This summary for Game Four was written by TheOneAndOnlyAtesh. Many thanks for volunteering to put this report together! 
When juxtaposed with the crazy and unpredictable outcomes of the previous three games, Game Four seemed to be a lot more straightforward, with three significant and easy to define regions. Going from West to East, to start were the two Greek leaders, Pericles and Alex. Their similarities end with their nationalities; while Pericles is a peacenik who prefers to sit back and emphasize culture, the seeded leader Alex is a bloodthirsty warmonger akin to South Park's rendition of Russell Crowe. Pericles was a heavy First To Die favorite, not only due to his evil twin to his south, but also due to his Central low peaceweight neighbors, the defending silver medalist Saladin and Qin Shi Huang. Making matters worse for Pericles was that both Saladin and Qin had extremely high quality land, rich in commerce, food, and production (aka everything), and the combination of Pericles' peaceweight isolation, Alex, and the border tensions that would result from his culture emphasis seemed to destine him for a tough outing.
In the East were three high peaceweight leaders: Washington, by far the most successful of the American leaders, Zara, who may have PTSD from being the sole reason for Alex's seeded leader status, and, last but certainly not least, Mansa Musa, one of the most celebrated leaders in AI Survivor history. The Season Six champion was a heavy favorite, and for good reason: he had the other high peaceweights to serve as meat shields for the more Western leaders and all the rivers he needed to do his "runaway in tech and win a Turn 300ish Culture victory" thing. However, his victory did not seem completely predetermined, as Saladin's and Qin's land was better in quality and Washington and especially Zara have not always been the most reliable allies to have.
The key questions that would determine the outcome of this game were:
1) Would Saladin be able to effectively execute his religious game plan and work together with his natural ally Qin?
2) Would the low peaceweight leaders be able to come together and take down one or more of Pericles, Washington, and Zara?
3) Saladin, Mansa, and Zara are all religious leaders; how would religious diplomacy shape the game?
4) How much would Alex undermine the ability of the low peaceweights to work together?
5) Will any of the above even matter if Mansa Musa is able to get out to 7-8 cities and steamroll through the tech tree?
Saladin immediately went for Meditation, guaranteeing him Islam. Note that both Zara and Mansa do not start with Mysticism, and with Deity starting techs removed, this had pretty significantly harmed them in the past, especially Zara, whose religious forays had played a major role in his dismemberments at the hands of Alex. This time, however, they would wisely opt for worker techs. Although Mansa would research Mysticism first in an attempt to found his religion, once Saladin founded Islam, he switched to Agriculture in order to improve his resources. In fact, it was PERICLES who decided to beeline the 2nd religion, as if he were brushing aside the "maybe you shouldn't found a religion when Alex is breathing down your neck" warnings from Zara. Making matters worse for North Greece, he and Saladin had settled their 2nd cities towards each other, and if he founded an opposing religion, their Holy Cities would already be bordering each other. The last thing Pericles needed was another enemy, and he was flashing a neon "Make Me First To Die" sign on his back. His religion attempt was not even a guarantee to succeed, as both Mansa and Zara later rejoined the Polytheism race. It got to the point that the three leaders were neck and neck for the 2nd religion. Who would win this race?
As it turns out, everybody lost. Well, actually, Pericles did end up founding the 2nd religion due to an alphabetical order same-turn tie with Zara (Mansa was one turn behind). But this was a quintessential Pyrrhic victory, as his lands were covered in forests and were not conducive to his Mining/Fishing starting techs at all. Pericles' founding of Taoism had doomed him to irrelevancy; on Turn 25 he had ZERO worker improvements. Zero. Not even a single road. Sparta had become a Real Poverty Point.
Mansa's failed Polytheism bid, meanwhile, did not hurt him too much. In fact, the early game could not have gone better for him, because both Washington and Zara ended up settling their cities away from him. Mansa certainly did not need more land to succeed, but it was being handed to him on a silver platter anyway. He was not taking as much advantage as he could have though, as he had a nearby Marble resource and was starting to focus on wonders earlier than he should have. Even more worrying for Mansa supporters was that, similar to Huayna Capac in Game Three, Mansa had almost no happiness pre-Calendar. In particular, there was an Ivory resource near potential Malinese or Ethiopian territory, that Mansa sorely needed both for happiness and in case one of his neighbors got run over by Elephants. Luckily for Mansa, Washington and Zara continued to settle away from Mali, and his wondering was not a complete waste, as he built the Pyramids and adopted Representation, which, alongside trades with his allies, rendered potential happiness problems pretty much nonexistent.
