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. As a reminder, the Wildcard Game is the only match that takes place under Raging Barbarian conditions and it contains every leader who survived the opening round but did not advance with a Top Two finish. We start as always with an overview of the map, this time a double overview since the 11 civs (!) in this game required the use of a Huge map:
We've had requests in past seasons for an overview screenshot of the map with the resource icon turned on:
And then the southern half of the map with the same pair of screenshots:
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:
Hatshepsut of Egypt
Traits: Creative, Spiritual (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Agriculture, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Culture, Secondary Religion
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Organized Religion
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: Two wildcard eliminations, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 10
Total Medals: 0 First Places, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 0
Overall Power Ranking: 0 points, dead last place, 52nd out of 52 leaders
Personality: Hatshepsut is a top tier leader for a human and a poor leader for AI Survivor purposes. She has excellent traits in the double-cultural Creative/Spiritual combo and an amazing civ in Egypt with Agriculture/Wheel starting techs, the War Chariot unique unit, and the Obelisk that has incredible synergy with Hatshepsut's religion + culture emphasis. The problem comes in the form of Hatshepsut's AI personality which is little short of suicidal for these matches. While her aggression rating of 3.7 is not that much in the grand scheme of things, it is quite high when compared to many of her cultural peers and has gotten her into unnecessary early tussles that come back to bite her. She combines that with a high peace weight, and a dangerous combination of a low build unit preference (2/10) and a high wonder rating (8/10). The latter rating is the key difference between her and fellow culturemonger Gandhi who seems to defend himself more competently because he is not tying up all his cities on wonders in an all-out war. Furthermore, she emphasizes religion in her diplomacy, with a big shared faith bonus and a major differing religions malus. Hatshepsut favors Culture and Religion for her research flavors, neither of which tends to contain much in the way of units, and Hatshepsut often finds herself an era behind in military tech despite good overall research. She will typically find herself serving as the "worst enemy" of all the low peace weight leaders and overrun with invasions from hostile neighbors. Hatshepsut needs to either draw a field of high peace weight leaders or a sheltered starting position for her wacky gambits to succeed.
Past Performance: Hatty carries the ignominious distinction of being the only scoreless leader in AI Survivor, and at this point her stepson with mummy issues and her no good dirty rotten pig-stealing great-great-grandfather must have put a massive curse on her. She's never gotten a kill and has only survived to the finish in a mere three games, being relevant in just one. Some of this has been her own fault; her dogged pursuit of all things culture and religion related has not only hurt her militarily, but in extreme cases hurt her economy as she pursues Music and Divine Right beelines over Currency and Education. However, one must acknowledge that she's suffered some truly horrible luck across the competition's history. Her earlier seasons saw her stuck in positions that were central, surrounded by multiple hostile neighbors, or both. Things have taken a turn for the ridiculous in recent years: Season Seven saw her on the cusp of a cultural victory before she was taken out at the last minute by a runaway Montezuma, in what alternate histories showed was an exceptionally unlikely outcome caused by her best meatshield (Lizzy)'s poor handling of the barbarians. Meanwhile, she was in a top two spot for the entire game in her Season Eight opener, only to fall to third place on THE LAST INTERTURN OF THE GAME, and in her wildcard match, she missed out on her first kill credit due to turn order before once again getting defeated militarily when she was about to win by culture. This was particularly sad because she would have been a scary contender in the year of the high peaceweights. Sorry to kick a woman while she's down, but even the long-defunct Apostolic Palace has outscored her. To be fair, she's definitely not the worst leader in the competition, for she almost always starts well and does have a gameplan that is capable of delivering fast victories. However, it should be abundantly clear that she has serious military and diplomatic weaknesses that have so far prevented her from accomplishing anything.
Lincoln of America
Traits: Philosophical, Charismatic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Science, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Emancipation
Zealotry: Low
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 12
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place 
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 40th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: While not to the same degree as Gandhi, Lincoln is (very inaccurately from a historical standpoint) a hyper-pacifist through and through with an exceedingly low aggression rating (0.8/10). Unlike the Indian leader, however, he lacks the tools for this to be effective. Like most AI Lincoln doesn't use Philosophical properly, and with that being his only culture trait alongside his late-game focused Science and Growth research flavors, he lacks the cultural ace up his sleeve like Gandhi or Lizzy. The American civ with its uselessly late unique features does not help matters, but at least his starting techs are fine and the Charismatic American leader will rarely have difficulties growing and developing his cities. He will at least train an average number of units (4/10) and therefore doesn't collapse instantly when attacked. It all adds up to a mixed bag, as while he has been a surprisingly decent techer considering his complete lack of willingness to expand, whether peacefully or through more violent means, he just lacks the tools to fully optimize the Darius or Elizabeth playbook.
