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:
Stalin of Russia
Traits: Aggressive, Industrious
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Season Three champion, one Championship loss, one playoff round elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 2 Second Places 
Total Kills: 10 
Overall Power Ranking: 34 points, 7th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Stalin has unexpectedly been one of the most dominant leaders in AI Survivor history, compiling a staggering track record of success that we're still not entirely sure how to explain. His traits are nothing special, with the Industrious trait largely acting as a detriment to AI performance and Aggressive never grading out as anything better than average. Stalin has undoubtedly been helped by his Russian civilization, with its decent starting techs and powerful Cossack unique unit. Understanding why Stalin has repeatedly crushed his opponents requires a deeper dive into his AI personality. He has a low peace weight and an above average aggression rating (7.6/10) while avoiding the truly nutty behavior of someone like Montezuma or Genghis Khan. Aside from a somewhat high build wonder rating (6/10), most of Stalin's AI ratings are in the middle of the spectrum and don't stand out one way or another. He loves espionage spending (10/10) but that's about it. What's unusual about Stalin is the fact that he doesn't care about religion at all, showing as little interest as Mao with miniscule shared faith bonuses and differing religion penalties. This may be a factor in his repeated victories as Stalin doesn't get hung up on the religious diplomacy and can act as he sees fit. He otherwise has Military and Production tech flavors and, of course, can plot war at "Pleased" relations. For whatever reason, this overall package has been extremely successful in prior seasons of AI Survivor.
Past Performance: Stalin's accomplishments are compressed into a single blaze of glory, but that blaze was so big and bright that he's still a Pool 1 leader years later. He was crowned champion after an utterly dominant Season Three; throughout that season, he kept jumping into dogpiles at the perfect moments, and ended up with three wins and seven kills to attain the highest single-season score in AI Survivor history. Stalin bolstered his reputation with a return to the Championship the next season, including another strong victory in the opening round, but has completely fallen off in performance since: he's the only seeded leader to have scored ZERO points across the past three seasons! He's had promising starts each time, only to completely fail to accomplish anything with them and end up eliminated sooner or later. Stalin's history before his breakout season was also unremarkable, with just one scrappy second-place finish and one kill across the first two installments, and it's worth noting that his tendency to ignore Mysticism (and thus culture) has shown itself as a serious weakness in recent seasons, one that stunts his early game and forces him to play catch-up. At this point a lot of people are wondering whether Stalin is actually a good leader or simply got really lucky in Season Three; whether he flames out again or returns to success in this season could have a big impact on that debate.
Gandhi of India
Traits: Spiritual, Philosophical
Starting Techs: Mysticism, Mining
Peace Weight: 10
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Five playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, one opening round elimination
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 25 points, tied 12th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Gandhi is without a doubt one of the most unique leaders in Civ4. For traits, he plays with the powerful Spiritual, and the terrible (for AI Survivor) Philosophical, an overall unremarkable pair that lands at about average, the most important point being that Gandhi gets several half-cost cultural buildings. He also has access to the above average Fast Worker and Mausoleum. Lastly, his starting techs are Mysticism and Mining, a generally weak pair useful for pursuing an early religion and not much else; like many religious leaders, Gandhi often takes a long time to improve his tiles and connect his resources. Gandhi is the leader least likely to declare war in the entire game, with an aggression rating of 0/10. He also has the lowest possible rating for building units (0/10) and demanding tribute (0/10), essentially making Gandhi a hyper pacifist who entirely neglects his military and prays it won't come back to bite him in the rear. Surprisingly, Gandhi is also quite unlikely to build wonders (2/10); he doesn't waste time with those either. Rather than units and wonders, Gandhi spends the entire game laser-focused on one thing: cultural buildings. Gandhi is a rare leader with only one flavour in Civ 4: CULTURE. He pursues religions like a man possessed and puts his production bonuses to extremely effective use. It's not uncommon to see Gandhi desperately fighting wars of survival whilst simultaneously building his third or fourth temple in each city. It usually doesn't end well. Gandhi is probably the most feast-or-famine type leader in AI Survivor. If he is not attacked by his neighbours, he can rush out a cultural victory like nobody's business, but if he is, he collapses faster than any other leader in the game. An early war declaration from a neighbour can often ruin any chance of a Gandhi victory on the spot.
