I loved that game! I was happy to see the low peaceweights soundly defeated once more, and the Mansa-Liz showdown was I think the most tense purely peaceful ending we've ever seen. So many twists and turns!
We can only hope the Championship approaches this level of tension, because I suspect that it will otherwise have a similar dynamic, with an extremely likely high peaceweight majority and Mansa and Elizabeth both there. I imagine the only leader who stands a good chance of challenging them there is Victoria.
All hail to
Mansa, once more AI Survivor's top leader! It's a shame that he and
Elizabeth couldn't both be awarded the win for this game, though. They deserved it equally. At the end it all came down to little AI quirks, not any sort of strategy as the AI can understand it, and enough die rolls went in Mansa's favor for him to win it. So be it, but it was a crazy fast outcome anyway. Liz has been so weak for so long in AI Survivor that I think most of us had forgotten how good she really is when she actually expands well and isn't screwed by diplomacy. I think it's near-total toss-up which of them has the advantage in the final game.
Lincoln and
Hammurabi let me down, here, neither at all effectively competing for second place. The real question is, was this the typical dynamic for this map? Were we always going to see a scenario where two Financial leaders were off to the races and left the others out? Or are there a good number of games where they get more bogged down and the central leaders have a chance to actually make their impact? I don't know, but early impressions at least are that I misread this part of the map. In fairness to Lincoln in particular, I
will say that this scenario - suffering an early attack from Gilgamesh while Mansa and Elizabeth got dream games to do their thing - was pretty much impossible not for just him to succeed from, but I think for any leader. Things really did line up wonderfully for those two.
Gilgamesh got pretty screwed this season, struggling to place second in his opener thanks to the early dogpile, then stuck here on a map where he was totally doomed. Even had he been left alone and quickly rolled over Lincoln, there was no way he was going to outrace both Mansa and Liz. No fault of his own that he died first here, even if I do feel like Pool One is overrating him somewhat.
Finally, an embarrassing performance by
Pacal that further underscores his ability to perform all over the spectrum - from dominant wins to backdoor seconds to total failures. I do still think he's one of AI Survivor's best because he
can dominate so much economically and often get by even when he's not doing great. But he certainly wasn't performing like it in this game. I think his overall odds go up considerably if, say, Game 8 plays out as expected and Lincoln is replaced with a warmonger. But it wouldn't have happened in this game regardless.