Past Performance: Lincoln has been a routinely unimpressive leader, scoring nearly all of his points in his debut. That was a mostly-friendly field where he smartly and atypically joined in on two separate dogpiles of some bad guys, then sat back with his cronies and coasted to a strong but unreplicable win. Outside of this game, he has largely served as fodder for the bullies of AI Survivor. Sometimes his lack of success has been beyond his control, of course - most notably in his Season Three opener, where he was a shoo-in for second place for ages until a runaway Mansa ran him over at the end of the game for no reason - but there's also been plenty of games with decent starts where his extreme passivity comes back to bit him. Most tellingly, he put up one of the worst defenses we've ever seen in his Season Seven, allowing a small-sized Carthaganian empire to quickly conquer his best cities without catapults and completely altering the course of the game in the process. While he finally returned to the playoffs off of an unlikely second-place finish in Season Eight, it's more than clear by now that Lincoln's complete inertia as a leader brings him to the bottom rung of AI Survivor leaders. To paraphrase JackRB, he frequently manages to disappoint despite already low expectations.
Sitting Bull of the Native Americans
Traits: Philosophical, Protective (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Environmentalism
Zealotry: Nonexistant
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, six opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 10
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 1
Overall Power Ranking: 8 points, 46th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Sitting Bull is stuck with the Philosophical and Protective traits; in other words, the two worst performing traits in the entirety of AI Survivor, although one can argue that Philosophical performs badly because it is foisted on leaders like Frederick, Lincoln, and, well, this guy. Sitting Bull also gets the terrible (for AI Survivor) Dog Soldier - the last thing a militaristic high peaceweight leader needs is weaker Axes - and the Totem Pole, which is like having double the Protective trait. At least he won't avoid Mysticism for ages on end and has above average starting techs, but his overall tools nevertheless leave much to be desired. As a personality, Sitting Bull is a series of absurd contradictions. He builds a lot of units (8/10), doesn't bother with wonders (0/10), and has Military and Growth research flavors. This all sounds like the makings of an aggressive leader in the vein of Ragnar or Alex, and yet, Sitting Bull has a lower than average aggression rating (4.3/10). He simply doesn't attack very often - he can't even plot at Pleased. He also has a high peace weight, preferring the likes of Gandhi and Elizabeth to Montezuma and Shaka. This, along with his traits, largely leads to an AI that constructs a strong military that he doesn't use, and a weak economy to boot, with Sitting Bull struggling to keep up in tech with even the rabid warmongers. It doesn't paint an impressive picture, and as a general rule Sitting Bull doesn't just start in a deep hole; he's unwilling to dig himself out. Even worse is that outside of his peaceweight, he has difficulties making friends in the harsh world of AI Survivor - he does not care at all about religion, he won't join coalitions, he doesn't get any warmonger respect ratings, and his favorite civic comes way too late to matter. Making matters worse is that Sitting Bull LOVES Espionage, and if he survives for a while, a humongous IF, he will often, erhm, poison his relationships with his peers. He is essentially the Karen of AI Survivor, demanding you stay out of his business while snooping into yours at the first possible opportunity. Most of the time, "Sitting Duck" usually just goes irrelevant, antagonizes everyone, and waits to be taken out of his misery.
Past Performance: Heavily armed pacifism has not proved a winning strategy in these games, and there's a legitimate case to be made that Sitting Bull is the worst leader in the entire competition. He's only finished off a single opponent in the course of eight seasons despite his militarism, and his two highlights are losing a space "race" to Frederick and an unusual Cultural win where he somehow steamrolled three more technologically advanced Financial leaders at the same time to claim his one victory (ok, that one was impressive). To be completely fair to the guy, he has gotten a pretty bad set of map draws, frequently surrounded by hostile foes that tear into and cripple him before he has the chance to do anything for himself. However, his performances when this hasn't happened haven't suggested that we've been missing out either, typically featuring... not much of anything. Even games where he starts strong tend to see him eventually fall behind maintaining a large army without properly leveraging his strength. His only good games so far have come together with Frederick, so the two leaders seem to have some bizarre synergy, but barring them starting on the same map, history suggests that neither is likely to accomplish anything of note.