Past Performance: Gandhi has long enjoyed a position as a seeded leader thanks to consistent success in the opening round - he's one of only five leaders to have made the playoffs in five separate seasons, and his only opening round elimination took place in the very first season. He also won his opening round game for an impressive four consecutive seasons, all in games that followed similar patterns: he was allowed to culture in peace for long periods of time until becoming unstoppable. On the other hand, things haven't been so rosy in the playoffs, where he routinely finds himself up against fields full of warmongers who want him off the map ASAP. Only one of Gandhi's five playoff games gave him a position that he really had a fair chance to win, and he wasn't able to deliver in that single game. More doubt has been cast on his true skill in recent years, too, as alternate histories suggest that his successes have been somewhat lucky, and in his Season Seven opener, he threw away an easy victory by inexplicably attacking and crippling his religious ally early in the game. But while he might not be quite the unstoppable juggernaut that his opening round stats suggest, he clearly has something figured out, and it bears remembering that if left alone to pursue his cultural gameplan in peace, he is extremely likely to win the game.
Joao of Portugal
Traits: Expansive, Imperialistic
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 First Places
Total Kills: 2
Overall Power Ranking: 12 points, 29th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Joao is supposed to be the best leader at rapid expansion in the game, with his combination of Expansive (cheap workers) and Imperialistic (cheap settlers) traits. However, in practice the Deity AIs tend to be more limited by their economies as opposed to their capacity to train more settlers, and Joao hasn't stood out as being especially good at expansion. He hasn't really stood out at all, aside from having a name that's difficult for non-Portuguese speakers to pronounce, and Joao mostly sits in the middling portion of the AI category ratings. He trains units at an average rate, builds wonders at an average rate, cares about religion at an average rate, declares wars at an average rate, and so on. He even has a peace weight right in the middle of the scale. About the only semi-interesting thing about Joao is that he makes a lot of demands, both for tribute (8/10) and to switch to his religion (10/10). This is a boring leader overall with little in the way of a distinct personality.
Past Performance: Joao's AI Survivor career has largely been characterized by his getting routinely stuck with crappy starts. Seriously, there's a good case to be made that the majority of his career games have given him unfair setups, either trapped against a smaller edge of the map, surrounded by hostile leaders, or both. And when push comes to shove... Joao's not a dynamic enough leader to overcome such starts. Where others have put on impressive or scrappy performances, Joao has almost always simply not done well, and that's that. His lack of oomph has been on display in other games too, as he's multiple times failed to accomplish anything with less-lousy starts, and even in the two games that he's won - admittedly, both strong games where he was finally able to leverage his rapid-expansion traits - they weren't the most exciting wins, and he scored only a single kill in each. Joao is a decent leader, and with a run of more favorable starts his stats might begin to look better, but it's far from a slam dunk, and he's not the most interesting leader in any case.
Napoleon of France
Traits: Charismatic, Organized
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 9
Overall Power Ranking: 11 points, tied 30th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Napoleon is a deeply militaristic leader who will emphasize unit production over everything else. His traits are a bit of a mismatch for this setup, and it's unfortunate that he doesn't have the Aggresive trait given how many units that Napoleon churns out. Organized is a misplaced trait for this guy's personality. France is a great civ choice as usual, with excellent starting techs and a useful unique unit in the Musketeer. Napoleon himself has a one-track mind as an AI leader: he loves to start new wars (9.1/10 aggression rating), he will train oodles of units (10/10), and he has the lowest peace weight possible to cause him to hate the "Good" leaders. Napoleon doesn't care about religion and he doesn't waste time building wonders. He does make for an obnoxious neighbor since he will constantly be demanding tribute (10/10) and civics changes (8/10). It should come as no surprise that Napoleon has Military as his primary research flavor along with a lesser Gold emphasis, and of course he will plot war at "Pleased" relations. Overall then Napoleon is pretty similar to Shaka and Ragnar and Boudica, if somewhat less memorable than any of those rivals.
Past Performance: Napoleon is a rather interesting case in these games, as he's racked up an impressive kill total akin to that of a seeded leader, yet has never won a game and only placed second a single time. While he's had a few games that didn't amount to anything, he's usually able to serve as something of a credible threat and at least help to roll over a weaker neighbor, but when it comes to converting this into a real advantage and snowballing ahead, so far he's failed to get it done. The closest he came was in his Season Six opener where he was able to find sustained success on the warpath, only to get repeatedly backstabbed and kept from properly converting it into a win, having to settle for Second Place instead. This was not his fault, and neither was his fall in the playoffs which came as a result of triggering a defensive pact that was signed on the SAME INTERTURN that he declared war. However, look at the rest of his individual games and it does seem to become a clear case that, while Napoleon has a very real threat level that some other aggressive leaders do not, he still falls short of being a truly good competitor.
