Civ4 AI Survivor Season 8: Leader Previews

Past Performance: Charlemagne is the controversial champion of Season Four, where he secured two straight game wins in the same fashion: watching the game leader throw away the victory on a distant Cultural attempt, allowing him to slowly win a Spaceship victory (and the entire season title) from a second-place position. Whether this is funny or frustrating depends on the viewer. Charlemagne then went on to secure a long-term position as a seeded leader by returning to the Season Five Championship off a pair of actual second-place finishes. Outside of those two seasons, he's mostly been hounded with wars from an early date and accomplished little; his most notable achievement is somehow losing what should have been an easy Space victory in his Season Three opener, coming in Second Place instead. Overall, he's established himself as a decent second-place kind of leader when diplomacy is favorable, but is perhaps the least likely of the former champions to repeat the feat.

Churchill of England
Traits: Charismatic, Protective
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Season 6 runner-up, one additional Championship loss, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 4 Second Places
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 16 points, tied 25th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Churchill has arguably the second-worst trait pairing in the game, with the below-average Charismatic and the terrible Protective. His English civilization is much nicer though, with the powerful Redcoat and Stock Exchange, which might help to make up for his traits. Lastly, he starts with Fishing and Mining, a weak pairing unless his capital is on the coast. Churchill is a little interesting in the sense that he has a low score in basically every category. He doesn't build a lot of wonders (2/10) or units (4/10). He doesn't demand tribute (1/10) and he has a pretty low aggression rating (4.3/10) too. In fact, the only thing this guy does is spend espionage (7/10); that's literally the only number above a 5/10 in his personality. He also has a neutral peace weight, so Churchill is fair game for attack from the good or evil leaders. Lastly, his flavours are Military and Gold. It all makes for an uninteresting personality that's more likely to sit in a corner plotting than anything else.

Past Performance: Churchill was just another nobody with zero accomplishments to his name, until he made everybody sit up and take notice in the past two seasons. His Season Six opener saw him shockingly win against an entirely low-peaceweight field, thanks to a fantastic starting position and the fact that nobody attacked him early on. He then followed this up with a streak of four consecutive second-place finishes across two seasons, including scoring both kills of the Season Six Championship! Now, to be fair, it took him five seasons of failure to reach this point, alternate histories have indicated that multiple of these results were rather unlikely, and Churchill hasn't actually come close to winning a second game; he's proven quite weak in the early game in particular. But he's proven to be quite dangerous in the later game, if left alone until that point, and if the map looks favorable, he should absolutely be kept in mind as a candidate for Second Place.

Cyrus of Persia
Traits: Charismatic, Imperialistic
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Hunting
Peace Weight: 3
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Season 2 runner-up, one additional Championship loss, one playoff round elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 5 Second Places
Total Kills: 9
Overall Power Ranking: 24 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Cyrus has Charismatic and Imperialistic for his traits, with Imperialistic being so good that it makes this a pretty good combination. There's also some synergy there, as Charismatic happiness is a bigger deal with more cities to use it in. He gets the notably less useful Immortal and Apothecary unique items, but he has very good starting techs with Agriculture and Hunting; Cyrus will quickly be able to improve basically any food resource he has. Cyrus has a pretty high aggression rating (7/10), builds a fair number of units (6/10) and loves wonders (8/10); this guy does it all. He cares an average amount about religion (big bonus for sharing, small malus for difference), and his flavours are Military and Growth. It creates the image of another of the snowball leaders, and Cyrus' game plan seems to be building a lot of cities with Imperialistic, getting them tall with Charismatic and his Growth flavour, and then crushing a neighbour or two once he has an advantage in food and production.

Past Performance: Cyrus's AI Survivor career got off to a promising start: after a decent Season One performance that got him a playoff spot, he had a fantastic Season Two, putting out three strong performances and falling just seven turns short of being the champion! He's had a considerably rougher time since then, though, dying in the opening round in four of the past five seasons. He temporarily held onto his spot as a seeded leader in Season Six, his best season in years where he returned to the Championship off a pair of Second Place finishes, but he finished the final game in a distant third, and a failed attempt to bump off the game leader in his Season Seven opener resulted in him losing his seeded position for the first time. Don't be fooled by his rocky history or the solitary win, though - while he's had a tough time finding lasting success, Cyrus is almost always a major player in his games, and it's very rare for him to simply be an irrelevant also-ran

Darius of Persia
Traits: Financial, Organized
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Hunting
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Two Championship losses, two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, two opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 8
Overall Power Ranking: 29 points, 10th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Darius has arguably the best pure economic traits in the game, with Financial and Organized. While he's stuck with the weak Immortal and Apothecary, he also gets fantastic starting techs in Agriculture and Hunting, allowing him to improve his food resources quickly. Darius has one of the better set-ups overall, and thanks to his traits and starting techs, begins the game already slightly ahead of the field. Darius is clearly an economic leader in most ways. He has Gold and Growth flavours, and those combined with his traits mean 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 target for attack from the more aggressive leaders. Lastly, Darius himself isn't necessarily going to build in peace, he actually has an average aggression rating (5.2/10), and he can 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 established a reputation as one of the more sluggish, incompetent AIs out there. It's common to see him given a decent or even great starting position, only for him to fail to do much of anything with it and get outscaled somewhere along the way. At the same time, though, Darius is a seeded leader who has made the playoffs more often than not; 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 in the Championship for an early exit. On the other hand, Season Six showed him at his worst; he had an amazing starting situation, only to just sit on it all game and take Second Place by default. Then in the playoffs, he had a very sheltered position and easy ticket to the Championship, but contented himself with four cities and actively avoided bettering his position the entire game. Outings like these have made him fairly unpopular in the community, yet it cannot be denied that if he has a decent position and bothers to expend the effort, Darius is a serious threat to win.

De Gaulle of France
Traits: Charismatic, Industrious
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 11 points, tied 30th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: De Gaulle's AI personality seems to have been created by a designer who was poking fun at various different French sterotypes. De Gaulle's trait combination of Charismatic and Industrious is underwhelming for AI Survivor purposes and doesn't appear to have much in the way of synergy. He does get to take advantage of France's excellent starting techs and solid Musketeer unique unit but that's about all that this leader has working in his favor. De Gaulle has a very low wonder-building preference (2/10), which largely serves to waste his Industrious trait, and mixes this together with obnoxious behavior towards his neighbors. He will make constant tribute demands (10/10) and civic change requests (8/10) that tend to make him unpopular with the other AI leaders. De Gaulle also infamously has the lowest resistance to capitulation in the game (0/10), and while that doesn't matter as much in a game without vassal states, he still makes few friends thanks to his peace weight score of zero. It's a confusing and incoherent AI personality that combines annoying behavior with a lack of the requisite ruthlessness needed to be a true conquerer.

Past Performance: De Gaulle has a pretty unremarkable track record and is rarely one of the more interesting figures in his matches. He was infamous for his terrible ranking in the competition's early days, thanks to suffering very early exits in the first two seasons, but overall his performance hasn't been notably bad - just mediocre, such that two or three other leaders are usually doing better in any given game. He had a single strong performance leading to a win in his Season Three opener, but his subsequent outings have proven that this was simply the game where everything lined up right, and his only other playoff appearance came from an "everyone else is dead" second-place finish. With no particular strength or strategy he likes to follow, De Gaulle is unlikely to play a notable role in most games.

Elizabeth of England
Traits: Financial, Philosophical
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, six opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 7 points, tied 42nd place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Elizabeth is an easy AI personality to understand, a pacifistic economic leader who will always seek out some kind of non-military victory condition. Elizabeth has one of the best trait combinations for teching in the Financial/Philosophical pairing, and while it's true that there's some anti-synergy there between running cottages and running specialists, there's little doubt that this setup will output a lot of beakers. If Elizabeth ends up getting a solid portion of the map under her control, she's one of the toughest leaders in the game to stop. She ranks no better than a mediocre leader for AI Survivor purposes precisely because this happens so rarely; Elizabeth has an exceedingly low aggression rating (1.9/10) and a low build unit preference (2/10). Surprisingly, she will indeed plot war at "Pleased" relations, but in most games you're more likely to see someone else invading England as Elizabeth frantically researches everything except the military technology which would save her. Elizabeth's Gold and Culture research preferences often cause her to ignore the Redcoats that she desperately needs for safety. In summary, Elizabeth performs far better in games with other high peace weight leaders where she's left alone to build in peace. She's a better version of Frederick and a weaker version of Mansa Musa.

Past Performance: Elizabeth looked like a top leader in Season One, where she made the Championship while consistently being a top techer in her games, even though she didn't actually win any of them. She was still credible for the next couple of seasons as well, starting strong in Season Two only to lose to a two-front war, then coming extremely close to winning her Season Three opener via culture. However, that game ended with Julius Caesar conquering one of her Legendary cities just five turns away from her win, and that seems to have broken her spirit in this competition. Since then, each season has featured her getting off to a slow start, usually with poor expansion, before inevitably getting picked off before the end of the game. She hasn't survived a match since Season One and has only scored a single point in that time. It is worth noting that she hasn't received great starting positions in these games, usually getting rather hostile draws that force her into conflict and don't give her a good chance to get her economy going. When left alone, she can be a legitimate threat, but she's also shown serious weakness in both expansion and combat, and that's resulted in a poor overall showing.

Frederick of Germany
Traits: Philosophical, Organized
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place
Total Kills: 1
Overall Power Ranking: 6 points, tied 46th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Frederick is another peaceful AI leader, albeit one lacking most of the tools necessary to be effective. His trait pairing of Philosophical and Organized comes off as underwhelming for a builder game, lacking Financial or Expansive or Creative or even the likes of Spiritual. There's nothing here to help Frederick to get off to a fast start and also nothing to allow him to max out at a higher economic tier after the expansion portion of the game has finished. All of Germany's unique stuff comes far too late in the game to matter and the German starting tech pairing of Hunting + Mining is only mediocre. 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). Frederick is probably most notable for having only one research flavor, Production, a choice which hasn't fared particularly well in practice. 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 without the traits or civ choice to pull it off.

