One of the recurring features of past seasons of AI Survivor have been our "alternate histories", running additional iterations on the same maps to see if the same events would play out again. Game Seven surprised nearly everyone as Elizabeth's economic power allowed her to race past a field of aggressive leaders and claim the victory. Was that something which would unfold in each game? This was a topic that called for more investigation with alternate history scenarios. Following the conclusion of previous seasons of AI Survivor, I had gone back and investigated some of the completed games and found that they tended to play out in the same patterns over and over again. While there was definitely some variation from game to game, and occasionally an unlikely outcome took place, for the most part the games were fairly predictable based on the personality of the AI leaders and the terrain of each particular map. Would we see the same patterns play out again and again on this particular map?
The original inspiration to run these alternate histories came from Wyatan. He decided to rerun the Season Four games 20 times each and publish the results. The objective in his words was twofold:
- See how random the prediction game actually is. There's a natural tendency when your predictions come true to go "See! Told you!", and on the contrary to dismiss the result as a mere fluke when things don't go the way you expected them to (pleading guilty there, Your Honour). Hopefully, with 20 iterations, we'll get a sense of how flukey the actual result was, and of how actually predictable each game was.
- Get a more accurate idea of each leader's performance. Over 6 seasons, we'll have a 75 game sample. That might seem a lot, but it's actually a very small sample, with each leader appearing 5-10 times only. With this much larger sample, we'll be able able to better gauge each leader's performance, in the specific context of each game. So if an AI is given a dud start, or really tough neighbours, it won't perform well. Which will only be an indication about the balance of that map, and not really about that AI's general performance. But conversely, by running the game 20 times, we'll get dumb luck out of the equation.
Wyatan did a fantastic job of putting together data for the Season Four games and I decided to use the same general format. This particular set of alternate histories were run by TheOneAndOnlyAtesh with assistance from Eaupxs I. Forgott - many thanks for spending so much time on this task! 
Atesh posted the resulting data from the alternate histories and then discusses some of the findings below in more detail. Keep in mind that everything we discuss in these alternate histories is map-specific: it pertains to these leaders with these starting positions in this game. As Wyatan mentioned, an AI leader could be a powerful figure on this particular map while still being a weak leader in more general terms. Now on to the results:
Game One | Game Two | Game Three | Game Four | Game Five
Game Six | Game Seven | Game Eight | Game Nine | Game Ten
Game Eleven | Game Twelve | Game Thirteen | Game Fourteen | Game Fifteen
Game Sixteen | Game Seventeen | Game Eighteen | Game Nineteen | Game Twenty
(Note : "A" column tracks the number of war declarations initiated by the AI, "D" the number of times the AI is declared upon, "F" the points for finish ranking, and "K" the number of kills. In addition, Elizabeth essentially tied in Game 16, as both her and Izzy had their spaceships arrive at Alpha Centauri on the same date, with the game randomly selecting Isabella as the winner.)
TheOneAndOnlyAtesh: If I were to rate how typical the Actual Game was on a 1 to 10 scale, with 1 being a completely bonkers livestream game, like Opening Game One, and 10 being a picture-perfect outcome, like Opening Game Two, my estimate for this game would be around a 5.5. To boot, Liz's gritty opening round victory was proven not to be a scam, as she won three more games in convincing fashion, came as close to winning another game as is humanly possible, and netted three more competent Runner Up finishes. Our Season Eight Champion's (it is crazy that this game has three champions) strongest performances were close emulations of the Actual Game, as they saw her build up her economy, find opportunities to make military headways against distracted opponents, and then eventually smash her technologically inferior rivals. All her victories or near victories involved her pummeling a larger but more technologically inferior foe. Game 7 played out like a carbon copy of the livestream game (with one notable exception soon to be explained below), down to Elizabeth winning a similar "Cultural" victory that only took place because of how long the game had already stretched.
However, there was one aspect of the Actual Game that was EXTREMELY atypical, and that was Liz and Mehmed making the playoffs together. As polar opposite personalities whose second cities were already breathing down each other's necks, the two absolutely could not coexist, and one leader's success always came at the expense of the other: when Liz secured a top two spot, Mehmed was either dead or dying, and vice versa. What was typical about the livestream was Liz and Mehmed consistently being top three in score by the midgame, and this inevitably led to a victory showdown between the two. As the results indicate, Mehmed tended to get the better of these exchanges, and indeed, the Conqueror lived up to his historical title, being THE dominant leader in this set. Much like in the Actual Game, Mehmed leveraged his amazing capital and incredible starting techs to settle extremely aggressively while still maintaining a functional economy, and there were games in which his victory was all but unquestioned by Turn 100, because he just had more cities than everyone else.
