That was a weird game. Alternate history runs of this one should be interesting; I expect this result was one of the less likely possible outcomes. I picked Washington to start strong and eventually win, but I certainly did NOT expect him to found an early religion. In a game with Pacal, Saladin, and the Burger King how often would that happen?
I thought Saladin would be stonger early than he was and Louis weaker; Louis expanded well and got more territory towards both Pacal and Saladin than I expected. I thought his stone resource would distract him with wonders, but it ended up being Washington grabbing some of the key stone wonders like the Pyramids. Maybe France benefitted from some fail gold?
Did Alex show a "you brought in a war ally against us" diplo malus with Pacal? I wondered if maybe Louis was bought into declaring on Pacal. It did seem odd otherwise. Still, that opportunistic war dec certainly worked out well for France, which became one of the major powers before the war with Washington later.
The Burger King vultured a chunk of territory from the Pacal pile on and otherwise stayed out of stupid conflicts. That was barely enough to sneak into the championship game to defend his title -- maybe we have to start giving this AI some respect?
Thanks for another very entertaining game, Sullla! On to game two!
(July 31st, 2020, 23:18)haphazard1 Wrote: Playoff game 1:
-- maybe we have to start giving this AI some respect?
I will fist fight you.
BK Keeps just stumbles into things. He NEVER outright wins and rarely comes should come close, he just sort of accepts he's a mediocre piece of AI and waits for better AIs to have their game ruined in whatever way.
how do you handle multiple submissions? Do they get automatically overwritten? My scoring of the first playoff game was based on my first submission, not the revised one. If you sort them out by hand I will refrain from submitting revised guesses. It's obviously not a big deal but it did cost me some points.
You made me find the source. Sullla should make this his subscriber animation.
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.”
Gonna post Playoff Game One thoughts and my reasoning behind a major event in that game.
Since I was someone who both said Louis would declare war on Pacal, picked him to win and Pacal FTD and so on, I thought I would mention my thought process. The biggest reason is that Pacal was Louis neighbor and none of his other likely targets WERE neighbors. Being a civilization neighboring the other is actually pretty important when it comes to if the AI will declare war! For example, there's seperate power ratio checks for nearby and distant civilizations: The AI aggression score on the CivFanatics post we use for the Aggression uses iMaxWarNearbyPowerRatio to calculate it.
However, when picking a TARGET, the AI also prioritizes close opponents! First off, if they share a long enough border, they add a MinAdjustedLandPercent to the check for potential victims. MinALP is the number of victim's land plots bordering the AI divided by the number of total land plots the AI owns. This is just to determine if the person nearby is a valid "target".
Once the AI determines a valid target, it then determines which of the valid targets it wants to fight. This is a big place where neighboring comes into play! For each land tile of a potential victim that is adjacent to one of the AI's, +4 is added to the weight of declaring on them compared to other AI. Since Pacal and Louis had a fairly notable border next to them, this number was going to be pretty high, and this was something predictable from looking at the map. By comparison, I don't remember if Louis and Washington had ANY bordering tiles and IIRC Louis and Saladin had very few as expansion had not gotten to the point of a large amount. Because of this, Louis had a large weight added to his chances of declaring on his neighbor Pacal before continuing.
On top of that, there is a check added for proximity of capitals to each other, with the closer the capital is the higher the value added. The max distance this can affect the AI is 42 tiles...AND there is a 1.5x bonus for shared land borders here! A quick look at the map shows shows Mutal is 12 tiles from Paris. By comparison, Mecca is 17 tiles from Paris and Washington is 15 tiles...if we count diagonals, which I do not know if it does. Without diagonals, the numbers are Pacal = 13, Saladin = 18, Washington = 23. HOWEVER, on top of that, Louis is getting Pacal's added amount multiplied by 1.5x due to their shared border, so the amount added is fairly higher just for being close.
These values are then multiplied by relations: Being Pleased adds a 2x modifier, Cautious is 4x, Annoyed is 8x and Furious is a massive 16x. This means Pleased vs. Annoyed is a difference of 6x, BUT that can be made up for by a much larger base, and IIRC Louis/Pacal were actually Cautious when Louis began preparing for war (but I can't check right now so). But, for example, Louis only needs to have 10 unique tiles bordering him compared to Washington to get a +40 weight to declaring on Pacal over Washington. This is then multiplied, which at Pleased makes it +80. Obviously this isn't me actually looking at the game state to see, but my guess would be that Pacal and Louis (especially since Louis' Creative borders will expand to border more) had quite a lot of border tension that, at minimum, made Pacal roughly as likely to be wardecced as Washington or Saladin.