Meanwhile, two dark horses were having strong starts: Washington and Qin Shi Huang. Saladin, like Mansa, was getting distracted by wonders, and his American and Chinese neighbors were taking advantage and expanding very rapidly. Washington in particular was settling provocatively, and his settling had the possibility of sowing the seeds for future conflict with his low peaceweight neighbors. Qin, with two gold resources near his capital and a fantastic starting tech combo, also expanded rapidly without crashing his economy. The same could not be said for Alex, whose city count was also ballooning but whose ignorance about centripetal force [Wheel tech] and hatred of Mysticism had rendered his economy literally worse than the Observer FOR THE FIRST 100 TURNS. It would have been longer had Alex not conquered a barb city, getting enough gold to reduce Pottery from 16 turns to a reasonable time. So far, this year has been a disastrous season for warmongers, and Alex was not going to buck this trend. While South Greece was stuck in a barbarian mindset, North Greece had also fallen into technological irrelevancy by going to the opposite extreme. Due to wasting time on religion, he had no tile improvements and was taking double digit turns to research The Wheel and Animal Husbandry. In order to emphasize how truly fruitless his Taoism push was, it bears to mention that while Taoism would never spread, leaving Pericles a religious pariah, Mansa's Monotheism religion of Christianity would immediately spread. Soon enough, the diplomatic chasm would widen, with all the low peaceweights in the west adopting Saladin's Islam while the Eastern high peaceweights had embraced Mansa's Christianity.
The biggest winners of the first 50 turns were Qin and Mansa, with Saladin not too far behind, as he would begin to expand well once getting out of wonder mode and was poised to have a strong religious game. Washington was also looking strong, with eight cities, despite his precarious diplomatic position. At worst, it seemed like he could tag along with Mansa Musa. Zara was having an ok game, but he was underexpanding, constantly getting beat to wonders by Saladin and Mansa, and having some issues with sprouting barb cities. Zara was nearly doomed to permanent 2nd-tier-status when Mansa came to within a hair's width of taking an important barb city, but luckily for Ethiopia, Zara was able to kill the last wounded Barb Archer and secure the deep South for himself. The Greek leaders, of course, had already become completely and utterly irrelevant. Community member aethelwynd put it succinctly: The Greeks were hoping for the EU to bail them out!
Partially due to Alex's pathetic economy, even by pure warmonger standards, the opening stages of the game was actually quite peaceful. For every contender, this had advantages and disadvantages. The two Central leaders were able to grow into formidable powers, especially Saladin, who was developing a strong religious economy to at least stay within striking distance of Mansa research wise. Qin was also strong, but his refusal to research Mysticism in a timely manner and overexpansion slightly slowed down his economy, allowing other leaders like Saladin and Zara to catch up. This early peace was great for these leaders, but of course, every turn that Mansa did not get closer to being stopped just increased the chance that he would become unstoppable. By Turn 110 or so, Mansa had gotten out of his expansion rut, netting enough cities to get the Mansa train rolling, despite being forced to keep two of his settlers home due to running out of room to expand.
With such a deep diplomatic and religious divide, war was naturally inevitable, and three wars broke out in succession. First, Saladin sicced his armies into America, almost immediately followed by Pericles surprisingly being the one to start the Greek Civil War and Zara invading Qin's lands. Nothing more needs to be said about the Ethiopia-China conflict, which would soon conclude with absolutely nothing accomplished by any side. This rendition of the Peloponnesian War would also be an admittedly hilarious sideshow akin to two Karens engaging in a slap fight in a Walmart parking lot, and although Pericles would immediately lose a city to Alex, afterwards the war would grind into an endless stalemate, as Alex's much larger city count was counterbalanced by Pericles' superior technology. A major theme for the two Greek leaders would be how, despite being mortal enemies, these two leaders really needed each other in some sort of mutually symbiotic parasitic relationship, as by obsessively fighting each other, they prevented each other from suiciding into the other far stronger leaders.