There were two key factors in Liz and Mehmed unusually being the playoff ticket in the Actual Game. First, Liz had conquered most of Spain, something that rarely happened in these Alternate Histories, and that extra territory made a crucial difference for her. Secondly, and more importantly, by the time the Ottomans came calling, Liz was extremely close to Infantry and Tanks. Usually, the two came to blows earlier, sometimes MUCH earlier, and with Liz usually smaller and not nearly as ready, the outcome was much more favorable to the Ottomans. Liz did still win sometimes, but these wins came either when she was able to capitalize on a dogpile of Mehmed or if his expansion was abnormally poor. If Mehmed was out of the way, her final boss was instead either Monty or Sury, who proved to be much easier foes. Ironically, Monty proved to be Liz's biggest asset in this game, as he was an excellent attack dog for her in the mold of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".
While Liz and Mehmed performed as expected, the results from the rest of the leaders were quite shocking, to say the least. When I posted a teaser to the Discord by sending a screenshot of the final results with the leaders cropped out, the consensus was that Suryavarman was the second-best performing leader while Izzy was one of the worst, a very reasonable guess based on previous season results. That turned out not to be the case: it was Sury who performed horribly, having the lowest score of all the non-practitioners of human sacrifice, while in turn, Izzy was the second-best leader on the map, garnering five wins and two decent seconds. As someone who was crowing to anyone who would listen that Izzy was a dark horse on this map, I certainly feel vindicated!
Why was this? Well, the problems that plagued Sury in the livestream consistently repeated themselves in the Alternate Histories. Sury would mismanage his early game to such a catastrophic level that in the vast majority of games, he was already out of contention by the midgame. Among the horrific disasters I witnessed: FISHING on Turn 110, research MYSTICISM on Turn 140, and still be sporting a Rifling Era army on TURN THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY (I do not think I ever saw Sury reach Assembly Line once, and these were long games). Watching Sury in this set was déjà vu, as in game after game, Sury would face barb troubles, build WAY too many warriors, crash his economy, and then slow his game down even further to upgrade his 1000 warriors into metal units. Afterwards, instead of trying to recover, he would fall further behind throwing those units at a neighbor, usually Charlie (but sometimes Izzy, and not attacking a Protective leader did go a little better for him) and thus throw away what little chance he may have had at relevancy.
There was another pattern from the Actual Game: the barbarians sacked one of his cities in EIGHT different games. If this were a Wildcard game with Raging Barbs, we might have seriously seen the Khmer leader get killed by the barbs. Sury did get six second place finishes, more than anyone else, but every single one of them were of the "last on the chopping block" variety, resulting either from being in the corner furthest away from Mehmed and Liz or from adopting the religion of a runaway Charlie or Izzy. His shared First To Die with Mehmed in Game 9 was a good indication of the map dynamics: that was a game in which Izzy murdered him at the same time as Lizzy and Monty partitioned Mehmed. It seems we now have additional fuel for the "flood plains are extremely overrated for AI Survivor" crowd.
With Sury a gigantic flop, his Spanish neighbor was the biggest beneficiary. Her strongest games saw her snowball off her tasty snack to her east. Izzy did have other advantages in this map - for example, her profitable shrine made her a competent economic leader compared to the rest of the field - but her principal play was to take advantage of Sury's weakness. Although Izzy was quite strong in this map, her own flaws were on full display, namely her bipolar personality, her extreme devotion to religion, and her only having one win condition for her strategy, that being to murder all the infidels.
The Actual Game convinced me that the Burger King was utterly screwed here, but he proved me wrong and impressed me with his tenacity. Considering that he was surrounded by Monty, Sury, and Mehmed, a 45% survival rate is quite impressive, and his three victories were just the cherry on top. Admittedly, Charlie had two whoppers to keep him fresh: the triple gems near his capital, and the incompetence of Sury and Monty. Monty might be one of the crazy warmongers whom having as a neighbor might be beneficial, being so reckless and so terrible economically that he becomes a free source of territory, and there were games in which his presence benefited rather than hurt Charlie. Although he still netted the highest First To Die rate, it was not as high as one may have expected when glancing at his spot in the map. His Actual Game performance was uncharacteristically bad due to poor expansion and research choices, making him unable to secure Copper in time to defend himself. Conversely, Charlie was far more competent in the replays and showed that he can never fully be counted out in these games.
