One of the recurring features of past seasons of AI Survivor have been our "alternate histories", running additional iterations on the same maps to see if the same events would play out again. The Wildcard game proved to be very much a wild affair, with Hatshepsut nearly dying to barbarians before Sitting Bull ultimately prevailed over a field of 11 competitors. Was that something which would unfold in each game? This was a topic that called for more investigation with alternate history scenarios. Following the conclusion of previous seasons of AI Survivor, I had gone back and investigated some of the completed games and found that they tended to play out in the same patterns over and over again. While there was definitely some variation from game to game, and occasionally an unlikely outcome took place, for the most part the games were fairly predictable based on the personality of the AI leaders and the terrain of each particular map. Would we see the same patterns play out again and again on this particular map?
The original inspiration to run these alternate histories came from Wyatan. He decided to rerun the Season Four games 20 times each and publish the results. The objective in his words was twofold:
- See how random the prediction game actually is. There's a natural tendency when your predictions come true to go "See! Told you!", and on the contrary to dismiss the result as a mere fluke when things don't go the way you expected them to (pleading guilty there, Your Honour). Hopefully, with 20 iterations, we'll get a sense of how flukey the actual result was, and of how actually predictable each game was.
- Get a more accurate idea of each leader's performance. Over 6 seasons, we'll have a 75 game sample. That might seem a lot, but it's actually a very small sample, with each leader appearing 5-10 times only. With this much larger sample, we'll be able able to better gauge each leader's performance, in the specific context of each game. So if an AI is given a dud start, or really tough neighbours, it won't perform well. Which will only be an indication about the balance of that map, and not really about that AI's general performance. But conversely, by running the game 20 times, we'll get dumb luck out of the equation.
Wyatan did a fantastic job of putting together data for the Season Four games and since then we've continued to use the same general format. First we'll post the resulting data and then discuss some of the findings in more detail. Keep in mind that everything we discuss in these alternate histories is map-specific: it pertains to these leaders with these starting positions in this game. As Wyatan mentioned, an AI leader could be a powerful figure on this particular map while still being a weak leader in more general terms. This particular set of alternate histories were run by TheOneAndOnlyAtesh - many thanks for spending so much time on this task! 
Now on to the results:
Game One | Game Two | Game Three | Game Four | Game Five
Game Six | Game Seven | Game Eight | Game Nine | Game Ten
Game Eleven | Game Twelve | Game Thirteen | Game Fourteen | Game Fifteen
Game Sixteen | Game Seventeen | Game Eighteen | Game Nineteen | Game Twenty
(Note : "A" column tracks the number of war declarations initiated by the AI, "D" the number of times the AI is declared upon, "F" the points for finish ranking, and "K" the number of kills.)
TheOneAndOnlyAtesh: I was a little worried that this game would hold an incredibly static series of outcomes, as is often the case with large maps, but to my pleasant surprise, this turned out to be a shockingly open-ended setup, one where over half of these leaders had some tangible chance to make it out of this eleven player Raging Barbarians hellhole. With that said, however, there was still a stark contrast between the haves and have-nots, with the Western leaders combining for 75% of all wins and nearly every second place finish. Furthermore, Hatshepsut was the only competitive Eastern leader, and if you exclude her, a backdoor Saladin second place finish was the closest a leader in that section of the map came to finding success. So why was there such a geographical divide in success?
The best way to visualize the dynamics of this map is to split it into two separate games. Think of the Western Game as having Sitting Bull, Monty, Darius, Huayna, Frederick, and Lincoln, and the Eastern Game as having Tokugawa, FDR, Justin, Sal, Hatty, and one of Lincoln or Huayna, who could overlap in both games depending on how the winds blew. The biggest disparity amongst these two games was that of land quality. Putting it simply, while the West had rivers and resources, the East was dry and sparse, with most of its spots choked in some sort of barely hospitable terrain.
