This summary for Game Eight was written by TheOneAndOnlyAtesh. Many thanks for volunteering to put this report together! 
It only felt like yesterday that we were watching Elizabeth defend her title in the Season 9 premiere, but wow, in the blink of an eye, the eighth and final Opening Round game is upon us! At least regarding entertainment value, this already fascinating season was truly saving the best for last. Once again, we had a group of vicious warmongers chomping at the bit for some action. While perhaps not as crazy as the Game Six field, these leaders were nonetheless equal in bloodlust. Among them was Catherine the Great, and while she emphasized the "lust" part more so than the "blood" part, this gal did not suffer any fools. As if the AI Survivor gods wanted to compensate for her horrible Season 8 positionings, here she was given an extremely spacious corner in the Southwest with a plethora of opportunities, both internal and external.
Yet, she was not the only Russian in this field. Nearby, smack dab in the center of the map, was the murderer of Cathy's grandson's great-grandson and great-great-grandchildren, Comrade Stalin. While the Man of Steel had long held an iron tight grip on the Pool 1 spot, with the weighted scoring system completely cutting out his Season Three Championship season, his status here was more befitting of the man who is YET TO SCORE A SINGLE point in the post-Apostolic Palace era of AI Survivor. Now, the Soviet's start here was quite fast, so if there ever was a time to rebound, now would be it. In his stead was perhaps the most troll of Pool 1 leaders... CHURCHILL?!? As it turns out, qualifying for the Championship in the PAST THREE seasons helps a lot with scoring points! With this guy as a Pool 1 leader, no wonder the top seeds have been so utterly cursed this season! Rather amusingly, Churchtroll, despite his peaceweight outlier status here, actually had a sheltered corner start in the Northeast - notably the one furthest away from the most dangerous opponents here - that was perfect for this guy to do "Churchtroll" things.
Russia was not the only nation doubly-represented here, as this game decided to bless us with two Frenchmen, Napoleon and Charles De Gaulle. Interestingly enough, many hardcore fans consider these two to be quite underrated despite their ignominious AI Survivor results. At least for Napoleon, there is some evidence that points to this assertion, as if Nappy had performed the way Alternate Histories say he should have, he would have been this game's Pool 1 leader under our weighted seeding. With an excellent capital and a strong diplomatic positioning, this was the time for Nappy to show his potential. De Gaulle, conversely, had a rather cold and unimpressive start in the Northwest corner, and he was going to have to utilize his rather favorable diplomatic situation to compensate.
On a similar topic, there was yet ANOTHER leader who, despite his struggles, had many clamoring that he is actually a strong leader, and that was the Silliest of Men, Suleiman the Magnificent. Like Stalin, he had also drawn a central position, but while the Soviets had a fast start with iffy scaling, the Ottomans had the opposite, a slow and forest heavy start that looked like it would scale well... if Suleiman was still in one peace, as he had Stalin AND Napoleon breathing down his neck here.
Rounding out the seven player field was Augustus Caesar, who, like Churchill, happened to be the other surprise seeded leader here. While Churchill had scammed or backdoored his way to most of his successes Augustus was riding off of a pair of dominant victories in the previous season alongside a strong Season 6 opener to bolster his scoring, and unlike his fellow seeded leader, his successes have generally been legitimized in the Alternate Histories. While he was a peaceweight 8 fish in a low peaceweight ocean, his position was not totally hopeless. He had Praetorians, he was capable of getting along with warmongers, and he had drawn the type of start that his successes have generally stemmed from - a good fitting corner capital in the Southeast, with enough space to use his traits maximally.
The prediction contest pretty heavily supported Catherine to win, believing she had the best combination of quality and quantity in the map. No other leader had much relevant victory support. While the Runner Up votes seemed murkier, a decent plurality believed Churchill was going to continue to cement his place alongside Mehmed, Charlie, and Mao as one of the kings of Second Place. Over half of the community favored the two most surrounded leaders for First To Die, either expressing concern over Suleiman's slow start or Stalin's general weaknesses as a leader. Fantasy wise, this was a season-making game for Lobster. With Darius one of ELEVEN already in the Wildcard, and Vicky looking like dead meat in a low peaceweight Playoff Game, she SORELY needed Cathy to do something for her team here. Meanwhile, Kuro and Vincarius, the two best candidates to be my primary fantasy challenger, had around 40 gold invested in this game. Otherwise, this was probably the final chance for Maniamuse to establish some sort of stake in the rest of the season, with his cheap Suleiman bid.
