This summary for Playoff One was written by Eauxps I. Fourgott. Many thanks for volunteering to put this report together! 
After over three months of competition, we have arrived at the playoffs! This season's second round is marked by an unusual prevalence of relatively peaceful builder personalities. Each of the three games has a majority of high peaceweight leaders, and even among the low peaceweights are two who generally prefer to build rather than fight. This majority is unprecedented in AI Survivor, and it will be fun to see how it will affect these later stages of the competition!
Our first playoff game in particular promised to be a Financial showdown, with three different leaders boasting that trait AND corner starts. The broad perception was that this match was mainly a competition between two of them: Mansa Musa and Pacal, two of the competition's most historically successful leaders. They started on opposite ends of the map, and which of them had the upper hand would come down to which factor proved more important: Pacal's amazing capital, or Mansa's greater available land and better diplomacy. The forgotten Financial leader for this game was Elizabeth, who started to the north of Pacal and lacked the space or great capital that her two rivals had, making her more of a dark horse candidate. Meanwhile, in the final corner, to the north of Mansa, was a completely different leader: Gilgamesh of Sumeria, the map's only warmonger, who would need to snowball masterfully in order to have any chance at keeping up with the blazing tech pace this game was sure to have. Finally, in the two central positions were lesser economic leaders in the form of Lincoln and Hammurabi. They both generally prefer to try to play the peaceful game, but in the face of the triple Financial threat, they would need to turn to more aggressive styles of play if they wanted to move on to the finals.
Of the map's two titans, it was Pacal who appeared to do better at the start of the game. That was no surprise, thanks to his dream of a capital location, which featured double gold resources, a wet corn, a plains cow, a grassland horse, and multiple floodplains tiles. He leveraged this to get out to the early tech lead (flipping into Hereditary Rule around Turn 65!!), and the first two cities he founded were both in the direction of his neighbors - and with them going elsewhere with their early settlers, he faced little early pressure and had plenty of southern backlines to fill in later. He also utilized his starting Mysticism tech to found Buddhism as one of the opening religions, which went on to roll random spreads to both Lincoln and Elizabeth, converting them early on and softening his diplomatic situation. Mansa on the other side of the map was hardly doing terribly, but he certainly didn't have the dynamic start that Pacal did. He founded Islam as the other early religion, but it didn't roll any passive spreads in the early going, and he further had the bad luck to have two barbarian cities quickly spawn at the north of his starting area, boxing him in somewhat and limiting his expansion. Both cities would eventually be captured by other leaders, minimizing his advantage in potential land to settle.
As for the others, Gilgamesh spent the first fifteen turns chasing after one of the opening religions, only for Pacal to steal it out from under his nose. The wasted research wasn't a terrible blow, though, and he still was able to expand at a decent rate. Lincoln was quickly boxed in by Gilgamesh and Elizabeth, and while he threw out cities wherever he could fit them in response, his habitual avoidance of early culture limited his overall strength. Elizabeth had both stone and marble in her capital's radius, and researched Masonry out of the gate in response; this turned into early builds of the Great Wall and Pyramids, which didn't do a whole lot to help or to hurt her as her overall opening was fairly average. Hammurabi chose a smart site with his first city, locking down a fertile river valley between himself and Mansa, but didn't do much else of note with his early game.
As the map filled out and tensions started to boil, it was still a pretty open game, with the leaders all still on fairly even footing and no solid diplomatic lines drawn yet. Pacal was the early frontrunner, though, thanks to his early tech lead; if he could maintain or even extend it, he would be hard to stop. The good news for the others was that he was also doing the worst job of actual expansion: after his first two cities, he mostly went for backline locations, and then stopped building settlers completely once he started plotting war at a rather early date. His resourceless unique Holkans were proving to be a poison pill here, as they allowed him to start plotting war before connecting metals, at a time when he should have been filling out his backlines. As a result, by Turn 85, while he had the highest score, he also had the least cities on the board, at six - always a dangerous place to be. By contrast, Mansa was sitting with the most cities, at nine; his advantage in land hadn't been as great as originally expected, but he still had a solid core and would soon be spinning up the old Mansa Moneybags economy. Gilgamesh had also expanded fairly well, his Creative culture helping his case as always, while Elizabeth had bostered her city count by capturing two barb cities in the middle of the map - including one bordering Gilgamesh's territory, making future conflict between the two more likely. Lincoln and Hammurabi were a bit smaller and would need some lucky breaks to move up to frontrunning positions. On the diplomatic front, Gilgamesh had eventually converted to Islam, while Hammurabi adopted the minority faith of Judaism. That left a world with few religious bonds so far, and most of the ones that did exist were fragile ones that bridged large peaceweight gaps. There were still a lot of ways that the game could go.