The tech pace was incredibly slow, and there were a few reasons for this:
1) Liz was the only above average techer in this field, and her land quality was by far the poorest with the amount of dry tundra it had. Financial/Aliving was not easy for her, even when not accounting for the many wars she had to fight.
2) Space was quite limited, and smaller empires usually mean slower teching, especially in the long term.
3) These were very violent games filled with stalemated wars, and most of these leaders tended to build lots of units to further stall their economic development.
The above factors would reinforce each other, creating a loop that further dragged the tech pace down. Even when the dust had settled, the wars had often been so draining that the game was still over a hundred turns from the finish line if the victor was unable to reach the Domination limit. Domination was by-and-large the sole victory condition in these games, with more "peaceful" finishes only taking place due to game length and the obvious winner not quite reaching the Domination limit. We were quite lucky to witness a captivating game from start to finish in the actual livestream, as a more typical game would have likely seen us watch Sullla click "Next Turn" 100 times while the runaway, Pleased or Friendly locked out of conflict, slowly trudged his/her way to space.
With this bunch, religion obviously was a significant factor in these conflicts. Some combination of Izzy, Charlie, and Monty founded one of the first two religions in every game, and many games hinged on which religious bloc would dominate militarily. I will say, however, that I was surprised at how infrequently Izzy and Charlie fought despite almost always having rival religions - their identical peaceweight explains this.
In the individual performance section, take note of the Offensive to Defensive war ratio. In most sets, the strongest leaders have the highest such ratios, but this one was quite unique in that the leaders who attacked the most AND were invaded the least (Sury, Monty) turned out to be the worst performers. Meanwhile, the top leaders were invaded quite frequently. This stemmed from the two most aggressive leaders being the most incompetent, as well as the high number of suicidal late game war declarations.
Now for a look at the individual leaders:
Mehmed of the Ottomans
Wars Declared: 42
Wars Declared Upon: 41
Survival Percentage: 65%
Finishes: 9 Firsts, 2 Seconds (49 points)
Kills: 24
Overall Score: 73 points
Mehmed towered above the rest of the field for one simple reason: in a map in which land was a sparse resource, Mehmed was by FAR the best leader at expansion. In the blink of an eye, Mehmed would obtain a double-digit city count from a combination of peaceful expansion and barbarian conquests, while his rivals still only had 5-7 cities. That was usually game over. His biggest early game weakness, ignoring Mysticism for too long, was mitigated by the ease in which he could get another leader's religion and by being twice the size of everyone else. Like in the Livestream, Mehmed would often find himself the Turn 50 score leader, ahead of all the Creative and religious leaders boosted by culture. His size combined with his maximal unit build tendency rendered him a TERRIFYING military leader, and I was in awe watching him brute force his way through his enemies, even those with superior military technology. I was also treated to a rarity: seeing an AI use Mounted units properly, like a human Deity player would. The schizophrenic and/or fanatic nature of his competition also worked in his favor. To give an example, Game 2 saw every leader not named Montezuma (!!!) suicide into Mehmed like a herd of wildebeest deciding to fling themselves down a cliff.
There were only two ways to stop Mehmed: either dogpile him or hamper his early game. Unsurprisingly, considering his central starting position in between a peaceweight enemy (Liz) and a Monty, Mehmed's situation was sometimes precarious, and he was essentially First To Die three times (he would have gotten that distinction in Game 18 had he not captured a faraway barb city). His worst games saw a combination of Liz, Izzy, and Monty either coordinate a dogpile or bring on death by a thousand cuts to the Ottomans - note Game 20, where he was attacked an incredible SEVEN times, a number we usually see on leaders like Hatshepsut and Hammurabi, not Mehmed. Very early attacks from Monty (and sometimes Liz) and inopportune barb city spawns that cut him off from the West also played a factor in Mehmed's weakest performances. Nevertheless, if it were not already cemented, it is safe to say that Mehmed is an above average leader for AI Survivor purposes, despite the derisive "meh-med" moniker. Although he admittedly was aided by his top-tier Ottoman civ and his beautiful double wet corn and plains cow capital, Mehmed still proved himself to be one of the scariest warmongers in the game. His inability to plot at Pleased appears to be his greatest weakness and the main culprit for his past "meh" performances, although with this ragtag bunch of leaders, that was rarely an issue for Mehmed here.