The key questions for this game, outside of religion as this game had zero Mysticism leaders, were as follows:
1) Can one of the central leaders establish a snowball, or will the center of the map devolve into a pointless bloodbath while one or more of the corner leaders peacefully develop?
2) Will starting wars or finishing them (that is, backstabbing or jumping in at the right time) win this game?
3) Is the map too large for a Domination finish, and moreover, were we going to have two Wildcard games this season? If even one non-top 2 finisher survives, we were going to split the Wildcard Game. With seven leaders and a large map, chances were, this season was going to last a week longer than typical, like in Season 8.
Suleiman opened his game with an EXTREMELY bold play, a Polytheism beeline that was sure to give him Islam. As someone who was firmly in the "Suleiman is screwed" camp, I viewed this as a risky move, as considering his strategic situation he needed to prioritize development and military over other distractions. With that said, the reward was equally as significant, as with not many natural allies in this game, Suleiman sorely needed religion to make friends here. With his future holy city ALREADY touching Imperial France and Rome, whose emperors each had a peaceweight difference of four, he needed to hope he could solidify some sort of friendship before border tensions provoked a catastrophically early war.
There were some other strange teching choices as well. Cathy, already feeling the heat of the curse of Sullla and the community favorite, opened with the Archery poison pill, while Augustus chose a Masonry opener to connect his capital Stone. Now, to be fair, this was a solid move as it gave his capital a high production tile for future Imperialistic settlers, and Auggie would later build an ultra-early Great Wall which meant he could expand with complete impunity as he was totally safe from any barbarian activity.
However, the strangest early tech choice came from an unexpected source: following a sound Agriculture research, STALIN BEELINED MEDITATION! HOLY CRAP, STALIN WAS NOT GOING TO DO HIS TRADEMARK ZERO CULTURE THING HERE! The Soviets had screwed themselves so much over the past few seasons with dubious tech pathing that one simple tech choice was enough to completely alter the outlook of this game. Who knows how strong this guy could be now? The guy had settled his second city near a grassland gems site, and he was going to have the quick start many thought he would have.
Thus, Suleiman founded Is- wait WHAT? CONFUCIANISM? It turns out, Stalin got to Meditation before Suleiman got to Polytheism, and swiped Islam right from Mr. Magnificent's nose!
Instead, it was Napoleon who was suffering from a lack of culture, settling his early cities in such a manner that all their good tiles were in the second ring! Lyons in particular was this game's resident Real Poverty Point, as until it popped borders, it was destined to remain stuck at size 1. There is a reason Creative is such a top tier trait, particularly for lower peaceweight leaders - just compare Cathy's city quality with that of Nappy!
While Stalin was doing a lot of good, including getting Stonehenge for further culture and a future shrine, some aspects of his early game were wonky to say the least. First, he sat with his 3rd settler for a bit too long, perhaps assuming he was still a seeded leader, and lost an important settling race to De Gaulle. No Joey, your petition to change your name to "Besarionis" for better alphabetical ordering has been denied. After eventually settling his 3rd city, Stalin for whatever reason began focusing more on wonders and Archers instead of expanding, and he was in danger of blowing his strong situation. Speaking of which, De Gaulle was having an impressive opening, doing a great job of expanding beyond his cramped corner with some aggressive settles.
50 turns had gone, and there was no clear frontrunner. Stalin had fallen back to earth through some poor expansion that would not have even flied in Civ5 (ultimately taking nearly 70 turns to found his 4th city when many of his rivals already had 7-8), Nappy was ignoring culture, Cathy had gotten off to a slow economic start due to bad research choices, and no other leader had done anything particularly remarkable. I'd say the only leader who was truly out of victory contention was Churchill, who already only had barren tundra left to settle. Nevertheless, these leaders were already on top of each other, and with everyone playing Twisters the map was a giant powder keg for conflict.
Nappy had Copper, and was plotting quite early, and he did have a golden target: the metalless Suleiman, who did not even have Mining yet. Time was definitely on the French emperor's side, assuming he chose the correct target:
And choose the correct target he did. Nappy launched the first war of the game on Turn 62, and it was against the Sick Man of Europe, who had a glorious army of Archers and Chariots defending the sanctity of Confucius. The Silly Man was about to research Bronze Working, but alas, he did not have Copper anywhere! He needed to whip out as many Archers as possible to save himself here.
