Civ4 AI Survivor Season 7: Game Eight Preview

Past Performance: While Charlemagne has one of the shorter personality sections, the past performance of the Season Four Champion is a real doozy. Charlie achieved literally nothing in the first two Seasons of AI Survivor, and looked to be just another stupid religious leader. In Season Three, that didn't change much, as his only real achievement was throwing away a certain victory in the last minute of Game Seven, before dying quickly in the playoffs. However, everything changed in Season Four. In his opening game, Charlemagne played a solid, if not spectacular, game which largely involved him riding Justinian's coattails on the right side of a religious coalition. The playoff game was the closest thing Charlemagne had to an actual dominant game, where he scored three kills following an extremely early conquest of Suryavarman. Even then, he only won because game-leader Darius decided to pursue a faraway cultural victory instead of, you know, win the game. Then, in the Championship, Charlemagne won even less deservedly, as he spent most of the game in third or fourth place before runaway Kublai Khan did the exact same thing as Darius! That's right, both of Charlie's victories, including the Championship, weren't from actually playing the game well; they were from other, better AIs screwing up even worse! Needless to say, Charlemagne has been one of the less popular leaders among the viewers. Sullla thought that this guy was a total fraud and doubted that he would be able to repeat his flukish Season Four result... only for Charlemagne to have a pair of strong second place finishes and return to the Season Five Championship game. The Holy Roman leader has had too many good outings at this point to dismiss his performance as pure coincidence; Charlemagne has to be considered an above-average leader for AI Survivor purposes even if he has been on the lucky side in many of these games.

Unseeded Leaders

Genghis Khan Temujin of the Mongols
Traits: Aggressive, Imperialistic
Starting Techs: Hunting, Wheel
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: No First or Second Place Finishes
Best Finish: Wildcard Round: Seasons One and Five
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 5 points, tied 45th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Temujin is a comically over-aggressive leader who routinely self-destructs with ill-advised military ventures. His Imperialistic trait is good for expansion but the pairing with Aggressive carries no economic benefits at all, leaving Temujin to crash his economy in game after game. The great khan is routinely one of the most technologically backwards leaders, inevitably causing him to flame out and lose to more advanced neighbors in the later stages of each match. The Mongolian civ is well above average thanks to the Keshik and Ger unique items, and Kublai Khan has been able to use them to good effect in his appearances. However, Genghis Khan is fatally undercut by his obsession with all things involving war. He has an exceedingly high aggression rating (9.5/10), he builds tons of units (8/10), he will demand tribute constantly (10/10), and he has the lowest peace weight in the game. Temujin only has a single flavor for his tech research, Military, and he'll go to great lengths to beeline Military Science for his grenadiers while still lacking Aesthetics. This is not a complicated leader to understand: Temujin is going to attack his neighbors early and often.

Past Performance: Like many of the other obsessive warmongers, Temujin has also struggled in his AI Survivor history. His most impressive performance came in Season One where he was handed an unfairly weak starting position and managed to survive against adversity into the Wildcard game. This was the Mongol leader at his best, churning out endless units to keep himself alive in the wake of repeated invasions. However, Temujin was never close to competing for a win in that game, and he's never been in contention in any of his other games either. The Wildcard game from Season One served as a perfect example of Temujin's self-destructive tendencies, as he picked a fight with a much stronger Zara Yacob and found himself booted out of the competition. The same result played out repeatedly in the following seasons, with Temujin attacking his neighbors again and again, stunting his economic development through endless wars, only to be rolled up and eliminated sometime towards the end of each game. The Mongol leader amusingly killed both Persias in his opening round game of Season Five but still couldn't do better than another Wildcard appearance. Mindless aggression rarely works well in the long run, and Temujin only has five kills to his name despite all of those many invasions.

