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:
Huayna Capac of the Incans
Traits: Financial, Industrious (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Production
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: Season 2 champion, one Championship loss, three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, two opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 17
Total Medals: 8 First Places, 0 Second Places 
Total Kills: 15 
Overall Power Ranking: 55 points, 2nd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Huayna Capac is one of the strongest leaders in Civ4 and brings a frighteningly powerful total package to the competition. He has the always-excellent Financial trait, and while Industrious is typically weak, it still functions as a second culture trait to help Huayna win lightning quick victories. More importantly, Huayna Capac is the only leader who gets to take advantage of the overpowered Incan civilization, with the single best building in the game coming in the form of the "granary that also produces culture" Terrace. The infamous Quechua is also surprisingly useful for AI Survivor purposes, as the AI leaders can at times struggle with barbarian archers and this unit allows Huayna Capac to roll over them without issue. (Most importantly, Huayna will not attempt ill-advised Quechua rushes, a problem with some other super early unique units.) Huayna has the total package, as he holds outstanding economic abilities, a dangerous aggressive streak (an aggro rating of 6.7, plus of course he can plot at Pleased), and major diplomatic insulation stemming from his low peaceweight, his Hereditary Rule favorite civic, and +2 warmonger respect. His weaknesses are an excessive love of wonder-building (8/10), although he's better able to afford this thanks to the Industrious trait, and a heavy emphasis on religion. On the rare occasions where Huayna falters, it's due to tying up too many cities on wonders and/or getting stuck in destructive religious conflicts. More often than not though, Huayna Capac will found his own religion and use it to dominate the diplomacy while scoring every wonder on the map and running over a bunch of scrubs who can't keep up with his teching prowess.
Past Performance: Huayna Capac is an undisputed titan of AI Survivor, succeeding time and time again and in all sorts of ways. From crushing Domination snowballs - including the fastest victory of all time (Turn 252) - to being a tiny nation pulling a Cultural victory out of a hat (which was how he won his Season Two trophy), from taking perfect advantage of strong starts to coming back from poor starts, from converting the entire world to successfully warding off three enemy civs at the same time... this guy has done it all. As a result, he's averaged a win per season, and has double or more the wins of every single other leader save for fellow titan Mansa Musa. Huayna's only been killed in the opening round twice in eight games, as even his weaker performances have usually seen him slip by for another chance in the Wildcard. Now, with all that being said, Huayna is still an extremely fallible AI, and we've seen him fail in all sorts of ways, most recently getting run over early by Sitting Bull of all leaders in Season Eight. In fact, ever since a poor showing in the Season Six Championship Game, the Incan leader has had a cold spell, allowing Mansa Musa to eclipse him atop the AI Survivor all-time points leaderboard. Furthermore, he has lacked consistency in the playoffs with only two successful playoff round games in five appearances. Realistically though, while Huayna is far from invincible, he probably is the leader most likely to be our first repeat champion.
Louis XIV of France
Traits: Creative, Industrious (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Culture, Secondary Military
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +2
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
Zealotry: Medium to High
Past Finishes: Season 7 champion, two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 2 Second Places 
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 25 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Louis XIV has a strange personality that mixes together a heavy emphasis on wonders with military aggression. His wonder obsession creeps into the deranged category, sporting the rare 10/10 rating in that category, and he has a Culture flavor for his research and tends to spend a lot of time at the top of the tech tree grabbing stuff along the Aesthetics line. However, he pairs all that with a Military tech flavor, a fairly high aggression rating (6.3/10), and a very low peace weight of 1. This does not always form a winning combination, and Louis is prone to biting more than he can chew. The Sun King has the Creative and Industrious pairing of traits, a setup that's good for claiming land and then transforming it into a tourist paradise. More importantly, Louis gets two cultural traits to be a rare low peaceweight Cultural ticking-time bomb, and he is always a major threat to win given good diplomacy. He furthermore benefits from the strong French civilization, with its excellent starting techs and the useful Musketeer unique unit. However, Louis largely wastes these positive features with a destructive AI personality that pulls in too many directions at once. He tends to make for a bad neighbor as his borders are always intruding on the other empires and he will backstab anyone at any notice. Needless to say, his strategy of picking fights with all his neighbors while simultaneously locking his build queues on wonders and cathedrals has backfired more often than not.
Past Performance: While Louis can boast about having one of the best single-seasons in AI Survivor in Season Seven, where everything came together and he shot out to large leads in score and land before cashing in with three straight Cultural victories en route to a title, it's mostly unrepresentative of the entire rest of his career. To his credit, Louis usually runs a credible nation after the landgrab phase and rarely is a non-entity, but in terms of being able to translate that into actually coming on top? Before Season Seven, the best he could muster was a pair of distant second-place finishes. His championship run also showed his flaws, as these games often saw him change strategies mid-game and betray his indecisive nature, and despite being a fairly aggressive leader, he only scored two kills during his Championship run. The alternate histories from Season Seven also suggested that Louis' triple victories were pretty lucky and not something that was sustainable. His subsequent title defense was pitiful, with the Sun King declaring two fruitless wars before being dogpiled as the first to die while catapulting his conquerors to the playoffs. So while Louis is a credible threat and has good odds to be an important player, he has proven to be his own worst enemy over and over again. Chances are, his Season Seven title will just be a mirage.
