This summary for Wildcard One was written by Eauxps I. Fourgott with some assistance from TheOneAndOnlyAtesh. Many thanks for volunteering to put this report together! 
It was time once again for the Wildcard round, the "last chance" for all of the leaders who survived their opening round games, but did not advance, to get a spot in the playoffs. However, this season it was a bit different from normal, because the Wildcard field was larger than it's ever been before: an unprecedented thirteen leaders qualified! Fitting these all into one game would have required either an extremely cramped map, or a ridiculously large one, so instead we decided to have TWO Wildcard games for the first time. Each game would play out like an ordinary opening round game, with one major difference: only the game winner would advance to the playoffs. For once, second place wasn't good enough to move on; it was time to go big or go home!
Sullla held a random draw to determine which leaders would go into which game, and as fate would have it, the pool was nearly completely divided along peaceweight lines. This first game thus would feature five higher-peaceweight, less aggressive leaders, with Catherine of Russia the only warmonger in the group. In addition to her outcast status, Cathy had a central starting position which would allow her to strike in any direction she chose - and also make it easier for the others to gang up on her if they were so inclined. She was lucky to get here after suffering from a terrible position in Game 2, and opinion was split as to whether or not she had a chance of advancing here, but it was clear that she was one of the biggest leaders to watch. Another notable starting position was Asoka's to her west; he had the largest backlines of any leader and an enticing grassland gems at his capital, which he could improve immediately since he started with Mining, but with raging barbarians turned on for this game (as they always are for the Wildcard), that extra territory could prove to be a curse rather than a blessing. In any case, his performance here was likely to be more interesting than his quiet Game 5 had been.
To Asoka's north was Joao, who was very lucky to be here after barely participating at all in Game 6. He had a sheltered position from the barbs on this map, but would be at a serious cultural disadvantage in the early game. East of Joao, in the other central position, was Hatshepsut, still trying to score the first points of her AI Survivor career after falling short in the last interturn of Game 5. This relatively peaceful field might allow her to finally succeed, but her central position offered plenty of room for things to go wrong. In the northeast was Zara Yacob, who had failed to be proactive enough to advance from Game 4 and now would need to take more initiative if he wanted to return to the playoffs. Finally, Pericles started in the southeast after a horrible performance in Game 4. He had a promising position to rebound, though, as it appeared to be sheltered from the barbarians and had lots of potential to profit if a dogpile materialized against Catherine.
This game was a true rarity in the picking contest, as for once there was no clear favorite at all. Somebody is almost always the obviously preferred leader, but this time, all six leaders got between 10% and 25% of the votes to win the game; Pericles had the highest share of the vote, but only by a little bit. The only thing that a majority agreed on for this game was that it had high odds to go to culture, with Hatty, Asoka, and Pericles all good candidates for that victory condition. Only one of them would move on though; who would it be?
As always happens in the Wildcard game, the early action centered around the barbarian hordes that were soon swarming the map. They weren't as bad this time as they've been in some Wildcard games; a map on the small side left less room for the barbs to spawn, and four Creative leaders helped to reveal the map quickly and further cut down on available space. But while the barbs didn't completely cut off anybody's resources or capture any cities this time around, their presence was still definitely felt. The first casualty was Pericles, who had been expected to have an easy time dealing with the barbs... only to get hit early on with a big wave of them, since both of his neighbors settled away from him and left a big spawning ground on his borders. He was forced to cancel an early settler build in order to churn out more soldiers, and when a faster-starting Cathy and Zara both sent their third cities towards him, it limited his available space to settle without him having gotten any corresponding benefit in fighting the barbs. On the other side of the coin, Joao had a truly sheltered position and barely faced any barbarian pressure, and he capitalized by tossing out his third, fourth, and fifth cities in record time. However, this sent his economy crashing, not helped by a forest-heavy capital or delays of both The Wheel and Mysticism. Soon he was stuck with just a trickle of beakers, and with no expanded borders in a map where everybody else had popped theirs quickly.