Best Performance: Game 13 was a masterclass in fighting, and it was incredible seeing Mehmed just rampage through a much more advanced Liz with sheer brute force.
Worst Performance: Game 9 saw Mehmed expand poorly and eventually get partitioned by Liz and Monty.
Sitting Bull Award:
Zara Award: Failing to connect metals in Game 18, condemning the Turks to the sacrificial altar.
Isabella of Spain
Wars Declared: 35
Wars Declared Upon: 35
Survival Percentage: 40%
Finishes: 5 Firsts, 2 Seconds (29 points)
Kills: 12
Overall Score: 41 points
After Mehmed, there was a sizable middle class, with Izzy shockingly at the top of it. Before running this set, I considered Izzy a bottom five leader in AI Survivor, and although her admittedly impressive Alternate Histories performance improved my opinion of her, it did not do so by all that much. It just felt like with Sury so weak, Liz such a good dogpile candidate, and the general nature of her competition, Izzy should have performed even better than she did. As mentioned before, Izzy is geared just a tad too much towards religion, causing her to struggle with other important priorities. Just like in the Actual Game, Izzy tended to not expand, only having 5-6 cities by Turn 100, which is just too few to compete if your name is not Huayna Capac or Pacal. The most common reason for this was that she would just stop expanding in favor of building monasteries, missionaries, and the wonders she inevitably encountered in her religious forays. No matter how widespread your religion is, five cities just does not cut it, and although Izzy usually maintained a score lead from cultural borders and good teching, her lack of cities would eventually bring about her doom, whether it was from getting conquered or out-scaled by a larger rival. Izzy's unpredictable personality did not do her any favors either. In some games, she was a holier Hatshepsut, gunning for some extremely strange early game religious beelines (Turn 15 Priesthood or going Monotheism immediately after Polytheism come to mind), neglecting her military and expansion, and eventually getting crippled and conquered. In other games, she was a female Monty, bashing her skull against anything and everything, including her supposed brothers and sisters in faith, until she had made too many enemies to survive. Also, Sury was still a thorn in Izzy's side despite his weakness, as Creative and religious culture induced border tensions did sometimes spark early wars that relegated Spain to irrelevancy, like in the livestream game. Luckily for Izzy, Sury preferred to attack Charlie first.
However, when Izzy put everything together, she was able to become an unstoppable force. A point in her favor was that although taking advantage of Sury was her most common avenue to success, it was not her only one. Games 6 and 11 saw her instead use Mehmed and Charlie respectively as springboards to success. All her victories saw her expand decently well, build a strong shrine (and sometimes Great Lighthouse) based economy, and then execute her crusades to perfection. In a way, she was a Mehmed-lite here, down to the 1:1 ratio of offensive and defensive wars. As a leader, I would put Izzy in the same boat as Stalin and Louis, as she is the type of leader who I will not be surprised if she has one extremely dominant championship run, even if she does jack squat in every other year.
Best Performance: Quite a few to choose from, but a pre Turn 300 victory like her Game 20 stomp is always worth highlighting.
Worst Performance: Spreading her religion everywhere should net a good game for Izzy... but instead she channeled her inner Monty and suicided into a much larger Mehmed to become First To Die.
Wang Kon Award: Game 11, in which after having worked together with her religious buddies Mehmed and Charlie to kill all the infidels, Izzy switched into Free Religion, murdered her former brothers in faith at the same time in a Defensive Pact triggered war, and then converted back to her religion as she ran over the last of the smoldering remains of those who were so devoted to her.
Annoyed Sullla Award: Her Game 16 victory was quite undeserved, in which she executed an extremely incompetent war against a much weaker Sury, struggling to conquer his Medieval forces with even Cavalry, and yet somehow tied a war-weary Liz for a Turn 405 spaceship and won the coinflip.
Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire
Wars Declared: 24
Wars Declared Upon: 54
Survival Percentage: 45%
Finishes: 3 Firsts, 5 Seconds (25 points)
Kills: 9
Overall Score: 34 points
The Burger King is a controversial leader, and his troll Season Four title is just the tip of the iceberg for his notoriety. Charlie has the ignominious distinction of being a terrible leader in human hands while being an incredibly tough and frustrating AI opponent due to his traits and his religious gameplay. Yet, this set showed why Charlie is still worthy of being in the top echelon of leaders, as he expands extremely well, knows how to make allies, and is an incredibly tough nut to crack at any stage of the game. Notwithstanding the triple gems, it was still a miracle that he was able to win even one game, let alone three, with his cramped start and neighbor situation; I certainly have a hard time thinking of anyone else who could have had his level of success.
