This is a continuing feature for Season Eight of Civ4 AI Survivor: a preview of each game before it begins, providing a quick summary of the leaders involved and how the community expects the game to shake out. We start as always with an overview of the map:
We've had requests in past seasons for an overview screenshot of the map with the resource icon turned on:
It's hard for me to see much of anything with all of those little icons but you guys asked for it, you've got it! Now for a look at our individual leaders:
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.
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.
Boudica of the Celts
Traits: Aggressive, Charismatic
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 8
Overall Power Ranking: 17 points, 24th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Boudica has the second most combat oriented trait combination in the game, with Aggressive and Charismatic. Her units will acquire promotions faster than any other AIs in the game, and it's a good thing too, because Boudica means to use them. A lot. She gets the mediocre Gallic Warrior and Dun for unique items, and lastly starts with Hunting and Mysticism. Boudica is one of the serious warmongers in Civ 4. She has an extremely high aggression rating (8.8/10), and Boudica is one of the AIs that uses their traits to full effect. She will not declare war at "Pleased" relations though, one of the stranger aspects of Boudica's AI personality. She has a middling build unit preference (6/10) and a low wonder build rate (2/10), and Boudica will often build a more balanced mix of units and buildings than most of the warlike AIs. Her flavours are also a little more balanced, with military and growth, and for one of the serious aggressors, Boudica can build a surprisingly competent economy in her downtime. Lastly, Boudica is less likely to waste her time on a religion than a lot of the other Mysticism-start leaders; it happens sometimes, but usually she'll move straight onto the key worker techs thanks to not having a religious flavour.
Past Performance: Boudica's AI Survivor career got off to a promising start, as she put up strong military games in the opening rounds of both of the first two seasons, but she's been struggling to live up to those expectations ever since. Her best game in the past five seasons was a second-place finish from a game that was just "okay", nothing impressive, and her last few showings have all followed the same pattern: early war that failed to snowball her ahead of the competition, then falling out of contention via poor economy. An exception is her most recent game: she came tantalizingly close to finally having another great game in the Season Seven Wildcard, only to be brought down by a truly out-of-nowhere backstab by a friendly Tokugawa. In addition to her poor recent record, all of Boudica's playoff appearances have been duds, and it seems that she should be considered a slightly below-average warmonger in this competition: capable of going on killing sprees when she gets off to a good start, but more often falling behind and only serving as a nuisance.
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.
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.
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.
Here's what the community was thinking based on the prediction contest before the game took place:
For our first game of the season, Kublai Khan emerged as a very strong community favorite with approximately 80% of the voters picking him to emerge victorious. This was a higher percentage than any leader achieved in the First Place category in any of the 13 games from Season Eight! Either Kublai was going to take home another victory or a lot of people were going to be looking silly after this one was finished. There was no clear consensus on a second place finish, as usual for our most difficult to predict category, and Hammurabi was the favorite to be First to Die with the other four non-Kublai leaders all attracting nearly identical amounts of the vote. A majority of the community saw this game finishing in Domination as it out-voted Spaceship by a nearly 2:1 margin.
Finally, here are some of the best/craziest written predictions about what would take place during the game. There were many other excellent entries but I had to pick and choose my favorites to keep this from running on too long. Thanks again for the submissions!
Fluffball: A mediocre field of mediocrity. I think KK mediocres his way through Churchill via his starting position and evil allies. Relatively peaceful game after Hammurabi dies. No one can tech, so late finish.
NotSpamBot: RIP Hammurabi who decided to spawn in the middle of a bunch if peaceweight 1-2 AIs (and Churchill), the amount of throwing necessary for your survival baffles the imagination. Speaking of Churchill I do actually belive that Churchill could come in 2nd or perhaps even 1st despite the way I voted. He has land, he is relatively isolated, and Hammer Boy will serve as a lightning rod in the early game. But MAN is that an unfortunate peaceweight situation.