Past Performance: Frederick has proven to be one of the competition's worst leaders, scoring all of his points in a single game and accomplishing nothing else in his other appearances, save sometimes serving as a useful meatshield. Even his one win wasn't very impressive: he had a strong start and got just enough gains from a single war, but did nothing else of note the entire game and only barely beat out Sitting Bull of all people in a late spaceship victory. As for his other games, he has suffered from some legitimately terrible starts, in central positions surrounded by enemies, but he's also had several perfectly serviceable starts that he simply failed to do anything with. Most telling is his Season Seven outing, where he completely tanked his economy with just five cities and rendered himself a dead man walking without any outside intervention, in one of the worst performances we've ever seen. As a peaceful leader without real economic strength, Frederick simply lacks the tools to find success in most circumstances.

Gandhi of India
Traits: Spiritual, Philosophical
Starting Techs: Mysticism, Mining
Peace Weight: 10
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Five playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, one opening round elimination
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 25 points, tied 12th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Gandhi is without a doubt one of the most unique leaders in Civ4. For traits, he plays with the powerful Spiritual, and the terrible (for AI Survivor) Philosophical, an overall unremarkable pair that lands at about average, the most important point being that Gandhi gets several half-cost cultural buildings. He also has access to the above average Fast Worker and Mausoleum. Lastly, his starting techs are Mysticism and Mining, a generally weak pair useful for pursuing an early religion and not much else; like many religious leaders, Gandhi often takes a long time to improve his tiles and connect his resources. Gandhi is the leader least likely to declare war in the entire game, with an aggression rating of 0/10. He also has the lowest possible rating for building units (0/10) and demanding tribute (0/10), essentially making Gandhi a hyper pacifist who entirely neglects his military and prays it won't come back to bite him in the rear. Surprisingly, Gandhi is also quite unlikely to build wonders (2/10); he doesn't waste time with those either. Rather than units and wonders, Gandhi spends the entire game laser-focused on one thing: cultural buildings. Gandhi is a rare leader with only one flavour in Civ 4: CULTURE. He pursues religions like a man possessed and puts his production bonuses to extremely effective use. It's not uncommon to see Gandhi desperately fighting wars of survival whilst simultaneously building his third or fourth temple in each city. It usually doesn't end well. Gandhi is probably the most feast-or-famine type leader in AI Survivor. If he is not attacked by his neighbours, he can rush out a cultural victory like nobody's business, but if he is, he collapses faster than any other leader in the game. An early war declaration from a neighbour can often ruin any chance of a Gandhi victory on the spot.

Past Performance: Gandhi has long enjoyed a position as a seeded leader thanks to consistent success in the opening round - he's one of only five leaders to have made the playoffs in five separate seasons, and his only opening round elimination took place in the very first season. He also won his opening round game for an impressive four consecutive seasons, all in games that followed similar patterns: he was allowed to culture in peace for long periods of time until becoming unstoppable. On the other hand, things haven't been so rosy in the playoffs, where he routinely finds himself up against fields full of warmongers who want him off the map ASAP. Only one of Gandhi's five playoff games gave him a position that he really had a fair chance to win, and he wasn't able to deliver in that single game. More doubt has been cast on his true skill in recent years, too, as alternate histories suggest that his successes have been somewhat lucky, and in his Season Seven opener, he threw away an easy victory by inexplicably attacking and crippling his religious ally early in the game. But while he might not be quite the unstoppable juggernaut that his opening round stats suggest, he clearly has something figured out, and it bears remembering that if left alone to pursue his cultural gameplan in peace, he is extremely likely to win the game.

Genghis Khan Temujin of the Mongols
Traits: Aggressive, Imperialistic
Starting Techs: Hunting, Wheel
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Two wildcard eliminations, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: No first or Second Place finishes
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 5 points, tied 48th 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 most of the really aggressive warmongers, Genghis has not seen much success in this competition, and at the start of Season Eight is one of only two leaders who has yet to see the playoffs. He frequently ends up as a runt civ, failing to develop well enough to become a serious power, fighting and fighting but accomplishing little, and eventually getting overrun or simply forgotten. He has had a couple of more successful outings, though: in both Seasons Five and Six, he successfully got the snowball of conquest rolling in his opener and became a major world power in a clear top-two position... only to throw it all away in a lategame attack against a technologically superior foe, as he never did get around to building a good economy. Genghis does at least have a respectable kill count, better than some of his aggressive peers, and alternate histories have proven that he absolutely has the ability to win a game if things go right. But he's still waiting for things to go right...

Gilgamesh of Sumeria
Traits: Creative, Protective
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Season Five runner up, one additional Championship loss, two wildcard eliminations, three opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 13
Overall Power Ranking: 32 points, tied 8th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Gilgamesh is a highly aggressive warmonger who finds himself bizarrely paired with defensive leader traits and an economic civilization. His trait combination of Creative + Protective is an odd grouping with no clear direction in mind. Faster border pops joined together with extra defensive promotions - huh? I suppose they're using for Pink Dotting a neighbor with a forward city plant but that's about it. The Sumerian civilization is quite a bit better, with excellent starting techs and a useful building in the Ziggurat. The Vulture doesn't grade out much better than a standard axe and definitely serves as the weakest part of this civilization's package. Gilgamesh has a strangely high wonder building preference (8/10) and an above average interest in religion. He's also one of the most likely leaders to launch new wars (8/10 aggression rating) and he emphasizes military techs in his research. He also has Culture as his other flavor alongside that Military preference, so again, this is kind of a confused individual. Gilgamesh can't seem to decide if he wants to be a culture/wonder leader or a military leader and often struggles to reconcile these competing impulses. He can be quite successful when it all comes together but we've also seen a lot of helpless flailing in multiple directions at once.

Past Performance: While his track record is a bit spotty, Gilgamesh has nevertheless established himself as a leader to watch. For the first three seasons, he was just a nobody, stuck in unfavorable starting conditions and unable to break out of them. That all changed in Seasons Four and Five, though: both seasons saw him play a solid second-place game in the opening round/Wildcard (sneaking in a Diplomatic win in one of those games) before stomping all over his playoff round game after favorable dogpiles. Those dominant wins feeding into two straight Championship appearances launched him up into seeded leader status, and he further bolstered his position by finishing Season Five in a very close Second Place. But while still being an important figure in most of his games, he's struggled a bit more of late: he's been stuck fighting it out in the Wildcard the past three seasons, and not been able to make it through the game in the past two. In sum, Gilgamesh is a capable warmonger who can be extremely dangerous when he breaks out in front, but historically has needed a bit of help from an ally to reach that point.

Hammurabi of Babylon
Traits: Aggressive, Organized
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, two wildcard eliminations, three opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 33rd place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Hammurabi is another leader who has traits pulling him in multiple different directions. His profile includes the ill-fitting Aggressive trait paired together with a setup that otherwise leans heavily in the peaceful builder direction with Organized. This Aggressive trait is largely wasted on a leader who loves to build wonders (8/10), features a defensive archer unique unit in the Bowman, and has only one research flavor: Culture. Hammurabi will obsess over anything associated with cultural output and stands a good chance of founding an early religion despite not starting with Mysticism tech. His own Agriculture/Wheel starting techs are excellent and that's one of the best things that he has going for him. Generally speaking though, Hammurabi ends up having a wasted leader trait as he sits in a corner of the map trying to develop his culture. He has a high peace weight, a low aggression rating (5.5), and won't plot war at "Pleased" relations. Unless Hammurabi gets involved in a religious dispute, he tends to be somewhat of an inert AI leader. Not one of the more interesting AI personalities in the competition.

Past Performance: Hammurabi has a well-established style of play: not doing much of anything. His games typically consist either of sitting back in a corner and doing nothing at all, or else fighting minor wars that do nothing to substantially improve his position. This has predictably resulted in a lot of unsuccessful games where he either gets eventually eliminated, or else survives without advancing. Neither of his placing games were very impressive, either: he backdoored Second Place once when the gamelong second-place leader was eviscerated for no reason in the closing turns, and while his winning game was an improvement, with him genuinely playing the best game of his field, it still took him over 400 turns to win by spaceship. Hammurabi clearly doesn't have the skillset to perform at a very high level, and he's not interested in trying to.

Hannibal of Carthage
Traits: Financial, Charismatic
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Four playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, two opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 10
Overall Power Ranking: 24 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Hannibal has one of the better trait combinations and can be a highly dangerous contestant if he successfully balances his military and economic strengths. Hannibal has the always-useful Financial trait and combines it together with Charismatic, which can often come in handy given how the AI struggles to manage happiness in its cities. In the rare case where Hannibal manages to build Stonehenge, he'll be off and running against the rest of the field. Carthage as a civilization is notably weaker, with subpar starting techs for anything other than a coastal start and a horse archer unique unit that takes a strength hit compared to the base unit. Hannibal is a militaristic leader in terms of personality, with a fairly high aggression rating (7/10), low peace weight, and Military for his research flavor (paired together with a lesser Gold preference). His build unit rating isn't quite as high (6/10) and Hannibal is undercut to some degree by failing to plot war at "Pleased" relations. When Hannibal does well, he's able to conquer additional territory and then make it economically profitable through use of his Financial trait. However, he will also sometimes pick foolish conflicts and stall out his economy with too much warring in a way that even Financial cottage cheese can't rectify.

Past Performance: Hannibal has recently had some very extreme performances. On the one end, his Season Six opener saw him choose a terrible second city site that, due to the quirks of the AI, resulted in him taking nearly a hundred turns just to settle his third city! On the other end, his Season Seven opener was an extremely impressive performance where he successfully broke out of a highly cramped starting position to conquer half the map and win. For the most part, though, he's somewhere in the middle, as a decently capable warmonger who nevertheless struggles to fully get it done. He's had a lot of suboptimal finishes after promising starts; some were legitimately not his fault, as he was saddled with lousy starts or inopportune war declarations, but there's also been quite a few matches now where he just didn't do enough to better his position, or did too much to try to better his position, and resultingly got passed up and finished in second or third place. As a result, while he's made playoffs over half the time, he's never been able to string together two straight placements to reach the Championship. His two highly dominant wins and strong kill total speak to the high ceiling he can reach and have (barely) made him a seeded leader for this season, but so far he's failed to perform consistently.