Darius of Persia
Traits: Financial, Organized (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Hunting
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Growth
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Free Religion
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: Two Championship losses, two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 16
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 8 
Overall Power Ranking: 29 points, 11th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Darius has arguably the best pure economic traits in the game in Financial and Organized, two traits that provide both economic tempo and lategame scaling. While he's stuck with the poison pill Immortal and weak Apothecary, he also gets fantastic starting techs in Agriculture and Hunting, allowing him to improve his food resources quickly. He has Gold and Growth flavours, which means Darius should almost always be able to construct a good economy. He loves building wonders (8/10), and unlike many of the other peaceful leaders, he builds enough units to defend himself too (6/10). That's lucky, because he also has a high peace weight of 8, and will often be a target for attack from the more aggressive leaders. Lastly, Darius himself isn't necessarily going to build in peace, as he actually has an average aggression rating (5.2/10) and will claim more land by the sword if necessary. On paper, Darius probably has one of the best setups in the game; he's a peaceful leader with amazing economic traits, but he's also willing to defend himself and fight for more land.
Past Performance: Darius has been one of the most frustrating and disappointing leaders in AI Survivor. It's common to see him given a decent or even great starting position, only for him to completely forget to expand, fall flat, and get outscaled. Indeed, he often gets tied up on early wonder builds and can be prone to ignoring other sources of culture, leaving him with a pathetically small empire struggling to establish its borders after the crucial first 50 turns. At the same time, though, Darius is a seeded leader because one would have to try in order to fail with his package; his economic setup is legitimately great and allows him to be a dangerous techer even when playing from behind. Darius has had two really successful seasons, Four and Seven, which followed similar trajectories: he played strong games to get out to winning positions in his first two outings (while throwing away one of those wins in Season Four), only to get ganged up on a hostile Championship for an early exit. On the other hand, Seasons Six and Eight showed him at his worst, where he was blessed with excellent starting positions and diplomatic fields but just stagnated. Outings like these have made him fairly unpopular in the community, and the general consensus is that no leader is more undeserving of the Financial trait than Darius. Nevertheless, his traits are so good that you cannot count him out ever, and no one will be surprised if/when he continues to be a wrecking ball in prediction contests.
Roosevelt of America
Traits: Industrious, Organized (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Production, Secondary Gold
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Mercantilism
Zealotry: Low
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 11
Total Medals: 0 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 7 points, tied 47th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Roosevelt is a classic example of a peaceful builder that largely wants to stay out of conflicts. He has an economic trait pairing with Industrious and Organized. In human hands he is the single best leader for rushing the overpowered Great Lighthouse, but for the AI it lacks any of the top-tier benefits of Financial or Creative or Expansive. Roosevelt often tends to struggle with expansion since he lacks any traits or abilities to speed up his early game. The American civilization is doing him no favors here, with decent starting techs but unique features that both come far too late to ever be relevant. Roosevelt the AI is not very militaristic at all, with an aggression rating of 2.6/10 and a dangerously low train unit emphasis (2/10). Despite his Industrious trait, Roosevelt doesn't particularly emphasize wonder building (4/10) and prefers to focus on espionage spending (7/10). He also has little interest in religion and doesn't stack up much of a shared faith bonus or differing faiths penalty. Roosevelt has unusual tech preferences for his research, emphasizing Production and Gold flavors, and the expected high peace weight for a "good" leader - but he can attack at "Pleased" relations in a bit of a twist. Generally speaking what you see is what you get with Roosevelt. He's going to try and play the builder game but with militaristic tech preferences it is a tall task for him to succeed.
Past Performance: It appears Roosevelt took his uncle's advice of "speak softly and carry a big stick" a tad too literally. The American leader has proven to be one of the worst in the competition, never in eight seasons vying for a win or accomplishing anything of particular note. He tends to have a medium-to-small nation after the early game, and never does much of anything with it. A few conquests of weak neighbors (which have all failed to move him into a top-two position) and a second-place finish of the "everybody else was murdered" variety are the biggest achievements he has to his name. Even with more promising starts in recent seasons, he's come up short: Season Seven saw him given a very good starting location and the chance to finally make a name for himself, only to throw it all away on a stupidly early attack of a friendly neighbor, while he got out to a great landgrab in Season Eight before wasting his advantage on poorly chosen and executed wars, getting outscaled and eventually nuked into smithereens. Roosevelt is essentially Frederick with a better civ and slightly less suicidal tech preferences, but this still does not make for a good leader.
