Thought I'd post another story just for fun. And because it's amusing to try to figure out what a Cultural Victory looks like....
At a UN-sponsored summit in Shanghai, televised world-wide, the four great powers met to discuss the ongoing war between America and China. Acknowledged by Secretary General Musa, whose opening speech received a thunderous cheer from far and wide, Abraham Lincoln was the first to step forward. Before he would speak however, he insisted on singing the new American national anthem. So, to the accompaniment of kora and n'goni, with a great tabale laying down the beat, Abraham stood and, with perhaps more enthusiasm than skill, falling short of most of the high notes, belted out...
AI-braham Lincoln Wrote:
O say, can you see by the turn's early light
If Los Angeles fell to the commie invasion:
Every soldier of Mao, Rifleman and fell Knight,
With AI subroutines set to wipe out our nation?
Nay, the SEALs' muzzle flare, Tank shells bursting in air,
Gave proof i-b-t: The invasion died there!
O look up, L.A. suburbs! Your banner doth wave
O'er the tiles of the free, B-F-C of the brave!
Scattered applause rose from the most nationalistic or tone-deaf of the Americans in the diverse crowd, shortly silenced as Musa raised his hand. At Mao's insistence, the Chinese National Anthem was aired as well.
M-AI-o Zedong Wrote:
(Historian's Note: If you think I'm actually going to try to do this in Chinese, transliterated or otherwise, you're out of your mind. Imagine a song about hating the game mechanics of the Statue of Zeus, cleverly shaped around March of the Volunteers, okay?)
Elizabeth shook her head, setting down her tiny cup of atai. "Mao, what happened? I remember the beautiful strains as your people sang of 'our new Stonehenge' and 'our million hearts beating as one!' Why is your whole song about one of Lincoln's World Wonders now? This can't be good for your cultural identity."
Mao only shook his fists as the sky. "That accursed bearded monster with his accursed ivory statue of that accursed pagan god! I deserved to win! I did! I just happen to massively suck at dealing with horrible war weariness mechanics or, you know, ever making peace even when my war is obviously a horrific grinding stalemate!"
Smiling indulgently, diplomatically refraining from reminding him about his earlier weedfests, particularly around Corinth, Elizabeth offered an alternative: "Yet you could still sing of your military successes instead of your failures. Consider my nation, and the words of the great Bard of AI-von!"
"Alas poor Zheng," she intoned, quoting the famous play, and turning to the Secretary General added, "I knew him, Kankou Musa," and would have continued as he bowed politely in acknowledgment, but with his name spoken and his gesture in reply, it had become impossible.
The crowd roared with approval; cheers were heard of, "Give us a speech, Mansa!" and then the great square of Shanghai shook with deafening cries of, "Speech! Speech!" and - soon overwhelming all others - "Musa! Musa! Musa! Musa!" Chinese riflemen set aside their arms to pound their palms in applause and join the chanting, American tank officers loaded fireworks instead of shells and launched them into the sky, and people around the world cheered their television screens in their homes as the Secretary General held up his arms to acknowledge and then to silence their cheers.
Elizabeth opened her mouth again, but then just shook her head. Starting again, she asked, "Who are we to stand against the will of all our peoples? I believe the war is ended now by popular acclaim. It's a Malinese world; we're just living in it. I therefore yield the floor; ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Lion of Mali!"
The great man moved forward, gallantly took Elizabeth's hand, and as she rose to stand beside him, both were enveloped in a brilliant glow. A voice proclaimed softly, from everywhere and nowhere, "Mansa Musa has won a Cultural Victory!"
And as the glow disappeared, taking Mansa and Elizabeth with it, amid thundrous applause, Lincoln called out, "Good luck in the finals!"
"You'll need it," Mao added in forboding tones. "You're going to be up against Sury."
----------
And an updated list of my unofficially-ranked...
Survivors:
1. Mao (Diplomacy in Game 8, 3rd in Playoff Game 2)
2. Catherine (Domination in Game 7, 3rd in Playoff Game 1)
3. Lincoln (Space in Game 5, 4th in Playoff Game 2)
4. Darius (4th in Game 6, 3rd in Wildcard Game)
5. Peter (3rd in Game 1, 4th in Wildcard Game)
6. Frederick (3rd in Game 6, 5th in Wildcard Game)
Mao takes over the top spot thanks to a tie-breaker with Catherine: His regular season victory was in a 7-player game, while hers was in a smaller field of 6. Lincoln, with an average ranking of 2.5 across two games, slots in just behind those two. Of course, others will supercede both Catherine and Mao by the time the tournament ends.