In contrast, the Arab and American conflict would prove to be a pivotal fight that would determine the outcome of the rest of the game. Saladin had leveraged a Mausoleum-boosted Golden Age and his Islamic Holy City extremely well, and he had Elephants and Catapults while Washington was just a little bit behind. Although Washington made a valiant effort trying to defend Boston, Axes and Swords could only ward off Elepults for so long, and Boston fell to the Arabs. Washington was at risk of completely melting to Saladin, and if this happened quickly enough, Mansa Musa would be exposed, and even he was likely to be unable to withstand Saladin's overwhelming numbers. Saladin's massive army, more than 2.5x the size of Washington's quickly made their way to the gates of Washington DC. If the American capital fell, the floodgates would open, and the Islamic low peaceweights would be poised to take control of the world. What would happen...
A Christian miracle took place. Washington DC held! As it turns out, Washington was able to get Elephants of his own just in time, and he was able to stuff his capital with enough defenders to do more than enough to ward off the Arabian army. This was a crucial victory for the high peaceweights, and Mansa was beginning to run away with the game. Mansa was not just benefitting from Fin/Alive; his double Holy City was altogether generating 37 GPT from Shrines alone, and he was about to build Sistine Chapel to officially mark the start of the Culture Victory countdown. Washington (and thus Mansa) was not completely out of the weeds just yet. Qin was plotting war, and he disliked both Zara and Washington. This was yet another potential turning point of the game, as if Qin were to attack Washington, America would certainly collapse and Mansa would be in trouble, while if Qin tried to invade Ethiopia, Washington would at the very least slow down the Arabian conquest enough that it would be too late to stop Mansa Musa. What would Qin do?
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTT??!?!?!?!?!?!???!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! 
Holy Moly. SALADIN?!? Qin's religious ally? What kind of voodoo magic was Mansa Musa cooking up? This dagger thrust into Saladin's back might rank among the top three most shocking moments in AI Survivor History, and the entire community, not the least bit Sullla himself, were rendered stunned. The Chinese army, helmed by Chu-Ko-Nus, immediately ran over Baghdad, and soon, two Chinese stacks were knocking on the walls of Saladin's two most prized jewels, his Islamic Holy City of Medina and his wonder-filled capital of Mecca. Saladin also made a grave tactical error. Instead of fighting for his very survival, he tried too hard to defend and hold Boston, and in the end, he chased two rabbits and lost both of them. The Americans recaptured Boston, and Medina fell to the Chinese, with Mecca also falling soon afterwards. The enemy of Washington's enemy was his friend, and the unlikely allied forces of American and Chinese forces were now converging onto the collapsing Arabian Empire. This was a good reminder of the importance of unique units. Even though Saladin had Camel Archers on the scene, they are barely marginal improvements over the Knights they replace (the best thing about them is that they do not require resources), while the collateral damage causing Chu-Ko-Nus, while not quite Praetorians or Cataphracts, are still strong units, and they greatly decimated the Arabian forces. Saladin did have one potential lifeline, as Zara was plotting war, and Qin was his only viable target as all the Christian leaders were in a lovefest. It seems though that Zara saw the writing on the wall, and he canceled his plotting, leaving the Arabs to their doom. Although Qin would get all the relevant prizes of the war, it was actually Washington who delivered the killing blow on the man who nearly destroyed him, rendering Saladin as the completely unexpected First To Die on Turn 190, a result that less than 2% of the picking contest predicted.
This certainly qualifies as one of the strongest performances by a First To Die in AI Survivor History. Truth be told, it is hard to explain Saladin's demise for any other reason other than plain rotten luck. Saladin was having a Justinian-like game, spreading his religion to everyone who mattered and being well on his way to conquer all non-believers, and had Qin not committed one of the most brutal backstabs that we have ever witnessed, a Saladin victory was a major possibility. This is not to say that Saladin played a perfect game. His initial expansion was too slow, and this helped Qin to become strong; maybe a weaker Qin does not surprise dec Saladin like that. He also failed to get his priorities straight, thinking he could continue his American campaign when the Chinese forces were about to rip his heart out. Nevertheless, we should now have enough evidence to conclude that Saladin is a poor man's Justinian, with worse traits, a worse Knight replacement, and generally not as effective at executing his religious strategy. When he gets his religion going, he has the potential to be strong, and he indeed was strong until the man who was supposed to be his closest brother in faith betrayed him.
Qin, despite taking the Islamic Holy City and Mecca for himself, was not remotely close to the biggest beneficiary of the war. Mansa Musa had become an unstoppable runaway, having teched Physics by the time of Saladin's demise (for reference, Alex had just finished METAL CASTING) and to be frank, the only realistic chance for a Qin victory was either through United Nations cheese or for Qin to somehow conquer the other high peaceweights, and maybe one of the Greek leaders for a Domination victory before Turn 300 at the latest, as any later and Mansa was almost certain to have three Legendary Culture cities.
