This summary for Game Five was written by TheOneAndOnlyAtesh with some assistance from Eauxps I. Fourgott. Many thanks for volunteering to put this report together! 
Game Five was a game of leaders with questionable quality. First and certainly least was Hatshepsut, the only leader with a big fat ZERO next to her name in the Power Rankings. Admittedly, much of this could be attributed to terrible luck, most notably in her Season Seven game where she was knocked out of a dominating position due to 1/100 type of dice rolls. It yet again appeared to be Groundhog Day for the Egyptian queen, who, in what was a favorable 4:2 split between high and low peaceweights, had the misfortune of being placed in the Northeast corner with the two low peaceweights as her neighbors. Fortunately for Hatty, one of them was the Pool One Leader, Pacal, who certainly is the most peaceful of the Evil leaders. Despite Financial/Aliving his way to multiple playoff and championship appearances, Pacal has a degree of inertness that has, in the past, led to some embarrassing performances. His position in this game was intriguing to say the least, as his capital had FIVE seafood resources. I love seafood, and I would have loved to have those tasty morsels of fish and crab for myself, but when it comes to Civ IV AI Survivor, fishing starts have often been a hindrance for the AI due to Workboats slowing down development and Fishing/Sailing line research paths delaying more useful techs. However, Financial and coastal go well together, and Pacal in particular was someone who could end up making something from his feast. Meanwhile, the other low peaceweight was Brennus, located in the North Central region. To be frank, Brennus is one of the least noteworthy of the crazy warhawks, likely due to a combination of his inability to attack at Pleased, his poor Celtic package without the Troll Queen nature of Boudica, and his mediocre at best past.
This was the relatively rare situation where the dumb jock Brennus turned out to be the unpopular kid here, as the three nerds in the West were all peaceniks who love to just build and tech in peace. In the Northwest was Asoka, who tries to be Gandhi but just isn't Gandhi. In the South Central region was Pool Two leader Darius, who immediately comes to mind when we think of a leader being carried by his traits. Last but certainly not least was the other Egyptian leader in this game, Ramesses II, who alongside Darius had a major breakout season last year, making it to the Championship game in convincing fashion. It was up to Ramesses and Darius to see if they could keep the momentum going this season and earn the community's respect.
For picking contest purposes, the community predictions were on team Financial/Alive, as they believed that either Darius would have the space to win or Pacal would be able to ride his seafood buffet to victory. Runner Up was a massive toss up, for good reason: there were arguments for any of these leaders to have strong games of their own. In general, the community believed that First To Die was going to depend on the results of the inevitable conflict between Hatshepsut and Brennus.
The key questions of the game were:
1) Would potential religious differences and border tensions drive a wedge in the Western hippie lovefest, paving the way for a low peaceweight playoff ticket?
2) Which of Brennus, Hatshepsut, and Asoka would become the leading Northern power? One was bound to benefit from another's demise.
3) Would Pacal's Red Lobster enterprise be a boom or a bust?
4) Would the often inconsistent Darius bungle the playoff spot that seemed to be handed to him on a platter?
The three Turn 0 Mysticism leaders were Asoka, Brennus, and Pacal. Pacal was almost certainly out of the running for the first two religions, as his situation heavily drew him towards learning how to make a fishing pole. Then, Brennus made possibly the dumbest initial tech choice that I have ever witnessed: he researched MASONRY despite having neither Marble nor Stone in his BFC. Dun dun dun. This moronic move paved the way for Asoka to found Buddhism.
Brennus had Animal Husbandry resources in his cities, and so, after Masonry, he found his sanity and... oh wait. He went ARCHERY next. After connecting the one Ivory tile he had in his capital, he was soon stuck building Warriors and Monuments on two cities with nothing to do with his worker, surrounded by peaceweight enemies including one with a potential future Holy City (Asoka) and a Creative Leader (Hatty) already breathing down his neck. Recently, there was a good discussion in the Discord about the pros and cons of having a Military research flavor, and the cons were rearing their ugly heads when it came to Brennus.
