AI Survivor - Season Four and Five Reruns

[Bobchillingworth]

I appreciate the write-ups, but I'll likely skip ones more than a few sentences long due to the time to read them all compounding over 20 iterations.

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

By all means, if you and others find all the details to be interesting, you can keep them around. I do want to know the general gist of how the results came to pass, but for these, I personally don't have a lot of interest in all the nitty-gritty details - what wars were declared and the city counts at those times, what who was researching when, ETAs when culture slide was turned on, etc. That's simply more detail than I really am interested in - the big war declarations and results, any particularly wacky happenings, and how the winner won would probably constitute the stuff that appeals to me.

But you certainly don't need to be bound by my preferences, especially if you're noting all the stuff down anyway. I can always skip extra details if I want to.

[Kuro]

I'm adding in that I appreciate the writeups, they have some valuable information in them and were rather fun to read (though I probably prefer the tone of the normal Survivor writeups). I particularly like seeing who fights who, as I like to see how that that turns out (I really wanna see how often Louis and Pacal war when we get to that for example).

[Sullla]

So I had to know: was Asoka winning last week's playoff game a fluke? The result was an early version of an alternate histories investigation for Playoff Game Two. Full details are at the following link but I'll toss out some teaser screenshots here: http://www.sullla.com/Civ4/civ4survivor5-11A.html





(Note : "A" column tracks the number of war declarations initiated by the AI, "D" the number of times the AI is declared upon, "F" the points for finish ranking, and "K" the number of kills.)



Thank you to Wyatan for providing the inspiration for this project.

[Dark Savant]

So Asoka was in fact the strongest contender to die, but even that's just a coin flip.

The hilarious conclusion I'm drawing from this is that yes, Augustus really is that inert. He's just chilling off in the corner so much of the time, doing okay but never winning.

[haphazard1]

Very interesting results, Sullla. Thanks for doing these alternate games and posting about them.

It is nice to have some theories confirmed after the actual Playoff Game Two went in a very unexpected (for most of us, at least!) direction.

[Ramkhamhaeng]

An other way to do this multiple simulations would be the usage of the Pitboss mode. After the game a replay file will be generated which can be viewed over the hall of fame. The war declarations etc. can also be found in the logs.

Problematic is just the space launch bug of vanilla BTS.
Code for Bugfix:

Nesting of AddLaunch() in CvPlayer.cpp

Code:

  if ( GC.IsGraphicsInitialized()){
    gDLL->getEngineIFace()->AddLaunch(getID());
  }

[Wyatan]

I actually find those results pretty surprising.

The prediction I was the least confident with was Caesar winning. I evaluated his odds at about 40%. And apparently, that was spot on.
I was a lot more confident about Suryavarman being the runner-up: I would have said about 50-60%. And that was just wrong.
I was dead certain about Asoka FTD chance being 85%+. And the actual odds were much lower.
Oh well.

At least it provides one more very anecdotal piece of evidence for my growing theory that, very broadly speaking, leaders who can plot at pleased make the best candidates for the win (they need to be cutthroat and to be able to exploit all opportunities), while leaders who can't make the best candidates for second place (the ability to stay under the radar is particularly relevant in that case).

I was away last week-end, and this week's been a tad more busy than usual, so I'll publish Game 3 results later than usual (end of the week-end at best).

@Ram,
Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm actually watching the games.
I guess that if I were only interested in extracting statistics, I'd try and find a way to fully automatize the process.

[Wyatan]

Season 4, Game 3 (1/3)

This is a game which saw an ultra-dominant Julius Caesar win an early victory.
Which is something he'd already accomplished quite a few times, as he's one of the best performing AIs in AI Survivor.
But the way he did was extremely unusual: instead of going on a romp and conquering the world with his legions, he stayed at peace thoughout, building up to an overwhelming technological lead before blitzkrieging a rival in the late game, and achieving a super early spaceship victory.
It basically felt like Caesar had hired Mansa Musa to oversee his civilization, while he retired to a country resort to play wargaming boardgames with a few friends.

Was Caesar supposed to be that dominant on this map?
Was there something in this game composition that caused him to renounce his warmongering ways, or was that a complete fluke?

Let's see:

   
(see the following posts for the game writeups)

   

Now, before I comment on each leader's performance, I would like to start with a general observation.
If you split these results into two groups, games 1-9 on the one hand, games 10-20 on the other hand, you get two different stories.

The first tells us that:
- Joao, Shaka and Frederick are tied for runner-up position.
- De Gaulle wins once, but dies every single time aside from that.
- Suleiman is the grand favourite for first to die (5 out of 9), who gets dogpiled right away without taking any active role in the game (he declares 3 wars while being declared upon 28 times, and scores a perfect 0 point).
- Shaka has a better than average chance of making it to the finish line (5 out of 9), and performs decently (33% runner-up finishes, average 1 kill / game).

The second story tells us that:
- De Gaulle is the grand favourite for runner-up position (7 out of 11), with Frederick a distant second (3 out of 11).
- Joao is the favourite for first to die, albeit a weak one (4 out of 11).
- Suleiman almost always dies (10 out of 11), but not first (1 out of 11 only), and not without putting up a fight (12 wars declared, 4 kills).
- Shaka performs very poorly, with not a single placed finish, averaging 0.5 kill per game only, dying 10 times out of 11, and being the second most likely candidate for first to die (3 out of 11).

I think this a reminder that 20 games remains a small sample, not exempt from streaky runs or outlier results.
It's still a far cry better than a sample of one, though, and I believe it's enough to see the main scenarios emerge.
But with each game accounting for 5% of the total results, this experiment only provides a coarse-grained picture.


Julius Caesar

He absolutely, completely, utterly dominated the game: 17 wins out of 20 games. And one of his only 3 losses was an absurd diplomatic loss, 5 turns before his ship would have landed.
So, yeah.
I don't expect to witness such a performance level in any other game. Certainly not in any Season 5 game. Maybe Huyna Capac's Season 4 opening round game? But then again, Huyna Capac does throw games at times... And with his fondness for a Cultural victory, I can't see him netting enough kills to beat Caesar's incredible 119 score.

Here, in nearly every game, Caesar would quickly become the dominant economic and military leader, and eat up his opponents one by one until he reached Domination.
So, how to explain that?