This, at least, was my understanding of what I picked up from forum posts since I don't know the coding myself, someone who knows more might completely correct me. But anyway just by the fact Louis and Pacal were neighbors while Washington was sooooooo far away made Washington an unlikely target. This is why I felt Washington wasn't likely to be FTD. I could be wrong over the long term, though.
I AM sad that despite having a pretty great read on the game, I only scored average points. Pacal held out long enough to avoid FTD and sadly I was incorrect on who of Louis or Washington would come out on top. I do feel happy I got a good call on it, though.
(August 2nd, 2020, 19:17)Kuro Wrote: Gonna post Playoff Game One thoughts and my reasoning behind a major event in that game.
That's a good analysis, and a good explanation of why it happened.
That said... I remain convinced that the Louis-Saladin conflict is more likely in general: more extensive border (in this game, Louis getting the barb city instead of Saladin reduced the potential border overlap for instance), greater peaceweight difference, different religions, Saladin attacking first...
We'll see when I get to replay that one.
I'd say my main prediction, ie that this game was largely unpredictable, was confirmed.
But mainly, I believe we got a series of lower probability events, which, combined, led to a pretty unlikely outcome.
High probability early events that did happen:
- Alexander ending up with no metal (I called it, although the way it happened... )
- Washingtion and Pacal at war
- Charlemagne and Alexander at war
All the rest were IMO lower probability events.
Note that I write "lower", not "low".
Let's use as a rule of thumb 35% vs 65% : individually, getting the 35% event is not shocking at all. But we kept getting those. The rolls weren't exceptional (nothing of the Boudica attacking Mao sort for instance), the streak was.
Pacal declaring on Alexander rather than Washington? Sure, just less likely.
Washington and Saladin sharing a religion? Sure, just less likely.
Said religion spreading early enough to raise relations before a DoW? Sure, just less likely.
Washington founding a religion before Charlemagne? Sure, just less likely.
Charlemagne not founding and converting to a later religion? Sure, just less likely.
Washington founding a religion before Saladin? Sure, just less likely.
Saladin not founding and converting to a later religion? Sure, just less likely.
Saladin going Assembly Line + Industrialism before Biology + Medicine? Sure, just less likely.
etc.
All of the above? Hmm, yeah, not bloody likely.
Did happen, though.
When I replay this game, I do expect to see Louis DoW'ing Pacal on a regular basis.
I do expect to see Pacal die to a dogpile more often than not.
I do expect to see Washington winning a few of them.
But I do not expect to see a game where Saladin is completety passive (curse the of the "cannot plot at pleased"!) AND Washington gets a total free pass in the early game AND Pacal's first war turns into a dogpile where none of his opponents will peace out AND the game ends in a peacefest AND...
(Yes, for the record, I believe the spaceship win also fell into the "lower probability" category.)
But I may be wrong.
I actually hope I'm proven wrong: losing when you're not good enough is the name of the game. Losing to an improbable dice roll (looking at you, wildcard game ) is harder to swallow !
Wow, interesting stuff Kuro! If you're correct about those modifiers, then that significantly affects our understanding of how likely the big event was to happen. Still a wacky game on the whole, of course, but I'd thought that was the most unlikely part of the entire contest. Now it looks like that may be incorrect.
I'll have to add a reference to this post to the game writeup later today before I send it to Sullla.
OK, let's get the easy stuff out of the way first: Asoka first to die, duh.
We could imagine a scenario where a weak Mao declares on Asoka, gets backstabbed by Sury, and dies first, I guess.
But c'mon.
As for the rest... Yikes. This is a tough one.
I think all five of the remaining civs have a decent shot, with none being an obvious choice. They'll all have some pretty big hurdles to surmount.
Willem
Even though I may not end up backing him, I'll probably be rooting for him.
After three dud seasons, he's finally come to, but he needs to redeem himself in the championship. I'd love for him to get the occasion, and a Huyna Capac vs Willem match would certainly be interesting.
But...
Look at his land.
Where's the food?
Where are the river tiles?
Where are the happiness resources?
He might get the Iron spot to the north, which would give him some green tiles at least, and deprive Sury of metals (by stealing the iron and possibly making the copper hill unsettlable), but then I bet he'd lose the gold + dye spot.
Said spot basically constituting the only happiness resources in range for him, but with zero food available to grow a city there.
So I think he'll struggle to get a tech lead and to grow his cities.