Huayna Capac of the Incans
Traits: Financial, Industrious (2 culture traits)
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Gold, Secondary Production
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Hereditary Rule
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: Season 2 champion, one Championship loss, three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, two opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 17
Total Medals: 8 First Places, 0 Second Places
Total Kills: 15
Overall Power Ranking: 55 points, 2nd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Huayna Capac is one of the strongest leaders in Civ4 and brings a frighteningly powerful total package to the competition. He has the always-excellent Financial trait, and while Industrious is typically weak, it still functions as a second culture trait to help Huayna win lightning quick victories. More importantly, Huayna Capac is the only leader who gets to take advantage of the overpowered Incan civilization, with the single best building in the game coming in the form of the "granary that also produces culture" Terrace. The infamous Quechua is also surprisingly useful for AI Survivor purposes, as the AI leaders can at times struggle with barbarian archers and this unit allows Huayna Capac to roll over them without issue. (Most importantly, Huayna will not attempt ill-advised Quechua rushes, a problem with some other super early unique units.) Huayna has the total package, as he holds outstanding economic abilities, a dangerous aggressive streak (an aggro rating of 6.7, plus of course he can plot at Pleased), and major diplomatic insulation stemming from his low peaceweight, his Hereditary Rule favorite civic, and +2 warmonger respect. His weaknesses are an excessive love of wonder-building (8/10), although he's better able to afford this thanks to the Industrious trait, and a heavy emphasis on religion. On the rare occasions where Huayna falters, it's due to tying up too many cities on wonders and/or getting stuck in destructive religious conflicts. More often than not though, Huayna Capac will found his own religion and use it to dominate the diplomacy while scoring every wonder on the map and running over a bunch of scrubs who can't keep up with his teching prowess.
Past Performance: Huayna Capac is an undisputed titan of AI Survivor, succeeding time and time again and in all sorts of ways. From crushing Domination snowballs - including the fastest victory of all time (Turn 252) - to being a tiny nation pulling a Cultural victory out of a hat (which was how he won his Season Two trophy), from taking perfect advantage of strong starts to coming back from poor starts, from converting the entire world to successfully warding off three enemy civs at the same time... this guy has done it all. As a result, he's averaged a win per season, and has double or more the wins of every single other leader save for fellow titan Mansa Musa. Huayna's only been killed in the opening round twice in eight games, as even his weaker performances have usually seen him slip by for another chance in the Wildcard. Now, with all that being said, Huayna is still an extremely fallible AI, and we've seen him fail in all sorts of ways, most recently getting run over early by Sitting Bull of all leaders in Season Eight. In fact, ever since a poor showing in the Season Six Championship Game, the Incan leader has had a cold spell, allowing Mansa Musa to eclipse him atop the AI Survivor all-time points leaderboard. Furthermore, he has lacked consistency in the playoffs with only two successful playoff round games in five appearances. Realistically though, while Huayna is far from invincible, he probably is the leader most likely to be our first repeat champion.
Tokugawa of Japan
Traits: Aggressive, Protective (0 culture traits)
Starting Techs:Fishing, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Flavors: Primary Science, Secondary Military
Warmonger Respect: +2
Base Attitude: -1
Favorite Civic: Mercantilism
Zealotry: Low
Past Finishes: Three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 13
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 15 points, tied 32nd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Tokugawa is infamous for being the most isolationist leader in Civ4. He won't sign Open Borders with anyone else unless relations warm up to "Pleased", and he generally refuses to trade or interact with anyone else unless they share a mutual military struggle. Tokugawa further suffers from one of the worst leader trait combinations in the game - who cares about a bunch of extra promotions when getting to a higher military tech 10 turns sooner is so much more valuable? He's also saddled with a below average civilization in Japan, with the nothing-special Samurai and the uselessly late Shale Plant. At least he starts with The Wheel, and for a warmonger with not particularly great economic tools that is a very good thing. Tokugawa's AI personality reflects his generally militaristic bent, with an above average aggression rating (7.3/10) and train unit emphasis. Tokugawa's best feature is probably his tech flavor, where he has the rare Science preference to go along with a lesser Military emphasis. This is likely the reason why Tokugawa has been somewhat decent at building an economy despite his atrocious leader traits. Long story short, this guy is basically an old man telling everyone to stay out of his yard while shaking a rolled-up newspaper.
Past Performance: Everyone thought Tokugawa would be a terrible AI Survivor leader, but he's pleasantly surprised the community - as it turns out, turning tech trading off is a major boon to him as it neutralizes the biggest weakness of his extreme isolationist personality. In fact, Tokugawa is near the middle of the power rankings, an okay-but-not-great warmonger who's seen modest success in the competition. His games have varied in quality: some have seen him given poor starting positions that he just was not equipped to get out of, while in others, he's able to expand to a respectable size and become a legitimate military threat in his own right. What's never happened is a true Tokugawa snowball; even though he's won one Domination victory, that was a match where he was mostly running even with multiple competitors, not pulling ahead until late in the game. While Toku is not as insanely aggressive as some warmongers and is a bit better at teching, his isolationist tendencies have come back to bite him in the past; any map where he starts in a central location seems to end poorly for him, with all three of his top-two finishes coming from starts off to the side. All in all, Toku is a scrappy fighter who's seen scattered successes here and there, but never put together any consistent runs.
