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 (note that all leader previews were written before the season began):
Asoka of India
Traits: Spiritual, Organized
Starting Techs: Mysticism, Mining
Peace Weight: 8
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, three opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places 
Total Kills: 2
Overall Power Ranking: 16 points, tied 25th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Asoka plays with Spiritual and Organized for his traits, a decent pairing with strong economic benefit but of no use militarily. As an Indian leader, Asoka gets the above average Fast Worker and Mausoleum combo, and his starting techs are Mining and Mysticism, a pair good for chasing religions and not much else; Asoka can struggle with improving his land in the early game, though the Fast Worker at least helps him catch up. Asoka is a generally peaceful leader, but is less polarised than his counterpart Gandhi. He's got a pretty low aggression rating (3.7/10), unit build (2/10) and tribute demand (1/10) preferences, but a high wonder (8/10) build rate. With religion and science flavours, you can count on Asoka to consistently build up a strong economy as long as he's left alone. Asoka places a strong emphasis on faith, but unlike a lot of the other religious zealots, he's actually pretty easy to get along with, with a minor penalty for differing religion but a huge bonus for shared faith. In theory, Asoka should find it easy to make friends and he's unlikely to get involved in too many wars unless he finds himself in a particularly hostile world.
Past Performance: Asoka has seen reasonable success in the competition, with his results generally depending closely on how much he has to fight. His successful outings have come from friendly maps where he never came under serious threat (or, in one case, a seemingly hostile map where nobody ever declared war on him, allowing him to waltz to victory). On the other hand, most of his defeats have come from games where he suffered repeated attacks and simply couldn't hold up under the pressure - only a couple of times has he legitimately played poorly and screwed himself out of a chance of victory. His most successful outing by far came in Season Five, where he picked up both of his career wins and was less than 50 turns away from becoming Champion via culture when he finally collapsed in the face of multiple attacks. With only two kills to his name, Asoka isn't much of a threat on the battlefield, but he's shown he knows how to play the economic game, and if he draws a map where he can sit back and build relatively undisturbed, he'll be a serious threat to win.
Catherine of the Russians
Traits: Creative, Imperialistic
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 2
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, two playoff round eliminations, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 3 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 7 
Overall Power Ranking: 24 points, tied 16th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Catherine has arguably the best traits for rapid expansion in the game, with Imperialistic for building settlers quickly, and Creative for popping borders of all her cities. She also gets the powerful Cossack, and the too-late-to-matter Research Institute for her unique items. Lastly, Catherine gets the weak combination of Hunting and Mining for her starting techs, meaning she'll have to research a few techs before she can get any of her food resources up and running. Catherine is one of the more unique personalities in the game. She has a unique change to her diplomacy in that refusing one of Cathy's demands will give a -2 malus as opposed to the usual -1. This applies to other AI leaders too, and Cathy often ends up hating nearly everybody else in the game because of it. Naturally, she has high likelihood to demand all kinds of tribute, with numbers like 8/10 and 10/10 for various types of demands. Catherine is the only AI leader in the game who can be bribed to join a war at "Friendly" relations. She is also moderately aggressive (6.7/10), and other than that most of her numbers are fairly average, including unit (4/10) and wonder build (6/10) ratings. She also has a fairly unusual flavour combination, with Cultural and Military flavours. Thanks to her traits, Catherine is one of the most likely AIs to claim a large portion of the map peacefully, and her moderate aggression rating means she can sometimes get the snowball rolling. However, the lack of economic benefit from her traits means that if she fails to do this, she will often fall behind technologically, the kiss of death in these games.
Past Performance: Cathy is a fan favorite who's repeatedly been a major player in her games. She's won with very strong performances in three different openers, and even in the games when she doesn't ultimately advance, she's still usually an important player. A perfect example is her appearance in the Season Six Championship, where she was the score leader after the landgrab and primed to be a top competitor for the title, only to get attacked on the exact same turn that she launched her own war, trapped in a 2v1, and eventually become the first eliminated. It does seem like Cathy's more likely than some of the other low peaceweights to get trapped in too many fights at once, resulting in her spotty record - perhaps that's her feisty AI personality coming into play. Regardless, it's rare indeed to see her completely falter and be a non-entity; her premier landgrab traits almost always result in her being one of the strongest leaders after the early game, and she's always one to watch.