Asoka nearly fumbled his own situation, taking so long to found his 2nd city that he was in danger of losing the benefit of having his 2nd city produce Holy City culture, but in a galaxy-brained move, he delayed his founding of Buddhism just in time to have it sprout up in his 2nd city. It was a rather shoddy city, choked by forest and jungle, and unfortunately, he would spend much of the opening turns hampered by his forest and jungle heavy land. Due to Brennus' incompetence and Pacal's fishy situation, it was the two Egyptians who would contend for the Polytheism religion. However, Hatshepsut, having a two turn lead due to the alphabetical ordering of names determining turn order, had the upper hand and she ended up founding the 2nd religion of Christianity. This compounded Brennus' predicament even further, as he now had two Holy Cities in his face, and the Celtic leader was not helping matters by beelining Bronze Working instead of feeding his people.
This is a great opportunity to expand on the importance of starting techs. Unlike in the previous game, where food poor Pericles destroyed his game despite winning Polytheism, Ramesses missing out on an early religion was of little harm, as his land and incredible Agriculture/Wheel starting techs were strong enough to mitigate any supposed waste of turns. His Polytheism attempt also set him up well to found Confucianism via Monotheism. Also note that Brennus' Masonry first gambit would be a lot less punishing if he had Agriculture/Wheel starting techs instead of the worst combination in the game of Hunting/Mysticism.
Darius was also stumbling out of the gate, as is often the case. His 2nd city eschewed the fertile flood plains region to his West for a backline tundra spot. At least the city had a cow and a deer, but this was not the direction Darius needed to go in order to take advantage of his land. It appeared that the community reading of the map was off, due to the desert that separated the flood plains region from Persepolis. His 3rd city would be even worse, an extremely food poor spot where the only saving grace was its central location. Dude, why not that western flood plains region? Ramesses is going to take it all from you if you don't hurry up! Two barb cities would also sprout up in what would have been two nice spots for Persian cities, hampering his expansion even more. What Darius needed to do was prioritize taking those cities with his Archer-busting Immortals, but no - he decided to attempt Stonehenge on three cities, losing it by one turn to Pacal (who also should not have been building Stonehenge, for what it's worth). As a Financial/Organized leader, Darius definitely did not need the failgold, and he was starting to be in danger of squandering his great starting position.
Meanwhile, Pacal's Red Lobster enterprise was turning out to be a hindrance. As notable Deity player and YouTuber Henrik accurately stated, his capital would not have been amazing even for a human, as considering the happiness cap, much of that food was way overkill, and Pacal's 20 or so turns spent on Workboats was nearly catastrophically delaying his expansion. It is safe to conclude that Fishing starts might be suboptimal for the AI, particularly if like Pacal they do not start with Fishing. The biggest beneficiary of Pacal's slow start was Hatty, who was conversely having one of the best openings in this game. She was expanding well, bolstering her economy with Obelisk-generated priests, and her two neighbors were sputtering. Hatty's War Chariots also could potentially secure her control over the mini barb civilization that had formed in the center of the map, further bolstering her start.
By Turn 50, the tiers were starting to form. The Financial seeded leaders were the runts, with Pacal having focused more on Workboats than Settlers and Darius just somehow floundering, with the result that each of them had fewer cities than the previously mentioned barb civ. In the middle was Asoka, who was playing fine but whose land was clearly of subpar quality, and a surprising Brennus, who, despite his horrific first 25 turns, was actually starting an impressive recovery. Despite two Holy Cities squeezing him, he was making the best of his situation, fitting in cities wherever he could, and he had kept his economy somewhat afloat by researching The Wheel early enough. His gold generating capital Ivory may have also saved him from complete irrelevancy. His long term prospects were still dicey due to his peaceweight outlier and his potentially suicidal hatred of those damn hippies surrounding him, but with a well timed attack and some luck he still had a fighting chance. Finally, at the top were the two Egyptian pharaohs on opposite corners of the map. They both had expanded incredibly well and they had fertile land and booming religions. Hatshepsut was even gearing up for a war, and she had two juicy weaker targets to attack. Despite all this, it would be mistaken to say that anyone was really out of this game. Both Darius and Pacal could Fin/Alive their way back to relevancy. Brennus and Hatty were all but fated to fight, and could either wreck each other's games or blossom off of each other, while Ramesses could have his game ruined by his religious enemy Asoka. One thing was clear: this was not going to be the next-turn clicker fest that much of the community was expecting.