For starters, Caesar has proven over the various Seasons of AI Survivor that he's a strong leader, belonging in the top tier.
Conversely, he wasn't exactly facing a tough opposition in this game. For instance, there was no Financial, or simply strong economy leader to challenge him on that account. There was fearsome Shaka to contest his military supremacy... but the net result is that Shaka's lost quite a few credibility points.
But that's not enough. The map, obviously, played a very large role.
Starting with that monstrous capital for a Roman civ: three sea food ressources, two silver hills, when Rome's starting techs are Fishing and Mining? Disgusting.
But that's not all. Caesar would settle his next two cities along the river flowing from the northeast. A very rich and fertile river valley that would net him Ivory and Gems, in addition to being perfect cottage terrain.
Ivory, Silver, Gems: that's three early Happiness ressources, when the AI's early growth is usually stunted by lack of Happiness ressources. And he even had Furs and Gold in the tundra to his south/southwest!
And then, there was the neighbourhood: ultra-pacifist and weak Frederick, Joao who was kept busy by the Zulu menace to his north, and Suleiman who was an aggression magnet and thus unlikely to cause trouble.

So, a perfect capital, a rich core, an abundance of early ressources, and non-threatening neighbours? A perfect setup, which Caesar's AI was competent enough to fully exploit. He could build up in peace, and then strike whenever he deemed he was ready.
Just look at the stats. He was only attacked 11 times, but he initiated 60 wars, with a deadly efficiency: more than half of these wars ended up in him delivering a killing blow. He scored by himself exactly as many kills as all the other AIs combined!

Veni, Vidi, Vici indeed.


Suleiman

So, the "Silly man" as players call him, somehow ended up as a seeded leader in that game.
Strong AI then?
Well, not here, at any rate: if Caesar's achieved a high score that will be very hard to beat, Suleiman's low score is almost as impressive.
He never finished placed. Not once. He died in 85% of the games, and the only three times he survived, it was with a coupla tundra cities about to fall when the game suddenly ended. On average, he's launched an attack once every two games, while suffering an attack three times per game. He's tied with Joao as the leader who was first-to-die the most often.

Is he then just a bad leader who lucked himself into a few previous good games? Maybe.
But mainly, I think that here he was set up for failure.

His land was good. Nothing spectacular, but fertile terrain, a corn ressource at his capital to match his Agriculture starting tech. His ressources were mainly Calendar ressources, so came into play a bit late. His Copper was at risk of getting snagged by De Gaulle (which happened quite a few times), but he had Iron.
The terrain doesn't explain his spectacular failure.

His position does, though.
He was in the middle of the map, bordering every single other AI.
Although Imperialistic himself, he had two Imperialistic neighbours to his West (Joao, Caesar), meaning he got to settle very little of his western lands (Caesar invariably settling the gems southwest of Istanbul, a spot that should have been Ottoman), and expanded instead to the east, creating a large and tense border with France.
No AI on this map started with Mysticism, which meant Suleiman got to found Islam nearly every time. And that turned out to be bad for him: not only did it slow his start, but it made him early enemies and unreliable friends.
For instance, De Gaulle, when he didn't found a religion himself, would more often than not pick up Islam. But the huge border tension between them cancelled any benefit from that, and they still ended up fighting one another. Furthermore, Caesar very often found his own religion, and as the neighbouring founder of a different creed, Suleiman ended up with a huge target painted on his back.
Not even mentioning that bordering Shaka ensures an early aggression.

Suleiman's setup was inviting dogpiles, and they sure kept coming.


De Gaulle

The French leader finishes with the second highest score... waaay below Caesar's.
He narrowly beats Frederick as the runner-up favourite (see the game 20 report for how that came to pass) with 7 second places to Frederick's 6. He won one of the rare games Caesar didn't.
No need to focus on his stats, though: they're not telling the whole story.

And that story is that he was by far the best performer on this map, after Caesar of course.
Game after game, De Gaulle would expand, peacefully and/or militarily, into a strong second position... only to run afoul of the outworldly Caesar.
In the first half of my tests, that happened in the mid game, hence De Gaulle's abysmal survival rate.
The later tests saw the confrontation between the game leaders move to the end game, and saw De Gaulle's final standings reflect more accurately his games.

De Gaulle, whose AI designer's dubious Dubya views about France are made manifest, is meant to be a sneaky snaky cowardly villain: he's the AI with the highest chance for joining an ongoing war, and with the lowest capitulation threshold. And a peaceweight of zero.
With Vassal States disabled, capitulation means nothing in AI Survivor. The propensity for fighting opportunistic wars, on the other hand, should ironically make De Gaulle a strong contender in the competition. And that's what happened in the one game he utterly dominated (Season 3, Game 8).
But ultimately, he's not that good of an AI. Mid-tier? Hence his lackluster results so far, with the occasional moment of brilliance.

Here there are two things to try and explain: his strong performance, and his even stronger enmity with Caesar.

The map explains the first aspect.
His terrain was good, with no lack of early Happiness ressources nor of metals, and he had room to expand, which he did. He almost consistently grew to the highest peaceful city count of all AIs.
He was neighbouring Frederick, which he would often attack, but at a time of his choosing. And Suleiman, whose partitioning he would often partake into.
Alright, that explains how he usually got strong.

But he still died a lot, because Caesar hated him.
And that's where the peaceweight comes in.
Zero is bad. Not only in terms of "in-game moral alignment", but in terms in-game diplomatic position as well. Consider this: Caesar, the untouchable game leader, has a peaceweight of four. That's a 4-point differential with De Gaulle. Frederick, with a peaceweight of 8, is the only one matching that. So in that game, De Gaulle and Frederick were the two leaders Caesar was predisposed to dislike.
But Frederick, being Caesar's neighbour, usually picked up his religion. Which improved relations to the point where they opened borders and started trading. Which improved relations even more.
De Gaulle, on the other hand, being on the other side of the world, usually picked up a different religion. Which made relations worse. No open borders, no trades, no missionaries.
And that's how these two came to be "worst enemies" in nearly every game, with dire consequences for De Gaulle's survival.


Frederick

There's... not much to say about him?
Before the game started, he was the communauty's second favourite (behind the Zulu-bordering Portuguese) for first-to-die: with Caesar as a western neighbour, and peaceweight-zero De Gaulle to the north, it's understandable.
But while De Gaulle indeed often showed ill-intent towards Frederick, a Roman aggression failed to materialize most of the time (there were only two instances of that in 20 iterations of the game).
So Frederick was actually rarely the first-to-die, and on the contrary, he has the best survival rate of all the non-Caesar AIs.

His was a sheltered land, with a short border area (and lots of peaks) limiting tensions. He also found himself protected at times from De Gaulle by Ottoman or Roman culture.
Apart from the rare venture into far-away Zulu lands, he essentially stayed in his corner, waiting for one of the game leaders to come and claim his lands, or for the game to end. In the latter case, as the only unmauled civilization left standing beyond the leader (Caesar), he would often finish second, by default.

And that's the thing with AI Survivor. The first rule is to survive.
If you can't be the top dog, being an overlooked little mouse is a legit strategy.