Louis XIV of France
Traits: Creative, Industrious
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: 2 Second Place Finishes
Best Finish: Playoff Round: Seasons Three and Five
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 8 points, tied 33rd place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Louis XIV has a strange AI personality that mixes together a heavy emphasis on wonders together with military aggression. It's not a winning combination. Louis has the Creative and Industrious pairing of traits, a setup that's good for claiming land and then developing cities upwards with additional infrastructure. He also gets to benefit from the strong French civilization, with its excellent starting techs and the useful Musketeer unique unit. However, Louis largely wastes these positive features with a destructive AI personality that pulls in too many directions at once. He's obsessed with building wonders, sporting the rare 10/10 rating in that category, and too often ties up his cities on world wonders with questionable benefits. Louis also has a Culture flavor for his research and tends to spend a lot of time at the top of the tech tree grabbing stuff along the Aesthetics line. These are poor choices for a leader who also has a Military tech flavor, a fairly high aggression rating (6.3/10), and a very low peace weight. Louis tends to make for a bad neighbor as his borders are always intruding on the other empires and he demands tribute constantly (8/10). Needless to say, the guy who likes to pick fights with his rivals while simultaneously locking up his cities on long wonder builds hasn't had a ton of success to date.

Past Performance: Louis has managed a pair of second place finishes thus far while being surprisingly competitive in many of his appearances. His true performance level is likely stronger than what these numbers suggest. With that said, Louis was quickly eliminated in each of the first two seasons of AI Survivor without serving as much more than a speedbump. And in both of his runner-up finishes, he was an extremely distant finisher with less than half of the score of a runaway Justinian (Season Three) and Suryavarman (Season Five). However, Louis was leading his Season Three playoff game for much of the match before running afoul of a distastrous two-front war against Caesar and Kublai, and he was similarly the leader for the first 200 turns of his opening round game in Season Four. Louis probably would have won that contest if Wang Kon hadn't built the Statue of Zeus to troll him in their lengthy war. He was also extremely strong in the alternate histories for his Season Six games without experiencing the same results in the actual matches. In other words, it's clear that there's some potential here even if Louis has a bizarre personality pulling at culture + military cross-purposes.

Napoleon of France
Traits: Charismatic, Organized
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: 1 Second Place Finish
Best Finish: Playoff Round: Season Six
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 8 points, tied 33rd place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Napoleon is a deeply militaristic leader who will emphasize unit production over everything else. His traits are a bit of a mismatch for this setup, and it's unfortunate that he doesn't have the Aggresive trait given how many units that Napoleon churns out. Organized is a misplaced trait for this guy's personality. France is a great civ choice as usual, with excellent starting techs and a useful unique unit in the Musketeer. Napoleon himself has a one-track mind as an AI leader: he loves to start new wars (9.1/10 aggression rating), he will train oodles of units (10/10), and he has the lowest peace weight possible to cause him to hate the "Good" leaders. Napoleon doesn't care about religion and he doesn't waste time building wonders. He does make for an obnoxious neighbor since he will constantly be demanding tribute (10/10) and civics changes (8/10). It should come as no surprise that Napoleon has Military as his primary research flavor along with a lesser Gold emphasis, and of course he will plot war at "Pleased" relations. Overall then Napoleon is pretty similar to Shaka and Ragnar and Boudica, if somewhat less memorable than any of those rivals.

Past Performance: Napoleon has stirred up plenty of trouble in his prior AI Survivor appearances but without having much in the way of success. Prior to Season Six, Napoleon had the most kills without ever taking a first or second place finish, something that's pretty hard to accomplish. The winning leaders usually monopolize the eliminations in each game and for a weaker individual like Napoleon to score several kills is an impressive feat. On the other hand, Napoleon has appeared in eight total games of AI Survivor and found himself getting eliminated in five of them without ever coming close to taking home a victory. He repeatedly crashes his economy with excessive warring only to be taken out by more advanced empires that have reached superior levels of military technology. Napoleon is therefore another example of the "suicidally aggressive" club that approaches every problem by hitting it with an axe. Like Genghis Khan and Montezuma, he's simply too militaristic for his own good. That's not to say that Napoleon can't have a successful game if he manages to snowball ahead off of an early conquest, only that he needs the right conditions to avoid flaming out with pointless invasions. He was honestly unlucky in Season Six, crushing the alternate histories for his opening round games before submitting a less-impressive second place finish in the actual tournament. Most of the time, however, Napoleon remains far too aggressive for his own good.

