Civ4 AI Survivor 2: The AI-stralian Outback

[Sullla]

Current Links

Website Page for AI Survivor Season Two

Livestream (Twitch)

Game One

Game Two

Game Three

Game Four

Game Five

Game Six

Game Seven

Game Eight

Wildcard Game

Playoff Game One

Playoff Game Two

Playoff Game Three

Next Game: Championship Game, tentatively scheduled for Saturday, May 30 starting around roughly 12:00pm EST

Current Bracket and Standings

Leader Draw and Map Selection

Prediction Contest Submission Form

Screenshot:

Original Post

Civ4 AI Survivor will be back again soon, ready to launch another tournament for 2015! There are plenty of questions to be answered as the AIs take to the Australian Outback for the second season. Can Justinian defend the AI crown in another repeat performance? What will fan favorites like Mansa Musa, Catherine, and Zara Yacob be up to this time? Who will win the pungent incense award for most suicidal AI? All this and more, coming soon!

Here's my current thought process. This is still in the planning stages, so feel free to make suggestions.

* I'd like to start the Survivor competition in about two weeks. I have an off day from work on Friday February 20, so I'm thinking perhaps on that day. This gives us a chance to do a less ragged start than last year (when I was essentially making it up as I went along).

* Games this year will be Livestreamed on my Twitch channel. This was requested by several folks last year, you'll have the chance to see these AI games play out in real time. There will not be written reports this year. I'm sorry about that; I think the written reports are better, personally, but I'll never have the time to do 13 full write-ups again while working full time. Apologies.

* Plan is to do one game per week. That should provide enough time to do the prediction contest and watch the weekly AI game. Remember, you don't have to watch live - everything gets permanently saved on my Twitch page.

* The tournament settings are the same as last time, I thought the format worked very well. AIs are randomly drawn into 8 games, each with either six AIs or seven AIs. Top two leaders advance to the playoffs, any surviving leaders get tossed into the Wildcard game. Then three playoff games feed into one championship game. Same as last year.

* More specific game settings: Deity AI, Standard size, Arid Climate (to match the season theme), Standard/Low sea, Normal speed, No Tech Trading, No Vassals, No Events, Aggressive AI.

Prediction Contest

The prediction Contest is back! And now even better, since Sullla has gotten much better at using Excel in the last year. We're making predictions in the following categories:

Winning Leader (5 points)
Runner Up Leader (5 points)
First to Die (5 points)
Victory Type (3 points)
Victory Date (10 points for exact, 5 points within 10 turns, 3 points within 25 turns, 1 point within 50 turns)

These are all returning categories. The one change here was to decrease the exact date bonus from 15 points to 10 points, since we had suggestions that that was a bit excessive. There's one new category this year:

Total Number of Wars (5 points for exact, 3 points within 2 wars, 1 point within 5 wars)

This is the replacement for the "Surviving Leaders" category, which turned out to be a bit of a dud. Someone suggested we guess the total number of wars instead, and that sounds like a lot more fun. Every time a war breaks out, some people will be gaining points and others losing points. Sounds like fun, especially when it's happening live on stream.

Logistics

*I think it might be a good idea to set up a Google docs spreadsheet to make prediction contest entries easier. (I'll also accept them in this forum thread too.) Anyone have some advice on the best way to do that?

* I'd like to do the random leader drawing and the map creation for the first game sometime this upcoming weekend, live on stream. I'll post in this thread when that happens.

* Here's a link to my Excel file with some sample data for examples. The workload should be vastly easier now that I know how to automate everything:

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ4/Surviv...vivor2.xls

* Any other suggestions for things that I'm missing (?)

This forum's been a bit quiet lately. Let's see if we can generate some more activity.

[Speaker]

I think a Google Form (which links to a spreadsheet) would be easiest. It would require the least work for you. I can set it up for you, if you want.

[Dp101]

Thanks for doing this again, the last one was a lot of fun.

[TheHumanHydra]

This is a thing? Yesssss ...

[Westbrook]

Very excited for this tournament!!! Thanks for running it again, Sullla! The setup plans look good. I'd vote for map starts that keep any civs from getting placed in the middle. It happened a few times last year, and though it created some interesting dynamics, it made the game much tougher for those leaders. I will really miss your excellent writeups, but I totally understand the time commitment of jobs (I'm about to finish up my last year of medical residency in South Bend). I think watching the streams will have its own benefits. Can't wait! I'd love to put my money on Mansa some of these games, but after what he did in the last championship, I'm wary. What made him fail to expand? Did he have Settlers that got beat to spots, or did he just completely drop the ball? At any rate, it was an awesome tournament to follow.

This weekend I had fun with my own little 4 way Emperor game on Lakes map, all civs random, playing as Suryavarman against Willem, Hatty, and Saladin. Willem started to run away from the game in the Dark Ages, also crowding me out on my NW when I expanded his direction to grab elephants. At 5 cities my maintenance costs were so high, I'm embarrassed to admit that at one point I had to drop down to 10% science and was still at negative income; obviously I started to fall behind in tech. Luckily for me, I made good friends with the Egyptians and Arabs who both loved Hinduism; Hatty even gave me a free tech after I converted. Willem was Buddhist, so when his borders started to press into mine and he climbed ahead in score, it was an easy choice. Took out 3 of his cities including Amsterdam with Ballista Elephants, Axes, and Cats, then signed peace when he threw in Feudalism. I was elected Apostolic Palace winner less than 10 turns later thanks my large population and Hatty's support, and I gladly took the win since I now had a commanding lead, lots of new territory, and the best part of the game (early expansion) was complete. It was a good combination of diplomacy and military management that won it for me, even though I mishandled my economy big time!

Sorry to go a little off topic before the Tournament, but Sullla did you ever try Endless Space? By the same developers as Endless Dungeon. I had a lot of fun with it the last few weeks after a $6 sale purchase. The game has an interesting tech tree, with a focus on economic development and military production. Battles aren't tactical; it's all about how you build your fleets. Diplomacy had a pretty good feel to it; the developers tell you exactly why you're hated or liked. End game screens are much better than original Civ5 I definitely got the "just one more turn" feeling on multiple occasions. Obviously you're super busy right now, but I'd love to see your thoughts on the economics of the game some day.

[Tyrmith]

Yeah! looking forward to this! Somehow I doubt I will have the rediculous luck I had in guessing last year though

[Tasunke]

Hmm ....

Montezuma wins, Shaka is the first to die, 7 wars, Cultural Victory ... OH YEAH!!!


(can someone link to the 1st one?)

[Jowy]

Prediction: Isabella wins, Monty falls in a fire, Tokugawa smuggles in beef jerky.

[Old Harry]

Thanks Sullla, can't wait to watch this.

If you're still tweaking settings - one thing I suggested at the end of last year's tournament was that the bonuses the AI's get at Deity (extra settlers especially) makes it feel like they're playing a different game to us. Monarch or Emperor would be a bit easier to relate to, but might mean more mashing of end turn for you, so it's understandable if you like the higher difficulty setting.

Also I'd vote for a balanced map even if its just the same one for every game - I'm interested in the AI personalities rather than the vagaries of the map script.

[Brian Shanahan]

I was just wondering, could I run two sets of predictions, one of my own choices, and the second picking the choices from the rng at random.org?

I'd love to do a random pick from the start this time, just to benchmark the game's randomness, but I'd also like to have my own chance to get everything wrong.