Hatshepsut of Egypt
Traits: Creative, Spiritual
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One wildcard elimination, six opening round eliminations
Total Medals: No first or Second Place finishes
Total Kills: 0
Overall Power Ranking: 0 points, 52nd place (out of 52 leaders - dead last place)

Personality: Hatshepsut is a great leader for a Single Player game of Civ4 and a horrible leader for AI Survivor purposes. She has good traits in the Creative/Spiritual combo and a great civ in Egypt with Agriculture/Wheel starting techs and the War Chariot unique unit. The problem comes in the form of Hatshepsut's AI personality which is little short of suicidal for these matches. Hatty is almost as pacifistic as Gandhi, with a low aggression rating (3.7/10), a high peace weight, and a dangerously low build unit preference (2/10). She loves to build wonders (8/10) and heavily 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 draw a field of high peace weight leaders where she can leverage her religious and cultural sensibilities to good effect.

Past Performance: Hatty carries the ignominious distinction of being the only leader in AI Survivor to never score a single point. She's never gotten a kill, and a pair of survivals as an irrelevant in Season Two are the most successful results she's ever achieved. Some of this has been her own fault; she's consistently proven to be a poor fighter, losing several protracted 1v1 conflicts, and one game in particular saw her attack a stronger rival early in the game en route to a quick exit. However, it's also worth recognizing that she's had some of the worst luck in terms of starting positions, routinely starting in positions that are central, border multiple hostile neighbors, or both; she hasn't gotten the same chance to thrive that other leaders have enjoyed. The past couple of seasons have been particularly brutal for her: Season Six saw her saddled with a central starting position, surrounded by six low peaceweight leaders, with predictable results. Then it looked like she would finally get her big break in Season Seven, with a great position that she leveraged to economic dominance, only to see Montezuma of all leaders grow to unstoppable runaway status off the ineptitude of his competition, then rampage through her territory right before she would have won by culture. Hatty's last-place position shouldn't be taken to mean that she's clearly the worst leader - rather, it reflects that she needs fairly narrow conditions to come out on top, and she has yet to see those manifest.

Huayna Capac of the Incas
Traits: Financial, Industrious
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Season Two champion, one Championship loss, three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, one opening round elimination
Total Medals: 8 First Places
Total Kills: 15
Overall Power Ranking: 55 points, 1st place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Huyna 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 hasn't seemed to suffer overmuch despite having to pair it with the typically weak Industious trait. 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 unique unit Quechua is also surprisingly useful for AI Survivor purposes, as the AI leaders often struggle with barbarian archers and this unit allows Huayna Capac to roll over them without issue. Huyna is one of the rare AI leaders who joins together outstanding economic abilities with an aggressive streak, and that tends to be the most dangerous setup possible for these games. Huayna has a fairly high aggression rating (6.7/10), a low peace weight, and he's willing to plot war at "Pleased" relations. 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 tieing up too many cities on wonders and 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 series of poor fools who can't keep up with his teching prowess.

Past Performance: Huayna Capac is virtually undisputed as the best leader in AI Survivor, succeeding time and time again and in all sorts of ways. Executing crushing Domination snowballs (including the fastest win in AI Survivor history), coming from a distant last place to win by culture, taking perfect advantage of strong starts, turning a poor start into a crushing victory, successfully warding off three enemy civs at the same time... this guy has done it all. As a result, he has more wins under his belt than there are seasons, and aside from Mansa Musa, he has double or more the wins of every single other leader - and with a bigger mean streak translating to more kills, as well as a lower peaceweight giving him greater safety, his ranking above Mansa is clearly no fluke either. Huayna's only been killed in the opening round one time, 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, in the end, a silly AI, and we've seen him fail in all sorts of ways too. He's struggled more in the playoffs as well, with only two successful playoff round games in five appearances. Huayna is far from invincible, and failure from him shouldn't be a great shock - but it's still less likely than a crushing success.

Isabella of Spain
Traits: Expansive, Spiritual
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, six opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 9 points, tied 36th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Religion, religion, religion. Isabella is a religious zealot and cares more about her faith than just about any other AI leader in the game. Her "Spain on a Lake" techs are good for founding one of the first two religions and pretty much nothing else, but they will ensure that she'll get some kind of religion and then defend it to the death. Either you are a treasured practitioner of the one true path or you are heathen scum that must be wiped from the earth; there's little subtlety or nuance to Isabella's diplomacy. Her Expansive/Spiritual traits are decent without being spectacular, although it must be said that the AI doesn't do a great job of leveraging the Expansive trait properly. Spain's Conquistador and Citadel unique items are similarly "OK" without having any sort of game-breaking potential. Isabella can be a difficult neighbor to live alongside since she will constantly demand tribute (8/10), and to no one's surprise, demand that others adopt her religion (10/10). Isabella has exactly one research flavor: Religion. Starting to sense a trend here? This obsessive emphasis on religion tends to lead Isabella into founding more religions than she needs and launching ill-advised crusades against rival faiths. She's a one-dimensional cartoon character who only cares about one thing.

Past Performance: Isabella has been less than effective, with all but one of her points coming from a single game. That game, her Season Four opener, saw her uncharacteristically dominate, profiting nicely from two dogpiles before killing her closest competitor head-on, but the rest of her career has exposed this performance for the outlier it was. Izzy's early-game performance has varied, with a couple of true stinkers in there (mostly caused by barbarian shenanigans), but for the most part her early religious focus has allowed her to get off to strong starts and be one of the better leaders early on... only for it to all come crashing down and for her to get conquered later in the game. Not only has she failed to advance again or score more than one additional kill, she hasn't even survived a single game outside of her lone victory! With a personality that both tends to get into lots of fights and notably lacks much military skill, Izzy is not set up for success, and results have borne that out time and time again.

Joao of Portugal
Traits: Expansive, Imperialistic
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 First Places
Total Kills: 2
Overall Power Ranking: 12 points, 29th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Joao is supposed to be the best leader at rapid expansion in the game, with his combination of Expansive (cheap workers) and Imperialistic (cheap settlers) traits. However, in practice the Deity AIs tend to be more limited by their economies as opposed to their capacity to train more settlers, and Joao hasn't stood out as being especially good at expansion. He hasn't really stood out at all, aside from having a name that's difficult for non-Portuguese speakers to pronounce, and Joao mostly sits in the middling portion of the AI category ratings. He trains units at an average rate, builds wonders at an average rate, cares about religion at an average rate, declares wars at an average rate, and so on. He even has a peace weight right in the middle of the scale. About the only semi-interesting thing about Joao is that he makes a lot of demands, both for tribute (8/10) and to switch to his religion (10/10). This is a boring leader overall with little in the way of a distinct personality.

Past Performance: Joao's AI Survivor career has largely been characterized by his getting routinely stuck with crappy starts. Seriously, there's a good case to be made that the majority of his career games have given him unfair setups, either trapped against a smaller edge of the map, surrounded by hostile leaders, or both. And when push comes to shove... Joao's not a dynamic enough leader to overcome such starts. Where others have put on impressive or scrappy performances, Joao has almost always simply not done well, and that's that. His lack of oomph has been on display in other games too, as he's multiple times failed to accomplish anything with less-lousy starts, and even in the two games that he's won - admittedly, both strong games where he was finally able to leverage his rapid-expansion traits - they weren't the most exciting wins, and he scored only a single kill in each. Joao is a decent leader, and with a run of more favorable starts his stats might begin to look better, but it's far from a slam dunk, and he's not the most interesting leader in any case.

Julius Caesar of the Romans
Traits: Imperialistic, Organized
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, two opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 15
Overall Power Ranking: 37 points, tied 4th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Caesar gets access to the Imperialistic and Organized traits, the former being top-tier and the latter being below average. Imperialistic is so strong that it makes this pair powerful, however, as more land = more everything in AI Survivor. His unique items are the busted Praetorian unique unit, as well as the significantly less useful Forum, again the praetorian being so good that this pair is still well above average. Lastly, Caesar has the Fishing and Mining starting techs, a generally weak pair that becomes significantly stronger with seafood at the capital, as with all fishing starts. Caesar, more than most leaders, depends on having the right starting resources, as seafood, iron, and metal luxuries all greatly speed up his snowball, as in his dominant opening game of Season Four. And make no mistake, Caesar's game plan is to snowball. With an above average aggression rating (7.6/10), unit preference (6/10) and military/production flavours, Caesar is far more likely than not to start an early war, and with a neutral peaceweight (4), all opponents are fair game for an attack. However, in early wars Caesar has a serious ace up his sleeve: praetorians. These guys are so strong that they almost break the game, often barging their way through city walls like no other unit can. Caesar depends heavily on an extremely successful landgrab using Imperialistic, an early conquest using praetorians, or both. From there, Caesar's gameplay looks similar to many other militaristic AIs, using his extra land to out-produce everyone else. If Caesar is unable to get his snowball rolling, his poor economic traits and aggressive personality usually mean he will fall behind and get himself killed, making him another feast-or-famine type leader.

Past Performance: Caesar is still riding a high from the early days of AI Survivor, where he was the most feared of the warmongers and scored enough points that, even with nothing in the last four seasons, he'd still be a seeded leader today. He won one crushing victory in Season Two, but the true highlight of his career was an exemplary Season Three where he scored two strong wins, a very respectable third place in the Championship, and SEVEN kills across the season, one of only two leaders to ever accomplish this feat. Since Season Four removed the free Deity starting techs, though, he hasn't been able to recapture that magic, and the two could very well be linked. Season Four saw Caesar adopt a different approach, going pacifist for a game and succeeding thanks to a lovely starting location, winning another dominant victory but with zero kills. Season Five saw him return to the warpath with modest success - his first second-place finish and four more kills - but it was still a far cry from his earlier successes, and he's come up completely empty in the past two seasons. He's also had trouble with very different fields lately, first failing to keep up in tech with peaceful groups for two seasons, then completely failing in two warmonger-filled games in Season Seven. As a result, despite being a Pool One leader, Caesar feels rather like a has-been whose glory days are long past. But he still shouldn't be dismissed as a threat, and perhaps he's just waiting for the right starting position to remind the world of what he can really do...

