I was just wondering if this event might have started up again. I read through the last season with interest, albeit several months late. Good to have a new round to look forward to!
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Civ AI Survivor: Season Five
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Yay, here we go again!
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.”
One tip on the write-up - Ctrl-F your text for "â€" and remove those pesky problems with apostrophes and speech marks.
 ’ = ' “ = " †= " Currently reading up while making my decision. (May 18th, 2020, 14:04)GreyWolf Wrote: There are two scenarios for this game: I'm adamant it's the 2nd, so that mean's it's almost certainly going to be the 1st.
Can't wait until AI Survivor starts next week? Feel free to prepare by binging through updated profiles of all 52 leaders: http://www.sullla.com/Civ4/civ4survivor5...eview.html
One of the small annoyances from the past few AI Survivor seasons was the leader profiles, which I had written for the first competition back in Season One. Although I had tinkered with a few of the profiles around the edges, they had become badly outdated as a group and were ripe for updating to reflect the greater knowledge that the community had gained over time. The driving force behind this update was Ghostpants, one of the community members who had the idea to update the format for these leader profiles. He came up with the new setup and wrote about 20 of the leader profiles while I filled in the remainder. This was a lot of work to put together and major thanks need to be sent to Ghostpants for helping to improve this part of the AI Survivor setup! 
Glancing over those profiles, Bismark stands out as someone who you'd think would be better in the AI survivor format. Slightly more militaristic but not TOO militaristic seems to treat the AIs well, and his peace weight doesn't make him an immediate mortal enemy of half the field like Frederick does.
Even in my SP games, he stands out for being pretty mediocre though. Usually Berlin has about 13 wonders and that's the extent of his influence on a game.
I think that's it. AI wonder-chasers are there just to mess up the human player's wonder goals.
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
I write RPG adventures, and blog about it, check it out.
Community predictions added to the Game One preview page: http://www.sullla.com/Civ4/civ4survivor5-1-preview.html
![[Image: survivor5-1-8.jpg]](http://www.sullla.com/Civ4/Survivor/S5/survivor5-1-8.jpg) ![[Image: survivor5-1-9.jpg]](http://www.sullla.com/Civ4/Survivor/S5/survivor5-1-9.jpg) ![[Image: survivor5-1-10.jpg]](http://www.sullla.com/Civ4/Survivor/S5/survivor5-1-10.jpg) ![[Image: survivor5-1-11.jpg]](http://www.sullla.com/Civ4/Survivor/S5/survivor5-1-11.jpg) Eauxps I. Fourgott: Toku is an aggressive leader, in a central position... yeah, probably not going to end well for him. Mansa's in a perfect position to take some gains from that, and if he does that then it's over. He probably rolls over the chronically incompetent Mehmed, maybe takes out Pacal as well, then techs to space while his buddy Joao takes over much of France at some point. MirrorG: Ahh, it's good to be back! Wasn't able to play for most of season 4, so it'll be nice to be able to work on my guessing game all season 5! As for my pics, Mansa is always strong, but he's being matched against several low peace weight + economic + militaristic opponents. I suspect that unless he can take out Joao without much difficulty he'll end up penned in by a bloc of Pacal, Mehmed, and maybe de Gaulle, of which Pacal's economy will snowball the quickest and allow him a relatively speedy victory. As much as I loved his performance last season, Tokugawa is royally screwed by being sandwiched between two warmongers from the start, especially with his reluctance to make friends, so he'll be out first. jarrebesetoert: Normally, I'd pick Mansa with my eyes closed, but... he's going to be the worst enemy of everyone except Joao. He's got a peace weight of 9, Joao 6 and the others have 0, 1 or 2!! Therefore I'm guessing the other financial leader will win: Pacal. Mansa won't be the first to die, with his tech lead and elephants/skirmishers to defend himself, but I don't think he'll win against all these low peace weight enemies. I also don't see domination as a victory type, since all the other low peace weight leaders will probably love each other in the end. So, spaceship it is for Pacal. I might be mistaken, but I also don't see a lot of horses on this map, which means: no horses for Mansa, since no one will trade it to him (Joao only has one). Fluffball: Mansa versus weak competition.... I don't know how you don't pick Mansa. c0lors: The cold map should constrain the settlement phase and get the wars started faster. I see Mansa taking a beating early, but I don't think the AIs will be able to close the deal and land the killing blow on Mali. I am very tempted to go with peace weight and pick Mehmed or Pacal, but I also don't want to feel like an idiot when Mansa rides his starting gold and river valley to an insurmountable tech lead. Pacal looks less attractive because Japan is right next door and the land to his south is dry and will be heavily contested by the Ottomans. Anyway, I'm guessing the king stays the king, and Joao rides Mansa's coattails to a comfy second place. Ichabod: Despite the peace weight difference, Mansa is way better than everyone else. He has copper and ivory (nice tile, nice unit) in his Capital, with a likely iron. Mehmed will likely fail to expand and die, but not that early. De Gaulle will probably go first due to lack of metal. Pacal as second place, since no one else seems to be able to do something worthy of note. Charriu: I think the AIs with the best chances in this game are Pacal and Mehmed. Pacal has great economic traits and plays well with all the other evil AIs. He also has a good starting position and will likely found a religion and engage in a religious block with Toku. Mehmed has