(April 9th, 2023, 07:04)haphazard1 Wrote: A couple thoughts on game 1. Heavy spoilers!
What a weird game! I think this one will be especially interesting in the alternate histories, whenever they eventually happen. Significant turning points that seemed very low probability to me:
- Gandhi declaring on his fellow Hindu Pericles (the bigggest surprise)
- Gandhi not turning on the culture slider any time in the last 50 turns (Maybe his loss of two of his culture cities caused the AI to reset its victory type, even though it later recaptured them?) and using his great artist to bomb city #2 rather than city #3
- Isabella's minority religion spreading to two neighbors, rather than her dominant Christianity, leading to mutually destructive warfare with Stalin
- Stalin choosing (see above point) to declare on Isabella rather than Gandhi or Pericles
At various points in the game it looked like a Gandhi culture win was a near certainty, then a Gandhi elimination, then a Shaka runaway to domination, then a Gandhi culture win again. The reversals were huge, and happened very fast -- it was crazy. Gandhi should have won easily, as he got exactly the game he needed: no one attacked him for millenia, allowing him to build and build and build in peace. Instead, he declared repeatedly. And refused the run the culture slider for an easy win late. And mis-used his great artist. I give Gandhi the "holding the idiot ball" award for game 1. Shake was crazy -- of course he was, he's Shaka! -- but it almost worked as he fought off a 3-vs-1 for many turns. If the Zulus had just a slightly better economy, maybe the mad war-monger could have pulled it off.
Finally, that tech pace. Ouch. Are we sure this was set to deity?
OK, had to get all that out of my system. Now to go make my (inevitably wrong) picks for game 2.
The AI, when deciding to run culture, will only do so if it's capital was founded before turn 10. For AI Survivor, since the AI pretty much never relocates its capital, this means that losing a capital can cause the AI to give up on culture when the second city is small and the capital goes somewhere else. In this case Gandhi's capital went somewhere inland to a later-founded city, so he wasn't actually eligible to run the culture slider!
So it's not Gandhi's fault, they're all wired that way! Well, okay, the warring was his fault.
Very interesting info, aetryn. Thanks! I was not aware of that.
So I was sort of correct, and the problem was Gandhi losing his culture city (his capital) that prevented him from grabbing the culture win with the slider. What an odd quirk of programming for the AIs. Why not just look at the actual culture totals in the top cities and the per turn culture rate, rather than weird indirect things like when the capital was founded?
Just got around to watching game three. Season 7 continues to be entertainingly odd, or is that oddly entertaining? A few thoughts:
Very poor defensive performances by both Zara and Justinian. Zara did rally for a while and put up a good fight at Lalibela, but Justinian was just pathetic. He had superior tech when the war started (pikes, trebs, maces, and castles over Ragnar) but completely folded when the Vikings crossed the border. Maybe his split empire with the former English holdings divided his forces?
Alex made the conquest snowball roll and roll and roll, somehow without falling too far behind in military tech. His deep bee line to grenadiers certainly helped him a lot, and mostly neutralized the late rifles of his opponents.
I thought De Gaulle played a pretty good game. He fought a successful war with Victoria, claiming a fair bit of territory that was adjacent to his core and useful. He got lucky with Justinian jumping in and helping crush England while letting France claim most of the spoils. Then he smartly stayed at peace and built the best economy and tech in the game, which earned him second and a spot in the playoffs.
My picks actually beat the average score for a change. That does not happen very often.
I'm not getting too many games this season, mostly because I've a season ticket for Cobh Ramblers in the League of Ireland (Irish semi-pro soccer team) which are nearly always Friday night games. This week I should get all but the start, as it's a bank holiday so the home game is Monday.
Anyway, flush with last week's success random.org decides to:
Quote:After the relative success of last week, random.org decides to favour Gilgamesh and Joao for first and second, with Qin bowing out of the game first. A domination win on turn 254 after seventeen (!) wars, sees the favourite and an underdog through to the next round. Hopefully I'll catch this week's game.
Travelling on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
Thanks to Sullla for running these alternate games -- they are always interesting to compare to the games we saw. I feel slightly better about my picks (Justinian to win, Victoria FTD), as it is nice to see I was not imagining things.
And refused the run the culture slider for an easy win late.
Are we sure this was set to deity?
I was not aware of that.
