This summary for Game Seven was written by Kuro. Many thanks for volunteering to put this report together! 
Following last week where almost everyone was either an insane warmonger or an equally insane religious nutcase, this game brought everything back down to earth with a field that looked to be more sedate. More reasonable religious leaders in Saladin and Zara, more stable warmongers in Justinian and Gilgamesh, the aggressive and religiously neutral Mao Zedong... oh, yeah, and Genghis Khan is here too. Despite these differences, this game similarly had one leader take a majority in winning odds in the picking contest, albeit by the slimmest of margins at 51%. Mehmed, Mansa Musa, and Pacal had all both not only failed to win their majority-chosen games but hadn't even survived to the end. Could Justinian break this streak? Or would Gilgamesh, the top seeded leader of the game, break the streak of top-of-the-pool failure that has permeated the entire season? The picking contest didn't seem to think so: Zara Yaqob, at 24.2%, doubled Gilgamesh in terms of how often he was picked to win for the 2nd highest odds.
The map had a pretty clear north-south dichotomy that most people anticipated to be defined by religion: With Saladin to the north and Justinian to the south beginning with Mysticism and their high religious tech preferences, it seemed likely they would get some combination of the Meditation and Polytheism religion, which would then spread to their neighbors. Justinian seemed to have the edge in that regard, situated on a vast river system that connected to Zara's capital and likely future Gilgamesh/Mao cities for an increased spread chance. The wildcard in that regard was Zara, who did not begin with Mysticism but did have a religious tech flavor. If he went for the Monotheism religion, it could mean trouble in the southern paradise and a fractured south vs. a united north.
Additionally, Genghis Khan was considered to have an excellent capital right next to Zara, who lacked Bronze. Lingering memories of Zara's repeated conquests by Alexander the Great left people wondering if Zara would suffer an early defeat thanks to Genghis rushing out with a Wheat + Corn + Gold start and nearby copper resource. This was perhaps the fiercest debate in picking contest's read of the game: 40.3% of people chose Genghis Khan as first to die, while 36.9% chose Zara, meaning a whopping 77.2% of voters felt it was kill or be killed between the two!
Up north, the biggest point of contention seemed to be if Gilgamesh would be able to destroy the Protective Mao/Saladin if he did not join them in an alliance against Justinian or Zara in the south, or if he would be overly distracted by the shiny Marble in his capital. Mao was seen as having poor expansion prospects and an up-and-down capital, while Saladin's land was solid but unexciting. 2nd place was expected to come from the north (71.1% of 2nd place votes were for a northern leader), but there wasn't a consensus on which one it would be: 25.5% for Saladin, 23.5% for Gilgamesh, and 22.1% for Mao. Spaceship won a majority as a victory condition, seemingly of the belief the game was religiously stalemate before domination was achieved and default to Spaceship.
In terms of the fantasy contest, this match had major implications. ABC170, the clear fantasy leader through the first 6 games, had both a massive 50 gold bid on Justinian and a 34 gold bid on Saladin. If the picking contest was correct in its read on Justinian, then ABC would have 4 of the first 7 winners, and be nearly unassailable come playoff time. LinkMarioSamus, who had yet to score a point in the competition, additionally had 50 gold on Gilgamesh and 20 on Mao Zedong, representing his last gasp at victory. Kuro (that's me!) additionally had a 23 gold bid on Zara that could convey to keep him close enough to ABC to make it a competition in the playoffs, while Jol Nar Binks looked to take points either by Genghis Khan getting a kill or being FTD [First to Die] as he was commonly predicted to be.
For my money, the keys to the game were as follows:
1: Would Zara found the Monotheism religion, or would he follow Justinian's religion for the majority of the game? With Theocracy as their favorite civic and shared religion, Zara and Justinian would be the tightest of friends and likely gang up on their enemies in constant 2v1s to a victory. But Justinian's massive diplomatic malus for different religions meant that if Zara got the Monotheism religion, before Theocracy came into play, he would be highly likely to be at the end of a 2v1 from Justinian and Genghis.
2: Would Genghis Khan attack especially early and would he attack Zara? Genghis had a strong capital and weak military neighbor, but his surrounding land was somewhat poor with a strong amount of jungle spots and, crucially, almost no river. Genghis would likely need to take a play from Alexander's book and knock off Zara early (Zara had no copper and thus needed Iron Working to get metals), taking Zara's fertile floodplains with 4x gold (!!!!) tiles, to fuel his conquest if he wanted a shot to do anything. If he did, that might provide enough of a tech backbone to make legitimate noise. Genghis could also attack Saladin instead and completely disrupt people's thoughts on the northern gameplan.
3: Would Gilgamesh be able to adequately expand via conquest? With protective neighbors or Justinian's heavy unit emphasis as Gilgamesh's only targets of conquest, it seemed to me a bit dire for Gilgamesh to adequately break out of the corner he was in, and if he got sidetracked by his Marble then Mao was in perfect position to expand into a lush, rivered area in the middle of the map, especially since a vast desert would naturally divert Mao there. Gilgamesh has been at his best when he conquers the world and then builds wonders to supplement it than the other way around, expansion prospects felt critical.