Over the next 25 or so turns, not much of note would happen, save for Pacal adopting Hatty's religion, a good stroke of luck for the score leader, and the two barb cities closest to Darius falling to Hatty and Asoka, who stole the other city from the Egyptian queen with a single warrior snipe. With only crappy tundra cities available to settle, Darius' winning chances were slowly slipping away. He did have one golden opportunity: Pacal was extremely weak and did not have Copper in his territory, theoretically leaving him with only Chariots and Holkans for defense. As a matter of fact, Darius was plotting war, and Pacal was his likely target. Yet, he was still making boneheaded decisions: he was trading metal to the Mayans! 
It's hard to understand how these leaders think sometimes.
Hatshepsut, as expected, launched an attack, but her target was quite the shocker: Asoka! This was a very weird move, notwithstanding religious differences, as Brennus was a far more logical target. Almost immediately after, Darius launched his expected attack on Pacal, and this was a pivotal conflict, as Pacal was now cut off from metals and a long ways away from Iron Working. If Darius could seize the Red Lobster enterprise for himself, he would almost certainly reestablish himself as a major contender. Darius almost immediately trampled over the core Mayan city of Chichen Itza (not to be confused with the wonder), and Pacal was in deep doo doo. However, he had a lifeline, in the form of his peaceweight bro Brennus, who traded an Iron resource to Pacal with the condition that he receive a free platter of Clams everytime he popped a visit to the Mayan seafood festival. This, combined with Darius' passivity and lack of Construction for Catapults, stabilized his situation, and the two would soon sign peace.
Hatty quickly took Angle, the former barb city that Asoka had sniped, but then Brennus, having adopted Asoka's Buddhism, invaded Northern Egypt and took Hatty's recent Indian and barbarian conquests for himself. Brennus had fully recovered from his terrible start, and was becoming scary. The biggest beneficiary of the initial fighting was Southern Egypt, which could develop off of its luscious territory unbothered. Meanwhile, religious lines were forming, with a Christian East (Hatty and Pacal), a Buddhist North (Asoka and Brennus), and a Confucian South (Ramesses and Darius). The diplomatic lines were blurring ever so more, and Asoka, having made peace with Christian Egypt, was forming an army near the borders of Confucian Egypt. A potentially dangerous move for India, as Ramesses had nearly twice the city count at this point.
Darius had rebuilt his stack in his brief hiatus, and was back at war against Pacal, with a much larger army that was barging on the gates of the Mayan capital before Pacal could spell the word fish. However, in his blind lust to see food (that's the last one, I promise!), he made a massive blunder: his stack did not have even one catapult! As expected, the Persian army was obliterated by Mutal's 60% cultural defenses. The Mayan Renaissance was entering full gear, and his empire was now better than the Persian one, both in quantity and quality of cities. Two factors contributed to Pacal's resurgence. First, he was executing the "Tall" game plan of fewer but bigger cities as well as one could in Civ 4, with a massive capital that had benefited greatly from the five seafood and multiple cities that were at least size 15, which would have been a large size for the late game let alone the early ADs. Secondly, Pacal had finally gotten out of his expansion rut, getting out to seven cities, which is enough for a Financial leader to get going. Darius and Pacal quickly made peace, an epic fail for Darius, whose winning chances were already feeling like they were shot. We have a Bismarck Gambit (Iron before Wheel), a Willem Gambit (Oil before Rifling), and even a Brennus Gambit (quarryless Masonry), and now we have the Darius Gambit: zero catapults after Construction.
