This summary for Game One was written by Eauxps I. Fourgott. Many thanks for volunteering to put this report together! 
Going in, the new season's opener looked to be a classic tale of the warmongers beating up on the peaceniks. For anybody new to the AI Survivor series, one very important factor in how these games tend to play out is the internal "peaceweight" score that's given to each leader, which significantly predisposes certain leaders to like or hate each other - the farther apart two leaders' peaceweights, the harder it will be for them to get along. On this particular map, there were only two leaders with a high peaceweight score, Hammurabi and Churchill, and they were surrounded to the west and south by four more leaders - Peter, Boudica, Mao Zedong, and Kublai Khan - who all had low peaceweights and thus were inclined to dislike them before the game even began. Thus, the expectation for this game was that Hammurabi and Churchill would eventually be overwhelmed by the weight of numbers against them, with a low peaceweight leader coming out victorious instead; less than 10% of predictions had one of these two leaders to win. The massive favorite in the picking contest was Pool One leader Kublai Khan, who had the most spacious starting position and ended up with nearly 80% of the picks to win, while Hammurabi's central position had him as the favorite for First to Die with about 50% of the vote.
The key area of focus at the start of the game was the southeast part of the map, where Kublai started a mere eight tiles away from Pool Two leader Mao. Mao chose to send his free starting settler straight towards Kublai, founding Shanghai in the beautiful but narrow river valley (complete with gold resource!) that lay between the two, and causing them to start racking up border tension as soon as Turn 25 hit and Kublai's capital expanded borders to the third ring. Since both leaders were aggressive and willing to declare war at Pleased relations, this seemed to both set them up for future conflict and give Mao the edge in that conflict - and Kublai didn't make things much better for himself in the early turns. Despite starting in a lush valley with floodplains aplenty and a gold resource, he failed to research any of Agriculture, Mining, or Pottery in a timely manner. Instead, he chose to research Archery out of the gate, then started a futile chase after one of the opening religions before continuing to make more questionable tech choices as the early game went on. He couldn't farm his floodplains until after Turn 30, mine his gold resource until after Turn 40, or cottage any of the floodplains until after Turn 80! By contrast, Mao started with Mining and was immediately able to bring his gold resource online for an early economic boost. Kublai then encountered another setback when his fourth settler was killed by an invading barbarian archer. It was a bad start for the massive favorite.
But as the landgrab phase went on, things started to swing back in Kublai's favor. This was largely due to bad decision-making by Mao; while he expanded at a decent rate early on, his total lack of interest in religious or cultural pursuits caused him to ignore Mysticism for a long time, leaving his cities without culture and unable to expand their borders for over 70 turns. Instead, he beelined an early Iron Working, connected an iron source at his capital, and used the early metal access to build an early lead in power... only to do absolutely nothing with the resulting army and let his lead go to waste.
Meanwhile, Kublai's failed religious bid had left him with the Mysticism tech, and he built Stonehenge in his capital, which at first seemed silly since he already had the Creative trait. However, the wonder did cause his capital to accumulate culture much faster than before, letting him fairly quickly expand his borders to the fourth ring, where they started pressuring Shanghai's city center. Shanghai still had no culture of its own, and thus was doomed - and seemingly realizing this and trying to curry favor with the Khan, Mao GIFTED the city over to him! Thus he had lost his early advantage over Kublai, his lack of culture causing him to become increasingly marginalized and one of the weakest leaders exiting the landgrab. As for Kublai, while his early expansion had been slow, neither of his neighbors had expanded towards him very much, and he had both the Creative trait to firmly establish his borders and the biggest backlines to found more cities in. As a result, his delayed settling didn't cost him significant territory at all, as he was still able to expand out to a strong size later in the landgrab and was in contention for the score lead at the end of the this phase. He was still behind in tech thanks to his slow economic start, but that could be fixed with smart development, and he'd gotten right back in the thick of it again despite what had appeared to be a disastrous start.