As mentioned before, Pacal started plotting war rather early in this game, and it seemed like he was targeting Mansa Musa at first. He started sending a stack through the icy wastelands south of Babylon, only for Hammurabi to found a city right in their way, leaving him without a path as he still couldn't sign Open Borders. Pacal must have been miffed by this obstruction, as he soon declared war on Hammurabi himself! Unfortunately, this proved a disastrous move. Pacal completely fumbled the attack; he marched a large stack to the border city of Sippar, and sacrificed much of it to kill all but one of the defenders. But then, instead of pressing the attack with his remaining soliders, he paused to regroup and heal, allowing Hammurabi to reinforce the city, and while he did briefly take it a few turns later, Hammurabi immediately recaptured it for good. Meanwhile, Hammurabi started the war by marching his own stack to the lightly defended city of Calakmul, quickly capturing it to knock Pacal down to just five cities. While Pacal still led in tech for the moment, he was now by far the smallest nation on the map, and stuck in a destructive war; he had clearly thrown away the game. It was an ominous sign when Mansa Musa almost immediately moved in front of him on the scoreboard, and an even more ominous sign when, some 20 turns into the war, Hammurabi was able to bruteforce his way into the core city of Chichen Itza despite still lacking catapults. Now it was only a matter of time.
On the other side of the map, Gilgamesh lost little time in making his play for relevance, declaring war on Lincoln. Despite a good-sized garrison stationed in the border city of Atlanta, he was able to wrest it away with his initial attack, in the process dealing a deathblow to Lincoln's chances of making something of this game. However, the good times were not to last, as he was soon dogpiled by Elizabeth and then Mansa Musa, and now the Sumerians were doomed as well. This was definitely not the low peaceweight leaders' game! At this point, Pacal managed to stabilize, teching Feudalism and halting the Babylonian assault with the longbows that it unlocked. Even after reaching catapults, Hammurabi seemed unable to progress further, and Pacal was even able to secure a couple of city sites in his backlines now. This had been too little, too late, though: Hammurabi had still taken three cities, crippling Pacal in the process. His advantage was totally gone, as he had fallen decidedly behind Mansa and Elizabeth in tech.
As for Gilgamesh, he had been on the offensive against just Lincoln, and held out fine when Elizabeth attacked, but once Mansa entered the fray, he quickly collapsed. Lincoln and Elizabeth had done all the heavy lifting in dealing with the main Sumerian army, and thus the Malinese forces faced minimal resistance, able to take every city that they attacked with no problems, totally breaking Gilgamesh's ability to fight back in the process. Liz's attackers had been depleted in her initial failed assault, but after finally assembling a new attack stack, she was able to start taking her fair share as well. Lincoln did less here, capturing just the Sumerian capital and then bowing out of the war and leaving the other two to split the remaining spoils. Ultimately they did so roughly evenly, and at the tail end, turn order worked in Elizabeth's favor: Mansa moved first, and in two different sieges attacked first to eliminate most of the defenders, leaving an easy capture for Elizabeth later in the turn. One of these was the final Sumerian city, allowing Liz to secure the kill credit as Gilgamesh exited the game on Turn 157. Poor Gilgamesh hadn't really done anything wrong here; he played well to earn this playoff spot, but found himself stuck in a hostile field. He didn't make any real mistakes and chose his first war well, but was quickly dogpiled and forced into a 3v1. How do you do well when that happens?
With Gilgamesh out of the picture, Mansa and Elizabeth had bolstered their positions considerably, and were now in a close competition for first place; Mansa did have a slight lead in score, but Liz had also played well and was still in the thick of it. They were in a dead heat in terms of tech and beaker rate. On the other hand, it was clear that nobody else stood a chance of winning. Lincoln had now lost his best chance at moving into a stronger position, ultimately ending the war with the same number of cities as he'd started it with. He was doomed to irrelevance. The halt of Hammurabi's conquest had also ended his chances of pulling in front, although if he could finish off Pacal and overcome his poor diplomatic position, second place could still be in the cards. Pacal himself was just staving off death for as long as he could.
