This summary for Wildcard Two was written by Eauxps I. Fourgott with some assistance from TheOneAndOnlyAtesh. Many thanks for volunteering to put this report together! 
After the peaceful leaders were used up in the initial Wildcard game, we were left with a group of aggressive low peaceweight leaders fighting it out for the final playoff spot. Once again, there was one glaring exception in the lineup - this time Washington, who was also stuck in a central starting position. He would need a miracle to survive this game intact, much less win. Starting to Washington's south, and a potential beneficiary from his demise, was Suryavarman of the Khmer. After barely surviving Game 7 with a single city and no military units, he was rewarded with a spacious central position on this map with gold at his capital, and resultingly enjoyed broad community support, the clear favorite with over 50% of votes to win. The other most-supported leaders on this map were Willem van Oranje and Cyrus, the two leaders who were likely to be most sheltered from the raging barbarians. Willem was a far better economic leader than anybody else in this field, but would have to defend well enough against any aggression that came his way to take advantage, while Cyrus had a cramped and commerce-poor start, but was right next to Washington to potentially get the conquest train rolling.
Possibly the biggest threat to Willem's chances was his southern neighbor, Alexander, who would likely need to snowball through the Dutch in order to be relevant on this map. Other fans were similarly skeptical of Cyrus because of his southern neighbor, Brennus, who had a food-rich start and was likely to found one of the game's first religions. Finally, De Gaulle had a fairly isolated position in the north which hadn't attracted much attention in the pregame. Once again, only the winner would be advancing from this game and moving on to the playoffs. Would the favorite in Sury come through and secure his Pool One position for another season? Would Cyrus or Alex or Willem step up instead and secure a position in Pool Two? Or would one of the three lesser leaders get a chance to shine?
At the start of the game, it was the eastern half of the map that saw the most significant activity. All four leaders over here sent their starting settlers into the space between them, quickly cutting down on empty space, while Brennus and Suryavarman opened the game by founding the first two religions (Confucianism and Buddhism) uncontested - thus opening the door for diplomatic tensions that could outweigh their very close peaceweight. Meanwhile, the raging barbs were soon in force across the map as usual, with highly varying impacts on the different leaders; the hardest-hit leaders seemed to be De Gaulle and Suryavarman. De Gaulle ended up canceling settler builds multiple times to churn out more units instead, resulting in him still only holding two cities into the 50s. The decision to take the time to build Stonehenge with just the two didn't help expansion either. Meanwhile, the downside to Suryavarman's spacious position became all too clear: there was a lot of space for barbarians to spawn, and he was soon having to deal with a lot of incursions. Despite starting with Mining tech, he benefited from his starting gold tile for only roughly 15 of the first 50 turns, with the barbs occupying or pillaging it the rest of the time, and he probably dealt with more total raiders than anybody else on the map, stunting his momentum. He was further undermining himself by repeating his mistake from his opener in Game 7, delaying Archery research for a very long time and thus building a large number of less effective warriors. He went on to lose his first settler to a barbarian attack, and when he finally got a third city down on Turn 50, it was jungle-choked and largely useless for the time being. Sury would need to accelerate his game in a big way if he was to deliver as the favorite.
On the flip side, Willem and Cyrus had very little barb activity to deal with, as had been expected. Willem was doing his normal thing of building up on a few cities, not expanding very quickly but with one of the best early tech rates, while Cyrus was leveraging his Imperialistic trait and flinging down cities wherever he could. Despite Brennus and Washington both settling towards him to start the game, and the former with a holy city, he was able to get a good number of plants down, which would serve him well IF he could avoid crashing his economy in the process. Brennus, Washington, and Alexander were somewhere in the middle in terms of barb aggression. Brennus's multiple clams and floodplain tiles were immune to the barbs, though, and allowed him to hold one of the best early research rates; he was going for only a few economic techs as usual (Animal Husbandry and Fishing to go with early Polytheism, Archery, Masonry, and Bronze Working), but his land was keeping him afloat for now, while its lower production didn't seem to be a major weakness against the barbarians. Washington's economy was pretty shaky as soon as he had even four cities, but he kept them coming. By contrast, Alex was doing a good job of balancing expansion with growth, and timely research of The Wheel and Pottery ensured his economy wouldn't suffer too much.