The picking contest breathed a sigh of relief as the continuing Sulla Season 9 Curse was put afoul onto Gilgamesh rather than Justinian, even if Justinian was 2nd. Sulla proclaimed that Zara would either die or win the game, but decided Genghis killing Zara and then self-destructing felt more likely, and that a weak Mao would allow Gilgamesh to take the lead. Could both the Sulla AND Pool One Leader curse end in one game?!
Things went off the rails from expectation from the word "go", as Justinian began a beeline through Hunting to Animal Husbandry, while Zara began a Meditation beeline. While Zara would lose Meditation to Saladin (who naturally took Islam), he would proceed to get the Polytheism religion after snagging Animal Husbandry and found Christianity in his 2nd city of Gondar. Despite taking place very early in the game, this looked like it could be a critical inflection point: Gondar was a beautiful city with multiple flood plains, Gold, a Grassland Cow and hills that looked to die for, but it also expanded directly towards Justinian and combined with Zara's Creative trait obliterated the surrounding terrain for the Byzantine leader. The flipside is that if Justinian ended up picking up the Monotheism religion, the two would almost certainly become bitter enemies with their intense border tension and religious fanaticism.
Mao and Gilgamesh both settled bog-standard 2nd cities, while Saladin marched his settler a bit north into the tundra and effectively wasted his holy city culture in sharp contrast to Saladin. Genghis Khan, meanwhile, sent his 2nd Settler into the jungle while also being 1 tile away from claiming copper (which to be fair he didn't know was there!) which sent his Settler on a 20+ turn build date. Zara's Settler also was a 20+ turn build in Gondar, but he at least was working a Gold tile to turbocharge his research as a reason, and he did then proceed to build a pasture over the cow and bring the time down. Stonehenge went to Justinian early (a big boon given Zara's cultural pressure), while Mao went for the early Great Wall vs. Gilgamesh's double Settler build despite having Marble at his capital and not Stone. And not having barbarian pressure. Disaster struck for Zara, though, as after getting his third city out towards Genghis Khan he decided to go for a 28-turn Temple of Artemis! He proceeded to cancel it soon after, and at least did begin a Settler after the Granary.
As we hit Turn 50, we had seen a clear delineation between Gilgamesh and Genghis Khan pushing a high "expand at all costs" strategy versus Zara, Mao and Justinian's more wonder-and-economy focused start (note Mao building a 100-turn Pyramids for no reason!). Saladin had expanded fine and made a mint-pink dot right on Mao's borders, but he would need to push further into the grassland near Genghis Khan or snipe more territory from Mao for a true shot at this one. Zara was dominating the research charts, but Zara had been struggling with production for not entirely clear reasons on the flipside, while Gilgamesh topped the Production/Food charts. The risk for Gilgamesh is that he had skipped Pottery and was continuing to expand dramatically, only pulling in a mere 7 beakers per turn while most pushed a higher tech pace of 9+ beakers, and Zara was outputting 23 per turn!
Gilgamesh had come out of the landgrab phase particularly strong in territory though, helped by Justinian settling almost entirely into the southern tundra or spots close to his capital and allowing Gilgamesh to take northern territory that one would expect to be Justinian. Genghis Khan may have had an equal number of cities, but they were inferior both in land quality and in their placement claiming territory. Justinian also had the same number if cities, but two of them had been founded very recently and were smaller than Gilgamesh's comparable cities.
As we got right past that, though, we got an immediate inflection point: Mao and Gilgamesh had both gone double Settler and both of them pushed one of the settlers down to a crucial middle of the map jungle spot. Whoever got this would effectively seal off the other from further settlements to the east, and Gilgamesh in particular would likely be restricted to nothing more than northern tundra cities while Mao could at least settle around to Saladin's territory thanks to his slower expansion. The city was additionally lush post-Iron Working with Bananas, Grassland Gems, Horses, and a multitude of river grassland tiles to go with three grassland hills. It was a game changing spot:
In the end, Gilgamesh won the settler race by exactly 1 turn on Turn 54, possibly thanks to escorting his Settler with a Chariot rather than an Archer. This not only gave Gilgamesh a gargantuan 7 cities and completely sealed Mao from the south while his Creative trait would also keep Mao from expanding well into the east. This was one of the major turning points of the game, seemingly relegating Mao to has-been status before the game had felt like it started and securing an enormous amount of territory for Gilgamesh completely peacefully. This did reduce Gilgamesh down to 5 beakers per turn with no Pottery, though, while Mao did grab an eastern city across from Gilgamesh. Zara also grabbed Iron Working at the early date of Turn 55 thanks to the Gold resource he claimed, securing metals against Genghis Khan early. Despite copper only being 4 tiles from the great Khan's capital it was only just now being connected for him due to his ignorance in the ways of culture. The barb city of Phrygian popped up in the far southeastern tundra, but that spot won't matter all game, right?
71 turns in and Zara finally completes his Temple of Artemis, at the cost of having only 4 cities to Gilgamesh, Justinian's or Genghis Khan's 7 cities. 
Good job, buddy. He did follow up by immediately founding Zeha on an extremely lush double gold + Rice + flood plains city. More importantly on Turn 77, Justinian converts to Zara's religion! Shockingly nobody has gone after the Monotheism religion at all despite Zara, Justinian, and Saladin all being in the game, leaving the door open for the Zara/Justinian alliance to begin!
