Civ AI Survivor: Season Five

[Wyatan]

So, post-mortem on game 4 :

Except for Ragnar, all fielded AIs were competent AIs. That is, none you would expect to win, but none you'd be shocked to see win.
Ragnar had the most available land : any other AI in his starting position would have been a favourite... but that's Ragnar.
Starting spots were rather poor, as illustrated by the fact they were heavily wooded, which is the start equalizer function's way of saying "sorry".
Ramesses : no horses, no war chariots.
Saladin : his religious emphasis usually works against him. Contrary to other zealots, he won't actively try and spread his religious. As a consequence, he's usually on the receiving end of a coalition, instead of the opposite.

In the end, I went with three predictions :
1) Pericles would be metal-less, and thus quickly eliminated. Most likely by Hannibal, who'd grow into the dominant power.
2) The West would be a clusterfuck. While Kublai and Ragnar piling on Victoria seemed a logical scenario, I didn't believe in it. I rather imagined something like Victoria declares on Kublai, Ragnar piles in, Saladin attacks Ragnar.
3) It would be a late finish.

Well, that turned out to be mostly correct, "mostly" being the operative word here.
1) Pericles was indeed the FTD, owing to his initial lack of metals.
But while he didn't get the spot I'd shown, neither did Hannibal, which came as a surprise (discounting the Copper which he couldn't see initially, it was still his only 4-ressource cluster in close range).
That delayed his war declaration enough that Pericles was able to get Iron during the war. Pericles still died, but much later than I'd expected.
2) The West was indeed complete chaos, but instead of a "less beaten-up" AI emerging, we got a "game-dominant" AI with Saladin...
3) It was indeed late. But a tad later thant anticipated.

Got lucky once again with the number of wars prediction. Getting within two is good game-reading, nailing the exact number is dumb luck.
Second game in a row where the victory condition is down to a coin flip. I'm wondering whether this is owing to Diety-level. Culture or Domination wins are on the clock, and the clock might be moving too fast... (I know, weird observation to make after one of our slowest games).

Can't remember which poster has posted the text edit solution to this for several years and sullla keeps saying he doesn't want to mod the game.

I did. Posted a reminder this year too, but not gonna insist.
Somehow, I get it : Sullla is extremely familiar with the World Builder and the debug tools, but not at all with XML editing.
When you've got a solution with tools you know, you tend to be reluctant to try another solution, even though it's a better solution, if it requires unknown tools.
Since he did mod the game this year to remove the AP, I thought he might give it a shot this time. Oh well.