Hatshepsut of Egypt
Traits: Creative, Spiritual
Starting Techs: Agriculture, Wheel
Peace Weight: 9
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One wildcard elimination, six opening round eliminations
Total Medals: No first or Second Place finishes
Total Kills: 0
Overall Power Ranking: 0 points, 52nd place (out of 52 leaders - dead last place)
Personality: Hatshepsut is a great leader for a Single Player game of Civ4 and a horrible leader for AI Survivor purposes. She has good traits in the Creative/Spiritual combo and a great civ in Egypt with Agriculture/Wheel starting techs and the War Chariot unique unit. The problem comes in the form of Hatshepsut's AI personality which is little short of suicidal for these matches. Hatty is almost as pacifistic as Gandhi, with a low aggression rating (3.7/10), a high peace weight, and a dangerously low build unit preference (2/10). She loves to build wonders (8/10) and heavily emphasizes religion in her diplomacy, with a big shared faith bonus and a major differing religions malus. Hatshepsut favors Culture and Religion for her research flavors, neither of which tends to contain much in the way of units, and Hatshepsut often finds herself an era behind in military tech despite good overall research. She will typically find herself serving as the "worst enemy" of all the low peace weight leaders and overrun with invasions from hostile neighbors. Hatshepsut needs to draw a field of high peace weight leaders where she can leverage her religious and cultural sensibilities to good effect.
Past Performance: Hatty carries the ignominious distinction of being the only leader in AI Survivor to never score a single point. She's never gotten a kill, and a pair of survivals as an irrelevant in Season Two are the most successful results she's ever achieved. Some of this has been her own fault; she's consistently proven to be a poor fighter, losing several protracted 1v1 conflicts, and one game in particular saw her attack a stronger rival early in the game en route to a quick exit. However, it's also worth recognizing that she's had some of the worst luck in terms of starting positions, routinely starting in positions that are central, border multiple hostile neighbors, or both; she hasn't gotten the same chance to thrive that other leaders have enjoyed. The past couple of seasons have been particularly brutal for her: Season Six saw her saddled with a central starting position, surrounded by six low peaceweight leaders, with predictable results. Then it looked like she would finally get her big break in Season Seven, with a great position that she leveraged to economic dominance, only to see Montezuma of all leaders grow to unstoppable runaway status off the ineptitude of his competition, then rampage through her territory right before she would have won by culture. Hatty's last-place position shouldn't be taken to mean that she's clearly the worst leader - rather, it reflects that she needs fairly narrow conditions to come out on top, and she has yet to see those manifest.
Joao of Portugal
Traits: Expansive, Imperialistic
Starting Techs: Fishing, Mining
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: Two playoff round eliminations, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 First Places
Total Kills: 2
Overall Power Ranking: 12 points, 29th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Joao is supposed to be the best leader at rapid expansion in the game, with his combination of Expansive (cheap workers) and Imperialistic (cheap settlers) traits. However, in practice the Deity AIs tend to be more limited by their economies as opposed to their capacity to train more settlers, and Joao hasn't stood out as being especially good at expansion. He hasn't really stood out at all, aside from having a name that's difficult for non-Portuguese speakers to pronounce, and Joao mostly sits in the middling portion of the AI category ratings. He trains units at an average rate, builds wonders at an average rate, cares about religion at an average rate, declares wars at an average rate, and so on. He even has a peace weight right in the middle of the scale. About the only semi-interesting thing about Joao is that he makes a lot of demands, both for tribute (8/10) and to switch to his religion (10/10). This is a boring leader overall with little in the way of a distinct personality.
Past Performance: Joao's AI Survivor career has largely been characterized by his getting routinely stuck with crappy starts. Seriously, there's a good case to be made that the majority of his career games have given him unfair setups, either trapped against a smaller edge of the map, surrounded by hostile leaders, or both. And when push comes to shove... Joao's not a dynamic enough leader to overcome such starts. Where others have put on impressive or scrappy performances, Joao has almost always simply not done well, and that's that. His lack of oomph has been on display in other games too, as he's multiple times failed to accomplish anything with less-lousy starts, and even in the two games that he's won - admittedly, both strong games where he was finally able to leverage his rapid-expansion traits - they weren't the most exciting wins, and he scored only a single kill in each. Joao is a decent leader, and with a run of more favorable starts his stats might begin to look better, but it's far from a slam dunk, and he's not the most interesting leader in any case.