Frederick of Germany
Traits: Philosophical, Organized (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Pure Production
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Universal Suffrage
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 11
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 40th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Frederick is yet another peaceful AI leader, albeit one lacking most of the tools necessary for that to be effective. His trait pairing of Philosophical and Organized, while excellent for a human, is lackluster for the AI because they don't know how to use the Philosophical trait and Deity bonuses (maintenance and building cost) greatly mute the effects of Organized. There's nothing here to help Frederick get off to a fast start and also little scaling. The Hunting/Mining combo is mediocre, and Germany's uniques are not only too late to matter but a terrible poison pill for Frederick and his pure Production tech flavor that can lead him to insane Rifling-avoidant beelines (I've seen the guy beeline Panzers, only to forget to tech Rifling and be unable to build Panzers) and undergo major Factory starvation. Frederick's AI ratings are generally average across the board, with scores of 4/10 in seemingly every category. He has a high peace weight, he doesn't train a lot of units (2/10), and he doesn't start many wars (4/10 aggression rating). He's generally a pretty boring AI overall, trying to pull off one of those pacifistic "sit in the corner and tech to a victory" strategies but with neither the traits, research priorities, nor civ choice to pull it off.
Past Performance: As it turns out, "hope to not get attacked and win a Turn 375 Spaceship victory after choking all my citizens to death with smog" is not a winning strategy. Frederick has the double whammy of being both incompetent and dull, scoring all of his points in merely two games while accomplishing nothing else in his other appearances. Occasionally he can be a decent meatshield, but that's all he's been good for. Even his two best games haven't been very impressive, both seeing him make gains in a single war but doing nothing else of note; he barely won a Turn 400 spaceship victory in one game, and then somehow lost to a Cultural victory from Sitting Bull of all leaders despite being a tech runaway with half the map under his control. Speaking of which, he advanced with the Sioux chief in both games and they're the only two games in which either leader has ever tasted success. As for his other games, he has suffered from some legitimately hopeless starts, being in central positions surrounded by enemies, but he's also had several serviceable starts that he simply failed to do anything with. To highlight two especially bad outings: in Season Seven, he completely tanked his economy with just five cities and rendered himself a dead man walking without any outside intervention, while his Season Eight playoff appearance saw him squander a triple gold start with multiple conquest opportunities, somehow still have a shot at advancing, only to blow a Championship spot through his patented Industrial starvation spurred on by his obsession with production at the expense of literally everything else. As it turns out, playing like Darius, fighting like Gandhi, and teching like Stalin will rarely if ever be a recipe for success.
Tokugawa of Japan
Traits: Aggressive, Protective (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Fishing, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Science, Secondary Military
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Mercantilism
Zealotry: Low
Past Finishes: Three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 15 points, tied 32nd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Tokugawa is infamous for being the most isolationist leader in Civ4. He won't sign Open Borders with anyone else unless relations warm up to "Pleased", and he generally refuses to trade or interact with anyone else unless they share a mutual military struggle. Tokugawa further suffers from one of the worst leader trait combinations in the game - who cares about a bunch of extra promotions when getting to a higher military tech 10 turns sooner is so much more valuable? He's also saddled with a below average civilization in Japan, with the nothing-special Samurai and the uselessly late Shale Plant. At least he starts with The Wheel, and for a warmonger with not particularly great economic tools that is a very good thing. Tokugawa's AI personality reflects his generally militaristic bent, with an above average aggression rating (7.3/10) and train unit emphasis. Tokugawa's best feature is probably his tech flavor, where he has the rare Science preference to go along with a lesser Military emphasis. This is likely the reason why Tokugawa has been somewhat decent at building an economy despite his atrocious leader traits. Long story short, this guy is basically an old man telling everyone to stay out of his yard while shaking a rolled-up newspaper.
Past Performance: Everyone thought Tokugawa would be a terrible AI Survivor leader, but he's pleasantly surprised the community - as it turns out, turning tech trading off is a major boon to him as it neutralizes the biggest weakness of his extreme isolationist personality. In fact, Tokugawa is near the middle of the power rankings, an okay-but-not-great warmonger who's seen modest success in the competition. His games have varied in quality: some have seen him given poor starting positions that he just was not equipped to get out of, while in others, he's able to expand to a respectable size and become a legitimate military threat in his own right. What's never happened is a true Tokugawa snowball; even though he's won one Domination victory, that was a match where he was mostly running even with multiple competitors, not pulling ahead until late in the game. While Toku is not as insanely aggressive as some warmongers and is a bit better at teching, his isolationist tendencies have come back to bite him in the past; any map where he starts in a central location seems to end poorly for him, with all three of his top-two finishes coming from starts off to the side. All in all, Toku is a scrappy fighter who's seen scattered successes here and there, but never put together any consistent runs.
