Civ4 AI Survivor Season 8: Game Eight Writeup


This summary for Game Eight was written by TheOneAndOnlyAtesh with some assistance from Eauxps I. Fourgott. Many thanks for volunteering to put this report together!

I apologize - I had made an error in my Game Seven Writeup. I had erroneously stated that Justinian's peaceweight was six, when it actually was four. This meant that so far, he had been the only low-ish peaceweight to have even sniffed victory this season. Well, the final Opening Round matchup HAD to get another evil winner, right? After all, the nice guys here have historically not been the most inspiring. One of them was Abraham Lincoln, a man greatly accustomed to being cannon fodder for the eventual winner of the game. Honest Abe was in a prime position to continue this trend, being placed in a northern central location surrounded by big baddies. His only saving grace was his high commerce capital, which gave him a Silver and a Fur monopoly. Directly East of America (Canada?) King Louis XIV, one of the craziest leaders in the game... AND THE DEFENDING CHAMPION. Much like his real-life counterpart, the Sun King had a tendency to cause his empire to collapse from the weight of attempting to devote everything to culture and military at the same time. However, last season he was somehow able to balance his priorities en route to one of the most dominant single seasons in AI Survivor history, single-handedly catapulting himself into a Pool Two seeded spot.

That was not all poor Abe had to contend with. To his west was the Persian leader Cyrus, a leader far more worthy of Darius' traits. Cyrus had endured down years as of late, partially due to his counter-synergistic combination of having a warmonger package plus personality yet not being able to plot at Pleased. However, he had gorgeous land, Lincoln as a neighbor, and a friendly diplomatic situation considering that his western neighbors were Suleiman and De Gaulle (with white borders to differentiate him from his fellow Frenchman Louis' royal blue), also known as "Sillyman" and "De Lol". Both of these leaders were great potential allies for Cyrus due to their similar peaceweight alignment, inability to plot at Pleased, and unthreatening nature. Although De Gaulle's personality was clearly designed to be a meme, he did have good land and a nearby Stone resource to aid him in building Stonehenge, a useful wonder for the Industrious/Charismatic leader Charismatic's Monument happiness boost. Suleiman, meanwhile, did not appear to have much of a shot in this game due to the jungle-choked nature of his land.

In the South were the two Caesars, the owners of perhaps the strongest unique unit for AI Survivor purposes due to their Macemen-like strength at Iron Working: Praetorians. Augustus Caesar had the standard Roman purple borders, and, being a fellow high peaceweight and having a great capital for his Mining/Fishing starting techs, was perhaps Lincoln's one hope at survival. The first Roman princeps had often failed to utilize his Praetorians, however, preferring to play the role of a mediocre builder. The red borders to his west denoted the lands of his uncle, Julius Caesar. Unlike Augustus, JC actually took advantage of his unique unit, and his Pool One status is reflective of this. Red Rome had plenty of land to expand into, but for someone like Julius Caesar who needs other people's lands to covet, too much land is not always a good thing.

Around 90% of the picking contest chose one of either Louis, Cyrus, or Julius Caesar to win, with a slight edge to JC. This Evil Triumvirate also dominated the Runner Up vote, with the general consensus that they would all partition Lincoln and Augustus before the best performing leader snowballed in some manner. The only clear consensus among the community was that Lincoln, having no Copper and surrounded by enemies with metals and Elephants, was utterly screwed.

The key questions of the game would be:

1) Which one of Cyrus, Louis, and JC would benefit the most from fighting Lincoln and Augustus?
2) Both Augustus and Lincoln had decent commerce rich land - would they be able to work together? They certainly need each other.
3) With no leaders starting with Mysticism or being particularly religious, who would end up with the dominant religion?
4) Will Suleiman and De Gaulle have any relevance in this game?

As always, the initial religion race was crucial, and only Augustus Caesar would beeline a religion, founding Christianity in Antium. For once, the leaders were making sensible Turn 0 research choices - they said no to Turn 0 Archery poison pills, no to useless forays into Masonry, and yes to prioritizing improving their resources. One could not say the same about their 2nd city spots. Some, like Cyrus and De Gaulle, failed to take advantage of their luscious river systems. Others, like Suleiman, only had Poverty Point-esque spots to choose from. Only Louis had a strong second city, showing how foolproof the Creative trait can be. Both he and Lincoln had settled in each other's faces, and these two polar opposite personalities were already fanning the flames towards a conflict.