Asoka was another leader to struggle in the early game; the first wave of barbarians ripped up all the mines he had built early on, negating the advantage from his only available tile improvement, and he opened the game by researching Meditation, Bronze Working, and Masonry, deftly avoiding any techs that would allow him to improve his food output for a long time. Neither of his starting two cities had any tiles that could produce more than two food naturally, and this led to him being rather slow to get a third settler out. Once he had it, he further delayed, spending a while shuffling it between his two cities, and wasn't until after Turn 50 that he finally set it out to found his third city... only for it to be killed by the barbarians before it got there!!! 
Asoka was thus left with two cities by the time everybody else on the map had SIX - and not just only two cities, two SIZE TWO cities for the lack of food. He was already clearly out of the running for a playoff spot by an early date. By contrast, Hatshepsut was playing the best opening of anybody on the map. She started with The Wheel and thus was the only leader who could build roads for the first forty turns or so, boosting her early economy by quickly connecting her cities, and she both had horses at her capital and researched an early Animal Husbandry to quickly put War Chariots on the board to counter the barbarians. She thus faced relatively little trouble from the raging hordes, and while her expansion was only average, she clearly had the best early economy out of everybody on the board. It was another promising start for Hatty, but would she be able to deliver on it this time?
As the landgrab phase came to a close, Hatshepsut remained in the lead. She was tied for the most cities and had the most tech, the best GNP, and the most luxuries. She had founded two of the game's first three religions, and the one she chose to stick with, Islam, spread far and wide, with Zara, Pericles, and Joao all adopting it to put her in a good place diplomatically. She already seemed to be on cruise control, in a position where somebody would have to come and knock her down to stop her from winning, and it was becoming increasingly unlikely that anybody would be both able and willing to do so. It certainly wouldn't be one of her western rivals, both of whom had fallen well and out of contention. Joao's economy had remained crashed, with his GNP dipping below the observer civ's at times, and limping to an Iron Working that took around 30 turns to research did nothing to help. He still had no Pottery until nearly Turn 100, and STILL no culture beyond that point! He was tied for the most cities, but just like we'd seen back in Game 6, they were all sitting with empty build queues as he couldn't afford any more military and couldn't build anything else. As for Asoka, his economy was functional, but he still had only three cities by Turn 90. He wasn't building more settlers and wasn't growing his cities significantly, not even teching AGRICULTURE until Turn 94!!! The food graph really betrayed his situation here, as he was far, far behind everybody else, barely even ahead of the observer civ. His backlines were the last part of the map to get settled, but that wasn't much of a help at all; eventually Cathy settled or captured nearly all of that land, with Asoka taking a single barb city to boost his total to four, but getting nothing else.
The other three leaders were somewhere in the middle. Pericles had further slowed his early game by delaying The Wheel until Turn 75, but several coastal cities and a source of gems that popped at his capital helped to keep him afloat, and he was at least able to settle a decent number of cities. He later went on to boost his economy by building the Great Lighthouse and Colossus, which paired well with his position in the corner of the continent. He wasn't in a great place at this point, but at least his game wasn't a total disaster. Cathy had a solid amount of territory, especially after settling Asoka's backlines, and the presence of such a weak potential conquest was promising. She'd played a slow economic opening, though, teching The Wheel around the same time as Pericles and not unlocking metals (via Iron Working) until after Turn 100; she definitely had to fight her way out of her position and it wouldn't be smooth sailing, especially since she'd been the only leader to adopt Asoka's Buddhism instead of the more popular Islam. As for Zara, he'd played an opening that was solid if not flashy. He expanded and teched at an average rate while neither doing particularly well or poorly against the barbarians, which left him jockeying for second place by the end of the landgrab. Like Pericles and Cathy, he was in a decent position that still had potential, but Hatshepsut was the looming problem for all three of them. Zara would need to reckon with her at some point if he wanted a chance to win.
We had seen Hatty plotting war, building up a big stack on the border with Joao and Asoka, so it came as a surprise when the first war declaration came not from her, but from... Asoka??? Yep, tiny four-city Asoka was attacking Cathy, his much larger neighbor and the only other leader who had adopted his religion. 