However, Alex threw it all away with his first war of the game, as he went for a predictable attack on Willem. Willem was no pushover, though: he already had metals connected, and the city Alex chose to attack was across a river, up on a hill, and boasted stout cultural defenses. Alex's initial attack accomplished nothing and the war quickly devolved into a stalemate that mutually dragged down both leaders. Willem had enough economic heft that he was still doing decently even while throwing soldiers away, but Alex didn't have the same strength; he was flubbing his one big chance to break out and become a major player, and even lost a backline city to the barbarians while focusing on the Dutch. Peace was signed soon enough, but this seemed to pretty clearly signal the end of Alex as a contender in this game.
As we reached Turn 100, it was hard to tell who was in the best position; nobody except Alex seemed to be completely out of it. Willem had by far the best early economy, to nobody's surprise, but had been hampered by the pointless war with Alex, had one of the lowest city counts, and also adopted the minority religion of Judaism to put himself in a diplomatic hole. Brennus's local terrain also gave him a fairly strong economy, despite his tech choices delaying the full array of tile improvements for quite some time. That left his land underdeveloped for a long while, and he also either lost or canceled a settler build at some point along the way, leaving him with one of the lowest city counts and a far from frontrunning position. One place he had done well, though, was in spreading his religion - whether due to his own efforts, or to his coast, rivers, and simple die rolls producing a lot of natural spreads. Washington and Cyrus had both picked up Confucianism, starting a religious bloc, and Cyrus in particular would now be a safe ally. Washington and Cyrus themselves were the fastest expanders early on, and Cyrus was the only leader with eight cities at Turn 100. He had also managed to keep his economy afloat and was one of the tech leaders despite delaying culture for ages; now he just had to find a good target and expand further via conquest, and he could really be a contender. Washington had done a worse job of managing his economy, and as time went on his lack of culture resulted in his cities starting to get crushed. While he had briefly moved into first place in score, he had fallen back out of it by Turn 100, and his poor diplomacy threatened to bring him completely crashing down at any moment.
De Gaulle had looked hopeless after his incredibly slow start, with Washington even founding a city in land south of Paris where he had no business settling. However, as the late landgrab phase went on, the French leader started to recover impressively. He was still able to get out a decent number of cities to build a solid core, and even moved into the score lead by Turn 100; a build of the Great Wall helped here, as there were still ice-covered barbarian spawning grounds to the north that it would protect him from. His chances still were very much alive despite the terrible start, especially if he could profit off of the expected dogpile of Washington. Suryavarman, too, seemed to be on the upswing; he had taken a long time to do it, at one point falling to last place in score despite all of his free culture, but there was a lot of fairly safe land in his backlines, and even one spot that Alex had poached was opened back up when the barbarians razed the Greek city, letting Sury fill it in for himself. Once he could hack out all the jungle in his territory, he'd really be in business. He still had no converts to his Buddhism, though, and that could prove a major diplomatic problem indeed down the road.
While the first portion of the game had been fairly quiet, as the contenders dealt with the barbarians and focused on filling the map, it was more or less full by the time Turn 100 did roll around, and things quickly started heating up afterwards. The first serious war of the game came when Suryavarman attacked Washington, followed shortly thereafter by De Gaulle dogpiling the American pariah. While these early attacks came in without catapults and Washington was able to easily repel them, it seemed like a dark sign for the First to Die favorite. However, things were soon well and shaken up, as Willem unexpectedly backstabbed De Gaulle! Nobody had seen this attack coming, and Willem brought a large stack that was able to break through and capture Orleans immediately for the game's first blood: a dire sign for the Frenchman. Brennus soon made his move as well, in one of the biggest moments of the game: he attacked his religious enemy of Suryavarman. He too brought a big stack, and it too succeeded in capturing its first target - the holy city of Hariharalaya!!! 
Sury was now in deep trouble as well, and here it became clear that, in addition to his diplomatic problems, he'd fallen in an economic hole compared to the others. While he was still picking up Writing and Mathematics, Willem/De Gaulle/Washington were all running around with catapults, and they and Brennus were working on Feudalism for longbows. Sury was operating at a tech deficit, and with De Gaulle signing peace with Washington to focus on the Dutch attack, he was stuck in a 2v1 with the two most powerful nations on the map. Everything was going wrong for him.