The Western Game can be further split into two subplots, with the eventual dissolution of Montezuma in the Northwest and the Inca coalition wars in the Southwest. Essentially, some leader in the Northwest, usually Sitting Bull, was probably going to kill Monty and coast to the playoffs off of two high quality empires worth of territory, and then Huayna and either Darius or Lincoln would have their own series of battles that would determine if they could also contend with the Northwestern superpower. Nevertheless, however, whether it was due to land quality or teching capabilities (as there were two Financial leaders alongside Lincoln who actually is a pretty good techer), this was the type of game that would end in some sort of Turn 310-350 economic victory, with the second place leader in this minigame being advanced and/or large enough to also finish second place in the wider contest. Imagine a setup like Opening 1 or Opening 4, except add 25-50 turns to the game length due to Raging Barbarians and the increased tech cost stemming from the Huge map size.
Conversely, the East was playing a much slower and more violent game, so destructive that its winner often had great difficulty keeping up with the West. Imagine, say, an 8-8 NFL team winning its horrible division, granting it the honor of facing a 13 win juggernaut in the playoffs. The one exception to this was Hatty, who was like those Tom Brady Patriots Dynasty teams who would run roughshod over their terrible division opponents year after year, mainly due to her high quality land:
Regarding the larger game dynamics, the primary role of the other Eastern leaders was to kill or cripple Hatty (and/or Huayna if need be) before she won. If one were to cut off the Eastern hemisphere and turn it into its own Opening Round Game, it would be something similar to Opening Round 6, a setup for a bunch of crazy leaders to brutalize each other, until either a Hatty/Gandhi/Izzy type managed to rise above the chaos to clutch an economic victory or a Tokugawa/Saladin/Brennus type limped to a Turn 350 or later Spaceship/Domination win. To further that analogy, FDR played a Game Six Bismarck-esque decoy role, either serving as a meatshield for more talented builders or dying horribly and setting up his conqueror's "snowball". It was pretty easy for FDR to die horribly, as he appeared to have the single worst setup and starting position for handling Raging Barbarians. Nevertheless, the Eastern game just could not compete with the Western game, not when one side was lucky to have industrialized at the same time as the other had nukes and were building spaceship parts.
Hatty, if intact, was more than strong enough to compete with the West, the same was not true for whichever other leader "won" the East. There were multiple instances where a leader like Tokugawa, or Saladin, or FDR, would be the second largest remaining nation on Turn 300 in either territory or population, yet only be fourth or fifth in score due to being that far behind in tech. Moreover, there was little hope to move up the leaderboard as the top leaders were holding hands in a lovefest and could dogpile the Eastern leader whenever they so wished. Even more tragic were the games where they were second in score, but a leader won without being top in score (usually by culture, but there were a couple of games where a leader won space that way), leaving the East still locked out of the playoffs. Many, many things had to go right for a non-Egyptian Eastern leader to make the playoffs, and, as will be discussed later, many, many, MANY things did indeed go right for Justin, who did not even so much as sniff a top two finish in the replays.