I dunno, does 6/7 even matter if Catherine basically murdered everyone on the continent except her Russian pet?
In Soviet Russia, Civilization Micros You!
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
I'm planning on putting out a full list from 1 to 52 for all of the AI leaders after the competition is over, based on more objective measures of how far they made it. (The round they reached, when they were eliminated, highest score for those who survived but didn't move on, etc.) There will be plenty of time to examine that sort of thing after the whole competition is done.
Scores for Playoff Game Two, spoilered for the large image size:
- We had 80% of the entries correctly pick Mansa Musa to win the game. This was the highest percentage for any winning leader pick to date. Catherine's victory in Game Seven was the second-highest, with 69% of the field getting that one correct.
- That said, the overall scores were on the low end for this particular game. Most of the other categories had modest scores. There was an even split for the runner up pick, between Alexander (9 picks) and Elizabeth (8 picks) and Mao (7 picks) and Qin (5 picks) and even Mansa Musa (4 picks) amongst those who didn't tab him to win. Poor Lincoln had only 1 pick to win, and 0 picks to finish second.
- Lincoln was the overwhelming choice to die first (30/35 = 86%), and he would have been my choice as well. It's rather strange that he ended up surviving to the end in this one. Blame Alexander's aggression for that. No one thought Alex would be the first to die, zero points for all in this category.
- Our first Cultural victory of the competition also blanked the field. Spaceship was extremely popular here, with 28/35 picks (80%).
- We had two different entries hit on the exact Turn 320 date for victory, congratulations to Sareln and TheSunIsDark! They scored the big 15 point bonus for having the good fortune to nail the exact victory date. About 85% of the field was within 25 turns of the correct date. The vast majority of picks were too low this time, the latest date predicted was Turn 331 (11 turns over) while the earliest date was Turn 277 (43 turns short). Even with Mansa and Elizabeth, I think a Turn 277 spaceship might have been pushing it.
Individual entries of note:
* Sareln also correctly picked the winner, runner up, and number of leaders surviving along with the perfect victory date. This resulted in a massive 28 points, the highest score we've seen to date. Just imagine if Lincoln had been the first to die like we all expected!
* In total, eight entries had the winner and runner up correct. This was literally every single person who picked Elizabeth to finish second, since all eight had Mansa Musa to win.
* Amongst those who didn't hit the exact victory date, timmy827 had the best score, with an excellent 18 points. Bobchillingworth and Dhalphir were just behind at 16 points with slightly weaker victory dates.
* The scores at the top of the field are very tight, with Hesmyrr and Ceiliazul and Katon all separated from one another by single points. There's another tightly bunched ground between 108 and 96 points.
Thanks to everyone who continues to participate. I'll get to work on Playoff Three today, and try to open it up over the weekend.
Second again (got 11 in Game Eight), due to a lucky finish date. All I got correct were victory date and Mansa winning! If Mao had just adopted Police State earlier...
Okay Mansa, I'll take Printing Press for Liberalism. Now where did I put my cannons?
I wondered for a moment why Dhaphir got more points than me by copying my entry. Then I noticed that I'm not given points for getting survivors right. Sulla, can you fix that?
(May 2nd, 2014, 01:19)RefSteel Wrote: Thought I'd post another story just for fun. And because it's amusing to try to figure out what a Cultural Victory looks like....
At a UN-sponsored summit in Shanghai, televised world-wide, the four great powers met to discuss the ongoing war between America and China. Acknowledged by Secretary General Musa, whose opening speech received a thunderous cheer from far and wide, Abraham Lincoln was the first to step forward. Before he would speak however, he insisted on singing the new American national anthem. So, to the accompaniment of kora and n'goni, with a great tabale laying down the beat, Abraham stood and, with perhaps more enthusiasm than skill, falling short of most of the high notes, belted out...
AI-braham Lincoln Wrote:
O say, can you see by the turn's early light
If Los Angeles fell to the commie invasion:
Every soldier of Mao, Rifleman and fell Knight,
With AI subroutines set to wipe out our nation?
Nay, the SEALs' muzzle flare, Tank shells bursting in air,
Gave proof i-b-t: The invasion died there!
O look up, L.A. suburbs! Your banner doth wave
O'er the tiles of the free, B-F-C of the brave!
Scattered applause rose from the most nationalistic or tone-deaf of the Americans in the diverse crowd, shortly silenced as Musa raised his hand. At Mao's insistence, the Chinese National Anthem was aired as well.