Pericles of Greece
Traits: Creative, Philosophical
Starting Techs: Fishing, Hunting
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? NO
Past Finishes: One Championship loss, one playoff round elimination, one wildcard elimination, four opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 1 Second Place
Total Kills: 3
Overall Power Ranking: 15 points, tied 27th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Pericles is one of the best leaders at pursuing a Cultural victory and he's had a good bit of success with that strategy in past seasons. Pericles has the ideal trait combination for chasing after cultural pursuits with the Creative + Philosophical pairing, providing cheap libraries and universities and theatres. The Greek civ doesn't offer too much in this regard, with subpar starting techs and an unrelated Phalanx unique unit, although I suppose that the Odeon unique building comes at half cost and can provide more Artist specialist slots. Pericles the AI leader has a peaceful bent in general, with a low aggression rating (3.3/10) and a modest build unit preference (4/10). Pericles would clearly much rather spend his time building wonders instead (8/10), which he'll do with great frequency in each game. Unlike many of the other peaceful leaders, Pericles doesn't place much of an emphasis on religion and rarely founds one of his own faiths. His research flavors are Production and Science, which also makes him a bit of a strange bird since he doesn't have a Culture or Religion tech preference in there. Overall Pericles is an easy neighbor to live with, as he almost never makes demands and has a middling peace weight that avoids either end of the spectrum. He's a leader who wants to be left alone and can become very dangerous if he gets that wish.
Past Performance: Pericles's career got off to a promising start. Both of his first two opening round games ended up being largely controlled by high peaceweight leaders, allowing him to cash in with Diplomatic and Cultural victories, and a Second Place finish from a more hostile playoff field in Season Two seemed to confirm his aptitude. But then he just kind of... stopped. Nothing has gone right for Pericles since then, and he's only scored a single point across the past five seasons. His failed performances have varied; some really were beyond his control, but there's also been several games where he messed up himself or simply failed to accomplish anything. The Season Six opener in particular saw him gifted a great start, only to lose one of his first cities to the barbarians for an extended period of time and never fully recover. It seems that while Pericles is capable enough to usually get it done in a favorable situation, he lacks that special spark needed to be a truly good or interesting leader.
Zara Yacob of Ethiopia
Traits: Creative, Organized
Starting Techs: Hunting, Mining
Peace Weight: 6
Declares War at Pleased Relations? YES
Past Finishes: Season One runner up, one playoff round elimination, five opening round eliminations
Total Medals: 2 First Places, 2 Second Places
Total Kills: 7
Overall Power Ranking: 21 points, 20th place (out of 52 leaders)
Personality: Zara plays with the Creative and Organized traits, combining to push a landgrab style of play and giving production discounts on a huge variety of buildings. For his unique items Zara plays with the Oromo Warrior, a slightly better musketman, and the Stele, useful for a cultural victory and not much else. Lastly, Zara gets the Hunting/Mining combo for his starting techs, which means he can be slow to connect his food resources, especially if he goes for a religion. Zara's numbers tend to be in roughly the middle of the board, including his aggression rating (5.6/10), unit build preference (6/10), wonder build preference (4/10) and even his peace weight, at a neutral 6. His flavours are Growth and Religion, an unusual combination that could lead to healthy and happy cities, while the last unusual thing about Zara is the huge diplomatic emphasis he places on faith. The diplomatic bonus for sharing a religion with Zara can go up to +8, and the penalty for religious differences is nothing to sneeze at either. Expect Zara's diplomacy to follow religious alignment to a tee, and when he finds himself on the wrong side of a coalition, Zara had better watch out.