Of course, with how large this map was, Raging Barbarians had a significant impact on these games, as a typical game would see 2-3 leaders irreversibly behind the curve due to bad barbarian luck, while their neighbors reaped the benefits. Some regions, namely the West Coast, were far safer from the barbarians than others, and it was no accident that Sitting Bull and Darius were amongst the best performing in this map. In general, the Western spots were more sheltered than the Eastern ones, yet another factor explaining the major difference in results between hemispheres. While I have run enough Wildcard Alternate Histories to be confident in stating that The Great Wall's hype does not match its actual importance, as most of the time it would be built when the Barbarian Era was in its twilight stages (and in most instances the real defense to raging barbs for these guys was getting units better than Warriors plus effective fogbusting), but there were a couple of instances where a leader utilized that wonder to great effect, particularly Huayna. Also, it was an immense joy watching Fumblin' Freddie die to the barbarians in Game 5:
Overall, these were long, grindy games, and it was definitely quite the marathon running twenty games from this gargantuan map. Not only was this not the most inspiring group of techers, but also, two of the more talented economic leaders had a frustrating tendency to switch up the cultural slider at ill-advised moments, Kublai Khan Season 4 Championship style, and a few playoff spots were either blown or nearly blown in such a manner. These were pretty violent games, with even the peaceniks surprisingly willing to throw hands at each other. Good thing the Apostolic Palace was not present, as I ran an unofficial Season 2 Wildcard Game Alternate Histories, which also had 11 contestants, and I ended up with a few games with 30-40 wars! That would have been exhausting to keep up with. Even without the Apostolic Palace, religion still played a major role in these games, but that aspect is best explored in the individual leader summaries. On that segue:
Sitting Bull of the Native Americans
Wars Declared: 31
Wars Declared Upon: 26
Survival Percentage: 90%
Finishes: 4 Firsts, 8 Seconds (36 points)
Kills: 18
Overall Score: 54 points
We have seen a lot of Standing Bull as of late, enough so that you cannot really say he is a bottom of the barrel leader. He's still definitively below average in overall capabilities, as I will soon make apparent, but one can absolutely concoct a scenario like this one where he can be the strongest leader on a map, a statement you cannot say about true bottomfeeders like Monty and Foolish Freddie. With that said, there were many, many factors working in favor of the Sioux. For one, they have a setup uniquely situated to handle Raging Barbs, combining the Protective trait with the Archer-boosting Totem Pole alongside a resourceless Axe for further easy barb defense. It was not like Sitting Bull needed those tools anyways, as he was extremely sheltered from the barbs, Monty in particular serving as a useful punching bag to hide behind, ironically. Moreover, his starting territory was absolutely gorgeous:
The Sioux had rivers galore, an immediately improvable wet corn, multiple safe backline spots, and zero "Real Poverty Points" - and huey boy, the real Poverty Point was the complete opposite of its moniker, being situated in the most prime flood plains region in the map. Then there was Monty, who was more than happy to Leeroy Jenkins themselves straight into Sitting Bull's arms (which also patched up the Sioux leader's greatest weakness, his penchant for maintaining a massive army that he would never use), and to boot Monty's land was also extremely high quality, further compounding Sitting Bull's advantages. The cherry on top was his diplomatic situation, considering he was a high peaceweight on a map practically rigged in favor of the high peaceweight club. I must also give credit to Sitting Bull's military capabilities, as the guy proved to be an excellent fighter when he put his mind to it. Particularly noteworthy was his willingness to even betray his own allies when it suited him, and quite a few games saw him cement a top two spot by running over one of his high peaceweight neighbors in the lategame. He only died twice, both extremely late amidst two strong Huayna performances.
On the whole, however, his results were quite disappointing. Seriously, being handed a playoff spot on a silver platter like that, a 60% playoff advancement rate is way too low considering all this. With Huayna, Hatshepsut, and Financial Darius in this game, some second place finishes are forgivable, but only four wins? A more competent economic leader would have done a lot better. In fact, Sitting Bull's economic failures caused him to blow multiple easy wins, particularly through some atrocious tech pathing. I counted at least two games (6, 12) that he blew due to some truly horrible endgame tech choices, where he would Stealth poison pill himself, save expensive spaceship techs like Fusion for last, and then watch another leader sneak past him and win instead. Considering his circumstances, this was a so-so performance from Sitting Bull, one where he ultimately failed to maximize his start's immense potential. Sitting Bull should have been the most dominant leader here, not merely settling for the most consistent.
Poverty Point of Order Award: Losing Poverty Point in Game 6 to the barbarians, only to nevertheless become a world power anyway and nearly win, ultimately coming in second place and advancing to the playoffs.
Chronically Online Chud Award: Losing the space race to Lincoln in Game 12 despite having built the Internet.
MontyBullma Award: Foolishly trying to backstab Darius in Game 2... getting himself into a Defensive Pact triggered 4v1 and throwing away 2nd place as a result.