Frederick of Germany
Traits: Philosophical, Organized (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Pure Production
Warmonger Respect: 0
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Universal Suffrage
Zealotry: Medium
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 11
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 40th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Frederick is yet another peaceful AI leader, albeit one lacking most of the tools necessary for that to be effective. His trait pairing of Philosophical and Organized, while excellent for a human, is lackluster for the AI because they don't know how to use the Philosophical trait and Deity bonuses (maintenance and building cost) greatly mute the effects of Organized. There's nothing here to help Frederick get off to a fast start and also little scaling. The Hunting/Mining combo is mediocre, and Germany's uniques are not only too late to matter but a terrible poison pill for Frederick and his pure Production tech flavor that can lead him to insane Rifling-avoidant beelines (I've seen the guy beeline Panzers, only to forget to tech Rifling and be unable to build Panzers) and undergo major Factory starvation. Frederick's AI ratings are generally average across the board, with scores of 4/10 in seemingly every category. He has a high peace weight, he doesn't train a lot of units (2/10), and he doesn't start many wars (4/10 aggression rating). He's generally a pretty boring AI overall, trying to pull off one of those pacifistic "sit in the corner and tech to a victory" strategies but with neither the traits, research priorities, nor civ choice to pull it off.
Past Performance: As it turns out, "hope to not get attacked and win a Turn 375 Spaceship victory after choking all my citizens to death with smog" is not a winning strategy. Frederick has the double whammy of being both incompetent and dull, scoring all of his points in merely two games while accomplishing nothing else in his other appearances. Occasionally he can be a decent meatshield, but that's all he's been good for. Even his two best games haven't been very impressive, both seeing him make gains in a single war but doing nothing else of note; he barely won a Turn 400 spaceship victory in one game, and then somehow lost to a Cultural victory from Sitting Bull of all leaders despite being a tech runaway with half the map under his control. Speaking of which, he advanced with the Sioux chief in both games and they're the only two games in which either leader has ever tasted success. As for his other games, he has suffered from some legitimately hopeless starts, being in central positions surrounded by enemies, but he's also had several serviceable starts that he simply failed to do anything with. To highlight two especially bad outings: in Season Seven, he completely tanked his economy with just five cities and rendered himself a dead man walking without any outside intervention, while his Season Eight playoff appearance saw him squander a triple gold start with multiple conquest opportunities, somehow still have a shot at advancing, only to blow a Championship spot through his patented Industrial starvation spurred on by his obsession with production at the expense of literally everything else. As it turns out, playing like Darius, fighting like Gandhi, and teching like Stalin will rarely if ever be a recipe for success.
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.
Justinian of Byzantium
Traits: Spiritual, Imperialistic (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs: The Wheel, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Religion, Secondary Military
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: +1
Favorite Civic: Theocracy
Zealotry: Extreme
Past Finishes: Season 1 champion, Season 3 runner up, two playoff round eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 5 First Places, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 12
Overall Power Ranking: 43 points, 3rd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Justinian is the Civ4 leader that best combines religious and military pursuits together into a dominant total package. Justinian benefits from a strong trait pairing in the Spiritual + Imperialistic combination, routinely securing a larger-than-average share of the available land while never losing Anarchy turns when switching religions and civics. He is tied to the Byzantine civilization, which has foolproof AI Survivor starting techs and perhaps the strongest unique unit in the game: the Cataphract. (For what it's worth, the Hippodrome is also quite strong.) Knights with Cuirassier-level strength are enough to win many games of their own accord and Justinian has put them to good use in many of his victories, even if he takes a while to research Guilds which do not correspond to his Religion + Military tech flavors. There's no question that Justinian is an aggressive leader who leans towards conquest, with a high aggression rating (7.6/10), heavy unit emphasis (8/10), and a moderately low peaceweight of 4. Unlike the game's most insane warmongers, however, Justinian largely limits his aggression to competitors outside of his religious bloc. He will strongly favor leaders who share his religion and hate those who don't. Justinian also will not plot war at "Pleased" relations, which is probably a good thing because it serves as the best of both worlds. If Justinian has many friends it usually means his religion has spread all over and he can run away economically with shrine income. If he has many enemies, well, they will usually all be crushed to death under Cataphract hooves.