The one leader who wasn't doing much of anything at this point was Cyrus, who soon found himself Pleased with every leader on the map except for Suryavarman, whom he chose not to attack. As a result, the Persian leader simply sat in the corner and teched up. Meanwhile, as the wars continued on, De Gaulle was able to stabilize after removing the American front from the picture. Once he committed the forces from there to deal with the Dutch invaders, he was able to retake Orleans and then stalemate the war - a disaster for Willem, who now fell below even Alex on the scoreboard, having lost his chance to move up into a leading position. Willem's situation was also disastrous from a diplomatic standpoint, as he'd converted to Suryavarman's Buddhism, but seen De Gaulle and Alex both join Brennus's Confucian bloc. Brennus was sending missionaries far and wide and reaping the benefits, and Willem was now quickly on the way to becoming a religious outcast, as Suryavarman was not holding at all against either Brennus or Washington. Alex tried to lend a hand with an attack on Washington - amusingly marching his forces across the southern tundra and up through Celtic land at first, for lack of open borders with the Khmer - but he was weak enough in comparison that his attacks did pretty much nothing, not even significantly slowing down Washington's attacks on Sury. Brennus and Washington both executed a routine conquest now, marching up large stacks, sieging down defenses, and capturing their targeted cities with no complications. Nothing happened to halt the campaign, and in the end, they split the conquest as evenly as possible, with Brennus ending up ahead by a single city as he scored the kill, sending the pregame favorite out as the First to Die:
This was a tricky position for Suryavarman, and he didn't play it well. The central position was a very perilous one on this map, and we saw that come into play as he was hit particularly hard by the barbs, never quite completely recovering, and it was very easy for him to be backstabbed once he went to war. (He even had multiple neighbors that could have attacked him but didn't, only facing a single war declaration in the entire game; it could have been much worse!) On the other hand, founding one of the first religions was a huge mistake for Sury, turning Brennus against him; he never spread that religion well, setting himself up as an outcast (although in fairness, the barbs probably rendered it impossible to spread the religion himself); his long delay of Archery did him no favors against the hordes and quite possibly cost him his first settler; and once things were finally starting to look up, he threw resources away on a fruitless attack instead of focusing on developing his cities. Even had the war with Washington remained a 1v1, it's likely it would have dragged Sury's chances of winning down on its own. In all honesty, after watching this game play out, I think the community was wrong and Suryavarman didn't have a good position for this map. We will see once the alternate histories come out, but this is always going to be a dangerous position and I imagine that only in particularly savvy games will he be able to emerge from it victorious. In any case, he is out for the season - and going back down to Pool Two next time.
The past sixty turns had seen two leaders surge forward while the rest stagnated. It was now Brennus's game to lose: thanks to his conquests and some extra tundra fishing villages founded in the meantime, he now had one of the highest city counts, the highest score by a good margin, the best culture (including five holy cities to open up the possibility of going for a culture win), the best economy (powered in part by shrines in said holy cities), and a strong religious bloc. He'd formed a particularly strong core alliance with Cyrus, De Gaulle, and Alex, and with his only enemy on the opposite side of the map, danger to him was virtually nonexistent. The only downside to his position was that his future conquests were also likely to be minimal, since he wouldn't declare war on any of his allies, but he'd already taken enough land that it might not matter. The surprising second place leader was now Washington; he was still several hundred points behind Brennus, but they were tied in overall city count, and Washington was good friends with both him and Cyrus, leaving only the weaker western leaders as potential threats. The belated addition of culture to his cities had also solved his earlier woes, as he had firm control over his own territory now. While he would need to do considerable conquering of his own to stand a chance of beating the Celtic giant, he was still in a better position to do so than the others, all of whom seemed to be out of luck now. Cyrus had sat out this round of wars and now would be at peace ad infinitum, Pleased or better towards every remaining leader; while this had prevented him from being dragged down in the same way the western leaders were, and he was Brennus's closest competitor in tech, his peacefulness had also closed the door on any potential chances to improve his position, and he was now doomed to be stuck with his original core, unable to match the growth of Brennus and Washington. De Gaulle and Willem were still sparring, their war having mutually ended their chances. Willem still had just five cities and it was clear that this would not be enough for him to out-tech his diplomatic disadvantage, while De Gaulle was still on only six, his momentum permanently damaged. Lastly, Alexander in the southwest was just a joke for this game, having barely even scratched the paint on Washington's chariots in his most recent war. While he might be able to contribute to Willem's demise, that was about the best he could hope for now.