Hatshepsut of Egypt
Wars Declared: 21
Wars Declared Upon: 46
Survival Percentage: 65%
Finishes: 5 Firsts, 2 Seconds (29 points)
Kills: 12
Overall Score: 41 points
Darius of Persia
Wars Declared: 35
Wars Declared Upon: 20
Survival Percentage: 80%
Finishes: 4 Firsts, 4 Seconds (28 points)
Kills: 10
Overall Score: 38 points
Huayna Capac of the Incas
Wars Declared: 36
Wars Declared Upon: 47
Survival Percentage: 40%
Finishes: 4 Firsts, 2 Seconds (24 points)
Kills: 10
Overall Score: 34 points
Following Sitting Bull were the three Jeckyll-and-Hyde leaders: Hatty, Huayna, and Darius, who each had 20-25% odds to emerge victorious, the same as the Sioux, but who were less likely to be strong enough to advance when not winning. Sometimes, they would still be strong, or even nearly win, but another leader, almost always Sitting Bull, would conquer his way up the leaderboard to lock them out.
However, these three had issues that made it difficult to find consistency. Huayna had poor global diplomacy, which got him suckered into the second most defensive wars of any leader. Furthermore, he often failed his early games by going too wonder crazy and getting outexpanded, and his economy was shockingly mediocre by his own standards. To be fair, good diplomacy is pretty important for building a good economy, as more friends means more income from trade routes, more resource trades for happier and healthier cities, and fewer destructive wars. Making matters worse for the Inca was that his would-be allies were essentially useless, either being saddled with horrific starts (Justin, Saladin), dying way too easily to allow a likely enemy to grow strong (Monty), or being a caricature of a bitter and angry boomer (Tokugawa). The fact he had these results in a glorified 1v6 situation shows why Huayna is widely considered AI Survivor's top talent. To borrow an oft-used analogy in this world, Huayna played the role of Austria in Avalon Hill's Diplomacy, either winning/nearly winning or dying. Less excusable was how often Huayna seemed to struggle with Raging Barbarians. I was pretty gobsmacked at how incompetent he was in that regard. YOU HAVE QUECHUAS. How could you ever lose core cities to the barbarians multiple times?!? There were times where Huayna made me wonder if his inherent strength comes moreso from his overpowered tools - being Financial, double-cultured, and Inca - rather than an innate winning personality.
Hatty, meanwhile, had poor local diplomacy, so bad her war counter made her look like she was on the wrong peaceweight alignment. She also struggled the most with the barbarians of the Fab Four, although she never replicated her "nearly dying to barbs" disaster from the livestream. (Poor Hatty. You really are cursed.) If it was not dogpiles or death by a thousand cuts, her failures came in a manner we are all familiar with: ignoring military techs in favor of cultural distractions, allowing backwards leaders to wreck her militarily.
The two H leaders were also overly-reliant on religious gameplay, and were typically also-rans if they failed to found an early religion. Religion did have positive tradeoffs, as is often the case, as these two were the best at leveraging a religion to grow strong, their best games seeing them run away militarily off of religious dogpiles or economically off of a highly profitable shrine. I was especially impressed by Hatty's fighting; there were a couple of games where she leveraged her War Chariots to take most of Byzantium and become unstoppable from there, and it typically took a coordinated effort from the low peaceweights to bring her down through fighting. These two were also well positioned to take advantage of barbarian disasters, Huayna especially benefitting from his neighbor FDR's worst games.
Darius' biggest issue, meanwhile, was being Darius, as he could just fail to expand or secure early culture and spend the rest of the game fighting fruitless wars or going irrelevant. He also had the toughest neighbor situation from a military standpoint, either having to fight cross-map to find easy targets or having to challenge either Sitting Bull or Huayna. With that said, however, sometimes he served as a mini-Sitting Bull, finding a way to run over his low peaceweight neighbor and secure a top two spot from there. Of the three boom-or-bust leaders, Darius was the most infuriating, sometimes having moments of brilliance, but other times looking like one of the worst leaders in the competition. Overall, however, the Fab Four were the heart and soul of this set, and watching them compete made this set as a whole highly entertaining despite its length. I truly believe they had equal chances to emerge victorious, both from their rather similar scores here, as well as multiple games in which some combination of these four were neck-and-neck and one leader won with another only a few turns away from victory themselves.