M-AI-o Zedong Wrote:
(Historian's Note: If you think I'm actually going to try to do this in Chinese, transliterated or otherwise, you're out of your mind. Imagine a song about hating the game mechanics of the Statue of Zeus, cleverly shaped around March of the Volunteers, okay?)
Elizabeth shook her head, setting down her tiny cup of atai. "Mao, what happened? I remember the beautiful strains as your people sang of 'our new Stonehenge' and 'our million hearts beating as one!' Why is your whole song about one of Lincoln's World Wonders now? This can't be good for your cultural identity."
Mao only shook his fists as the sky. "That accursed bearded monster with his accursed ivory statue of that accursed pagan god! I deserved to win! I did! I just happen to massively suck at dealing with horrible war weariness mechanics or, you know, ever making peace even when my war is obviously a horrific grinding stalemate!"
Smiling indulgently, diplomatically refraining from reminding him about his earlier weedfests, particularly around Corinth, Elizabeth offered an alternative: "Yet you could still sing of your military successes instead of your failures. Consider my nation, and the words of the great Bard of AI-von!"
"Alas poor Zheng," she intoned, quoting the famous play, and turning to the Secretary General added, "I knew him, Kankou Musa," and would have continued as he bowed politely in acknowledgment, but with his name spoken and his gesture in reply, it had become impossible.
The crowd roared with approval; cheers were heard of, "Give us a speech, Mansa!" and then the great square of Shanghai shook with deafening cries of, "Speech! Speech!" and - soon overwhelming all others - "Musa! Musa! Musa! Musa!" Chinese riflemen set aside their arms to pound their palms in applause and join the chanting, American tank officers loaded fireworks instead of shells and launched them into the sky, and people around the world cheered their television screens in their homes as the Secretary General held up his arms to acknowledge and then to silence their cheers.
Elizabeth opened her mouth again, but then just shook her head. Starting again, she asked, "Who are we to stand against the will of all our peoples? I believe the war is ended now by popular acclaim. It's a Malinese world; we're just living in it. I therefore yield the floor; ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Lion of Mali!"
The great man moved forward, gallantly took Elizabeth's hand, and as she rose to stand beside him, both were enveloped in a brilliant glow. A voice proclaimed softly, from everywhere and nowhere, "Mansa Musa has won a Cultural Victory!"
And as the glow disappeared, taking Mansa and Elizabeth with it, amid thundrous applause, Lincoln called out, "Good luck in the finals!"
"You'll need it," Mao added in forboding tones. "You're going to be up against Sury."
----------
And an updated list of my unofficially-ranked...
Survivors:
1. Mao (Diplomacy in Game 8, 3rd in Playoff Game 2)
2. Catherine (Domination in Game 7, 3rd in Playoff Game 1)
3. Lincoln (Space in Game 5, 4th in Playoff Game 2)
4. Darius (4th in Game 6, 3rd in Wildcard Game)
5. Peter (3rd in Game 1, 4th in Wildcard Game)
6. Frederick (3rd in Game 6, 5th in Wildcard Game)
Mao takes over the top spot thanks to a tie-breaker with Catherine: His regular season victory was in a 7-player game, while hers was in a smaller field of 6. Lincoln, with an average ranking of 2.5 across two games, slots in just behind those two. Of course, others will supercede both Catherine and Mao by the time the tournament ends.
I love your stories! I love how the AIs breakwhat i call the "3.5th" wall: they know theyre in a game but arent aware of Sullla
The player who loses motivation to play after the opening!
von Adlercreutz, thanks for catching my mistake. I've added the three extra points on my spreadsheet. Everyone in the prediction contest, please feel free to double check my results each game. I try to avoid any mistakes, but there are a lot of you and only one of me.
On to the third playoff game, the last one before the championship:
Boudica
Boudica emerged from a similarly uncertain field to take the top spot as the winner of Game Three. She had a bit of a difficult jungle-choked position in that one, but managed to conquer first Louis, and then Isabella en route to dominating the game. That almost turned into a literal Domination victory, although in the end Boudica was forced to head for space when she found herself stuck around 60% land area. Boudica is one of the most aggressive leaders in the game, and she'll surely be trying for another military victory of some kind in this game. Boudica AI has Aggressive and Charismatic traits, purely combat-focused and with little to no economic benefit. Her Celtic civilization uses the Gallic Warrior and Dun unique items, neither one especially impressive. I'm struggling to remember if anyone has ever picked the Celts in one of our unmodded Multiplayer games. Boudica the AI has military and growth flavors. She is highly aggressive as mentioned before (8.8 out of 10 rating), good enough for sixth place out of the 52 leaders in militarism. Boudica will strangely not declare war at "Pleased" relations, but she does have a very low peace weight as an "Evil" leader. Expect her to initiate wars early and often.
