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:
Justinian of the Byzantines
Traits: Imperialistic, Spiritual
Starting Techs: Mysticism, Wheel
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Season One champion, Season Three runner up, one playoff round elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 3 Second Places 
Total Kills: 10 
Overall Power Ranking: 36 points, 6th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Justinian is the Civ4 leader that best combines religious and military pursuits together into a dominant total package. Justinian benefits from a strong trait pairing in the Spiritual + Imperialistic combination, routinely securing a larger-than-average share of the available land. He is tied to the Byzantine civilization, which suffers from terrible starting techs but benefits from one of the game's most overpowered units in the form of the Cataphract. Knights with 12 strength are enough to win many games of their own accord and Justinian has put them to good use in many of his victories. (He's also sometimes refused to research Guilds until a very late date, as it doesn't correspond with his Religious + Military tech flavors.) There's no question that Justinian is an aggressive leader who leans towards conquest, with a high aggression rating (7.6/10), heavy unit emphasis (8/10), and a somewhat low peace weight. Unlike the game's most insane warmongers, however, Justinian largely limits his aggression to competitors outside of his religious bloc. He will strongly favor leaders who share his religion and hate those who don't. Justinian also will not plot war at "Pleased" relations, which simultaneously keeps him from backstabbing his allies but also sometimes limits the gains that the Byzantines could be making with more decisive action. Justinian will typically found an early religion and use it to make some friends, then go on the attack against those who are outside his religious bloc. He does this well enough to make up for his lackluster performance on the economic side of the game. Research doesn't matter if everyone else has been crushed to death beneath cataphract hooves.
Past Performance: Justinian was one of the best leaders of the early seasons. Not only did he win the inaugural Championship, he followed it up with a second-place overall finish two seasons later, and is currently the only leader to finish in the top three overall on two separate occasions! Seven placements and nine kills in the first four seasons established him firmly as a top-tier leader, as he was important in game after game after game. More recently, he's fallen on hard times: he's scored no survivals and only a single kill in the past three seasons, one of the least successful seeded leaders in this stretch. But if you look more closely, he has good excuses: his starting position in Season Five was terrible and left him with no hope, and the past two seasons have seen him get off to strong starts where alternate histories indicate he was the best leader on the map - only to see somebody else snowball ahead and plow into him at the worst possible times. As a result, while Justinian has largely fallen into "old legend" status by now, he continues to be an imminent threat to take the world by storm again, and one of the top candidates to become the first two-time champion.
Gilgamesh of Sumeria
Traits: Creative, Protective
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Season Five runner up, one additional Championship loss, two wildcard eliminations, three opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 13
Overall Power Ranking: 32 points, tied 8th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Gilgamesh is a highly aggressive warmonger who finds himself bizarrely paired with defensive leader traits and an economic civilization. His trait combination of Creative + Protective is an odd grouping with no clear direction in mind. Faster border pops joined together with extra defensive promotions - huh? I suppose they're using for Pink Dotting a neighbor with a forward city plant but that's about it. The Sumerian civilization is quite a bit better, with excellent starting techs and a useful building in the Ziggurat. The Vulture doesn't grade out much better than a standard axe and definitely serves as the weakest part of this civilization's package. Gilgamesh has a strangely high wonder building preference (8/10) and an above average interest in religion. He's also one of the most likely leaders to launch new wars (8/10 aggression rating) and he emphasizes military techs in his research. He also has Culture as his other flavor alongside that Military preference, so again, this is kind of a confused individual. Gilgamesh can't seem to decide if he wants to be a culture/wonder leader or a military leader and often struggles to reconcile these competing impulses. He can be quite successful when it all comes together but we've also seen a lot of helpless flailing in multiple directions at once.