Past Performance: Zara was perhaps the biggest star of Season One, rebounding from near-elimination via the Wildcard game and putting out three straight strong performances to come just short of winning the title. (Instead, he sat back while slightly under the Domination threshold and let Justinian win via space instead, in classic AI fashion.) However, his career since then has seemingly been dedicated to proving that this performance was a fluke. Zara has accomplished very little from Season Two onwards, failing a little or a lot depending on the game, but in any case almost never becoming truly strong or a major figure. He saw a small resurgence in Season Six, with a narrow second-place Wildcard finish and trio of kills briefly regaining him a position as a seeded leader, but then lost that position right back with an embarrassing early elimination at Alexander's hands in his Season Seven opener. Zara also has the unenviable record of the earliest elimination in AI Survivor history, as his Season Five opener saw him rushed by Alex (again) without having even teched Archery and thus summarily wiped out. Actually, three of the last four seasons have featured Alex killing Zara early in the opening round, so prepare to see a quick exit if you see Zara starting next to the Greek conqueror again - although you shouldn't expect too much from him in any case.
Here's what the community was thinking based on the prediction contest before the game took place:
Wildcard One looked to be a true rarity: an AI Survivor game with no true community favorite. At the time of writing, there was no leader with more than 21% or less than 11% of the community picks to be the winner. I can't remember a game that was this close in the picks which will hopefully make for a fun and exciting game. The Runner Up category was almost as evenly divided, though that's a lot more common for the second place picks, with Joao and Zara having perhaps a slight edge here. First to Die was the only category with an actual favorite as Catherine was the top choice for an early exit, and then Cultural was the runaway victory choice for the first time in ages. We've had a lot of Cultural endings thus far in Season Eight and perhaps that's starting to influence the community.
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!
AutomatedTeller: I picked Pericles for 2 reasons: 1) he's going to be relatively secure from the barbs, in his corner there - I think everyone else is going to have massive problems 2) I think Ashoka Joao will share religions, hatty will be on her own and Cathy, Pericles and Zara will share and Cathy will attack Ashoka. Pericles will just be left alone.
CharlemagneGandhiPericlesTokugawa: Catherine's strong traits for rapid expansion and her tendency to demand tribute and declare wars make her a strong candidate for a Domination victory. Zara Yacob, with his decent traits and ability to leverage religion for strong diplomatic relations, is likely to come in second, benefiting from Catherine's wars by taking weakened cities or simply avoiding conflict with her. Hatshepsut's extremely poor past performance and high peace weight make her a prime candidate for 'First to Die,' especially considering her tendency to be a target for more aggressive leaders. Given the mix of moderately aggressive and peaceful leaders, a total of 12 wars is a reasonable estimate. The game is expected to end on turn 325, reflecting Catherine's ability to snowball once she gets going but also taking some time due to potential resistance from other leaders.
Ambassador Pineapple: This season is not just weird, its plain dumb. Now we have 2 WC games. Im calling it, Mansa has already won this season. For this game, im gonna go J-man first and Zara second via space. Cathy might kill Asoka, but then what? she will just get out-teched. Then again according to this season, the most stupid outcome is what will play out. That speaks to a Cathy win, so maybe.
Myth: I just want my girl Cathy to make a comeback, gotta go with my heart
random.org: Asoka proves all of the haters wrong, and leverages the power of the plains cow to beat back the Raging barbarians LIKE A BOSS. He then goes on to help a general dogpile of Cathy, knocks her out, and in the meantime builds Shwedagon Paya to revolt to Free Religion; with Hatty's religion having spread to the rest of the world, this paves the way for a peaceful lovefest for the rest of the game. This eventually culminates in him winning a diplo victory. As for Hatty, she finally gets her big break and finishes in second place after a strong builder game... in the very first non-Championship game in AI Survivor history where that does not equal a ticket to the playoffs. Trolled again!
Eauxps I. Fourgott: Raging barbs ought to be pretty important once again, and turn a fantastic position for Asoka into a pretty iffy one - he's going to be hit hard! I think he can eventually rebuild into a second-place position but that won't be enough for the playoffs this time. I do think it's quite possible for Catherine to win this game, actually, but the more likely outcome is her eventually being brought down and the game proceeding to a peaceful conclusion. If that's the case, it's probably gonna be culture, and I think Pericles has the inside track for that win - he should face the least barbarian pressure while still getting enough land to be relevant, especially if Cathy does fall.
RandomKesaranPasaran: well picking a low peaceweight leader to win has worked exactly 0 out of 4 times for me so far so maybe the barbs will bother someone who isn't hatty won't that be nice
Smosism: Come on J-man, do something. Pls I swear. You have 4 happiness around you, good land. You can dogpile hatty with zara. Just pls don't suck as always. I'm on my knees begging. Last chance bro. Last chance.