Ramesses II of Egypt
Traits: Industrious, Spiritual
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: 1 Second Place Finish
Best Finish: Playoff Round: Season Three
Total Kills: 0
Overall Power Ranking: 2 points, tied 49th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Ramesses is best summarized as a peaceful leader who loves to build wonders. His traits are well suited for this, with the Industrious trait granting additional production for wonders and Spiritual serving as a useful all-around development trait. The AI loves to waste turns in Anarchy flipping civics and it helps save them from their own follies. Ramesses is further helped by the presence of the powerful Egyptian civilization, which has excellent starting techs along with one of the game's best unique units in the form of the War Chariot. Unfortunately the whole is less than the sum of its parts as far as Ramesses is concerned, as his traits and AI personality contribute to one of the worst expansion rates in the competition. Ramesses is so busy building his wonders (10/10) that he forgets to train units (2/10) and struggles to get settlers out on the map to claim territory. He's helped here by a peace weight in the middle of the spectrum to prevent him from being quite as much of a sitting duck as Hatshepsut but the low aggression rating on Ramesses (3.7/10) makes it unlikely that he'll be able to snowball ahead from conquering territory. Ramesses also heavily emphasizes religion, strongly favoring his religious compatriots and disliking his rivals. With his Culture and Production tech flavors, he's another leader who's likely to found a religion despite not starting with Mysticism tech. Only in the rare situation where Ramesses is somehow able to acquire additional territory does he start to become a threat to win the game. His wonder-heavy gameplan simply doesn't work very well for AI Survivor purposes.

Past Performance: Ramesses has been one of the worst-performing leaders in AI Survivor, with zero kills to his name and frequent early eliminations. He was the First to Die in the first ever game of AI Survivor and things generally haven't improved a lot since then. Season Two was going a bit better for Ramesses until he picked a fight with Mansa Musa and was knocked out the competition for his impunity. Season Four's opening round game had an unfortunate field of mostly low peace weight leaders and that meant another First to Die outing for Ramesses. Only in Season Three did he have one solid game, stunning everyone who expected an early demise by triumphing over Ragnar and riding that conquest to a second place finish. This had less to do with Ramesses and more to do with Ragnar inexplicably deciding to attack his low peace weight neighbor Stalin, an invasion which was unusually suicidal even for Ragnar. Order was restored in the playoff round as Ramesses once again suffered an early exit. It was back to the usual grind in Season Five and Season Six as Ramesses failed to expand properly and suffered more early defeats. He's appeared in seven total matches and suffered six eliminations without ever managing a kill, not exactly a successful track record from past years.

Washington of America
Traits: Charismatic, Expansive
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: 1 First Place Finish, 1 Second Place Finish
Best Finish: Championship Game: Season Five
Total Kills: 1
Overall Power Ranking: 8 points, tied 33rd place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Washington has a pacifistic AI personality combined with traits that lend themselves towards combat, leaving him stuck in an ineffectual spot that has achieved little to date. He has the combination of Expansive and Charismatic leader traits, a setup that theoretically leads to highly promoted units and faster expansion through cheap workers and granaries. Unfortunately Washington's personality is designed to play a peaceful builder game, and these traits simply aren't as useful as what other economy-focused leaders get to play around with. Extra happiness and health in each city is OK and all that but they're nowhere near as good as being Financial or getting the free culture from Creative or the free civic swaps from Spiritual. Washington certainly isn't helped by hauling around the American civilization, with its incredibly late-arriving unique features and only decent starting techs. Washington the AI has a low aggression rating (4.3/10), a high peace weight, and won't declare war at "Pleased" relations. He doesn't make many demands and typically acts as a great neighbor aside from a penchant for espionage spending (7/10). However, Washington inexplicably has Military and Growth tech preferences, causing him to prioritize military techs that he won't use and ignore development-focused research. It's a bizarre tech prioritization system that badly undercuts his performance. When combined with mediocre traits and the weak American civilization, it's easy to understand why Washington has struggled in past seasons.

Past Performance: Washington has a record of failure in AI Survivor, much like the early stages of his real-life military career. Washington was repeatedly eliminated without ever scoring a single kill or coming close to taking home a victory... right up until he found the perfect starting position in the playoffs of Season Five. His previous best showings were two appearances in the Wildcard game during Season One and Season Three, both times following sluggish "sit in the corner and do nothing" opening round games. Washington was eliminated in both of those Wildcard matches despite the generally low level of competition that prevails in them, as well as being eliminated in his opening round matches in Season Two and Season Four. Washington's Season Four appearance was typical of his past showings, with a decent early game but with no efforts to increase American territory by snowballing ahead through conquest, leading inevitably to being swallowed up by a rampaging Huayna Capac later on. Washington's breakthrough in Season Five involved a distant second place finish in the opening round followed by a shocking win in the playoffs, largely thanks to having a beautiful capital city and lots of good fortune in terms of how the diplomacy shook out. He was First to Die in the Season Five Championship though and First to Die in his opening round game for Season Six, a sign of what happened when Washington's luck ran out. This leader favors a passive style of gameplay and his associated leader traits and civilization simply aren't strong enough to win via that route unless everything lines up perfectly.