Although many attempted to secure the rival religion to Augustus' Christianity, it was Louis who won, founding Taoism in Lyons. It was already obvious why Lincoln was an overwhelming First To Die favorite. He was already getting squeezed by Creative and Taoist Royal French culture, and both New York and Boston were struggling to control their first ring tiles. Louis continued to tighten his grip on Lincoln, surrounding America with his fourth city. Lincoln was also having some barbarian troubles, with his furs getting pillaged and his expansion being significantly hampered. By Turn 50, Lincoln's empire was stuck on three cities, with two of them already drinking the Royal Blue Kool Aid. Although he had two settlers out, the barbarians forced him to keep them huddled in his cities for a long time. His position was increasingly becoming hopeless - and it did not help that his only peaceweight ally Augustus was also expanding poorly.

The first 50 turns validated the community's belief in the Evil Triumvirate of Cyrus, Louis, and Julius Caesar. Although JC's and Cyrus' settling patterns were questionable, with the former favoring the coastline over central land and the latter constantly missing rivers and resources in the first ring, they had the most cities, the best future expansion prospects, and plenty of time to recover their economies. They just needed to not delay Mysticism as long as they currently were. Amongst the other leaders, only De Gaulle was having a good start. The French Republic's failed attempt at religion had not been a waste, as it had helped De Gaulle secure Charismatic Monuments via Stonehenge. Regarding the others, America looked like it was going to become Quebec in the future, Augustus was stuck on four cities and prioritizing Moai Statues and Temple of Artemis over expansion, and Suleiman's land was so god-awful that he was the Sick Man of Europe, already consigned to irrelevance. Nevertheless, with four Imperialistic leaders, one Creative leader, and one Stonehenge-boosted leader, the expansion pace was rapid, although there was still plenty of land left to settle due to the large map size. All of this seemed to foretell a slow research pace, especially considering these leader's propensities to ignore Pottery and Mysticism.

Unexpectedly, Cyrus was the first leader to prepare for war. Perhaps it should not have been that surprising - although the AI usually cannot plot without metals, they can plot with unique Chariots, like Persian Immortals. Considering Cyrus' inability to plot at Pleased, Lincoln appeared to be his likely target. After the absolute insanity of the previous games, the pieces were all coming into place for this game to FINALLY be a return to normalcy. Lincoln had figured out his settling issues and had secured the important defensive techs like Archery, Masonry (Walls), Mysticism (cultural defenses), and, most importantly, Iron Working, but that would not save him from a 2v1, especially since Louis was also plotting.

One factor in Imperial Rome's (Augustus) favor was that Augustus was winning the religious race. Although this had shades of Izzy's performance in the previous game, in which she spread her religion well but had too small of an empire to compete, Augustus had converted his uncle and buried the Monotheism religion of Confucianism. Strangely enough, Cyrus had picked up Confucianism, and if there was one thing that could help the two Nice Guys, it was religious divisions amongst the low peaceweights. Nevertheless, barring something crazy, it appeared that Cyrus was going to kickstart the eventual dogpile of Lincoln, leading to the Evil Triumvirate partitioning the Nice Guys and coasting.

Except... something crazy happened. So much for a return to normalcy! Cyrus had sicced his Immortals onto JULIUS CAESAR. Considering that Praetorians were already helming the armies of the Red Roman Republic (henceforth the R.R.R.), it looked like Darius had thrown a tantrum after his Game Five embarrassment and guilt-tripped Cyrus into letting him play instead. To absolutely no one's surprise, the eight-strength Praetorians chopped up the four-strength Immortals at Cumae, and JC immediately launched his counterattack. This war had all the makings of a disaster for both sides, as both of them had not recovered their crashed economies quite yet, and they were destined to waste more time throwing units at each other. In one fell swoop, the victory door had been yanked wide open for the rest of the field, especially De Gaulle, who had become the score leader. The French Republic had conquered two Barbarian cities east of the Ottomans - slamming the door on whatever Suleiman's miniscule winning chances were - and De Gaulle was in a game-leading position.

