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:
Julius Caesar of the Romans
Traits: Imperialistic, Organized
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, two opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 4 First Places, 1 Second Place 
Total Kills: 15 
Overall Power Ranking: 37 points, tied 4th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Caesar gets access to the Imperialistic and Organized traits, the former being top-tier and the latter being below average. Imperialistic is so strong that it makes this pair powerful, however, as more land = more everything in AI Survivor. His unique items are the busted Praetorian unique unit, as well as the significantly less useful Forum, again the praetorian being so good that this pair is still well above average. Lastly, Caesar has the Fishing and Mining starting techs, a generally weak pair that becomes significantly stronger with seafood at the capital, as with all fishing starts. Caesar, more than most leaders, depends on having the right starting resources, as seafood, iron, and metal luxuries all greatly speed up his snowball, as in his dominant opening game of Season Four. And make no mistake, Caesar's game plan is to snowball. With an above average aggression rating (7.6/10), unit preference (6/10) and military/production flavours, Caesar is far more likely than not to start an early war, and with a neutral peaceweight (4), all opponents are fair game for an attack. However, in early wars Caesar has a serious ace up his sleeve: praetorians. These guys are so strong that they almost break the game, often barging their way through city walls like no other unit can. Caesar depends heavily on an extremely successful landgrab using Imperialistic, an early conquest using praetorians, or both. From there, Caesar's gameplay looks similar to many other militaristic AIs, using his extra land to out-produce everyone else. If Caesar is unable to get his snowball rolling, his poor economic traits and aggressive personality usually mean he will fall behind and get himself killed, making him another feast-or-famine type leader.
Past Performance: Caesar is still riding a high from the early days of AI Survivor, where he was the most feared of the warmongers and scored enough points that, even with nothing in the last four seasons, he'd still be a seeded leader today. He won one crushing victory in Season Two, but the true highlight of his career was an exemplary Season Three where he scored two strong wins, a very respectable third place in the Championship, and SEVEN kills across the season, one of only two leaders to ever accomplish this feat. Since Season Four removed the free Deity starting techs, though, he hasn't been able to recapture that magic, and the two could very well be linked. Season Four saw Caesar adopt a different approach, going pacifist for a game and succeeding thanks to a lovely starting location, winning another dominant victory but with zero kills. Season Five saw him return to the warpath with modest success - his first second-place finish and four more kills - but it was still a far cry from his earlier successes, and he's come up completely empty in the past two seasons. He's also had trouble with very different fields lately, first failing to keep up in tech with peaceful groups for two seasons, then completely failing in two warmonger-filled games in Season Seven. As a result, despite being a Pool One leader, Caesar feels rather like a has-been whose glory days are long past. But he still shouldn't be dismissed as a threat, and perhaps he's just waiting for the right starting position to remind the world of what he can really do...
Louis XIV of France
Traits: Creative, Industrious
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 1
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Season Seven champion, two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 6
Overall Power Ranking: 25 points, tied 12th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Louis XIV has a strange AI personality that mixes together a heavy emphasis on wonders together with military aggression. It's not a winning combination. Louis has the Creative and Industrious pairing of traits, a setup that's good for claiming land and then developing cities upwards with additional infrastructure. He also gets to benefit from the strong French civilization, with its excellent starting techs and the useful Musketeer unique unit. However, Louis largely wastes these positive features with a destructive AI personality that pulls in too many directions at once. He's obsessed with building wonders, sporting the rare 10/10 rating in that category, and too often ties up his cities on world wonders with questionable benefits. Louis also has a Culture flavor for his research and tends to spend a lot of time at the top of the tech tree grabbing stuff along the Aesthetics line. These are poor choices for a leader who also has a Military tech flavor, a fairly high aggression rating (6.3/10), and a very low peace weight. Louis tends to make for a bad neighbor as his borders are always intruding on the other empires and he demands tribute constantly (8/10). Needless to say, the guy who likes to pick fights with his rivals while simultaneously locking up his cities on long wonder builds hasn't had a ton of success to date.