And woe befall him should he get attacked: he'll have mainly tundra cities, while the production queues of his few cities with actual production capabilities will be stuck on Wonders, so getting a decent size army just might not be an option.
There's also a decent possibility that whoever will have absorbed Asoka + Augustus will be running Buddhism while Willem will be running a different religion (or be the only godless civ in a Buddhist world), so he could very well be next on the chopping block.
He could make it work, though.
For instance by absorbing a no-metal Suryavarman to get some quality land.
Or by landing the Colossus + GL combo and settling a lot of ice fishing villages.
We know he's going for a cultural win: no need for 20 cities for that.
Suryavarman
I think he's got the best land, with two major rivers: almost a free financial trait!
There's a good chance he'll be the early and mid-game tech leader.
As mentionned above, he's at risk of not having metals: I think he'll either send his settler east to the spice + floodplains spot, or south to the rice.
In the former case, he could lose the rice + iron spot to Willem's third city (only food in range for Willem after the wheat + deer spot he'll surely grab with his initial settler).
It might not be as bad as it sounds, though: Mao should be busy elsewhere, and Willem extremely weak militarily.
I think Sury's main issue is going to be breakout: he's not bordering the high peaceweight civs, and shared religion + Organized Religion as a favoured civic might prevent him from declaring on his neighbours.
So while he could very well end up winning, I believe he's a safer bet for runner-up: almost guaranteed to do well, but maybe not enough for first place.
Mao Zedong
With a creative Sury on one side, and Asoka most certainly planting a Holy City right in his face on the other side, he's going to have to get creative himself to find tiles to work.
Cue "pointy stick border expansions".
He'll need to get a good share of Asoka's lands. If he does, he'll be in good shape.
If he doesn't... not so much.
Between Sury's commerce-heavy lands, and a financial Willem, I don't think he'll be able to reproduce his wildcard game economic dominance. He'll have to make up with a bigger size.
Basically, he has to play Julius's game, only better...
He has going for him that he's more sheltered (only Sury as a backstab risk), and a better eco leader.
Augustus Caesar
What he'll need is what he may not get: time.
He should be safe from early aggression (Indian bait)... from the other AIs.
But he'll be playing his own wildcard game version, fighting off barbs who didn't get the memo that the wildcard game was over.
If he manages to deal with that issue in time, he should become a major power: I'm not too fond of the initial quality of his land (choice between tundra or dry), but I like its available quantity (and there's the juicy gems spot to the north that he might beat Aasoka to).
Then he'll need time to overcome his peaceweight issue (civics, religion, shared military struggle bonus).
Ideal scenario for him would probably be Mao and Julius having at it over the spoils of India, and him backstabbing Julius.
He might also have to contend with a long-distance invasion by Sury, though.
Basically, can he avoid a fatal dogpile long enough to grow to a critical size?
And I guess the answer to that one is a noncommittal "sometimes".
I don't think he's a good candidate for runner-up, though: he'll either grow powerful enough to live, and win, or he'll die.
Julius Caesar
The other Rome.
Now, I think Julius's game is going to be pretty straightforward: iron or no iron, he'll have copper (he has three first-ring sources), and he'll attack Asoka early.
And that'll be the start of his snowball.
To keep it going, he'll need to conquer his fair share of India (ie, not have Mao steal his conquests), and fast enough that's he's not exposed to a deadly backstab by Augustus.
Then he'll either conquer Mao, Augustus, or possibly Willem, and become unstoppable... or fail and die.
His central position means his conquests will always perfectly fit with his territory and shorten his supply lines.
It also exposes him to attacks from opposite fronts.
All in all, I think I'll tentatively go for:
Winner: Julius Caesar Runner-up: Suryavarman First to Die: Asoka
But frankly, any non-Asoka AI winning seems legit here.
(August 3rd, 2020, 10:33)Eauxps I. Fourgott Wrote: Wow, interesting stuff Kuro! If you're correct about those modifiers, then that significantly affects our understanding of how likely the big event was to happen. Still a wacky game on the whole, of course, but I'd thought that was the most unlikely part of the entire contest. Now it looks like that may be incorrect.
I'll have to add a reference to this post to the game writeup later today before I send it to Sullla.
Here is one of the resources I used when looking for how neighboring AI affects likelihood of war, if you or anyone else wants to take a look (since for all I know I messed up XD): https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/i...st-7190899
I'm sure there's other or better resources but hey.
On to game two!
In a game with Pacal, Saladin, and the Burger King how often would that happen?
) is harder to swallow 
!