Beevis and Butthead in the Greek West had suspended their little kindergarten's row, and Butthead was embracing his role as the troll of the game, launching a cross map war on Zara. Of course, Zara's Cuirassiers banished Alex's Classical army into the Shadow Realm, but this did have the effect of bringing Qin, who absolutely adored Alex, into conflict with Zara. For a moment, Zara appeared to be in trouble, as Qin's massive army rolled over the core Ethiopian city of Addis Ababa, but Washington declared war on Qin, leaving Qin in a 2v1 once Alex eventually ran away with his tail tucked in between his legs. Meanwhile, Mansa was beelining Mass Media, nabbing all the important late game Cultural wonders and enabling him to watch on a flatscreen TV the unenlightened world around him burn.
Qin was theoretically in the driver's seat for Runner Up, but he had the potential to squander it. Yes, he was in a 2v1, but he was not helping himself, as he was committing one of the more egregious Willem Gambits that I have certainly witnessed. While Zara, and eventually Washington, had Rifles and Cavs, Qin was researching RAILROAD before Rifles. Washington was conquering former Northern Arabia, getting all the way to Damascus, and Qin needed to do something before his idiocy caught up to him. Thankfully, Qin's adversaries were of the forgiving type, and Qin was able to make peace with Zara and Washington before any significant disaster, maintaining a strong 2nd place (technically, he was tops in score, but Mansa's victory was all but assured at this point). He managed to avoid punishment for his strange aversion to Rifling, which he would avoid until he absolutely had to research it in order to continue to progress through the tech tree.
As that war was going on, Alex resta, and this time, he made significant headway, as his much larger empire was too much for Pericles to handle. Pericles seemed to be on the way out, but, surprisingly, Alex made peace, leaving Pericles with three cities. Meanwhile, On Turn 229, Mansa switched on the Culture slider, and the victory turn was likely to be in the 280s at the very latest. On Turn 235, he built the UN, but a Diplomatic win was an extremely unlikely possibility, as Qin was frankly not big enough and Mansa had long since embraced Free Religion, dropping his relations with Washington and Zara to Pleased.
Interestingly, Mansa switched off the slider. As it turns out, he was plotting war! Despite being peaceful, Mansa can plot at Pleased – not even his former Christian allies were safe. Even though this slowed down Mansa's victory, it was not an ill-advised move at all. On the contrary, it was not a bad idea for Mansa to effectively ensure his safety by teching all the way to Bombers and Tanks before switching the slider back on, and he did not slow down his victory in any significant manner – even without the slider, he was still on pace for a pre-T300 win.
There was one wrinkle, however, as Washington and Zara signed a defensive pact. Mansa could easily end up murdering both of them. That turned out to be a moot point, however, as the turn after the Defensive Pact, ALEX declared war on Zara, bringing himself into a 2v1. What an absolute troll of a war this was. Alex had zero chance against the two, but Qin hated both Zara and Washington, and so, Alex was shielded from any Christian retribution, as neither the American nor the Ethiopian forces could cross Chinese territory. Alex was being that prick we all know from middle school who would be an obnoxious bully but get away with it by hiding behind the strongest or most popular kid.
Thus, the war went nowhere, and Mansa would cancel whatever war he was considering, instead opting to turn back the slider once he had researched Plastics, as is often the case for Cultural leaders, and using well-timed Great Artists to achieve the incredibly early Culture Victory date of Turn 281. That was that – only one leader died, Qin made the playoffs, and the Wildcard game added four more leaders. The Wildcard game is already looking like a must see event, with leaders such as Alex, Cathy, Willem, and Pericles ready to put on a show for the community.
Considering Tokugawa's Game Two performance, and now this horrific embarrassment by Pericles, perhaps non-religious leaders should heed the advice to just leave the religious stuff alone, especially if they have poor starting techs for their land. Pericles, in his religiously and diplomatically isolated position, is exceedingly lucky to survive, as he was fortunate that Alex turned out to be irrelevant while Saladin and Qin hated other leaders more. Pericles will certainly be First To Die in the majority of Alternate Histories, and his case also serves as another piece of evidence that the AI are not great with forest heavy starts. Giving one final amusing side note that pretty much sums up Pericles' game, he would not build his religious Shrine until Turn 255.