Yer A Warmonger, Hatty Award: Having a stunning 4 kill victory in Game 17, starting with her best War Chariot rush on Justinian. To be fair, one of those kills was sniped, but still.
Deja Vu Award: Like in his Opening Round game, Darius nearly missed out on a top 2 spot in Game 13 when his spaceship was en route yet an Egyptian leader won a culture victory.
Huayna Caput Award:
Frederick of Germany
Wars Declared: 41
Wars Declared Upon: 17
Survival Percentage: 85%
Finishes: 1 First, 2 Seconds (9 points)
Kills: 14
Overall Score: 23 points
Following the Jeckyll-and-Hyde tier were two middling leaders, Lincoln and Freddie, who tended to play more supporting roles for bigger and better players. While they had decent starts, their central positions left them more exposed to the barbarians due to having multiple flanks to cover, and their general personality defects often proved costly, their most frequent outcome being to survive while watching more dynamic leaders advance. With that said, they each had three games where they expanded and/or conquered particularly well and managed to become power players, alongside one First To Die result each that stemmed from barbarian catastrophes (including Freddie Farquaad ACTUALLY DYING TO THEM.)
Frederick Flop continued to show why he is a punching bag in AI Survivor. I am shocked that my opinion of him could have sunk even lower, but my god, was this guy a despicable coward. Frederick had one style of play: allow other leaders to do the dirty work before swooping in against a civ so weak it had adopted the Pacifism civic and swiping away the kill credit. The guy had 14 kills stemming from 41 wars, and so many of them were undeserved. He was the basketball center who camps at the basket to get easy defensive rebounds. He was the runner who jumps in at the 25 mile marker and claims he ran the marathon. As a Philadelphia Eagles fan, during our 2024 Super Bowl year we had a guy who tried to steal interceptions away from other players; Frederick was the AI Survivor equivalent. Occasionally he ended up taking most of the Aztec lands, leveraging that to a top two finish. In Game 20, when he actually played like a real leader instead of a parasitic vulture, he even managed to win! In light of his dishonorable play, may this bozo forever starve his cities out of contention with insane Industrialism beelines, and may he one day find himself dying to the barbarians like he did in one of my replays. Sullla, can I petition you to have this leader expunged from AI Survivor?
Unsportsmanlike Conduct Award: Frederick Fraud had possibly the most pathetic triple kill game I have ever witnessed in Game 12, where this loser sniped every kill by entering wars at the last minute against dying civs.
Sitting Bull Award: Getting backstabbed out of second place contention in Game 16 by Sitting Bull due to spy shenanigans.
Lincoln of America
Wars Declared: 35
Wars Declared Upon: 35
Survival Percentage: 50%
Finishes: 2 Firsts, 2 Seconds (14 points)
Kills: 7
Overall Score: 21 points
Lincoln was both far more interesting and impressive than his Prussian counterpart, and I would say he overperformed from what turned out to be a rough position. His North was choked in a jungly breeding ground for barbarians, he was surrounded on multiple sides by strong or hostile leaders, and he was also a favored target for cross map wars by the Eastern fanatics. With that said, Lincoln usually tried his best, declaring a high number of wars (especially high considering that he has the lowest aggression of all the non-Gandhi leaders and was also attacked quite frequently) in an attempt to make something of his position. The most important decision Lincoln could make was the location of his second city. Put Philly north, towards the jungle, and his game was pretty much over, as his second city would become a barbarian magnet and Huayna would have more room than usual. Those games saw him either dead or a non-factor. Put Philly South towards Huayna and a flood plains region, however, and he had a good chance at becoming competitive, as it weakened his most dangerous neighbor, was much more strategically protected from barbarians, and also was just a stronger early city.