Here's what the community was thinking based on the prediction contest before the game took place:

Based on exactly 100 submissions, the community was unsurprisingly picking Huayna Capac as the favorite to win. The Incan leader has been the all-time most successful leader from past seasons and always has a real shot to take the victory in any game where he appears. Louis was the only other leader to attract some support followed by distant dark horse candidates in Charlemagne and Napoleon. There was absolutely no consensus whatsoever on the Runner Up slot, with the community divided five different ways, before the First to Die category broke down into a split between Ramesses and Washington. There wasn't much faith in the high peace weight leaders on this map. Victory preference was for Spaceship over Domination, with surprisingly few Cultural votes given the popularity of Huayna Capac to be the winner.

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!

Mooaddict: HC has space to expand and relatively weak neighbors so his expansion to win is inevitable. Napoleon is close to both Washington and Ramesses which leads to border tension early and war against Napoleon for sure, but all three are lacking nearby copper which makes war delayed quite a bit. If Washington get the copper in north of his starting before HC gets it, then he can defend, if not I expect him to die fast. There is copper south of Napoleon which he will get, but Ramesses has horses and his UU is perfect against axes. That makes Washington soft target for Napoleon. In east Genghis and Charlemagne eventually clash and I have no idea which can win so I expect it to be war that doesn't really progress very well for either. If Genghis goes after Ramesses instead Ramesses is toast. I expect him to be toast anyway between Genghis and Napoleon but not as fast as Washington. Only way Ramesses can survive is that he kills Napoleon fast and consumes his land so that he has time to turn around and defend against Genghis. I don't expect that to happen and two-front war is impossible to defend. All civs have iron somewhat near and probably gets it, but I don't think this goes to iron working before we see first war.

Smosism: Burguer King and Mongol King slowing each other down as Huayna Capac tech to another universe.

Diplomatic Toku: So Capac will be a HUGE favorite, therefor he is out for me. Genghis will probably attack Ramses early with that copper and maybe he has some succes, but in the end his land does not support good teching, plus he is Genghis, so yeah. Napoleon could dogpile on Ramses, but i think he will attack Washington and drag them both down. So i really only have Charlie and Loius to choose from. So im going with the burgerking, because of how much room he has and its also good land. Loius for second is risky, but he is a notorius backstabber, so he could absolutely attack Capac more then once.

kcostell: Will Louis move west and box Huyana in, or east to challenge Charlemagne's control of that juicy open area between them? Will HC grab that juicy gold tile, or demonstrate the silliness so many other seeded leaders have this season? My kingdom for a screenshot 1 turn further on in the game so I could see where all those settlers were going before making my prediction!

Duizhang_Lu: As much as first seeds have not been doing well this season, I think our boy Huayna has a good shot on this map. Fertile start with copper, space in the north to settle, expansion option in Washington nearby as well as neighbors he’s not too inclined to like, I think he has a good chance of snowballing to a victory. I reckon Charley’s most likely for number 2 because he’s the least likely to pick a stupid fight with Huayna

the_lord_admiral: Washington and Ramesses are going to get eaten alive. My gut tells me I should pick Huayna as one of the chief beneficiaries of this, but I just don't like his starting land enough. Going to go with the Burger King since I think he'll have time to build a large empire and advance technologically before all the warmongers carve up the other empires.

Dagoth Gares: There's one Incan, and the rest of the field (including the pool 2 leader) is a bunch of jobbers. Let's not overthink this.

Tincuradan: So far, I haven't scored very well when believing in the power of friendship, while I've gotten pretty lucky when rooting for evil runaway warmongers. For the latter, the obvious pick would be Napoleon. (Genghis will crash his econ too bad and doesn't even have horses for keshiks). Still, I see only one soft target for him in Rammy, and then he doesn't even end up with that much land. Then he's in the thunderdome with four neighbors who like to build units and tech military. On side of friendship however, HC and Louis have similar peaceweights, shared fave civics and probably both Louis' religion. Louis loves to declare war at Cautious, but if HC can get him to pleased, then he is probably shielded from the rest of the chaos. For long enough that is.