On the flipside, poor Mao gets another very important surge of bad luck on Turn 78: His settler gets to a northern spot that would completely cut off Gilgamesh from about 3~ tundra city spots and allow Mao to get a healthy backline to go with his 5 main cities, but Gilgamesh ALSO has a settler on the EXACT same tile! Going first in turn order, Gilgamesh bounces Mao's settler away and claims it for himself, ensuring Sumerian access to the icy north and once again stymieing Mao's expansion at the last second. Again, this felt insanely important and very unlucky for Mao vs. lucky for Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh was up to 8 cities peacefully and now had room to expand to the north as well, but he was twice 1 turn away from being perhaps stuck at 6~ cities and being totally cut off from the east or north, or perhaps settling where Justinian's aggressive plant of Angora or Zara's slow plant of Zeha were. Mao, equally, would have been able to get to 9-10 cities peacefully despite burning down huge amounts of production on The Great Wall and the 'Mids, and perhaps emerged as a strong AI in a central location who would be willing to declare on just about anyone. I am personally very interested to see how this plays out in Alternate Histories.
We had seen a few turns ago that Genghis Khan was preparing for war, and on Turn 80 the early war fireworks flew as the promised war began against Zara! This paired together with the other important information that Zara was going after Monotheism, which would effectively bury any religious tension with Justinian until Theocracy shared civics came into play. Unfortunately for Genghis, this war was immediately disastrous from the outside: While Zara had been without iron or archery until Turn 55, Genghis had yet to connect his copper until AFTER Zara already researched it, missing any window to pull an Alexander and start an early war against a pants-down Zara. Zara's high research rate surely helped this. Genghis additionally had multiple low-production fishing spots and a lack of Iron Working for two jungle choked cities plus no culture to get more tiles in. The result was that despite having 2 more cities than Zara, Zara was equal to Genghis in production and while Genghis was 1st in Power Zara was 2nd.
On top of that, curiously Zara had been playing in a human-like nature, and kept the bulk of his army in the border city of Lalibela! Not only did this result in Genghis Khan simply getting shredded as he walked over to Lalibela, but it actually meant there was a brief period where Turfan was defended by only TWO AXES (!!!) with NO cultural defenses (!) and Zara had a 6 unit stack moving towards in. Unfortunately for Zara, Genghis ended up attacking into the stack with his attacking units, and the time it took Zara to heal up (instead of just going in which he probably could have took the city with) allowed Genghis to stuff defenses into Turfan to hold it. Confucianism got founded in the Zara south during the war and said war quickly stalemated, neither side having Construction or enough of a production edge to overwhelm the other. The great Khan does decide to throw his lot in with Saladin by adopting Islam during the war however, putting him directly opposed to Justinian's own Christianity.
By Turn 100, the game had very clearly dovetailed into the three "haves" and the three "have-nots" with Gilgamesh, Zara, and Justinian as the "haves" and Saladin, Genghis Khan, and especially Mao as the "have-nots". Gilgamesh had converted to Christianity on Turn 87 while Mao had done so on Turn 98, leaving Saladin extremely diplomatically isolated with his only religious ally being the unstable and rather useless Genghis Khan. Not that Mao was a threat to Saladin nor would have been prevented from attacking him due to mere religions regardless. Genghis Khan had expanded well enough early but his war had proven to be completely pointless so far, Zara not even diverting a ton of resources towards stopping him militarily, and his slow research meant that despite beelining Construction it seemed unlikely to change anything in time. Worst of all Justinian had begun plotting war and unless he had begun plotting on one of his Christian brothers before converting the ONLY option he had to attack was Genghis Khan, and despite being a cross-map war this seemed destined to ruin him. Mao, meanwhile, had never recovered from losing those city spots to Gilgamesh as he settled either towards Saladin or in safe spots after, which led to Gilgamesh encroaching hard on Mao's territory.
The haves, meanwhile, were all ahead in their own way. Gilgamesh had crashed his economy but kept expanding and fueled by the power of Pyramids/Great Lighthouse failgold plus some wonderful city locations had recovered, allowing him to get out to a grotesque number of cities compared to everyone else. In the double digits completely peacefully! His weakness came from being a bit technologically behind due to the temporary economy crashing, and the fact that long term his lack of a religious favorite civic could mean going into Free Religion and losing the big bonus he had. He also had run quite a huge farmer's gambit and not gotten Iron Working until quite late, so his military was not very impressive.
Justinian, by contrast, had balanced his expansion and economy more, having less cities than Gilgamesh but having gotten a huge Great Lighthouse on Turn 94 when most of his empire was coastal to absolutely begin speeding out in tech behind only Zara. His weakness came in his city locations: At least half of his empire was tundra and another 1/4th in low production coastal cities, so his cities suffered from low production (he dipped below Saladin at one point, despite having multiple more cities!) and less future growth. Zara was the opposite of Gilgamesh: his economy was amazing, but he had only 5 cities to his name, and winning would be difficult with that few cities.