Past Performance: While his track record is a bit spotty, Gilgamesh has nevertheless established himself as a leader to watch. For the first three seasons, he was just a nobody, stuck in unfavorable starting conditions and unable to break out of them. That all changed in Seasons Four and Five, though: both seasons saw him play a solid second-place game in the opening round/Wildcard (sneaking in a Diplomatic win in one of those games) before stomping all over his playoff round game after favorable dogpiles. Those dominant wins feeding into two straight Championship appearances launched him up into seeded leader status, and he further bolstered his position by finishing Season Five in a very close Second Place. But while still being an important figure in most of his games, he's struggled a bit more of late: he's been stuck fighting it out in the Wildcard the past three seasons, and not been able to make it through the game in the past two. In sum, Gilgamesh is a capable warmonger who can be extremely dangerous when he breaks out in front, but historically has needed a bit of help from an ally to reach that point.
Bismarck of Germany
Traits: Expansive, Industrious
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 6
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: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 9 points, tied 36th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Bismarck has the Expansive and Industrious traits, a below average combination probably most useful for the half-cost granaries and forges. As a German leader he gets the Panzer and Assembly Plant unique items, both of which are fairly strong on paper but come so late in the game that they may as well not exist, excluding very fringe circumstances. Lastly, Bismarck gets Hunting and Mining, which can make him slow to improve his food resources early in the game. Bismarck's main quirk is that he's a rare leader with only a single flavour: Military. Unlike most of the other leaders with just one flavour though, Bismarck's other preferences aren't particularly geared around it; he's otherwise a pretty standard AI. Bismarck has an average aggression rating (5.6/10), unit (6/10) and wonder (6/10) build preference, and a neutral peaceweight at 6. He's basically a generic AI that's more likely to be ahead instead of behind in military tech, but a little slower on the economic front.
Past Performance: Bismarck is perhaps best-known in the AI Survivor community for being the first leader to showcase the strategy of ignoring The Wheel research and leaving his territory completely road-less for ages. Yeah, he has that sort of track record. Most of his performances have been unremarkable at best and laughably bad at worst, leading to him no longer being taken very seriously. The lone exception, and source of over 75% of his total points, was his Season Six opener, where he leveraged a great starting position and expertly-timed backstab to win a crushing Domination victory. However, the rest of his performances have made it clear that this performance was out of the ordinary, and barring another great start, he shouldn't be expected to repeat this success anytime soon.
Catherine of the Russians
Traits: Creative, Imperialistic
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, two playoff round eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 7
Overall Power Ranking: 24 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Catherine has arguably the best traits for rapid expansion in the game, with Imperialistic for building settlers quickly, and Creative for popping borders of all her cities. She also gets the powerful Cossack, and the too-late-to-matter Research Institute for her unique items. Lastly, Catherine gets the weak combination of Hunting and Mining for her starting techs, meaning she'll have to research a few techs before she can get any of her food resources up and running. Catherine is one of the more unique personalities in the game. She has a unique change to her diplomacy in that refusing one of Cathy's demands will give a -2 malus as opposed to the usual -1. This applies to other AI leaders too, and Cathy often ends up hating nearly everybody else in the game because of it. Naturally, she has high likelihood to demand all kinds of tribute, with numbers like 8/10 and 10/10 for various types of demands. Catherine is the only AI leader in the game who can be bribed to join a war at "Friendly" relations. She is also moderately aggressive (6.7/10), and other than that most of her numbers are fairly average, including unit (4/10) and wonder build (6/10) ratings. She also has a fairly unusual flavour combination, with Cultural and Military flavours. Thanks to her traits, Catherine is one of the most likely AIs to claim a large portion of the map peacefully, and her moderate aggression rating means she can sometimes get the snowball rolling. However, the lack of economic benefit from her traits means that if she fails to do this, she will often fall behind technologically, the kiss of death in these games.
Past Performance: Cathy is a fan favorite who's repeatedly been a major player in her games. She's won with very strong performances in three different openers, and even in the games when she doesn't ultimately advance, she's still usually an important player. A perfect example is her appearance in the Season Six Championship, where she was the score leader after the landgrab and primed to be a top competitor for the title, only to get attacked on the exact same turn that she launched her own war, trapped in a 2v1, and eventually become the first eliminated. It does seem like Cathy's more likely than some of the other low peaceweights to get trapped in too many fights at once, resulting in her spotty record - perhaps that's her feisty AI personality coming into play. Regardless, it's rare indeed to see her completely falter and be a non-entity; her premier landgrab traits almost always result in her being one of the strongest leaders after the early game, and she's always one to watch.
