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:
Mehmed of the Ottomans
Traits: Expansive, Organized (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Culture
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Vassalage
Zealotry: Medium to High
Past Finishes: Season 5 champion, one Championship loss, one playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 5 Second Places 
Total Kills: 13 
Overall Power Ranking: 28 points, 12th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Mehmed is a typical militaristic AI leader. He's not quite as crazy as some of his shared rivals in the Montezuma or Shaka mold, but he still acts predictably aggressive and causes a lot of trouble for his neighbors. Mehmed does have a pair of good economic traits in the Expansive/Organized combo, albeit ones which the AI does not leverage particularly well. His Ottoman civilization is top tier in almost every aspect, from the Agriculture/Wheel starting techs to the Longbow-shredding Janissary to the well-rounded Hammam. Mehmed's biggest problem is similar to other warmongers who cannot plot at Pleased - he's too militaristic (7.8 aggression rating) when he should not be while also paralyzed in inaction at the worst possible times when considering his insane 10/10 unit build tendency that can cause him to waste his funds on a massive army he won't use. His research flavors are Military and an odd Culture, once again reinforcing how Mehmed tends to neglect economy in favor of more and more units. Mehmed has often been a popular pick from the community because he looks like he should be strong on paper, and yet he's struggled more than he should.
Past Performance: Until his shocking Season Five title run, the conqueror was derisively referred to as "Meh-med" for good reason, but upon finally proving his mettle he's been far more consistent and competitive in these games. The biggest blemish on his record is that he's only won a single game, albeit at the best possible time! The fact that he's a former champion is thus clearly a case of "right place, right time", as he reached the Season Five championship off a pair of unimpressive second place finishes, only to come out on top of a war-filled game and take the title. He had another chance to do the same, reaching Season Seven's championship off two more second-place finishes, only to play a terrible game that time and finish irrelevantly. Still, Mehmed has now racked up more than a dozen kills over the years, and while he never accomplished anything for the first four seasons of the competition, he's finished in the top two six times in the past four seasons - although the Deity starting tech removal may have helped immensely, as it turns the Agriculture/Wheel combination from a weakness to a major strength. He further bolstered his credentials with a very good Season Eight, nearly winning his opener and then nearly making the Championship in the playoffs from an extremely tough land and diplomatic setup. If he continues on this trajectory, he's going to establish his place into the top echelons of AI leaders sooner rather than later.
Gandhi of India
Traits: Spiritual, Philosophical (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Mining, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 10
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Pure Culture
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +2
Favorite Civic: Universal Suffrage
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: Season 8 Runner Up, Five playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, one opening round elimination
Total Games Played: 16
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 4 Second Places
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 32 points, 10th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Gandhi is without a doubt one of the most unique leaders in Civ4. He gets to utilize the excellent Fast Worker and Mausoleum, although considering his extreme pacifism the Mausoleum is not as useful. His starting techs are Mysticism and Mining, a weak pair useful for pursuing an early religion and not much else; like many religious leaders, Gandhi often takes a long time to improve his tiles and connect his resources despite his Fast Workers. Furthermore, he gets the Spiritual/Philosophical pairing, which nets him a ton of important half-cost cultural buildings, speeds up his Great Artists, and, crucially, grants him two cultural traits. Lucky him, because Gandhi spends the entire game laser-focused on one thing: CULTURE. With his pure Culture research strategy, he pursues religions like a man possessed and puts his production bonuses and traits to extremely effective use. Gandhi is truly a hyper-pacifist who entirely neglects his military and prays it won't come back to bite him in the rear, with zeros for both aggression and built units. Surprisingly, Gandhi is also quite unlikely to build wonders (2/10), and there is a possibility that this has helped him as he has proven more adept than other peaceniks at defending himself despite his ultra-low militarism. He is a prime example of why AI Survivor disables vassals; in pre-Sullla attempts to run AI tournaments, Gandhi won literally every championship because he would constantly vassal (or be vassaled) and then be left completely unbothered to win a cultural victory. Without a powerful benefactor to hide behind, Gandhi is probably the most feast-or-famine type leader in real AI Survivor. If he is not attacked by his neighbours, he can rush out a cultural victory like nobody's business, but he can collapse very quickly if attacked, and with a peaceweight of 10 he is prone to getting attacked a lot. An early war declaration from a neighbor can ruin any chance of a Gandhi victory on the spot.