Asoka, as expected, attacked Ramesses, catching the Confucian pharoah off guard. Despite his smaller size, Asoka quickly took two cities. The Brennus-Hatshepsut conflict was also not going as well as it should have for the Egyptian queen, who was in danger of losing her Christian Holy City of Heliopolis. Although the Celtic attack failed to break through the Egyptian Longbows, it was a close call for Hatty, whose propensity for building Shwedagon Paya and minority religion missionaries in the middle of an all-out war was biting her in the rear end. Nevertheless, both Egyptian wars stalled out, as Brennus was falling behind technologically, while the other leaders were just too culturally inclined to do anything more than their initial push. Asoka and Ramesses ended their conflict, and it turned out well for the Indian leader, who ultimately gained a net of one city without expending too much. The Hatty-Brennus war, on the other hand, had entered an endless cycle of hatred and bloodshed. For centuries on end, neither side would make a modicum of progress against each other. Their battles tended to fall into this cycle of doom:
1) Hatshepsut would half-heartedly put together a stack and send it on its way to the Celtic city of Dunovaria, often succeeding in capturing the city.
2) However, Hatty would never reinforce the stack, as she was also trying to execute a cultural gameplan, causing her forces to quickly die out without being replaced.
3) Brennus would take back his city and march all the way to a core North Egyptian city, usually Heliopolis, but his outdated army would be unable to accomplish anything.
4) Rinse and repeat.
Alongside Brennus' caveman status and Hatty's inability to juggle culture and fighting, another major factor in this stalemate was Brennus practicing Asoka's Buddhism, with the result that Asoka would never backstab the Celts. In fact, BOTH leaders were FRIENDLY with each other. Not Pleased, but Friendly, something that does not often happen between two leaders with peaceweights of zero and eight! Imagine how different things would be if Brennus were stuck on a 2v1 against Asoka and Hatty.
At this point, there were only three leaders with any realistic winning chances, barring something crazy occuring. Both of the Egyptians leaders, with the largest empires and three Holy Cities each, were officially in the Cultural Victory race. Ramesses currently had the upper hand, considering that he did not at the moment have a crazy ginger running roughshod through his lands, but if Hatty were to pull ahead enough in tech, or someone were to dogpile the crazy ginger, she could conquer him and runaway with the game. The other leader with at least a plausible victory chance was, incredibly, Pacal, who had climbed all the way to 3rd on the leaderboard behind the Egyptians, and if the Egyptians faltered or fell behind running the Culture slider, Pacal could potentially seize his opportunity and show that one can never count him out, especially if he had five tiles with 5-6 food, 2 hammers, and 4-5 commerce in his capital. No matter the victor, hype around this being the first game in AI Survivor history where NOBODY dies were beginning to grow. This was not at all out of the realm of possibility, as the military situation was stalemated, the leaders were generally equal in tech, and Cultural finishes tended to end games sooner rather than later.
Darius was back to plotting, and he was close to unlocking Knights. Much hinged on who he chose to attack. He could either go back to Pacal, or he could pile on Brennus. In a smart diplomatic move, Brennus, perhaps sensing the way the winds were blowing, switched to the Confucianism that Ramesses and Darius practiced. However, it did not matter who Darius was plotting against, as Pacal decided to get revenge on his Persian adversary. This unfortunately backfired though, as right after Pacal's attack, Ramesses swooped in to help his Confucian buddy. This was not an ordinary 2v1, as both of Pacal's adversaries were to his West, meaning he was not surrounded by hostiles, but Ramesses' army provided a useful diversion for Darius' stack, helping Darius seize a massive Mayan city, even though Pacal was able to get back his former city of Chichen Itza. This success was short-lived, however, as Pacal was much stronger, and he immediately took back his other lost city. Soon, Asoka decided to get another go at Ramesses, leaving the world essentially in three separate 1v1 conflicts. This had been a shockingly bloody game considering this game's contestants.