a great starting position with a lot of land to grab. A lot will come down to who dies first. I don't think Mansa will die first mainly because of skirmishers. Still this is a hard game for Mansa with all the evil AIs around him and only Joao being somewhat of a friend. Still Mansa will found the other religion and building a religious block with Joao. Joao also won't likely die first, because of lack of aggressive neighbors. This leaves only Toku and De Gaulle and here I think Toku has the upper hand with better promotions and being more aggressive. De Gaulles strategic resources are also a bit far off his capital. So De Gaulle will die first and probably by Tokus hand. Next to do die is probably Mansa by Mehmed with help from Toku and maybe even Joao. Meanwhile Pacal will build up a nice tech lead in the background. This will leave the Pacal, Mehmed and Toku as the leading players, but Mehmed and Toku will most likely show worse performance in the later stages of the game. So I give this game a win for Pacal with a Cultural Victory from the shadows. David Anber: I’m a bad Civ 4 player but I’m good at predicting Vincarius: The two leaders that stand out to me as potential winners are Pacal and Mansa. I've been jumping a lot between both. The game has 4 low peace weight civs which would suggest Pacal to be the favourite. However, I'm not a big fan of these low peace weight civs. De Gaulle has a poor start and poor AI plus will have a hard time grabbing copper or iron. Mehmed has poor AI, lots of room but a large part is tundra. Tokugawa is a poor AI with bad starting techs and he's squashed in the middle. So for me the question comes down to who I like more between Pacal and Mansa and for that I'll have to go with the latter. I'd say Mansa has the superior AI and a good position. Meanwhile, Pacal has a good position as well but could be cursed by the stone and his high wonder building and therefore has a larger chance of ruining his opening. With Mansa as the winner, Joao would be a sensible second place due to his high peace weight. For first to die I've picked De Gaulle as he does not appear to have copper or iron nearby. As for victory type and date I've gone with Spaceship T300 as both Mansa and Pacal are competent researchers. Spambot: Mansa Musa FTD [First To Die]?! Well, it's a low peaceweight field and Tokugawa is RIGHT THERE with Pacal and De Gaulle to guard his flanks and perhaps even dunk on Moneybags. Mehmed has a lot of land but I have a feeling that Pacal is going to gobble up a lot of that. Tokugawa is NOT going to snowball from eating Mansa, as I suspect that he is going to attack pre Catapults and thus only ensuing that Mansa becomes too weak to survive the next attack. Cuthraxys: It's probably more likely Mansa wins, but I want to see another Toku win please... He can roll up the inferior French quite easily, then stomp Joao/Pacal. While Mehmed fistfights Mansa who's on Physics, that's when the rising/setting sun empire 2-front wars into a sunny (dream) victory. Mehmed eats dust, barely in second place. Brian Shanahan: Mansa wins, he's by far the best of this group and the peace weight difference won't hurt him too bad. Spaceship at around turn 330's my guess. Pacal's second because he's the best land to build into who's not Mansa and Toku's beside him so he'll get a free pass early on. Joao is first to die I think, he's too indescript as an AI. pindicator: Let's be bold with our predictions to start a new season! I'm going to say that Mansa will be the outsider and first to go. His high peace weight will cause the other civs to eye him funny, and then landing a religion that the rest of the continent does not share will be the final straw. Militaristic Mehmed will come knocking. He won't kill Mansa in the first strike but weaken him enough to do it later on. Pacal will eventually tire of Tokugawa and absorb him, moving west, and we'll end up with a map where Pacal has half, Mehmed has a third, and Joao holds on with a little bit. Pacal wins by space. Shpoko: Mansa returns to from in this one, as while the majority of the field here are low peace weight, they are all starting away from him. De Gaulle is cramped and has a poor resource situation, Toku has a poor economy, Pacal is likely to be a passive wondermonger, and Mehmed has no good food spots outside his capital. This plus capital copper gives Mansa the time to build up his tech engine. After that the baddies will likely come to get slaughtered by Mansa's superior troops, with J man picking up Mansa's religion and riding his coattails to a second place finish. Amicalola: Look, I get it, Mansa is the Golden Boy. We all love him. This breaks my heart. But: He's surrounded on all sides by leader who WILL attack him, not if but when. It's not much better than poor Gandhi in that playoff game last season. If Mansa gets attacked 3 times before Turn 150, I don't care how good his economy will be by Turn 200: he'll be dead. Even if he somehow survives, he'll be constantly at war and wasting production on units, not to mention having his cottages pillaged. So the question is, who stands to gain the most from his demise? I think it will be Pacal, not because he'll gain territory; he'll probably stay out of it. Instead, he'll race out to an unbeatable tech lead while the three warmongers scrap with Mali, Portugal, and eventually each other. This is basically Pacal's ideal game: 3 pretty crummy warmongers who can't beat him in tech, and 2 poor souls for them to feed on (Mansa, Joao), while he sits it out in the corner, building. Space vs Culture is a tossup, don't know how to predict that. The question for second is whoever gains the most out of Mansa's demise, and (holy crap, this is exciting), I think it's Mehmed! He's got a great start including close luxuries, he's directly bordering Mali rather than a diagonal, and he's got the unit preference to actually take some cities. I think this is finally Mehmed's game! We uh, haven't heard that one before... Sir Colville of the Dale: Mansa, this just isn't your day. |