Pericles
Pericles was the victor in Game Six, one of the most peaceful games that we had in the opening round amid a field of mostly economic leaders. Pericles was fortunate to take that game, as he was going to lose the space race to Elizabeth had events played out naturally. Instead, Elizabeth built the United Nations and found herself losing the vote to the Greek leader. It seemed to work out for her in the end, since Elizabeth still managed to make her way into the championship match. As for Pericles, he'll have to navigate this field of much more aggressive rivals to do the same. Pericles has aruguably the best economic traits in this particular game, with the Creative and Philosophical pair. Both are very good at emphasizing culture, which is one of Pericles' strengths. His Greek civ has the Phalanx and Odeon uniques. As an AI, Pericles uses production and science flavors for research. Pericles loves to build wonders (8/10 rating) and otherwise has mostly average ratings. He's pretty pacifistic in general, with an aggression rating of only 3.3 out of 10. Pericles is considered "Neutral" in peace weight, albeit one leaning towards the "Good" end of the spectrum. There will be some tension between him and the leaders at the bottom of the peace weight scale. Overall, Pericles wants a game that's generally peaceful in nature, where his superior economic traits can lead him towards a space or culture win.
Zara Yacob
Zara makes it to this game by virtue of winning the Wildcard match. His initial appearance in Game Two was somewhat of a disaster, where he fell down to only two cities at once point and had to be saved from elimination by the intervention of Mansa Musa. In the Wildcard game, Zara drew a semi-isolated jungle spot and managed to avoid war in the early game until he'd built up a tech lead. He then turned around an ill-advised declaration of war from Genghis Khan and snowballed into the game's runaway AI leader, topping the board in all categories and eventually winning through space. Can Zara win one more game and become the true comeback kid? Zara has Creative and Organized traits, an economic pairing with some good synergy. They are debatably as good or better than Pericles' traits, depending on how one feels about Organized vs. Philosophical. Zara's Ethiopian civilization has the Oromo Warrior unique unit and the Stele unique building. Zara the AI employs growth and religion flavors; he's a decent shot to found one of the early faiths in this game. Zara AI generally likes religion quite a bit, and he even has Theocracy as his favorite civic. Zara's numbers are otherwise fairly average, with a middling aggression rating (5.6 out of 10) and a "Neutral" peace weight rated the same as Pericles. Zara is pretty good at the landgrab phase, and that could be his ticket to opening with a strong start.
Brennus
Brennus is the forgotten man, sitting around on the sidelines ever since Game One! Way back in our first contest, Brennus came in second place to Suryavarman. It wasn't an especially impressive game; Brennus took over Tokugawa's territory (winning a war against one of the most incompetent AIs in Civ4), but he was greatly overshadowed by Suryavarman, and Brennus was in the process of losing a war when the game ended through United Nations vote. In fact, if Peter hadn't voted for Suryavarman in that game, Brennus would have dropped out of second place and into the Wildcard match. Brennus will have to do more in this game if he expects to move on to the championship. Brennus has the underpowered trait pairing of Spiritual and Charismatic. He is the other Celtic leader, also using the Gallic Warrior and Dun. Will we see a battle between rival Celtic clans before this one is over? Brennus the AI uses military and religion flavors. Because the Celts start with Mysticism tech, he's another likely leader to found an early religion. Brennus emphasizes religious stuff rather heavily, much like Zara. Brennus is above average in aggression rating at 7/10, although he doesn't go overboard with unit emphasis and his other numbers are fairly average. He does sit at the lowest possible peace weight rating, dead zero "Demonic Evil" as I've described in past reports. Brennus is honestly a bit bland as a leader, somewhat aggressive but not enough to be truly interesting. We'll see what he can conjure up in this game.
Suleiman
Suleiman appears in this game by virtue of his runner-up finish in Game Four, where he was last seen getting nuked repeatedly by a runaway Huayna Capac. Suleiman generally played well in that game, he simply was nowhere near as strong as the Incan monster off to his east. It's hard to know what to make of Suleiman, another middling leader with average numbers in most categories. His traits are Imperialistic and Philosophical, a pairing with little synergy that doesn't appear to fit any particular strategy. Suleiman usually tends to get overlooked for the much better traits of Mehmed (Expansive/Organized) for this very reason. His Ottoman civ is one of the better choices in Civ4, with the Janissary and Hamman uniques. (The Ottomans also have outstanding starting techs with Agriculture and The Wheel, although this doesn't matter too much for the Deity AIs and their free starting techs.) Suleiman the AI has culture and military flavors. He is also slightly above average in aggression rating (7/10) and otherwise has middle of the board ratings. Lots of stuff listed as 4/10 or 5/10 or 6/10, nothing that stands out. Suleiman AI also has a "Neutral" peace weight, albeit one that leans towards the low end of the scale, the opposite of Pericles and Zara. He'll get on better with someone like Brennus. All told, Suleiman is another leader without much to make him unique. He's pretty ordinary as AI leaders go.