Asoka v. Ramesses Part 2 turned out to be a catastrophe for the Indians, and in an Asoka soon sued for peace, giving up his core city of Pataliputra in an absolute coup for South Egypt. Sadly, Asoka's playoff chances were now close to zero, and he had to hope to make it into what is likely to be a massive and cutthroat Wildcard Game. Fortunately for Asoka's survival, future conflict between the two leaders had become far less likely, as they both were about to form a newfound bond over the virtues of Free Religion, Asoka's favorite civic, and let bygones be bygones about their past religious differences. Ramesses then, very prematurely (he was yet to have Rifles), switched on 100% Culture, a move that would have been risky if he were not insulated by two peaceful neighbors. Darius and Pacal also made peace, each having gained nothing from the war, and once again, the only conflict was between Hatty and Brennus. One point in Brennus' favor: he was beelining Rifling, and although it was dozens of turns away, his survival chances would skyrocket. It helped that, after more than 150 turns of fighting and crippling Statue of Zeus induced war weariness, he finally sued for peace with Hatty, only giving up his hotly contested border city of Dunovaria.
Darius' situation was precarious, however, as Pacal was soon ready to go back to war against Darius. Unlike the high peaceweights, Pacal, who already had Cuirassiers, was determinately pushing Rifles and was about to use them to make his power move. Pacal launched the Fourth Persian Gulf War, with the always bloodthirsty Brennus piling on. Hatty, having a mean streak of her own, attacked Pacal, her former Christian friend (the Mayans had at one point switched to Free Religion). This was not a smart move by Hatty, as she not only sorely needed to take advantage of the only period of peace she was likely to get, but also could little afford to make an enemy of her other neighbor.
Even with Hatty on his side, Darius was objectively toast, and the community would have to wait longer for the first deathless game. His empire was small, he was building Turn 250 Horse Archers while his enemies had rifles, and he was in a 2v1, as Hatty peaced out after seizing a border city for herself. His last, tiny chance at survival was if Ramesses, who had canceled his culture to plot war, decided to fight Brennus or Pacal, but Persia disintegrated too fast for this to matter. Although Pacal took all the major prizes, it was Brennus who netted the last blow, rendering Darius as one of the later earliest eliminations that we have witnessed.
Civ IV was my personal childhood introduction to the Civilization series. I would play it as often as I could as a kid, and I am unabashedly going to admit that I had trouble on difficulties as low as Prince unless I sicced Praetorians or War Chariots on my opponents. Among the many reasons I sucked so much: not building enough workers, attempting to build every wonder under the sun despite having three to four cities, building too many useless buildings, and throwing stacks of units at cities without siege and wondering why my game hated me so much. The best way for me to sum up Darius' game is to say that he played like an utter noob, like how eight-year-old me did. He did not build enough workers. Instead of going for lush flood plains regions, he saw a cow and a deer and settled it, even though it was near tundra. He allowed barb cities to sprout near his lands. He tried to build Stonehenge with just three cities. He gave Copper to the metalless opponent he was about to attack. He threw away a giant army by forgetting to build Catapults. As a result of his sloppy and noobish play, he ended up falling behind, with a small and pathetic empire that had zero chance of withstanding an attack from two technologically superior armies. Although Darius is in no danger of losing his seeded leader status, especially due to his great season last year, he certainly feels like a leader entirely carried by his traits and civilization, a Lamborghini driven by a middle aged alcoholic. His performance in this game only reinforced why he is one of the most frustrating AIs in Civ IV.
At last, there was a non-negligible period of peace. Both Ramesses and Hatty, who was also fully on the Culture train, had their sliders on, and although the former was less than 40 turns from victory, he needed to be careful, as Pacal now bordered him, and he had Infantry and Factories which would surely destroy anything South Egypt had. Barring such a conflict, which was relatively unlikely as Pacal is a more peaceful leader despite his low peaceweight, it seemed that the two Egyptian leaders would make the Playoffs, and much of the talk was about hype for a potentially massive Wildcard Game.
