Civ4 AI Survivor: Season Four

[Sullla]

Catching up with some of the posts in this thread:

* Willem AI: He has great traits but failed to use them well in past seasons until this one. I think that he might have been carried along by the fact that it was apparently King's Day in the Netherlands when we were running Game Two. More seriously though, Willem doesn't seem to put a high enough priority on expansion; if you watched this game, he was tearing it up in culture and economy while struggling to get past four cities for a long time. This is probably what has doomed him in past games.

* AI Mods: This question has come up before and it's the same answer as before, I'm simply not interested in them. I want to run the competition on the base game that everyone is familiar with, not an AI mod that maybe 2% of the Civilization community has experience using. If the AIs do some dumb stuff, well, that's part of the fun. I don't think that an AI mod where the AI uses its free starting Immortal/Deity units to rush the player at the start of the game makes for a very interesting or fun experience, even if it's the best play from a theorycrafting perspective.

* Gandhi: I think that Fluffball nailed the explanation for why Gandhi seems to win any game where he doesn't get killed. He's basically running a total farmer's gambit at all times and leaning hard into the expectation that he won't be called on it. Either it works and he wins a pre-Turn 300 cultural victory, or it doesn't work and he gets eliminated. I don't think Gandhi can ever win the Championship with this strategy because it's too reliant on luck but he can definitely win a series of games along the way. Note that this still makes him stronger than something like 80-90% of the leaders in Civ4.

A couple more links for you:

Game Two Writeup

Game Two Full Video (YouTube)

Game Three Picking Contest Entry Form

The YouTube video is still buffering at the moment but it should be available in high quality in an hour or two. Hope to see a bunch of you again on this upcoming Saturday for Game Three!

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

More seriously though, Willem doesn't seem to put a high enough priority on expansion

This. 100% this. I know last year, Willem barely expanded at all and was eliminated for that reason. I'm pretty sure that was part of previous years' failures as well. Willem simply doesn't like to expand. My biggest memory of a SP game with him was once where I was on a team with him, on an archipelago map, and he NEVER built a second city. He had a whole long, snaky island, but Mansa on the opposite end ended up getting all the land. If Wang or Louis had gone after Willem in this AI game, he probably would've been dead.

[Bobchillingworth]

I actually recently started up a Warlords game; the AI is better (it uses a superior version of the AI Blake developed)

What's different there?  AFAIK, BTS just kept Blake's same AI from Warlords.

I can identify three significant differences:

* No BtS espionage system, so the AI isn't programmed to waste resources on it.

* The Warlords AI is much more aggressive about cottaging its land, to the point where it does suffer from production short falls since it builds few to no watermills or workshops, and replaces most of its mines as soon as it can build windmills. It does tech very quickly as a result, however.

* The AI tends to be more effective at taking cities and clearing stacks since siege units can kill, and it loves throwing them around.


It also appears to expand more quickly, particularly when claiming islands, although it also settles in strange patterns which often leave gaps of unclaimed land in its territory. It seems to overvalue securing unique resources.

[darrelljs]

Just wanted to say now much I appreciate you doing the writeup for us luddites that still prefer to read .

Darrell

[Brian Shanahan]

So what is it that makes Gandhi such an incredibly good AI? All other AIs with anything near that unit emphasis and aggression rating are uniformly "food" but somehow that dadgum super-callused fragile mystic plagued with halitosis manages to be just resilient enough, and actually does fight decently when finally forced into war. It baffles me.

Random.org is going to put a lot of us to shame this season, I predict.

It's been putting me to shame for the last three years.

[RFS-81]

Hope to see a bunch of you again on this upcoming Saturday for Game Three!

Saturday, not Friday? I may actually get to see this one live!

[yuris125]

* AI Mods: This question has come up before and it's the same answer as before, I'm simply not interested in them. I want to run the competition on the base game that everyone is familiar with, not an AI mod that maybe 2% of the Civilization community has experience using. If the AIs do some dumb stuff, well, that's part of the fun. I don't think that an AI mod where the AI uses its free starting Immortal/Deity units to rush the player at the start of the game makes for a very interesting or fun experience, even if it's the best play from a theorycrafting perspective.