Perhaps the most puzzling case of all of this though was Saladin. Saladin had gotten off to an average if solid start in his corner and was relatively isolated, but had effectively entirely turtled in said corner and seemingly stopped doing anything. Somehow, Saladin had apparently crashed his economy, and I spotted turns around Turn 90 where Saladin's entire empire had empty build queues or mostly empty build queues as he did not feel he could afford anything. This is despite the fact that Saladin easily had room to expand with Mao's slow start and at least 2 city locations that did not push into the desert/tundra which the AI might not like settling into. In fact, Mao had started settling multiple cities against Saladin's borders that were well within his sphere of influence! It gave Mao's empire an odd crescent shape, and meant that despite every opportunity to at least be a relevant AI in this game (even if the diplomacy shook out poorly) Saladin had simply fallen to the back of the pack for entirely self-inflicted reasons. Saladin had a river network nearby on grassland with cottages and multiple water tiles to work, so I'm not entirely sure why his economy crashed so bad. He was researching Writing while the leaders were on Currency and Horseback Riding and the like. He was behind GENGHIS KHAN in tech!
With Justinian plotting war and units visibly moving through Ethiopian territory, it was evident Justinian was knocking out the only guy he could in Genghis, and on Turn 112 the war declaration came in. Only 1 turn after Zara founded the Theology religion of Taoism! Turfan had been softened up by Zara attacks only a few turns earlier, so Justinian's timing was impeccable to get into the fray. While a cross-map war, this felt like a good option for Justinian to me even aside from it being his only option: Gilgamesh would almost certainly win a 1v1 and had no dogpile potential, Saladin was even further than Genghis Khan, and Mao was probably a tougher nut to crack even if he was slightly closer. Joining in on the 2v1 on Genghis seemed like a good chance to gain territory he needed to compete with Gilgamesh. Genghis' multiple coastal cities playing well into the Lighthouse was also nice, of course.
Mao had also been plotting war during this time, but it was... puzzling. Despite having many targets to pick, Mao seemed unsure on what to do, marching his army to the borders of Zara and Gilgamesh before parking them in his capital for no reason. Eventually, though, Mao decided to declare war on Saladin on Turn 116. It seemed like effectively his only option outside of dogpiling Zara, and angering his brother Gilgamesh with a war declaration seemed like a poor idea. Note that Saladin still did not have Iron Working on Turn 116 and if he didn't have copper would be metalless, meanwhile Gilgamesh was all the way up at Feudalism and Zara was 1 turn from Construction! Mao did get unlucky here though, as despite his alpha strike attacking Baghdad when it was low on units Saladin managed to have a single battered Spear survive at 2.4 HP, which kept the city alive when a unit got whipped and two nearby units reinforced. Saladin's Protective trait came in clutch there!
Mao, of all people, got the Mausoleum while Zara grabbed Hinduism on a quick Code of Laws, Paya, the Pantheon... he was cleaning up the peace, anyway. Justinian was taking his time taking out weak Genghis border cities, with New Sarai (expect to see this name again!) being taken on the Saladin border on Turn 123. Chat christened it New New Sarai. Zara decided NOW was the time to peace out, with an army outside of the border city next to him of Turfan...but he DID get Turfan in the peace treaty! With Genghis still licking his wounds it now appeared that he would die a slower yet no less painful solo death to Justinian, Zara surrendering those goodies but getting out of the war. This did allow Genghis to retake New New Sarai, chat rechristening it to New New New Sarai.
Gilgamesh got to plotting basically right when Zara came out, and thanks to being able to declare at Pleased meant he could go almost anywhere... but considering he had massed a good 20+ units on the Chinese border, the target seemed clear:
Zara turned his attention to a different type of warfare: Barbarian clearing. While the barbarian cities hadn't appeared anywhere meaningful to stop expansion, multiple of them had appeared in the southern tundra, and Zara sent the army that was going to be flung at Genghis directly at them to take Hun on Turn 131. Zara would slowly begin clearing out these cities and settling the tundra over time, slowly growing his empire with a bunch of cities that while iceballs or low in terrain nonetheless especially helped his commerce and to keep him from being too small to compete. Phrygian, sadly, was razed due to the barbs having not discovered Fishing, and Zara would not resettle the spot. It was a shrewd move, and many of Genghis cities were coastal village types anyway due to him settling around Zara.
New New New Sarai was once again taken by Justinian and chat rechristened it New New New New Sarai. Unfortunately for Justinian, Zara sent a Great Artist he got (not from Music seemingly) onto the city of Turfan that Zara had been gifted for peace. This meant that Zara would proceed to dominate the borderlands between himself and Justinian after the conquest of the Mongols concluded. Justinian at least got the Colossus to pair with his Great Lighthouse, empowering his maritime economy even further and fueling his conquest easily. As the game approached Turn 150, Mao put together a nice and competent stack to send at Baghdad and was in the middle of what looked to be a successful siege... alas, on Turn 140, Gilgamesh declared war and moved a good 30 units into Mao's territory. With Justinian's units approaching Genghis' capital it looked increasingly like Genghis would be removed from the world first only to be shortly followed by Mao.
Gilgamesh's conquest of Shanghai, without using siege!, occurred one turn before the fall of Karakorum. This was not aided by Mao losing his stack at Baghdad as some was pulled back to defend. But Nnig-Hsia fell on Turn 149 and Justinian was already sieging another city...granted, New New New New Sarai had been culturally crushed and thus given to Saladin, who naturally decided to go with chat in calling it New New New New New Sarai. Guangzhou fell on Turn 150 to Gilgamesh as he walked up a huge stack and didn't even bother sieging, with only a Longbow and some older trash on defense meaning the city was toast, while Mao took Old Sarai a turn later. Hangzhou fell to Saladin on Turn 155, giving Saladin any results of the war, while Beshbalik fell to Justinian and left Genghis with only 1 little tundra city left while Mao had four ready. One small issue was Samarqand was far to the south while Beshbalik was to the north, so there was a trek to get down there.