Jukesey: Hammy will be busy planning to run for the UK's tory party leader, that will upset Churchill, but for now that will have to simmer whilst Winny tucks into some quality wisky that his decent start will afford him, For hammy trouble will come early from the West. But peter been peter wont have figured out what siege is, so initially gets repulsed untill his S300s get upgraded to patriots, But he will be back for round 2, By that Time, big dog churchill and possibly Boudica smell another failing Tory leader and declare on hammy shortly after Peter declairs on Hammy. With this Hammy taps out, deciding that middle managment rather than supreme ruler is more his thing. Peter does remarkably badly with Churchhill and Boudica taking the spoils. Kublai stays out of it, and builds a strong large empire. Plenty of Time yet to set the world alight. Mao cant get over that women have rights to and throws down against boudica, and peter gets called in, weakening all 3 of those involved, Churchhill is taking a time out due to another wisky fuelled hangover and Kublai is now highly advanced and comes out swinging, picking off those west of him. It's all over by the time Churchill sobers up, and seeing that Kubs has turned the map a nice shade of 70s brown, he decides a good stiff drink is what is needed, and that will be that. Big K for Domination
Bellomorphe: I feel like Peter is the better techer of this field, if we exclude the low peaceweight leaders, who will get ganged up on. Being the closest to Hammurabi, Peter will most likely get a few spoils, and hopefully Mao Zedong and Kublai keep at each other without much progress afterwards.
Willow Arkan: So Boudicca surrounded by low piece weight neighbors will start a war with whichever doesn't follow her religion, or if that's not an option make a pilgrimage to tank hammurabi's game, anyway this will inevitably get her to be knocked out first by an annoyed neighbor. Peter and or Mao will make sure Hammurabi has a bad time, if Bouddica is busy. While not first Lincoln will be eaten by Mongolia, maybe with China's support. If Hammurabi is somehow still alive by the time protective can't keep lincoln alive, then the 2 seeded buddies will enjoy a nice soft target, maybe Peter comes to and ends up 3rd. Mongolia first and China second. Like that double gold and lots of nice backline with horses and metal.
Chitis, Right?: I just picked Boudica because I think she's cool
Mooaddict: Kublai has really good starting position, lacks horses nearby, but flood plains, pig, gold, iron + room to expand south and east. Also horses at southeast which he almost certainly gets. Mao is too close to Kublai and Boudica for comfort, war is guaranteed, but not too early (for Kublai). At north it is more peaceful and not quite as tight, jungle between south and north helps Hammurabi. Could be Churchill game, but I'm betting on Hammurabi more. At south there is only one copper source, northeast of Mao and northwest of Kublai. This slows Boudica a bit, she needs iron to wage war. Copper is closer to Mao than Kublai, if he gets it before Kublai that gives him a chance to survive a bit longer (also puts Kublai in serious disadvantage if there is early war, but I'm betting Mao playing relatively peaceful).
Mousey: Kublai is the best leader in a field of mostly dead weight and has a fantastic start. Boudica will get an early religion that Mao doesn't care about, and both will get dragged down when she inevitably throws herself at him until he inevitably out-techs and conquers her. Despite diplomatic isolation Hammurabi will survive til midgame due to the passivity of Peter and Churchill, but when Kublai and Mao turn north the wonder hoarding comes to an end.
Andrei: I like seeing Sulla's ranting when bad leaders are doing well :P
BluesyCobalt: Kublai's gonna have a slow run-up because of his starting techs, but I think the lack of early war due to no copper or horses and Mao not caring about religion is gonna keep his economy honest while he snaps up the best land on the map. Then, Turn 125 or so he goes full Yuan over all of these wayward tributaries.
ZincAlloy: Gold. Iron. Floodplains. Built on a hill. What more could you ask for in the greatest city in the world - Karakorum? (Other than a wet corn :P) This is the world of second-placers, and Kublai is the second-placiest of them all, so having a pretty good capital should be enough to give him the win. Boudica's here too and she rarely finishes wars quickly, giving Kublai all the time in the world to build up and conquer while the Celts slow everyone else down.
Kharush: This looks like a map of crashed economies. Assuming that Kublai gets gold west from his capital, he will be able to get enough cities for snow balling without crashing his economy.
