofounder did.
Regarding the picking contest, this was an INCREDIBLE performance from CivFanatics superfan Thrasybulos, who seemingly read this game like a book en route to a staggering 28 points. Such a performance immediately vaulted him to the top spot overall. Smart Random.org also rebounded from its pitiful performance last week, coming in second with an over 20 point performance. However, this was not a great showing from the overall community. Not many had predicted a Ramesses victory (and Peter First to Die was also quite low), and despite the litany of high scoring performances in this game the overall community average was 8.5 points.
The biggest winner fantasy wise for this game was Maniamuse, who got five points from his 39 gold Rammy bid. Moreover, his fellow Egyptian is looking really, really good in the Wildcard. It was a mixed bag for everyone else. Lobster's cheap Peter bid paid off with two FTD points, but she needs a good performance from her pricey Darius bid in the Wildcard. Sadly for Kjotleik, his title defense odds were given a major blow with his 40+ gold bid on the Burger King imploding. While FDR netted him one point for just 12 gold, Kjotleik can ill afford one scoreless leader with how small his team is.
We are halfway through the opening round now! After some very imbalanced diplomatic fields, we have an even good vs. evil showdown next week. Can Huayna put an end to his cold streak? Will the Troll King be able to keep his Troll King crown? Find out next week!