Of course, when there was a Brennus bordering a Hatshepsut, there was going to be another war. Hatshepsut was playing for 2nd place, as she would not have the Culture slider up while at war. This did not have the makings of a good fight for Brennus, whose army was smaller and technologically inferior to Hatty's. Yet, somehow, Brennus took two cities from Hatty. Come ON Hatty, you have Artillery and Brennus has Rifles! Maybe you needed to prioritize your war over the UN, considering that a Diplomatic victory just ain't gonna happen! Pacal was also gearing up for conflict, and he was the tech leader, with Tanks. Who would Pacal attack? No matter whom, this was a good opportunity to swipe 2nd place from Hatty and continue to deny her any points.
Indeed, he decided to make his move on Hatty, punishing her for her previous attack. Making matters worse for the Egyptian queen, Ramesses turned off his slider, further delaying his cultural victory! He was still going to win in 20ish turns, but Hatshepsut was in a 2v1, with one of the leaders having Tanks, and an extended game was the last thing she needed. Pacal was on her heels in score, and he only needed to take one city or research a little bit more to supplant Hatty for a playoff spot.
Suddenly, Hatshepsut got two incredibly lucky breaks. Of less importance: Asoka, reminding the world he still exists, declared war on Brennus. This gave the community an amusing snapshot: somehow, the Great Indian Famine had occurred, leaving Asoka's cities with single digit population counts. His capital had starved all the way down to size 6! This was not the first time, nor would it be the last time, that we would see an AI struggle with late game Factory-induced unhealthiness.
Far more crucial was the fact that Ramesses WAS ABOUT TO CULTURE BOMB A GREAT ARTIST TO GET HIS 3RD LEGENDARY CITY. This was it. Hatty had 3412 points, while Pacal had 3380 points, and was ONE TURN AWAY from researching Flight, which would net him more points. Everyone, not the least bit Sullla himself, was rooting for Hatty to, at last, make the playoffs and score her first points. Hatty had endured so much pain and disappointment. She had generally played strong games, only to succumb to low peaceweight dogpiles or to just random strokes of bad luck. She had, for the most part, played a great game, dealing with endless centuries of bullying from aggressive Brennus and yet still building a thriving civilization. It is such a travesty that bozos like Freddy and Monty, who won the Season 7 game that she should have, are on the scoreboard and yet she is not. She is such a nice and friendly leader to have in our games, a great trading partner, a fantastic vassal, and a loyal friend. We wanted her in the playoffs, we needed her to have the breakout season that her Egyptian counterpart had last year. We desperately needed it.
What was going to happen? Would Hatty hold on or would Pacal rip our hearts out at the last second?
PACAL PULLED OUT THE RUG UNDERNEATH HATTY, STEALING 2ND PLACE BY FOUR POINTS: 3416 TO 3412. 
Finishing Flight was the difference. What a ridiculous finish to a wacky game, so crazy that Sullla instantly decreed that he was going to work on this game's Alternate Histories.
This was a gut-wrenching failure on the part of the Egyptian leader. I would normally summarize these leader's games in order of finish, but I just have to start with poor Hatty. This game cements her place as the unluckiest leader in AI Survivor history. While Ramesses only had to deal with extremely weak Asoka, Hatty was fighting endlessly with Brennus, yet was still in a position to do something. However, while emotions may tell us that Hatty deserved to score her first points, logic and reason may lend the opposite conclusion. To be fair, Hatty played an exceptional game in most facets, expanding well, utilizing an effective culture gameplan, and staying technologically relevant despite being at war for 75% of the game. Unfortunately, Hatty's crippling flaw, and the reason she still has an egg for a score, is that she displays Darius-level incompetence when it comes to the military side of things. She was consistently at least one generation of tech ahead of Brennus, yet was often losing cities to him. She also seems to have a Cathy-esque crazy streak, getting herself into unnecessary conflicts. Both her fights against Asoka and Pacal would come back to bite her, not least of which Pacal, who of course declared war on Hatty to steal 2nd place. This is the key weakness of the Cultural leaders: it's hard to culture and war at the same time, and if their culturing is not absolutely top notch, they could easily slide out of a top two spot. Hatty's final chance for points this season is in the Wildcard Game, but it is hard to see her having any chance against some of the formidable AIs that are already in that game.