Justinian of the Byzantines
Traits: Imperialistic, Spiritual
Starting Techs: Mysticism, Wheel
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Season One champion, Season Three runner up, one playoff round elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 10
Overall Power Ranking: 36 points, 6th 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. He is tied to the Byzantine civilization, which suffers from terrible starting techs but benefits from one of the game's most overpowered units in the form of the Cataphract. Knights with 12 strength are enough to win many games of their own accord and Justinian has put them to good use in many of his victories. (He's also sometimes refused to research Guilds until a very late date, as it doesn't correspond with his Religious + 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 somewhat low peace weight. 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 simultaneously keeps him from backstabbing his allies but also sometimes limits the gains that the Byzantines could be making with more decisive action. Justinian will typically found an early religion and use it to make some friends, then go on the attack against those who are outside his religious bloc. He does this well enough to make up for his lackluster performance on the economic side of the game. Research doesn't matter if everyone else has been crushed to death beneath cataphract hooves.

Past Performance: Justinian was one of the best leaders of the early seasons. Not only did he win the inaugural Championship, he followed it up with a second-place overall finish two seasons later, and is currently the only leader to finish in the top three overall on two separate occasions! Seven placements and nine kills in the first four seasons established him firmly as a top-tier leader, as he was important in game after game after game. More recently, he's fallen on hard times: he's scored no survivals and only a single kill in the past three seasons, one of the least successful seeded leaders in this stretch. But if you look more closely, he has good excuses: his starting position in Season Five was terrible and left him with no hope, and the past two seasons have seen him get off to strong starts where alternate histories indicate he was the best leader on the map - only to see somebody else snowball ahead and plow into him at the worst possible times. As a result, while Justinian has largely fallen into "old legend" status by now, he continues to be an imminent threat to take the world by storm again, and one of the top candidates to become the first two-time champion.

Kublai Khan of the Mongols
Traits: Aggressive, Creative
Starting Techs: Hunting, Wheel
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Season Four runner up, two additional Championship losses, one playoff round elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 5 Second Places
Total Kills: 13
Overall Power Ranking: 38 points, 3rd place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Kublai Khan is a much more successful version of a Mongolian leader. His warmongering benefits from the Aggressive trait while the Creative trait helps to push out early game borders and provide at least some degree of research support with cheap libraries. This is an early game setup but those are the most important turns in any Civilization game. Kublai's Mongolian civ is well above average, with strong unique features in the Keshik and Ger paired with subpar starting techs. As an AI leader Kublai Khan tries to balance cultural and military goals, generally doing a pretty good job at both of them. He has average ratings for training units, building wonders, and an average aggression rating (6.4/10). Kublai does have a low peace weight and he has an additional diplomatic penalty for anyone who refuses his demands. He doesn't make those demands very often though, and he doesn't care very much about religion in general. Kublai's tech preferences are expectedly Military and Culture in nature, and he lives up to his Mongol heritage by plotting war at "Pleased" relations. Long story short, Kublai Khan is the military + culture leader done correctly, unlike several others who try and fail at this combination.

Past Performance: Kublai has simultaneously been an impressive and a disappointing leader, one who seemingly should have accomplished much more and yet one who's nearly always in the mix and is one of the highest-ranked in the entire competition as a result. Sometimes, he's looked legitimately great, most notably in his dominant wins in Seasons Two and Seven - in particular, he was the only seeded leader to win a game in Season Seven. Almost always, he executes a strong landgrab and is a leader of note exiting that phase, and very often, he's able to maintain a solid empire for much of the game, vying for a second-place position if nothing else. Kublai's managed to score at least one point in all but one of his seasons, a feat only equaled by one other leader, and is one of only three leaders to reach the Championship three times. And yet, he also keeps disappointing. Multiple times, he's failed to conquer a much smaller and weaker foe for ages on end. Multiple times, he's taken what should have been a great position and failed to accomplish anything with it. His biggest failure was in the Season Four Championship, where he was in the driver's seat with the win right there for his taking, only to turn on the culture slider instead and let Charlemagne walk home with the trophy. Still, frustrating though he can be to watch at times, he still has a consistency in contending that few leaders can match, and is virtually guaranteed to be in the conversation to advance to the playoffs once again.

Lincoln of the Americans
Traits: Charismatic, Philosophical
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place
Total Kills: 2
Overall Power Ranking: 7 points, tied 42nd place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Lincoln can essentially be thought of as a slightly less extreme clone of Gandhi. He's almost as pacifistic in nature without taking things to quite as ridiculous of a degree. Lincoln's trait combination is pretty lackluster, depriving this peaceful leader of much of an economic foundation to work with. Philosophical in particular doesn't seem to do much for AI leaders who always run a gazillion specialists at all times. Lincoln is not helped either by his American civ with all of its uselessly-late unique features. Lincoln as a leader is extremely peaceful in nature with an exceedingly low aggression rating (0.8/10). He won't declare war at "Pleased" either so Lincoln rarely winds up initiating much in the way of conflict. Unlike Gandhi, he will at least train an average number of units (4/10) and therefore doesn't collapse instantly when attacked. Lincoln's an easy neighbor to get along with, as he rarely makes demands and doesn't hold much interest in religion. Unfortunately he also doesn't have any clear path to winning a victory, as his traits aren't great for pure economy and he doesn't have anything beyond half-cost universities to help with culture. It all adds up to a mixed bag, a nice guy leader who's too friendly to attack anyone while also lacking the tools to run the Mansa Musa or Darius playbook.

Past Performance: Lincoln is an extreme case of a leader with a front-loaded performance: he scored every single one of his career points in his very first game! That was a mostly-friendly field where he smartly joined in on two separate dogpiles of aggressive leaders, then sat back with his friends and coasted to a strong but unsustainable win. He has utterly failed to remotely approach this level of performance since, and has instead largely served as fodder for the aggressive leaders. Sometimes his lack of success has been beyond his control, of course - most notably his Season Three opener, where he was a shoo-in for Second Place for ages until a runaway Mansa attacked him in the closing turns for no reason - but there's also been plenty of games with decent starts where he simply didn't get anything done. Most tellingly, he put up one of the worst defenses we've ever seen in his most recent appearance, 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. It's more than clear by now that Lincoln is in the lowest tiers of competition, and a strong performance by him is an unlikely outcome indeed.

Louis XIV of France
Traits: Creative, Industrious
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Season Seven champion, two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 25 points, tied 12th 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 is enjoying a position as a seeded leader for the first time, thanks to a breakout performance in Season Seven where he scored about two-thirds of his total points; all three of his games in this season saw him lead in score from the end of the landgrab to the end of the game, ultimately cashing in with Cultural victories while pretty much never being in true danger. As impressive as this performance was, though, it's totally unrepresentative of the entire rest of his career. To his credit, Louis usually runs a credible nation after the landgrab phase and rarely is a non-entity, but in terms of being able to translate that into actually coming on top? Before Season Seven, the best he could muster was a pair of distant second-place finishes. His championship run also showed his flaws, as these games often saw him change strategies mid-game and betray his indecisive nature, and despite being a fairly aggressive leader, he only scored two kills across the entire season. So while Louis is a credible threat and has good odds to be an important player, he doesn't seem to be the most likely to make another Championship run, not unless he gets put out in front again.

Mansa Musa of Mali
Traits: Financial, Spiritual
Starting Techs: Mining, Wheel
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Season Six champion, two Championship losses, one playoff round elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 8 First Places
Total Kills: 8
Overall Power Ranking: 48 points, 2nd place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Mansa Moneybags is the best AI leader in the game when it comes to pure economy and it's not a close comparison. He is an absolute fiend when it comes to research, even under our settings where Mansa's well known propensity to engage in tech trading gets disabled. Mansa Musa benefits from an amazing pair of economic traits, Financial for endless cottage cheese and Spiritual to avoid ever wasting turns with the AI's frequent civics shifts. The Malinese civ has an excellent unique unit in the Skirmisher and a passable unique building in the Mint. The biggest downside here comes from the poor starting techs, and if Mansa chooses to chase after an early religion, he can lock himself out of connecting early food bonuses for quite some time. On that note, Mansa has a surprisingly heavy religious preference including a lesser Religion tech preference paired along with his dominant Gold flavor. He's one of the most likely leaders to found a religion despite not starting with Mysticism tech. Mansa's strategy otherwise tends to be predictable: blanket the landscape in cottages and tech like a banshee. He's extraordinarily good at doing this even on a limited number of cities; we've repeatedly seen a Malinese empire with five cities still leading the pack in tech. If Mansa ever manages to amass a large amount of territory, may god have mercy on your soul, because he will plot war at "Pleased" and isn't afraid to lay the smack down despite his 1.6/10 aggression rating. Mansa Musa is always a dangerous opponent and will usually win the game if he doesn't get roughed up by his neighbors.

Past Performance: Mansa is widely recognized as the premier economic leader in this competition, and his overall prowess and achievements are only rivaled by those of Huayna Capac. Aside from Huayna, no other leader has won more than half of the games Mansa has! Mansa was especially strong in the early seasons of AI Survivor before the free Deity starting techs were removed, making the playoffs in three straight seasons and reaching the Championship twice. He was denied a full victory in these seasons, however, thanks to playoff fields full of low peaceweight leaders who wanted a piece of him, and most recent seasons have seen him get attacked too early in the opening round to really get going and open up the tech leads he relies on. The removal of the free techs seems to have hurt him a fair amount, making it much harder for him to survive these early assaults - but Season Six showed that he's still dangerous if he makes it through the early game, as he performed a full season sweep with three economically dominant victories to finally claim a title. While he's been roughed up quite a bit lately, Mansa still very much fills the "ticking time bomb" role, and nobody else can technologically torch the competition quite like he can.