Meanwhile, Louis launched his attack on Lincoln, showing who Cyrus should have turned his attention towards. It was too little too late, however. Unlike some past embarrassing performances, Lincoln was mustering a competent defense, and the Royal French-American war immediately sputtered out. Louis smartly withdrew from a useless conflict before he could further drag his position down, instead reverting back to his previous settler-based avenues of attack by using Toulouse and his strong culture to isolate Philadelphia from the rest of the American mainland. Despite this, with the Evil Triumvirate leaders having stagnated at best, Honest Abe's position had suddenly become much stronger. If he was going to be First To Die, such an event would come a heck of a lot later than initially anticipated.

Meanwhile, Julius Caesar's counterattack on Bactra was not going well. It was not helping that he was building far too many Chariots despite having Praetorians - the AI have a strange Chariot obsession for some reason. To tack on, rather than forming a dedicated stack, JC was sending trickles of to attack the city as if he were a Civ V/VI AI. Time was not on his side - the rest of the field was pulling away in technology. While the R.R.R. was sputtering, Imperial Rome was crawling back into the game. Augustus had finally expanded out of his initial four cities and was setting up a well-oiled Great Lighthouse and Holy City based economy. He had spread his religion so effectively that Louis, THE FOUNDER OF THE 2ND RELIGION OF TAOISM, had converted to his favorite religion of Christianity. (As it turns out, favorite religion has more of an effect than initially believed - the only reason we usually do not see leaders like Saladin and Mansa Musa convert to Islam is that with Choose Religions switched off, the Divine Right religion has little to no chance of being relevant enough for the AI to consider)

As some predicted, the two Western leaders went to war, with Suleiman surprisingly instigating the conflict in a desperate attempt to get out of his horrible position. De Gaulle had nearly twice the number of cities at this point, and this was his chance to firmly establish himself as the game leader while the Eastern leaders bogged each other down. There was one major demerit regarding his prospects: he had adopted his Royal Frenchman's Taoism when the rest of the world had embraced Christianity.

At last, the R.R.R. broke through Bactra, but at what cost? Julius Caesar was researching POTTERY on Turn 99, and was on the verge of becoming an insignificant player. Cyrus still had some prospects, but his foolish war had dragged him down to the middle of the pack. The good news was that he made peace with Julius Caesar soon after losing Bactra, and he had an ample period of peace to recover resulting from his Pleased status with the rest of the world and his finally researching Mysticism to expand his borders. Finally, Louis was back at war, this time against Augustus Caesar, as if he had not just witnessed Cyrus disregard the advice of "thou shalt not wage war against Praetorians in the Classical Era". So much for the Evil Triumvirate.

Augustus was not unprepared. Although Louis' massive army immediately ran over the border city of Arretium, his Praetorians soon afterwards made quick work out of Dijon. They were not the only leaders unwittingly trading cities; De Gaulle was DeLoling his war effort, taking the Ottoman city of Konya but failing to defend Marseilles. The "Silly Man", considering his position, was putting up a spirited fight. In the midst of all this fighting, Lincoln had shockingly become one of the biggest contenders. He had eleven cities and counting, including Alemani, a former barbarian outpost in the Deep South that he sniped from Julius Caesar. Even his diplomatic situation was good, as he was practicing global Christianity and his two biggest enemies were mired in other conflicts. Lincoln just needed to not stray to one of his self-founded religions.

Despite Augustus' Praetorians, Louis appeared to be on the verge of breaking the stalemate, as his army had bulldozed its way to the outskirts of the Christian Holy City of Antium. If Louis were to seize it for himself, Imperial Rome was sure to collapse. The First Emperor was in huge trouble - he had five defenders in Antium! Imperial Rome sorely needed his Praetorians to be heroes... Indeed, they were heroes.. The Battle of Arretium was a massacre for the Royal French. Louis had just learned a very hard lesson: DO NOT attack Praetorians on a hill with 60% Cultural defenses, especially if you lack Catapults. To call this an utter catastrophe for Louis would be an understatement. Soon after the entire Royal French attacking force was wiped out, Lincoln came back calling with a vengeance, linking with Imperial Rome to banish the Louis loyalists from his lands for once and for all. Louis was in huge trouble - would the defending champion become First To Die? This was an increasing possibility, as Lincoln reconnecting his cities with his capture of Toulouse was followed by Augustus running over Chartres.