Joao

Joao was the communauty's heavy favourite for first to die.
And they were not wrong: he's tied with Suleiman for that dubious honour.
He finished second three times, by dint of not being attacked by Caesar. He "won" once, by diplomacy. Although the game should have been Caesar's, that was a genuinely strong game on Joao's part. He got attacked twice as much as he attacked: standard Zulu neighbour fare.

Funnily enough, people seemed to think he would be conquered by Caesar. When Shaka was the issue. Joao was almost never the target of Caesar's first war declaration (Game 4 being an exception).
It may be a season 5 thing, but Joao's issue should have been very apparent: he's bordering Shaka... and he has no Copper ressource! And his single Iron is near the border, pillaging impi bait (not to mention that Joao was often the last civ to research Iron Working, which is very unusual for an AI lacking copper and having jungle to cut down).

That was Joao's story, really: when Shaka came calling early, Joao would die. But if Shaka exhausted himself first against Suleiman for instance, and let Joao become stronger, then Joao would often end up conquering the Zulu instead.
Another part of his story is that he can't plot at pleased, which led most of his rare military ventures to be ill-fated, across-the-map expeditions.

Joao's land was good (apart from the critical lack of metal), but it was in short supply. As an Imperialistic civilization, he would fill it up fast. In my game reports, I've often mentionned his expansion patterns, because they would somewhat shape the early game:
- His third city would either go up 5N 1W, on the coast, and make Shaka mad; or it would go 5E 2N, securing him horses and giving him a chance at not being Shaka's initial target.
- Depending on his settling pattern, Rome would get anywhere between 0 to 3 (4 in one particular case) cities on their border. So exactly how strong Rome came out of the early game largely depended on Joao.


Shaka

Shaka's a warmonger. The warmonger.
With Montezuma, he's a favourite amongst the AI Survivor crowds, because mayhem is his middle name.
Trouble with warmongers, they tend to do poorly: they exhaust themselves into early unfruitful wars, and drop into irrelevancy. But when the conditions are right, they do spectacularly well (cf. Season 5's Alexander opening round).

So where the conditions right here?
The results seem to speak for themselves: Shaka's managed a successful snowball exactly once. Out of twenty games.
Apart from that, he's managed a few second place finishes, but his survival rate is the second worst, after Suleiman's: he's made it alive out of 6 games only.
He's declared 54 wars for 13 kills only: Caesar's been twice as effective a killer.
I think that on average peace periods for Shaka were 5 turns long. Even when he was dead last in power, he would never stop to consolidate, he'd just jump back into battle.
Waaagh! He's not a Zulu, he's a Space Ork.

So, bad setup for him?
Alright, his starting land wasn't great: his capital didn't have ressources matching his techs, and the surrounding terrain was food- and commerce-poor. But he had all the strategic ressources in his immediate vicinity: Copper, Iron, Horses, Ivory, which is all he needed, right?
He did have the perfect neighbour in Joao, though: no copper, a single iron connected very late and eminently pillageable.
Shaka was actually set up for a textbook warmonger snowball: conquer a militarily weak but spoils-rich Joao, then move on to Suleiman, then keep going.

And he failed spectacularly. In Game 15 for instance, when Shaka attacked, all Joao had were warriors: he couldn't access his Horses, he hadn't researched Iron Working nor even Archery.
Sure, Shaka conquered him in the end, but that was a painstaking conquest which took 60 turns. When watching that, my thoughts were "This guy's no Alex".
I dont know why he was so bad. None of the forward-situated cities, including Lisbon, were on a hill either.
I know there's a stat determining how cautious a leader is with his units, with Napoleon for instance being an extreme for not caring about the odds. Maybe that's also the issue for Shaka? He kept throwing units away when he simply didn't have the numbers (for instance attacking with 4 units when there were 5 defenders), so maybe that's part of the issue for Shaka too?


   

At a glance, the game ran pretty much according to expectations:
- Caesar won.
- Joao was one the two tied leaders for first-to-die.
- The number of wars (10) fell right in the middle of the two most common results (9 and 11). (Although remember that without the AP in those reruns, this is the least reliable statistics.)
- The victory was an early one, as expected.
- Shaka as the runner-up was more unusual, but you can't get them all, now, can you?

There was one complete outlier result, though: the victory type, which was overwhelmingly likely (85%) to be Domination.
And that's a strong hint that the game was actually a complete fluke.
The closest I had to a scenario similar to the actual competition game was game 20: Caesar tech'd in peace for 200 turns... but then the hammer fell and he killed two opponents before fighting a last war for a Domination victory.
Mansa Musa's shadow was simply never felt.

So that game was an oddity: its outcome lined up with expectations, but its scenario was a complete one-off event.

   


(A side note if you want to try and run this game yourself: there was a peak at the southwestern tip of the land which isolated a tile (with Horses).
I forgot to remove that peak. I noticed it only in game 17 when I saw a barb city there. From then on, I replace the peak tile with a hill tile.
It had little impact on the games: if anything it hurt Caesar a bit, since without the peak, he had one more city site available. He didn't seem to care.
That said, having a reachable barb city spawn there ended up having a strong impact on the way game 19 unfolded...)

[Wyatan]

Season 4, Game 3, continued (2/3)

Game 1
Shaka's attack on Portugal backfires horribly as Germany and Rome side with Portugal. Caesar annexes most of the former Zulu lands.
France rises to prominence by carving up the Ottomans before falling into oblivion because Caesar said so.
Caesar honours his vanquished foe by taking up their Ottoman-carving tradition and achieves Domination.

An interesting consequence of having no civilization starting with Mysticism is that they all research it after the initial worker techs, since the early religions are still up for grabs (Note: this was actually an outlier).
So no AI with no mysticism on turn 100 in this one.
Caesar and Shaka get the early religions this time.

Turn 60: De Gaulle and Joao on 6 cities; Caesar, Suleiman and Shaka on 4 cities; Frederick on 3 cities
Turn 83: Shaka (6 cities) declares on Joao (8 cities, no metal but researching Iron Working)
Turn 100: Caesar is the tech leader, De Gaulle the game leader, and Frederick... has completely botched his game. Sitting at 4 cities, and already firmly boxed in.

Turn 115: Caesar has added the Monotheism, Code of Laws, and Theology religions to his collection.
He's also converted everyone but Shaka to his Hinduism religion.
He declares on Shaka.
Turn 128: De Gaulle declares on Suleiman, Ankara falls right away. De Gaulle also about to get the Philosophy religion.
Turn 131: Frederick joins the anti-Shaka coalition.