Gilgamesh had split his stack into two in the process, or rather made two different stacks, meaning that Gilgamesh took Chengdu on Turn 159 while Saladin had put together an impressive stack to take Xian on Turn 160. Justinian, meanwhile, was slow to move his stack down, but he was going to get to that last Genghis city soon enough, right...? What's this, Gilgamesh's 2nd stack took the southern city of Beijing after the attack seemed to fail, and now Mao's down to his capital! Chat was on the edge of its seat on who would die first. Don't forget, Genghis had been one of the two massive favorites for FTD while Mao had almost not been chosen, so this was huge for the fantasy contest! Everyone bit their nails as the Catapults got into position and did their thing...
...And led to a TIED FIRST TO DIE on Turn 166! Folks, I don't know if that's ever happened before! I'm confident that we've had simultaneous kills before, but not as first to die! Chat had some confusion on what would happen, but the result was obvious as Sulla explained: Whoever died first, well, was first to die. Gilgamesh, as the seeded leader, moved first in the turn order and he was the one to knock off Mao (China's destruction even appears first in event logs!), meaning in a surprise upset Mao was first to die! L-MAO indeed. It was hard to say Mao didn't deserve it, but I do genuinely think he got incredibly unlucky in this game, losing multiple extremely important cities by 1 turn and coming a single half health Spear short of taking a major city that could have jumpstarted him a little (or at least made Saladin weak enough he wouldn't crumble). Instead, China was relegated to the dustbin of history, and for what it's worth Mao's desire to chase wonders he didn't even have the right resource for certainly was a REASON for getting to those things late!
Genghis died in the same turn and in his case it was hard to say it was undeserved. He had expanded well enough but never built up a particularly impressive economy (shocking!), attacked late due to researching culture late and not having a good reserve force built, then attacked a numerically equal opponent in the stronghold they had shoved the majority of their army into. He didn't put up a very spirited defense and folded quickly, outside of retaking New New New New New Sarai for a moment. He clearly felt like the runt of the litter overall and the worst AI on the map, though I suspect in AHs he'll have a game he runs over Zara very early and gets a big domination win as there WAS a big ticket window of vulnerability here.
Note that, if Gilgamesh's initial attack had failed and Saladin had killed Mao, then Genghis Khan would have been First To Die as Justinian moved before Saladin in the turn order!
With the have-nots largely swept away, the game took on a pretty clear complexion: Gilgamesh was both the largest empire and at this point was close in tech to Zara/Justinian even if behind, having executed his farmer's gambit to perfection, and looked like he had a solid #1 spot but far from guaranteed. Justinian had conquered a similar amount of land to Gilgamesh, but his land was culturally crushed by Zara to a greater degree than Gilgy's natural borders, and he did not have the hammer capacity that Gilgamesh did. The Great Lighthouse/Colossus was giving him an especially strong economy with around 8 coastal cities, though. And Zara had a smaller empire than either but had the largest cities, most infrastructure, and had at least expanded through 3 tundra cities into a competitive size, although the tundra cities were largely commerce farms than anything else. It seemed clear Gilgamesh was the strongest leader at the moment, but he was unlikely to be stronger than Zara AND Justinian, making a potentially exciting scenario there! Gilgamesh was Friendly with everyone, though, thanks to shared civic bonuses of Hereditary Rule, and Zara/Justinian were extreme Friendly with each other. It appeared to be a total peacefest at the moment save for Saladin, who practiced a religion nobody else liked, and while he had gotten some good spoils from China (Xian/Hangzhou fit right into his borders with Hangzhou being one he should have founded himself!), he was noticeably behind in tech without any empire size to compensate. His following of Theocracy, both Zara and Justinian's favorite civic, had allowed him to be Pleased-locked with Justinian despite this... but no such luck when it came to Zara.
This tri-empire situation could be seen in the graphs: Zara was a high 1st in GNP, Justinian was 2nd with huge jumps during golden ages but more modest without, and Gilgamesh was closer to Saladin than Zara. But in production Gilgamesh was far above while Zara/Justinian were roughly tied for 2nd and Saladin far behind. Justinian/Gilgamesh were effectively tied in power, while Zara had a competent but smaller army.
Nothing happened for a few turns except for chat getting a bit manic about checking diplo and graphs repeatedly, but we did get a major event on Turn 171 as Gilgamesh decided to run up and grab Divine Right to found Buddhism. Switching religions was one of the only things that could break up the non-Saladin lovefest, after all! Justinian also got a crucial Golden Age, with how much his empire especially jumped with it. Note that while Justinian was building the Taj and Zara was taking Liberalism, Saladin grabbed CODE OF LAWS. Naturally, Justinian saw this competent play of his and decided to completely negate it by beelining Corporation and obsoleting the Great Lighthouse. Over the next 12 or so turns, the diplomatic situation slowly heated up. Gilgamesh moved up to Representation thanks to capturing the Pyramids and stripped away the Hereditary Rule bonus, and being in Organized Religion meant no Theocracy bonus as he was no longer fighting Mao after all. But the big one came on Turn 199, as Gilgamesh revolted to the self-founded Buddhism he had built a shrine to, instantly tanking himself into range to declare on Zara or Justinian and going from "peaceful lovefest" to "powder keg waiting to blow"!