Elsewhere on the map, Churchill had gotten off to an underwhelming start. The combination of a gold resource at his capital and a starting tech of Mining gave him a solid economic start, and he put his first few cities out quickly, but then he stalled out and stopped founding more cities, instead letting Kublai and Hammurabi claim land that he could have contested. As was his habit, he had also ignored Mysticism tech and thus failed to expand his borders early, and so by the end of the landgrab phase he was in an okay position, but not one that could vie for the lead without capturing additional territory. He came close to capturing a convenient barb city on the eastern coast, killing all but one of the defenders with his first strike... only to see a wandering Celtic warrior kill the last defender and steal the city out from under his nose. But while this was a setback for Churchill, it was an absolute disaster for Boudica, who had already gotten off to a very slow economic start. Her starting techs didn't allow her to build any tile improvements around her first cities, and her military and religious focus caused her to start the game off by teching Archery and then Polytheism; while this did let her grab the game's first religion, it also stunted her early growth, as her workers had nothing to do for ages. Taking the barb city on the opposite coast only added to her problems, as she suddenly found herself having to pay 7 gold per turn for maintenance on it, and her economy immediately crashed and left her sputtering along, able to only muster 2 beakers per turn at break-even science, taking 40 turns just to research Bronze Working! After around 20 turns of this state of affairs, though, she got a bailout from an unexpected source: Kublai Khan finished building the Pyramids, and Boudica's own attempt at the wonder suddenly delivered her a generous sum of failgold, over 300 in total. This was just what she needed, allowing her to knock out critical techs like Bronze Working and Pottery via deficit research and get back in the game. Still, the damage had been done, and the slow start and temporary hold on research had led to her being an economic laggard, at the back of the pack with Mao at the end of the landgrab.
In the northwest, Peter had gotten out to a pretty unremarkable start. He had a decent number of cities, but the land around his capital wasn't very good and he'd largely favored sites along the west coast for his cities, limiting his overall size. The real story up north was Hammurabi in the center, who had leveraged a very favorable capital site (double corn resources that he could improve right away, plus double ivory resources that he could improve after he teched Hunting on Turn 8) to get out to an explosive start. Hammurabi expanded faster out of the gate than any other leader; founded one of the opening religions and spread it to Churchill, making him a fast friend and securing his eastern border; dominated all three of his closest neighbors culturally due to all three ignoring Mysticism; and in general played a strong early game to be one of the score leaders by the end of the landgrab phase. He would clearly be the leader to beat now - but with a dogpile from the low peaceweights still quite likely, there was still plenty of skepticism about his future prospects.
The first war of the game was indeed a poor sign for Hammurabi, as he was attacked by Peter. However, soon afterwards, he got exactly what he needed: the other leaders got distracted, as Kublai chose to attack his direct neighbor Churchill and Boudica did the same to Mao. This was great for Hammurabi, as he could hold a catapult-less Peter alone off with ease - the only real danger to him was a dogpile. He wasn't going to be making any gains off of Peter in this war, but as the strongest leader on the map, this set of 1v1s suited him just fine, allowing him to maintain his lead. In the broader picture, this wasn't a decisive set of wars. Boudica was able to take advantage of a confused Chinese army that just sat in the middle of their shared border, sending her own raiding parties to capture a couple of lightly defended but low-value Chinese cities, but she didn't have access to catapults and thus posed no threat to Mao's core. The other leaders were even worse off, their wars proving to be complete stalemates where no cities changed hands. Hammurabi and Peter got the best of this set, signing a peace treaty fairly quickly to allow them to build up more while the others stagnated, but nobody had yet gotten out to a truly commanding lead. We were still waiting for a really decisive conflict that would determine the course of the game.
Then on Turn 119, it came: Hammurabi declared war on Mao! This was an instant deathknell for the chairman; not only did Hammurabi have a much bigger and stronger empire and a fresh army, but Mao was also still fighting Boudica and caught out of position. The initial Babylonian attack took the city of Guangzhou almost immediately, and Mao was reduced to just two strong cities remaining. As Hammurabi advanced on the capital, a few wandering Celtic units successfully pillaged Mao's only source of iron, preventing him from building any reinforcements stronger than chariots - and chariots wouldn't fare so well against the war elephants that Hammurabi now fielded. Mao amassed a large force in Beijing to meet Hammurabi's attack, and the battle ended up being a very near thing, almost every unit on both sides dying... but once the dust settled, the capital had fallen, and Mao was finished. There was just mop-up duty left now, and the conquest was completed in short order. Hammurabi ended up with all the big prizes, but Boudica's persistence was also rewarded, as she never signed peace with Mao and was ultimately able to snag his last city to score the first kill of the season.
Mao was given a tough start in this game, and ultimately played it extremely poorly. It looked like he had a chance to really have a strong game when he grabbed the Shanghai site at the start... but then his refusal to pursue early culture bit him soundly in the rear. His expansion was limited, the cities he did get were weakened, and he ultimately ended up completely giving away that prized city. To further dig his own grave, he focused hard on his military in the early game... only to never declare war or otherwise leverage his advantage, and thus fade to a point where he could barely even hold off Boudica. Mao thus misses the playoffs for the second season in a row, and I can't say that this felt like anything except a deserved result.