Turn 150: Shaka's dying. He's lost his four core cities to Rome, he's down to 3 secondary cities remaining.
De Gaulle and Suleiman have made peace, Ankara still French.
Rome has taken the lead, France is second.
Oh, and Rome picked the Divine Right religion. That makes it five.
Turn 153: Shaka's dead. Rome got 6 cities, Germany 1, Portugal none.
Rome in Free Religion now (Shwedigon Paya). Still pleased with everyone, except De Gaulle (cautious).

Turn 163: Suleiman declares on De Gaulle.
Turn 177: Edirne has fallen, Istanbul under siege, Suleiman last in power.
Caesar declares on De Gaulle.

Turn 194: The French possessions in Turkey have been returned to their original owner.
Roman rifles and cavalries are carving up France.
France has Gunpowder and is about to get Military Tradition, but is a long way from Rifling.
At least they got peace with Suleiman, but it doesn't really seem to matter.
Joao got Liberalism since no one else was interested.

Turn 214: The feeding frenzy is on. Frederick and Suleiman have declared.
Turn 233: How the mighty have fallen. France, who was the early game leader, and then the second major power, far above the rest of the field, is no more.
The Ottomans sniped two cities, Rome got all the rest.
Joao's the tech leader, but Rome's 24 cities should overtake his 9 cities soon enough.
Only pleased and friendly faces around, but Rome's merely pleased with everyone.
No one's safe.

Turn 258: Suleiman's drawn the short straw. He loses three cities on the first turn of the war.

Turn 265: Rome wins a domination victory.
Suleiman barely survives.
Amazingly, Frederick, who stayed on 5 cities all game, made it through.

   

Game 2
Shaka initiates the dogpile on Suleiman, Frederick and Caesar join in.
De Gaulle attacks Germany while its armies are away. Shaka and Caesar like the idea and attack De Gaulle.
Caesar performs a culling at Germany's expense.
Shaka and Joao fight it out for second place, Shaka ends on top as Caesar gets ready to conquer Alpha Centauri.
(Note: Caesar was at 62% land area, which would have secured him a Domination win under Season 4 rules.)

This time, Sumeiman went right out of the bat for Meditation (Islam), while Caesar went Polytheism (Hinduism) after a Hunting detour.
Contrary to the first game, delayed Mysticism is in play for all other civs. And… Suleiman as first to die?
De Gaulle plants a super aggresive fourth city (Rheims), on the copper hill 4 tiles east of Istanbul.

Turn 78: Caesar (44 bpt) and De Gaulle (39 bpt) are the tech leaders. Shaka doesn't believe in that science thing (3 bpt).
De Gaulle: 9 cities (no religion)
Caesar: 8 cities (Hindu)
Shaka: 7 cities (Hindu)
Joao: 6 cities (Hindu)
Suleiman: 5 cities (Muslim)
Frederick: 4 cities (Hindu)
Shaka declares on Suleiman, captures Edirne (Islam Holy City) on turn 80 and converts to Islam right away.

Turn 86: De Gaulle ends the Rheims experiment, gifting away the city to the Ottomans (briefly: it is razed by the Zulu 4 turns later. Amazingly, it never grew to size 2).
Turn 88: De Gaulle converts to Islam. It's North (Islam) vs South (Hinduism) now.

Turn 100: Caesar is now way ahead in research (113 bpt vs Joao's 45 bpt) and in score (1350 vs De Gaulle's 810).

Turn 121: Shaka rejoins the Hinduist fold. His offensive against Suleiman has been stalling.

Turn 135: Frederick joins forces with Shaka, captures Bursa.
Turn 140: Caesar joins the dogpile.
Turn 141: De Gaulle declares on Frederick.
Turn 147: Frederick loses Hamburg, but slips in and captures Istanbul which was besieged by the Romans.
Turn 155: Frederick recaptures Hamburg, but loses Berlin. Suleiman is down to 1 city.
Joao declares on De Gaulle.
Turn 160: Suleiman dies. Shaka got 3 cities, Frederick 2, Caesar 1.
Caesar's pleased or friendly with everyone, except De Gaulle he's annoyed (-5) with...

Turn 165: Shaka declares on De Gaulle and sends a strong message by razing the barbarian city of Gaul.
Frederick recaptures Berlin and signs peace.

Turn 194: The war horn sounds. Julius (who's now fielding rifles) took his own sweet time, didn't he?
Oh wait. It's not Julius. Frederick's back into the fray.
Turn 196: OK, now, it's Julius. Au revoir, De Gaulle.

Turn 222: France is relegated to history books.
Julius is far ahead, but friendly with everyone. Shaka's only pleased with everyone, so let's hope Shaka shakes things up.
Turn 226: Scratch that. Julius goes Free Religion, drops to pleased with everyone.
Turn 230:
Julius, 16 cities, 1732 bpt, researching Rocketry, is 16 techs ahead of Joao
Joao, 9 cities, 1064 bpt
Shaka, 13 cities, 132(!!) bpt
Frederick, 10 cities, 425 bpt
Turn 236: Shaka converts to Islam.

Turn 260: While shaving, Frederick clumsily drops the mirror he was using. It shatters.
Julius and Shaka declare. Germany shatters.
Turn 268: Germany's no more. Julius at 56% land area.

Turn 285: Rome has 2 legendary cities, is 3 techs away from launch, controls 60% land area.
Shaka is a mere 60 points ahead of Joao on the scoreboard, he decides to force the issue: Shaka declares on Joao.
Shaka has twice Joao's units, he has Rifles, but no cavs (researching military Tradition, though), while Joao has Machine Guns.

Turn 295: Caesar launches.
Shaka has captured two Portuguese cities, cementing his second position with a 450-point lead over Joao.
Roman culture fills in the gaps left by the disappearing Portuguese culture: Caesar at 62% land area.

Turn 305: Caesar wins a spaceship victory.
Note that if the second observer civ had been in place, Caesar would have won by Domination since it lowers to Domination threshold to 62% land area.

   

Game 3
Shaka and Joao fight into a stalemate.
De Gaulle and Suleiman fight into a stalemate.
They decide to swap fights, just in case, and it works better indeed: France conquers Portugal and Shaka cheers along as Caesar conquers Suleiman.
Then the top dogs have at it while the underdogs fight for the scraps.
Top dog winner: Caesar
Underdog winner: Frederick

Suleiman goes straight for Polytheism (Islam). Joao gets the Meditation religion (Christianity) a bit later, while Frederick and Caesar were on Mysticism, which leaves Shaka and De Gaulle with no Mysticism.

Turn 54: Caesar, currently Muslim, founds the Monotheism religion (Taoism). Will he convert?
Turn 67: Yep. With three major religions in play, the religious and diplomatic landscape for this game should play out differently than for the previous two games, then.
Still no Mysticism for De Gaulle and Shaka, by the way.

