All right, now for some proper game analysis.
Any newer viewers who didn't understand what the deal was with Mansa Musa certainly should know now. He executed a subpar landgrab, had only a middling number of cities, and never went and conquered anymore... yet he completely ran away with the game economically, and it didn't even take him that long to do it! The simple read of the map proved the correct one in this case: Washington and Zara were the perfect meat shield for Mansa to just do his thing uncontested. I'm sure it won't go so smoothly in some alternate histories but it did for the real thing and I doubt that's an unlikely result. I like his position in the playoffs too, as long as he can deal with whoever will start to his east. Could we be in for a Mansa vs. Justin throwdown to become the first two-time champ? I'd be here for it!
Also notable is that he won without ever fighting a single war - quite a rare feat! But I know it's been done once before... by Mansa, in the Season One playoffs, in a game that, for him, looked virtually identical to this one. So yeah, watch out for the Mansanator!
Qin was the only other leader with any real power move in this game, that of course being the backstab of Saladin. With Sal out of the picture and China double the size, nobody else seemed to be capable of contesting Qin for second place. He certainly didn't do anything else to deserve the position after that move, though, remaining committed to the Willem Gambit even in the face of a 2v1 and getting lucky to get peace when he did. I was salty about his backstab so that was definitely frustrating to see. But credit where credit is due: he executed a great landgrab and used one decisive war to get out in front of the pack, just so long as you ignore Mansa over there in the corner... Those who backed him based on his strong start clearly had the right idea.
On the other hand, despite that landgrab, he was still clearly behind Sal before the backstab, not doing anything very impressive with that land. The biggest thing that made the backstab a surprise is Qin's not-that-aggressive nature; if this had been someone more like, say, Kublai, then sure. If it were Alex it would virtually have been unexpected for it to not happen. But peaceful Qin was not somebody I saw this from. I'm still not too impressed with Qin as a leader, personally, but I will admit that I'll never have an easy time giving him full credit for this particular performance.
Poor Saladin had everything all lined up, and then suffered one of the most dramatic collapses we've seen. Other than not expanding fast enough out of the gate, he played a great game up to the backstab; not the most efficient conquest of America, sure, but he was in great shape there overall. Unfortunately, he seemed to epically bungle his defense. I don't think he should have fallen quite that easily, and as I referenced in my poem his failure to complete a castle in his first city under siege was a grave tactical error that let Qin attack faster, and if I remember the power graphs directly that attack was what really sunk him, taking out a good portion of his army while inflicting minimal casualties in return. So no, Sal was not just a victim of circumstance, he definitely had his own failures as well. Still, it feels like an overall unlucky result, and honestly at this point I feel like Sal is one of the competition's unluckiest leaders. We shall see how successful he actually proves in the alternate histories, though.
Credit where credit is due, Washington putting up a spirited defense and not pulling a Lincoln gave him time for a save and allowed him to skate by to the Wildcard. He played well in that part of the game. Before that, though, it looked like he was in the process of wasting a strong start, first to eight cities but then not expanding anymore after that, and seemingly running out of options. I don't know how much he is to blame for his consistently poor economy post the war, either - shouldn't he have been able to rebuild a bit better? Dunno. Overall a pretty meh performance from him.
Better at least than Zara, who was actively uninspiring. Poor early expansion, and then he had the game's second-best economy overall but completely failed to leverage it in any appreciable way. He fought Qin a couple of times without accomplishing anything, and in particular his dropping out of the 2v1 right as he was getting the upper hand was an extremely foolish move that cost him his chance to place. Maybe he'll accomplish more in the Wildcard, but I was doubtful of him before the game and no less doubtful after the game. He doesn't even have any really strong Alternate Histories results in past seasons and I really don't think he's that effective of an AI.
Pericles... oof. He was lucky the Greeks were ignored by the rest of the world and that Alex similarly bungled his start, because that was a terrible mishandling of an already-poor start. First to Die for him in many Alternate Histories seems quite reasonable because he will always have a tough time getting up and running from that start, and Sal may not always go east. On the other hand, he's probably not going to push for the early religion all the time, and using those early research turns on worker techs might be what he needs to flip this start around and at least be reasonably competitive. In any case, he got lucky to slip by the Wildcard, where he'll be hoping for a more competitive starting location.
Finally, after several straight seasons of impressive opening-round performances, Alexander reminded us just how low he can go to, and just why his dominant win in Season 5 was such a shock. In an economically weak start, he stagnated completely and left himself totally crippled, and just got lucky that Pericles was similarly weak and Qin such a fantastic meatshield. Honestly, this performance doesn't affect my opinion of him much, rather than just confirm that he's very much a go big or go home leader. We still need to watch out and not underestimate him too much, because when he does go big... yeah. Honestly I'm happy he made it to the Wildcard and it would be fun if we had an Alex stomp there.
Overall, I found this game very promising at the start, utterly devastating in the middle, but quite comical near the end as the rest of the field bumbled about as Mansa strolled to victory.
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