Ragnar of the Vikings
Traits: Financial, Aggressive
Starting Techs: Fishing, Hunting
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 5 points, tied 48th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: If you like insane seaborne invaders with funny hats, Ragnar is the guy for you! This lunatic has never met a war that he didn't like and any game with Ragnar present is sure to have some spicy moments. Ragnar combines together the Financial and Aggressive traits, which theoretically should make him better than the average warmonger in terms of managing his economy. That largely doesn't happen in practice though, as Ragnar takes every single lever available for managing his civ and turns it to the military setting, then dials the strength up to 11. His Viking civilization is pretty decent between its starting techs and Berserker unique unit and Trading Post unique building, although a lot of the benefits get wasted on the Pangaea maps used for AI Survivor. Ragnar's AI personality is a complete one-hit wonder: all military all the time. His aggression rating is absurdly overtuned (9.9/10), his train unit emphasis is maxed out (10/10), and he only has one tech flavor which, of course, is Military. Ragnar will fight war after war after war and neglect the building of infrastructure in his cities, which typically leaves him far behind in tech by the latter stages of each match. This often causes him to get eliminated at the hands of more advanced rivals, although sometimes he can ride the coattails of other low peace weight leaders and survive to the finish. Perhaps someday we'll see Ragnar snowball out in front of the rest of the field and then ride his Financial trait to a position of tech dominance but that hasn't happened thus far. Instead, Ragnar has mostly been a ticking time bomb that's gone off and ruined someone else's game... along with his own game at the same time.
Past Performance: Ragnar is another piece of evidence that in AI Survivor, as in life, hyperaggression is not a good thing. Time and time again, we've seen his constant attacks fail to get him anything except elimination. Ragnar is frequently a slow starter in these games, consigning him to also-ran status from an early date; admittedly, a lot of this is because he keeps drawing poor starts squeezed against the edge of the map, but he also tends to make bizarre moves early on that make his situation even worse. Most notably, he bungled the opening to the Season Four Wildcard so badly that his capital was captured by the barbarians! Even in the less common games where Ragnar is able to get a solid start and build his empire up, there's always another nation out there growing even stronger, and Ragnar has inevitably come into conflict with his stronger rival and gotten knocked right down again. Even in his only second-place finish, he was actively getting conquered at the end and only barely held on to his lead over third place! The very low number of kills for a warmonger further reinforces that he simply isn't that effective most of the time, and even his Financial trait doesn't seem to have appreciably helped him in these games. While Ragnar can be dangerous if he gets off to a good start, he's not very likely to win.
Roosevelt of America
Traits: Industrious, Organized
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 5 points, tied 48th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Roosevelt is a classic example of a peaceful builder that largely wants to stay out of conflicts. He has a solid economic trait pairing with Industrious and Organized, although lacking any of the top-tier grouping of Financial or Creative or Expansive. Roosevelt often tends to struggle with expansion since he lacks any traits or abilities to speed up his early game. The American civilization is doing him no favors here, with decent starting techs but unique features that both come far too late to make a difference. Roosevelt the AI is not very militaristic at all, with an aggression rating of 2.6/10 and a dangerously low train unit emphasis (2/10). Despite his Industrious trait, Roosevelt doesn't particularly emphasize wonder building (4/10) and prefers to focus on espionage spending (7/10). He also has little interest in religion and doesn't stack up much of a shared faith bonus or differing faiths penalty. Roosevelt has unusual tech preferences for his research, emphasizing Production and Gold flavors, and the expected high peace weight for a "good" leader. He will plot war at "Pleased" relations though in a bit of a twist. Generally speaking what you see is what you get with Roosevelt. He's going to try and play the builder game but he lacks the traits and the civ to make him a top competitor for that gameplan.
Past Performance: Roosevelt has proven to be one of the least effective leaders in the competition, never in seven seasons vying for a win or accomplishing anything of particular note. He tends to have a medium-to-small nation after the early game, and never does much of anything with it. A pair of conquests of weak neighbors, neither of which substantially improved his position, and a second-place finish of the "everybody else was murdered" variety are the biggest achievements he has to his name. Last season saw him given a very good starting location and the chance to finally make a name for himself… only to throw it all away on a stupidly early attack of a friendly neighbor, dooming himself to irrelevance once again. Roosevelt might get ignored and make it a little farther in the tournament as a result, but he's one of the competition's least likely leaders to really make a splash.
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.
Here's what the community was thinking based on the prediction contest before the game took place:
Game Six was one of the first games this season that lacked a dominant favorite in the picking contest. Stalin had the most votes to emerge victorious with a little over a third of the total, followed by a relatively even split between Napoleon, Gandhi, and Joao. Runner Up remained the most difficult category to pick, with a modest lead for Joao but no real consensus whatsoever amongst the community submissions. The First to Die category had two overwhelming choices in Gandhi and Roosevelt as nearly everyone picked one of the two for an early exit. The more martial nature of this game was also reflected in the community selecting Domination for the most popular victory type which was about 2.5 times as common as Spaceship.
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!
TheOneAndOnlyAtesh: I’m sure Teddy Roosevelt once sat his dear nephew on his lap and told him to speak softly and carry a big stick. Problem is, FDR may have taken this advice way too much to heart, as all he’ll be able to muster against the bloodthirsty Napoleonic army of Cats, Swords, and Elephants is a whimper and a big stick.
random.org: Lots of war, peace, and general stagnation. Gandhi manages to avoid major aggression and techs up and up until it's too late. Roosevelt eventually gets the better of a partition of Viking lands to move into the second place position.
aubbls: first time pickem. napoleon nestled between two high peace weight leaders, ripe for conquest. i feel roosevelt is more likely to be ftd over gandhi due to gandhi grabbing a religion and napoleon most likely ending up being brothers in faith. as for the others, ragnar may be able to eat vicky but eventually he'll hit napoleon or stalin and then he'll have trouble. vicky feels the natural target for ragnar so even if she survives, she'll be held down. stalin feels like a wild card to me--ive never seen him do anything in the last 4 seasons, i'm unsure he'll find much to do here and i think a lot of it hinges how strong he gets. joao has a pretty solid core if he settles the river valley and that commerce should help him not be bogged down by expansion, plus there's no way gandhi is going to apply pressure to him outside of cultural.. gandhi has to hope for inert napoleon and someone to keep the southern leaders from thinking about killing him. roosevelt has no real chance of escaping irrelevancy or defeat from his position. to me, napoleon and stalin feel like the most pivotal leaders here and considering napoleon has some very tasty neighbors next to him, i expect a napoleon snowball. if stalin's the stronger one, other victory types are open which means joao or vicky have chances in space or diplo, and stars would need to align for gandhi to hammer out a cultural win.
AutomatedTeller: Vicky is due, and that's an awesome start for her starting techs and good for her traits.. She'll be the early tech leader
NotSpamBot: I was almost tempted to pick Gandhi to win despite him starting next to Napoleon, this field is that uninspiring. As it is he IS next to Napoleon... but Napoleon will not have culture for ages and is next to Gandhi, while his other neighbor is Roosevelt, making a double team after he has exhausted himself on Gandhi's walls likely. So... what are the alternatives? If Ragnar was any other Financial leader I would pick him to win giving his isolated position and great land... but he is RAGNAR. And then we are left with a choice between Victoria, Joao, and Stalin. So, Stalin first by process of elimination. Joao second because he does tend to build a large and powerful civ, he just never uses it for anything and that is good for score if nothing else.
Dagoth Gares: Is Ragnar drunk enough to finally win a game? No, no he is not.
Vesper: Napoleon has only one spot for second city, towards Gandhi, so they will clash and with Nap sitting on ivory it'll be Gandhi's doom. Joao is too slow to do stuff here, and with 3 warmongers on the map he's to be crushed under the foot of either. Vicky is secluded enough and is sitting on gold plus seafood for great tech pace early and expansion mid+late, and with Redcoat being the counter to rifle+cavalry rush, she's likely to survive and possibly tech or culture well enough to earn second place. But as the last game showed, everything can change in an instant, say Boudica going after Stalin too early to cripple both, Nap to settle far and slow and let Gandhi culture in peace, Joao backstabbing either side for insignificant gains etc.
kcostell: Forget "Financial/alive": The key traits I'm banking on are "Not next to Napoleon" and "Not next to Ragnar".
Mooaddict: Stalin start is phenomenal. Rivers everywhere, copper at capital. Gandhi would be good if he would not have Napoleon as neighbor, that stops his early teching forcing him to build units, but I don't believe Napoleon will kill him immediately. That is why I pick Joao as FTD even that he is not a pushover leader. Stalin runs over him with his super start while Ragnar fights Victoria and possibly Roosevelt messing with both Ragnar and Napoleon slowing them down. I like Ragnar position, he is unlikely to be Stalin target and his other neighbors are not aggressive enough to go after him before he gets out of slow seaside start. Also lacking copper at immediate perimeter helps him which sounds weird, but those "too aggressive" leaders benefit from lacking early metals. So Stalin #1, Ragnar #2, Joao FTD, Domination.