Furthermore, he had a capital copper resource that solved the barbarian problem and greatly aided his expansion, and he won two games by expanding peacefully to over a dozen cities and leveraging that to establish an eventual tech lead, including an impressive catchup effort in Game 12. He could also take advantage of a dogpile on Huayna to claim second place, including Game 13 where he TIED WITH DARIUS. Lincoln would have dominated from Sitting Bull's spot.
Civil War Award:
Dr. Strangelove Award: In Game 9, Lincoln NUKED HIMSELF to destroy Tokugawa's army and win the 2nd place showdown that way.
Saladin of Arabia
Wars Declared: 40
Wars Declared Upon: 21
Survival Percentage: 70%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 1 Second (2 points)
Kills: 9
Overall Score: 11 points
There is a steep dropoff from the previous tier to the next two, as while the middle duo still had a decent shot at success, these two had flimsy runner up odds at best, to say nothing of winning. While they were successful enough on the military end and had quite a few games where they were legitimate world powers, strong enough to be a candidate for UN Secretary General, their land quality and distance from the main action ensured they would be unable to compete technologically with the West. Both leaders definitely had longshot odds to sneak into second place, nearly doing so a few times, only for, say, a leader to win by culture from third place (or Sitting Bull in once case winning space in that manner), or to fall so behind in tech that they remain in the middle of the scoreboard despite being top two in land size due to lacking hundreds of score points that come from researching techs. Saladin managed to do so once in an official replay, while Tokugawa managed to get second place in an extra game I ran where I put Mansa Musa in Sitting Bull's spot. Based on my eye test, I would say they had similar, <5% chances at advancing into the playoffs. Otherwise, the vast majority of their points came from kills, often on Hatty; the best way to some of this map overall was that Hatty would win unless Sal or Toku did something about her.
With that said, they both had slightly different issues on the map. Saladin's available territory just had WAY too much jungle, and for a leader already prone to slow starts he just fell behind too much dealing with the consequences of a jungle-choked start in a huge Raging Barbs map. He never Hannibalized himself, as he had an acceptable non-jungle second city spot to his south and starting with Mysticism gave him a failsafe from such disasters (as leaders are much more likely to build Monuments instead of Settlers in their second city), but this was not the map to have to wait until Iron Working to be able to develop one's empire. In fact, some of Saladin's worst games, including the livestream and his one First To Die performance, saw his production issues get so ugly that Tokugawa would REX a million cities in his face like a Civ5 AI and completely crowd the Arabs out. Making matters worse: Saladin had immense difficulty founding a religion. I will elaborate more on this issue in Justinian's section, but the gist of it was that Saladin rarely had his own faith, and without his primary win condition, was rendered pretty ineffective. He was noticeably stronger with his own religion, however, either making or nearly making the playoffs in every instance where he researched Meditation or Polytheism first.
No One Is Buying Your Dubai Chocolate Award:
Tokugawa of Japan
Wars Declared: 41
Wars Declared Upon: 48
Survival Percentage: 50%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 0 Seconds (0 points)
Kills: 10
Overall Score: 10 points
Tokugawa, on the other hand, just had a personality incompatible with success in an eleven-player buildfest. His xenophobic nature ensured he would have difficulty getting along with even his low peaceweight peers, and with zero trade routes going into his territory alongside a total lack of economic traits, he would inevitably fall catastrophically behind in tech. He was great at expansion, had an easy snack in his barb-ravaged Western neighbor, and was so effective at fighting that he could often hold his own even when two eras behind in military tech, but eventually his enemies would have tanks and planes and the house of cards would collapse. He was the stereotype of a boomer hoarder waving his shotgun around and screaming about those damn hippies while the rest of the world moved on, or even decided to silence his ramblings. If he would just Open Borders like a normal person, he would have been a more viable contender. Instead, his former Samurai-turned-Riflemen found themselves subject to nuclear annihilation to a shocking extent. In many ways, Tokugawa was like an extension of the Raging Barbarians, another brutal yet hostile NPC that the other ten leaders had to contend with.
