March Madness: Civ4 AI Edition

[Sullla]

I'm not sure if we'll do another one of these again in the future. Maybe, maybe not, depends on free time and such. If we would do another AI competition though, give me some feedback on what it should look like. What would you change, what would you keep the same? Other suggestions / ideas / comments? This would be a good time for any brainstorming ideas.

[Azza]

Personally, I didn't like that the last map was balanced when all the other maps were more random. Apart from that, no complaints.

[TheSunIsDark]

Maybe another one without Aggressive AI, to see how they perform under normal conditions. And random maps for all of them, but slightly edited for the lurker civ to not leave too much room. And maybe try a different map script, Pangaea is really bad for some civs, especially Viking and Portugal.

[Kuro]

First off, dropping my thanksies for doing such a hard task for our great amusement. Personally, I would also keep the last map random, and add in some non-Pangaea maps: How do AI handle continents and such and so? Can the naval civs do better? If you really wanted to do something "different", you could do Unrestricted Leaders with random combinations (Using random.org for it so that nothing is skipped by removing civs/leaders selected until you can only do duplicate civs for remaining leaders or something).

[Dantski]

What about making it always war to help out the aggressive and protective leaders a bit? How did you feel about the games being on Deity? Should it be lowered to say Emperor or Immortal?

I'd almost like a random personalities game and everyone has to try and guess who's using each leaders persona. Of course that would be a little less serious though.

[TheSunIsDark]

What about making it always war to help out the aggressive and protective leaders a bit?

Always War only affects the player. Permanent War or Peace would be the closest, but it would rely a lot on the RNG. A special setup/mod might work though, although for the special setup I think they'd have to start with contact with each other.

[TheHumanHydra]

I liked it how it was, personally. Thanks again for doing it, Sullla.

[Nakor]

Really enjoyed the series! Thanks, Sullla!

[Sullla]

Hmmm. There's some interesting ideas here. Let me provide my own thoughts on some of the suggestions.

I'm surprised that several of the comments were opposed to having a balanced map for the final game. I heard repeatedly throughout the playoff games that each map was unfair for one leader or another. The first game was unfair for Huayna Capac, the second game was too easy for Mansa Musa, the third game was unfair for Boudica, etc. I thought that we'd use a single balanced map for the championship so that no one could complain that one or another leader had an advantage. I'm genuinely surprised to be hearing suggestions that this was a bad idea, never expected that. But if we'd used another random map, wouldn't there just have been more complaints that Leader X had too big of an advantage over Leader Y?

I'm personally not a fan of the non-Pangaea maps because the AI is so bad at conducting any kind of naval attack. Remember how bad they were at sieging cities in these games? Now imagine adding naval logistics and transportation on top of all the problems we saw here. I've actually tested this on an Archipelago map, using debug mode to simulate through 300 turns in a few minutes. There were wars aplenty, but at the end of the game, everyone was still alive, all six leaders surviving, their island cores intact. A game where everyone survives and none of the leaders can eliminate one another doesn't make for an interesting game, in my opinion.

Continents maps aren't much better. There are basically two outcomes for a game with a handful of continents. The AI leaders befriend one another, in which case they spend the whole game at peace; or the AI leaders hate one another, in which case one kills the other, and then nothing happens after that. Again, I feel that this gameplay is inherently less interesting and doesn't make for very good storytelling. I chose the Pangaea maps so that there would be more interaction between the AI leaders, and that no one would ever be completely safe from attack. I'd be interested in doing these games on a different map script if we run the event again, but I really do think we need a single continent for this to work.

Also, I'm not sure if everyone realizes that the maps already *WERE* slightly edited to work around the lurker civ. It's not easy to get a random map that's evenly set up for all AIs. I rolled as many as 30 maps in some cases, and did edits on top of that, and you guys still weren't happy with the result much of the time. Realms Beyond can be a tough crowd.

Unrestricted leaders could be a possibility. I just think it's inherently less interesting from a thematic standpoint. Do people really want to see Peter of Greece versus Brennus of Persia? I rolled two random pairings there as an example. Unrestricted is great for a competitive MP environment, but I'm not sure it's a good fit for this kind of thing. It's also extremely confusing keeping track of which leader fits with which civ. You get Gilgamesh using Aztec city names and other bizarre stuff like that. Still, maybe it's a possibility.

Always War for the AIs would be tough to set up, there's no default option for this. I think that I could do it, although it would require more work on the setup end. This would produce a very different type of game. I'm not sure if we'd ever get anything other than military victories though, I kind of liked that we had some Diplomatic victories and even the one Culture victory in this competition. It might be worthwhile to see at least one game like this, and how it would be different.

I was actually thinking that there would be more suggestions on how to manage the scoring categories when I asked. I basically made them up on the spot when organizing this thing, and I'm not convinced that they were the best ones. Is there something else we could ask people to predict that would be more interesting? (Something that doesn't require tons of work for the one spectating the games, nothing like "total number of wars" please!)

[Bobchillingworth]

I would love to see this sort of game run with FFH AIs Their complete, deplorable idiocy would certainly be a thing of wonder.