Civ4 AI Survivor: Season Four

[haphazard1]

Watching the series inspired me to fire up a 4-way team battlegrounds match. Emperor difficulty so my AI ally is supposed to be competent. We take an early lead, I land the oracle to grab CoL, and I'm thinking we've got this in the bag. Then my ally Ragnar dies to barbarians.

Rage quit.

An emperor AI (with aggressive) died to barbs? What kind of settings did you have?

Cicling back to on topic, the barbs did not do very much in game one other than provide some easily conquered cities for the AIs to take. The lack of the usual AI Deity starting techs ended up hurting the barbs a lot more than it hurt the AIs.

[Sullla]

The written report for Game One is finished. I'm trying to keep these reasonably short this year, we'll see how well I do with that. I'll also put out the call again for anyone who might be interested in doing a written writeup for future games. We had a lot of success with that in past years and I'd definitely appreciate having help to cut down on my workload. Thanks!

[Commodore]

I wonder if the techs thing helped Izzy; she didn't sweep the early religions because she was strictly required to tech to pastures, farms, and mines.

[LKendter]

WOW - round was a total WT

[Fluffball]

An emperor AI (with aggressive) died to barbs? What kind of settings did you have?

Ragnar didn't have metal at his capital and the tech pace is insane in team games. I assume he was trying to escort out settlers with archers and lost them to axes. Although understandable, I was still pretty ticked at him. 

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

I'm flattered to have been quoted in the writeup. Thank you, Sullla, for helping me defend Roosevelt from the haters!

I also didn't realize until recently that the two survivors of this match were the only two who had not made it to the playoffs ever before. Could the bracket be in for a major shakeup this year???

[yuris125]

Wang Kon will win. He can't march his army to the other side of the map because with him in the middle, there's no 'other side' of the map. His options for troll moves are severely limited. But winning a game when Pacal is in it will be the ultimate troll move

[Sullla]

Community predictions have been added to the preview page for Game Two! Here's a quick summary:






And here's a sampling of the community responses in the picking contest:

Methoz: Louis will be first to declare war and it will be against Ganghi, but Pacal, Wang, and eventually Vicky will backstab him and Louis will be first to die. Willem will Peacfully tech away until he has a reasonable tech lead then gain territory through Mehmed or Pacal, whoever is fightin Wang at the time. There will be a few start and stop wars not accomplishing anything and Willem will edge out a space victory from Vicky.

Fatkid: Predictions are pointless except that Wang Kon will find some bizarre way to win the game.

JackDRB: In a world filled with boring and horribly underperforming "good" peaceniks, the "evil" warmongerer is king. Probably. Mehmed begins his reign of terror by running over his neighbour Willem and snowballs from there. Pacal gets a pass because peaceweight and he's more competent than the other tech-y civs. Late-ish finish because I expect most of the financial civs to be run over in one way or another.

Irismono: Both Pacal and Willem have terrible tundra starts, England, India, and France are fairly bunched up. Mehmed on the other hand is in a fantastic position. 3 gems? as soon as he get's mining he'll be able to keep up with the financials in tech pace. Victoria has a pretty good start, and will probably ally with Gandhi (Via religion?) but I think the most that will do is let her use India as a wall while she techs up. Wang is in a true wildcard location, middle of the map, no one really nearby (besides wonder boy Louis) not many resources, but plenty of room to expand. I think Pacal and Willem will end up fighting for territory, allowing Mehmed to expand and build up a giant of an economy, then steamroll anyone in his way. Wang would be his only real obstacle.

Eauxps I. Fourgott:We've seen this sort of setup twice before, and Gandhi won in a landslide both times. The only question is how that win will manifest itself this time, and I frankly don't know so I'm guessing Culture. For second place, I think Mehmed's in a pretty decent position, with good starting land and as far away from Gandhi as possible. Willem clinically sucks at this competition AND borders both Pacal and Mehmed, the two worst neighbors to have in this game, so I'm saying he'll be the first to go.