Past Performance: Justinian was an AI Survivor megastar from its inception, winning the inaugural Championship before adding a Runner Up trophy two seasons later, making him one of two leaders to have two overall season medals. 7 placements and 9 kills in the first four seasons established him firmly as a top-tier leader, as he was important in game after game after game. Since the removal of the Apostalic Palace, a wonder that felt especially unfair when under Byzantine control, he has endured tougher times: he was felled in the Opening Round of Seasons 5-7 while only scoring one kill, one of the least successful seeded leaders in this stretch. In all fairness, Season Five saw him with a terrible start that was right in the middle of a guaranteed-to-be-a monster Alex, and Alternate Histories showed he was quite unlucky in Seasons 6-7. Indeed, he returned to form in Season Eight, winning a dominant victory from a mediocre starting position in the opening round, although a difficult diplomatic landscape in the playoffs stopped him from returning to the Championship - which he was, once again, proven quite unlucky to miss out on. Still, Justin is one of the few truly elite leaders in the competition, and any season could give him strong odds to reclaim his crown from the first season.
Saladin of Arabia
Traits: Spiritual, Protective (1 culture trait)
Starting Techs:Mysticism, The Wheel
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Flavors: Primary Military, Secondary Religion
Warmonger Respect: +1
Base Attitude: 0
Favorite Civic: Theocracy
Zealotry: High
Past Finishes: Season 7 runner up, one playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Games Played: 14
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 19 points, tied 47th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Saladin is one of several leaders that focuses on religion and military. It turns out the Arabian civilization is quite a bit better than initially thought for the AI, as Mysticism/Wheel automatically gives good ol' Sal two AI bottleneck techs while giving his Deity worker something to do if he pursues Meditation out the gate. Meanwhile, although the Camel Archer is pretty irrelevant in most cases, the early culture from the Madrassa can be quite useful. Spiritual is quite nice too. What really hamstrings Saladin is the Protective trait, and indeed he tends to be quite a slow starter as a result. Outside of his pious nature, most of his AI ratings are in the middle of the range of available values, such as his aggression rating (5.5/10) and peace weight (4) - indeed, he's one of the least aggressive of the religious nuts. This is a straightforward AI personality: he's essentially a more mild-mannered Justinian, someone who will try to defend himself and his allies from religious enemies much like his real life persona.
Past Performance: Saladin is a pretty solid AI who is probably a bit unlucky to have not scored more points than he has. By now he's logged quite a few games where he played solidly throughout and was close, only to either suffer a late conquest or else just barely get edged out for second place by somebody else. He might be budget-Justinian, but as he showed in his silver medal Season Seven campaign, budget-Justinian is as capable as any leader of achieving success. His most recent performance also saw him in a pole position at the midgame, only to suffer a brutal backstab from a religious ally at the worst possible time to fold and become First to Die. Saladin tends to perform quite competently, usually possessing a competitive empire after the landgrab, and has on multiple occasions won games simply by steering a steady course to prosper while his competition implodes. He's unlikely to race out to victory, but is there to take the win or second place when others mess up. Perhaps the biggest weakness we've seen from him, though, is that while he loves to found Islam, he has issues spreading it (or any other religion he ends up with) due to his slower starts. As a result, Saladin often finds himself in the role of the religious outcast, and this has gotten him into trouble several times in the past. If he can avoid that, though, he's quite capable of putting on a decent performance.
Here's what the community was thinking based on the prediction contest before the game took place:
The Wildcard game is significantly more difficult to predict than our normal contests. The combination of the Huge map size, the 11 participating combatants, and the Raging Barbarians all introduce chaotic elements that made the game fun to watch but hard to predict. With all of that said, there was still an overwhelming community favorite on this map in the form of Huayna Capac. The Incan leader somehow managed to draw just short of half of the winning votes in an 11 AI field which is one of the best indications of how the voting public feels about his strength as a leader. Justinian, Hatshepsut, and Darius were the next-most popular choices trailing far behind Huayna's lead. There was basically no conesnsus whatsoever in the Runner Up and First to Die categories, and then the big map caused Spaceship to be the runaway favorite for the victory type.
Finally, here are some of the best/craziest written predictions about what would take place during the game. There were many other excellent entries but I had to pick and choose my favorites to keep this from running on too long. Thanks again for the submissions!
GreenJacket: Darius, Sitting Bull, and Lincoln will possibly make contiguous detente against the scattered lpw leaders. Lincoln's more central position and his weaker circumstances will eventually lead him to floundering, I think his other two friends will be able to outlast the chaos and turn it to their advantage.