The two Greek leaders were remarkable men in real life, and they had to be rolling in their graves while watching this game. Alex needed to prove to the community that his seeded leader status was not merely from being lucky enough to roll over metalless Zara in past seasons, and he failed miserably at this. As with most other pure warmongers, he just did not prioritize his economy well enough, and as a result, he was lagging behind the Observer Civ. This is embarrassing, even by Alex standards; I'm not sure infamous bad techers like Boudicca or Bismarck could have pulled this off if they tried! Alex is also quite lucky to survive, as his buddy Qin was able to shield him from certain doom. At least he was not foolish enough to bite the hand that fed him. I am starting to wonder if, for a pure warmonger, too much land might actually be a bad thing. Perhaps it gives too much potential for the warmonger to crash their economy. Maybe they need barely enough room for 6-7 cities, before they just focus on cranking out their armies. Anyways, it is such a farcical meme that Saladin had to be the only player to be eliminated while these two Greek bozos survive to the Wildcard.
Washington played well, and showed why he is regarded as the most competent of the American leaders. In particular, he defended extremely well, holding off Saladin when his demise seemed inevitable. Mansa Musa certainly owes the first US President a lot for the amount of aggression soaking he did. After the war against the Arabs, which wrecked the American economy, Washington did an admirable job recovering, even taking some territory from the powerful Qin. It appears that the main issues with Washington are his extreme high peaceweight and the subpar American unique package that come far too late to have any relevance. Nevertheless, despite the strong Wildcard field, I would not count Washington completely out, especially if he has a lot of land to expand into.
I don't really have much to say about Zara, except that he was extremely meh. This game made it clear that his true potential as a leader is at best a mediocre leader, and certainly a subpar religious leader. The best way I could summarize his game is that he tried to execute the Mansa Musa playbook, but he just is not Mansa Musa, and it is telling that the biggest impact he had on this game, other than expanding away from Mansa early, was to continuously defy UN attempts to embrace global Free Religion. I expect him to be more interesting in the Alternate Histories, particularly in games where he ends up with a different religion from Mansa Musa.
Although much of Qin's strong game stemmed from his excellent land, he certainly made the best of it. His expansion was good enough that his no-culture-until-Libraries gambit had a minimal effect on his game, and of course, his backstab of Saladin was a brilliant move that secured his spot in the playoffs. His most foolish moment was when he stubbornly refused to research Rifling, but luckily, Zara and Washington are inert enough AIs that he faced minimal consequences. Against stronger AIs, he certainly cannot afford to commit such a stunt. The playoffs will provide more hints as to if Qin is actually a decent leader or if he was carried by having double gold near his capital in this game. Nevertheless, this was a very good performance by Qin Shi Huang.
One sign that someone is the absolute best at what they do is when they can have a poor performance and still win comfortably. Examples of this include NFL superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes, future basketball legend Lebron James, and the Germany soccer team. We can lump Mansa Musa into that category. Mansa Musa did not play particularly well, especially in the early game, in which he was doing the build Temple of Artemis on four cities thing that has doomed many an AI in the past, including Huayna in the previous game. Yet, despite extremely strong leaders with much better land in this game, he still won a blisteringly early Culture Victory with his victory never in doubt by Turn 150 or so. Admittedly, he could not have asked for a better setup, with neighbors who are simultaneously natural allies and tough nuts to crack, but he still proved why he is poised to leapfrog Huayna for the all time point scorer title this year. While last year was the season of mediocrities, this appears to be the season of high peaceweights, and if things continue like this, Mansa should have an easy track to the Championship game this year.
Sudo Nym, probably due to having an on-point victory date, catapulted his way to the top of the Picking Contest leaderboard, scoring 21 points in Game Four alone to have 57 points. The race is now close, as Chaplain, Dark Savant, and mooaddict are not far behind, with many more contestants in the mid to high 40s in points. It appears that random.org's luck, however, may be starting to run out.
86 coins on Mansa Musa looks like an absolute coup for antisocialmunky. Mansa should have gone for at least 100. ASM will be looking to see if Darius can serve as a good #2 for him. I certainly feel bad for Eaxups, whose bid on Saladin looked very smart; at least Saladin netted him 2 points as a consolation. Amicalola and Kjotleik will be very interested in the outcome of Game Five, while J_mie6's will be looking ahead to the Wildcard Game regarding his Fantasy team.