Meanwhile, in the Central region, the R.R.R. decided to take revenge for Cyrus' earlier attack. Predictably, this was a disaster for Julius Caesar. The era of PRAETORIAN SMASH was nearing its end, and JC's inferior land, poor economic management, and lack of happiness had ensured his falling irreparably behind the field. Cyrus destroyed the Red Roman stack on the first turn of the war, and Persia was on the offensive. With De Gaulle taking down Suleiman and Royal France being partitioned by America and Imperial Rome, it was a matter of when, not if, there would only be four leaders standing, all of whom were likely to have decent playoff prospects.

It was the unexpected Louis, being in a 2v1 against the two tech leaders, who disintegrated the quickest, and there would once again be no back-to-back champions. Although Lincoln ended up getting slightly more and better cities (plus the kill), Augustus was able to capture Paris, which contained the Golden Age enhancing Mausoleum of Maussollos. It is tough to say if Louis was a deserving first elimination, considering his excellent opening. Lincoln was a reasonable first target, and his game might have been quite different had his fellow Evil Triumvirate members not gone completely insane. Unfortunately, many leaders have squandered strong starts with too much pre-Catapult warring, and Louis' attack on Augustus almost immediately after peacing out with Lincoln would have been premature even if he was not chucking units at Praetorians. Obviously, the fact that he was going up against Praetorians only compounded this, and led to his immediate collapse once a much stronger Lincoln joined the dogpile. Louis' fate was probably sealed the moment Cyrus and JC turned on each other, as it left him in a difficult position of being surrounded on all sides by enemies, and the Sun King's personality and blind hatred of high peaceweight leaders was ill-suited to handle this alone.

As of this writing, I would say that there have been enough seasons to place the past champions into three categories. There are the dominant champions, like Justinian (S1), Huayna Capac (S2), and Mansa Musa (S6). No one is surprised when they learn that these are former champions, and if Pacal or Cathy were to win this season, they would fall in the same boat. Then, there are the perennial runner ups or "backdoor" champions, the type of leaders who get enough 2nd places that they get chances to snipe a Championship game win. Mehmed (S5) and Charlemagne (S4) are clear examples of backdoor gold medalists, and perhaps Churchill could fall in this category if this season decides to troll us. In my appraisal, Louis joins Stalin (S3) in the third category, the boom-or-bust champion, the type of leader who wins convincingly 15-25% of the time and spectacularly combusts the other 75-85% - for non-champions think of leaders such as Gandhi or Alex. Like Stalin, Louis was able to get a season with three of those high percentile games, and no matter what happens in the future, he will likely continue to be an entertaining presence in AI Survivor games.

The quick takedown of Louis had put Augustus and Lincoln in the driver's seat for the playoff ticket. The two had forged an iron bond, even with Lincoln switching into Free Religion, and were free to develop their empires while Cyrus and De Gaulle were getting bogged down in their methodical, unaided conquests. In Cyrus' case, Julius Caesar had far more cities to take down, and the R.R.R. had Longbows and Castles to further delay the Persian conquest, even though they were unlikely to actually save JC. In the West, De Gaulle was completely flubbing his war effort with an extremely incompetent display of stack management, entering an endless cycle of seizing an Ottoman city only to have a previous conquest recaptured by Suleiman. He was taking so long to conquer the Ottomans that he was becoming relegated to 2nd tier status, a dangerous place to be considering his unpopular Taoism and extreme peaceweight of 0. Eventually, De Gaulle incorporated Knights, and that finally proved too much for Suleiman to bear. The French Republic finished what was perhaps the most unimpressive solo kill in AI Survivor history, in a war its leader did not even start.

There is not much to say about Suleiman's game. His starting position was so atrocious that no leader would be able to do anything with it, and in all honesty, he did about the best he could with it. In particular, Suleiman's defensive effort was impressive, and although his attempted attack on De Gaulle turned out to be suicidal, one sometimes has to shoot his shot in such a hopeless position.

The R.R.R. would expire soon after Suleiman's demise. Julius Caesar's game was good proof that more land is not always a good thing. This season has seen quite a few leaders hampered by having too much in the way of low quality land, and JC was no different in that regard. However, it bears mentioning that he might have made it out in one piece had he not had to contend with Cyrus' betrayal. JC's best ticket to the playoffs was in being a good lackey to Cyrus, and such hopes were dashed when Cyrus' actions condemned the two to be enemies. Et tu, Cyrus, indeed. I have stated this before and will repeat myself: warmongers, especially those with Praetorians like Julius Caesar, need just enough space to eventually be squeezed on land and have enemies to kill. Just ask JC's adopted son, who, despite not being a warmonger, had an enemy attack him at the perfect time for him to use his Praetorians to Catapult himself into a game-leading position. JC's post Season Four struggles have proven that without a good situation to use his Praetorians, he eventually falls behind in technology and becomes an irrelevant player. He is running out of time to show that his Pool One status was not merely a product of mowing down a bunch of scrubs with Praetorians in a few early season Opening Round games.