The keg began exploding on Turn 203, as Zara declared on Saladin with an impressive stack of 38 medieval units, although he had yet to grab Rifling so despite Zara's tech edge they were at tech parity. This stack flew in and took New New New New New Sarai on turn 1, leading us to New New New New New New Sarai's era. Justinian and Gilgamesh both began beelining Rifling while Zara picked up Military Tradition, and Justinian began plotting war with the only man he could: Gilgamesh. The era of Cataphracts had ended, so this looked like if it was a 1v1 it would be difficult for Justinian to win, although if Gilgamesh declared someone and got into a 2v1 that could change things up. Gilgamesh wasn't plotting at the time, though. Zara did go to Rifling right after Military Tradition which, amusingly, meant all of the top leaders were on Rifling 2T at one point. Justinian and Gilgamesh had roughly the same military side while Zara and Saladin had the same as each other rather than the top 2 there, so any form of dogpile would be big.
Saladin was already taking it on the chin, though. He cleared out Zara's stack at Najran well enough but once Cavalry and Rifles started making their way into Saladin territory it looked brutal. This all became a bit of a sideshow to the next keg going off though: Justinian moving up a stack of 74 units (almost the size of Zara's entire army!) up to Gilgamesh and declaring war! The two biggest armies in the world were gonna tussle! Despite this, Justinian seemed to get a bit scared afterwards and felt defensive in pathfinding, as his army for multiple terms simply stayed in the border town of Angora or used it to kill attackers next to Angora despite the size. Justinian, you have the alpha strike, use the advantage! He did not, really, and the stack got chipped down whenever he left the city to kill Gilgamesh units before fleeing back to Angora. This was bad for Justinian on another level: Gilgamesh had built the Statue of Zeus back on Turn 141, so the war weariness was really building up from these big unit trades. This apparently spooked the cowardly Justinian something fierce, as despite being a total stalemate and starting the war Justinian signed peace and GAVE AWAY ANGORA in the process! 
Angora was a beautiful size 13 border city with lush grasslands and rare production for Justinian, so this truly was an intensely baffling move when the power graph suggested more of a stalemate.
It was also worth noting Saladin had at least gotten Gunpowder for Cuirassier, so he was managing to hold out on that front. Najran, Zara's next siege target, impressively held out for a multitude of turns as Saladin flanked down Zara's siege, packed it full of defensive longbows and Cuirassier, and attacked out of the city repeatedly when Zara tried to bring in some reinforcements. It fell on Turn 229, but not easily, to the point the entire Justinian/Gilgamesh "war" had concluded in the time it took Najran. Zara's pathfinding really hurt him afterwards, passing up Saladin's capital and going for the deep city of Kufah instead. Zara's brand new cannons helped him take down Castles but he didn't have many in his stack, and this allowed Saladin to tech up to Rifles as Kufah was taken. Zara took Kufah one turn before Saladin got Rifles, but Zara countered by teching up to Infantry.
This had major implications as Gilgamesh, who had been plotting in the background with Saladin or Zara as the target, decided to strike at Zara (the more logical target) while he was off in Saladin's lands. He sent a splinter force off to Kufah, but his main force stabbed directly at Yeha in the process. This, however, led to Justinian attacking Gilgamesh RIGHT back in that same turn! This thus was a messy 2v1v1, with Saladin down but militarily competent enough to potentially turn things, and Gilgamesh as the strongest civ by a good margin but not necessarily stronger than Justinian + Zara. Zara had a clear tech edge (Infantry/Machine Guns/Cavs vs. Rifles/Machine Guns/Cavs), particularly on defense, but his main force was caught with their pants down in a foreign land and Gilgamesh had a massive stack of easily 70 units ready.
Gilgamesh's splinter stack slammed into Kufah to no help to taking the city, but Zara's main stack was heavily wounded in the process, leading to an interesting situation as Zara's stack simply could not get out of the city reliably as the AI. They looked to heal up, but Saladin was completely willing to hit them inside even with no odds to take the cities back, and when Zara would send a small stack out of the city they would end up getting harassed in a Napoleon-esque manner as they went out 1 tile at a time, unable to join the Gilgamesh front. It seems like in this world instead of the "Russian Winter" people would be talking about the folly of fighting during "Arabian Summer"! Yeha and Najran fell on Turn 251 (Gilgamesh gifted Najran back to Saladin almost immediately afterwards) and Saladin's spirited defense was a key point in helping Gilgamesh not truly get smacked by a 2v1. Zara simply couldn't bring his Infantry to bear!
Justinian recaptured Angora, but it was a bloody affair, and importantly Angora was drowned by Gilgamesh culture due to gifting it away earlier. D'oh! Gilgamesh, sensing blood in the water, turned a chunk of his stack away from Zara and went to take Antioch and then retake Angora right after. The fighting caused HUGE losses, shredding Gilgamesh's power, but it took away a Justinian core city in the process and Gilgamesh had better ability to re-establish losses. Gilgamesh also sent a small splinter force to attack the not very well defended New New New New New New Sarai so that he may dub it New New New New New New New Sarai for the Sumerians. New Sarai ended up in the hands of everyone except Mao at one point! Their passports must be a MESS!
