Civ AI Survivor: Season Five

[Wyatan]

I don't know how you could say that, he didn't have any metal and wouldn't have ever had metal if he didn't land the GW.

He had Iron first ring to his north, in a spot he was extremely likely to settle.
He got beaten to it by Hammy this time because he was so late to develop. I don't know if that was a fluke or not.

His other source (the one he got in the end) was unlikely to get contested by anyone but the barbs, so he wouldn't have stayed metal-less.
I considered Mao more at risk to end up metal-less (his northern source was also in barb land, but Genghis could have conquered those barb cities).

So either Hammy goes first via dogpile, or Bismark goes first .

That's why I gave this example about the importance of the map.
Two high peace weight AIs with 5 low peace weights... FTD just has to be one of the two, hasn't it ?

Well, I remain convinced that the highest chance for FTD was Toku, Genghis, or Gilgamesh.
Neither Hammy nor Bismarck.

You saw how weak Toku was. That Gilgamesh chose to go after Genghis rather than him... seems flukey.

Now I gave that example because I assumed that for a lot of people, the reasoning would have been :
- high peace weight AI in a low peace weight world
- who has performed abysmally so far
=> FTD !!
Prediction purely leader-based, with no consideration for the map.

Now, in your case, you did take the map into consideration (we simply differ in our reading of it), so bad example as it relates to you.

I was aligned with Fluffball in my thoughts about the Wildcard: a no metal Bismarck next to be-metaled Tokugawa seeming like a chomping opportunity ripe for the picking.

But I think Wyatan's premise was that there was a TON of room between Bismarck and anyone else, which meant he was unlikely to be pressured upon for some time. Is there more that you wanted to add, Wyatan? I'd love to understand your thoughts.

As said above, Bismarck had iron close by, so I didn't consider him as a metal-less civ. Copper-less, sure, but with raging barbs, a super early DoW seemed unlikely.
His capital was on a hill, so tough luck breaking through that. He had horses for chariots to help fend off barbs (yeah, I know, you need The Wheel for that ).

But basically, early game, he only needed to worry about Toku.
While Toku also had Gilgamesh to be wary of.
Gilgamesh was stuck between Brennus (that they would share a religion definitely wasn't a given, and creative borders tend to make neighbours unhappy) and Toku.
Genghis between Hammy and Mao.

Early eliminations often come from an early combined assault, and each of these three was far more at risk than either Bismarck or Hammy IMO.

I didn't anticipate that he'd have so much trouble dealing with barbs (but so did Toku), so I thought he'd fill his backline quicker.
Lots of cities means slow conquest (assuming he'd be on the losing side), which would have exposed his would-be conqueror to a deadly backstab.