This series of wars turned out to be an enormous success for Hammurabi. While the other leaders had continued to stagnate, he was able to make significant territorial gains with a minimum of effort, and was now definitively in the driver's seat with the most land, best culture, and one of the game's best economies. In the east, Churchill and Kublai had continued to stalemate in their war; Churchill maintained a tech lead over Kublai, beating him to each new military unit and able to use his superior forces to hold the hordes of Keshiks at bay, but he still hadn't been able to make any progress into Mongolia himself. In the west, Peter had ventured an attack on Boudica during the Chinese campaign, but failed to make any headway; when he eventually broke through and captured his first city after a lengthy effort, he was exhuasted enough that he immediately handed it back in exchange for peace. Still, he was competitive with Churchill and Kublai for second place, and keeping up with Hammurabi in tech despite his smaller empire. He had built the Colossus and Great Lighthouse earlier in the game, putting all of his coastal cities to good use. The runt of the map was now clearly Boudica, who had the game's lowest score and worst tech. She needed to play smart and under the radar to get through this one alive.
So, of course, she rested for all of five turns before turning and attacking Hammurabi, the strongest
leader in the game. 
She had no hope of succeeding on her own, but she was in luck: Peter
attacked Babylon as well ten turns later, making it a 2v1 conflict and distracting Hammurabi's attention
from the far inferior Celtic armies. Peter saw some early success, taking the border cities of Opis and
Sippar in short order, then moving a stack in to threaten the capital of Babylon and try to strike a
deathblow. However, the big attack was poorly-planned; the stack consisted almost entirely of siege
units, lacking enough killing units to actually capture the city, and so Hammurabi was able to clean up
the attack, retake Sippar, and sign peace with Peter to escape the danger and put Boudica in dire straits.
Over in the east, Churchill signed peace with Kublai, only to declare war again just four turns later -
what? This must have been a rare ceasefire instead of a formal peace treaty, a bizarre move that didn't
seem to change much. Churchill continued to enjoy tech superiority over Kublai, and in particular
beelined Guilds rather early in order to reach Banking and his unique building. The knights that he
unlocked this way seemed to make a real difference in the ongoing war, as we were now seeing English
units hanging out in Mongolian territory instead of the other way around. (Perhaps Churchill getting the
first strike after the ceasefire helped as well. Who knows?) Eventually, he was able to siege down and
capture the border city of Ning-Hsia, then finally sign a lasting peace treaty with Kublai. While
Churchill hadn't actually conquered Kublai's land, he had at least established himself as the stronger
party in their struggle and gained the upper hand.
Now that she was engaged in a protracted 1v1 fight against Hammurabi, Boudica's empire was starting to crumble. Hammurabi wasn't being very efficient in this conquest, frequently stopping stacks in their tracks and delaying his assaults, but his army was far bigger and more advanced than Boudica's, and her ability to mount any meaningful resistance crumbled as he started to take her core cities. But then she got a second save, as Kublai refused to rest and attacked Hammurabi from the other side! This immediately diverted Hammurabi's attention away from the Celtic conquest, as he turned to deal with this latest threat. As for Kublai, he had by this point unlocked curassiers - but Hammurabi finished Rifling research right after the war broke out, soon bringing rifles and cavs to the fight. Kublai's first stack looked impressive and immediately captured Beijing, but their progress immediately halted once Hammurabi's main stack arrived in the area. When it finally attacked Beijing back after a lot of lollygagging, Kublai's stack immediately disappeared. Hammurabi was clearly in no danger from this two-front war.
But suddenly, it wasn't a two-front war any more! In the most surprising move of the game, CHURCHILL attacked Hammurabi on Turn 248. Churchill had converted to his own self-founded religion some time ago, and without shared faith bonuses at work, he was only Cautious towards Hammurabi. As a result, he chose to put aside his rivalry with Kublai, and instead attacked based on border tension. (For any new fans, a very important part of the calculation of whom an AI will declare war on is border tension, measured by the number of tiles where both civs are exerting culture. The AIs' actual diplomatic attitude is merely a modifier applied to this base chance, so given Churchill and Hammurabi's long shared border, an attack on Hammurabi was probably at least close to being as likely as one on Kublai at this point in the game - once his attitude dropped to Cautious, their past friendship didn't matter one bit.)