ZincAlloy: Welcome to the neighbourhood Ramesses! Your new neighbours Napoleon and Temujin can't wait to kill... I mean meet you. Oh man, Egypt is so doomed. And once Ramesses goes down Washington and Charlemange are soon to follow. But which of the low peace weights will win it? Huayna's land is okayish and he's got a reasonable chance of grabbing that gold, but he's next to Louis, King of the Backstabbers who's got the best capital on the map. Napoleon's in the best position to snowball off two weak neighbours. And Genghis Khan is here too. I think the Incans have the best shot, but anything could happen this season. Wouldn't even be surprised to see a longshot Mongolian diplomatic win.

BledDest: Washington has three low PW leaders (including Huayna Capac) very close to him and ready to dogpile him. That's why I picked him for the first place spot - this is how this season works.

Plains-Cow: YOU get a plains-cow tile, and YOU get a plains-cow tile, and.... hmmm, I feel like this has already been said before. Anyways, Genghis saw the HUGE SUCCESS of his namesake's plains-cow start, so he's decided to duplicate the ritual in the attempt to seize victory. Unfortunately, rather than make only one plains-cow tile to rule them all, he's made too many, risking the value of his own plains-cow start. Also, since BURGER NEED COW, I assume that Charlie will flip out over all the beef available around the world and seek second place as a result of his restaurant madness. Ramesses FTD because he's too busy smacking hams in his capital to do anything even close to game winning. Unless he gets....nah, he can't. Or WILL he...? Oh yeah, and space because all these plains-cow tiles are OUTTA THIS WORLD!

ManiaMuse: This game is going to be an absolute bloodbath and probably the truest anologue to the real Survivor TV series. There are no permanent friends in this setup and there will be constant warring, brutal dogpiles, backstabbing and all sorts of shenanigans that will probably cause Sulla to start ranting during the livestream.

BigBlueBen: This world is about to look very French. Both have gold starts which should get them out of the early game in good shape (and start with wheel so they don't Fredrick themselves). Napoleon doesn't have copper or even iron that's certain to be settled before he reaches iron working, so he might be able to follow the more sane Monty strat of waiting a bit to declare with overwhelming force (did I really just right that sentence, this season is so weird!) I think Louis is in better shape though, he has a ton of land and free border pops as well. Louis is also in position to dog-pile on whoever Ghengis wastes an army against. I just don't think HC has enough land to stay ahead and besides, pool 1 leaders haven't been doing so well.

eyser: I have been excited for this game, as when I first saw this map I really do think Napoleon has this one. Napoleon and Alex are both underestimated AIs, and both are better than Caesar now that AIs don't start with deity starting techs. Additionally Napoleon has 2 neighbors he can bully and defeat here along with a good starting location. He is going to use power to crush his enemies and take the victory. Ramesses is actually also an underestimated AI but his start here is horrible and he is definitely most likely first to die. For second Louis and Charlemagne are good choices, but I lean towards Charlemagne with that isolation. He will either get 2nd or die right at the end

danjuro: I've agonized between Louis and Burger King for a while, but Charlie's roomy start is kinda ruined by the amount of jungle, and his PW is higher than Louis, which is painting a target on his back once Rammy and Washington are out. Louis is boxing in the main threat, has a low peaceweight to avoid drawing attention, and a good start. Napoleon has a good position to go rip Washington and Rammy apart, but doesn't have the economy to go the distance, So I'll pick him second. Even with Washington in the game, I think Rammy is too tempting a target to pass up for Nappy and GK.

Schmun: It's got to be my boy HC, this is such a weak field otherwise. Not much to say about this one, it's probably one of the weakest fields I've seen in a game of AI survivor so if HC is taken out of the running by circumstance it really could be anyone's game. Choosing Louis for 2nd just because his start is too good. Rameses probably is FTD, there's just too much aggression around him.

SirSystemError: This has been a season of the top seeds failing and the underdogs breaking through. I mean, Monty went on the run last game. Given that and with shoutouts to old cartoons, here is an illustration what I think is going to happen:

Game Eight Picking Contest Entry Form