Genghis Khan Temujin of the Mongols
Traits: Aggressive, Imperialistic
Starting Techs: Hunting, Wheel
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Two wildcard eliminations, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: No first or Second Place finishes
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 5 points, tied 48th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Temujin is a comically over-aggressive leader who routinely self-destructs with ill-advised military ventures. His Imperialistic trait is good for expansion but the pairing with Aggressive carries no economic benefits at all, leaving Temujin to crash his economy in game after game. The great khan is routinely one of the most technologically backwards leaders, inevitably causing him to flame out and lose to more advanced neighbors in the later stages of each match. The Mongolian civ is well above average thanks to the Keshik and Ger unique items, and Kublai Khan has been able to use them to good effect in his appearances. However, Genghis Khan is fatally undercut by his obsession with all things involving war. He has an exceedingly high aggression rating (9.5/10), he builds tons of units (8/10), he will demand tribute constantly (10/10), and he has the lowest peace weight in the game. Temujin only has a single flavor for his tech research, Military, and he'll go to great lengths to beeline Military Science for his grenadiers while still lacking Aesthetics. This is not a complicated leader to understand: Temujin is going to attack his neighbors early and often.
Past Performance: Like most of the really aggressive warmongers, Genghis has not seen much success in this competition, and at the start of Season Eight is one of only two leaders who has yet to see the playoffs. He frequently ends up as a runt civ, failing to develop well enough to become a serious power, fighting and fighting but accomplishing little, and eventually getting overrun or simply forgotten. He has had a couple of more successful outings, though: in both Seasons Five and Six, he successfully got the snowball of conquest rolling in his opener and became a major world power in a clear top-two position... only to throw it all away in a lategame attack against a technologically superior foe, as he never did get around to building a good economy. Genghis does at least have a respectable kill count, better than some of his aggressive peers, and alternate histories have proven that he absolutely has the ability to win a game if things go right. But he's still waiting for things to go right...
Tokugawa of Japan
Traits: Aggressive, Protective
Starting Techs: Fishing, Wheel
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 15 points, tied 27th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Tokugawa is infamous for being the most isolationist leader in Civ4. He won't sign Open Borders with anyone else unless relations warm up to "Pleased", and he generally refuses to trade or interact with anyone else unless they share a mutual military struggle. Tokugawa suffers from one of the worst leader trait combinations in the game, with lots of unit promotions but little else to recommend it. He's also saddled with a weak civilization in Japan, which suffers from poor starting techs and the uselessly-late Shale Plant. Unfortunately the Samurai unit is nothing special in Civ4. Tokugawa's AI personality reflects his generally militaristic bent, with an above average aggression rating (7.3/10) and train unit emphasis. He makes it clear that he wants to be left alone by never asking for help (0/10) or demanding tribute (1/10) or making religious conversion demands (2/10). Tokugawa's best feature is probably his tech flavor, where he has the rare Science preference to go along with a lesser Military emphasis. This is likely the reason why Tokugawa has been somewhat decent at building an economy despite his atrocious leader traits. Long story short, this guy is basically an old man telling everyone to stay out of his yard while shaking a rolled-up newspaper.
Past Performance: Tokugawa is right in the middle of the power rankings, an okay-but-not-great warmonger who's seen modest success in the competition. His games have varied in quality: some have seen him eliminated early or never manage to become a significant power, while in others, he's able to expand to a respectable size and become a legitimate military threat in his own right. What's never happened is a true Tokugawa snowball; even though he's won one Domination victory, that was a match where he was mostly running even with multiple competitors, not pulling ahead until late in the game. While Toku is not as insanely aggressive as some warmongers and is a bit better at teching, his isolationist tendencies have come back to bite him in the past; any map where he starts in a central location seems to end poorly for him, with all three of his top-two finishes coming from starts off to the side. All in all, Toku is a scrappy fighter who's seen scattered successes here and there, but never put together any consistent runs.