Mao Zedong of China
Traits: Expansive, Protective
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Mining
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, four playoff round eliminations, two opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Places, 5 Second Places
Total Kills: 10
Overall Power Ranking: 25 points, tied 12th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Mao Zedong has been surprisingly successful at AI Survivor despite working with relatively few resources. His trait combination is simply bad, with the terrible Protective trait combined together with the AI's poor handling of the Expansive trait. Mao does get to take advantage of the Chinese civilization though, with the best starting techs in the game (Agriculture/Mining) and the strong Cho-Ko-Nu unique crossbow. Mao's AI personality is best known for placing very little emphasis on religion. He doesn't gain much of a benefit from shared religion and attaches little penalty to practicing a different faith. Mao will almost never demand that someone convert to his religion (0/10) but he will make civics-based demands on a frequent basis (10/10). Most of Mao's ratings are fairly average aside from his hefty emphasis on espionage spending (8/10). He's only average in terms of aggression but has a low peace weight and will happily plot war at "Pleased" relations. Mao's middle-of-the-road ratings reflect a leader who often seems to lurk under the radar until catching others by surprise.

Past Performance: Mao is one of those leaders who is very good at hanging around even if he's not in great shape, and that's resulted in a consistently solid performance that's let him maintain a position in Pool Two for some time. He's one of only five leaders to have made the playoffs in five different seasons, as even when he's not very strong, he can tag along behind one of his low peaceweight buddies and slide by in Second Place (or to the Wildcard - he's made the playoffs through that game multiple times!) While the map generation has been somewhat kind in that Mao usually has a lot of friends on the map, these results also speak to his tenacity and decent play that avoids any major blunders. The flip side of this is that Mao rarely excels; his only win came post-Turn 400, from a very unusual Season One map, and while he "should" have won one more game in Season Five (which was instead sniped via a Diplomatic victory), it's still clear overall that he lacks the traits or skills needed to really dominate. His usually-rough playoff appearances also speak to the fact that he's a step below the top of the competition. However, compared to the field of competitors as a whole, Mao has proven himself to be quite good, and he has excellent odds of slipping by yet again.

Mehmed of the Ottomans
Traits: Expansive, Organized
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Season Five champion, one Championship loss, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 4 Second Places
Total Kills: 9
Overall Power Ranking: 22 points, 19th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Mehmed is a typical member from the group of militaristic AI leaders. He's not quite as crazy as some of his shared rivals in the Montezuma or Shaka mold, but he still acts predictably and starts a lot of trouble for his neighbors. Mehmed does have a pair of good economic traits in the Expansive/Organized combo, albeit both of them traits that the AI doesn't leverage particularly well. His Ottoman civilization also benefits from having excellent starting techs and decent unique features in the Janissary and Hamman. Mehmed's biggest problem is that he's too militaristic for his own good, endlessly picking wars and failing to leverage those economic traits to good effect. He has a maxed out preference for training units (10/10) and a high aggression rating (7.8/10) to go along with his low peace weight. And yet Mehmed also won't plot war at "Pleased" relations for some reason, often causing him to stack up units endlessly to no effect whatsoever. His research flavors are Military and an odd Culture, once again reinforcing how Mehmed tends to neglect economy in favor of more and more units. Mehmed has often been a popular pick from the community because he looks like he should be strong on paper, and yet he traditionally let everyone down over and over again.

Past Performance: Mehmed is the champion of Season Five, but the oddity of this result is perhaps best shown by the fact that he's the only former champion to not also be a seeded leader. While he's put on solid performances from time to time, Mehmed has never come particularly close to winning another game, and most of his games have been pretty unimpressive; mostly he either falls behind in tech to get wiped out later on, or else simply fails to accomplish much of anything and just sits around instead. He has scored a couple of Second Place finishes with that latter approach, at least. Aside from his Championship, his one legitimately impressive game came recently in the Season Seven playoff round, where a well-timed backstab resulted in an early conquest that made him the uncontested power king of the map - only to do virtually no fighting for the rest of the game because he liked everybody remaining and wouldn't declare war! The result was a Second Place finish which led to an unimpressive Championship performance. All in all, Mehmed's done just enough for the idea of him as champion to not be a total joke, but he's normally a secondary leader instead, and not one of the better warmongers out there.

Montezuma of the Aztecs
Traits: Aggressive, Spiritual
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place
Total Kills: 2
Overall Power Ranking: 7 points, tied 42nd place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Anyone who's played much Civ 4 probably already has a pretty good idea of the Montezuma AI. He tends to... stand out. To start with, Montezuma gets the Aggressive and Spiritual traits, a strong, if not top-tier, combination for these games. His unique items are the Jaguar Warrior and the Sacrificial Altar, both useful in the hands of a human, but relatively worthless in those of the AI. Lastly, Montezuma starts with Hunting and Mysticism, which allows him to found a religion right off the bat. Make no mistake, Montezuma likes himself some religion. 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), and Montezuma is actually the benchmark for the normalized system we use to judge the rest of this bunch. His unit build (8/10) and tribute demand (10/10) ratings are both very high, which is lucky because there is rarely a time when Montezuma isn't fighting at least one other player. Montezuma won't bother with building wonders (0/10); he takes them instead. He doesn't ask other AIs for help either (0/10); he wants to do all the fighting himself. 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 during his downtime. 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 worst leaders 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. Indeed, more often than being a serious threat to his neighbors, he's instead proven a help, as nearly half of his games have seen the eventual winners feed off his territory en route to their own victories! He's proven successful exactly once, in his highly unusual Season Seven opener; that game saw him play unusually peacefully due to not connecting metal for around 100 turns, 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, 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'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.

Napoleon of France
Traits: Charismatic, Organized
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 9
Overall Power Ranking: 11 points, tied 30th 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 is a rather interesting case in these games, as he's racked up an impressive kill total akin to that of a seeded leader, yet has never won a game and only placed second a single time. While he's had a few games that didn't amount to anything, he's usually able to serve as something of a credible threat and at least help to roll over a weaker neighbor, but when it comes to converting this into a real advantage and snowballing ahead, so far he's failed to get it done. The closest he came was in his Season Six opener where he was able to find sustained success on the warpath, only to get repeatedly backstabbed and kept from properly converting it into a win, having to settle for Second Place instead. This was not his fault, and neither was his fall in the playoffs which came as a result of triggering a defensive pact that was signed on the SAME INTERTURN that he declared war. However, look at the rest of his individual games and it does seem to become a clear case that, while Napoleon has a very real threat level that some other aggressive leaders do not, he still falls short of being a truly good competitor.

Pacal of the Mayans
Traits: Financial, Expansive
Starting Techs: Mysticism, Mining
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Three Championship losses, two playoff round eliminations, two opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 4 Second Places
Total Kills: 9
Overall Power Ranking: 37 points, tied 4th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Pacal has a top tier trait combination, with the amazing Financial and the good Expansive, allowing him to get those Financial cottages up and running even faster. He also gets the bad Holkan unique unit and the good Ball Court, which adds a nice boost to happiness in the midgame. Lastly, Pacal gets Mysticism and Mining for his starting techs, a pretty crappy pair only useful for chasing a religion out of the gate. Pacal is a pretty standard economic AI in most ways, with a low aggression rating (2.8/10), though his unit preference (4/10) isn't as suicidally low as some of the leaders like him. His flavours are Culture and Growth, and you can usually expect Pacal to pursue an early religion right out of the gate. Pacal is one of the two leaders (along with Huayna Capac) who combine a low peace weight with a heavily economic style of play. With a peaceweight of 2, an ideal Pacal game probably sees the warmongers and peaceniks fight it out amongst each other while he sits back and builds an insurmountable tech lead.

Past Performance: Pacal's combination of economic focus and low peaceweight have proven highly effective at moving him through the tournament: he's the only leader so far to manage the twin achievements of five playoff appearances and three Championship appearances! Pacal has shown convincingly that he's able to play the economic game and play it well, using that avenue to pull out to an unstoppable tech lead in all of his wins. His second-place finishes have been considerably less impressive, generally coming when he's considerably behind and somewhat lucky to be advancing at all. Those show his low peaceweight at work, though, allowing him to slip on by even if it's not his game. That said, when Pacal fails, he can fail hard - there's been multiple games where he was attacked before even connecting metals, leading to very early exits. He thus has similar strengths and weaknesses to other major economic leaders, but his peaceweight has allowed him to enjoy the consistent success that most of them have lacked.

Pericles of Greece
Traits: Creative, Philosophical
Starting Techs: Fishing, Hunting
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, one playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 15 points, tied 27th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Pericles is one of the best leaders at pursuing a Cultural victory and he's had a good bit of success with that strategy in past seasons. Pericles has the ideal trait combination for chasing after cultural pursuits with the Creative + Philosophical pairing, providing cheap libraries and universities and theatres. The Greek civ doesn't offer too much in this regard, with subpar starting techs and an unrelated Phalanx unique unit, although I suppose that the Odeon unique building comes at half cost and can provide more Artist specialist slots. Pericles the AI leader has a peaceful bent in general, with a low aggression rating (3.3/10) and a modest build unit preference (4/10). Pericles would clearly much rather spend his time building wonders instead (8/10), which he'll do with great frequency in each game. Unlike many of the other peaceful leaders, Pericles doesn't place much of an emphasis on religion and rarely founds one of his own faiths. His research flavors are Production and Science, which also makes him a bit of a strange bird since he doesn't have a Culture or Religion tech preference in there. Overall Pericles is an easy neighbor to live with, as he almost never makes demands and has a middling peace weight that avoids either end of the spectrum. He's a leader who wants to be left alone and can become very dangerous if he gets that wish.

Past Performance: Pericles's career got off to a promising start. Both of his first two opening round games ended up being largely controlled by high peaceweight leaders, allowing him to cash in with Diplomatic and Cultural victories, and a Second Place finish from a more hostile playoff field in Season Two seemed to confirm his aptitude. But then he just kind of... stopped. Nothing has gone right for Pericles since then, and he's only scored a single point across the past five seasons. His failed performances have varied; some really were beyond his control, but there's also been several games where he messed up himself or simply failed to accomplish anything. The Season Six opener in particular saw him gifted a great start, only to lose one of his first cities to the barbarians for an extended period of time and never fully recover. It seems that while Pericles is capable enough to usually get it done in a favorable situation, he lacks that special spark needed to be a truly good or interesting leader.