Turn 70: Shaka (7 cities) declares on Joao (6 cities). Shaka is at 3(!!) beakers per turn.
Joao has no copper, is slowly researching Iron Working (12 turns to go), his only Iron tile is currently farmed and not roaded. That's bad?

Turn 91: Joao's lost a border city, but Shaka's wasted his main stack attacking into the 60% cultural defenses of Lisbon, from across a river.
Joao's been able to connect his Iron, but it gets disconnected by roving impis.
Shaka has a new stack poised to renew the assault on the Portuguese capital, this time not attacking from across the river, but Joao's piled enough archers in the city that it should hold.
Meanwhile, De Gaulle (8 cities, Taoist) declares on a Suleiman who's expanded better this game (8 cities, Muslim).

Turn 100: Caesar (7 cities, 145 bpt) is crushing the field in research (second best is Frederick: 5 cities, 62 bpt).
As expected, Shaka's attack got nowhere. He's now fielding swords, but is a long way away from catapults (no writing yet).
Joao's reconnected his Iron, but Construction is very distant for him too (researching Writing).
The French and Ottomans seem evenly matched (1 city changing hands from both sides).
Toist missionaries busy at work everywhere.

Turn 120: As both are about to discover Construction, Shaka and Joao agree to peace.
Turn 126: De Gaulle and Suleiman follow suit. De Gaulle gains one city in the peace treaty.
Caesar's converted Shaka, De Gaulle, and Frederick to Taoism. He's the game leader, but is less dominant than in the previous two games.
Turn 127: Shaka declares on Suleiman.

Turn 143: Caesar declares on Suleiman.
Turn 144: He convinces Joao to declare on Shaka, so that he gets all the spoils from the Ottomans.
Turn 150: De Gaulle declares on Joao.
Caesar has already captured two Ottoman cities... their two northermost cities??
Turn 163: Caesar's Northern Legion accomplishes its true mission. Ghuzz (barbarians) is razed in the Arctic (Seriously, he diverted half his army to go after a barbarian city beyond France's borders :weed.

Turn 182: France completes their conquest of Portugal. The Zulu got nothing, France got all five cities.
Turn 186: Scratch that, De Gaulle gifts Coimbra to Rome.
Turn 192: Caesar's stratagem worked. Every single Ottoman city went to Rome.
Shaka is getting the feeling that something went horribly wrong.

Turn 206: As usual, De Gaulle has played a good game and is in a strong second position behind Caesar.
As usual, it all comes crashing down as Caesar declares on him.
It should be noted that at that point, 7-city Frederick is pulling slightly more beakers (~800 vs ~700) than 15-city Caesar. It won't last as Caesar's reasearch is ramping up, but it explains why Frederick is way ahead (over 500 points) of 9-city Shaka on the scoreboard.
Turn 216: Shaka disagrees with those rankings. He declares on Frederick.
The guys putting up those rankings may know their job, though: Shaka's medieval armies don't fare too well when pitted against German infantries.
Shaka's offensive is repulsed, and he starts losing core cities.

Turn 275: Caesar's capture of the last French city puts him over the limit. He wins by Domination at the end of the interturn.

   

Game 4
De Gaulle launches an early conquest of the Ottomans while Shaka's foray into Portugal also becomes a frank success when Caesar joins in.
The Roman Church is just that: Roman. No one else likes it. Tired of the sermons, Shaka and De Gaulle head for Rome to reform it.
Then they also reform Frederick.
Finally, just for fun, they run an experiment by pitting Zulu hordes of riflemen and cavalries against outnumbered French tanks and infantries.
Quality is a quality of its own: the French win.

Early religions go to Suleiman (Islam) and Caesar (Confucianism).
Aggressive 4th city by Caesar: Corn + Dye + Iron spot northwest of the gems.

Turn 66: De Gaulle (7 cities) declares on Suleiman (5 cities, no metal).
Turn 80: Suleiman already down 2 cities.
Shaka declares on Joao. Guimaraes, Joao's 3rd city, planted midway between Lisbon and Ulundi, at the Cows + Fish + Gems spot, seems to cause extra tension game after game, and Shaka always ends up capturing it. As is the case here, on the first turn of the war.
De Gaulle the only one following Julius's religion. All the others are Muslim.
Turn 90: Istanbul falls. De Gaulle converts to Islam. Julius is the religious pariah at this point.

Turn 113: Julius declares on Joao who's already lost two cities to Shaka.
Turn 121: Suleiman is dead.
De Gaulle (12 cities, 1745 pts) is the game leader, followed by Caesar (8 cities, 1450 pts), then Frederick (7 cities, 771 pts).
Turn 132: Joao dead too. Caesar (9 cities) only got one city, Shaka (12 cities) got the rest.

Turn 139: Bells heard tolling in Rome. De Gaulle (13 cities, 195 units) and Shaka (14 cities, 95 units) make their move against Caesar (9 cities, 90 units).
Turn 144: Caesar buys Frederick (8 cities, 58 units) against Shaka. Beggars can't be chosers, I guess.
Frederick does capture a coupla Zulu cities, then gives on back for peace.

Turn 192: Mighty Rome has fallen. De Gaulle (17 cities) is the clear game leader, with three times Shaka's (18 cities) research power, but Shaka's power is now matching his.
Turn 195: Shaka declares on Frederick. The guy never pauses.
Turn 209: De Gaulle piles in.
He captures a coupla cities, then peaces out.
Turn 240: And then there were two.
De Gaulle has researched Assembly Line, Combustion, Electricity... and still no Rifling.
Considering that Shaka's only pleased with him, he might come to regret it...

Turn 266: And there we go... But Shaka may have waited too long: De Gaulle (387 units) has tanks and factories, while Shaka (503 units) is still on cavs and rifles.
Turn 272: Yup. De Gaulle, 323 units, Shaka, 226 units. Ouchie...
Turn 276: De Gaulle has mechs now, while Shaka still doesn't have infrantries.

Turn 280: De Gaulle wins a Domination Victory.

   

Game 5
Caesar has second thoughts about Deity's free settler. Barbarians provide him with peace of mind by deleting his 3rd settler.
Caesar's mishap propels Suleiman into a position he's not comfortable with: game leader.
His discomfort shows as he gets dismantled by the Zulus, the French, and the Romans. Especially the Romans: they've hired Joao to distract Shaka and Frederick to distract De Gaulle so that they get the Ottoman lands for themselves.
De Gaulle and Caesar are best buds now. Until Caesar decides he wants De Gaulle dead, that is.
And what Caesar wants, Caesar gets.
Shaka kills Joao while being killed by Frederick.
Caesar watches in amusement as his culture closes in on all those gaps left open.
Closer. Closer. Closer.
Now.