Willem soon signed peace with De Gaulle to bring peace to the world, but the reprieve was short before everybody (except Cyrus, still happily teching in his corner) went back to war. Alex kicked things off with another invasion of Willem, who just barely held off a large Greek stack attacking the hilltop city of Rotterdam... only to see Brennus dogpile him immediately afterwards and immediately bulldoze the Dutch cities. Willem had no chance against the much bigger Celtic empire regardless of the circumstances, and Brennus had chosen the perfect timing to get an extremely easy conquest. Meanwhile, Washington declared war on De Gaulle in the north, and it was clear that he, too, had the advantage, if not to such a large degree as Brennus. De Gaulle's cities were soon falling and he clearly was not long for this world. But he held out much better than poor Willem, whose five cities lasted a very short time indeed in the face of the joint assault. Brennus picked up the lion's share, including a sixth holy city to add to his collection, but Alex was able to take two cities of his own, sneaking in the kill credit.
Willem's position on this map wasn't as tricky as Suryavarman's, but he didn't play it any better. His big problem was that he failed to expand; he had a sheltered position and had seemed to be only very lightly affected by the barbarians, but still expanded at the same pace as the much more heavily battered Sury! That was an unacceptable performance, and he was left with too small of a territory base to even keep up in economy once the others got going; other than dogpiles, I don't think he had any chance of winning any wars to improve his position, and being the only leader to adopt Buddhism was the kiss of death. I think we might see some stronger performances from him in alternate histories, if he expands better, but in the real thing he dropped the ball and paid the price. Meanwhile, in the wake of his demise, Brennus was all but confirmed as the game's winner. He had started flying through the tech tree after Sury's defeat, and gaining three more quality cities with minimal effort only compounded his lead. At this point there was no path in sight for even Washington to catch up to him in any way; Brennus had a stranglehold over the game, and now the only questions were how he would win, if Washington could maintain good relations and survive to the end of the game, and how Alex would manage to get himself killed.
The game now quieted down quite a bit; with two of the strongest nations on the map unwilling to plot war, there wasn't much room for things to get shaken up. 20 more turns passed without incident as Washington finished grinding through France, and then De Gaulle was out as well. De Gaulle's game here was pretty simple; he horribly bungled his opening with nonexistent expansion, and then, just when he was starting to recover, he was backstabbed by Willem and got stuck as a nonentity from that point on. I think De Gaulle's position was good here and he'll be capable of good results when he expands properly, but there was no question that he deserved the poor finish in the real game. By this point, Brennus's lead was actually not all that big - Washington's conquests had left him with similar amounts of cities and territory, and Cyrus had managed to grab several key wonders, including the Taj Mahal and Statue of Liberty. But Brennus still had an overwhelming territorial edge against Cyrus, and a similarly unbreakable tech edge over Washington, so his overall position was secure. We started flying through the turns now, with Brennus continuing to race up the tech tree and nothing happening to shake up the status quo. Despite all of his holy cities, Brennus did not seem to be pursuing a cultural strategy here, instead going for the space victory. He also built the UN to open up the possibility of a Diplomatic victory; he would be up against Washington in the vote, and would have both Cyrus and Alex in his corner if he wanted to go that route.
Eventually, we got one more major set of events in the game. Washington kicked them off with a major mistake: choosing to adopt Free Religion, thus destroying the large shared faith bonsuses that had kept him safe from Cyrus and Brennus for the entire game. Cyrus immediately dropped to Cautious with him; Brennus was barely Pleased at first, but dropped as well when he caught an American spy, and soon all three of Washington's rivals were plotting war against him. Alex's was the first attack to come in, and Washington was able to fend it off, at great cost in terms of soldiers. That left him very vulnerable when Cyrus attacked next - finally doing something in this game! He immediately took a border city and America was clearly in trouble. It then became truly ugly when Brennus joined to make it a full dogpile. Brennus's tech lead was big enough now that he was bringing gunships into the fight against Washington's rifle-based forces - pretty lopsided! The helicopters were soon swarming across America, removing garrisons right and left. There were even multiple cities where Brennus's gunships removed all of the defenders but couldn't actually capture the cities, thus allowing Cyrus to walk ground troops in instead and take the cities for himself! America was collapsing in record time; it only took a couple of turns for Washington to fall out of second place, and his death would follow soon after. That is, it would without the UN stepping in. Brennus chose to call a Diplomatic victory vote as Washington was down to his last city, and although he was now up against Cyrus, he still pulled in Alex's support, which was enough to bring this game to a close:
It was a strong performance and a deserving win from a normally mediocre-at-best leader. Brennus unexpectedly managed to take this game by storm thanks to playing a strong economic game throughout; his naturally food- and commerce-rich starting land gave him the early advantage, and he was able to play well enough to maintain it for the duration of the game. Light pressure from the barbarians ensured that he could stay afloat despite an iffy production situation, and while his overall expansion was poor, he was able to make up for it with a well-timed strike against Suryavarman. In the early game, the biggest move Brennus made was to found (and later to spread) his own religion. He was able to use it to build a strong alliance that kept him out of danger for the entire game, and that worked wonders in giving him a smooth path to victory. A bit later, his other big move, and the one that solidified much of how the game would go, was his attack on Suryavarman. His timing couldn't have been better, and this allowed him to convert his early lead into a dominant long-term position with little trouble. Brennus was largely on cruise control from that point forward, with this clearly being one of the most dominant wins of the season. The final playoff spot is thus his, as he goes to Game 2 where he'll face off against Justinian and a bunch of high peaceweight leaders. Depending on how the religions shake out, he could be Justin's best friend or his bitter rival, and it should be interesting to find out which one.