Peter of Russia
Traits: Expansive, Philosophical
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, three wildcard eliminations, two opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 7 points, tied 42nd place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Peter the Great is an AI leader who seems to be pulling in six different directions at once, leaving a bit of a confusing mess as the result. Peter has two traits that lack any clear synergy, with Expansive theoretically being useful for growing outwards while Philosophical develops upwards. Neither of these traits is particularly strong in the hands of the AI and Peter ends up weaker in this setup as compared to when played by a skillful human. Fortunately the Russian civilization is a good choice to have available, with decent starting techs and a powerful unique unit in the form of the Cossack. As for the leader himself, Peter's AI personality is all over the place in terms of what it emphasizes. He has a higher than average unit training preference (6/10) but also an above average desire to build wonders (6/10) and spend on espionage (7/10). This is a leader who doesn't care too much about religion, for whatever that's worth. Peter would appear to be your standard militaristic AI, with a high aggression rating (8/10) and low peace weight and willingness to declare war at "Pleased" relations. However, Peter has tech preference that don't match a conquest gameplan at all, instead using Science and Growth flavors for his research. He also rarely if ever makes any demands of his neighbors: no tribute demands (2/10), no civics changes (1/10), no asking other AI leaders to convert religions (2/10). It's not particularly clear what goal Peter has in mind for any particular game and the AI often seems confused as well.

Past Performance: Peter is a chronic underperformer who's never quite been able to get it done despite a good survival rate (more than half of his total games!). Whatever the reason, he always manages to come up short and has never become a truly dominant AI on his maps, seemingly lacking the ability to properly snowball. He has sometimes fallen to inopportune backstabs (like in Season Four and the Season Seven Wildcard), sometimes just gotten off to a poor start and been always weak (like in Seasons Two and Six), and sometimes gotten off to a fine start and then just... not done much of anything (like in Seasons One and Seven). A pair of distant second-place finishes has been the best he can muster, and only three kills, despite being a frequently-surviving leader with an aggressive streak, speaks to his lack of major successes on the battlefield. It's not clear why Peter has thus struggled to break out, but what is clear is that expectations for him should be tempered.

Qin Shi Huang
Traits: Industrious, Protective
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Mining
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Three playoff round eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 9 points, tied 36th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Qin Shi Huang has the unfortunate penalty of being saddled with the worst trait combination in Civ4 for AI Survivor purposes. The Industrious trait seems to cause the AI leaders to tie up their cities on wonders in lieu of expanding out across the map, while the Protective trait is well-known for being the weakest of the bunch. Defensive promotions and cheaper walls can help string out a losing game but won't do much of anything to help win a game. Qin's saving grace is the Chinese civilization, with its amazing starting tech combination and powerful Cho-Ko-Nu unique unit. The extra promotions on this unit are about the only useful thing that Qin gets from his traits. Qin's AI personality is mostly that of a peaceful builder, as he has a low aggression rating (3.9/10) and a fairly high wonder emphasis (6/10). Qin generally won't pick a lot of fights as he doesn't make a lot of demands and he has a low train unit emphasis (2/10). This economic setup is oddly paired with a low peace weight and the ability to plot war at "Pleased" relations. This is likely the reason why Qin has outperformed his terrible trait combination, as low peace weight leaders who can successfully pull off economic development tend to be some of the strongest competitors in AI Survivor. It's too bad for Qin that he doesn't get more useful traits to pair with his otherwise promising setup.

Past Performance: Qin was a mediocre leader even at his peak in Season One, and has never truly risen to greatness. He's turned in middle-of-the-road performances most of the time, not playing really disastrously or sinking his own game (except once, when he overexpanded from a poor start and dramatically crashed his economy), but also never enjoying any great successes. He's managed to complete a few joint conquests to build into decent positions, but that's it - none of his games have seen him really pull out in front or become a dominant leader. Probably his best showing was one of his most recent, in his Season Seven opener, where he took the majority of cities from an early dogpile and rode that and a strong start to the tech lead at the end of the game. Even then, though, his overall position was about even with two other leaders, and he ultimately finished in Second Place. Qin's low peaceweight has perhaps been his biggest asset, helping him to hang around and secure some Second Place finishes that he otherwise would not have gotten. Don't be surprised if he manages to slip through, but don't expect him to be one of the big movers in his games either.

Ragnar of the Vikings
Traits: Financial, Aggressive
Starting Techs: Fishing, Hunting
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 5 points, tied 48th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: If you like insane seaborne invaders with funny hats, Ragnar is the guy for you! This lunatic has never met a war that he didn't like and any game with Ragnar present is sure to have some spicy moments. Ragnar combines together the Financial and Aggressive traits, which theoretically should make him better than the average warmonger in terms of managing his economy. That largely doesn't happen in practice though, as Ragnar takes every single lever available for managing his civ and turns it to the military setting, then dials the strength up to 11. His Viking civilization is pretty decent between its starting techs and Berserker unique unit and Trading Post unique building, although a lot of the benefits get wasted on the Pangaea maps used for AI Survivor. Ragnar's AI personality is a complete one-hit wonder: all military all the time. His aggression rating is absurdly overtuned (9.9/10), his train unit emphasis is maxed out (10/10), and he only has one tech flavor which, of course, is Military. Ragnar will fight war after war after war and neglect the building of infrastructure in his cities, which typically leaves him far behind in tech by the latter stages of each match. This often causes him to get eliminated at the hands of more advanced rivals, although sometimes he can ride the coattails of other low peace weight leaders and survive to the finish. Perhaps someday we'll see Ragnar snowball out in front of the rest of the field and then ride his Financial trait to a position of tech dominance but that hasn't happened thus far. Instead, Ragnar has mostly been a ticking time bomb that's gone off and ruined someone else's game... along with his own game at the same time.

Past Performance: Ragnar is another piece of evidence that in AI Survivor, as in life, hyperaggression is not a good thing. Time and time again, we've seen his constant attacks fail to get him anything except elimination. Ragnar is frequently a slow starter in these games, consigning him to also-ran status from an early date; admittedly, a lot of this is because he keeps drawing poor starts squeezed against the edge of the map, but he also tends to make bizarre moves early on that make his situation even worse. Most notably, he bungled the opening to the Season Four Wildcard so badly that his capital was captured by the barbarians! Even in the less common games where Ragnar is able to get a solid start and build his empire up, there's always another nation out there growing even stronger, and Ragnar has inevitably come into conflict with his stronger rival and gotten knocked right down again. Even in his only second-place finish, he was actively getting conquered at the end and only barely held on to his lead over third place! The very low number of kills for a warmonger further reinforces that he simply isn't that effective most of the time, and even his Financial trait doesn't seem to have appreciably helped him in these games. While Ragnar can be dangerous if he gets off to a good start, he's not very likely to win.

Ramesses II of Egypt
Traits: Industrious, Spiritual
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, one playoff round elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 1
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 33rd 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 failed to accomplish much through most of his career, his AI Survivor story instead largely one of military defeats. He tends to have a strong early game and exit the landgrab phase in a solid position, only to see it all crashing down at some point thanks to losing a war. Whether he wars against multiple foes or just one, this seems to be a legitimate and important weakness for him, as he rarely gets the better of these conflicts and thus is eliminated in game after game - Ramesses is a rare leader who has never been to the Wildcard game. He's also thrown away multiple top-two positions with really terrible moves, such as declaring war on the dominant AI or signing away his best city in a peace treaty. On the plus side, he has managed to hang on for a couple of Second Place finishes now, and his recent appearance in the Season Seven playoffs featured a very strong start from which he was able to put on a dominant Cultural victory, while scoring his only career kill. Recent alternate histories have also suggested that Ramesses might be better than his results indicate, and his reputation might be on the upswing... but he still has a long way to go if he wants to be a real success story.

Roosevelt of America
Traits: Industrious, Organized
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 5 points, tied 48th 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 a solid economic trait pairing with Industrious and Organized, although lacking any of the top-tier grouping 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 make a difference. 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. He will plot war at "Pleased" relations though 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 he lacks the traits and the civ to make him a top competitor for that gameplan.

Past Performance: Roosevelt has proven to be one of the least effective leaders in the competition, never in seven 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 pair of conquests of weak neighbors, neither of which substantially improved his position, and a second-place finish of the "everybody else was murdered" variety are the biggest achievements he has to his name. Last season 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, dooming himself to irrelevance once again. Roosevelt might get ignored and make it a little farther in the tournament as a result, but he's one of the competition's least likely leaders to really make a splash.

Saladin of Arabia
Traits: Spiritual, Protective
Starting Techs: Mysticism, Wheel
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Season Seven runner up, one playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, three opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 19 points, 21st place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Saladin is one of several leaders that focuses on religion and military; unlike most of the other leaders with this combination, he's only middle of the spectrum in terms of aggression and peace weight. Saladin is hurt badly by his leader traits and Arabian civilization, with the useless Protective trait handicapping his performance. He is also penalized by having to start with arguably the worst starting tech pairing in the game in Mysticism and Wheel. Saladin's free starting Deity worker cannot hook up any food resources or build mines, while being stuck two techs away from both Bronze Working and Animal Husbandry. Saladin heavily emphasizes religion and he will therefore always try to found one of the Meditation/Polytheism faiths, leaving him even further in the hole compared to his rivals. This poor starting situation typically leaves Saladin significantly behind the other leaders and makes it hard for him to keep pace with their expansion. 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. Saladin rarely makes demands of his neighbors and will be a good friend when sharing the same faith, though his preferred civic of Theocracy makes it almost impossible for rival religions to get any kind of footing. This is a straightforward AI personality: he's going to try to found a religion and then attack those who don't share it, although not nearly to the same degree as someone like Montezuma or Isabella.