Turn 28: Just as Suleiman (Islam) and Shaka (Taoism) found the first religions (late: everyone went worker techs first), Caesar loses a settler (on its way to found the 3rd city at the gems spot southwest of Istanbul) to a very lucky barb warrior!
Turn 40: The replacement settler is too late (Rome busy with Stonehenge), Suleiman founds Bursa on that spot.
Turn 54: Caesar founds the Monotheism religion (Buddhism) and converts.

Turn 88: Shaka opens hostilities. He declares on the game leader, Suleiman.
Caesar's amazingly managed to rally everyone but Shaka and Suleiman to Buddha.
Turn 98: Caesar also declares on Suleiman, and draws first blood.
Stonehenge has provided a great prophet for his Shrine, already worth 17 gpt.
Suleiman is getting the upper hand on Shaka (60 vs 40 units, 1 Zulu city down already): will Caesar's intervention tip the balance?

Turn 107: Joao declares on Shaka. Zulus on their way out?
Turn 109: De Gaulle declares on Suleiman. While Shaka and Caesar are way lower than Suleiman in power, De Gaulle is his match. Could get ugly...
Turn 120: As Ankara's fallen to the French, Caesar captures Bursa. At last, that spot is his!

Turn 138: As the French enter Istanbul, Frederick declares on De Gaulle. Apparently, he doesn't subscribe to the notion of a Buddhist brotherhood...
The German stack captures Rouen, at the southern edge of France, then meets De Gaulle's main stack in French territory, and is slaughtered.
The Ottomans take advantage of the confusion to recapture Istanbul... which is retaken by Caesar, with the French army one turn away.
I think I get it: Caesar actually bought Frederick against De Gaulle to serve as a distraction while he gets the spoils from the Ottomans. To those who say the AI cannot do that, this is the second game's Caesar's done it!
And with that, for the first time in this game, Caesar takes the lead on the scoreboard.
Meanwhile, in the other war, Joao's offensive has petered out and his initial numerical advantage has melted. Peace is signed on turn 155 with no city changing hand.

Turn 164: Suleiman bows out. While the French were making all the early gains, Frederick's attack effectively blunted their efforts on the Ottoman front. Caesar gets 6 cities, De Gaulle 2 only.
The French need to make gains in Germany to stay competitive with the Romans.

Turn 170: Shaka wants revenge on the Portuguese.
Turn 180: Caesar is pleased with De Gaulle (+11), friendly with Joao (+7), pleased with Frederick (+7), cautious with Shaka (0).
Caesar declares on De Gaulle.
Some events are fated.

Turn 197: Lisbon falls. Portugal has no more resistance to offer to the Zulu hordes who converge on the remaining cities.

Turn 262: Twice-betrayed France exits the stage.
Thanks to Frederick's intervention who is now busy capturing Zulu core cities, Portugal is still hanging there, getting used to life as a city-state.
Frederick may have taken a risk in capturing the Zulus' Holy City, though: Shaka has converted to Buddhism, and Rome is now pleased with both Shaka (+8) and Frederick (+4)...

Turn 282: Caesar deprives Frederick of his first kill by culturally reaching the Domination threshold before the last two Zulu cities could fall.

   

Game 6
Caesar is a practiced Muslim-slayer. This time around, he decides to get to know them and their creed better, and to befriend Suleiman.
Shaka launches an early attack on Portugal... and succeeds.
De Gaulle launches an early attack on the Ottomans... and dies as Caesar comes to the rescue.
Emboldened, Shaka attacks Suleiman, and meets the same fate as De Gaulle, under the same circumstances.
Suleiman rumoured to have uttered "Et tu, Julie?" as Roman legions turn around and slaugter his troops.
Frederick sets up a good-luck charms business as the world bows to Roman domination.

Suleiman goes right out of the gate for Islam (Meditation). He then tries for Polytheism as well (:weed but De Gaulle beats him to it (Christianity).
Turn 43: Caesar discovers Iron Working when the rest of the world is still clueless about Bronze…
He also converts to Islam: Sully safe for now?
Turn 68: Shaka (4 cities) declares on Joao (7 cities, but no Iron Working, so no metal).
Shaka's lack of expansion has allowed Caesar to plant Ravenna way up North.
Turn 70: Guimaraes falls.
Suleiman founds Hinduism (Monotheism): is Julius going to actually remain Muslim?
De Gaulle is the score leader, but hasn't so far expanded as well as in previous games (still on 5 cities). This is something that seems to happen a lot: founding a religion seems to hurt expansion. Stonehenge build instead of settlers? Later worker techs really slowing down their start?

Turn 73: No surprise there, De Gaulle declares on Suleiman.
Turn 83: Caesar plants Arpinium between the Zulu and the Portuguese!
Turn 95: Was about to write that the Zulu offensive had stalled when Lisbon falls.
Caesar takes the score lead. De Gaulle still on a mere 5 cities.
Turn 114: ...and probably less very soon as Caesar declares.
The race is on between Joao and De Gaulle for first to die!
Turn 120: Caesar went straight for the jugular, Paris falls.
Shaka has converted to Christianity. A world at peace wouldn't be a Shaka world: with Suleiman and Caesar Muslims, and Shaka and Frederick Christians, peace shouldn't be long-lasting when the current wars are over.

Turn 135: Portugal has won the race.
Suleiman failed to capture any French city, but he gets Tours in a peace treaty.
Turn 146: Orléans, France's last and Holy city, falls.
Now, will Caesar convert to Christianity?

Turn 152: Caesar is now firmly in the lead, but Frederick's a surprising second and is actually the tech leader.
WWII starts as Shaka declares on Suleiman (surprise!).
Turn 155: And... Caesar joins the fray, defending his Muslim brother. Shaka'd better get Frederick involved...
Turn 194: ...but he didn't. Exit Shaka.

Turn 220: Frederick seen weeping as the war horn sounds.
Caesar declares on Suleiman.

The Ottoman empire just melts away. Caesar wins by domination on turn 255, with Suleiman exiled to a coupla tundra cities.

   

Game 7
Caesar conquers the Ottomans while Shaka cheers him up and Joao pokes him.
Caesar's tired of the poking and conquers Portugal.
De Gaulle is in the process of conquering Germany when Shaka attacks him.
De Gaulle is in the process of conquering Zululand when Caesar conquers him.

Suleiman once again goes straight for Islam (Polytheism this time). Caesar then wins the Meditation (Confucianism) race against Joao.
Calling it now: Suleiman FTD.

Turn 83: Suleiman, De Gaulle and Joao are Muslim. The others follow the teachings of Confucius.
Caesar's been a bit slower to expand (7 cities, still) and has let Portugal get the Ivory + Marble coastal spot North of Rome.
And... Shaka declares on Suleiman.
But peace is concluded after 20 turns with no tangible result.

