Civ4 AI Survivor: Season Four

[Sullla]

Season Four has finally come to a conclusion! Here's a final set of links as we wrap things up:

Main Season Four Webpage

Sullla Twitch Page

Sullla Discord Channel

AI Reference Guide from CivFanatics

Championship Game Livestream

Championship Game Written Report

Championship Game YouTube

Full YouTube Playlist of AI Survivor Games


Congratulations to Y3llowSheep as the winner of the Championship Game's picking contest with 18 points. Even larger congratulations goes out to LukeT for winning the season-long competition with 161 points, a very impressive average of almost 12.5 per game. The full spreadsheet can be downloaded from my website here:

Final Bracket and Standings

I'm working on a Conclusions page which should be ready later this week; I'll have savegame files ready for download at that time. Thank you to everyone who took part in this season of AI Survivor - the picking contest was fantastic again and everyone made the Livestreams a total blast. We had our best turnout year this year, and odds are we'll be back again next year for Season Five. Special final thanks again to Commodore for creating the map used for the final - it was awesome even if the AIs were a bit less so.

[Kofiman]

In truth I'll take a few games like this over predictable stomp-fests.  This was hilarious to watch.

[haphazard1]

The unexpected twists and turns certainly made the championship interesting. Also exasperating, frustrating, and hilarious.

Thanks for all the work put into this season, Sullla! Very much appreciated.

[Borsche]

The peacenik AI's avoid Rifling mainly because of its flavors - they are 10 Military, 1 Production, 1 Science. For comparison, Gunpowder is 9 Military, 4 Production, 4 Science, Assembly Line is 3 Military, 10 Production, 3 Growith, Industrialism is 2 Military, 10 Production, 3 Gold, 4 Growth. The few non-Military flavors Rifling has is not enough to make it a priority even for those that do have Production or Science flavors.

And Elizabeth actually made the Championship match in AI Survivor 1, finishing 4th place, so she's the English leader with the best performance so far.

I don't feel that Bismark deserves such a low place. His greatest weakness is perhaps his peaceweight.

Oh dang, I didn't even know that the techs had their own flavors. This is in the CIV4TechInfos.xml if anyone else wants to look through them.

[haphazard1]

That is new info to me, also, Borsche. Civ AI Survivor has me learning new things about a game I have played for years.

As for Bismark, his greatest weakness is that he is German. Like the American leaders, his civ's unique unit and building almost never make a difference since they become available so late, after the game has usually already been decided.

[Borsche]

Honestly the real thing that killed Willem here was building the Shwedagon. He was in Buddhism and was sharing a war with Kublai - both leaders can still plot at pleased, but once Willem was in Free Religion (his favorite civic) he went down to cautious with Kublai (and most other leaders).

Willem will always go Free Religion, but this move caused him to go into FR about 20(?) turns earlier than he would have, and Kublai's Max War Rand is fairly low (100 for him, compared to Temujin's 50, out of a possible 400) so each turn that he's sitting at cautious is another turn Kublai is likely to declare war.

If he at least stays in Buddhism until Liberalism, Willem could've probably gotten to Rifling (or I guess at least Railroads for the Machineguns lol) since he was basically getting every tech in 1 turn through the tree.

[darrelljs]

Now we have to live in a world where Charlemagne - Protective/Imperialistic Charlemagne! - is an AI Survivor champion.

QotM.

Were you deliberately mispronouncing his name on the stream or have I been saying it wrong my entire life?

Darrell

[Fluffball]

Now we have to live in a world where Charlemagne - Protective/Imperialistic Charlemagne! - is an AI Survivor champion.

QotM.

Were you deliberately mispronouncing his name on the stream or have I been saying it wrong my entire life?

Darrell

This came up last season as well. He's pronouncing it badly, but attempting a French pronunciation. Also Roosevelt pronounced his own name Rose-a-velt and not the Dutch way that Sullla says.

[Fluffball]

As for Bismark, his greatest weakness is that he is German. Like the American leaders, his civ's unique unit and building almost never make a difference since they become available so late, after the game has usually already been decided.

I don't know how much that matters. A LOT of civs have pretty bad uniques, even if they're available earlier. And some of the strong leaders have bad uniques as well, like Catherine/Stalin (Cossacks are fine, just not game changing, and labs are extreme end game.) And then there is Justinian that only ever researches guilds when he's on the cusp of cavs.

[RFS-81]

Ouch, I was rooting for Willem this season.

Economic leaders just keep avoiding rifling. In MOO, all AIs have the same tech preferences while at war. I wonder if that would help the Civ 4 AIs too. In many cases, starting on military techs when the enemy is already at the gates will be too late, but for runaway financial leaders that knock out a new tech every two turns it could be very helpful.

How do AIs choose the victory condition they aim for? How do they decide that a post turn 400 culture victory is the way to go?


Also, thank you Sullla for running this event again and for writing all the summaries!