Past Performance: Louis is enjoying a position as a seeded leader for the first time, thanks to a breakout performance in Season Seven where he scored about two-thirds of his total points; all three of his games in this season saw him lead in score from the end of the landgrab to the end of the game, ultimately cashing in with Cultural victories while pretty much never being in true danger. As impressive as this performance was, though, it's totally unrepresentative of the entire rest of his career. To his credit, Louis usually runs a credible nation after the landgrab phase and rarely is a non-entity, but in terms of being able to translate that into actually coming on top? Before Season Seven, the best he could muster was a pair of distant second-place finishes. His championship run also showed his flaws, as these games often saw him change strategies mid-game and betray his indecisive nature, and despite being a fairly aggressive leader, he only scored two kills across the entire season. So while Louis is a credible threat and has good odds to be an important player, he doesn't seem to be the most likely to make another Championship run, not unless he gets put out in front again.
Augustus of Rome
Traits: Imperialistic, Industrious
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Three playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 1
Overall Power Ranking: 10 points, tied 33rd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Augustus is one of the less noteworthy AIs in the game. His traits are Imperialistic and Industrious, which is a combination seriously lacking in synergy: Imperialistic wants you to get out there and claim the map, while Industrious wants to build wonders instead of settlers. He also gets the uber-swordsmen in praetorians and the less powerful forum, though the increased great people points do synergise with Industrious wonders. Lastly, Augustus starts with Fishing and Mining, a generally poor pair unless he starts on the coast. Augustus has a personality full of synergies and anti-synergies. To start with his synergies, the most notable thing about the Roman Emperor is his love of wonders (8/10), which works well with Industrious. He also gets the forum, which isn't fantastic but does allow him to generate more great people with those wonders. Lastly, his low aggression rating (4.6/10) means he is generally in a position where tying up his cities on large projects isn't a total disaster. However, because of that low aggression rating, Augustus typically doesn't make use of the biggest reason to play the Romans: Praetorians. Sure, they can stabilise a defence if he's attacked early, but Augustus is pretty unlikely to go on the offensive. He tends to ignore the Imperialistic half of his trait combination, and Augustus is unlikely to claim the lion's share on the map. Other than that, Augustus' numbers are in about the middle of the scale, and he has production and military flavours. He's a generally run-of-the-mill AI with a particular penchant for wonders. Augustus has a strong and mediocre trait, and a strong and mediocre unique item. Unfortunately, he focuses on the wrong half of both.
Past Performance: Augustus has had more success at reaching the playoffs than many high peaceweight leaders, but his overall performance still hasn't been very impressive. Two of his three "placing" games, including his only win, were the result of very favorable setups where he got an isolated start and the chance to peacefully expand to a large size, then enter the global stage at a time of his choosing. While he was competent enough to not screw up these opportunities, the fact that he scored only a single kill between those two games speaks for itself. His first-ever game did see him successfully use his Praetorians to stave off multiple early assaults until an ally came to help, but there he similarly couldn't actually finish off any opponents on his own. Augustus has accomplished little of note in his other appearances; basically, he has the potential to capitalize on a favorable start, but otherwise will probably not be very important.
Cyrus of Persia
Traits: Charismatic, Imperialistic
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Hunting
Peace Weight: 3
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Season 2 runner-up, one additional Championship loss, one playoff round elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 5 Second Places
Total Kills: 9
Overall Power Ranking: 24 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Cyrus has Charismatic and Imperialistic for his traits, with Imperialistic being so good that it makes this a pretty good combination. There's also some synergy there, as Charismatic happiness is a bigger deal with more cities to use it in. He gets the notably less useful Immortal and Apothecary unique items, but he has very good starting techs with Agriculture and Hunting; Cyrus will quickly be able to improve basically any food resource he has. Cyrus has a pretty high aggression rating (7/10), builds a fair number of units (6/10) and loves wonders (8/10); this guy does it all. He cares an average amount about religion (big bonus for sharing, small malus for difference), and his flavours are Military and Growth. It creates the image of another of the snowball leaders, and Cyrus' game plan seems to be building a lot of cities with Imperialistic, getting them tall with Charismatic and his Growth flavour, and then crushing a neighbour or two once he has an advantage in food and production.