Wang Kon of Korea
Traits: Financial, Protective (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Mining, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Science
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Caste System
Zealotry: Low to Medium
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 11
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 11 points, tied 38th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Wang Kon is infamous in AI Survivor circles for acting as the "Troll King", the one leader who will do the most obnoxious thing possible to screw with the rest of the field as well as the viewers watching the game. He has one amazing trait in the form of Financial and one terrible trait in the form of Protective, the two polar opposite traits in terms of overall usefulness in Civ4. Wang Kon's Korean civilization has an OK set of starting techs combined together with the powerful Hwacha and the excellent (if relatively late) Seowon, and it says a lot about how terrible Protective is that most only consider Wang Kon a mid-tier leader in human hands. As far as AI personalities run, Wang Kon is ostensibly a cookie-cutter builder with Gold and Science research flavor, a high peace weight, and an inability to declare war at "Pleased" relations. However, he is easily the most aggressive of the peaceniks, carrying a shockingly high aggression rating of 6.1 - for reference Cathy has a 6.7 rating - which probably is a major contributor to his "Troll Kon" persona. While his build unit rating is low (4/10) and he is not particularly zealous despite starting with Mysticism, there is a fascinating amount of neuroticism encased into his personality.
Past Performance: Wang is a massive fan favorite who has delighted viewers for years with antics that have earned him the frequent monikers of "Troll Kon" or "the Troll King". It all started in his Season Two opener, where he amused the crowd to no end by continually marching his army to the other side of the world to (successfully) harass other leaders at little gain to himself. Since then, he's been present for (perhaps incited?) further cross-map crusades; trolled a field of low peaceweight leaders by keeping them occupied fighting him, thereby letting Gandhi secure a win; trolled a stronger competitor by declaring war, buying the game's runaway AI into the conflict, then bowing out and watching the carnage; and in Season Seven trolled the picking contest by declaring a suicidal war and getting himself killed before the massive favorite for First to Die. His most infamous moment, though, was in his Season Three opener, where he was miraculously resurrected from near-elimination via the liberation mechanic, then (still in a trailing position) finagled an exceptionally unlikely Spaceship win via same-turn tiebreaker, to the point where nobody saw his win coming until the turn where it happened! Notably, one thing not on Wang's resume is real success, as the aforementioned extremely unlikely win has been his only scoring finish over eight seasons, and his most recent game was an absolute dud in all aspects. The Financial trait has helped him out a little, but not made him a real contender, and it seems he often tries to be a religious leader, a warmonger, and a peaceful builder at the same time, falling flat in all aspects while serving as yet more proof of how terrible Protective is for AI Survivor purposes.
Washington of America
Traits: Charismatic, Expansive (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Free Speech
Zealotry: Medium to High
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, three wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 40th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Washington has the Expansive/Charismatic pairing, a pretty nice early game combination that would go well with a more warmongering personality. Unfortunately he prefers to be a pacifistic economic leader, and while extra happiness and health in each city is OK and all that and Washington rarely has issues growing his cities, it is not only a zero-culture trait combination, but also just doesn't do as much for a builder's game as being Financial, or having free culture and cheap libraries, or free civic swaps. Washington certainly isn't helped by hauling around the American civilization and its incredibly late-arriving unique features. Washington the AI has a low aggression rating (4.3/10), a high peace weight, and won't declare war at "Pleased" relations, and he overall is a great neighbor to have save for the occasional spy shenanigans (7/10 espionage). However, Washington inexplicably has Military and Growth tech preferences, causing him to prioritize military techs that he won't use and ignore development-focused research. It's a bizarre tech prioritization system that badly undercuts his performance. When combined with mediocre traits and the weak American civilization, it's easy to understand why Washington has generally struggled.
Past Performance: Washington has had one strong season (Season Five) and a thoroughly unexceptional track record otherwise. Season Five was clearly a case of "right place at the right time", as a distant second-place finish managed to get him a beautiful starting location in the playoffs, which he leveraged (in a legitimately strong performance) to his only victory. Meanwhile, his failures have taken various forms: he's been stuck surrounded by hostile leaders and left without hope several times, tried and failed to fight his way into a strong position a couple of times, and in his very first appearance, successfully avoided fighting a single war throughout his entire game... resulting in him getting passed up and finishing in third place. While he is a legitimately good fighter, this is a Catch-22, as in friendly diplomatic fields he ends up with the Sitting Bull syndrome of "build an army and never use it", and he has to face diplomatically hostile fields to put his fighting skills to use. Aside from his win and one other strong but second-rate performance, Washington has never done anything very impressive. While he's not the worst leader in the competition (and easily the best of the Americans, which is a VERY low bar), his ceiling generally caps out at "wildcard elimination".
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Check back later for the community predictions shortly before this game begins!