Past Performance: Saladin is a pretty solid AI who is probably a bit unlucky to have not scored more points than he has. He logged a pair of solid second-place finishes in the most recent season, becoming the tournament's runner-up, but he's also had quite a few other games in the past 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. 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 when other leaders slip up. Perhaps the biggest weakness we've seen from him, though, is that while he loves to found Islam, he's doesn't do much to spread it (or any other religion he ends up with) around. 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 that at least puts him in the conversation to advance to the next round.

Shaka of the Zulus
Traits: Aggressive, Expansive
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Hunting
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Four playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, two opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 7
Overall Power Ranking: 18 points, tied 22nd place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Shaka gets the Aggressive and Expansive traits to play around with, two middling traits that create a roughly average combination, if well-fitted for conquest. He also has the below average (in AI hands) Impi, and the extremely strong Ikhanda for his unique items, an above average pairing that, again, works well for militaristic play. Lastly, Shaka has the Agriculture and Hunting pair for his starting techs, which allow him to get out to a fast start. If you haven't picked up on it yet, Shaka is all about the military. He's one of the "Crazies" who cross the threshold from "aggressive" to "nuts", and his aggression rating (9.2/10) is the fourth highest in the game. Like most of the other Crazies, Shaka's only flavour is Military, and he builds units at a frenetic pace (10/10) while ignoring wonders (2/10). Surprisingly, Shaka is quite unlikely to demand tribute (1/10), but other than that, he's a fairly standard hyper-aggressive leader. Shaka's traits, unique items and flavour are all pretty unhelpful in constructing an economy, and usually he doesn't even try. Expect Shaka to spend his entire game warring on the high peace weight pacifists (or anyone else, for that matter!), and his success to largely depend on whether those wars are successful or stall out.

Past Performance: Unlike the other hyperaggressive warmongers, who just flame out over and over again and have rarely amounted to much, Shaka has managed to consistently make himself a contender, reaching the playoffs more often than not and often making a significant impact even when he's not ultimately successful. While he's only fully set up a successful snowball once, in the opening round of Season Two, he's still proven consistently able to find smaller successes and avoid imploding in the same way as other warmongers, enough so to scrape by in Second Place several times. Even his defeats are sometimes impressive - multiple times now, he's become the largest empire on the map, and only slowly fallen once taken on by all of the remaining leaders combined, a behemoth that took an immense effort to bring down. Now, all this being said, Shaka does routinely have a terrible economy, and his playoff round success has been extremely limited, suggesting that he is in fact a significant step below the competition's best leaders. Still, whatever the reason may be, there's a method to his madness, and he's proven to be a legitimate threat in these games.

Sitting Bull of the Native Americans
Traits: Philosophical, Protective
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, six opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 0
Overall Power Ranking: 2 points, 51st 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. This immediately puts him in a bit of a hole. Sitting Bull also gets the unimpressive Dog Soldier and Totem Pole for his unique items, neither of which help matters. His only redemptive feature is his starting techs of Agriculture and Fishing, yet even they are merely above average, meaning that Sitting Bull plays the game at a serious disadvantage. As a personality, Sitting Bull the AI is a series of contradictions. He builds a lot of units (8/10) and doesn't bother with wonders (0/10). He is the most likely leader in the game to demand tribute (10/10), and his flavours are Military and Growth. 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 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.

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. Despite his military focus, he's one of only TWO leaders remaining to have never scored a single kill! 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. For example, in his lone relatively successful game, he expanded well in the beginning and could have easily won, but then simply failed to be proactive enough throughout the game, settling for a narrow Second Place instead. He may make for a small sample size, but Sitting Bull nonetheless suggests quite strongly that a peaceful leader who doesn't focus on his economy is a losing prospect.

Stalin of Russia
Traits: Aggressive, Industrious
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Season Three champion, one Championship loss, one playoff round elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 10
Overall Power Ranking: 34 points, 7th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Stalin has unexpectedly been one of the most dominant leaders in AI Survivor history, compiling a staggering track record of success that we're still not entirely sure how to explain. His traits are nothing special, with the Industrious trait largely acting as a detriment to AI performance and Aggressive never grading out as anything better than average. Stalin has undoubtedly been helped by his Russian civilization, with its decent starting techs and powerful Cossack unique unit. Understanding why Stalin has repeatedly crushed his opponents requires a deeper dive into his AI personality. He has a low peace weight and an above average aggression rating (7.6/10) while avoiding the truly nutty behavior of someone like Montezuma or Genghis Khan. Aside from a somewhat high build wonder rating (6/10), most of Stalin's AI ratings are in the middle of the spectrum and don't stand out one way or another. He loves espionage spending (10/10) but that's about it. What's unusual about Stalin is the fact that he doesn't care about religion at all, showing as little interest as Mao with miniscule shared faith bonuses and differing religion penalties. This may be a factor in his repeated victories as Stalin doesn't get hung up on the religious diplomacy and can act as he sees fit. He otherwise has Military and Production tech flavors and, of course, can plot war at "Pleased" relations. For whatever reason, this overall package has been extremely successful in prior seasons of AI Survivor.

Past Performance: Stalin's accomplishments are compressed into a single blaze of glory, but that blaze was so big and bright that he's still a Pool 1 leader years later. He was crowned champion after an utterly dominant Season Three; throughout that season, he kept jumping into dogpiles at the perfect moments, and ended up with three wins and seven kills to attain the highest single-season score in AI Survivor history. Stalin bolstered his reputation with a return to the Championship the next season, including another strong victory in the opening round, but has completely fallen off in performance since: he's the only seeded leader to have scored ZERO points across the past three seasons! He's had promising starts each time, only to completely fail to accomplish anything with them and end up eliminated sooner or later. Stalin's history before his breakout season was also unremarkable, with just one scrappy second-place finish and one kill across the first two installments, and it's worth noting that his tendency to ignore Mysticism (and thus culture) has shown itself as a serious weakness in recent seasons, one that stunts his early game and forces him to play catch-up. At this point a lot of people are wondering whether Stalin is actually a good leader or simply got really lucky in Season Three; whether he flames out again or returns to success in this season could have a big impact on that debate.

Suleiman of the Ottomans
Traits: Imperialistic, Philosophical
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 9 points, 36th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Suleiman is a fairly standard militaristic AI leader tied to a good civilization and a bizarre pairing of traits. This might be the least synergistic pairing of traits in Civ4, with Imperialistic favoring rapid expansion across the map while Philosophical works at cross-purposes through the running of specialists. At least Suleiman does get to take advantage of Imperialistic, a consistently successful trait for AI Survivor purposes. He also benefits from the Ottoman civ, which features excellent starting techs and two useful (if not overpowered) unique features in the Janissary and Hamman. Suleiman's AI personality emphasizes military aspects but not to an overwhelming degree. He has a high aggression rating (7/10) and does like to train units (6/10). On the other hand, his peace weight is in the middle of the scale, he doesn't make a lot of demands against other leaders, and he won't declare war at "Pleased" relations. Suleiman surprisingly doesn't care much about religion at all, although he has decent odds to found a later religion because his tech flavors are Culture and Military. His setup is a mixed bag overall, with conflicting leader traits and several different points of emphasis in Suleiman's personality. The various parts can occasionally come together into a larger whole but not on a consistent basis.

Past Performance: Suleiman was a part of the very first Championship, but only off a pair of distant second-place finishes. Sullla speculated at the start of that finale that Suleiman wasn't actually that strong, and he's certainly been proven right since, as a pair of kills are all that "Sillyman" has to his name since. There's not a whole lot in particular to say about Suleiman's performances across the past six seasons, nothing remarkable that's happened. He's just been generally ineffective. The closest he's come to success since 2014 is finishing within 200 points of Second Place in a Wildcard game, and when you can say that, you know you don't have a very strong performer on your hands.

Suryavarman of the Khmer
Traits: Creative, Expansive
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, four playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, one opening round elimination
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 3 Second Places
Total Kills: 11
Overall Power Ranking: 32 points, tied 8th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Suryavarman has a lot of power packed into his kit even if it sometimes seems to be pulling in six different directions at once. He has the quintessential early game trait pairing of Creative and Expansive, two traits that help to drive expansion and to claim land quickly. This was a popular trait pairing for a long time in unmodded Civ4 Multiplayer games, often chosen ahead of Financial leaders to get off to a roaring start. Suryavarman's Khmer civ is a bit weaker, with decent starting techs and adequate unique features in the Ballista Elephant and Baray without having anything of game-breaking strength. As far as Suryavarman's AI personality goes, he has a surprisingly aggressive setup for someone with good economic traits. Suryavarman has a high aggression rating (7.6/10), a very low peace weight, and a fairly high emphasis on training units (6/10). However, Suryavarman also positively loves building wonders (8/10), an odd fit for someone with his militaristic bent and expansion-focused traits. He will heavily emphasize religion in his diplomacy and carries a special penalty for anyone who refuses his demands. Along with the Creative border pops, this is not an easy neighbor to live alongside. Suryavarman's tech preferences are Gold and Culture, and he will indeed plot war at "Pleased" relations. He can be a highly unpredictable leader, either charging into multiple wars or sitting back to construct wonders in peace.

Past Performance: Suryavarman has a long track record of success that has earned him a spot as a Pool One leader. He's only died in the opening round once, failed to make the playoffs only twice, and has scored at least two points in every season except one (the only leader with this particular achievement). Sury has proven himself quite capable of snowballing ahead and steamrolling his opposition; this is responsible for all three of his wins, and he would have secured a fourth such win last season if not for a truly remarkable performance by Hannibal on the same map. When things don't go so well for Sury, he's still often able to hang in there, either backdooring Second Place or surviving to the Wildcard game for another shot. Of course, he's had his share of failed outings as well, and in particular he can have trouble keeping his economy up to speed; multiple games, including the Season One Championship, have seen him take a leading position by conquest as the largest nation on the map, only to fall behind in tech and suffer a lategame collapse when fighting a more advanced foe. While this failing keeps him locked a level below the top tier, it shouldn't distract too much from the fact that Sury is one of the game's most consistently successful warmongers.