Past Performance: Cyrus's AI Survivor career got off to a promising start: after a decent Season One performance that got him a playoff spot, he had a fantastic Season Two, putting out three strong performances and falling just seven turns short of being the champion! He's had a considerably rougher time since then, though, dying in the opening round in four of the past five seasons. He temporarily held onto his spot as a seeded leader in Season Six, his best season in years where he returned to the Championship off a pair of Second Place finishes, but he finished the final game in a distant third, and a failed attempt to bump off the game leader in his Season Seven opener resulted in him losing his seeded position for the first time. Don't be fooled by his rocky history or the solitary win, though - while he's had a tough time finding lasting success, Cyrus is almost always a major player in his games, and it's very rare for him to simply be an irrelevant also-ran.
De Gaulle of France
Traits: Charismatic, Industrious
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 0
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 4
Overall Power Ranking: 11 points, tied 30th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: De Gaulle's AI personality seems to have been created by a designer who was poking fun at various different French sterotypes. De Gaulle's trait combination of Charismatic and Industrious is underwhelming for AI Survivor purposes and doesn't appear to have much in the way of synergy. He does get to take advantage of France's excellent starting techs and solid Musketeer unique unit but that's about all that this leader has working in his favor. De Gaulle has a very low wonder-building preference (2/10), which largely serves to waste his Industrious trait, and mixes this together with obnoxious behavior towards his neighbors. He will make constant tribute demands (10/10) and civic change requests (8/10) that tend to make him unpopular with the other AI leaders. De Gaulle also infamously has the lowest resistance to capitulation in the game (0/10), and while that doesn't matter as much in a game without vassal states, he still makes few friends thanks to his peace weight score of zero. It's a confusing and incoherent AI personality that combines annoying behavior with a lack of the requisite ruthlessness needed to be a true conquerer.
Past Performance: De Gaulle has a pretty unremarkable track record and is rarely one of the more interesting figures in his matches. He was infamous for his terrible ranking in the competition's early days, thanks to suffering very early exits in the first two seasons, but overall his performance hasn't been notably bad - just mediocre, such that two or three other leaders are usually doing better in any given game. He had a single strong performance leading to a win in his Season Three opener, but his subsequent outings have proven that this was simply the game where everything lined up right, and his only other playoff appearance came from an "everyone else is dead" second-place finish. With no particular strength or strategy he likes to follow, De Gaulle is unlikely to play a notable role in most games.
Lincoln of the Americans
Traits: Charismatic, Philosophical
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Fishing
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One playoff round elimination, two wildcard eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 1 First Place
Total Kills: 2
Overall Power Ranking: 7 points, tied 42nd place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Lincoln can essentially be thought of as a slightly less extreme clone of Gandhi. He's almost as pacifistic in nature without taking things to quite as ridiculous of a degree. Lincoln's trait combination is pretty lackluster, depriving this peaceful leader of much of an economic foundation to work with. Philosophical in particular doesn't seem to do much for AI leaders who always run a gazillion specialists at all times. Lincoln is not helped either by his American civ with all of its uselessly-late unique features. Lincoln as a leader is extremely peaceful in nature with an exceedingly low aggression rating (0.8/10). He won't declare war at "Pleased" either so Lincoln rarely winds up initiating much in the way of conflict. Unlike Gandhi, he will at least train an average number of units (4/10) and therefore doesn't collapse instantly when attacked. Lincoln's an easy neighbor to get along with, as he rarely makes demands and doesn't hold much interest in religion. Unfortunately he also doesn't have any clear path to winning a victory, as his traits aren't great for pure economy and he doesn't have anything beyond half-cost universities to help with culture. It all adds up to a mixed bag, a nice guy leader who's too friendly to attack anyone while also lacking the tools to run the Mansa Musa or Darius playbook.