The power graph said it all. Justinian's stack was wiped away outside of Angora and he was down to little but defense forces, reducing Justinian to Saladin levels despite researching to Assembly Line now. His back had been broken and the Christian alliance shattered. Massive war wariness (+8, +9, etc) was angering the domestic citizenry as well, which with his already weak production base was brutal. Zara used Gilgamesh's absolute Byzantine Beatdown to retake Yeha, although Gilgamesh took it back almost immediately.
Shrewdly, Zara sensed which way the wind was going, and gave peace in exchange for Yeha's return. Some people (including Sulla!) saw this as a mistake for Zara and throwing away his chances, but I personally disagree completely: With how weak Justinian was after his military losses and split empire, it felt clear that the 2v1 had failed and neither Zara nor Justinian had made headway. Zara was also in a 2v1 that was hurting him pretty hard. It was a weasel-y move, but Zara effectively sacrificed Justinian to survive and take over Saladin, insuring his 2nd place position. How Saladin and Justinian managed to defend could determine the winner, as Zara still had a substantial tech lead if he could keep up in military or size.
Justinian quickly imploded. Justinian's beautiful Notre Dame/Spiral Minaret/Statue of Liberty capital city fell on Turn 275. Najran fell back to Zara soon after, and then Zara decided to sign peace in exchange for a city. Oh my! All of the combat had exhausted Zara's forces, so he seemed like he wanted to get out of it to rebuild them. He also was researching towards Tanks along with Justinian, but Justinian was too far out to matter, and importantly this meant Arabia kept enough borders that Gilgamesh wasn't locked out from most of Justinian's conquests. Justinian's original empire was reduced to 2 cities by Turn 288, with Gilgamesh running away in power and flooding those cities with Paratroopers while a big ol' 90+ unit stack went towards Justinian's Mongolian prizes. The problem for Gilgamesh there was Samarqand: It was completely surrounded by Zara's culture, and as we calculated, it was ONE TILE off from Paratrooper range! Gilgamesh seemed completely blocked from killing Justinian, which also could keep Gilgamesh from Domination if he remained war-locked without Zara declaring. On the flipside, Samarqand was culturally crushed, and actually had a revolt chance to the Ethiopians! Could we see the rare kill via culture flip? Zara getting the Eiffel Tower certainly helped those flip chances followed by Hollywood in the border city. All of the non-Samarqand Byzangolian cities were taken by Turn 315 and Justinian's last random original city would fall soon after, reducing Samarqand to his last...
...Or so we thought! Remember that barbarian city of Phrygian that got razed earlier? Nobody had settled that spot despite Zara's tundra settling spree, and Justinian manages to get himself a settler there despite being in a war. You can even see the Ruins there. This ended up being the difference: On Turn 326 Samarqand did, in fact, flip to Zara. If Phrygian had grew earlier in the game so Zara had taken it or Justinian not decided to build that last settler, then Justinian would have died to culture flip! Instead, Justinian lived to see another day with a 2000 IQ play. A UN Open Borders resolution could kill Justinian, but nobody seemed keen on putting it up for a vote.
Zara began plotting during this time and the tension was effectively just if he would suicide into Gilgamesh or go knock off Saladin. He made the smart play and went in on Saladin, tanks and bombers screaming over the border as Arabian cities fell one by one. But then a MAJOR event happened.
Gilgamesh and Justinian signed peace! 
AI will very rarely do this, ending up in "they want to win the game" mode, and get stuck like this. Instead, Gilgamesh actually got out of the war, and given the HUGE diplomatic tension between him and Zara he was clearly going to attack Gilgamesh with an army unlike the world had seen before long. People in the Discord suggested this was the result of an AI "White Peace" they are willing to sign after 50 turns, but I don't know how accurate this is. And Gilgamesh did not take long to get to work: On Turn 333, after Zara had taken multiple Saladin cities in one turn, Gilgamesh declared war. If you want an idea of how impossible this was to win for Zara, I'll put it like this: Gilgamesh had 695 units on turn 1 of the war. Zara had 310. He may have had a very slight tech edge, but not enough to overcome a 2-to-1 unit disadvantage. Multiple Zara cities began going down within 2 turns, and the door was open to Gondar. And despite their calls, no aid would come for Gondar: It fell on Turn 338.
Hilariously, Zara did get one counterpunch in... New New New New New New New Sarai, allowing it to become New New New New New New New New Sarai under the Ethiopians' watch. That did not seem likely to last. While this was happening, Zara's units had peeled away from Saladin to help him out defensively after taking Medina, allowing Saladin a moment of reprieve. At one point, Saladin had a COMPLETELY EMPTY XIAN but Zara was getting obliterated by Gilgamesh too much to take advantage! While Zara did grab it eventually, it was a signal of how hard the Ethiopians were taking it on the chin. Instead, Gilgamesh walked in and began just casually taking the Arabian conquests Zara had made, only accelerating Gilgamesh's Domination. The UN even forced peace between Zara and Saladin, ensuring that Saladin would make it to the wildcard round along with Justinian. Considering how spirited he had defended and in his own way contributed to Gilgamesh's victory, I felt good for him doing that.