Turn 108: Caesar declares on Suleiman, De Gaulle on Frederick.
Turn 118: Joao declares on Caesar. Not sure it's going to help Sully, though, because...
Turn 124: Rome captures Istanbul. Shaka renews hostilities with Suleiman.
Turn 126: Or maybe it does. Rome signs peace with the Ottomans. Portugal's in trouble now...
Turn 142: Portugal dodges a bullet by signing peace for the city of Evora which was about to falll to Rome anyway.
Germany is two cities down, France seems to be gaining momentum in their war (weird: France is not supposed to win wars against Germany).
Turn 150: Of course, that peace was very bad news for Suleiman, who is now pretty much gassed and see Roman legions moving across his border once again.
Germany loses Hamburg.
Turn 164: As Suleiman is down to two cities, and Frederick is down a capital, Joao redeclares on Caesar.
Turn 178: Well, it does changes things for Suleiman, actually. He's killed by Shaka, not Caesar.
Called it, by the way.

Turn 186: Shaka declares... on De Gaulle!
Essen, Hamburg fall to the French as Marseilles is captured by the Zulu.
The Germans seem pretty broken, though, while the French are significantly higher in power than the Zulu.
Turn 225: Rome completes the conquest of Portugal.
France is ignoring the last German cities for now, concentrating on the Zulu. France is clearly winning... but as the last Muslim civ in a Confucian world, it certainly has cause for worry.

Turn 239: De Gaulle, 19 cities, Shaka, 5 cities, Frederick, 3 cities. And France is about to get Rifling.
Rome, 19 cities. Roman cavs and infantries invade France: France, 17 cities, Rome, 21 cities.

Turn 259: Caesar shows the Germans how a blitzkrieg is done. De Gaulle dies in the interturn, Caesar wins a Domination victory.

   

Game 8
Shaka exhausts himself in pointless war, with nothing but a perfect kill snipe to show for it. Then he goes for one war too many and Portugal gets a sizable territorial upgrade.
Meanwhile, Caesar (mainly) and De Gaulle (a little) conquer the Ottomans.
Then De Gaulle is off to Germany and is offed by Caesar and Joao.
The two of them stay best buds but Caesar's bored: he builds a spaceship to find lands to conquer.

Yet again, Suleiman goes straight for Islam (Meditation). Right after that, De Gaulle goes Mysticism -> Polytheism and founds Christianity (turn 30).
At that point, all the other AIs have ignored Mysticism.

Turn 65: Caesar founds and converts to Judaism (Monotheism).
Joao has expanded unusually well, to 8 cities.
Turn 81: Shaka (Christian) declares on Suleiman.
Turn 88: De Gaulle piles in.
Turn 102: Shaka peaced out a few turns ago.
Frederick's been struggling: Caesar's able to plant Setia a mere 6 tiles away from Berlin.
Turn 108: Right as he starts winning against De Gaulle, Suleiman signs peace and gives away the city he's just captured.
Turn 113: Good thing Shaka's impis are fast movers, since he sends them across the map at Frederick.
Turn 118: Surprise! Caesar's legions enter Ottoman territory, bent on mayhem.
While the previous invasions saw Suleiman fight off opponents of the same power level, Caesar's armies are twice as numerous as Suleiman's.
Good luck, I guess?
Turn 123: Even impis get tired. Shaka is condescends to signing peace.
Caesar builds the Statue of Zeus. Suleiman knows how to counter its effects, though: he's going to fight exclusiveley inside his (shrinking) territory.
Turn 125: No rest for the wicked. Shaka (6 cities, 46 units) declares on Joao (8 cities, 63 units). You sure about that, bud?
Turn 127: De Gaulle is back for round 2.
Turn 147: As expected, Shaka's made no progress in his war, but to his credit neither did he lose any city. He signes peace.
If he wants to declare war on Suleiman for a 4th opponent in this game, he'd better hurry: only three Ottoman cities left.
Turn 152: Of course he was fast enough. Shaka declares on Ankara (yeah, that's all what's left of the Ottomans).
Turn 155: And... he snipes the kill !

Turn 163: Caesar (14 cities, 572 bpt) is, as usual, the game leader. Shaka (7 cities, 29 bpt) is dead last.
But he's Shaka. The war horns sound again. Off to Portugal this time.
Turn 175: De Gaulle, as usual too, is second behind Caesar. He tries to consolidate his position by invading a weak Frederick.
Turn 181: And as usual... Caesar will have none of that. His armies are off to Paris.
He actually was probably bought into the war since his stack is deep in his territory, far from the French border. De Gaulle thus manages to score the first city capture of the war: Istanbul (which must have flipped to Rome, missed that). But Rome has Rifles and Cavs... D'Artagnan and Co are going to be hard-pressed to contain that.

Turn 198: Ulundi falls. Yes, this time Shaka bit more than he could chew.
Turn 223: The curtain falls on Shaka. Joao scores his first kill.
Turn 230: Paris falls.
Turn 232: Joao piles in.
Turn 263: France is no more.
Portugal actually got more than its fair share of French cities, and is now in a strong second position: 23 cities to Caesar's 22, more units, but a full tech era behind.
They're both friendly to one another though, so this might be headed to space.
That said, spy shenaniggans plus a UN-enforced Free Religion dropping the shared religion bonus coud still make for a lively endgame.

Turn 315: Nope, Spaceship it is indeed.

   

Game 9
Shaka takes everyone by surprise when he invades Germany.
De Gaulle thinks it's a jolly good idea and the two of them carve up Germany.
Joao has squeezed Rome pretty hard and Caesar needs room. Suleiman's will do.
All that cosying up has established a solid relationship between Caesar and Joao, so when Shaka comes knocking at Portugal, Romans knock him down.
De Gaulle has failed to take heed, so when he has at Joao, Caesar beats him up too.
Every relationship has its ups and down, like when Caesar "borrows"" a few Portuguese cities for his "Domination" project.

Suleiman yet again goes straight for a religion. He wins the Meditation race against Shaka who then drops out and doesn't go for Polytheism. Caesar does, though, a bit later, and founds Buddhism, which pops in Cumae, not Antium.
Different religions, border tension between Caesar's Holy and both Suleiman's capital and Holy City... I got a feeling of where this is headed!
Joao settles aggressively towards Caesar, and founds Evora on the Marble + Ivory spot (that usually goes to Caesar) and Coimbra in the North at the Cow + double Dye spot, cutting off Caesar from any expansion in those directions.
Caesar is left with the Southern tundra and the East to expand, where the barbarian heavy presence makes him keep retreating his settlers. On turn 54, Joao is on 7 cities, while Caesar's still on 3...
Turn 57: Joao and De Gaulle convert to Buddhism, while Frederick already has. Suleiman is starting to feel exposed and very lonely...
Turn 86: Shaka has gone for Taoism, Caesar's minority religion. De Gaulle converts to Islam.