A quiet interlude followed Gilgamesh's elimination; Mansa and Liz continued their close race up the tech tree, following divergent paths and claiming separate prizes as a result. Mansa grabbed the Economics Great Merchant and built the Taj Mahal while heading towards early Corporation, while Liz built the Divine Right wonders and grabbed the Liberalism prize as she headed for Astronomy and Replaceable Parts. Meanwhile, Hammurabi eventually gave up his campaign against Pacal and signed peace, having successfully knocked the Mayans out of contention but not substantially helped himself in the process. He did have three additional cities, but the long years at war had completely trashed his economy and he was now roughly even with Lincoln. If Mansa and Liz did come to blows later in the game, it was anybody's guess who would come in second place.
Soon enough a second set of wars was brewing. It wasn't terribly long after he finished with Gilgamesh that Mansa was plotting again; he could have attacked anybody on the map, but Pacal was his worst enemy, and he was indeed the target. Mansa marched a large stack across the map and declared war, with Hammurabi returning to the fight as well shortly afterwards. This was actually best for Elizabeth, though; she was able to fully focus on economy while Mansa built more units for the attack, and Mansa's actual gains from this war were minimal. The Buddhist holy city of Lakamha was culturally crushed by England as soon as it was taken, with its shrine helping Mansa somewhat but the city otherwise not a valuable contributor. It was Hammurabi, not Mansa, who was able to take the biggest prize, that insane capital Mutal. Mansa did get two cities to the south, but that was it; three cities, one of which could only work a few tiles, was all he got for all the focus he'd put into this war. He would even be once again denied the kill, as Hammurabi was able to finish what he had started, knocking out Pacal to secure yet another victory for the high peaceweights. As for Pacal himself, what can we say? He completely bungled this one. His position hadn't been terribly safe to begin with, and if he had stayed at peace up to this point, who's to say how well he would have held out against a larger Mansa? But he didn't let it get to that point. He didn't expand well enough, he went to war too early, and he soundly lost the war that he himself declared almost immediately. As well as he showed his chops in the opening round this season, he proved just as decisively in this game that he's not immune to terrible performances; it seems to work out for him more often than not, but when Pacal fails, he fails hard.
With the two low peaceweights out of the way, we moved to a truly peaceful game. By the end of the wars, Lincoln and Hammurabi were both unwilling to attack anybody else; Mansa joined them after swapping to Free Religion, and Liz, the only leader who could now theoretically start a war, proved uninterested in doing so for the rest of the game. Instead, this became a game of teching at breakneck pace, Mansa and Liz continuing to race up the tree. They were still very close in score, territory, power, everything, but then Liz used a well-timed Mausoleum golden age to knock out a lot of techs in very short order and establish the tech lead. Mansa had the inside track for culture, though, and aided his case by beelining Mass Media and building almost all of the wonders from that part of the tech tree... and then he revealed his hand by turning on the culture slider on Turn 239. It was now a race to one of two different victory conditions. Mansa would win by Turn 330, and bring that date down as he added more culture to his cities. Would that be fast enough to beat out Liz's amazing teching and pre-empt her spaceship victory? She was now making over 2,300 beakers per turn, and had 15 techs left on the tree. Could she pull off the nigh-impossible and beat out a strong cultural attempt by purely peaceful means?
The race proved to be incredibly tight as the clock continued to count down on both victory conditions. With Mansa and Liz now friendly towards each other, there was no question that they would both be moving on to the playoffs, but who would get the actual win this time? Liz's teching slowed down somewhat as she devoted some of her cities to constructing new buildings and wonders, and others lost tiles to Mansa's bloated culture. Still, she only needed five spaceship techs more at a point where Mansa's third city, the Sumerian conquest of Ur, still had 45 turns to Legendary; she could still pull this off. The turns passed extremely quickly with little happening except for the peaceful teching, building, and culturing, yet this was a tense finish to the match all the same. Liz had earlier helped her case by building Cristo Redentor, eliminating any future anarchy, but now she wasted five turns teching Robotics, making the race yet closer. Mansa's first two cities went legendary, but Ur was decades behind them. After teching Robotics, Liz turned down the science slider to upgrade all of her infantry to mechs, slowing her down that much more. Mansa had turned on the culture slider while teching Assembly Line, so he still lacked infantry, and if she hadn't liked him so much, she could have blown him off the map easily. They were still mutually Friendly, though, so it was not to be. The UN wasn't going to matter, either; Mansa was easily elected Secretary-General, but never called a victory vote. Then, with 29 turns left on Ur, Liz made a critical mistake: she went for Stealth tech with three other techs still to research! That ate up an additional five turns, leaving her with 14 turns to research Superconductors/Ecology/Genetics, build the last spaceship parts, and launch; it was going to be extremely close! Had she torpedoed her chances?