Wang Kon of Korea
Traits: Financial, Protective
Starting Techs: Mysticism, Mining
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 11 points, tied 30th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Wang Kon is infamous in AI Survivor circles for acting as the "Troll King", the one leader who will do the most obnoxious thing possible to screw with the rest of the field as well as the viewers watching the game. He has one amazing trait in the form of Financial and one terrible trait in the form of Protective, the two polar opposite traits in terms of overall usefulness in Civ4. Wang Kon's Korean civilization has a subpar set of starting techs combined together with the decent Hwacha and the excellent (if late-arriving) Seowon. As far as AI personalities run, Wang Kon is a pretty basic peaceful builder. While he has a somewhat high aggression rating (6.1/10), his build unit rating is low (4/10) and he doesn't make a lot of demands on his neighbors. With Gold and Science research flavor, a high peace weight, and an inability to declare war at "Pleased" relations, this would seem to be a standard economic leader in the Elizabeth or Frederick or Roosevelt mold, someone who's mostly going to stay out of the way and tech away in peace.
Past Performance: Wang is a massive fan favorite, who's delighted viewers for years with antics that have earned him the frequent monikers of "Troll Kon" or "the Troll King". It all started in his Season Two opener, where he amused the crowd to no end by continually marching his army to the other side of the world to (successfully) harass other leaders at little gain to himself. Since then, he's been present for (perhaps incited?) bizarre antics like other leaders' cross-map crusades; trolled a field of low peaceweight leaders by keeping them occupied fighting him, thereby letting Gandhi secure a win; trolled a stronger competitor by declaring war, buying the game's runaway AI into the conflict, then bowing out and watching the carnage; and most recently trolled the picking contest by declaring a suicidal war and getting himself killed before the massive favorite for First to Die. His most infamous moment, though, was in his Season Three opener, where he was miraculously resurrected from near-elimination via the liberation mechanic, then (still in a trailing position) managed to finagle an exceptionally unlikely Spaceship win via same-turn tiebreaker, to the point where nobody saw his win coming until the turn where it happened! Notably, one thing not on Wang's resume is real success, as the aforementioned extremely unlikely win has been his only successful finish. The Financial trait has helped him out a little, but not made him a real contender, so while entertaining antics from him are a reasonable expectation at this point, a strong performance is not.
Here's what the community was thinking based on the prediction contest before the game took place:
The picking contest had one clear favorite going into Game Two: Gilgamesh to be the winner of the match, with a little more than 50% of the votes picking the Sumerian leader. Justinian had close to 20% of the remainder and then none of the other leaders could muster more than a minimal amount of support. That's where the consensus ended as there wasn't much agreement in the other categories. A surprising Tokugawa topped the Runner Up category followed by Justinian and Gilgamesh, then the First to Die picks were all over the place. Catherine narrowly edged out Genghis Khan and Bismarck without anyone having more than a small plurality of the votes. This was another map where Domination was favored over the more peaceful victory conditions, in particular without much support for the Cultural ending possibility.
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!
NotSpamBot: With both Genghis Khan and The Wang in play this is going to be a messy game. I am going with Gilgamesh 1st because it seems like he might get a safe backline to settle, which would be a nice advantage. I am not voting for Justinian because I don't like his land and I don't like his neighbors. Cathrine is a backstabber extraordinaire and Tokugawa is THE isolationist. I am not even going to try and guess what Wang Kon or Genghis Khan will do. They will ruin someone's game but it can be literally anyone. oh and Bismarck's FTD because lol Bismarck and Genghis not QUITE being insane enough to kill himself instantly like Monty does
Dubioza: I'm going Toku domination. I don't know, I can see it go lots of different ways, but he's fun to root for, so :) Giggles 2nd, Bismarck FTD, cause Toku domination.