Stalin
Out of all the leaders in the opening round, Stalin played perhaps the most remarkable game. Attacked repeatedly by his neighbors, Stalin twice dropped down to last place in score, and not merely by a few points. He appeared to be the Dead Man Walking multiple times in Game Seven. On every occasion, Stalin rallied back and somehow managed to survive. He paired with Catherine and ultimately the two Russian leaders were the only ones still standing when all was said and done. Stalin will have to walk a tightrope once again to find a path to the final match. Stalin uses Aggressive and Industrious traits, another unusual pairing that doesn't appear to have much synergy. His Russian civ has the Cossack and Research Institute as unique items; we've seen the cossack used to good effect in several previous games. Stalin the AI has the historically appropriate research flavors of military and production. He's another aggressive guy with a rating of 7.6 out of 10, and of course Stalin is more than willing to declare war at "Pleased" relations. Stalin AI's most unique feature is a love of espionage, with 10/10 rating in that category. Stalin has a low peace weight as an "Evil" leader, again as expected. Just as I wrote before Stalin's first game, it's an accurate portrayal of the historical Stalin. How will he do in this one without Catherine to help out? We shall see.
Our map, spoilered again for size:
We're using the same categories as always:
Winner
Runner Up
First to Die
Number of Leaders Surviving
Victory Type and Date
Since this is running over the weekend, I plan to keep the predictions open until Tuesday or Wednesday or this upcoming week. Best of luck to all of you with your picks.
![[Image: redglare.jpg]](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p2YLXLRQPo4/WjvEsM6MjfI/AAAAAAAAEPc/ENYfXWlyuCUx82PEswbbkrJ16cr4CPsBgCLcBGAs/s1600/redglare.jpg)
![[Image: redarmy.jpg]](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7jmHLlLvjGI/WjvEr_f0xdI/AAAAAAAAEPU/ZScE_azFaKAg2AzRt0Smu0vBYdR4DEppwCLcBGAs/s1600/redarmy.jpg)
![[Image: AIvon.jpg]](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uR5wimwf_zU/WjvEqHvLIxI/AAAAAAAAEO4/u9Mnj4ZsZJgXqoHHD43SBo3OzZHQAMJDwCLcBGAs/s1600/AIvon.jpg)
![[Image: mansa.jpg]](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-S7lcJNS_2dI/WjvErgE0qrI/AAAAAAAAEPQ/TjQ2HT26zNcEwtUz7v3aTuMlItPYFXxjQCLcBGAs/s1600/mansa.jpg)
![[Image: results11.png]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/results11.png)
They scored the big 15 point bonus for having the good fortune to nail the exact victory date. About 85% of the field was within 25 turns of the correct date. The vast majority of picks were too low this time, the latest date predicted was Turn 331 (11 turns over) while the earliest date was Turn 277 (43 turns short). Even with Mansa and Elizabeth, I think a Turn 277 spaceship might have been pushing it. 
Just imagine if Lincoln had been the first to die like we all expected!
![[Image: redglare.jpg]](http://i819.photobucket.com/albums/zz112/RefSteel/redglare.jpg)
![[Image: redarmy.jpg]](http://i819.photobucket.com/albums/zz112/RefSteel/redarmy.jpg)
![[Image: AIvon.jpg]](http://i819.photobucket.com/albums/zz112/RefSteel/AIvon.jpg)
![[Image: mansa.jpg]](http://i819.photobucket.com/albums/zz112/RefSteel/mansa.jpg)
![[Image: leader5.jpg]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ4/Survivor/leader5.jpg)
![[Image: leader35.jpg]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ4/Survivor/leader35.jpg)
![[Image: leader52.jpg]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ4/Survivor/leader52.jpg)
![[Image: leader6.jpg]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ4/Survivor/leader6.jpg)
![[Image: leader45.jpg]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ4/Survivor/leader45.jpg)
![[Image: leader44.jpg]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ4/Survivor/leader44.jpg)
![[Image: survivor12-0.jpg]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ4/Survivor/survivor12-0.jpg)