For someone whose only real role in most of these games is in wrecking other AI's games, Brennus actually played quite well, notwithstanding his absolutely horrific opening. After his Masonry-first fail, he made very smart teching choices, not the least of which was making sure he kept up in military tech. He also made prudent diplomatic choices, mitigating his peaceweight status by using his Spiritual trait to switch religions whenever necessary regarding who was the biggest threat to him in the game. Another genius move by Brennus was in trading metals to Pacal, ensuring that his only true peaceweight buddy would stay in the game. The biggest takeaway from his performance is that the Celtic package, with the godawful Hunting/Mysticism starting techs and the inconsequential, tech detour causing uniques, might be the single worst one for AI Survivor purposes (and, honestly, for human players as well). At least Holy Rome has Rathauses, and Japan has much better starting techs and sometimes useful Samurai. At least America and Germany have far better starting techs and uniques that do not encourage buffoonery like researching Masonry first without Stone or Marble. Nevertheless, with how weak Asoka and Darius were, and how bad at fighting Hatshepsut was, there may be one or two games where Brennus makes something of his situation and nets a spot in the playoffs.
There is not much more to say about Asoka that has not already been said, except that his strong Season Five, where he came close to winning the Championship, is increasingly looking like a fluke. Admittedly, his land was not great, but he had multiple opportunities to secure a better position that he did not take. Most notable was his aggression: there was no point in continuously attacking the far stronger Ramesses, just over religious differences. Brennus would have been a far better target, and with that territory, he might have been able to be more relevant to the game. Some of this was due to Brennus getting his religion, but after Brennus switched to Confucianism, he still had a chance to 2v1 Brennus with Hatty and instead launched a disastrous war against Ramesses, losing one of his best cities in the process. Like how Brennus is a C list warmonger, both in performance and in personality, Asoka appears to be a C list peacenik, not nearly as interesting as say Sitting Bull or Hatty, but also not as competent as say Pacal or his Indian counterpart.
Despite how chaotic this game was, it can be said that the two leaders who made the playoffs were the ones who deserved it the most. When it came to the question about Pacal's seafood, all answers were correct. The excessive seafood utterly gimped Pacal's start, but it also helped him completely roar back from irrelevancy and blossom into one of the strongest leaders in the game, in what was the greatest comeback in a game since Wang Kon's earning of the Troll King moniker in Season Three. He defended himself well, and made decisive attacks in order to establish himself, first on a weak and exhausted Darius, and next on Hatty to secure the playoffs. There was definitely some controversy over if Pacal was truly a great leader or if, like Darius, he is carried by his package, but now, having made the playoffs in 75% of these seasons, it is safe to say that Pacal is a worthy member of the upper echelon of AI Survivor. Very few leaders could have pulled off anything more than a Wildcard appearance from Pacal's position, and the Mayan leader showed that he is one of them.
Ramesses was the deserved winner of this game. Like Hatshepsut, he had some bad luck in prior seasons, but at this point there may be mounting evidence that he also has a winning AI Survivor personality through his prowess in teching and culture. In this specific game, it is tough to say whether he was carried by fantastic land and weak neighbors, but he is definitely capable of churning out Mansa Musa-esque performances and demonstrating why he is a borderline S tier leader in the hands of a human. In a Civ Fanatics forum post that was experimenting with a different perspective of AI Survivor, there were games in which Ramesses won in the 240s! The playoffs will help give more clues as to if Ramesses can continue to gain the respect that he has garnered.
There is a close race in the picking contest, with sudo nym, Chaplain, and Dubiosa all tied at 61, with many others in the high 50s. Dubiosa was bolstered by a great performance this game, scoring 21 points, although the highest point scorer was Anih with 24 points. Kjotleik is in danger of running away with the Fantasy Contest, with three leaders, including Justinian himself, already in the playoffs. However, Amicalola has a larger team, a fantastic bid on Ramesses, and no team members eliminated. The Wildcard game looks like it is going to be crucial for fantasy purposes.