Past Performance: Lincoln is an extreme case of a leader with a front-loaded performance: he scored every single one of his career points in his very first game! That was a mostly-friendly field where he smartly joined in on two separate dogpiles of aggressive leaders, then sat back with his friends and coasted to a strong but unsustainable win. He has utterly failed to remotely approach this level of performance since, and has instead largely served as fodder for the aggressive leaders. Sometimes his lack of success has been beyond his control, of course - most notably his Season Three opener, where he was a shoo-in for Second Place for ages until a runaway Mansa attacked him in the closing turns for no reason - but there's also been plenty of games with decent starts where he simply didn't get anything done. Most tellingly, he put up one of the worst defenses we've ever seen in his most recent appearance, allowing a small-sized Carthaganian empire to quickly conquer his best cities without catapults and completely altering the course of the game in the process. It's more than clear by now that Lincoln is in the lowest tiers of competition, and a strong performance by him is an unlikely outcome indeed.
Suleiman of the Ottomans
Traits: Imperialistic, Philosophical
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 4
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, one wildcard elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 5
Overall Power Ranking: 9 points, 36th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Suleiman is a fairly standard militaristic AI leader tied to a good civilization and a bizarre pairing of traits. This might be the least synergistic pairing of traits in Civ4, with Imperialistic favoring rapid expansion across the map while Philosophical works at cross-purposes through the running of specialists. At least Suleiman does get to take advantage of Imperialistic, a consistently successful trait for AI Survivor purposes. He also benefits from the Ottoman civ, which features excellent starting techs and two useful (if not overpowered) unique features in the Janissary and Hamman. Suleiman's AI personality emphasizes military aspects but not to an overwhelming degree. He has a high aggression rating (7/10) and does like to train units (6/10). On the other hand, his peace weight is in the middle of the scale, he doesn't make a lot of demands against other leaders, and he won't declare war at "Pleased" relations. Suleiman surprisingly doesn't care much about religion at all, although he has decent odds to found a later religion because his tech flavors are Culture and Military. His setup is a mixed bag overall, with conflicting leader traits and several different points of emphasis in Suleiman's personality. The various parts can occasionally come together into a larger whole but not on a consistent basis.
Past Performance: Suleiman was a part of the very first Championship, but only off a pair of distant second-place finishes. Sullla speculated at the start of that finale that Suleiman wasn't actually that strong, and he's certainly been proven right since, as a pair of kills are all that "Sillyman" has to his name since. There's not a whole lot in particular to say about Suleiman's performances across the past six seasons, nothing remarkable that's happened. He's just been generally ineffective. The closest he's come to success since 2014 is finishing within 200 points of Second Place in a Wildcard game, and when you can say that, you know you don't have a very strong performer on your hands.
Here's what the community was thinking based on the prediction contest before the game took place:
The community had a clear favorite to win Game Eight in the form of Julius Caesar, expecting the Roman leader to get back to his earlier winning ways after several down seasons. Running behind Caesar as secondary co-favorites were Cyrus and Louis who both had nearly identical vote shares and no one else had more than a scattering of support. The Runner Up category was the usual mess with no obvious favorites, and then First to Die was the exact opposite as Lincoln was the overwhelming choice to make a quick exit. The blue Pac Man eating the rest of the pie chart was a strong suggestion that Lincoln wasn't getting much love from the community. Then because Caesar was such a popular pick to win, Domination was the majority choice for the victory condition over Spaceship and Culture.
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: Lincoln has a real nice capitol. Can't wait to see how he's first to die.
Galren: Cyrus appears to have a lot of great land to expand into, along with some 2v1 potential against De Gaulle and Lincoln. Louis could 2v1 Lincoln or Augustus. Sulieman will pull De Gaulle into a war of irrelevancy while the Caesars duel off. If Lincoln doesn't get iron working before Louis or Cyrus come knocking, he could be in serious trouble.
NotSpamBot: Lincoln is what we in the industry like to call "Proper Fucked", as his inability to defend himself does not pair well with starting between two fairly aggressive low peaceweight AIs with a track record of martial competency. That probably dooms Augustus in the long run as well, as he will then be all alone and facing down Cyrus, THE Caesar, and Louis which is certainly a triumvirate to fear. With that said, AI Suvivor is AI Survivor and Augustus is set up to have an excellent opening (AI willing and all, of course), so I wouldn't be terribly surprised if he ends up winning despite everything.