Two of Charlie's three wins were well earned, and it is tough to describe them as anything other than Charlie simply out-expanding, out-maneuvering, and out-researching his competitors, fighting tooth-and-nail for every ounce of success. Only his Game 1 victory was rather lucky, as that game entailed the rest of the field engaging in fruitless cross-map wars while the Holy Romans coasted to victory (notice how he was somehow never attacked that game). Charlie was also a great pick for the Runner Up spot, and if I had to identify what a default game would look like, it would see Charlie kill Monty and Sury while Mehmed cleaned up the West, and then either Mehmed would reach the Domination limit or the two would engage in a friendly competition for Alpha Centauri. If Charlie did not have to contend with a pre-Turn 100 2v1 from Sury and Monty (this happened in 13 games), he could have been even stronger in this map. Unfortunately, Charlie was a major dogpile magnet, and thus, he had the highest First To Die rate, although he was not remotely as screwed as the community thought he was. Love him or hate him, the Burger King has proved worthy of our respect.
Best Performance: In Game 4, Charlie straight up murdered Monty and Sury AT THE SAME TIME in one of their aforementioned pre-Turn 100 2v1s.
Worst Performance: Weirdly enough, it was actually his Game 13 Runner Up performance, in which he only expanded to THREE cities and survived because he managed to convert runaway Mehmed to his religion.
Angry antisocialmunky Award: Despite winning Game 14, Charlie was outscored by Runner Up Mehmed, who had FOUR kills in that game.
Elizabeth of England
Wars Declared: 23
Wars Declared Upon: 46
Survival Percentage: 45%
Finishes: 3 Firsts, 4 Seconds (23 points)
Kills: 6
Overall Score: 29 points
Elizabeth had two main issues in this setup, and her peaceweight outlier status was not one of them: Izzy was a frequent partner in crime due to religion and her peaceweight of 6, while Monty usually blew up any chance of collaboration by Team Evil. Instead, the Virgin Queen's issues were 1) her bad land, and 2) Mehmed. Liz's championship winning run proved that she is one of the best pure techers in Civ 4, but she had a hard time showing it because of these factors. Although Liz's expansion and fighting were good, it just did not match up with her Ottoman nemesis, and she melted almost every single time she faced a 1v1 against him at equal military tech. Even Infantry was not enough to save her, not when Mehmed had over 300 units and double the city count. Allow Mehmed to unlock Janissaries, and Liz's fate was usually sealed, especially when she adopted Free Religion and lost any potential religious bonds with her Eastern (and sometimes also Northern) neighbor. Liz sometimes did not help her own case. Some games saw her launch incredibly stupid wars, including a suicide into Mehmed in Game 5 and an unnecessary cross map war against Charlie in Game 15 (she did murder him, but still gained very little from her efforts).
I was still pleasantly surprised by her performance considering her diplomatic situation. She did not need everything to go her way to be successful, as like Charlie, Liz also performed admirably as a lackey, especially to Izzy. 3.5 firsts and seconds each (the .5 being her Game 16 "tie") is nothing to scoff at when neighboring the military juggernaut with the worst land in the map. One thing I learned from this season: the English package helps Liz (and the other English leaders, including future seeded leader Churchill) immensely. Stock Exchanges encourage the English to unlock Knights, and Willem van Oranje certainly wishes he would have Redcoats to prevent him from going Medicine before Rifling. Without the English unique package to keep the Royal army modernized, this may be quite a different story for the English queen.
Best Performance: Game 9 was a rare game in which Liz for once defeated Mehmed solo and then won a Turn 300ish Domination victory. Yes, Elizabeth won a crushing Domination victory in this set.
Worst Performance: Getting crushed early by Mehmed in Game 4.
Sitting Cow Award:
Gandhi Award:
It bears mentioning that Liz had forced the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty into the UN prior to this snapshot.
