Civ AI Survivor: Season Five

[Commodore]

I dunno if I'd say Brennus deserved anything. He was the only AI not flailing around uselessly slinging chariots into city walls for the entire ancient era, and to show for it, he had...nothing.

[pindicator]

I dunno if I'd say Brennus deserved anything. He was the only AI not flailing around uselessly slinging chariots into city walls for the entire ancient era, and to show for it, he had...nothing.

And I'd argue that was only because his start was so awful that he hadn't built up to that point yet

[Charriu]

I'm a bit sad that Sitting Bull was attacked by Sury and collapsed. It really was one of his better performance.

[haphazard1]

And I'd argue that was only because his start was so awful that he hadn't built up to that point yet

Much of Brennus' poor start was his own fault, chasing an early religion rather than going for techs that would allow him to start improving his resources. That he did not even get a religion from it just doubled the pain. If Catherine had expanded better, Brennus would have been boxed in and likely gone early.

Oh well. What if, what if, what if.

I'm a bit sad that Sitting Bull was attacked by Sury and collapsed. It really was one of his better performance.

Sitting Bull played a strong early game, and even made a solid attempt at using the army he usually builds and then ignores. I agree it was one of his better performances. He needed his war against Russia to actually gain some cities, though, not just slaughter lots of units on both sides.

[superdeath]

There a way/place to download and try out each of the matches? Id love to rerun this one a couple dozen times.. Same with others.

[Amicalola]

You'd probably want a super computer or something to run it but i reckon running a season over and over again with the same opening round draws and maps and seeing how consistent (or not) the results of the whole season are would be a really fun experiment. Like how consistently would 1-3 of the AI's win their opening and playoff games based on opponents and starting positions.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

https://www.microsoft.com/en-sg/download...x?id=52521

There has been a decent amount of work done on studying the civ 4 ai, I think it's easier than I expected to run a couple thousand sims...

[Sullla]

I make the savegame files for AI Survivor available at the end of the competition each year. In part it's to avoid one more additional task on my each week, and also in part to avoid anyone doing too much experimenting while the picking contest is still taking place. We've done some repeated tests of the same map in past years, written up on the website in places like here and also here.

And on that note, the Game Two Livestream went up on YouTube today for anyone who prefers to watch it there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoTFPlP_U0I

[Sullla]

Community predictions added to the Game Three preview page: http://www.sullla.com/Civ4/civ4survivor5-3-preview.html






Duizhang_Lu: Oh man, this is a game that could go down many paths. I think there's a 40/40 chance that either Gandhi or Liz wins. If Gandhi wins, it's definitely cultural, but if Liz wins, it could be either or. And of course, I think Caesar has a dark horse chance of victory. The Romans are surrounded by other civs predisposed to hate them, and even though the sheer weight of numbers will likely drag them down, I think the Romans may have a (slight) shot due to the sheer incompetence of their enemies at war. If the romans die, the ottomans are sure to follow them and the game is a lovefest from then on out.

MirrorG: Well, after the unmitigated disaster that was my picks last round, how about we try a bit of a safer bet this game? Rome is guaranteed the resources it needs to start up its reign of terror, and has the Ottomans as a potential buffer / ally between them and the bloc of high peace weights, meaning Rome can just focus on dominating its end of the board and then snowballing over the rest. As such, I think they'll go for Frederick first and then just arc their way across the map from there, needing to go the long way around to stop Gandhi as his culture poses a 'time limit' to Rome's domination.

Fjord: Elizabeth is due a win. She can hopefully pick up a northern block of same religion without getting entangled in what will almost certainly be struggle between Sulieman and Ghandi. Frederick is simply Julius Ceasar's nearest viable target and his start position looks weak.

eyser24: No one can compete against Caesar militarily, and he proved last season he can tech and maintain a great economy too by having what was one of the best AI performances in any season. He has what he needs at his start to be a powerhouse. I don't see him getting wiped out unless he falls multiple tech eras behind, meaning he should survive to either get first or second. Tough choice between Gandhi and Elizabeth for second, as Elizabeth has a better start resource wise but is closer to Caesar, and I have underestimated Gandhi and overestimated Elizabeth in the past. All the other AIs I feel are basically dead men walking, especially the disaster known as Frederick.

dreamyeyed: Gandhi gets the first religion and hopefully uses it to make friends. Caesar attacks and conquers Frederick early while Suleiman does the same to Hammurabi. Suleiman eventually wins by capturing Gandhi's wonders.

RonJenzy: Games with binary outcomes part 3: Stardust Praetorians. Does Caesar hold back his bloodlust until he's in a good position to run over these high peace weight fools? Then he wins because Praets are broken. If he doesn't hold back? He cripples himself and Gandhi wins by virtue of being left alone. Sillyman actually has a decent chance in this game if Caesar messes up, but he's weaker overall so he might actually just get his butt kicked by some hippies. Personally, I think this field is just weak enough for Gandhi, and Hammurabi takes 2nd by virtue of being the farthest away from any potential conflict. Frederick dies first in any case by virtue of being next to Caesar.

ZincAlloy: Look at that Caesar start. The legionnaires feast on wet corn tonight! Fredrick is so very, very dead. So are the other high peace weights, but they get to stick around a little bit longer. Suleiman second based solely on peace weight. Gandhi has a chance if Suleiman is a total idiot and Caesar comes for him last, but I'm not going to bet on that. Still, there is a world where Gandhi hides behind the three good-aligned meatshields to reach tech supremacy.