I mean, yes, desperate times call for desperate measures and all that, and Cathy WAS actually the closest leader to last-place Asoka in power since she had only recently connected metals, but still, this war was a total joke. Asoka's paltry attack stack accomplished absolutely nothing, and he lost his southern ex-barb city as soon as Cathy put together a counterattack stack. With no friends on the map, his days were numbered... but Catherine was denied a quick conquest, as Pericles soon attacked her from the other side. She now had to deal with a serious war, and this was an excellent piece of news for Hatshepsut, who was assembling a monstrous cultural machine, founding all of the available religions and focusing hard on all of the culture-related techs. One of the biggest threats to her had been the possibility of Cathy snowballing over Asoka; now that she had Pericles to deal with as well, that wasn't going to happen. Asoka was certainly no threat, and Joao and Pericles both loved Hatty. The only potential threat to her now was Zara, still only Pleased towards her at +9 relations, but how likely was an attack from him to come in?
It soon became clear that Cathy was in a very bad situation. She brought a big attack stack to Asoka's capital, but the attackers lacked catapults and were cut to ribbons against the walled hilltop defenses. On the other side of her territory, Pericles' initial attack quickly succeeded at taking her city of Novgorod, and these two battles combined to destroy a large portion of her military strength. Things then went from bad to worse, as Zara got in on the action and declared war on her as well, taking a city just one turn after declaring and permanently snuffing out her chances. And once Hatty's very lengthy war preparations finally finished and she was ready to strike, she attacked Cathy as well! As if to symbolize the deathknell, Pericles captured the Russian capital on the same interturn.
It turned out that, despite the strong position she'd occupied coming in, Hatshepsut wouldn't get much out of this war. She was pursuing some bizarre beelines on the tech tree in this game; earlier she'd picked up Literature and Music before Currency, and now she was heading for Nationalism without holding Machinery or Engineering! (She later went on to tech Education before CALENDAR. 
) The practical result of this was that Hatty was still mostly bringing ancient units to the battlefield, and those wouldn't cut it even against the greatly weakened Russian army. Nevertheless, Cathy was now in full collapse mode. Even before Zara had entered the picture, her ability to resist the incoming attacks had largely been exhausted with the destruction of much of her standing army, and now, despite two of her opponents proving largely incapable, Zara and Pericles were more than enough to get the job done. They hadn't been messing around with weird beelines and had state-of-the-art armies and, by now, a massive advantage in numbers. Russian cities were falling right and left with no illusions that the bleeding could be stopped. Even Asoka got a city, as Cathy handed back the only one she had taken from him in exchange for a useless peace treaty. Soon enough it was all over, and Cathy was the First to Die.
Thus she was indeed undone by her poor diplomatic situation. There's not many ways that a game can go right when you're attacked four times by Turn 150; Pericles alone would have been a tall order for Cathy to stop, and then when Zara joined her fate was sealed. Hatty's declaration was just kicking her when she was down, and I'm not sure that there was a way for Cathy to be prepared to deal with all these attacks. She did miss her best shot though: with Asoka so weak to her west, there was a real opportunity to attack and use him to start a snowball. But Cathy's opening was too slow, as she once again did a poor job of developing her early economy, and that resulted in her being too late to metals to really get anything going before the attacks came in. Overall, this was an unfortunate season for Cathy, stuck in two very unfavorable starting positions. The deck was stacked against her, and she'll have to hope for a better draw next season.
