Time for the full results from Game 1. Nobody got this one exactly correct; most of the trends were easy enough to guess, but literally
everybody underestimated one leader...
I do have paragraph summaries of each individual game and endgame screenshots from some of the replays, and can share them on request. Otherwise, the writeup is below, and I'll be back next week with Game 2!
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Important note: Unlike the alternate histories for Seasons 3 and 4, which were run under modern AI Survivor conditions (by removing the free Deity starting techs and the Apostolic Palace), this alternate history was run under the same conditions as the original game. As a result, we can’t draw as reliable of conclusions about the overall strength of the leaders involved to apply to new seasons, but the histories are a more accurate reflection of how the original game was likely to play out, so we can draw more reliable conclusions about how typical the real result was.
![[Image: G1-3.png]](https://i.ibb.co/wQkFm4P/G1-3.png)
![[Image: G1-2.png]](https://i.ibb.co/T0N1xdj/G1-2.png)
The first-ever game of AI Survivor turned out to be the tale of three leaders. Peter, Suryavarman, and Brennus were the top three finishers in the real Game One, and the alternate histories showed this to be an expected outcome as they were the clear power trio of this map. Between them they took all but one of the wins, 75% of all top-two placements, and about 80% of the kills. Almost every game would see them as the top three leaders in some order coming out of the landgrab phase, followed by a series of wars to determine which of the three would come out on top this time. Sometimes one would (perhaps with help from the lesser powers) manage to kill both of the other two, allowing a lesser leader to slide into second place, but at no point in any of the games did any of the weaker three leaders assume a stronger position than all of the Big Three – even Napoleon’s single win was the result of a throw by a clearly stronger Brennus.
Which of the three leaders actually came out on top in any given game would depend on the dynamics of that game’s wars. This was a very violent match, with an average of more than 14 wars declared per game and every single game pushing the war counter to the double digits – in this sense the real Game One was highly atypical, as it only featured 9 war declarations. (It’s also worth noting that the Apostolic Palace inflated these totals quite a bit, forcing early peaces and unnecessary dogpiles. Playing these AHs convinced me that removing it starting in Season 5 was the right choice.) However, aside from Ramesses frequently getting dogpiled and Tokugawa frequently attacking Brennus, there weren’t any clear patterns to the wars. This was a highly aggressive field of AIs and most of them were willing to declare war on almost any rival at any given point in time, and that led to high variance in this regard. Most of the time, one of the Big Three would emerge as the leader after the early wars, and then ride on that to victory, but there were also a couple of games where the leader would get dogpiled by multiple rivals later on and get eliminated anyway. The lowest elimination rate on this map was still 30%, which speaks to the fact that nobody was truly safe.
So why did the games end up this way? I’ll go into more detail below, but the short version is that Ramesses and Tokugawa were completely screwed from the start, while Napoleon had a slightly weaker starting position coupled with a worse AI personality that couldn’t make good on it. That left the other three leaders on top in every game more or less by default, and while the lesser three could prove important in deciding the final outcomes of individual games, they almost never had the opportunity to actually jump out in front. Their best outcomes were to end up on the favorable side of dogpiles, and almost inevitably those outcomes would still see a stronger leader also gain territory to maintain his lead over them. As attested by the results, every leader had at least an outside chance of gaining a second place finish, but it became pretty clear that Napoleon could only win as the result of a particularly weird game, and the other two never had any chance to win at all.
Now for a closer look at the individual leaders:
Peter of Russia
Wars declared: 65
Wars declared upon: 32
Survival percentage: 70%
Finishes: 10 firsts, 1 second (52 points)
Kills: 16
Overall score: 68 points
There was no true juggernaut on this map, but Peter was its clear best performer, winning half of the alternate histories, coming close to the lead for kills, and boasting the best survival rate. This was mainly due to his possession of the most favorable starting position on the map: spacious enough to let him always expand to a good size, out of the way enough that every other leader (except maybe the unthreatening Ramesses) had somebody else whom they were more likely to attack, yet well-positioned to get a share of Ramesses’s, Suryavarman’s, or even Brennus’s land when they were dogpiled. As a result, Peter both had the easiest opportunities to get in front and the least likelihood of an inopportune backstab messing up his game, and he was both competent and ruthless enough to take advantage of his this position. Peter’s path to victory was to get out in front of the pack early on by taking some land from one of his neighbors (most often Ramesses, whom he attacked early in almost every game), and then coast to the win from there. If he could get that early lead, he almost always won; there were two exceptions where Brennus leapfrogged in front of him with a mid-game conquest of Tokugawa, and in the dramatic Game 17 he had only a slight lead and was taken down by an attack from Napoleon, but otherwise Peter did a great job of capitalizing on his advantages. Interestingly, he didn’t have any particular preferred victory method; he won no more than 4 times by any single condition and took home at least one win with all four.