Then, just three turns later, Peter joined the fray as well, putting Hammurabi at war with every single remaining leader on the map. Babylon was now in dire straits, drawn in too many directions at once and on the wrong side of the numbers. Hammurabi was still the only leader with Rifling tech, but even that could only do so much, especially when Churchill brought grenadiers to the field to counter. He was able to keep the weak Boudica under control with no trouble, and focusing his attention on Russia allowed him to make inroads and capture the Russian city of Yaroslavl - but that left him vulnerable to the east, where Kublai and Churchill were both able to make inroads and start capturing border cities themselves. Then Churchill and Peter both finished their own Rifling research, suddenly putting Hammurabi at a military unit DISADVANTAGE, as he'd have to face both Redcoats and Cossacks. It was all too much. He couldn't withstand these overwhelming odds.
But then, suddenly, he caught a break! After 19 turns of the 4v1 war, the roughed-up Peter decided that he'd had enough, and agreed to sign a peace treaty. This was a key turning point in the game; while Peter had been getting the worst of the recent exchanges, Hammurabi was on the verge of collapse, and with a little more perseverance Peter could have turned things around and gone on the offensive. Instead, he cashed out and removed a major source of pressure from Hammurabi's western border. Without Russia to worry about any more, Hammurabi was able to stuff Babylon full of defenders as the English lay siege to it; the defenders mounted a counterattack, and ultimately wiped out Churchill's stack, convincing him to hand over one of the captured border cities for his own peace treaty. Kublai saw which way the wind was blowing and also signed a white peace while he was still up a couple of cities, and Hammurabi had officially weathered the storm. While he had lost a few cities in the war, his core was still intact, he still had the strongest civ by far, and the others had failed in their effort to bring him down. He also was still at war with Boudica, whose army was still stuck in the medieval era; without other distractions, Hammurabi was quickly able to annex her core, further expanding his holdings and strengthening his position.
Boudica got a third stay of execution, though, as before Hammurabi could march to her eastern holdout to deliver the final blow, he found himself being attacked by the others yet again. Kublai and Peter both came to fight yet another round, but Hammurabi was stronger than before, and while the opposite fronts confused the AI too much for him to make meaningful gains against them, he was still able to hold both off and stalemate them with little trouble. But that wasn't the only action taking place; Churchill renewed his old confict with Kublai, declaring on him in the third and final turning point in the game. With his northeastern neighbor on his side again, Hammurabi was confirmed to be in no danger, and Churchill now had a decisive edge over Kublai Khan. Kublai was stuck in a 2v1 conflict, and was still behind in tech - he had managed to tech up to rifles, a significant amount of time after the others, but Churchill unlocked infantry shortly into this war, and Kublai was nowhere close to them himself. When Karakorum fell, it was clear that he couldn't stop Churchill, and was finally going to fall, making Churchill the clear second-place leader. Meanwhile, Hammurabi secured peace treaties with both Kublai and Peter once again, still strong despite another multi-front war, and with this distraction eliminated, he finally conquered Boudica's final city, eliminating her after about two hundred turns of constant warfare.
Boudica's problems in this game can be traced back to her decision to pursue one of the early religions. This had a twofold effect - first, it stunted her early economic development, forcing her to play from behind for the rest of the game, and second, it put her on the opposite side of a religious divide with Hammurabi. If they'd practiced the same religion, they might have been able to get along in the wake of their conquest of China, but instead their different faiths motivated her to immediately declare a suicidal war on Babylon, and while the crazy events of the game delayed her exit for a very long time, they ultimately could not stop it. This was a poor game from Boudica, and showed why she's not a very good leader for AI Survivor purposes.
Now that Hammurabi and Churchill had finally gotten a definitive edge over the rest of the field, they were starting to push that advantage in earnest. Kublai's remaining cities finally started falling faster after the loss of his capital, and shortly after Boudica's elimination, Hammurabi found himself right back at war again - attacked by Peter for the 5th time! (This was the ninth war declaration that Hammurabi had faced this game, while he himself had only declared the one war against Mao.) While Peter still had tech parity and was in fact the first to unlock tanks, Hammurabi was now undistracted, and his vastly larger empire finally started to make its strength felt as he moved in against Russia with overwhelming numbers. There was no long holdout here by the Russians - as soon as the Babylonian army started attacking their cities, they started falling, unable to stem the tide. Both Peter and Kublai were now in full collapse mode, and this time there was to be no peace treaty - not even a ceasefire. Very soon they were both eliminated, Kublai exiting on Turn 370 and Peter following just eleven turns later. This also helped speed up the end of the game: Hammurabi was still an era away from finishing the tech tree, but the new Russian holdings were enough to put him over the Domination limit, and so he claimed his win on the very turn that he eliminated Peter.