Vesper: Asoka and Joao finally got miracle lands, and with Asoka having open gems at capital, he's quite in a position to run away with the game from T1. Joao would get tossed around by barbs into irrelevancy, Hatty won't catch up due to not having gold and also would take a share of barbs, Zara and Pericles would get eaten or at least chewed on by Cathy who'd make second. Also Cathy's got a lil desert on her way to Asoka to be pushed the other side to Pericles' doom.
kcostell: In my ideal world: Pericles' corner position lets him shelter his core from barbs. Catherine gets distracted by Asoka, leaving Pericles to happily tech away in peace, leaving him far enough ahead of Catherine to be able to handle her once she turns eastern. The way my season's going, this means the Barbs and Catherine will likely combine to overrun Pericles before turn 150.
BigBlueBen: Here we go, Hatty has it this time! High peace-weight field and no Brennus this time. Sure, it's going to be 100 turns before she gets any metals hooked up, but are Joao or Zara really going to call her on that early on? ... Wait, you say this is the wildcard game... with raging barbs... and Hatty's start is in the frozen tundra... So anyway, Pericles wins by space (too many religious leaders for him or anyone else to get enough self-founded religions for culture), and Pericles is rather isolated from barbs and is the only leader with nearby copper. Cathy bites off more than she can chew at some point and is first to die.
Blervis: Catharine will implode attacking Zara or Asoka, the high PW will dogpile. Joao will get a good amount of territory, but Hatty will be free to tech away to a culture victory in peace.
blindeli: Let's see how this can go wrong for Hatty. She'll exit the landgrab with lots of territory, but that just turns Egypt into the world's biggest barbarian playground. After that, she'll have to fight off Joao who picked up Asoka's religion and wants to expand. By the time she gets a peace treaty, she's lost some cities and can't catch up to the rest of the field. Maybe she can watch as Catherine gets dogpiled after provoking every high PW leader and Pericles randomly wins by sitting in his corner and building wonders all game.
danjuno: Really, just spin the wheel three times and you probably have even odds. Best Guess: Pericles has the most barb shelter, and good land to boot. Joao is on the other side of the map and will leave him be. Cathy won't and will get dogpiled.
Schwarzschilda: I worry about the metal situation for everyone but Catherine and Pericles - Asoka/Joao could miss copper with their settles and Hatshepsut/Zara might take a while to get iron working. With raging barbs, that could be a serious issue. I don’t like Pericles’ start. I like Catherine’s but worry her diplomatic situation could drag her down. I’ll go with Zara since he has a good looking start with iron and hope Alex not being in this game means he doesn’t die horribly.
TheOneAndOnlyAtesh: A long time ago, in a Pangaea far, far away...
(Cue Music)
AI SURVIVOR
WARS
Episode WILDCARD I
THE PHANTOM ALEXANDRIA
There is a great disturbance in the FANTASY contest. HATSHEPSUT, the beloved pharaoh of Egypt, has disappeared! Rumors abound of her whereabouts. Had she reached her breaking point, and what was it? Was it last year, when the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I lost her city to the BARBARIANS, leaving Egypt as vulnerable as an upside down tortoise to the rampaging AZTECS? Was it when Darth Pacal, at the LAST SECOND, robbed Hatshepsut of her rightful place in the Playoffs? Was it just from endless years of toiling, only to still have a zero next to her name when lesser men like Frederick and Churchill had long passed her by? No matter the cause, there was great fear and uncertainty, considering that this was her FINAL CHANCE at proving her worth, in a year that had been so kind to the GRAND COUNCIL OF JEDI MASTERS.
The whispers only grew louder. Hatshepsut may be no more. Voices throughout the galaxy, ranging from the homeworld of the CIV FANATIC FORUMS to the darkest depths of the Outer Rim Realm DISCORD, all sang the same tune - that Hatshepsut had ventured to the terrible lands of MACEDONIA to seek the council of ALEXANDER, Dark Lord of the Sith. He was not in this game, but his little brother, the Jedi Knight PERICLES was, and he was sure to want to destroy him. Had Alex’s influence corrupted the once respected Hatshepsut? After all, there were reports that Hatshepsut had returned, and was whispering the same refrain, over and over again: KILL ZARA YAQOB, KILL ZARA YAQOB...