On the flip side, if Peter couldn’t get in front early, he almost always got knocked out somewhere along the way. He never really seemed to stay out of conflict, but would always wind up in a fight sooner or later, and if he hadn’t taken the lead, those fights wouldn’t end well for him. As a result, while Brennus and Suryavarman each had solid odds of taking second place if they didn’t win, Peter only got it once – in every other non-winning game, he was either eliminated or at death’s door when the game ended. (If the games had lasted a little bit longer, his ‘true’ survival rate would have been 55% instead of 70%.) He also managed only three kills across his non-winning performances, less than anybody else except for Ramesses. The real Game One was, of course, one of these less successful performances since Peter’s only early conquest was a single city from Ramesses, although that game was a bit unusual in that he never got in a tussle with a stronger foe. Still, stuck in a weaker position, he never accomplished anything there and was forced to hope to backdoor second place. Overall, Peter ended up being the biggest feast-or-famine leader on this map, one who needed a position in front in order to get anything done but was fortunate enough to get that position a lot of the time.
Brennus of Celts
Wars declared: 48
Wars declared upon: 60
Survival percentage: 60%
Finishes: 5 firsts, 5 seconds (35 points)
Kills: 19
Overall score: 54 points
Brennus took home second place in the real Game One, then went on to also place second in the alternate histories, taking home a top two finish in half the games while also racking up the most kills. At first I thought he would be this map’s juggernaut, as he finished in the top two in five of the first six games while surviving all of them, but later on he cooled down significantly, in particular only winning a single game in the back half of the simulations. Like Peter, Brennus had one of the map’s more favorable starting positions, one that had decent enough space, was fairly insulated from aggression, and featured a weak neighbor to conquer. He also proved similarly versatile in his victory methods, winning by all four conditions despite only five total wins. However, Brennus’s position also proved more susceptible to backstabs and dogpiles, as he was attacked nearly twice as often as Peter and three times was First to Die after suffering an early dogpile.
But the biggest reason that Brennus fared worse than Peter was that his weak neighbor was a much more prickly customer. Instead of the weak and unpopular Ramesses who usually was an easy dogpile target, Brennus got the isolated Tokugawa, who never went down without a significant fight and could be quite the thorn in his side. Brennus and Tokugawa’s fates were near-perfectly intertwined on this map: if Tokugawa was killed, Brennus would almost always leverage the extra territory to a top-two position, much as he did in the real Game One. He only failed to do this in two of eleven such cases and only died in one. Tokugawa was First to Die on three different occasions, always by Brennus’s hand, and Brennus was able to win each of those games. On the other hand, if Toku was able to hold out and avoid death, it almost always meant trouble for Brennus. Across Toku’s nine surviving games, Brennus only survived twice, finished in second once, and scored a single kill. Of course, sometimes Toku was surviving specifically BECAUSE Brennus was dying to an early dogpile, but this also showed that Brennus needed the Japanese territory to be truly competitive. Overall, then, Brennus was an average warmongering AI in a fairly favorable position, and would either conquer his weak neighbor en route to a successful game, or fail to conquer him and not be strong enough to compete.
Suryavarman I of Khmer
Wars declared: 48
Wars declared upon: 58
Survival percentage: 60%
Finishes: 4 firsts, 5 seconds (30 points)
Kills: 13
Overall score: 43 points
The last member of the Big Three, Suryavarman won the actual Game One in dominant fashion, but the alternate histories showed that this was a bit of a lucky result. In particular, his extremely strong start in the actual game was an anomaly that only one alternate history came close to repeating; I’m not sure why he was so strong out of the gate in that game, but in most games here he exited the landgrab either only slightly ahead or else behind Peter and/or Brennus. That said, he was still an important player on this map and a viable one, grabbing a top two spot almost as often as those two leaders. Sury’s path to victory in these games was to snowball, getting a lead via conquest early on and then continuing to fight various leaders until he won by Domination. All four of his wins here were from that victory condition, and he was on his way there in the real Game One as well before UN shenanigans ended the game prematurely. However, actually getting the snowball rolling proved a difficult task.