Past Performance: Gandhi has long enjoyed a position as a seeded leader thanks to consistent success in the opening round, having made the playoffs in 75% of all seasons (including a consecutive four season streak!). In fact, his only career opening round elimination took place in the inaugural season in a game in which he was a marked man the moment his opponents were selected. His wins followed similar patterns: he was allowed to culture in peace for long periods of time until the machine became unstoppable. On the other hand, things haven't been so rosy in the playoffs, where he routinely finds himself up against fields full of warmongers who freakin' hate his guts merely for existing. He finally threw the playoff monkey off his back once he got a workable playoff field in the Season Eight builder bonanza, but even then his land was bad and his Championship qualification was insanely lucky, requiring tactical and strategic blunders from almost all his rivals in order to secure his first shot at a trophy. At least he gave it his best shot with a legendary Championship performance where he not only nearly won, but also morphed into Nuclear Gandhi at the end of the game. With that said, it is tough to determine his true skill level, as he has proven a tad fraudulent in some Alternate Histories, his non-Championship games last season were pretty mediocre despite his scoring finishes, and he seems to have an inner Wang Kon streak as seen in a Season Seven opener that saw him throw away an easy victory by inexplicably attacking and crippling his religious ally early in the game. But while he might not be quite the unstoppable juggernaut that his opening round stats suggest, he clearly has something figured out, and he is easily the most likely non-Mansa leader to win if left untouched. That is a big if: as we saw in last season's Championship game, it's hard to make friends with a peaceweight of 10, especially when, to paraphrase Amicalola, he becomes the "least mostly good leader" in the field.
Bismarck of Germany
Traits: Expansive, Industrious (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Pure Military
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Nationhood
Zealotry: Low
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 10
Total Medals: 1 First Place
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 40th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Bismarck is an aggressively average AI save for one quirk: he has a pure Military tech flavor, causing him to put maximal priority on the latest and greatest weapons. The rest of his package isn't especially militaristic, or anything else, though; he only has an average unit build rating (and is just as likely to go after wonders), an average aggression rating, cares an average amount about religion, likes espionage an average amount... you get the drift. He's even in the middle of the peaceweight scale; tack on a warmonger respect rating of 1 and he is one of those "true neutrals" who can align with (or fail to get along with) any faction. His bonuses are nothing exciting either, with Industrious and Expansive a nice human pairing but extremely middle-of-the-road (see the theme?) for the AI; his unique unit, the Panzer, being theoretically useful as they are very good at killing non-Panzer tanks, but typically appearing too late in the game to have much of an impact; and the rather mediocre Hunting/Mining tech combo. Without any other focus, Bismarck's best bet for success in the competition is to go on the warpath, and he is at least willing to declare war at Pleased relations, keeping that door more open than it would be otherwise. Still, he is generally regarded as more of a troll than an actual warmonger, having garnered himself the nickname "Clownmark" through his bizarre and aimless playing.
Past Performance: Bismarck is one of the competition's one-hit wonders, winning a single crushing Domination victory from a fantastic starting position in Season Six and otherwise accomplishing nothing save for a smattering of random kills. Additionally, he has had a number of comical follies over the years, most recently throwing away a playoff spot by attacking a runaway Justinian for no reason. One particularly embarrassing opening in Season Five spawned the "Bismarck gambit" trademark of completely ignoring The Wheel and never being able to connect his resources or cities. He's had a few promising starts where things ended up swinging against him - especially on the diplomatic front, where he's never quite fit in with the true warmongers - but just as many games where he was never that important, and his First To Die rate is embarrassingly high for a neutral militaristic leader. His results paint him as a "lite" version of your standard hyperwarmonger, with less mindless aggression but the same general pattern of usually either steamrolling the world, or else not getting much of anything done. Although who knows - some Alternate Histories have suggested that he may be more competent than we think...
Brennus of the Celts
Traits: Spiritual, Charismatic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Religion
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Organized Religion
Zealotry: Extreme
Past Finishes: Three playoff round eliminations, two wildcard eliminations, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 7
Overall Power Ranking: 16 points, tied 30th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Brennus is one of several leaders with the "religious warmonger" personality type, but he's a far cry from the cream of that crop. A big part of this is a particularly bad early-game setup that will often slow his initial development: Brennus has the poor economic starting tech duo of Hunting/Mysticism, he has Military and Religion research flavors that cause him to prioritize archers and holy cities above worker improvements, and he has two unique items that make him prioritize Masonry and Iron Working over Pottery and Agriculture. Once he gets past that, there isn't anything really special about his personality that gives him an edge. He is a strong religious bloc member who gives large shared faith bonuses and refuses to plan wars at Pleased relations, but his rock-bottom peaceweight (not helped by a further -1 "first impression" demerit) still threatens to crack apart any religious alliance with the wrong leaders. He's aggressive and builds units, but not excessively so (7/10 and 6/10 ratings, respectively), and while he is willing to press low-odds attacks more than some, there otherwise isn't anything very notable about his personality. His traits of Spiritual and Charismatic also aren't anything to write home about; basically, this guy fights and cares about religion, but also can be a very slow starter, and it always seems like he's too passive when he should take some initiative and too aggressive when he needs to show restraint.