Blervis: There are a handful of competent leaders here. Justinian has nice land, and (unfortunately) a very juicy Hatty and Freddie to take a bite of first. Huayna is ok, but not as much. It's gonna be a shitshow, so I'll cast my lot with true Rome
SomethingAboutBears: I just want Hatty to actually score a point :(
Eauxps I. Fourgott: With Fred and Sitting Bull playing together again, can they work their magic once more, kill Monty early, and go from there to dominate the map and enrage the audience? Can Monty leverage the triple pigs start to go on a rampage and actually succeed for once? Can Justinian or Tokugawa beat the odds and overcome their horribly desert-y starts? Can Roosevelt run over his low peaceweight neighbors to assume a dominant position? Can Saladin hack a game-winning position out of his bountiful jungles? Can Huayna avoid dogpiles from his three peacenik neighbors and use the nearby stone, marble, and Industrious trait to build every wonder? Can Lincoln overcome the raging barbs to settle a ton of space around his capital and become a power player for once? Can Hatty finally break the curse, and use her strong start and War Chariots (for barb duty) to at last see the playoffs? Or will the sheltered Darius just do Financial/Alive things and win that way?
Syrinius: Way too open, so going with the safe picks for first and second, I think Justinian's starting spot will be underestimated by some and HC's starting spot is not that great unless he gets Great wall, but I think HC can still make it work. Picking diplo for wincon because it seems more feasible in a game with this many leaders and would be entertaining, even though spaceship is still more likely. I think hatty has good potential to lose a city to barbs, as do some of the jungle belt leaders. If the barbs play their game really well they could even claim their first kill credit and push Hatty to 53rd spot out of 52 leaders, so I'm rooting for that above all else!
danjuno: Despite how terrible he is in AI Survivor, I am honor-bound to pick FDR as he's my favorite. This probably requires him to lead the southern High PWs in a dogpile on Huayna. I had an FDR/Darius ticket in the opening around, so I guess I'll give him another go for second.
67SixSevenVIVIISeisSiete: Simple. The top 2 will be the Opening Game 6 and Opening Game 7 representatives, respectively. That means Monty, and Saladin (who wins out over fellow O7 representative Justinian due to having 7 letters in his name). FDR FTD because the 67 meme is one that will live in infamy. Not to mention, the Battle of Midway ended on none other than June 7th, and the Japanese are lurking. This lends itself to a Turn 267 Spaceship victory.
the_lord_admiral: It feels like I keep picking Hatty to score her first point and she keeps letting me down. But maybe, just maybe, this game will be different. Instant war chariots should let her handle the barbs and maybe take a couple free cities off them, and I don't see any neighbors likely to conquer her before she's built herself up economically (Ordinarily, Justinian would be a threat but his land is complete trash). Can she survive into the late game and do her culture thing? Let's find out.
NotSpamBot: We got some economic heavy weights here but the runt eco leaders have amazing starts for an eco game plan. Meanwhile for the warmongers they have wealthy and weakly held lands to conquer and start snowballing. So everyone has a path to victory... except Hathy, who is Cursed, and Sitting Bull, who exists primarily to tempt Monty away from the Path of Killing Frederick.
Newton: no idea tbh, I do like darius spaceship in a mostly peaceful field with a decent start for his civ. Monty first to die as he is most likely to get into wars, second place just a random guess but maybe its SBs time to shine.
Faded_Outline: Why on earth would anyone pick Sitting Bull to accomplish anything here? Raging barbarians. Both the normal ones and Monty, both of whom will be a pain in the rear but offer something for him to use the units he's going to be building anyway on in the early/midgame. Plus Frederick is present and the one distinguishing feature that leader has is being SB's mascot (Not going to help him sneak second place, mind you... the best Freddy can hope for is living through the competition). FTD seems like a close race between Hatshepsut and Montezuma, going to lean into the latter because it fits my hopes better. Picking Darius for second because I haven't yet learnt my lesson about voting his way.
AidanK: Huyana will fight barbs well, get land, beat his neighbors and go to space. Justinian will get his land, maybe Great Lighthouse again, and get in smart wars. Montezuma is going to wreck Sitting Bull.
blindeli: Can Hatty get a point here? Sure, she just needs to use her War Chariots to stop the barbarians, spread her religion to Justinian, hope that Frederick and Sitting Bull defeat Montezuma after a long stalemate, have Huayna Capac boxed in by other weak leaders, then build all the culture.... Yeah, I'm picking Huayna Capac for this one.