Meanwhile, Cyrus moved into second place in the eleventh hour, without having done much in particular to deserve it. I suppose he did play a solid enough builder's game, expanding well early on, avoiding crashing his economy, and then doing his peaceful thing for the rest of the game, but it was certainly no way to compete for the win, and he would have remained in third had Washington simply stuck with Confucianism. Cyrus simply ran out of options too soon here, was too hesitant to go to war even when he did still have the option, and so got stuck. This was clearly a case where a refusal to plot war at Pleased worked against him, although with a position bordering the map's two strongest leaders, it's unclear how much he could have accomplished regardless - and it would have taken a massive effort to successfully beat out the game Brennus played here. In any event, Cyrus is now done, having likely secured a seeded position for the next season, but failed to move on to the playoffs again.
Washington technically survived this game, although now that we're past the opening round, it doesn't make any practical difference. I think things went about as well as possible for him here; he had a tough position, but he was able to befriend the two most likely leaders on this map through shared religion, and that friendship coupled with the way the wars played out to put him on the right side of the numbers. It was clear at the end, though, just how precarious of a position he was in; as soon as he dropped the shield of religion, he got torn apart, and he surely will not last as long in most of the replays of this map. The deck was stacked against him and he did about as well as possible given the circumstances; is there a way that he can get on the right side of the numbers and not be stuck with somebody else, like Brennus, in a stronger position that he can't catch? I don't know that there is. In any case, Washington played well this season but got stuck with some raw deals. He fought valiantly to survive Game 4, but was stuck on the defensive to begin with and had his ally sell him out when he had the chance to really take ground. He very nearly came in a strong second place in this game, playing well aside from the early avoidance of culture, but he couldn't catch Brennus and the overall setup doomed him the moment he made a diplomatic misstep. It was an impressive performance, all things considered, but it wasn't good enough.
Finally, Alexander was in full-on troll mode this game, launching many largely pointless attacks, marching his army in weird routes, and stealing a kill from Brennus. After his first attack on Willem failed, it was clear that he had no chance of winning this game, but he kept on fighting throughout, and came surprisingly close to second place at the end. He managed to avoid any suicidal conflicts, and that was enough to survive intact to the end of the game, but this was in no way an impressive performance. After some very strong games in recent seasons, this season offered a good view at what should be considered the more typical Alex performance: ridiculous aggression without the economic strength to back it up. We'll see if he gets a stronger setup next season that allows him to return to the warpath with more success.
This wasn't a great-scoring game in the picking contest, with most points coming from the number of wars category and Cyrus's runner-up finish. Bartek walked away with the win for the week, scoring 19 points as the only person to correctly guess the Brennus/Cyrus/Suryavarman ticket. Meanwhile, several fantasy teams scoring small totals and one winning big brought that contest even closer than it was before. Eauxps, El Grillo, j_mie6, and Kjotleik are all tied for the lead with 17 points apiece; Kjotleik currently has the edge with four leaders still alive, followed by Eauxps with three, but nobody is completely done just yet. It will all come down to the playoffs, where we are finally headed now after over three months of competition. Will the high peaceweights continue to dominate the season, or will the few remaining low peaceweights turn the tables and come out on top in this round? Stay tuned in to find out!
