March Madness: Civ4 AI Edition

[Sullla]

That's certainly true, but it's not as though Augustus didn't have iron close to his starting position. Five tiles from the capital:



The AI is simply too dumb to save itself sometimes.

[DaveV]

I've been enjoying these writeups, Sulla. You do a good job of making repeated clicking of the Enter button sound exciting.

A proofreading comment: this is the second time I've seen "dire straights" (instead of dire straits) and "reigned in" (instead of reined in). Your writing is good enough that it's jarring to encounter mistakes like these, and the fact that you made them more than once indicates that they probably aren't mere typos.

[Dp101]

Well, my prediction was terrible.

[haphazard1]

Well, my prediction was terrible.

I know exactly how you feel, Dp101. I think a point or so from being vaguely near the finish date will save me from a flat zero, but that is about it.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for another enjoyable write up, Sullla!

Augustus, what were you thinking?!?!?!? I expected him to get a lot of value from that big patch of flood plains to his north and west, as well as his praetorians. Instead he waits until his fifth (!!) city to even start to claim the flood plains, and ends up with Justinian and a barb city taking most of them. The iron gets claimed by Huayna's culture, so no praetorians. Spending the Oracle on founding a minority religion to make everyone hate him even more was just icing on the cake by that point -- Augustus was obviously looking to die. So much for my top pick -- the guy was obviously suicidal!.

Justinian and his oil, his culture push, his small cities.... But he was just too big and too far ahead by that point. I am surprised to see him advance.

Huayna Capac also failed to move forward, a surprise for a usually effective leader. Not getting any of the spoils from the slaughter of Rome certainly did not help his cause.

Catherine, poor Catherine. Things were going so well for a long time, but it was not to be. Not enough tech, not enough time to consolidate conquered territory.

Suryavarman goes to the finals, despite not really being very impressive this game. Stabbing his Jewish fellow should have led to his destruction, but Huayna and later Catherine (lured in by Huayna who immediately made peace! The slimy so-and-so did not benefit from it in the end, though) saved him. Being farthest from Justinian probably helped as well.

Is this the first of these games to see four separate religious blocks? Not that Rome's Confucian block lasted very long, but so much of the time you only get two big religious blocks, or sometimes three.

Anyway, a very interesting game with some surprising results. Can't wait to see what happens in the next group.

[antisocialmunky]

I've been enjoying these writeups, Sulla. You do a good job of making repeated clicking of the Enter button sound exciting.

A proofreading comment: this is the second time I've seen "dire straights" (instead of dire straits) and "reigned in" (instead of reined in). Your writing is good enough that it's jarring to encounter mistakes like these, and the fact that you made them more than once indicates that they probably aren't mere typos.

To be fair, if you have to defend a dissertation, then your brain tends to archive things like good grammar to free up space.

[Lord Parkin]

Man, I was so close on this one. Even off by just one turn on the victory date, darn!

Winning Leader - Catherine x
Runner Up - Sury ✓
First to Die - Augustus ✓
Number of Leaders to Survive - 3 ✓
Victory Date and Type - Space x T308 so close!

Guess at the full ranking:

#1 - Catherine x
#2 - Sury ✓
#3 - Justinian x
#4 - Huayna ✓
#5 - Cyrus ✓
#6 - Augustus ✓

Everything correct in the ranking except for Catherine and Justinian switching places. I even said before looking at the map that I'd pick Justinian ahead of Huayna.

Playoff Round One

- Suryavarman advances
- Catherine advances

These two definitely seem a cut above the others in their bracket. Barring a weird map or unlucky circumstances where they butt heads too much, they both deserve to head to the finals. My third place pick would be Justinian, who seems to generally do well if he's left alone long enough.

[Hesmyrr]

Lucky hit on victory date along with elimination of everyone's favourite means I am still in this

Cyrus performed far better than I expected from his position, and would actually have had chance of advancing if his religious buddy didn't choose to backstab him... I would say that I should have just went with my thinking and pick Justinian instead of being influenced by my pre-map pick, but it wouldn't even have mattered since I only considered him a runner-up candidate.

[Sullla]

Here are the results from the first playoff game. I'm going to put them in a spoiler because the image is getting quite large.

I'm afraid that I have to run and can't write too much in the way of comments. A few short points:

- No one picked the game winner correctly, not even one vote for Justinian. That's the first time that we had the entire field miss on the winner.

- I was honestly surprised that so few people picked Augustus as First to Die. I thought going into the game that he was dead meat due to peace weight status, and then when the game played out and he was immediately targeted, it seemed to reinforce that view. My guess was that we'd see a lot of people picking him as the unlucky one. Instead, the predictions went heavily in favor of Cyrus.

- Domination and 3 leaders to survive were both picked by a large number of entries. The field has gotten much better in these areas.

- Hesmyrr hit on the extra victory date and type in this game. Parkin and Nakor were a single turn off, one turn too late and one turn too early.

Congratulations to Hesmyrr for the high score of the round at 21 points, aided by that exact date prediction. Azza, Parkin, and tiredkitten also had strong entries for this round. We have some slight separation at the top of the scoreboard, followed by a logjam of scores in the 70s and 80s.

We'll open up the predictions for the next game tomorrow, on Monday morning.

[antisocialmunky]

Yay, top 5!