Past Performance: Brennus has a thoroughly mediocre track record in the competition, despite having regularly drawn friendly fields of low peaceweight competitors to play with. The latter factor and his not-too-aggressive personality in particular have helped him be a good survivor, having only died in 5/14 games played, but those survivals haven't translated into any real accomplishments. There's a lot of third and fifth and distant second-place finishes on his record, and he has largely been forgettable from both an accomplishment and an entertainment standpoint. Brennus finally had his day in the sun in the most recent season, where after an admittedly impressive recovery from a poor start in a hostile field to get another chance, he took advantage of a commerce-heavy starting position in a highly militaristic field to win a commanding Wildcard victory. Sadly, he followed that up with perhaps his worst performance ever, where he was back to his typical slow-starting ways, recorded his first First to Die result, and was a troll kill snipe away from laying an egg in the Alternate Histories. This made it immediately clear that instead of someone we've been underestimating all these years, he's just a mediocre leader who got lucky once, and barring a similarly good start, he should be expected to be a scrappy but ultimately unsuccessful competitor.
Isabella of Spain
Traits: Spiritual, Expansive (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Pure Religion
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Theocracy
Zealotry: Extreme
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, seven opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 9
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 9 points, tied 36th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Religion, religion, religion. Isabella is a religious zealot and cares more about her faith than just about any other AI leader in the game. Her "Spain on a Lake" techs are good for founding one of the first two religions and pretty much nothing else on non-coastal starts, but they will ensure that she'll get some kind of religion and then defend it to the death. Either you are a treasured practitioner of the one true faith or you are heathen scum that must be wiped from the earth; there's little subtlety or nuance to Isabella's diplomacy. Although her starting techs are subpar, her Expansive/Spiritual traits helps make up for it somewhat, and her Conquistador and Citadel unique items, if used properly, are powerful militarily, although they are counter-synergistic in that one can only take full advantage of one unique item per game. Similar to how certain leaders are too imbalanced in the military or culture direction, Izzy is too psychotically obsessed with religion for her own good, delaying her development in favor of religions (and the wonders she encounters en route to said religions) and launching ill-advised crusades against rival faiths, and sometimes her own brethren as she can plot at Pleased. She's essentially a Flanderized cartoon character who, despite her neuroticness, is so one-dimensional that she tends to be more annoying than entertaining.
Past Performance: It's safe to say that Izzy has been one of the worst performers in AI Survivor, scoring eight of her nine points in a single game. That game, her Season Four opener, saw her profit nicely from two dogpiles before killing her closest competitor head-on, but the rest of her career has exposed this performance for the outlier it was. Izzy's early-game performance has varied: sometimes she does poorly and fails to expand due to focusing more on Priesthood and Temple of Artemis than on Pottery and settlers, but at other times her early religious focus has allowed her to get off to strong starts and be one of the better leaders early on... only for her to make too many enemies, stall out, and later on get conquered. In fact, outside of her one win, she has died in every single game she has played! Most recently, she failed to take advantage of a self-destructing Suryavarman (even losing a war to him) before suiciding herself into Lizzy Spanish Armada style. Her style of play is just too all-or-nothing, and until she can balance her priorities she will continue to flail about in these games.