I experimented with K-Mod when I was trying some AI Survivor things myself. With the mod, AIs tend to go to choking wars to each other, which may be a good play, but ultimately ends up in prolonged wars with no cities changing hand and no visible progress. Overall, while these games could be considered to be played at a higher level, they were much less interesting from spectator point of view. Which is not a strike against the mod, producing interesting games between AIs was not its goal. But I 100% agree with the decision to use base AI

[Borsche]

I feel like Willem has a potentially AI since I see it do well in most of the games that I played with him, but the expansion thing is definitely where he runs afoul. He's actually a pretty balanced leader, building units and science and infra at a good rate, but he probably focuses a little too much on wonders and culture to the detriment of expansion. Compared to other 'balanced' leaders like Cyrus and Julius who tend to ignore culture while continuing to expand, or even other 'specialist' leaders like Gandhi who goes all in on culture it can feel a little bit like too many competing priorities.

[shallow_thought]

* AI Mods: This question has come up before and it's the same answer as before, I'm simply not interested in them. I want to run the competition on the base game that everyone is familiar with, not an AI mod that maybe 2% of the Civilization community has experience using. If the AIs do some dumb stuff, well, that's part of the fun. I don't think that an AI mod where the AI uses its free starting Immortal/Deity units to rush the player at the start of the game makes for a very interesting or fun experience, even if it's the best play from a theorycrafting perspective.

I experimented with K-Mod when I was trying some AI Survivor things myself. With the mod, AIs tend to go to choking wars to each other, which may be a good play, but ultimately ends up in prolonged wars with no cities changing hand and no visible progress. Overall, while these games could be considered to be played at a higher level, they were much less interesting from spectator point of view. Which is not a strike against the mod, producing interesting games between AIs was not its goal. But I 100% agree with the decision to use base AI

Absolutely. The whole point of AI Survivor is to let us watch these wacky guys (and occasional gal) who we've spent so much time with do their thing. I do think that some of the settings play to certain stremgths - but I'd rather see ORG nerfed than watch half the civs die to barbs or take four hours to establish actual borders with the opposition, so Deity it is. Similarly coast/naval civs are not favoured by the Pangea choice, but it's the least bad option.

It might be interesting in an academic sense to set up every leader on identical but separated islands and see who can tech best, but I very much doubt we'd be dicussing season four of that .

But in terms of exploring what's out there in Civ IV SP (and Civ VI has definitively not filled the gap - we play more SP MOO on the site), I guess I should give these mods a try...

[Sullla]

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






This game turned out to have the biggest favorites yet in the picking contest. Julius Caesar was the overwhelming choice to win the game with more than half of the total entries expecting him to emerge victorious. Shaka, De Gaulle, and Suleiman were all distant trailers in the wake of the Roman leader. The runner up vote can often be the most difficult choice in the picking contest, and that seemed to be the case here with no particular favorite standing out. The community didn't seem to have any strong feelings about this category. First To Die was another overwhelming selection, with Joao picked to get crushed at an early date by more than half of the field. Frederick was the only other leader who registered here, far behind the Portuguese king. It also bears mentioning that Domination was even more of a massive favorite in the victory category, with almost 3/4ths of the contest entries choosing it, and with Spaceship eating up pretty much every other entry form. I'm not saying that these were bad choices either, and this definitely did not appear to be a game that would end in a Diplomatic or Cultural outcome.

Finally, here are some of the best/craziest written predictions about what would take place during the game:

Warclam: Frederick is in big trouble, but I think João is going to get nommed by Shaka before distant Freddy can fall to Rome. De Gaulle probably won't make it out either, leaving the pie to be shared between the warmongers and the Sillyman. I'm going to peg Shaka in third, with Julius taking the top spot and Sillyman by his side.

Faded_Outline: Ok, Joao must have bothered some higher power to get a starting spot between Caesar and Shaka. Religion might save him (and everyone else by extension, for neither one of those leaders will stop at one kill) but I can't see anything else that'd do it.

jarrebesetoert: Jules connects iron at the moment his Praetorians need it. He expands north and east until he runs into Sillyman. He can still expand east, maybe declares on Sillyman, but I'm hoping on Frederick, who has a very high peace weight (so Jules will hate him, while Sillyman has the same peace weight). The starting techs of Frederick also really don't match his starting position. So, I'm hoping he will be killed first. Meanwhile, Shaka will probably declare on Joao (having different peace weights), but Shaka is not in a very good starting position (not a lot of resources around), while Joao has all green lands, gems and not too much jungle. He'll expand like crazy (as usual) into the face of Shaka. They'll probably have a long inconclusive war, while Jules has more success with his Praets. De Gaule has some excelent land to start with, atuned to his starting techs. I think it all depends on which direction the Sillyman takes. If he goes towards Joao, he'll probably join the war with Shaka against him (also peace weight) and then Joao could be first to die. I'm hoping though that the Sillyman expands towards De Gaule and goes to war with him (because of all the tribute demands and peace weight). So: Jules vs Frederick, Shaka vs Joao, Sillyman vs De Gaule. Jules kills Frederick first with his Praets and snowballs from there. Shaka will suicide at some point as usual.