TheOneAndOnlyAtesh: First time ever doing the picking contest! I first came across your website a few years ago when reading your rather scathing review of Civ 5. I love Civ 5, it’s my favorite one, and I can play it on Deity but... I did wholeheartedly agree with everything you said, especially about the final form of Broken New World (which is why I play modded versions now). Also, Civ 4 was my introduction to Civ in general, and it was super cool to see that you helped build and balance it! Now, in Civ 5, if there is a civ that resembles Civ 4 Inca the most, it is Babylon. Playing on Immortal or Deity for the first time? Always choose Babylon. Easiest civ ever, guaranteed science victory. Good thing that they did that in Civ 5, because no leader in Civ 4 could have been more boring, counter-synergistic, and random than Civ 4’s Babylon. Now, regarding our Babylonian friend, all he really wants to do is sit in the corner and get Hammered (pun totally intended) on wonders. Unfortunately, the only type of Hammering that’s gonna happen to him is the absolute drubbing he’s gonna get from one of the three bloodthirsty rabid dogs in the South. Speaking of rabid dogs, it ain’t gonna be Kublai, whose sadly sandwiched right between two Protective leaders and will probably bang his head against Churchill’s until the big bad Boudicca, the true beneficiary of Peter’s and Hammurabi’s wonder building, puts them out of their misery. Mao, in typical fashion, gets runner up and greatly leaps forward to the Playoffs.
Dagoth Gares: Man, this is like the NFL opening the season with the Broncos playing the Jaguars. The field is roughly one Washington short of the blandest assembly possible. Given that, I'm expecting a long affair full of ineffectual wars. Kublai eventually wins because he's less bad than his competition, and Boudica grinds her way to second at unimaginable human cost. Basically, chalky picks until I know if this season is going to be as absurd as the last one.
Bernn: Surprisingly, I like the high peace weights here. Hammurabi's got that nice double corn and easy ivory, and Churchill has immediately improvable gold with Fishing as an okay starting tech this close to the water. They'll probably get off to strong starts, or certainly better ones than most of this lineup. Kublai's position nominally looks great and he's definitely a heavyweight, but I think there'll be considerable border tension with Mao. Plus he possibly has too many floodplains - it's only happened a few times, but we've occasionally had floodplains heavy leaders struggle with production early on. I'm gonna go with Churchill as the winner. Not because he's a great leader, but because he's got a solid start and can develop in relative isolation all game. We've seen him grab a win this way before.
danjuno: Kublai's a solid lock for the gold. My usual picks for silver/backdoor shenanigans (Mao and Churchill) are uncomfortably close to him, so I guess I'll pick Peter for second as he's up in the corner and is less likely to receive a surprise visit. Hammurabi is a lock for FTD just by relative peaceweight.
Max: Kublai has floodplains and Iron? Sold. Kublai wins, with Mao following him. Boudica will get a religion but fail to spread it far and wide, Hammurabi's peace weight dooms him to be the first one to die, with Churchill saved only by being protective. Still, he will soon follow Hammurabi. At that point, it's a spaceship race, as everyone's peace weight is close and shared friendship from hammering the good guys prevents them from too much further warfare. Oh, Peter will fail at something basic like expansion or city defence, causing Sullla to facepalm on at least one occasion.
Plains-Cow: It's that time again where the steppe lord discovers the only plains-cow tile on the map and then stomps his way across the world to domination. What more is there to say? Well, I GUESS I could say that Kublai will win, it'll be by domination, Churchill will be second, Hammy will die first, there will be 11 wars, and the game will end by 285, but THAT would be a mouthful. Moo.
Plain Cow: Hello Sullla, this is my first ever comment, it isn't a prediction, but hopefully you'll read it. I just wanted to clear up some potential confusion between "Plains-Cow" and "Plain Cow". My name has been highlighted quite frequently in your streams, particularly last season, but I think often as a case of mistaken identity. Plains-Cow is your Twitch/CFC regular, debuted in S7, and their energetic promotion of their namesake resource quickly became a popular CFC/Survivor meme. I'm just Plain Cow and have been quietly entering Survivor for a few years now (since mid S5 with some success). Think of me as the antithesis to Plains-Cow. I'm plain, reserved, make dull predictions and certainly don't do memes ;-) ! Anyway, many thanks for all the effort you have put into the Survivor series over the years!
Eauxps I. Fourgott:
