Civ4 AI Survivor Season 8: Game Seven Preview

Past Performance: Charlemagne is the controversial champion of Season Four, where he secured two straight game wins in the same fashion: watching the game leader throw away the victory on a distant Cultural attempt, allowing him to slowly win a Spaceship victory (and the entire season title) from a second-place position. Whether this is funny or frustrating depends on the viewer. Charlemagne then went on to secure a long-term position as a seeded leader by returning to the Season Five Championship off a pair of actual second-place finishes. Outside of those two seasons, he's mostly been hounded with wars from an early date and accomplished little; his most notable achievement is somehow losing what should have been an easy Space victory in his Season Three opener, coming in Second Place instead. Overall, he's established himself as a decent second-place kind of leader when diplomacy is favorable, but is perhaps the least likely of the former champions to repeat the feat.

Unseeded Leaders

Elizabeth of England
Traits: Financial, Philosophical
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, six opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 7 points, tied 42nd place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Elizabeth is an easy AI personality to understand, a pacifistic economic leader who will always seek out some kind of non-military victory condition. Elizabeth has one of the best trait combinations for teching in the Financial/Philosophical pairing, and while it's true that there's some anti-synergy there between running cottages and running specialists, there's little doubt that this setup will output a lot of beakers. If Elizabeth ends up getting a solid portion of the map under her control, she's one of the toughest leaders in the game to stop. She ranks no better than a mediocre leader for AI Survivor purposes precisely because this happens so rarely; Elizabeth has an exceedingly low aggression rating (1.9/10) and a low build unit preference (2/10). Surprisingly, she will indeed plot war at "Pleased" relations, but in most games you're more likely to see someone else invading England as Elizabeth frantically researches everything except the military technology which would save her. Elizabeth's Gold and Culture research preferences often cause her to ignore the Redcoats that she desperately needs for safety. In summary, Elizabeth performs far better in games with other high peace weight leaders where she's left alone to build in peace. She's a better version of Frederick and a weaker version of Mansa Musa.

Past Performance: Elizabeth looked like a top leader in Season One, where she made the Championship while consistently being a top techer in her games, even though she didn't actually win any of them. She was still credible for the next couple of seasons as well, starting strong in Season Two only to lose to a two-front war, then coming extremely close to winning her Season Three opener via culture. However, that game ended with Julius Caesar conquering one of her Legendary cities just five turns away from her win, and that seems to have broken her spirit in this competition. Since then, each season has featured her getting off to a slow start, usually with poor expansion, before inevitably getting picked off before the end of the game. She hasn't survived a match since Season One and has only scored a single point in that time. It is worth noting that she hasn't received great starting positions in these games, usually getting rather hostile draws that force her into conflict and don't give her a good chance to get her economy going. When left alone, she can be a legitimate threat, but she's also shown serious weakness in both expansion and combat, and that's resulted in a poor overall showing.

Isabella of Spain
Traits: Expansive, Spiritual
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mysticism
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, six opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 9 points, tied 36th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Religion, religion, religion. Isabella is a religious zealot and cares more about her faith than just about any other AI leader in the game. Her "Spain on a Lake" techs are good for founding one of the first two religions and pretty much nothing else, but they will ensure that she'll get some kind of religion and then defend it to the death. Either you are a treasured practitioner of the one true path or you are heathen scum that must be wiped from the earth; there's little subtlety or nuance to Isabella's diplomacy. Her Expansive/Spiritual traits are decent without being spectacular, although it must be said that the AI doesn't do a great job of leveraging the Expansive trait properly. Spain's Conquistador and Citadel unique items are similarly "OK" without having any sort of game-breaking potential. Isabella can be a difficult neighbor to live alongside since she will constantly demand tribute (8/10), and to no one's surprise, demand that others adopt her religion (10/10). Isabella has exactly one research flavor: Religion. Starting to sense a trend here? This obsessive emphasis on religion tends to lead Isabella into founding more religions than she needs and launching ill-advised crusades against rival faiths. She's a one-dimensional cartoon character who only cares about one thing.

Past Performance: Isabella has been less than effective, with all but one of her points coming from a single game. That game, her Season Four opener, saw her uncharacteristically dominate, profiting nicely from two dogpiles before killing her closest competitor head-on, but the rest of her career has exposed this performance for the outlier it was. Izzy's early-game performance has varied, with a couple of true stinkers in there (mostly caused by barbarian shenanigans), but for the most part her early religious focus has allowed her to get off to strong starts and be one of the better leaders early on... only for it to all come crashing down and for her to get conquered later in the game. Not only has she failed to advance again or score more than one additional kill, she hasn't even survived a single game outside of her lone victory! With a personality that both tends to get into lots of fights and notably lacks much military skill, Izzy is not set up for success, and results have borne that out time and time again.

Mehmed of the Ottomans
Traits: Expansive, Organized
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Season Five champion, one Championship loss, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 4 Second Places
Total Kills: 9
Overall Power Ranking: 22 points, 19th place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Mehmed is a typical member from the group of militaristic AI leaders. He's not quite as crazy as some of his shared rivals in the Montezuma or Shaka mold, but he still acts predictably and starts a lot of trouble for his neighbors. Mehmed does have a pair of good economic traits in the Expansive/Organized combo, albeit both of them traits that the AI doesn't leverage particularly well. His Ottoman civilization also benefits from having excellent starting techs and decent unique features in the Janissary and Hamman. Mehmed's biggest problem is that he's too militaristic for his own good, endlessly picking wars and failing to leverage those economic traits to good effect. He has a maxed out preference for training units (10/10) and a high aggression rating (7.8/10) to go along with his low peace weight. And yet Mehmed also won't plot war at "Pleased" relations for some reason, often causing him to stack up units endlessly to no effect whatsoever. His research flavors are Military and an odd Culture, once again reinforcing how Mehmed tends to neglect economy in favor of more and more units. Mehmed has often been a popular pick from the community because he looks like he should be strong on paper, and yet he traditionally let everyone down over and over again.

Past Performance: Mehmed is the champion of Season Five, but the oddity of this result is perhaps best shown by the fact that he's the only former champion to not also be a seeded leader. While he's put on solid performances from time to time, Mehmed has never come particularly close to winning another game, and most of his games have been pretty unimpressive; mostly he either falls behind in tech to get wiped out later on, or else simply fails to accomplish much of anything and just sits around instead. He has scored a couple of Second Place finishes with that latter approach, at least. Aside from his Championship, his one legitimately impressive game came recently in the Season Seven playoff round, where a well-timed backstab resulted in an early conquest that made him the uncontested power king of the map - only to do virtually no fighting for the rest of the game because he liked everybody remaining and wouldn't declare war! The result was a Second Place finish which led to an unimpressive Championship performance. All in all, Mehmed's done just enough for the idea of him as champion to not be a total joke, but he's normally a secondary leader instead, and not one of the better warmongers out there.

Montezuma of the Aztecs
Traits: Aggressive, Spiritual
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mysticism
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 First Place
Total Kills: 2
Overall Power Ranking: 7 points, tied 42nd place (out of 52 leaders)

Personality: Anyone who's played much Civ 4 probably already has a pretty good idea of the Montezuma AI. He tends to... stand out. To start with, Montezuma gets the Aggressive and Spiritual traits, a strong, if not top-tier, combination for these games. His unique items are the Jaguar Warrior and the Sacrificial Altar, both useful in the hands of a human, but relatively worthless in those of the AI. Lastly, Montezuma starts with Hunting and Mysticism, which allows him to found a religion right off the bat. Make no mistake, Montezuma likes himself some religion. But it's not the traits or unique stuff that makes Montezuma so well-known in Civ 4; it's the man himself. Sullla described Montezuma as a "rabid dog let loose in the streets to cause as much trouble as possible before being put down", and considering that Montezuma is still a strategy game AI, that's surprisingly accurate. Montezuma has polarizing numbers all over the place. He has the highest aggression rating in the game (10/10), and Montezuma is actually the benchmark for the normalized system we use to judge the rest of this bunch. His unit build (8/10) and tribute demand (10/10) ratings are both very high, which is lucky because there is rarely a time when Montezuma isn't fighting at least one other player. Montezuma won't bother with building wonders (0/10); he takes them instead. He doesn't ask other AIs for help either (0/10); he wants to do all the fighting himself. Monty's peace weight (0) is also the lowest possible in the game, and any cooperation between him and a "good" AI should be virtually impossible. Montezuma's flavours are Military and Religion, and his "strategy" is almost universally to found a religion, and then psychotically defend it to the death. Or just attack the other true believers anyway during his downtime. There's no way that could possibly go wrong...

Past Performance: Monty is bad. Like, really, really bad. He's firmly established himself as one of the worst leaders in AI Survivor, his insane overaggression coming back to bite him again and again as he's almost never able to back up his bluster. Indeed, more often than being a serious threat to his neighbors, he's instead proven a help, as nearly half of his games have seen the eventual winners feed off his territory en route to their own victories! He's proven successful exactly once, in his highly unusual Season Seven opener; that game saw him play unusually peacefully due to not connecting metal for around 100 turns, then use that as a launching point to snowball off a set of enemies who had played particularly messy games. However, alternate histories later showed this to be an extraordinarily unlikely outcome, and he followed it up in the playoffs by becoming First to Die in a 1v1 conflict fought from a great starting position. While a couple of other games have seen him legitimately screwed by too many wars declared against him, it's more than clear that Monty occupying a position of strength is the exception rather than the rule, and he's one of the least likely leaders to come out on top in any given match.

Here's what the community was thinking based on the prediction contest before the game took place:

Game Seven was back to having a series of favorites again from the community. Suryavarman was the runaway pick to win the game with two-thirds of the contest submissions and no one else getting more than scattered votes. There was also a clear choice in the Runner Up category for once as Mehmed received about half of the community ballots. The First to Die category was split between two co-favorites as Charlemagne and Montezuma each sat very close to 35% of the entries thus far. And then the victory category had a community preference for Domination over Spaceship without much support for a Cultural ending on this map.

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!

delan: Been fooled too many times on Isabella and Monty is Monty, but while I reckon this is a Surry chalk game, second place seems up for grabs. Charlie's got an insane capitol but I suspect he'll get bogged down in religious fights. Liz seems to have a lot of space, even if it's not great land. Mehmed has the PW synergy and a nice food-heavy start. If Monty gets a first or second finish I will eat a hat.

ZincAlloy: What a odd layout, what with that massive empty space in the west. Ah well, despite the oddity this is an easy one. Mehmed/Montezuma. Team double corn is unstoppable. Those pitiful leaders with only one corn to their name don't know what's coming. And Elizabeth is first to die with a tragic zero corn capital.

kcostell: Surya picks up Charlie's religion, much to the chagrin of Isabella. The resulting stream of futile Spanish martyr soldiers pleases Isabella. The dead soldiers are less pleased.

AutomatedTeller: I was going to pick Lizzie, on the theory that early religions go to isabella is likely to spread her religion to lizzie and mehmed and lizzie gets left alone... but I think that Sury gets a ton of land to expand and will likely run over isabella relatively early - I think she loses on the 1st 2 religions and ends up with spending a lot of time getting her religion, so ends up behind, maybe without iron. I picked lizze 2nd cause I think Sury kills everyone else along the way and wins by domination before he can kill lizzie.

Smosism: Sury looks much stronger than the competition and you know he wants his ivory and will make a drive through on the burger king. Mehmed on the south is competent enough to get second place. Biggest wildcard is if isabella spreads her inevitable religion through that long river into mehmed, that could shake a lot of the early to mid game.

aubbls: to me, the game hinges on two points, montezuma and religion. since monty will throw himself at someone who doesn't have his religion, it feels that charlemagne is a very popular target. whoever recieves the attack will either be ftd, conquer monty, or both would become irrelevant. conquering monty for charlie or mehmed would seem good, but their history in ai survivor is that they're not steamrollers, they're second place finishers. the likely founders of religions will be isabella, monty, and charlemagne. its possible that izzy will get a natural ally from her religion in suryavarman or elizabeth, which will keep her safe until late game. elizabeth's isolated start keeps her from ftd--mehmed would need to be on top of his game and the only way he'd be doing that is if he already had monty gift him his land. suryavarman feels like the natural pick to win for me--he'll pick up enough power in limited wars or just teching to be able to beat monty when they border each other. i feel that there will be 3-4 civs alive at the end of the game, and mehmed will take second with score from whatever pickings he gets of monty or elizabeth. as for victory type, i'll go space. domination feels like its locked to montezuma, charlemagne, and mehmed, which is in a rare snowball scenario. elizabeth, isabella and suryavarman feel like space being their option. culture may happen with those three too, but im not seeing some clear frontrunner there.

lymond: Nothing crazy about my pick this time. Underdogs have not done well for me this season. Sury looks stronk so I'm biting. Chuck looks like one of those no-name wrestlers getting chairs thrown at him in a WWE-style Sury-Monty tag team. Lizzy will get attacked by everyone constantly - and I mean everyone with maybe the exception of Chuck, who will be thrown outta the ring early.

LaserGuy: Elizabeth looks really out of place in this field. How the religious diplomacy breaks will really determine this game, but it looks like we'll see Isabella + Mehmed vs. Sury, Burger King, and Monty. Sury is a great leader and his position seems super strong here so he seems a clear favourite. I feel like he and Charlemagne will be close religious allies and finish 1-2.

random.org: The pious Queen Isabella calls a crusade against the heathen Aztecs. Unfortunately, she fails to account for the equally heathen Khmer on her eastern border; they attack and keep her busy, while Montezuma marches across the map and takes most of Spain for himself. With her out of the picture, the world exists in religious unity for long ages; the only major action is Montezuma engaging with regular fights with Elizabeth for his own amusement. These keep her economy stagnant and eventually result in her conquest. Suryavarman becomes the tech leader and builds the UN, but it is Monty who has conquered the hearts of the Ottomans and Holy Romans, and is thus voted the winner of the game.

urbestfriend9k: Because Sulla's copy of Civ4 is obviously glitched this year, everyone except Elizabeth will forget what a Settler is after 4 cities and get into forever wars with each other and Elizabeth will put on a cloak of invisibility and settle the entire open part of the map on her way to peaceful Domispace

Commodore: Izzy kills her start by going hard for religions and ignoring the techs she needs, granting food-bad Sury his first conquest. Liz and Mehmed fight it out until Monty screams and leaps into war against England because his soul told him to, before dying to more advanced neighbors. Sury's conquest of the religions are a poison pill, though, because they prompt him to go for a badly-timed culture victory...which is exactly what BURGER KING loves...Charlie space.

Eauxps I. Fourgott: This map offers clear evidence that Sullla engages in riggage from time to time. Burger King's position has obviously been hand-picked in an attempt to finally boot him from the ranks of the seeded leaders. He won't die first, though; that honor will go to Monty after he commits ritual sacrifice on himself and donates his lands to the Ottomans (due to game engine limitations, this will be portrayed as an ordinary war declaration, but we will know). After Charlemagne is divvied up, the Ottomans them will go on to attack Liz and wreck her chances yet again. The game will then henge on who exactly is leading the Ottomans this time: if it's Mehmed, he'll then sit around and watch Sury slowly win by space or culture. But if it's his identical twin Goodmed, he'll go on to roll over Spain and win by domination. (btw I don't actually think you rig this, Sullla)

SirSystemError: Okay, look. Listen! I know some of you hate Charlemagne. You think of AI Survivor as this prestigious thing and that him being a champion has desecrated the sacredness of the competition. But let's be reasonable here: he is neighbors with Montezuma. The way I see it, he's going to do Monty things and crash ineffectually into the high peace weight leader and feed him his territory. Therefore, he automatically has a leg up on the competition. It'll be a whopper of a win, with salt and a salad. Where's your bracket now? In the restroom no doubt because most of you mindlessly believed in the likes of Huyana Capac and Kublai Khan. Both couldn't hold their lunch and puked it up, by the way. You can't always have it your way. So it's time for the King to reign. Or, you know, Monty goes for Mehmed instead and the same thing happens with another former champ. It's perfect logic! Watch either of it happen.

Bernn: This is a pretty unusual lineup. When Mehmed and Charlemagne are some of the highest scoring leaders present, you know it's gonna be a funky game. I think the low peaceweights will ultimately do better and I'm inclined to go with Sury just as a default, but yikes I don't like his start at all. Way too many floodplains and he's wedged between two leaders who could both get holy cities. I don't trust him to do well if he's squeezed, so my next choice is...Mehmed. He's actually got a pretty good start with double wet corn, and Elizabeth is isolated and a perfect target for Mehmed's slowburn aggression. Basically no aggressive leader has met expectations this season, but it's gotta happen one of these times. Monty is a huge wildcard as ever, but assuming he plays reasonably sane and stays out of Mehmed's hair, I think we'll see a slow and steady Ottoman victory by spaceship.

Schwarzschilda: I feel like I should try to offer insight into my picks after somehow ending up in 1st place in the picking contest. Idk if I actually have insight, but here it goes: Suryavarman seems like he might struggle due to the flood plain start with low production, like his playoff game last year. Charlemagne looks screwed by neighboring Montezuma and Suryavarman. I like Mehmed’s capital but not his surrounding land or him being next to Montezuma. Elizabeth in a corner looks dangerous and she has a lot of land. Isabella seems likely to be an also-ran with all of that desert around her. Montezuma is a bad leader. So I’m going out on a limb and picking Elizabeth by science in this year of the high PWs since I don’t think she’ll get too many religions with all of the mysticism leaders in this game. Let’s see how quickly this goes wrong!

Colors: Surya's start is so nice but his diplo situation is unnecessarily rough unless he grabs Izzy's religion. I like Mehmed to eat Lizzy, then for Monty to launch a suicidal war into an ascendant Ottomans. Mehmed rolls. Also he has plains cow GG ez.

bellarch: I don't really believe in Sury. He's not all that competent, and his high-food, low-production, zero-happiness-resource start is going to be very bad in the hands of the AI . . . but at the same time, he's going to have more land than anyone else, and his other cities should be quite good even at low size. So while I'm still fighting with myself on this, I think he is (maybe by a slight margin) the most likely winner. It's either him, Charlemagne, or Mehmed, I think -- but I don't trust the two that start next to Monty, and Mehmed might be cramped, and he's definitely going to war with Lizzie quite a bit, and that could drag his game down. Especially if he gets backstabbed! Part of me thinks that Mehmed might actually be favored here, but I don't trust his position, so I think Sury finishes first and Mehmed finishes second. Monty will be strong but inevitably die to being himself, Izzy is going to be large enough to avoid being FTD but backwards and irrelevant, and Charlie is caught between Monty and Sury and maybe Mehmed and so ends up FTD despite having a pretty nice starting position. Then the map devolves into a bloodbath and we end up with Sury over the top for a relatively late domination victory. That's my guess, anyway -- but this honestly feels like another map where a lot is going to go sideways, so who knows?

Guanidine: Mehmed the Conqueror with double wet corn, agriculture ready for his workers while he grabs Archery first, and an idiotic neighbor that will expose his neck when he inevitably clashes with Charlie over religion. On the other sider the farmer's gambit queen with undefended gates. In the North a lush river valley, fertile ground for numerous cities. The Champion is back, baby!

Zigzagzone: Can anybody stop my meme picks from winning? Definitely not in the opening rounds, and the same goes for Charlie the Champion. Look at that commerce, and look at that gem city spot! Diamonds for days, crown jewels for the king. Propelled through the early game, he will make friends with religion and from vassalage enjoyers. Everyone else gets crushed under bejewelled boots from his Landknechts.

TheOneAndOnlyAtesh:
Whopper Whopper Whopper Whopper
Not Holy Not Roman Definitely Not An Empire
Jungle Gems Jaguars Janky Monty
Christianity From That Gal Izzy
BEEEEEE-KAYYYYY HAVE IT YOUR WAYYYY
YOU RULE!

Game Seven Picking Contest Entry Form