XpL: Hard to imagine Caesar not doing well with a triple sea food capital and already building a WB, however Suleiman has better position to consume the weaker leaders De Gaulle and Frederick. Joao more likely to be knocked out by Caesar than Shaka and the game will largely be decided whether the two clash for extended periods of time. Regardless, can't rule out the surprise De Gaulle culture/spaceship!

UnforcedError: Frederick to die first seems almost certain. Everyone but Joao will hate him on sight, he has a slow seafood start and won't build many units anyway. Another contender would be Joao, but I presume he will do his normal crazy rexing and last longer due to having more cities. Hard to predict who will like whom in this game. Neither of them cares too much about religions (except maybe Suli, with his culture flavor?) so it's impossible to see where the holy cities will end up. No Mysticism starts either. Shaka has impi readily available, but he also has a slower seafood start as does JC. I like De Gaulle's capital. He also seems to have a bit more expansion space than most. He might just be able to survive in this game. Shaka's a wildcard as always: he will either grow big or get killed. JC and De Gaulle have better traits and flavors in the long run. I don't dare to bet on Suli, he will probably behave like an idiot. Or win culture, who knows?

ZincAlloy: That's right, I'm voting for de Gaulle. Shaka's out for blood, and peace weight makes him attack Joao in an ineffective war that weakens them both, letting de Gaulle overrun them and thus the rest of the game. Julius is here too? I guess he can go beat up Frederick.

Takuan: Caesar will be boxed in early on and won't manage to succesfully kill an AI. He will waste his time attacking far away AIs, therefore he won't be able to do much. On the other hand, Shaka will expand just as well as Joao in the early stages of the game and then will attack and kill him off, taking his land and the lead. He will snowball from there, killing Suleiman while Caesar finally kills Frederick, but too late; Shaka will also kill him. De Gaulle will get second place due to the large chunk of land he can get for himself, and his luck of being ignored by Shaka for the majority of the game (due to Shaka having targets that he dislikes more).

Y3llowSheep: It seems like the top seed is a death sentence, so it's been nice knowing you JC

lightms: Caesar has a really good start, with three seafoods, two silvers, and a horse (in a pear tree) so... naturally I'm not picking him as AI's with really good starts wait around too long improving tiles to begin expanding (I'm serious, I think this is a thing as the AI just doesn't build enough workers). I picked the Ottomans last time and they let me down, so I'll pick them again as statistically they must have already used up all their bad luck, leaving them with only good luck. More seriously I do think that he has a good starting position and has a decent chance at founding a religion, staying peaceful with Caesar (same peaceweight), and taking out either Joao or Fredrick. I think Shaka also has a decent chance of doing OK, as he has lots of room to expand to the east and Degaul is probably (knock on wood) a three-cities-is-sufficient AI.

NotSpamBot: Preemptively sending my regards to Joao's next of kin due to his impending graphic mauling at the hands of Shaka. It is rather telling that I predict that he will die before Frederic, but at least there is wilderness and space between Germany and the inevitable Ottoman and/or Roman invasion(s).

Shpoko: Haven't been close yet, but here goes. With this group of leaders, I see religion being less important. No one starts with Mysticism and none seem very focused on it. Because of this peace weight takes center stage, and that's why I think Fred is first to die. He has the highest peace weight and only Joao is anywhere close. This gets him in trouble early. His only saving grace is distance, but with two Imp neighbors, that won't last long. Shaka and De Gaulle I see becoming buds and going after Joao, leaving them facing down a partnership of Julius and Suleiman. This I think will stall out until one wins by space.

Asselis: Caesar = Caesar ; Suleiman = Nicomedes IV ; De Gaule = Vercingetorix ; Frederick = Ariovistus ; Joao = Viriathus ; Shaka = Juba I ; HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

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Yeah, I don't quite know what the last one means either but went ahead and included it. Game Three will take place this week on Saturday (not our usual Friday) 04 May. There's a couple days left to get in predictions if you haven't already - hope to see you there.