Oh, and Suleiman and De Gaulle is off in the west being irrelevant or something.Kharush: Recipe is the handling of desert and jungle this time. The leaders that will not have to handle that recipe are Louis and Augustus Caesar. Therefore, the carpet of dark blue will roll from East. Once Suleiman has managed to cut jungle, thick blue color is already flashing in the middle of the continent.
TheOneAndOnlyAtesh: An absolute lovefest, with Louis’ religion spread everywhere, a bunch of low peaceweights who won’t plot at Pleased, and who will all be munching on finger-Lincoln good KFC while watching the Caesars argue over whose noses are pointier into irrelevancy? Sullla, the only way to save your index finger is to kidnap the Caesars, install Caligula and Tarquin Superbus as leaders, and have them suicide into the Persians and allow them to snowball into a domination victory.
Dagoth Gares: "Two Caesars is one too many," said Gaius Julius to Octavian.
aubbls: there's a lot to not like about julius' start--the distance between other civs, the amount of sprawl needed for him to get going while having a weak economy. two of the three most likely civs to expand into feel like bad choices to gain from: suleiman will have weak land and augustus will also have praetorians due to his need to chop down all the jungle. taking from cyrus is what i feel is the best, most common route for him to win from, but i'm not buying that. louis has a very easy neighbor to pick up from in lincoln. i think the only real problem for louis is if lincoln has a religion that blocks out his own so his diplomatic situation is weak. he has a variety of options to win from and he feels like one of the stronger choices to win this game. where does that leave the rest of the field? suleiman and augustus will have a lot of chopping to do and due to UU tech preferences i think augustus will be able to get an economy online and survive early game. suleiman will have a lot of work to do to get out of that hole and neighbors who aren't going to let him do that. lincoln feels very much like a dead man walking with that high peace rate and plenty of neighbors that could wage effective wars. cyrus feels like he has a good shot of a top two if he survives. de gaulle is a wild card here, especially if he joins up on a 2v1 and grab some land of cyrus or suleiman. his window to win is being very dominant and domination, but even if my pick is going a bit more unconventional, i only see de gaulle being a 1-2 wins on the alternate histories. so my pick is going to be augustus and cyrus, who can weather whichever warmonger tries to go domination, and space since most of these leaders won't have any other win conditions within reach. the game feels moderately open for anyone outside of lincoln.
Amicalola: Cyrus might have the single best start for Charismatic I've ever seen in AI Survivor. The question, as ever, is whether he will be smart enough to actually research Mysticism...
BluesyCobalt: Julius' land looks great and there's a hell of a lot of it and it's got iron. Roman cannibalism kicks off the game with Julius devouring his adopted son and then balling out of control. De Gualle for second as the terrified Gaul in the backseat.
LaserGuy: Kinda of an odd field. Caesar has a nice amount of land, but his start is fairly low econ and I could see him ending up in a similar position to Sury last game where his economy is never good enough to get anywhere as he chases the wrong techs. Louis looks a bit cramped, but he's got copper and elephants and should be able use his creative trait to secure a decent amount of good land from some fairly passive neighbors. DeGaulle probably has the strongest starting position and I expect he'll have a decent game.
random.org: Everybody is shocked when Lincoln and Augustus tagteam Louis on Turn 80. The praetorians do all the heavy lifting, as the American forces slip through the backlines to get all of the good stuff. Having tasted blood, Lincoln turns west and keeps going; everybody has been wasting their strength on pointless wars and peace treaties (inflating the war counter to an amazing 19), and nobody can stop him as he rolls through Persian, then French, then Ottoman lands on the way to a scorching-fast Domination victory. Meanwhile, Julius conquers an Augustus who gained almost nothing from Louis's demise to secure second place.