The Western and Central conquests had taken too long: Augustus and Lincoln had run away with the game, and their friendship was so compact that they were unlikely to fight, likely locking Cyrus and De Gaulle out of the playoffs. Curiously, it was Augustus who had the upper hand, even though Lincoln appeared to have more and better cities. Although this created quite the conundrum in the Twitch chat, the reason for Augustus being the tech leader soon became obvious: Augustus had spread Christianity so well that the Christian shrine was generating a staggering FIFTY-TWO gold per turn WITHOUT MODIFIERS. This only compounded the importance of Augustus, not Lincoln, capturing the Mausoleum of Maussollos from Louis: being the first to Taj Mahal, he was able to use two extra-long Golden Ages to leapfrog ahead of the Americans, and it did not matter that Lincoln had won the Liberalism and Economics prizes. (See my Game Seven writeup on how important the Renaissance Era is for running away in tech.) He had also benefited nicely from his uncle's demise, as it left him with more room for cities: quite amusingly, Augustus Caesar was able to found the city of Caesaraugusta near the outskirts of Persian-controlled Rome, denying Cyrus some land that so many Persian soldiers had bled for. Savor this moment - it is rare that leaders name troll cities after themselves in AI Survivor!

Lincoln's best chance at victory was in taking out Cyrus and De Gaulle for Domination, but that was a major longshot for a few reasons: he had a good relationship with Cyrus, De Gaulle was on the opposite side of the map, and Lincoln was channeling his inner Dutch by researching BIOLOGY before Rifles. Nevertheless, he decided to go back to war, and De Gaulle was his target, a war that turned out to be completely pointless. By the time Lincoln finally researched Rifling, the French Republic had also obtained Rifles, and Lincoln lost his colony of Alemani. He made peace with De Gaulle, and that was that. The only remaining question was how Augustus Caesar, who had built Wall Street in his Christian Shrine city of Antium, was going to win. This was some kind of Mansa Musa-Justinian hybrid monster economic performance from Augustus.

Cyrus, channeling his hatred of Romans in this game, launched a desperate attack on Imperial Rome. However, with Augustus two turns away from Tanks, this was yet another suicidal war declaration, and the rest of the game consisted of the community watching Augustus play the role of Constantine, a Christian leader reunifying Rome, as Sullla lamented at the utter destruction of his predictions. Cyrus was deader than dead, Augustus' spaceship was going to land at Alpha Centauri around Turn 315, and nothing else of significance was going to happen. Or was it?

Cyrus had a savior: Globalization! Augustus had used the United Nations to call a Turn 295 Diplomatic victory vote... and:

1) DE GAULLE WAS AUGUSTUS' RIVAL. Yes, De Gaulle's population had exceeded Lincoln's. This was likely due to a combination of Lincoln dealing with Factory unhealthiness and the general higher quality of De Gaulle's land.
2) LINCOLN HAD FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH AUGUSTUS - despite Augustus' nuking of his "friend" Cyrus!

Thus, Augustus was voted World Leader, and Cyrus survived to the Wildcard game when he was at death's door. Lincoln losing his barbarian outpost to De Gaulle turned out to be the difference between one and two Wildcard games. Sullla's annoyance was understandable - 12 leaders might have been tenable, but the unlucky number of 13 was too much to handle. Step aside Wang Kon - the Troll King had been deposed and replaced by a Troll Parliament.

This game was a demonstration of the disparity between unique units. Of course, we all witnessed Praetorians star in this game, but what has not been mentioned as often is that Immortals might be among the worst unique units for AI Survivor purposes. AI leaders already have a frustrating tendency to build far too many Chariots, and Immortals being a unique Chariot does not help with that. Making matters worse, while leaders cannot plot war with just Chariots, they can with just Immortals, meaning that Persian leaders run the risk of waging war solely with FOUR strength units, just like Cyrus did. At least War Chariots have five base strength (and we have seen those units be poison pills as well). Without Immortals, Cyrus would not have plotted so early that he dragged down a natural ally with him, and he instead would have worked with Louis to partition America and become one of the game's most powerful forces. Instead, his attack on Julius Caesar turned into the catalyst that led to the unexpected events of this game.