Ambassador Pineapple: Please let some bloodthirsty ai:s go through. Im going to back Napoleon and Stalin with a domination victory. No other reason, just fun to see Nappy win here. Rosie as ftd in a 1v2. Vicky, Rosie and Ragnars land are all just meh and J-man is no fun. Blood and gore!!
RefSteel: After Gandhi's religious cultural pressure completely enrages the little corporal, my hopes rest on Roosevelt coming in from the other side to save the day - or at least turn the war into a gigantic 2v1 stalemate. The southern civs will meanwhile blissfully expand into their comparatively enormous tracts of land, with copperless Ragnar building so many chariots, warriors, and archers without being allowed to get rid of them in an actual war that by the time he limps to iron working under the burden of his unit costs, his inevitable war against Victoria will consist at first of thousands of ancient units suiciding against longbows in castles, and later of proud Viking cities getting eaten by knights and siege. Since those proud cities will come with exactly zero infrastructure, even this probably won't be enough to let Victoria overcome the Russian juggernaut dictated by the map and pool 1 incumbency, but a title-conscious empress can dream!
pindicator: Gandhi & Liz are both out because they border psychopaths. And likewise can't trust Napoleon or Ragnar to close the deal because they are in fact psychopaths. (Although, if ever there was a chance for Ragnar to pull out a win this is the setup: Roll up Vicky, then Roosevelt, and then snowball to victory.) Stalin is the safe pick: lots of land, proven leader - but he borders both of the psychos. So I'm going to say this is Joao's time to shine. Decent land and if he can get a good split then I could see him mopping up Gandhi after Napoleon has softened him up.
Plains-Cow: With so many plains-cow tiles on the map, the energy in the air is palpable. Additionally, there are SEVERAL AIs who start with plains-cow tiles in their capital's starting ring, which is just insane. However, Joseph "The People's Cow" Stalin not only has a plains-cow start but also has two other plains-cows directly to his north and west! I mean, Sitting Bull and Ramesses winning their games with plains-cow starts were no-brainers, but Stalin has the potential to harness three plains-cow resources rapidly from the beginning of the game. How can all those hammers fail the man whose national symbol is literally half hammer? Plains-Joao will come in second, as is his mandate, and Gandhi will be FTD (Napoleon will make use of his plains-cow tile before Gandhi can).
Zalson: I feel like this is the "First to Die" Olympics. Gandhi, sandwiched between Joao, Napoleon AND Stalin? And then Rosie and Vicky also in between Napoleon, Stalin, and Ragnar? Maybe when the AP was around the peaceniks could survive. I think this is Napoleon's time to shine. Or he attacks Stalin and general winter obliterates my pick. In that case, Gandhi wins a T302 cultural victory.
Crazy Dave: It’s definitely the year of the Joes. Iosep Vissaronavitch has the good capital, and plenty of decent spots for second and third cities. Joao’s capital is not bad either, and both are far enough from Bonaparte and Ragnarok to grab some popcorn and techs, while they watch the action.
Bernn: Napoleon looks quite good here - solid start, guaranteed copper, multiple copperless peaceniks nearby to devour - but someone looks even better to me: Ragnar. Hear me out. This is probably the best start he's ever had in this competition, with a capital that actually synergizes with his starting techs for once and a nice little river valley to expand into. He's next to Victoria who's cramped, drowning in forest and again has no copper, so there's legitimate potential for a Viking snowball. Assuming he kills Vicky somewhat early, he'll land a ton of juicy coastal real estate and can springboard from there to go after Roosevelt/Stalin/whoever gets in his way. It's a tall ask given his consistently poor performance in these games, but if there was ever a map for him to pull off a rampage I think this is it. As comical as it sounds, I'm going all in on a Ragnar Domination win. With Napoleon as a #2 after he similarly rushes Gandhi and becomes a major power.
BigBlueBen: Somehow there's only two leaders with more kills than Gandhi in this game. I don't really think that Napoleon starting near Gandhi is too likely to hurt the Indian leader. Napoleon's capital is all floodplains and forests and the land near his capital very dry and squeezed by leaders much more culturally inclined, (and there's a ~40% chance he fights America before India too). As long as Gandhi survives early on, he probably wins culturally before anyone else can reach a victory condition... Although Stalin does has a ton of room to expand, and financial Vicky will likely get donated all of Ragnar's cities at some point by our favorite Viking.
arlind: If Stalin doesn't win with this position, I'm never trusting him again. He can join GK and Darius as the biggest failures so far.
Sicut: Stalin is an absolute fraud of an AI leader. Slightly better than usual warmonger at best who got lucky a few times in a row.
BluesyCobalt: Gandhi Win: PEACE FOR THE PEACE GOD!