Sury would fail to win his games in one of two ways: sometimes his central position would prove his undoing, as he’d get stuck in multi-front wars and thus be knocked too far back to compete for the win, if not completely killed. The majority of his eliminations started not with him being beaten by a single superior foe, but with somebody else jumping into an existing war and breaking his back. However, in other games, he simply failed to get out in front, not able to keep up with Peter or Brennus, and if he didn’t take the lead early he wasn’t able to win. He wasn’t able to reliably profit off another leader’s demise the same way the other two could, and so he needed a fairly favorable situation in order to come out on top. Still, even when he couldn’t outright win, Sury did a good job of hanging in there given his risky central position; he survived to the finish in half of his non-victorious games, managed to take second place in a majority of those, and never suffered the fate of being First to Die. Overall, these games painted a picture of Sury as one of the better warmongers while still not a top-tier leader. He was a frightening foe when given the advantage and a scrappy survivor when not, but also didn’t have the skills needed to take first place without an early snowball.
Napoleon of France
Wars declared: 58
Wars declared upon: 33
Survival percentage: 50%
Finishes: 1 first, 6 seconds (17 points)
Kills: 9
Overall score: 26 points
Napoleon was perhaps the biggest disappointment on this map. He had a decent starting position, a bit cramped but still viable and with good access to profit off dogpiles on Ramesses or Suryavarman, but while he was often relevant in these games and had a good shot at finishing in second place, he was never the dominant force. Nappy routinely was weaker than the Big 3 exiting the landgrab, and from that point had no route to get out in front. His best path to victory probably would have been to conquer Egypt and snowball from there, but he wasn’t strong enough to take out Ramesses by himself, and a dogpile would result in someone ahead of him getting even stronger. The one Napoleon victory on this map was a fluke result, where he was clearly the second-place leader to Brennus, only to see the Celtic leader turn on the culture slider when he was
TWO TECHS from the end of the tree and then turn it off much later – this resulted in Napoleon winning via spaceship
THREE TURNS before Brennus would’ve won by culture. There was one other game that Napoleon came close to winning, where he could’ve taken the lead after crippling a winning Brennus with a late 2v1 war, but then dropped out of the war and refused to re-enter it in time to stop the victory. This one may have been my fault, as I forgot to delete the second observer civ (sitting around to prevent an AP Diplo victory during the autoplayed turns) after the construction of the UN, and so Nappy may have just been plotting war against a foe he could never reach. But the overall point still stands: Napoleon needed some extremely lucky breaks in order to have a chance of winning on this map, and otherwise was stuck tagging along behind the big dogs.
My personal theory is that Napoleon performed this poorly as a result of having a weak AI personality for this competition. He’s too militaristic in focus, and that resulted in him not performing as well in the early landgrab, falling a bit behind, and then having no good targets to snowball off of. Nappy as an AI leader needs an advantageous position to come out in front, one from which he can easily conquer a neighbor on his own early on; he didn’t have one in this game, and wasn’t flexible enough to win any other way. He certainly tried his best, declaring the second-most wars on the map, but ultimately it wasn’t enough. He lacked the landgrab or economic skills needed to be successful in this game.
Tokugawa of Japan
Wars declared: 55
Wars declared upon: 20
Survival percentage: 45%
Finishes: 0 firsts, 2 seconds (4 points)
Kills: 4
Overall score: 8 points
Tokugawa was utterly screwed on this map, stuck with a horrible starting position that would never be kept in AI Survivor today. Not only was he crammed in the very corner of the map, but the majority of the land near his starting position was useless ice or tundra, leaving precious little land nearby that was actually good for settling. Brennus would inevitably take a good share of the land between the two leaders, with an end result of Toku having only four good city sites. His settling pattern ended up being very predictable as he settled the same four sites in almost every game, and once he got to those four, he was out of decent land to expand into.
Obviously, just four cities is not enough to be competitive, and Toku had absolutely no chance of winning and only a slim chance of moving forward in these games. His best outcomes came when he successfully grabbed some cities from a neighbor weakened by other wars, but even then he could only get up close to the level of an average AI after the landgrab phase – and the leaders who had started at that level would by this time be doing rather better themselves. Toku did manage to get two second place finishes in these games, but in both of those he was tagging along well behind a victorious Peter. There was a single occasion where he had an outside chance of victory – an unusual Game 18 offered a lategame opportunity for him and Ramesses to attack a leading Peter together and
MAYBE overwhelm him with a 2v1 – but even that was no guarantee, and ultimately Toku instead worked with Peter to kill Ramesses.