RefSteel: With both Romes in the game, both certain to get iron - barring unprece... okay, no, barring totally precedented levels of AI incompetence - and the desert in between them driving them away from a mutually-destructive Praet fest, I'm going to try to channel the spirit of Season 8 and guess that all the free land Julius seems poised to claim backfires when he gets boxed in by a series of barb cities that end up getting captured by someone improbable like West France - while East France, giddy with capital copper, invades Augustus just in time to smash flat against his walls. Infuriated, Gus will turn the tide, exterminate the Sun King with just enough token help from Lincoln for their Mutual Military Struggle to ensure eternal peace between them as Purple Rome turns into the superpower of the map, slowly snowballing against the competition until Lincoln politely raises his hand and says, "Pardon me, I believe I have just won by culture."
Vesper: Too many imperialistic kids in this block, but only two have the right weapons to build a good empire, and only one that can use them right. And that one also has the most land AND traits to govern large land early. Guess who?
BigBlueBen: It's the season of high peace-weights, so it's Lincoln and Augustus to win, right? I actually do like Augustus, with that capital and starting techs (gold and seafood hooked before turn 10). I think the desert between the Romans stops an early civil war, and Augustus might even get Julius's iron resource since it's on his side of the desert. I'd pick a human (or Mansa Musa) with Julius's capital every time, but it looks very similar to Sury's last game and that didn't go so well... Religion is also a complete wild-card with no mysticism starts or overly religious leaders. This might be one of the more divergent alternate histories due partly to religion.
Blervis: WWJCD? He would come back after an absence and remind us of his power. So powerful in fact, that he was assassinated irl for it.
Colors: Other than being first to die, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? I like Julius Caesar because he has a whole mess of land to expand into and a plausible expansion target in Augustus Caesar. The other leaders are underwhelming, but I like Cyrus enough as a leader. Louis is kind of crushed and will need to get like all of Lincoln or most of Augustus to be competitive. I hate Sillyman's start and DeGaulle is a fraud and his land is much worse than it may appear at first glance. So, Cyrus for second assuming that he can finesse some winning plays. Regardless, in this group I think domination will FINALLY hit this season, so JC for dom and Cyrus for second by default. RIP Lincoln.
bellarch: I think there are two real options to win here: Cyrus and Julius Caesar. They both have by far the most space to expand and the traits to support it, and we've seen many times before that the ability to expand generally leads the AI to dominate a disproportionate amount of games. That said, I think Cyrus is in a better position here on average. JC has one big problem: he's got no commerce resources! With no precious metals or even seafood for coastal cities, he's in grave danger of pulling a Suryavarman and failing to research Pottery, or maybe even The Wheel, until he's in too deep an economic hole to recover. His capital may be better, but I prefer Cyrus's multiple golds even though his capital is weaker. Combine that with Cyrus's higher happy cap due to Charismatic and actually having an early luxury resource, and I expect him to do the best landgrab and dominate the rest of the game from there. Then at some point he probably ends up conquering Caesar after border tension leads to a war, so we end up with De Gaulle or Louis in second instead en route to Cyrus's Domination victory over the high peaceweight also-rans -- let's say De Gaulle, since I honestly like his start a lot too and because I don't trust Louis not to waste his massive production capital building wonders to add +3 culture in every city instead of +2 and adopt Hereditary Rule ten turns earlier while Augustus claims most of the good land in his vicinity. De Gaulle's relative aversion to wonders, and Suleiman's awful jungle-choked start, puts him ahead in this regard.
Eauxps I. Fourgott: This is AI Survivor, we don't care about the odds! Lincoln somehow gets ignored the entire game as the four western leaders get bogged down in their own squabbles, eventually coming at the expense of Sillyman and De Lol, and Augustus keeps Louis busy. If this does happen, Lincoln torches the others in tech with his economic focus + all those furs and silver, and later leverages his lead to partition Louis with Augustus and coast to space from there. Cyrus nabs second place with the extra land he's captured in the west. Alternate histories later prove this to be a 0-5% odds outcome, and the masses shake their heads and sigh.
Slashin': AUGGY SMASHES DUMB LOW PW FRENCH BOOB THEN GORILLA SMASH FALSE ROME RAWWRRRR AUGGY SMASHHHH