TheOneAndOnlyAtesh: Once Genghis, taking out his anger at his grandson's Game 1 performance, forces Cathy to bow down to the might of the Golden Horde, Cathy is going to give you a big slap on the face for giving her clams and a grassland cow. Not that any of this petty drama will matter anyway, because Giggles has all the land he needs to just sit atop, mimosa in hand, on a Ziggurat and enjoy life.
ZincAlloy: Temujin's got lots of space to expand and horses at his cap. If there was ever a time for him to pull off a Keshik rush into a snowball, this is it. It's not going to happen because he's awful, but he's got the opportunity. Anyways, I'm putting in a fringe vote for Tokugawa here because nobody impresses me on this map. I feel like there's going to be lots of pointless wars that go nowhere, and Toku's strategy of pretending everybody else doesn't exist might get him ahead in science while the others squabble.
Ambassador Pineapple: Well, first game i went for what i thought would happen and that went horrible. Alternate histories for that game will be very interesting indeed. This time i am going for what i want, which is to have my boy Giggles run over this map and Toku to follow him. That clown Bismarck to die first. Genghis has nice land, but much is jungled and he will tank his economy with useless cities far away. Justinian has 2 horrible neighbours, so dont think he will be strong here. Ftd could ofc be Wang also. Cathy is just screwed by the map.... Come on, lets go first double-digit game :)
Vergilou: Justinian takes one religion Wang Kon the other. This will cause conflict between them. I expect Justinian to kill Wang Kon, Bismarck and Tokugawa while allying with a weak Cathy who has no river at all and with Temujin who can be really powerful with his start. Gilgamesh will be second by gaining territory peacefully from the conquests of Justinian and keeping it quiet.
JackDRB: One of those games that feels like a total crapshoot, so let's go with a crapshoot pick. Through sheer mysterious Korean magic, from the dust Bismarck and Wang Kon will emerge as the top 2. How? I have absolutely no idea, but the Wang Kon voodoo works in strange and mysterious ways, leading to Bismarck executing his greatest gambit to date (a regular, sensible opening) while Wang hides on his little peninsula, far away enough in the hopes that the low peaceweights decide against smashing into Protective Longbows and instead smash into each other, leaving undeveloped and exhausted empires ready to be German fodder.
lymond: One Ring to Rule them all and in the Darkness Bind Them. Well, I doubt Genghis Khan owns any rings, but the perennially ineffectual Dark Lord has the jewels this time to wreak havoc on this map, even with a nice start for Giggles. I predict Khan will get off to a fast start and make enough early gains to roll the map in a fast Dom win. I expect his first tasty dish will be Cathy.
Dp101: My feeling is that Gilgamesh's start + isolation is a really strong combo, immediately farming the corn will allow for a hell of a settler pump, might found a religion along the way. Bismarck is in a similar position, if he mines the pigs (which seems likely) it'll make for a 5 foodhammer tile, so even before the expected obligatory archery detour is finished, he'll be able to get out to a good start, and most expected city locations either push him further towards agriculture/AH or have ivory to make hunting worthwhile. The north is too crowded for the civs up there to have much of a hope, feels like Catherine comes out on top by virtue of being less likely to waste time on religions than Justinian and thus getting a better landgrab. No strong feelings regarding FTD, but the chances that Genghis throws himself at Gilgamesh at a poor time and gets eaten for his troubles are not insignificant (though if it's at a poor time for *gilgamesh* then everything goes wrong, but I'm sure it'll be fine).
Smosism: TOKUGAWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Schmun: This is a hard one! I don't like Justinian's start position. Gilgs has plenty of space but he might get sidetracked by wonder building. I actually quite like Catherine's land but Ghengis is going to run into someone and torpedo their game and that could well be Catherine or Gilgs. So, Wang Kon? Really could be anyone's game. It seems to be weighted in favour of the low peace weight AIs but if they all fight themselves out then Wang Kon could just be far enough along tech-wise with financial to not care. Toku could likewise eke out a second place finish by just staying alive. My gut says Catherine so that's what I'm going to go with. Wang Kon second because I want to believe. Gonna actually say Justinian FTD in the spirit of going all-in on fringe predictions. Hedging my bets a bit with a spaceship finish, fairly high war count and late finish date.