But even though Toku was stuck in a horrible position and barely had a prayer of finishing in the top two, that didn’t stop him from trying his hardest anyway, and he became a great underdog leader to root for as I played through these games. Despite his weakness, Toku had the highest ratio of aggressive versus defensive wars, going into battle early and often to try and better his position. He and Brennus fought in almost every single game, but it was usually Toku initiating those hostilities. As mentioned before, those two leaders almost never survived together; sometimes there was nothing Toku could do and he was eventually rolled over en route to a successful Brennus performance, but through his sheer persistence, Tokugawa was able to wreck Brennus’s game and outlast him far more often than it seemed like he should have. While he was never in a position to solo kill another leader, his dogged determination was rewarded with a small smattering of kills across these games. Many leaders would have done much worse when starting in this position, and it’s a testament to Toku’s toughness that he managed to perform as well as he did – he may not be one of the best leaders, but this game offers powerful evidence that you should never count on him to be an easy elimination. All things considered, it was a performance to be proud of.
Ramesses of Egypt
Wars declared: 10
Wars declared upon: 81
Survival percentage: 10%
Finishes: 0 firsts, 1 second (2 points)
Kills: 0
Overall score: 2 points
It may not have been immediately apparent going into the original Game One, but in hindsight it was extremely obvious that Ramesses was dead meat on this map, as the lone high peaceweight builder on a map full of low peaceweight warmongers. It was almost inevitable that he would get dogpiled, and that indeed happened early and often in the alternate histories as well as in the real game. Ramesses was always attacked at least twice, and averaged more than four incoming attacks per game, which is especially impressive considering that he frequently was dead by turn 150. The other leaders were drawn to him like a shark to blood in the water, and as a result he was the first to die on thirteen different occassions. In a typical game, the first noteworthy event was for two or more leaders to pile on Ramesses and partition his territory, after which the rest of the game could commence. There was usually nothing that Ramesses could do when faced with so many attacks; he fought the best that he could, sometimes holding out against multiple foes for an impressively long time, but the weight of numbers would eventually prove too much, and so he was stuck with early exit after early exit.
Now, with that being said, this wasn’t a case like we’ve seen in other alternate histories, where a leader was regularly in a strong position before getting dogpiled and was solely done in by a bad diplomatic situation. Ramesses was almost always in the bottom half of the scoreboard exiting the landgrab phase, even before he got attacked, and never in a leading position. Even in the rare games where he managed to hold out and/or get ignored to avoid an early death, he never accomplished much of anything; there were always multiple leaders in front of him, and he never got out to any significant tech lead or took more than a couple of cities from a rival. His one second place finish saw him in third place for much of the game, protected by a Suryavarman who had become his best friend due to shared religion and favorite civic, before Sury killed the second-place Brennus in the lategame to allow Ramesses to backdoor second place. He had an outside chance to take another top two finish in Game 18 as mentioned before, but that was it, and his total lack of kills accurately reflected his failure to ever conquer significant amounts of territory. Essentially, if he hadn’t been constantly attacked in these games, it looks like he’d have performed more like Napoleon than like Peter, suggesting that he’s not a particularly strong AI even by the standards of the peaceful builders.
![[Image: G1-1.png]](https://i.ibb.co/PDjYPCy/G1-1.png)
Conclusion
The alternate histories showed that while the real Game 1’s result wasn’t the most likely one, it also wasn’t wildly improbable, and other than Sury’s total dominance, the overall game dynamics were typical for this map. Suryavarman won a decent number of alternate games, Brennus was as likely as anybody to take second place, and Ramesses was by far the most likely to die first. Even a Diplomatic victory had decent odds of occurring, coming up three more times in these games. The most unusual thing about the real game was that it was quite quick and peaceful – every single one of the twenty alternate games lasted longer and saw more wars declared than the real thing. The quick finish was likely due mainly to Suryavarman’s unusual strength, while the low war count was partially due to the quick finish and partially due to Peter and Brennus being more docile than normal. The real loser in this game was Peter, who got consigned to the Wildcard despite being the best leader in the alternate histories, but when he voted himself out of a playoff spot in the real thing, you can’t feel too bad for him! Overall it was quite fun to look at an original game from the perspective of nearly ten years later, enough so that I kept going through these games and have now done nearly four more...
At least I called Peter right - poor guy has just had no luck in Livestream games, he was also meant to win S4 game and S5. 
Very good write up, and interesting results. I was surprised by Peter's strength, and also by Napoloeon not being more effective.