For a moment at the end of the war, it looked like Hatty had been going to finally score the first point of her AI Survivor career. She hadn't taken any cities at all, but as Cathy was reduced to her final two cities, she finally had a sufficiently large stack outside of one of them, at the same time that Zara had the other under siege. And then... both leaders launched their attacks and took the cities on the same interturn, and Hatty went first in turn order, meaning Zara was the second to take a city and thus scored the kill credit. Even if this would have been a rather undeserving point given her lack of contribution up until now, the rug had been snatched out from under Hatty yet again. Still, her overall position in this game was solid and she was still the most likely to win. She wasn't an unstoppable runaway in most respects, as Zara and Pericles had risen dramatically: each had taken roughly half of Cathy's territory, making them the two largest and strongest empires on the map, and Zara's superior land and Pericles's amazing coastal economy had closed the tech gap when contrasted with Hatty's relatively food-poor territory. However, Hatty had continued to fuel her cultural machine all this time. She'd built tons of wonders, including the ever-important Sistine Chapel, and had founded every religion except for Asoka's starting Buddhism, so the clock was clearly ticking. It was now Zara who had the power to decide which way this game ran; Hatty had entered Free Religion a while ago thanks to building the Shwedagon Paya (another sacrifice made in the name of culture), so he remained only Pleased and thus willing to potentially declare war on her. If he did attack, the outcome of the game could still be in doubt. But if he waited too long, or attacked elsewhere, then it was already over. As for the remaining two leaders, Joao had dogpiled Asoka back when Cathy was still a serious force, but had accomplished absolutely nothing in the intervening years. His initial attack stack lacked catapults and thus was annihilated; he followed that up with a stack composed almost entirely of catapults, which didn't work any better. While this couldn't keep up forever, even the feeble Asoka was able to hold him off for a long time. The only significant role that either of these two would play in the wider game now would come if one of the others attacked them to fuel their bids for victory.
The game continued quietly for a while, with little happening. The weight of Joao having double Asoka's cities finally started to make itself felt, as he began to very slowly grind through and capture the Indian holdings, while the other three raced up the tech tree in peace. Hatty had a respectable research rate thanks to all her shrines - she was able to run 100% science while gaining gold - but Zara and Pericles had more and better land (and a bunch of profitable coastal cities for Pericles) to make up the difference. Hatty's cultural beelines also cost her some prizes, as Pericles gained the free tech from Liberalism, Zara snagged the free Economics great merchant, and they were able to build a couple of wonders whose techs she hadn't prioritized. All three leaders remained very close on the scoreboard, and if second place had been advancing from this game, the race for that position would have been extremely tight. But this would all be irrelevant if Zara didn't do anything to stop Hatty; her top three cities were already above 10,000 culture by Turn 200, and she'd win in record time if she turned on the slider. There was no way that Zara or Pericles could outrace her to any victory condition if she was allowed to continue this gameplan.
Thus it was with great interest that we checked and saw that Zara was plotting war! And this war had to be against Hatshepsut; Zara was friendly towards everybody else on the map! (Asoka had converted to Islam after losing his holy city to Joao, leading to total religious unity outside of Egypt.) A few turns later, the attack came in:
Now it was on! This fight was the most important moment in the game, Hatty's big chance to secure her victory... and Zara's big chance to open this game up. And Zara was going for the jugular! His attack stack, over 50 strong, moved in on Heliopolis, one of Hatty's top three cities, as its first target. The two leaders were currently even in military tech, both pursuing concurrent Willem gambits - either one could unlock rifles within two techs, but both were prioritizing distractions like Communism instead. However, Zara had the advantage of numbers here thanks to putting more focus on building his military, and that made the difference. Hatty made a game effort, but in the wrong direction, sending her own stack after the border city of Gondar. They succeeded in their attack, but failed to reinforce Heliopolis, and on the same turn, that city fell to the Ethiopian army. Just like that, Hatty had fallen from the pole position and would need a miracle to win. Losing a core city put her definitively behind Zara and Pericles on the scoreboard, and her fourth culture city was far behind the top three. She'd just lost over 50 gold per turn (before multipliers) in shrine income - and, of course, she still had to deal with the rest of this war with Zara.
Meanwhile, time finally ran out for Asoka; Joao had remained at war with him all this time, and delay though he might, he couldn't put off the conquest forever. He eventually got the job done, if far too late to bid for a victory himself. As for Asoka, he played a horrible game that left him with no chance from an early date. Not teching Agriculture until Turn 100 on a low-food start, and delaying and ultimately losing his third settler, set him far, far behind, and nothing else mattered after that point. He had a rough position, but completely misplayed it, and was lucky to last as long as he did. All attention now went to the war between Zara and Hatshepsut. Zara was clearly the stronger party in this war, soon retaking Gondar and then capturing an additional border city, but his conquest beyond that wasn't easy. He and Hatty picked up Rifling around the same time, and after a shaky start, she was mounting a better defense in her remaining cities, preventing him from making quick progress. His next big attack, against Elephantine, failed, setting his campaign back; he had dealt a critical blow to her chances of winning, but right now wasn't doing a lot to advance his own chances. This opened up the possibility of Pericles coming out on top, as unlike the other two, he was fully locked into peaceful research and was starting to open up a tech lead as a result. If Zara and Hatty remained stalemated for long enough, and neither unlocked a major advantage, he still had a real chance of moving on.