Dolwin: Strangely enough, I see Monty doing extremely well against raging barbs compared to his neighbors. Combine that with Elephants mid game, and he will jump out to enough of a lead that he can snowball. Sitting Bull and HC also do well against the barbs, with SB falling behind in tech eventually the way he always does. Freddie fails to protect himself enough to prevent early death, but that could be one of 4 or 5 FTD choices.
SIIN: Togu has weak neighbours, even more weaker through raging barbs, gets the religion of huayna and get dominant while conquering roosevelt and saladin. the north ist struggeling through barbs and a weak start position of justinian and get conquered by the south in the late game. Huayna makes a stupid mistake that puts him behind Darius, so that Darius will finish second and not huayna. Perhaps a settler lost to barbs or something like that.
Bernn: Is Sitting Bull the best leader here? Definitely not. Is there a good chance he stalls out and does nothing of note all game? Absolutely. But aside from these initial hurdles, it's hard for me not to root for the guy as a dark horse pick. His starting land's fantastic, Protective as a trait is genuinely helpful against raging barbs and he's right next to Montezuma which I think is actually a plus on this one. Conflict between the two is basically guaranteed and SB probably has the advantage. If he swallows up the Aztec land decently early (or perhaps splits it with Frederick) he'll be in a great position by virtue of simply having twice the land of anyone else. The allure of the Financial/Alive leaders is tempting, but I think both Darius and Huayna Capac are trap picks. Huayna's diplomatic situation is pretty dire and it'll be a miracle if he avoids getting dogpiled in the midgame and Darius has a mediocre start and struggles with expansion even at the best of times. I'm expecting a slow, surprisingly peaceful game where Sitting Bull slowly coasts to space.
BluesyCobalt: TOKUGAWA BANZAIIIIIII!!!
Agni Neres: For this huge world, the usual 'who starts with a gold mine' analysis is wholly insufficient to the task. The question is, whose traits will scale up to 20+ cities, and whose won't? Best are the ones that work on a national level: Financial, Organized, Spiritual, and (possibly) Charismatic. Darius has the first two of these and will win the game easily. Huayna has a chance at second place, but is surrounded by three high-peaceweight leaders he'll need to overcome. Roosevelt will have a good game, with his maintenance costs cut in half. Of the four spiritual leaders, Justinian is best; avoiding anarchy losses across a massive empire is priceless, and with all this land his Imperialistic trait will provide an additional early-game boost. The only charismatic leader is Lincoln; although an extra two happy citizens per city (assuming a monument) is nice, it won't be enough to overtake the leaders named above. While it's easy to predict the number of wars is higher than usual, I'm uncertain of the effect the additional 'Defensive Pact' opportunities will have on the total. And the end date? This will depend on how quickly the small fry are rolled into the empires. It's going to be a long afternoon, but well worth it!
Vesper: It'll be a great Aztec feast, with triple pigs AND an ivory, all being accessible from the get go, with plenty of room to expand and a tasty Fred next door (and a prickly Bull to serve as a sidekick until he'll be placed on the altar), finally allowing Montezuma to do a runaway start buffed by a conquest. However, others' starts happen to be similarly powerful, namely Hatshepsut's, with a ridiculously large floodplain valley, but I actively avoid naming her as first, as I'm probably the one who cursed her in Season 8 to not get the deserved win. (And she's a beautiful sacrifice, with all her culture) Huayna for second because he's religious and will likely convert (to) Monty and avoid his wrath early, with lately becoming a tech powerhouse as he is, yet I think Aztecs would conquer the world by then.
RefSteel: Unearthed from an ancient tomb: "Dearest Mummy, In recent weeks, much has been made of a curse upon a great Roman general with an extra L to his name. This is by design: It distracts from the true curse that has persisted from the beginning of Season 1. Do you wonder that after a strong start, you barely survived your first game this year while again scoring not a single point? Do you wonder that you face ten rivals in this wildcard game, with the field's biggest losers for allies and enemies as murderous as Zuma and as devastatingly powerful as Capac? Trust me, Mummy, this is no accident. Try what you can, you can't break my curse. You will never live down reigning wisely and well when I was a child and young man, for thwarting all my childish whims, for being a female Pharaoh to whom I, true Pharaoh of all Egypt, am compared unfavorably! I have ordered all your images removed from our monuments, and persuaded my son to do the same, and now that you find a second life in this competition, my curse follows you there as well! Am I a whiny child? Well, I have the power to curse you, whiny or not! So nah-nah-na-nah-nah! I remain, with all the devotion I can fit in a scarab's claw, your loving son, Thutmose III"
Dagoth Gares: My picking this season has been disastrous. May the entire field burn in fire, first by barbarians, and second by barbarians named Montezuma.