Tokugawa of Japan
Traits: Aggressive, Protective
Starting Techs: Fishing, Wheel
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 15 points, tied 27th 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 suffers from one of the worst leader trait combinations in the game, with lots of unit promotions but little else to recommend it. He's also saddled with a weak civilization in Japan, which suffers from poor starting techs and the uselessly-late Shale Plant. Unfortunately the Samurai unit is nothing special in Civ4. Tokugawa's AI personality reflects his generally militaristic bent, with an above average aggression rating (7.3/10) and train unit emphasis. He makes it clear that he wants to be left alone by never asking for help (0/10) or demanding tribute (1/10) or making religious conversion demands (2/10). 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: Tokugawa is right in 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 eliminated early or never manage to become a significant power, 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.

Victoria of England
Traits: Financial, Imperialistic
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place
Total Kills: 1
Overall Power Ranking: 6 points, tied 46th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Victoria gets the privilege of having the two best-performing traits in AI Survivor history: Financial and Imperialistic. This should allow her to get out to a fast start and have the economy to support it. She also gets the powerful Redcoat unique unit and Stock Exchange, both well above average in their own right. Victoria's only weakness on paper is her combination of starting techs, Fishing and Mining, which aren't garbage tier but are definitely in the bottom half of potential combinations. Other than her amazing traits and unique items, Victoria is a relatively standard AI. Her flavours are Gold and Growth. Her ratings are about average across the board with few exceptions, including aggression (5.1/10), wonder (6/10) and unit (4/10) build preferences. The main exception to this is her low likelihood to demand tribute (2/10). She has a high peace weight, and is likely to fight warmongers and befriend peaceniks, though unlike most high peace weight leaders she can declare war at "Pleased" relations. Victoria is essentially the quintessential average personality gifted with god-tier traits.

Past Performance: Vicky is one of the biggest puzzles in AI Survivor, as despite possessing two great traits for the competition, she's failed to accomplish anything with them time and time again. She's had only a single strong performance, a massive outlier result where she was allowed to peacefully expand to NINETEEN cities and snowball from there. Otherwise, she's come up empty every single time. Some of these failures have come from hostile maps where she's faced too much pressure from other leaders, but plenty of others have come from decent starts where she just... can't get out in front despite her Financial trait and capacity for rapid expansion. She did come close to one more win in the Season Three Wildcard, assuming a winning position before squandering it on an all-advised Cultural victory attempt and getting knocked out as a result, but still, two solid games in ten appearances is far, far worse than one would expect from her. Nobody's figured out why exactly she's struggled so much; just know that she has, and temper your expectations accordingly.

Wang Kon of Korea
Traits: Financial, Protective
Starting Techs: Mysticism, Mining
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 11 points, tied 30th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Wang Kon is infamous in AI Survivor circles for acting as the "Troll King", the one leader who will do the most obnoxious thing possible to screw with the rest of the field as well as the viewers watching the game. He has one amazing trait in the form of Financial and one terrible trait in the form of Protective, the two polar opposite traits in terms of overall usefulness in Civ4. Wang Kon's Korean civilization has a subpar set of starting techs combined together with the decent Hwacha and the excellent (if late-arriving) Seowon. As far as AI personalities run, Wang Kon is a pretty basic peaceful builder. While he has a somewhat high aggression rating (6.1/10), his build unit rating is low (4/10) and he doesn't make a lot of demands on his neighbors. With Gold and Science research flavor, a high peace weight, and an inability to declare war at "Pleased" relations, this would seem to be a standard economic leader in the Elizabeth or Frederick or Roosevelt mold, someone who's mostly going to stay out of the way and tech away in peace.

Past Performance: Wang is a massive fan favorite, who's delighted viewers for years with antics that have earned him the frequent monikers of "Troll Kon" or "the Troll King". It all started in his Season Two opener, where he amused the crowd to no end by continually marching his army to the other side of the world to (successfully) harass other leaders at little gain to himself. Since then, he's been present for (perhaps incited?) bizarre antics like other leaders' cross-map crusades; trolled a field of low peaceweight leaders by keeping them occupied fighting him, thereby letting Gandhi secure a win; trolled a stronger competitor by declaring war, buying the game's runaway AI into the conflict, then bowing out and watching the carnage; and most recently trolled the picking contest by declaring a suicidal war and getting himself killed before the massive favorite for First to Die. His most infamous moment, though, was in his Season Three opener, where he was miraculously resurrected from near-elimination via the liberation mechanic, then (still in a trailing position) managed to finagle an exceptionally unlikely Spaceship win via same-turn tiebreaker, to the point where nobody saw his win coming until the turn where it happened! Notably, one thing not on Wang's resume is real success, as the aforementioned extremely unlikely win has been his only successful finish. The Financial trait has helped him out a little, but not made him a real contender, so while entertaining antics from him are a reasonable expectation at this point, a strong performance is not.

Washington of America
Traits: Charismatic, Expansive
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 1
Overall Power Ranking: 8 points, 41st 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 seen little success in the competition, with all eight of his points coming from Season Five and nothing to show from any other years. Season Five was clearly a case of "right place at the right time", as a distant second-place finish managed to get him a beautiful starting location in the playoffs, which he leveraged (in a legitimately strong performance) to his only victory. Meanwhile, his failures have taken various forms: he's been stuck surrounded by hostile leaders and left without hope several times, tried and failed to fight his way into a strong position a couple of times, and in his very first appearance, successfully avoided fighting a single war throughout his entire game... resulting in him getting passed up and finishing in third place. Aside from his win, Washington has never done anything very impressive, and while he's not the worst leader in the competition, he's clearly one of the lesser ones, requiring things to line up just right in order to put up a strong performance.

Willem of the Dutch
Traits: Financial, Creative
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Two Championship losses, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 18 points, tied 22nd place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Willem has one of the strongest economic setups in the game and he's been held back thus far only by his poorly-chosen set of research priorities. Willem has one of the best possible combinations of leader traits in the Financial + Creative pairing. Not only does Willem benefit from the free border pops and the Financial commerce bonus, there's even some basic synergy between the two in the form of cheap libraries. Willem's Dutch civilization is significantly less powerful, though it does have decent starting techs and can become strong if the Dikes ever show up in time to matter. As an AI leader Willem has middling scores in almost every category, lots of 4/10 and 5/10 ratings across the board. His aggression rating is about average at 6.7/10 and his peace weight also sits in the middle of the scale. Willem has a very low religious emphasis and he won't found his own faith very often despite his strong economic abilities. The single biggest weakness for Willem comes in the form of his tech preferences: he has Gold and Science flavors, which turn out to be one of the worst possible combinations for military tech. Willem has repeatedly refused to research Rifling technology to a ludicrous degree, in some games finishing Assembly Line and Flight (!) techs before picking up Rifling. This has led to his elimination at the hands of much less advanced civilizations as he needlessly fights with muskets against rifles. We have a general rule for Willem: if he makes it to Rifling tech then he wins the game; otherwise, he finds himself getting eliminated.

Past Performance: Willem is one of those leaders whose success has been very tightly concentrated; in his case, he scored all of his career points across Seasons Four and Five, and has accomplished absolutely nothing in the other five seasons. Looking at those two seasons, Willem looked like a top-tier leader; he showed how economically strong he can be with the two best traits in the competition, put out three strong winning games (one sniped away by a Cultural victory), recovered from an early loss of his capital for another second-place finish, made the Championship twice in a row, and got out to a good start there both times before eventually getting beaten back militarily. Season Four in particular looked like it would be his title, until he showed his most infamous weakness: ignoring the Rifling tech for ages on end, allowing a foe with weaker overall tech to attack and conquer him despite his lead. Despite his successes in those two seasons, though, Willem's failure across the rest of his career means he's not even a seeded leader. Seasons 1-3 saw him just play ineffectively, but his last two appearances gave more hope for a resurgence in the future, as both saw him get out to promising starts before getting attacked relatively early by another strong leader. If Willem can avoid such an early attack in a future game and get a better chance to build up, we may well see him return to glory and make a real run for the title once more.

Zara Yacob of Ethiopia
Traits: Creative, Organized
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Season One runner up, one playoff round elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 7
Overall Power Ranking: 21 points, 20th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Zara plays with the Creative and Organized traits, combining to push a landgrab style of play and giving production discounts on a huge variety of buildings. For his unique items Zara plays with the Oromo Warrior, a slightly better musketman, and the Stele, useful for a cultural victory and not much else. Lastly, Zara gets the Hunting/Mining combo for his starting techs, which means he can be slow to connect his food resources, especially if he goes for a religion. Zara's numbers tend to be in roughly the middle of the board, including his aggression rating (5.6/10), unit build preference (6/10), wonder build preference (4/10) and even his peace weight, at a neutral 6. His flavours are Growth and Religion, an unusual combination that could lead to healthy and happy cities, while the last unusual thing about Zara is the huge diplomatic emphasis he places on faith. The diplomatic bonus for sharing a religion with Zara can go up to +8, and the penalty for religious differences is nothing to sneeze at either. Expect Zara's diplomacy to follow religious alignment to a tee, and when he finds himself on the wrong side of a coalition, Zara had better watch out.

Past Performance: Zara was perhaps the biggest star of Season One, rebounding from near-elimination via the Wildcard game and putting out three straight strong performances to come just short of winning the title. (Instead, he sat back while slightly under the Domination threshold and let Justinian win via space instead, in classic AI fashion.) However, his career since then has seemingly been dedicated to proving that this performance was a fluke. Zara has accomplished very little from Season Two onwards, failing a little or a lot depending on the game, but in any case almost never becoming truly strong or a major figure. He saw a small resurgence in Season Six, with a narrow second-place Wildcard finish and trio of kills briefly regaining him a position as a seeded leader, but then lost that position right back with an embarrassing early elimination at Alexander's hands in his Season Seven opener. Zara also has the unenviable record of the earliest elimination in AI Survivor history, as his Season Five opener saw him rushed by Alex (again) without having even teched Archery and thus summarily wiped out. Actually, three of the last four seasons have featured Alex killing Zara early in the opening round, so prepare to see a quick exit if you see Zara starting next to the Greek conqueror again - although you shouldn't expect too much from him in any case.