There wasn't much to say. Gilgamesh had a rogue stack casually knocking off Zara tundra cities while Zara's core was also collapsing, an inevitable tide of Sumerian might, with Gilgamesh grabbing the prized jewel of New New New New New New New New Sarai so it could reach its final form of New New New New New New New New New Sarai under his glorious reign. Really, the funniest thing was probably Justinian's 1 city civ signing a defensive pact with Saladin's 2 city civ, something that surely had the rest of the world quivering in its boots.
It all ended on Turn 353. The curses were broken. Nature was healing.
A clean victory from an AI that played almost disturbingly human-like in his game, executing an excellent landgrab and Farmer's Gambit into a casual Mao conquest and eventually world domination. Things felt like they went his way multiple times and I'm curious how he'll do in the AHs in that regard, but he also showed himself as strong nonetheless and likely to be some kind of force. Zara took a clean 2nd with his strong teching and own well timed war against Saladin, and his lackluster early settling was made up for by wisely grabbing the entire tundra. But Gilgamesh's war before he could absorb Saladin crushed him, and he never had the production base to match up with Gilgamesh once he got rolling thanks to Gilgamesh's immense size.
Justinian's finish of 3rd with 1 city left doesn't show off the true reality of his game, where he played a strong game only to get the short end of the inevitable battle for 2nd. Where everything seemed to go right for Gilgamesh, it felt like multiple things went wrong for Justinian such as Zara getting a holy city right on his borders which locked him into tundra and water holdings when Gilgamesh also pushed south. Zara's religion spread effectively locked him into fighting Genghis, but he timed it beautifully and got himself a reasonable if wonkily shaped empire. But he could never overcome missing out on the best land and while his Atlantean aquatic empire managed great commerce for a long time it couldn't keep up once the Great Lighthouse/Colossus combo lost his edge. Still, the biggest reason he lost may have simply been the fate of timing: Him and Zara were never able to freely 2v1 Gilgamesh without outside interference when they needed complete focus to take him down to win. His game effectively ended once he attacked Gilgamesh uselessly and gifted away the core city of Angora in the process, while Zara was much more shrewd in his peace treaty. Zara's diplomacy IS one of his bigger strengths, afterall.
Finally we come to the last place Saladin, clinging on with two cities and a UN resolution. He flubbed his midgame for reasons still unclear to me, crashing his economy despite river grassland and coastal tiles around him, after an expansion phase that was solid but not terribly strong. This put Saladin behind the 8-ball compared to the big three leaders from the start and it must be emphasized how poor that was. But past that point, I was impressed by Saladin! He reversed Mao's war declaration on himself into multiple territories, and then fought fiercely when Zara came at him again and again, consistently holding on for Gilgamesh to come down from the top rope to save him and actively cultivating it by tying down Zara to keep the Gilgamesh/Zara/Justinian war from being a 2v1. He is, along with Mao, the leader I am most curious about in Alternate Histories: If he can spread his religion to someone else as an ally (much less likely with the river networks admittedly) or not crash his economy, I think he could actually be a reasonable force on this map. In particular, any map he and Zara share a religion could lead to a Genghis partition and lifelong alliance.
The fantasy contest was a low scorer this time with an average score of 7.55, with a huge reason being the Mao FTD obliterating almost all FTD points: The top 5 all had Mao as FTD and hit on it. Automated Teller's 21 took it by 1 point over Smelly Mildred's 20, and in the overall contest SmartRandom.org retained a small lead over Kuro (that's me!) by but 1 point at 97 vs. 96: Genghis Khan's death would have flipped this. Fippy and Thrasybulos rounded out those with 90+ but I do want to shot out Smelly Mildred moving up to a 6th place tie thanks to his strong performance this game.
In the fantasy contest, this was a pretty chalk-y game save for Justinian. LMS' 50 gold bid on Gilgamesh paid off big with 6 points to put him on the board and his 20 point bid on Mao resulted in FTD points which is plenty solid value. He'll need Sitting Bull and Lincoln to pull some unexpected weight to have a chance though, with Gilgamesh being his only remaining premium leader. Zara for Kuro pulled in 2 points and a playoff appearance to give him 3 leaders going forward with 2 in Game Eight. Him and Vincarius seem like the two most likely to push ABC170's dominance, although Lobster667 still had some solid guys left. Speaking of ABC170, he had both Justinian and Saladin on this map, and while Justinian left lots of opportunity for points off the board he also had both of them advance to the Wildcard. That gave him an absurd SIX civs still out there gathering points! You have to imagine he wanted more from Justinian, but it's hard to be upset. How the wildcard goes could be critical. Jol Nar Binks was the only one particularly unhappy here, his 24 gold Genghis bid having resulted in 0 points thanks to a same turn FTD order. He's down to Elizabeth and Hammurabi left, so he'll need them to make a deep run to get a good finish, difficult when they've both been sorted into the same game. On the other hand, said game DOES look very peaceful...
With that, another week of AI Survivor concludes. Tune in next time when we see if Mother Russia or Father France will take the win, assuming the Romans don't kill us all first. Later days!