Jowy: Gems... Gems are truly outrageous. They are truly truly truly outrageous.

RefSteel: Completely surrounded by leaders predisposed to hate him, the Troll King will have to reach new levels of metagame manipulation and/or sheer hilarity just to outlive anyone else, but the question isn't so much IF as HOW! Perhaps he'll trick Louis into declaring a relentless war on Gandhi in which neither side takes the trouble to build any units in between wonders. Then Louis could pull ahead of Kon in the race to oblivion when Gandhi begs for help from Victoria! With Imperalistic expansion and ideal starting techs for her capital, she could by then have claimed the whole northeast of the map and be ready to roll - or so I'm hoping. Meanwhile, in the West, what will it take for the Mehmed to outperform his miserable record? I dunno - how about a triple gems start? Will that do?

NotSpamBot:Despite what I voted Victoria might just win this. She has a lot of land and her neighbors are Gandhi, Louis, neither of whom are going to be dangerous, and Wang Kon, who would totally screw with her given half the chance but is far enough away that he should be limited in his ability to troll Victoria. I am still not going to vote for her, as I have absolute faith in her ability to disapoint.

ZincAlloy: WAAAAAAANG KOOOOOON... does absolutely nothing all game, disappointing everyone. Pacal kills Louis and Wang while the two civs on the left get cut off and never settle enough to be a threat. Ghandi comes second due to having so much land to himself, but fails to grab a culture win.

Tank Sinatra: Willem and Mehmed have the hot starts - will one of them break out of his years-long slump? I say yes, and I say Willem. Pacal tries something aggressive and gets dog-piled. Mehmed chokes like usual. Willem gets rich, things are relatively peaceful (peaceful enough for Gandhi to be left alone), and eventually the Dutch Alpha Centauri Company sends an Alpha Centauriman to plant the orange flag and bring back some of them space spices.

LinkMarioSamus: Perhaps picking Pacal and Gandhi seems like tempting fate after the last match, but they aren't in much of a position to cannibalize each other like Cathy and Cyrus were previously. They seem to be in fairly safe positions and the battle between good and evil is largely pretty even this time around, if perhaps slightly slanted towards the latter. I'm honestly not entirely sure what to say here other than that Pacal winning, Gandhi in second, and Louis as first to die was my gut pick when I saw the game preview, and I'm sticking with it. Gandhi has Victoria as a close neighbor while Pacal's closest is Willem, so not much threat there. Isabella doing so well bodes well for Gandhi as they were in the same game last season, but between the slightly greater presence of lower-peace weight leaders in this match and Pacal having better econ traits, Gandhi seems to be a good bet for second. Also Louis might attack him and mess with Gandhi's early game, and this field seems slightly stronger than Gandhi's opening round competition in the last two seasons.

Louis dies first because his closest neighbors are Gandhi, Wang Kon, and Victoria. Also, as mentioned in Sullla's description Louis's AI personality is kind of self-destructive, hogging wonders and then pissing off stronger civs he's in no position to deal with, and Qin doing so badly last game does not bode well for Louis given their similarities (Industrious leaders who snuck into the playoffs last season on the backs of much stronger first place civs). Mehmed might attack Willem and drag them both down, which would only be further good news for Pacal (either he avoids war or dogpiles Willem), so the lower-peace weight leaders might lose their upper hand in this, but we could be gearing for a good vs. evil showdown of Mehmed and Pacal (and Willem if he survives) vs. Wang Kon, Victoria, and Gandhi.

Greatmefisto: Last time I gave detailed explenation of what will happen and nothing came out true. This time all predictions are made by my wife that has no clue what AI survivor is about

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Two days remaining to submit your predictions if you haven't done so already.

[vmxa]

I enjoyed the stories of how the game will play out, nice job all. Now I just have to remember to tune in tomorrow.

[RFS-81]

Willem has to win because tomorrow is King's Day in the Netherlands!