Then the miracle happened for Hatty: Zara had enough of this war, and handed Heliopolis back for peace!!! 
Suddenly the Cultural victory was in the cards for her again. Heliopolis had lost a lot of its culture generation in the interim, and hadn't been contributing to the victory at all, but it did still have over 20,000 culture saved up and several nice wonders that immediately started contributing again. She had a real chance once more. On the other hand, this was the death knell for Zara's chances, and a particularly bad blunder given the fact that he'd been in the process of teching Assembly Line to open up a definitive edge over Hatty. He'd spent a lot of resources on this war, falling definitively behind Pericles in economy in the process, and in the end got only a single, uselessly culturally crushed city to show for it. He'd taken his shot and made his mark on the game, but had ultimately missed, and now had only the slimmest hopes of sneaking out a victory. It was almost certainly now down to a two-leader race: would we see culture from Hatty, or space from Pericles?
And then... Hatty threw the game. Instead of hunkering down, putting everything towards boosting Heliopolis to legendary culture, and giving her all to try and seize the win, she went crazy and attacked Joao. 
Losing the triple holy city of Heliopolis must have caused her to abandon the cultural gameplan that she'd been chasing all game, but while this attack would have been a smart play 150 turns ago, now there was little if anything to gain, and everything to lose. Hatty's research had fallen off since the war with Zara started, and Joao was now equal in military tech and actually slightly ahead in power! It wasn't clear if he'd be able to threaten her core cities, but he did instantly kill her attack stack and quickly capture her ex-Russian city in the southwest, and this wasn't a distraction that Hatty needed at all. While Heliopolis was still ticking up the culture, now less than 70 turns from going Legendary, this threw a door wide open for Zara...
...and he took advantage! While I still think the earlier peace treaty was a mistake, what it did successfully do was set up Hatty to be distracted by a war with Joao, allowing Zara to quickly reenter the war - and now with a decisive advantage. In addition to catching Hatty out of position, he also now had the advantage of both infantry and tanks, and it quickly became clear that she was no longer capable of mounting significant resistance. Once again, Zara marched on Heliopolis first and quickly took the city, seemingly sealing this game for Pericles, but this time, when he moved on Elephantine next, it fell just as fast. Hatty crumpled like an empty can, no city lasting for more than a turn or two under siege, and twenty turns later, it was all over.
Hatty thus exits Season 8 having failed to score any points yet again; she's now been AI Survivor's only scoreless leader for two full seasons! But I think this game made it abundantly clear just why she's struggled so much. She had a fantastic opening to this game, as she so often does, and was in the pole position from an early date. With a well-balanced game, she could have won easily. But once again, her ineptitude at all things military came into play. She plotted her first war for an unreasonably long time, and then finally attacked with too weak of a force, only gaining one city for her efforts. She fell back behind Zara and Pericles in overall power when they didn't have this problem, and actually expanded their empires. She ignored the chance to gain a military tech advantage, and then lost one of her cultural cities immediately once Zara did attack her, proving decisively weaker despite being equivalent in score. She focused too hard on the cultural gameplan once again, at the expense of her overall game, and once again somebody called her out on it, attacked her, and she couldn't handle the hot war. The ridiculous attack of Joao in the lategame was just the icing on the cake; with Zara attacking again, her odds were low anyway, but that attack threw away whatever chance she still had. While I still don't think that Hatty is the worst leader in AI Survivor (she does at least have a clear gameplan that allows her to quickly come out on top when it works out - for instance, had Zara not attacked, she'd have won this game around Turn 280), these past two seasons have illustrated her weaknesses quite well; she definitely has major problems that other AIs don't, and that has opened the door for her to get shut out time and time again.