Turn 92: Caesar is out of room to expand. He goes to plan P(raetorians) and declares on Suleiman.
Turn 94: Shaka declares on... Frederick??
Turn 134: After an early capture of Konya, Caesar's been struggling to make any more progress against Suleiman. He finally punches through and captures Istanbul... then signs peace.
In the other war, Shaka's captured one German border city (Christian Holy Cityn though), but the logistics don't favour his campaign.
On the scoreboard, Caesar (9 cities) is ahead, De Gaulle (8 cities) is second. Sounds familiar?

Turn 136: De Gaulle invades Germany.
Turn 176: Joao is a surprising tech leader and he gets the Liberalism and Taj Mahal prizes.
De Gaulle had captured Munich right away, but it's taken him 40 turns to punch through and seize Hamburg.
Shaka has yet to capture another city.
On the power graph, Germany looks pretty done for, though.
Turn 190: Berlin falls to the French. Cologne and Essen have fallen to the Zulus. Frankfurt is the only German city still standing.
Turn 196: Suleiman declares on Frederick... one turn before Frankfurt falls to the Zulus.

Turn 198: Shaka declares on Caesar.
Let me get this straight: he concludes his war with Frederick on turn 196, starts plotting right away on the following turn, and declares on the very next turn? Geez.
Turns out that Caesar had signed a defensive pact with Joao some time before that: Joao declares on Shaka.
Turn 201: Both Suleiman and De Gaulle ask me to cancel deals with "the vile Romans". Could be bad for Rome as De Gaulle is the current military leader.
On the other hand, Caesar's only 7 turns away from Rifling...

Turn 211: De Gaulle declares on Caesar, as Frankfurt's the only remaining Zulu possession in former Germany.
Turn 224: De Gaulle signs peace. That was a short war. But now Caesar's top in power.

Turn 245: Just as Caesar kills off Shaka, De Gaulle declares on Joao.
And apparently Joao immediately buys in an ally, because: Caesar declares on De Gaulle.
De Gaulle could have made it work against Joao: he was at a tech disadvantage (rifles vs infantries), but had twice Joao's numbers. But Caesar has both the tech and numerical advantages on him. So... it goes as badly as you'd expect.
De Gaulle exits the game on turn 299, with Rome getting the kill and most of the spoils.
Caesar has now taken an overwhelming lead in territory and military and teching power.

Turn 316: Remember Suleiman? He's amazingly still in there. Not for long, though, as Joao declares on him, followed on the next turn by Caesar.
Turn 319: Not for long indeed.
Caesar's on 62% land, 60% population. He needs 64% and 63%. So close... and yet it looks like this is headed for space.

Turn 334: Or not. Caesar declares on Joao and wins by Domination on turn 342.

   

Game 10
Shaka, Caesar, and De Gaulle keep Suleiman entertained.
Joao wants to visit France, the Zulus and French come visiting instead.
It gets really confusing as the Germans and Ottomans visit Zululand while Caesar goes sight-seeing in Germany.
Things get simpler as Joao, Shaka, and Frederick stomp off.
Suleiman takes a liking to the invading stuff and heads to France.
Caesar teaches him a bitter lesson about how it's done.

Suleiman gets beaten by Caesar (thanks to the silver) to Meditation (Buddhism) and goes immediately for Polytheism, which he gets (Islam).
Right. So in almost every game, Suleiman does go for a religion immediately. I think it's a combination of his culture flavour (he has medium culture, low military as flavours), his starting techs (agriculture, wheel) and his initial city spots (Corn for the capital, Rice for Edirne): his workers aren't at a risk of idling and can improve his food ressources.
Joao went for a more traditional settling pattern, with Guimaraes going to the Fish + Cow spot south of Ulundi.
Caesar gets both the Oasis + Iron spot west of Cumae (his gems city), and the Marble + Ivory spot.
De Gaulle is the one with some aggressive settling here: he founds Rheims on Suleiman's copper and Tours on Fredericks's northern iron.

Turn 64: Joao and Frederick have both converted to Islam, Shaka to Buddhism.
Turn 73: De Gaulle converts to Buddhism.
Turn 79: Shaka declares on Suleiman.
Turn 89: Caesar piles in. Joao converts to Caesar's minority religion (Christianity).
Turn 114: Caesar makes peace after capturing two cities. Shaka has yet to capture a single one, but he's researching Construction now.
Turn 122: De Gaulle declares on Suleiman, Shaka peaces out a coupla turns later (sigh).
Turn 128: Joao declares on De Gaulle. Now, wait for it...
Turn 130: ...Shaka declares on Joao! Yeah, I know, everyone but Joao saw that one coming a mile away.
Turn 146: De Gaulle signs peace with Suleiman, who's no longer at war with anyone. Joao, though, is now in a 1v2 situation.
Turn 157: Frederick to the rescue? He declares on Shaka.
Turn 160: And he's imitated by Suleiman. Yes Sillyman, with a massive Roman army at your border, getting an additional diplo malus with Caesar and sending your troops away is definitely the right move there.

Portugal and the Zulu are fast disappearing from the map.
I see a Roman city between them and think I've missed a war declaration, but no: with all the surrounding cities in resistance, and the area thus devoid of culture, Caesar has slipped in a settler and founded Arpinium in a legal spot! Coimbra, a French conquest, will thus come out of resistance deep in Roman territory, and is bound to become Roman.
Nice move, Julius!

Turn 194: Well, maybe Suleiman knew stuff we didn't. The long-anticipated Roman attack is launched... at Germany!
Turn 196: Portugal falls to France. Ronaldo's weeping from the sidelines.
Turn 197: Guys, this is an important moment. Suleiman scores his first point, as Shaka bites the dust!
Turn 204: Seems like we'll be getting another first in this game. Suleiman declares on De Gaulle. Are we headed for a Caesar first, De Gaulle second finish?  
Turn 231: De Gaulle and Suleiman sign peace. France gained two cities (Ulundi and Guimaraes), but they mainly killed off one another's armies to a draw.
Turn 244: Another one bites the dust as Caesar relegates Germany to history books. Books he authors, obviously.
Caesar is at -6 (Annoyed) with Suleiman, +7 (Pleased) with De Gaulle.
Turn 248: Suleiman renews hostilities with De Gaulle. Please note that Suleiman has started as many wars in this game as in all nine previous games, combined!
Turn 256: Flabbergasting. Caesar declares on... Suleiman. C'mon Julius, where's your deep-ingrained, logic-defying hatred of De Gaulle?

Caesar wins by Domination on turn 267. A very afraid, lone Ottoman city means Suleiman makes it to the finish line.