Montezuma of the Aztecs
Traits: Aggressive, Spiritual (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Hunting, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Religion
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Police State
Zealotry: MOAR SACRIFICIAL CAPTIVES
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 10
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 2
Overall Power Ranking: 7 points, tied 47th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Anyone who's played even a little bit of Civ 4 probably already has a pretty good idea of the Montezuma AI. Let's just say he is, well, Monty. To start, Montezuma gets the Aggressive and Spiritual traits, a good-but-not-great combination for these games. Unfortunately, his unique items are the Jaguar Warrior and the Sacrificial Altar. While they hold great utility for the human, they are awful for the AI, and one can at least partially attribute Monty's issues to trying to bumrush his enemies with strength 5 Swordsmen instead of strength 6. Lastly, the Aztec emperor starts with Hunting and Mysticism, and although Monty certainly likes himself some religion, his starting tech combination otherwise does not help him much. But it's not the traits or unique stuff that makes Montezuma so well-known in Civ 4; it's the man himself. Sullla described Montezuma as a "rabid dog let loose in the streets to cause as much trouble as possible before being put down", and considering that Montezuma is still a strategy game AI, that's surprisingly accurate. Montezuma has polarizing numbers all over the place. He has the highest aggression rating in the game (10/10); in fact he is literally the benchmark for the normalized system we use to judge the rest of this bunch, and he combines this with an endless queue of sacrificial captives and virgins to fling at whoever and whenever he feels, with an 8/10 unit build tendency. Montezuma won't bother with building wonders (0/10); he takes them instead. Monty's peace weight (0) is also the lowest possible in the game, and any cooperation between him and a "good" AI should be virtually impossible. Montezuma's flavours are Military and Religion, and his "strategy" is almost universally to found a religion, and then psychotically defend it to the death. Or just attack the other true believers anyway at the slightest whim. There's no way that could possibly go wrong...
Past Performance: Monty is bad. Like, really, really bad. He's firmly established himself as one of the biggest trainwrecks in AI Survivor, his insane overaggression coming back to bite him again and again as he's almost never able to back up his bluster. That doesn't mean he's not entertaining - viewers are always in for a treat if he's in a game. Take last season, where he proceeded to absolutely pummel an already hobbled Suryavarman and sack the Khmer capital before his game crashed as hard as it had soared. Nevertheless, he's usually been so insane and incompetent that in picking contests "starts next to Monty" is often a positive when picking a leader to succeed. Monty has proven successful exactly once, in his highly unusual Season Seven opener; that game saw him play peacefully due to not connecting metal for around 100 turns - so the sun rose from the West - then use that as a launching point to snowball off a set of enemies who had played particularly messy games. However, alternate histories later showed this to be an extraordinarily unlikely outcome, a 1 in 100 games fluke result, and he followed it up in the playoffs by becoming First to Die in a 1v1 conflict fought from a great starting position. While a couple of other games have seen him legitimately screwed by too many wars declared against him - it really feels like he's a high peaceweight leader in disguise sometimes - it's more than clear that Monty occupying a position of strength is the exception rather than the rule, and he's one of the least likely leaders to come out on top in any given match.
Shaka of the Zulus
Traits: Aggressive, Expansive (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Hunting
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Pure Military
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Police State
Zealotry: Low to Medium
Past Finishes: Four playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 7
Overall Power Ranking: 18 points, tied 26th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Shaka gets the Aggressive and Expansive traits to play around with, which at the very least are pretty good for the early game and for warmongering. He is also blessed with the top tier Zulu civilization, with the fantastic Agriculture/Hunting pair, the mini-courthouse Ikhanda - the only unique building that rivals the Terrace, and it probably is better for Aggressive leaders - and the much more mediocre Impi (in AI hands, that is). If you haven't picked up on it yet, Shaka is all about the big guns. He's one of the "Crazies" who cross the threshold from "aggressive" to "nuts", and his aggression rating (9.2/10) is the fourth highest in the game. Like most of the other Crazies, Shaka's only flavour is Military, and he builds units at a frenetic pace (10/10) while ignoring wonders (2/10). He's a fairly standard hyper-warmonger, although he does have a better time navigating the diplomatic landscape due to his not-so-extreme peaceweight of 2. He also seems to get along economically slightly better than expected, probably due to his cheap Ikhandas and good starting techs. Expect Shaka to spend his entire game warring on the high peace weight pacifists (or anyone else, for that matter!), and his success to largely depend on whether those wars are successful or stall out.
Past Performance: Unlike the other hyperaggressive warmongers, who just flame out over and over again and have rarely amounted to much, Shaka has managed to semi-consistently make himself a contender, reaching the playoffs as often as not and often making a significant impact even when he's not ultimately successful. While he's only fully set up a successful snowball once, in the opening round of Season Two, he's still proven consistently able to find smaller successes and avoid imploding in the same way as other warmongers, enough so to scrape by in second place several times. Even his defeats are sometimes impressive - multiple times now, he's become the largest empire on the map, and only slowly fallen once taken on by all of the remaining leaders combined, a behemoth that took an immense effort to bring down. Now, all this being said, Shaka does routinely bungle his economy (albeit not to the same extent as the other crazies), his playoff round success has been rather limited, and his most recent game where he stalled out on all his wars before getting run over by Freddie of all leaders was also one of his worst. Still, whatever the reason may be, there's a method to his madness, and he's proven to be a legitimate threat in these games.
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Check back later for the community predictions shortly before this game begins!
