My thoughts on these results:
I'm pretty pleased, as I feel this was the first map this season where I had a pretty good read overall post the Alternate Histories. I was indeed correct that the real game was out of wacky land, and while I made some mistakes when going over the leaders in detail, I don't think I was wildly off base with anything and my read on the game as a whole was solid. One thing I commented in the preseason was that this was the hardest game to predict, and that was borne out by the results here being so open. But there was an advantage for the southern leaders, if perhaps not to quite the degree I'd originally thought!
Stalin was a case of me being right in general, not so much on the specifics. I was right that this was a high variance start... but I didn't expect it to be this boom-or-bust, because I didn't expect him to be so consistently going to war very early! I expected it to happen sometimes but not ALL the time, and it seems that meant that he either steamrolled or flamed out, with little room for the strong overall games I was expecting to see some of from this start. What that also meant was that his position didn't seem to be especially dangerous from a diplomatic perspective... because he either won or lost the game before that could even matter! Basically, I didn't expect him to be quite such a warmonger, and that naturally led itself to more dramatic results. He was indeed the favorite to win, but the result we got wasn't unreasonable either. More broadly, Stalin certainly has had some bad luck in recent seasons which has partially led to his lack of success. He hasn't gotten to try out a corner start since I think Season 4, instead always getting riskier central positions, and there's multiple maps in that timespan where he was among the best leaders in the AHs, only to lose out in the real thing. He's clearly not top-tier, though, either; Myth emphasized in the Discord how unimpressive this performance was, how Stalin should have done even better from this position. I'm reserving judgment on that personally as it was a risky spot overall, but his weaknesses are obvious (overaggression at times, low culture early) and have played a clear part in his failures. Overall I don't think Stalin is a fanatastic leader for this, but I also don't think he's as much of a fraud as some people do. Mid-tier leader? Maybe. The fact that he's somehow still Pool One at present is pretty nutty though.
Guess I was wrong about Stalin's starting position being a high-risk high-reward start: it was all rewards.
The "risks" part was there alright, but owing 100% to Stalin's incompetence.
To be fair, with a more normal performance, the risks you thought of might instead still be there! Stalin was just getting ahead of the game and ruling them out as factors.
Joao is probably the most satisfying result for me, very validating. I thought he was in one of the best situations on this map and that his real performance was a fluke, and he bore that out with the most consistent overall results. Joao's definitely a mid AI and this was a scenario where mid-ness worked out to his advantage; it also sounds like his score was really undervalued here as he had some bad luck as far as actual points went. I think he was probably the smartest fantasy bid on this map, which satisfies me as I had pegged him out as one of the best choices prior to the auction, even if I didn't actually get him (RIP Henrik).
Ragnar wasn't great, but he was indeed quite viable with one of the best setups of his career! I think I might have oversold him but my overall read was still good. I think bidding a moderate amount on him for fantasy was a fine choice as well, even if one that ultimately didn't pay off. On the flip side,
Victoria was indeed too squeezed to compete well, but I still undersold her. I think I was expecting her to simply not be very relevant, but it sounds like she was often strong - until the lategame. I'm glad we didn't get one of those games where her Redcoats lost to medieval forces, as that would have been quite rough to watch for fantasy. In any case, my small bid for her was solid, I think. Low chance of much rewards but a low price, and it hit. I had about 50-50 odds to score from one of these two, so my overall result of nothing from Ragnar and a big payday from Vicky was slightly on the lucky side, but not excessively so. I like to think of it as my strategy of getting a lot of leaders (for more chances to hit) being rewarded.
Napoleon was indeed limited on options; I think he did a bit stronger here than I had anticipated, but it's not like he was really dominant and I missed it. That would have been embarrassing! Here I was pretty close. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the AHs was
Roosevelt being as viable as he was; I'd thought his limited land and lousy personality would make him just irrelevant, but it seems that there were quite a few games where he did similarly to the real game, but with a happier ending. I suppose that makes enough sense; when I did his AHs for Season 1, he had strong but limited land and tended to be quite good when not being dogpiled, so a similar performance here checks out.
And then there's
Gandhi. Another thing I did not expect was for him to be so weak at competing for cultural stuff, but it seems that locked him out of his preferred victory condition a lot. Oops! I think I also overestimated the danger that Napoleon posed, while simultaneously underestimating the danger from the rest of the field. It sounds like his problem was less neighboring France and moreso the constant dogpiles despite his out-of-the-way position. In particular, I figured Joao wouldn't always be his best friend, but I didn't expect them to tussle in a full 90% of games! So it seems Gandhi was quite lucky once again, and my original read of him being a poor fantasy bid was correct, as he didn't have very good odds for any scoring category, including First to Die. Kjotleik made good choices with most of his bids, but this was one where he got lucky. Not that there's anything wrong with that!
In the larger scale: While you can argue that other leaders may be luckier in terms of drawing good starts/positions (Darius and Kublai come to mind), I think it's pretty obvious by now that Gandhi is the luckiest player in AI Survivor in terms of beating the odds to turn in good performances. He's now made the playoffs from maps where he was estimated by AHs to have odds of 60% (not bad), 35% (pretty lucky), 30% (again pretty lucky), and 10% (very lucky) -
twice! By my calculations the odds of making playoffs in all five of those games are about
0.06%! Although there's probably a lot of flaws with a simple probability calculation like that, I think the point is pretty clear. Gandhi is one of the most consistent playoff leaders, with 6 appearances in 8 seasons, but no more than two of those were from maps where he had good odds to do it! (I might have to do AHs on his Season 2 opener sooner rather than later, to complete the dataset.) When you look at it that way, his frequently putrid positions in the playoffs themselves haven't been bad luck - they've just been his just desserts for scamming yet another playoff berth! Personally, I find this narrative of "Gandhi the lucky duck" to be pretty funny and am here for it as long as it continues.
and sells him as best AI while he is not, not with pw 9 that is possible at least. He can still enjoy being best high pw(8-9-10) of the game though.