As we closed in on the ending date, it turned out that this was as close as it gets. Mansa had been running four artists and building culture in Ur, but for a single turn, he swapped those to priest specialists and building Wealth, delaying his victory date by a turn. Then he popped a very late golden age, which, when all was said and done, moved it back forward by two turns. On Turn 297, his victory was due in twelve turns, and Liz was set to launch her spaceship in two turns... thus having it arrive in twelve turns. Both victories were due on the same turn! Then, after ages of running the culture slider, Mansa finally finished Assembly Line research... AND STOPPED BUILDING CULTURE IN UR TO PUT IN A FACTORY INSTEAD!!! 
That delayed his victory by one turn, putting Liz back in the driver's seat! But Mansa also popped a Great Artist just when he needed it most, and put it to good use, popping a culture bomb Ur to fill in more than half of the remaining culture needed and get back in the lead. Except... MANSA TURNED OFF THE CULTURE SLIDER!!! 
Apparently, he just had to have Industrialism tech, but the loss of culture income would delay Ur's Legendary date by about 30 turns - far too much. The advantage was back to Liz. Unbelievable. This was by far the closest purely peaceful finish we'd ever seen. And then, four turns later, he turned the slider back on again!!! This final move proved to be the deciding one, putting Mansa barely in front once more as he avoided any further mistakes. Elizabeth would have won an extremely impressive space victory on Turn 308, but a mere two turns before that, Ur went Legendary, and Mansa took home the gold medal instead.
It was an extremely impressive game from both of the top two, and we certainly had been treated to a Financial showdown on this map - if not with the eastern leader many had expected! Mansa and Liz had very similar games here, playing solid openings, then dogpiling Gilgamesh to reach dominant positions while Hammurabi dealt with Pacal for them. Then they raced to their preferred victory conditions in safety, both clocking in with very early win dates; it's a shame that only one could be the actual winner. It's obvious that Mansa didn't beat Elizabeth because he played noticeably better; their overall quality of play was basically the same, and it was all of the little random die rolls that managed to put Mansa's win date a couple of turns ahead. The Mayan border city of Lakamha had a serious chance to flip when it was first captured, but ultimately didn't before Mansa stuffed enough units in it after roughly 10-20 turns. If it had flipped, its extra beakers would most likely have put Liz over the top. She also would have won if she'd skipped a single optional tech, or if Mansa hadn't popped an opportune Great Artist, or maybe even if he hadn't also been able to pop a late golden age. It was that close, and neither leader was more deserving of the win than the other.
In any case, what really matters is moving on to the Championship, and both will be taking very well-deserved positions there, where either one will have a good chance of winning the overall trophy. Elizabeth in particular is returning for her first Championship since all the way back in Season One; after so many rough outings since then, will this be a true redemption season for her? Meanwhile, Mansa has now exceeded the career point total of Huayna Capac, making him once again the #1 ranking leader in the entire competition. He's sure to be the community favorite for the Championship; will he deliver and also become AI Survivor's first two-time champion?
I should also briefly mention the two other surviving leaders, although they were very much afterthoughts, neither one factoring into the game at all after Pacal's demise. Hammurabi ultimately failed to fight Pacal well enough to contend for a playoff spot without a miracle taking place, but as some had predicted beforehand, he DID play a critical role in this game. His turning the tables on Pacal so quickly completely torpedoed the game of the early frontrunner, and had he played more like, say, Darius instead, we might have had a completely different game on our hands. As for Lincoln, he fought well enough to prevent an instant Gilgamesh snowball and that was about it. Given that he faced a tough early attack, and that Mansa and Liz had the opening to play the games they did, I don't think there was any way for him to come out on top - but he certainly didn't do anything to distinguish himself either. It was a very forgettable trip to the playoffs for him.
This ended up as a fairly high-scoring game in the picking contest; an early Mansa cultural victory certainly wasn't the hardest outcome to see coming! Vincarius was the winner for the week with an impressive 26 points; he was a mere 2 wars and 5 turns from acing the game completely. Meanwhile, the fantasy contest continues to be extraordinarily close; the top five teams all have scores in the 17-20 point ranges, and none are completely done playing yet. Mansa's victory put antisocialmunky in the very slight lead, but there's no telling who will be on top after the last three games of the season. Next game, we'll find out if Justinian and Brennus can unite through religion and stand up against the peaceniks, or if a high peaceweight majority will be confirmed for the Championship. See you then!