BUT IN HIS SILLIEST MOVE TO DATE, THE SILLY MAN PUT HIS SUPPLY OF WHIPS TO THE COMPLETELY WRONG USE. Instead of desperately conscripting an army of Bowmen, he handed over the Ottoman supply of whips to his Chariot riders! Chariots get ZERO defensive bonuses - they do not even counter offensive Axes - and he had left the Confucian Holy City of Edirne defended by two Chariots and one Archer. Just like that, Edirne fell to the French Imperialists on TURN 72, and the only question now was how quickly would the Sick Man of Europe expire.
Nappy needed to kill Suleiman ASAP to get anything out of this war, however. The true winners of this early conflict were Cathy, De Gaulle, and Augustus, who had burgeoning empires and were about to establish themselves as the three leaders to watch for the rest of the game. Cathy had fully recovered from her slow economic start and done a good job killing the barb cities that had sprouted near her territory, while Augustus, despite a total lack of culture, was maximizing his Imperialistic trait and still had plenty of expansion room. However, it was De Gaulle who had truly aced his opening, cementing himself as the current front runner when one of his stray Warriors sniped a faraway barb city in the East. With that said, it seemed that one leader had FINALLY realized the urgency of his situation and woken up from his slumber...
STALIN donned his Nurse Joker mask, sending his own band of Swords, Axes and Spears to whisk the Sick Man away to the hospice ward. He seized Konya immediately upon entry into the war, destroyed the Ottoman Chariot counterattack, and soon enough he and Nappy had cleaned up the remainder of Suleiman's territory for the first pre-Turn 100 death in YEARS. There were many loud voices expressing concern about Suleiman's strategic and diplomatic situation, and at least in the livestream, the naysayers were proven correct. The Silly Man did not help his case at all, however, playing like he had bet on himself to be First To Die. With his setup, the guy sorely needed to prioritize production and military, but instead favored cultural and religious distractions. Moreover, having horses proved to be a fatal poison pill, as it caused him to build way too many Chariots on defense while also causing him to delay Iron Working for too long. This game was an embarrassing exclamation point to what has so far been an embarrassing AI Survivor career for this guy.
Speaking of breaking multi-season streaks, with the kill credit Stalin got his first point since Season 4, and that fact was befitting his newfound position of strength. Ten turns ago, he looked so dead in the water, holding just five cities in a central position with most of the world being Confucian instead of Islamic. The turns tabled immensely though, as Stalin had gained three extra cities from the war, had a real economic and cultural machine behind his empire, and quickly reversed the religious tide as well by converting Cathy to Islam, ultimately turning a 2:4 religious split into a 4:2 one. He was also beginning to rack up some extra religions, and there were some whispers that a Cultural victory was a possibility*. Napoleon, on the other hand, had failed to net enough value for the effort expended, held the second lowest score behind Churchill despite his conquests, and was increasingly irrelevant from a technological standpoint.
*This is not as outlandish as it sounds. Stalin has one cultural trait (Industrious), he does not have Theocracy favorite civic to cancel that out, and he likes to build wonders. With at least five holy cities he had a chance to consider that avenue. In fact, Stalin has a Turn 296 Cultural Victory in his track record (Season Four Game Eight), and multiple testers, myself included, have witnessed him go for culture once in a while.
Napoleon was not going to give up though. He built up an army at Bursa, and with it launched an attack on... STALIN?!? Perhaps it was revenge for ruining his game the previous season. Nappy truly had no chance; Stalin already had Elephants and Longbows while the French were yet to research Construction. The only point in his favor was with Stalin's more central terrain, the "attack Russia in winter" concern was somewhat mitigated. Nonetheless, the two unlikely religious leaders were clashing, and it seemed they would drag each other down while Cathy and De Gaulle continued to happily frolic away in their corners, especially considering Nappy was able to use the element of surprise to immediately seize Istanbul for himself.
However, Stalin was not alone. 13 city Cathy made her move, joining forces with her Russian comrade to take on Nappy together. With one foe being much larger and the other having a far more advanced army, the Imperialist French quickly collapsed like they did during their real life attempt to fight a land war in Asia. With that, Cathy had become the clear cut frontrunner with a gigantic score lead, also gaining the Confucian shrine that Nappy had so generously built for her right before his final stand. Stalin had also gained some nice territory, but for now he was a secondary contender. Nappy here had the game many thought Stalin would have; he ignored Mysticism for far too long, had a much weaker empire as a result, and then his subsequent copperdec, while somewhat successful, was not enough to overcome his economically weak opening, leaving him a dead man walking. We will see if, like in previous seasons, Alternate Histories prove him to be quite unlucky.