Commodore: This is a game with six potential winners and Otto von Bismarck, the only guarantee is that things will be volatile. The Troll King, clad in all these fashionable furs this time, is likely able to use his corner pocket location coupled with an ablative Germanic shield to make it to Rifling with the crucial Financial/Alive trait pairing without the crazies ever managing to consolidate everything into a dominant conquest snowball. Toku defaults to second place by opting to NOT engage the locals with diplomacy.
OleDavey: I think Gilgamesh will likely get run over by a 2v1 from Genghis Khan and Wang Kon. Meanwhile, I expect Justinian and Tokugawa to religious tag-team their way to victory.
Plains-Cow: There are sooooo many more plains-cow tiles on this map than the previous one! If you go back and take a look at Kublai's BEST RESOURCE, he failed to keep his pasture intact multiple times, showing poor micro regarding this essential game-winning tile. In this new game, with resources so vast and leaders so aggressive, I'd imagine that the clashes will be immense enough for even the observer civ to feel underfoot! It's my opinion that Justinian will use his spiritual trait to sense and acquire this mooing resource quickly and efficiently, but if he NEGLECTS TO BUILD A PASTURE like in his game last season with Alexander (who won by being FIRST to have a pasture up on his own plains-cow tile), then it's possible that another civ will harness their plains-cow energy to win the day over the Byzantines. I have Gilgamesh in second place because despite being so far away from so many plains-cow tiles, I think that he'll feel spited and fight extra-hard to get a few mooers for his own empire. It would also be prudent to check if an AI is foolish enough to trade away their only plains-cow resource for something else that's inferior, like corn. Eugh.
Tincuradan: Ghengis Khan Temujin will see his enemies cover before him because his cap is great for starting techs, he has horses, and a good diplo situation.
eyser: My strategy this year is to see if I can determine a likely first place or first-to-die and go from there. It paid off last game figuring out Mao's position was bad. This game I think I see the winner - and its Giggles. He has room to backfill, and even better there is a desert separating him from Genghis. So Genghis is highly unlikely to attack him first. I think either Wang or Bismark are good FTD picks and am choosing Wang because closer to Giggles. I expect the northern leaders to all be small and squeezed. Justinian for second because I like him and of the northern leaders he has the best shot at making something out of nothing. Thanks again for holding these competitions, I look forward to them every year.
Cuthraxys: It's Panzer zeit! Oh but first elephants... Genghis, Gigs, Wang and Bis have elephants... but Toku does not! While GK and Gigs stonewall against Cathy's culture and Wang's ivory fortresses, the Axi- I mean German Empire shall rise as mr Ivory-Gems rolls mr What-are-luxes. Just gotta hope the Bismarck Special :tm: does not last for too long. After the dust settles, Germany can roll the rest of the European plain and maybe the Khan will have met his match then. If he isn't dead already. Oh and Gigs? Just got finished toying with Korea for a nice silver medal.
Mansa da man: This game feels like that scene from Pirates of the Caribbean where everyone has their guns pointed at each other. I expect no allies and just pure chaos. Speaking of chaos, Wang Kon should be attacking Gilgamesh by all means but I fully expect him to found an opposing religion to Justinian and then pull off a reverse crusade just because. The winner will be the one who cleans up at the end, and Gilgamesh has the land and favourable peaceweight to do so. You thought last game was bloody? One interesting thing though is that Genghis might not get copper, which could push him towards a Gem fuelled Iron Working to get rid of that jungle and actually develop his land somewhat. He's a real dark Keshik here (sorry) with the likely slow tech pace in this game.
Zigzagzone: Blood for the blood god! This is the map, this is the god start for Genghis Khan to finally forge his empire. Can you hear the sounds of thousands of hooves drumming in the distance? His horde is coming