With Hatty out of the picture, we were in for a quiet ending to the game. Zara, Pericles, and Joao all loved each other, leaving further war out of the question, and while Zara had quickly gained a significant amount of territory, it was too little, too late to catch up to Pericles' tech lead; he still was up a good seven techs or so, including the very expensive Robotics and Fusion. Thus it was just a matter of time until Pericles launched the spaceship and won. Or was it? The United Nations still had the potential to give us a different ending to the game. Zara and Joao were now tight friends, and there existed the possibility that Zara could call a diplo victory vote and win that way. We weren't done just yet - at least, not until Joao made the last critical move of the game:
He swapped into Free Religion, thus removing a large diplomatic boost between himself and Zara. While the two were still good friends and had no chance of fighting each other, this did cool relations to just +3 on Joao's part, and that ensured that he would not vote for Zara (or Pericles) to win in the UN. Zara did in fact call a diplo victory vote (after a few distractions), but without Joao's support, it failed. Thus it would be a space victory from Pericles. The rest of the game proceeded without incident; Pericles wasn't going about this especially quickly, but Zara wasn't catching up either, and there were no last-minute twists. On Turn 352, it was official: Pericles is going to the playoffs!
All three survivors of this game had similar themes to their opening round games. For Pericles, that theme was getting lucky in terms of what was going on elsewhere on the map. In his opener, the fact that nobody except the hapless Alex had come after him allowed him to survive and reach this point; in this game, he benefited from Hatty, Joao, and Zara playing in such a manner that none of them could win before his own mediocre spaceship effort came into play. Had Zara not knocked Hatty down, or Joao not flipped into Free Religion and refused to vote for Zara, or Hatty not initially defended against Zara so well, one of them would have won instead, but things played out in Pericles' favor, with he himself doing nothing to influence them after the early game. To his credit, he played out his end of this game much better than in his opener, using the coastal wonders to recover from a slow start and then successfully taking Cathy's best cities to make himself one of the game leaders. He didn't mess around much with unhelpful cultural or military stuff later on either, instead mostly focusing on growing and keeping his tech lead. Essentially, he took a bit of land and then played the "tech in a corner and hope everybody else implodes" game, and that can be a legitimately successful strategy some of the time, even if it isn't the most impressive or reliable. Pericles is thus heading to the playoffs for the first time since Season 2; can he handle a tricky starting position and return to the championship?
In Zara's case, the theme was not doing enough to capitalize on a solid position. In particular, both in Game 4 and in this game, when he went to war with one of the leading AIs and had the chance to secure a playoff position, he stalled out early in the war, then signed peace right when he was on the cusp of breaking through. Here, his peace treaty with Hatty ensured that he got no significant gains from the first war, and by the time he finally broke through some time later, it was too late. He changed the game through his actions, but ultimately that equated to setting Pericles up to win instead of Hatshepsut - not advancing himself. Zara otherwise played well this game, with a solid opening, well-timed attack on Cathy to expand his holdings, and by far the highest score at the end, and in any other match he would be moving on. This time, though, it wasn't enough, and he's done. Amazingly, he scored enough points that he might be a seeded leader again next season, but it's abundantly clear by now that most of the time, he simply doesn't play any one part of the game well enough to find consistent success.
Finally, Joao's common theme across the two games was knocking himself out of contention early through crashing his economy, and this season has certainly exposed this as a major weakness for him. By the time he was done researching a 30 turn Iron Working, it was too late, and his avoidance of culture for so long did him no favors either. The difference between his two games was that this time, he only had to fight weakened foes, and that allowed him to remain intact and comfortably survive to the end of the game, instead of barely hanging on with a couple of cities. Still, he was nowhere close to moving on, and there was no question that he was a sideshow only for this match.
For once, the community favorite came through, even if that was only a very slight favorite. Pericles' win and Cathy's first to die status resulted in a solid overall score in the picking contest; Kaitzilla won the week with an extremely impressive 28 points after scoring well in every single category. In the fantasy contest, antisocialmunky picked up a win and a second playoff leader with Pericles's victory; he and Amicalola both moved close to the overall lead, the latter scoring well from Zara's performance. This contest remains very close, even with the season more than halfway through. We'll see how it looks after another week, and a second Wildcard game filled with much more militaristic leaders!