It was a very deserved victory for Hammurabi, a normally-underwhelming leader who nevertheless played a legitimately impressive game here. We saw in this game the exact reason why half the picking contest had selected him as First to Die - he was an aggression magnet, fighting literally every other leader on the map and suffering multiple dogpiles. But the actual timing of those war declarations worked out such that he was able to weather them all and still come out on top. This was due in large part to excellent play by him - he leveraged his strong starting position well and played by far the best opening, successfully fought off early aggression and got a quick peace treaty with Peter, then chose the right war target, piling in on a weak leader and easily securing several quality cities for himself. This launched him into the leading position, and he successfully held it from that time forward, maintaining one of the game's strongest economies the entire game, avoiding crumpling when faced with three different multi-front wars, and fighting off the attack stacks that truly threatened him by targeting his capital. While his fighting was not the most efficient in this game, he still got the job done, and he fully deserves to make the playoffs for the second year in a row.
Meanwhile, Churchill takes home second place again - for the fifth time in the past three seasons! This was a pretty easy performance to understand from him - he came in second by playing a better economic game than Kublai and avoiding Hammurabi's wrath. It was also, for the most part, a very characteristic Churchill performance, as he played a weak opening, managed to avoid serious trouble for a long time (facing only one war, and doing a capable job of fending off Kublai), then grew stronger once he reached the Rifling age and went out and did some conquering from there - not enough to win, but enough to be the clear second-place leader. Churchill and Kublai's death struggle ended up largely keeping them out of affairs to the east, as Hammurabi was too busy being attacked by the others to intervene, and Churchill ultimately won this conflict decisively to merit his finish and a third consecutive playoff appearance.
Finally, Kublai and Peter were both eliminated in the game's closing turns, and so the season is over for both of them. Kublai torpedoed his game very early on with a poor opening, delaying important economic techs for far too long and digging himself into a pit. Then he ensured he'd never be able to climb out of that pit with his poor strategic choices for war - he should have either attacked a weak Mao or else peacefully built his economy, but instead he chose to lock himself in near-constant struggles with Churchill and Hammurabi. His slow start ensured they'd always be ahead of him in tech, resulting in him usually fighting at a military tech disadvantage, and so he was never able to get a real advantage over them, instead keeping his economy run into the ground with constant fighting that got him nowhere. Eventually it was too much and he collapsed. It was a poor showing from a leader who had been expected to do far better. As for Peter, he played one half of the game well, building a successful fishing economy to make the best of a poor starting situation and spend the entire game jockeying for the tech lead. However, as well as he played that side of the game, he played the military side equally poorly, failing to ever gain significant ground in his constant conflicts. The decision to attack Hammurabi over and over again worked out especially poorly for him, as he usually had no prospects to make headway there, and the one time he did - during the 4v1 - he instead signed peace! That peace treaty specifically was the fatal move for Peter, dropping him out of a potentially game-winning position and squandering his big chance, and after that he never had another opportunity to pull ahead. While I think Peter did play better than any of the three leaders he beat out, he clearly never did what was necessary to earn a top two spot.
This was a wild season opener, especially with the unexpected result of two high peaceweight leaders successfully killing off all the warmongers around them! I think this game offers excellent lessons in both the importance of starting terrain and the unreliability of dogpiles. Hammurabi clearly had the best capital location in the game with regard to his starting techs - four resources he could improve within the first ten turns got him out to a roaring start, and that made him the leader to beat. (Churchill's capital was probably the second-best for his starting techs as well.) Then, while he still would have been susceptible to a dogpile, it turned out that it wasn't that hard for him to escape one - in the first set of wars, all it took was Boudica and Kublai choosing to attack closer neighbors instead, and in 4v1, all he needed to stabilize was for Peter to let up and sign peace. Everybody had to commit to the dogpile, and that doesn't always work out so smoothly as one might expect when surveying the map. But again, Hammurabi still would probably have folded from all of his wars if he hadn't gotten off to such a strong start - he needed both of these factors to go in his favor in order to come out on top. It's worth keeping these lessons in mind when evaluating future games, especially for leaders that have amazing starts but iffy diplomatic prospects - they might not be as dead-in-the-water as you think!
This turned out to be an extremely popular game, pulling in nearly 300 viewers at its peak, although it was less than successful for the picking contest - the average score was less than five points as most people did not expect this dynamic for the game at all. Andrei, Rory Story, and Dark Savant tied for the win there with 17 points each. In the fantasy contest, this was a two-edged sword for El Grillo, who saw his 50-gold bid on Kublai Khan fall totally flat with 0 points, but had also bid much less on Hammurabi, who came through with 7 points and the potential for more in the playoffs! j_mie6 also did well this game with 3 points from a moderate bid on Churchill, while the real tests for the remaining six fantasy teams will come in future games.