Suryavarman of the Khmer
Wars Declared: 48
Wars Declared Upon: 27
Survival Percentage: 45%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 6 Seconds (12 points)
Kills: 10
Overall Score: 22 points
In my book, this ranks as the single most pathetic set I have ever witnessed from a Pool One leader, and yes, I did read the Season Five Game One Alternate Histories in which Mansa Musa died in all twenty games. Do not be fooled by Sury's six second place finishes or his score: he was awful, and those runner ups were all backdoor finishes. It was almost impossible for a leader to continuously self-sabotage himself to the extent that Sury did in these games.
It may not be immediately apparent what is wrong with this picture. However, look at the tiles Sury is working - he is not utilizing any of his flood plains commerce! Instead, he is prioritizing production tiles and one-turning Warriors in his capital. Usually, when a leader crashes his economy, it comes from overexpanding, but Sury only has three cities! He just is not working any commerce, and instead working high food tiles when his capital had already exceeded its happiness cap. I can conceive of two reasons Sury did this: 1) he had barb troubles in the Northern tundra, and was panicking and building a bunch of military units (warriors) to deal with them, and 2) the AI seem to prioritize production when they have reached the happiness cap. Compounding matters was that Sury's land had very little happiness - he could not even rely on an early religion due to the nature of the rest of the field. Thus, Sury would never work any commerce, and build too many warriors, which do not make for an effective military backbone, to say the least.
As mentioned previously, Sury lost a city to the barbs in 40% of these games
Unlike in the Actual Game, Sury always immediately recaptured those cities, but it was still a disaster he could ill afford. When combined with his penchant to avoid Archery due to his Gold/Culture research flavors, and his teching being further slowed by upgrading all his warriors into Axes, this created a perfect storm to ensure that Sury's winning chances would go poof by Turn 75.
A lesser factor in Sury's early game struggles was that Charlie almost always settled a Holy City in his face, squeezing him out and sparking early conflicts that Sury definitely did not need.
I would not blame the flood plains for Sury's embarrassing performance. A leader like Huayna Capac or Liz would have been ecstatic in Sury's position. Only Sury himself is to blame, and I am starting to think he might be one of the more overrated leaders for AI Survivor. He is just mismatched and counter-synergistic, holding a builder-focused economic package and research traits while having a militaristic personality. He is also on the crazier side of the spectrum, and instead of trying to salvage his position, he instead kept himself in the dregs with meaningless warring. I am starting to question if Sury is truly an elite leader.
Best Performance: He did not crash his economy in Game 1.
Worst Performance: He got a city autorazed by the barbs in Game 9, before falling victim to the Izzy buzzsaw.
Hatshepsut Award: Losing a war to three city Charlie in Game 13, even when Monty was also attacking from the other side.
Willem Award: In the one game (Game 14) that Sury was able to become the tech leader, he blew it by avoiding Rifling and getting crushed by Mehmed.
Sullla EDIT: I would like to note that Suryavarman was the overwhelming community favorite to win this game in the picking contest, including my pick as well. 
Montezuma of the Aztecs
Wars Declared: 53
Wars Declared Upon: 23
Survival Percentage: 20%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 1 Second (2 points)
Kills: 7
Overall Score: 9 points
Monty is the AI Survivor embodiment of "so bad it's good," and he certainly played the part of double agent for Team Good. Liz and Izzy especially should consider themselves grateful for his presence. Yet his suicidal tendencies also made him a feeding ground for his neighbors. There were essentially two categories of Monty games: 1) destroy one of his neighbors in a dogpile, fall technologically behind, and then donate his lands to the tech leader, and 2) throw all his Jaguars at Mehmed or Charlie before either being turned into a kebob or into a burger. Both approaches had the same result, and Monty was absolutely a reasonable First To Die pick alongside Charlie. I could go on, but it would all be a long-winded way of stating these two words: Monty sucks.
Enlightened Monty Award: His one playoff appearance in Game 2 stemmed from somehow being the only leader to NOT go completely bonkers and suicide into Mehmed.
One unsurprising A lister, an evenly matched middle class that included the Actual Game winner, and two losers. This was quite a wild set of games, and many of them had the feeling of there being six Montezumas vying for supremacy with how insane these leaders could be when put together. Although we all love seeing the games and Alternate Histories in which the Mansas and Justinians of the world put out their masterclasses in playing Civilization, the sets with six highly flawed leaders such as this one can be equally as compelling. Despite their glaring flaws, we also saw the reasons why there are three champions amongst this field. No matter how one may think of these leaders, they will always find a way to spice up AI Survivor tournaments in a manner that traditional bluebloods like Huayna and Kublai Khan cannot.