Wang Kon Award: Toku, despite being middle of the pack in score, was Sitting Bull's UN Diplomatic Victory opponent in Game 7, mainly because he was so behind in tech that he was the only large empire who had not industrialized and thus starved his cities. This allowed SB to win Diplo, while also locking Fearful Freddie out of the playoffs when he was about to build the Internet and be in contention for the win.
Too Much Even For Willem Award:
Justinian of Byzantium
Wars Declared: 46
Wars Declared Upon: 17
Survival Percentage: 50%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 0 Seconds (0 points)
Kills: 4
Overall Score: 4 points
Immediately after the Wildcard map was released, the Discord instantly came to a consensus that Justinian was completely screwed by his atrocious land. The one exception was me, but I was just coping for Fantasy reasons. Deep down, I knew Justin had possibly rolled the worst starting position of not just this game, but this season (and possibly in AI Survivor's history). It was entirely reasonable to view his livestream success as a total fluke, considering it stemmed from his neighbor Hatshepsut nearly disintegrating to Raging Barbarians in a manner she rarely came close to replicating, and indeed the Alternate Histories proved this and then some.
Justin's streak of good luck in the Actual Game started at the very beginning: he founded a religion! He rarely managed to found one in the replays, with even leaders like Sitting Bull and Lincoln more likely to have their own faith. In fact, many games saw Justin attempt to found one, only to get one-turned by Monty or HC. Sometimes he would attempt the other religion, only to get beat to that by, say, Hatty or Sitting Bull. Turn order certainly did not help, as since Justin came from Game 7, he was near the bottom in turn order (this was also an issue for Saladin). However, the REAL reason Justin struggled was...
I mean, that's truly horrific. It even misses the oasis for crucial commerce! (Although having the oasis in his first ring did not really help.) The only way Justin could get his own religion was to research one of the first two uncontested, which was a rare scenario with four Mysticism starters on this map. Even with a religion, however, Justin was a complete non-entity, because his land was that bad. It was surrounded by desert and tundra, had little access to rivers, and almost no food or production. The only thing his spot had was space, but with Raging Barbarians, having lots of space, especially of this quality, was not a good thing. Most games saw two outcomes for Justin: either he adopted the popular religion and then chilled out in his corner doing nothing save for the occasional cross-map crusade, or he tried to break out of his corner and ended up getting conquered. Even sadder were the games where Hatshepsut, a leader not very well known for her military prowess, solo-conquered him, sometimes with War Chariots, and I am pretty shocked Justin was never First To Die. No matter what, Justin NEVER came close to advancing from this game, and he truly won the lottery in the live. It really felt like the AI Survivor gods took pity on Justinian, who has been one of the unluckiest leaders in the modern era of AI Survivor, and allowed him to escape an untenable starting position in a turning of the tables.
Wang Kon Award: Throughout these games, Justin would troll his supposed ally Saladin by sniping potential Arab conquests for himself when they were attacking the same target. This cost Saladin at least one second place finish, most notably in Game 11.
LCSullla of the Barbarian State
Wars Declared: 220
Wars Declared Upon: 0
Survival Percentage: 0%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 0 Seconds (0 points)
Kills: 1
Overall Score: 1 point
I am not kidding when I say this: the barbarians had a far more respectable performance than quite a few of these jokers, and if given traits, uniques, and some economic heft they might have scored in the top half. They for sure were better at fighting than Monty, and better at building than FDR and Tokugawa!
Roosevelt of America
Wars Declared: 20
Wars Declared Upon: 39
Survival Percentage: 40%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 0 Seconds (0 points)
Kills: 0
Overall Score: 0 points
It is kind of a farce that FDR scored zero points here, as he had quite a few near-kills and did come close to securing a playoff spot a couple of times, but ultimately FDR was given an awful hand here, and I am not sure any leader could have succeeded from his spot. He had one of the worst starting positions on the map when it came to Raging Barbarians due to a combination of a Raging Barbarian factory to his south and his neighbor Huayna often building the Great Wall to keep more barbarians funnelled towards Eastern America. Making matters worse was that he often settled his second city near that tundra, one that drew barbarians like flies to honey.