ThreeLeggedChicken: That's an interesting one, in that it is reminiscent of Caesar's season 3 game - getting a good start with an culturally-inclined enemy in the other side of the continent, thus reducing the game in whether he will be able to reach them in time to capture them. In fact, the wildcard of the game is Suleiman; if he manages to hold on his own and avoid getting involved in a multi-fronted war against the Eastern civs, he projects to be Caesar's ally in his conquest of the globe. If he doesn't (and this is my prediction), Gandhi will run away with this game, while Lizzie will fight Caesar's quantity to an extended draw. Frederick will, in any case, be overrun by Praetorians, which is still more compelling of a storyline than Hammurabi's one for this game.

Ethan: After tying Willem and Washington's shoelaces together, ensuring that his two worst enemies would fight in a different arena, prepper Julius Caesar landed on Pangaea and quickly made his way to his cache. He'd stashed away some iron, horses, wet corn, and other assorted goods in a spot just south of where Frederick would be pre-building infrastructure for him. With the help of his trusty ally Suleiman - dogpiler extraordinaire - Caesar was able to pick off all of the peaceful leaders one at a time. Caesar didn't need to take AP History to figure out that the Apostolic Palace was history, and the cowardly AI strategy of stopping wars by decree posed no obstacle to his inevitable conquest.

Slashin': Corner Gandhi given a lot of space to expand with two easy to tech into food sources and a conga line of peaceniks along the north that will be distracting the mighty Roman legions. We've seen this setup before and Gandhi always comes out on top when hes given breathing room to build every cultural buildings before being impenetrable once he stumbles onto rifling. Julius's bid for world domination are tempered by a low food non coastal start that slow down his praetorian legions, but they secure him a moderate amount of territory before deserting to get selfies with their favorite bollywood actors.

KaiserRek: Some German parsley, Babylonian sun-dried tomatoes, Indian curry, and British thyme all make for good seasonings on Caesar's salad.

Amicalola: I think Elizabeth gets a very early spaceship victory here. Suleiman is almost guaranteed to attack Gandhi, but unfortunately no one else is, so I think Gandhi might stalemate it and wreck both their games. Meanwhile I think JC has a better chance of fully killing Frederick, but his economy is going to stall out so badly against Elizabeth who'll be at peace long term that he won't advance further, and might even suicide into her lategame, maces vs infantry style. Lastly, Hammurabi gets second because he'll stay out of the way and tech/wonder in peace all game, while everyone else either wrecks their economies (JC, Suleiman, Gandhi), dies (Frederick) or wins (Elizabeth). It won't be a strong performance, but everyone else will be worse. I think the most likely thing to wreck my prediction is if one of the high-peaceweight leaders intervenes in the Gandhi v. Suleiman wars, but because they all have low aggression ratings I'm counting against that. Please be too peaceful for your own good, Lizzie and Hammer.

RefSteel: With Julius in the game along with fast-expanding Suleiman, it looks like a case where the four high-peaceweight AIs will either stand united or get divided (over religious differences or just through bystander syndrome) and conquered. I really want to believe that Elizabeth can ride her Financial floodplains to victory, with Gandhi in her train, but I'm hedging my bets on Frederick because Caesar seems predestined to Praet him to death while he's still only built four cities, each stuck on a different Wonder he'll never complete. If logic says he'll roll right on across the top of the map from there with help from Sulei while the peaceful AIs wring their hands, that won't prevent me from suiting my picks to my unlikely hopes.

Agni Neres: Gandhi either wins or dies; the question is whether Frederick dies first. I'm going with Gandhi FTD due to (1) certain religion difference and (2) no iron (the iron in the screenshot is much closer to Suleiman). The south has much better food supply than the north, so all three southerners should grab more land in the early game. All three of Gandhi, Hammurabi, Suleiman are capable of Cultural victory, so we go with that. Number of wars low due to many peaceful players in the game.

Isidora: One thing is sure: somebody will kill Frederick

By the way, I had to highlight these dueling predictions from this Civilization-enjoying couple!

Anih: I will try to beat my boyfriend Takuan, by betting on the starting positions that appeared the strongest to me : Gandhi's (first place) and Caesar's (second place). I don't think Gandhi could win by Culture due to his lack of Marble and Stone resources, and he's unlikely to win by Domination. So spaceship it is. I think Elizabeth will attack Hammurabi due to close borders struggles, whereas JC will attack Suleiman for the same reasons. My reasoning doesn't make sense since if i'm right, then JC would be in an ideal situation to win the game instead of Gandhi, by Domination. But i've been irrationnal during the Season 4 contest and beat my BF so i'll keep it up.

Takuan: I wanna win against my girlfriend Anih, so despite kind of agreeing with her choice, i'm going to bet on a different horse. I'll go with JC winning by Domination. Gandhi has a great territory to expand and peacefully tech to Culture, but hopefully he'll be stalled by Suleiman attacking him. On the other side of the map, Caesar will snowball out of the worst AI of the game (aka Frederick) thanks to his Praetorians (made it easier with the eary access to Iron in his capital). Just switch Hammurabi and Freddy's positions, and i'd say JC struggles enough against Hammy to allow Gandhi to just out tech and win. But in that setup, i think JC will run away with the game. Suleiman in second place, by virtue of being JC's best buddy and thus being spared by Rome's might.

Game Three Picking Contest Entry Form

Two more days to get the predictions in before Friday's match.

[Brian Shanahan]

Just ran my two picks and random.org came out with this, frankly, insane result.

Frederick's going to win by domination on turn 448, with Suleiman coming in second. And he's not going to do it by war, oh no! Because nobody dies and there will be only two war declarations the whole game.

Maybe he's read up on the Passive-Aggressive Hatty game?