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 (note that all stats are from before the start of Season Eight):
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Here's what the community was thinking based on the prediction contest before the game took place:
Amongst this collection of misfit toys, it was Victoria who emerged as the early favorite with a little over a third of the vote. This was surely the first time that Victoria was ever the top pick in one of our games, with Churchill and Pericles trailing behind her as the next most popular choices. Churchill was the first choice for the Runner Up category with a similar share of the vote, and then the other five leaders all polling between 7% and 17%. The First to Die category was truly weird with four different leaders all polling close to a quarter of the vote apiece, between Pericles, Sitting Bull, Mehmed, and Qin. I can't recall the vote ever splitting in quite that fashion before. For the victory condition, Spaceship was overwhelmingly popular as the visual turned into a Pac-Man eating the rest of the pie chart.
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!
Dolwin: Qin and Sitting Bull butt heads early and often, slowing each other down. Mehmed ends up fighting both Qin and Pericles, with Vicky ending up joining in and dooming Pericles. Vicky runs away with financial/alive, while Mehmed taking over the west side but falling behind in tech. Churchill sticks around, but doesnt do enough to move on to the championship.
RandomKesaranPasaran: can the championship game be half english? it seems possible with this field.
VoteZaphod: Seven years of hurt never stopped me dreaming, Civ 4’s coming home!
jarrebesetoert: Can I choose "no one wins"? What a meh field! Anything goes, I guess. I think Pericles is going to settle his first city south, mainly blocking Victoria from ever getting a lot of cities. Qin has copper at his start, so he probably declares war on Sitting Bull long before catapults and achieves nothing but dragging both of them down. Beyond that: I really don't know. Mehmed will probably take a lot longer to declare on Sitting Bull or Pericles, so by then I'm hoping Pericles is strong enough to retaliate AND get some help from his high peace weight allies I guess... Churchill has a nice river to settle along that leads him nicely to the middle of the map? So maybe him? Space... someday? Qin and Vicky are the only ones that declare at pleased, so it's probably going to be a love fest once the low peace weights are out.
Vesper: One FIN/alive, no religion inclination, no spiritual, one creative kid locked in the north and vast land in the south with weak expanders - a total mess except for peace weight split. For this sole reason Vicky is the only one with an advantage. Pericles FTD because of high culture thus high border tension on everyone, Mehmed for second due to likely shared conquest of Pericles with her. Qin might do something valuable, but his peace weight makes him a dogpile magnet. But if Bull would again stand up... He's got too great land to not to try, but I don't expect him to succeed twice in a row.
Sir Colville of the Dale: The price of having four Spiritual leaders in one game is that this one has none. If my stab in the dark that Mehmed and Churchill get the two religions is correct, I think Pericles gets steamrolled, Victoria becomes unstoppable to space, and Qin does just enough to get past a Churchill who gets peace-locked the entire game.
BluesyCobalt: Have to go Vicky and Churchill because triple England finale would be a heinous affront to God and I can't not root for that outcome.
haphazard1: Despite a couple games in a row of AIs with fantastic starts failing to do anything with them, I am picking the great start. Churchill will get his golds online quickly, powering him through the early techs and getting him past the no road/no culture zone so many AIs fall into. Pericles looks promising but gets squeezed for land. Qin and SB end up in a long, pointless war that leaves both of them way behind. Victoria might do something, her start is decent for her opening techs if she mines the marble. But I have confidence she will squander any early success. That leaves Mehmed to come in second. Who knows where the religions will get founded, though. That could make all of this completely wrong. If SB founds a dominant religion and unites the world through diplo, all bets are off.
kcostell: Victoria's Starting position would be terrible for a lot of leaders, but for a financial leader starting with Fishing the seafood tiles aren't a curse. That being said, she starts with mining and there's marble in her capital. I'm worried she'll get distracted by the shinies. Instead, I'll put my trust in Pericles being enough of a non-idiot that he'll tech Animal Husbandry sooner rather than later. Churchill is an expert at riding on coattails to a second place finish, so I'll pick him for that. Qin's likely to spend an eternity banging heads against the brick wall that's Sitting Bull, so I'll put him down as first to die.
the_lord_admiral: I could try picking my favorite starting location (and there's a few beauties here; Pericles and Churchill's look hard to screw up). Or I could just take season 8 to its logical conclusion and blindly pick the highest peace weights to win. Yeah, I'll go with that one. Vicky pulls off some kind of Fin/Alive BS and settles a dozen plus cities somehow in a game that gets replicated in zero of the alternate histories, Sitting Bull outtechs Qin and kills him (with help from across the map allies), and Mehmed ends up donating his land to the other leaders by getting into a 4v1 in the midgame. Vicky eventually gets to space while someone else backs into 2nd place. I know that's Churchill's MO but I'll give it to Sitting Bull just because he has PW 8.
ZincAlloy: It's Sitting Bull's ideal map! He can sit in the middle of the map and get in the way of Mehmed and Qin while the other high peace weights get way out in front. Maybe they'll even vote him into a diplo win as thanks.
Commodore: I'm chosen Sitting Bull for the win in this completely-full-of-unseeded-leaders field, for two reasons:
1. He's got a great capital and the most expansion room by far.
2. He's the leader least likely to be picked to win by Sullla and thus receive the Season Curse.
Colors: This is the season of the good and peaceful, so screw it - Vicky wins by spaceship, the four western leaders will have inconclusive squabbling until Churchill's redcoats sweep out of the east to lock up second.
aubbls: this is going to be a long game. qin and mehmed should be natural allies but odds are theyll butt heads. sitting bull and pericles are the natural blockers for the english to be safe from the more aggressive leaders. religion is a toss up and could make strange bedfellows or even give qin and mehmed a reason to team up. this feels like a wide open game with several win conditions. pericles doesnt usually have enough in the tank to win a strong culture game. sitting bull can find opportunities against the non-english. mehmed or qin could gobble up a whole civ and push a domination or out tech the smaller civs. vicky is the one who has the advantage with financial, and Churchill isnt flashy and has a knack at surviving (just like mehmed) so ill split the difference. its unlikely england will finish first and second, but this field is wide open. the alternate histories will give us more insight, but the best guess is the safest. space win, Churchill second like he usually is, and Vicky using financial to outrace other leaders to rhe end. really want sitting bull to win though.
Smosism: Victoria is probably going to be left alone like her last game and that's enough for the fin/alive wincon to take care of itself. I don't think churchill wil do churchill, in fact i think he will completely fumble his insane capital. A fumble for the ages.
Keler: I hate this season, losers ftw