In fact, FDR came very close to dying to the barbarians multiple times, and was utterly crippled by Turn 100 like he was in the live. The black barbarians, however, were the least of his troubles. If he was able to withstand them, he had another, even worse apocalypse to deal with: the red barbarians. Those pesky Japanese supersoldiers had one direction to go, and in game after game they ruthlessly butchered poor FDR over and over again. FDR might be a bottom tier AI Survivor leader, but this was just a dud starting position.
Weeboo Award: Uncharacteristically allying Tokugawa in Game 6 through a mutual conquest of Saladin. Seriously, the two loved each other. And then, FDR, through a Defensive Pact, intervened on his Japanese BFF's behalf... only to end up at war with three leaders due to their own Defensive Pacts, and to get himself nuked out of contention.
Reptilian Globalists Award: Getting denied a likely kill in Game 13 due to a UN Stop the War resolution.
Montezuma of the Aztecs
Wars Declared: 22
Wars Declared Upon: 52
Survival Percentage: 5%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 0 Seconds (0 points)
Kills: 0
Overall Score: 0 points
The offensive to defensive war ratio, a shocking one for a crazed warmonger, says it all. With how OP Sitting Bull's start was, no low peaceweight would have been able to handle this, and while Monty tried his best, he was probably going to die between Turns 150-200. Really, his biggest impact was if he died too quickly and allowed Sitting Bull to run away with the game, or if he held on, stalled the Sioux, and gave other leaders a chance. I am surprised he even survived one game. In Game 4, Sitting Bull completely flubbed his early attack for whatever reason, a stronger than typical Justinian took care of Freddie for the Aztecs, and then Huayna rode to Monty's rescue when Sitting Bull came back for what would have been a knockout punch. That was the high watermark of Monty's set, however.
It is rare when the livestream turns out to be BOTH a typical game and a bonkers outlier at the same time. Sitting Bull indeed did have an overpowered setup that guaranteed him an easy game, and his strength in the livestream was very much replicable. However, Justinian getting that second playoff spot was positively ludicrous, a result he never came close to replicating, and I am confident I could run 100 more games and he still would not advance the playoffs, that is how awful his spot was. So what the heck happened in the live that caused Justin to pull a Hammurabi-esque miracle?
Simply put, there was a total implosion amongst the other non-Sioux leaders. Hatshepsut nearly died to the barbarians. Frederick and FDR were still struggling with Raging Barbarians at the unacceptably late Turn 100. Lincoln and Darius were just awful in every aspect, failing to expand and having early games that would have led to irrelevancy even under regular settings. Huayna was completely incompetent on the military end, failing to conquer his far weaker neighbors and falling behind in tech. Saladin also had a bottom tier performance, one so bad he was nearly First To Die in the actual game. With Tokugawa being the only other leader playing up to snuff, and his personality being incompatible with an eleven player buildfest, Justin essentially got the second playoff spot through process of elimination. To sum it up, the livestream was the 1 in a bajillion game where nearly every single leader crapped the bed, allowing the Byzantines to get insanely lucky from an unviable starting position. Honestly, I am fine with this. These games are more entertaining when leaders like Justin succeed instead of clowns like Darius Dunce and Frederick Failure.
A final point that I wanted to make: there is a reason one of the first buffs given to the AIs as difficulty levels are increased is to grant them Archery: these leaders by-and-large are pretty hopeless with just Warriors to defend themselves. They either turtle up too much and let their entire empire get pillaged, or they panic, throw bodies at the invading barbarians, and leave their cities perilously undefended. For a high level Immortal or Deity player, Raging Barbarians probably makes the game easier due to the AIs total incompetence at barbarian management.
Click the link above to read full summaries of each individual game!