Concurrently with the final Napoleonic War, Churchill, desperate to convince everyone that he was not a total NPC, sicced his forces onto... THE ROMANS?!!!???? AUGUSTUS? HIS FELLOW HIGH PEACEWEIGHT? While Churchill was a weak and pathetic leader here, this was an abject disaster for Augustus. While he still had lots of expansion room in the Southern tundra, instead of settling and developing those cities he was now stuck expending hammers and wasting his Praetorian window on his only potential ally, who also happened to be a faraway leader with Protective / Charismatic Longbows. He was not just diplomatically isolated from a peaceweight perspective, as following Napoleon's exile from this game, Augustus was now the world's sole practitioner of Silly Confucianism. +1 Warmonger Respect was not remotely enough to help him diplomatically.
De Gaulle, who could literally only attack the Romans (he cannot plot at Pleased), came to help the English in a nebulous real world parallel right after Auggy had finally grinded through Hastings. With DG's help, Churchill hastily regained Hastings, and the Roman-French-English war generally stalemated. For a brief moment, the French pulled out, allowing Auggy to regain the upper hand and capture London, but then De Gaulle came in with fresh reinforcements which seemed likely to continue the stalemate... BUT THE SOVIETS HAD OTHER THOUGHTS. Stalin decided he truly hated those darn French, decreed that all fries were to be called Comrade Fries, and thrust a knife into De Gaulle's back! With the bulk of the French Republic Army off in the Northeast, Stalin had a 77-unit strong army ripping through the Parisian core. While the Soviets were just content to take a couple of border cities and then be handed Grenoble in the peace treaty, Stalin's opportunistic war had completely knocked yet another rival off of what had seemed like such a secure perch.
While DG was now crippled, this did not give the Romans a reprieve at all. The Tsarist Russians were immediately back on the warpath, attacking the only target they could: Augustus. She had over double the power, and despite Auggy's decent size, she in theory should have quickly run over the Romans. As I said though, in theory. Despite her overwhelming force, Cathy was undergoing some serious pathfinding issues, marching her troops in a circle in the middle of the Roman mainland! Making matters worse was that Cathy's orange color was ostensibly cursing her, as she was undergoing a special flavor of Willem Syndrome here, going for Democracy and Corporation over GUNPOWDER. There was absolutely zero reason for her to still be fighting with just Engineering Era troops when she easily could at least have Cuirassiers. It was no accident that her pathfinding issues were resolved once she finally teched Gunpowder and Rifling for Cossacks, and with Cossacks she quickly cleaned up all of Rome (amusingly razing Arpinium, which never got to grow past size 1). Augustus actually played a very good game, expanding well and building a promising looking Great Lighthouse based economy, but when Churchill uncharacteristically attacked him that was essentially curtains for him. Moreover, he got rather unlucky religiously, ending up with Confucianism in an Islamic world. This setup was just too much of an uphill battle for him.
As Augustus got torn to shreds, Stalin, who also had Cossacks of his own, returned to finish off what was left of De Gaulle while the French army was all the way in Rome. While De Gaulle was doing everything he could to avoid Rifling, they would not have saved him anyway, and Stalin quickly ended all traces of blue French existence in this map. Similar to Augustus, De Gaulle also played an excellent game, only to be undone by the general dynamics of the map. Unfortunately for him, Stalin caught quite a few lucky breaks to become a monster, and De Gaulle was left in a passive position due to his inability to plot at Pleased, against a religious comrade who could not care less about religious bonds. Nevertheless, this game came very close to a De Gaulle trip to the playoffs, and if he plays like this in the Alternate Histories he is sure to have some strong games.
Cathy had over half the map and should have easily been the game runaway. Except, the smaller Stalin actually had a technological stranglehold on this game! In fact, upon the demise of the French, THE SOVIETS ALREADY HAD FACTORIES AND TANKS. Despite her much larger size, Cathy's Cossacks stood absolutely zero chance, and she had to hope her larger size could help her outscale the Soviets. She had switched to Free Religion not long ago, meaning she was only cautious with Stalin, but she would actually lose the showdown under current conditions. (The Double Russia ticket was still firmly set in stone - the English had four ravaged cities to call their empire and had zero shot at any sort of backdoor 2nd.)