There is little worth saying about De Gaulle except that he is a blah leader in all aspects. With such an excellent starting position, an inside track to Stonehenge, and a weak neighbor, all he could muster was a Wildcard Game caliber performance. His pitiful conquest of Suleiman left him too far behind to compete, and he was lucky that Cyrus served as a buffer from the Eastern high peaceweights. Give any other leader in this game De Gaulle's starting position, and they would dominate. Conversely, put De Gaulle in Cyrus' or Lincoln's position, and he just flails. De Gaulle, like Peter and Frederick, is just one of those leaders who are far better in human hands than when AI controlled.

Generally, a human player needs friends to win in Civilization IV. This truth extends to the AI as well, and what separated this game's playoff ticket from the rest of the field was that Lincoln and Augustus were best friends while the other leaders were on their own. The Evil Triumvirate could have formed such a bond, but Cyrus made an enemy out of Julius Caesar. A consistent pattern this season has been the low peaceweights turning on each other while the high peaceweights work together. In Game One, Boudicca crippled Mao, leaving him easy pickings for Hammurabi while Churchill kept Kublai Khan occupied. Game Three saw Shaka be Shaka and Willem betray Huayna Capac, allowing Frederick and Sitting Bull to become strong. Games Four and Six, of course, infamously saw crazy betrayals and backstabs that paved the way for the eventual high peaceweight winners. This game was no different, and hence, Lincoln will return to the playoffs for the first time since the inaugural season. Speaking of which, Lincoln did not play particularly well, save for his well-timed dogpile of Louis. He was asking to be First To Die with his slow opening, where he was getting his cities culturally crushed by Louis and not expanding from three cities for a long time. Even when he should have established a power position, he just stagnated. Admittedly, although his land was good for early commerce, long term it just did not measure up to De Gaulle's or Augustus'. Nevertheless, I would be quite surprised if he ever sniffed the playoffs in Alternate Histories.

Nobody truly deserved to win this game, and Augustus certainly did not. His opening was horrible - four cities by Turn 50 is absolutely unacceptable, and demonstrated why he generally churns out mediocre at best performances. If the low peaceweights had not turned on each other, someone else would have been the beneficiary of his 52 GPT Christian shrine, and even then, he needed to rely on Praetorians to save his neck. One could give him his kudos for his fantastic economic performance, but he was dangerously close to losing in this game. Without Praetorians, Augustus is merely a below-average builder, and considering his Roman package, he may be one of the few high peaceweight leaders who actually benefit from having enemies as neighbors, so that he can actually use his unique unit.

This was an incredibly low scoring game, with a picking contest average of 3.75 points, a number that would have been even lower had the victory date not been a multiple of five. Obviously, very few expected an Augustus-Lincoln pre-Turn 300 Diplomatic victory. Regarding fantasy:

AMICALOLA: He is in the thick of it, but he needs two good Wildcard games to truly be considered a contender.

ANTISOCIALMUNKY: Good thing he has Mansa Musa. I would not count out Pericles however - he has a nice setup in his Wildcard game.

BELLOMORPHE: His score may appear as if he is still contending, but Qin and Lizzy are not who one wants to be relying on. Lizzy is his best shot, but she is in a game with Pacal and Mansa.

EAUXPS I. FOURGOTT: He is the current score leader, even though his surviving team members are not the most inspiring. His disastrous bids on Julius Caesar and Saladin are counterbalanced by his steals on Lincoln, Freddy, and Vicky.

HENRIK: I will eat crow. Henrik has roared back more impressively than Pacal did in Game Five. Augustus this game and Mehmed last game have helped immensely. If Hatty can actually pull things off in the Wildcard round, he can be considered a contender again.

JDP EL GRILLO: Unfortunately, when Hammurabi is the backbone of a Fantasy team, that team is likely irrelevant.

J_MIE6: Like Amicalola, the Wildcard game will be important. He also has two leaders in the 3rd playoff game, and I like their chances.

KJOTLEIK: Definitely still the frontrunner, but others are closing the gap. He is no longer a runaway.