Except, Cathy was playing like a bourgeoisie counterrevolutionary... as SHE WAS DOING LITERALLY EVERYTHING SHE COULD TO AVOID ASSEMBLY LINE!!! Ladies and gentlemen, we have Willem Syndrome, we have Boudicca Personality Disorder, and this game has spawned the "Cathy Capitalist Decadence", where she was going RADIO, MEDICINE, FLIGHT, and ROCKETRY before Assembly Line! Despite her much larger size, Stalin was Factory-producing research to continue running away in tech! In particular, he had captured the Mausoleum of Maussellos from De Gaulle. Now, she was not a totally lost cause, as instead of sparking what would have been a disastrous Russian Civil War, she crossed Bolshevik lines to put an end to the English farce:
Seven turns later:
Just like that, we were going to have one massive 11 player Wildcard game! I have few words to say about Churchill - he played poorly from a poor start and that was that. Like Alex, the fraudulent Pool 1 leader ended up playing like a fraudulent Pool 1 leader.
While Cathy is an aggressive leader, with a 6.7 aggression rating it was not like she was totally insane. Stalin had a formidable nuclear arsenal and was absolutely FLYING through the tech tree, and the most notable event was Stalin being so devoted to the Proletariat Utopia that he defied a UN resolution to enforce global Environmentalism. Despite that, the German and the Georgian Russian leader remained cordial, and the game quickly ended with a Turn 325 Soviet Spaceship (Sullla's exact predicted date!), a very impressive teching performance considering the circumstances.
This was quite the rollercoaster for the Soviet dictator! He started off so well, and then completely forgot to expand to look irrelevant, then gained crucial cities from an early Suleiman dogpile, and then looked destined to be stuck in a forever war with Napoleon. But then Cathy made her move on Nappy, and Stalin combined a series of successful anti-French wars with an impressive teching display to claim his first victory in a long time. For those less familiar with Stalin's Season 3 and Season 4 successes, I encourage you to read or watch those games as they are a good demonstration of how Stalin can succeed. The thing is, Stalin is quite a poor early game leader, but when he gets going, he definitely has both the warmongering and building chops to become scary - a Turn 325 spaceship is a pretty darn good timing considering his tools, and he straight up outscaled someone 1.5x his size.
Cathy played a pretty disappointing game, and methinks she was more carried by her land than by her abilities here. In particular, she really fumbled her early and late games through some piss poor tech pathing. Early on, she failed to prioritize economic techs, which greatly put her behind the 8 ball, honestly for the entire game. De Gaulle, Stalin, and even Augustus consistently held a tech lead over her during their peaks. Later on, she not only avoided Gunpowder and Rifling for a while, but also, she completely neglected ASSEMBLY LINE to truly cement what was ultimately a choke.
Prediction contest wise, the winner was Packers5280, who had a nearly perfect prediction save for the finish date. Smart Random.org is still maintaining its lead though over us puny humans! Fantasy wise, I have a challenger! Vincarius the Victorious hit big on his Stalin gamble, and now has 20 points to my 21! Finally, a worthy opponent. I really like Joao's playoff position, and despite his Pacal disaster, he is in the thick of things. (It has helped that most of the large bids have not fared so well this season.) This was also a great game for Lobster, and if Darius can make it out of the 11 player wildcard she is definitely a darkhorse, even if Vicky looks diplomatically doomed in her playoff field (which, at least will be First to Die points).
This was not so great for Kuro, but he still has three leaders in the playoffs, which keeps him in the running. Vincarius, Kuro, Lobster, and I look like the four contenders. Jol Nar Binks only has Lizzy and Hammurabi and their positions do not look great. I am not sure Maniamuse has enough juice even with a best case scenario Wildcard outcome, especially since his leaders are not exactly known for getting kill credit points. Kjotleik DOES have Huayna, but with just four points that feels like too much catchup to do. LinkMarioSamus is the one contestant who could return to contention with a positive Wildcard outcome, I would say.
This has been an incredible Opening Round, and it feels like AI Survivor has been better than ever. The community seems to agree, with every game having over 320-330 entries! Great thanks for Sullla for putting in all the work to getting this competition running. With that said, it's time for our gargantuan 11 player Wildcard! With Justinian, Huayna, Hatty, and Monty amongst many others, it is going to be a wild one for sure! Which leader will withstand the raging barbarians and come out of this cornucopia? Tune in next week to find out!
