Looks like sullla drunkenly edited the gold resource all over this upcoming map. Darius' early game research is going to be unholy. Too bad there's no other high peace weight leaders to shield him.
What happened with the Mehmed and Toku war? Mehmed had more cities and much better tech, and should have run Toku over easily. The "one catapult in stack" AI flaw froze his main stack for about 25 turns, and he achieved nothing useful. Pitiful war-time performance.
Still, Mehmed did a pretty solid job overall after a slow start. He mostly kept out of wars (until the Toku debacle) and developed his economy pretty well. Second place and a playoff spot seems earned.
Toku had some crummy land, but he expanded well and fought well against both Rome and the Ottomans. How he managed it with such a garbage economy I have no idea. I am glad he gets another chance in the wild card game.
Julius was a disappointment. (I had him for second place behind Darius.) He had a very good start with the gold at his capital, but expanded very poorly. How he did so badly in the land grab with imperialistic I do not understand. He also managed to miss the second gold with his city placements. He will get another chance in the wild card game, but I do not think he really deserved it. He was lucky to survive, as Toku would probably have finished him off if Mehmed had not attacked Japan.
Brennus and Saladin...meh, they did not show very much this game. Lots of wasteful warring, poor economies. Saladin did manage to spread Islam quite well, not that it helped him very much.
Willem...not sure what to hink. He did an amazing job growing his economy and building heaps of wonders, and looked likely to contend for a playoff spot for a while. But once again he got run over in a 2-v-1 after not building enough military and still building wonders even as his cities got conquered. Willem seems to be a fundamentally flawed AI personality, at least in AI Survivor terms.
Thanks to Sullla for another entertaining game. Get healthy, man, and we will see you in two weeks for game 7.
(May 19th, 2023, 17:35)haphazard1 Wrote: A few thoughts on game six:
What happened with the Mehmed and Toku war?
Thanks to Sullla for another entertaining game. Get healthy, man, and we will see you in two weeks for game 7.
Mehmed seemed to follow half of the RB MP meta - an excellent grenadier beeline there - but then forgot to research Steel to complete the process. Because he hadn't done any early military build-up he didn't start recruiting units until he had kinghts and Janissaries available, and I think some quirk of the AI meant he didn't build any "outdated" collateral units. This meant he couldn't siege, couldn't soak up Toku's cats and trebs, and couldn't cut down the large Japanese stacks. He reached Rifling but then spent an age on econ techs before finally getting cannon, too late to be useful. He was lucky that Darius decided second place for him.
Looking forward to game 7 - hopefully I'll be able to catch at least some of that live.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
Mehmed seemed to follow half of the RB MP meta - an excellent grenadier beeline there - but then forgot to research Steel to complete the process. Because he hadn't done any early military build-up he didn't start recruiting units until he had kinghts and Janissaries available, and I think some quirk of the AI meant he didn't build any "outdated" collateral units. This meant he couldn't siege, couldn't soak up Toku's cats and trebs, and couldn't cut down the large Japanese stacks. He reached Rifling but then spent an age on econ techs before finally getting cannon, too late to be useful. He was lucky that Darius decided second place for him.
It did seem like there was some kind of "I have much stronger units than catapults, better build those shiny new units with better odds" thing going on. The problem was that single cat caused the entire stack of grenadiers and jannisaries to wait forever. If that one cat had not existed, Mehmed would have stormed the first couple cities. He would have taken losses with the defenses intact, but he would almost certainly have taken those cities anyway. I don't know if that would have done enough damage to Japan for Mehmed to win the war, but taking those cities from Toku would have shifted the production balance more in Mehmed's favor.
We have seen this AI behavior before, of course. It just shows that the Civ4 AI really has no concept of stack composition. It just throws together whatever units it has already built plus whatever it is currently building (generally its current "best" unit) amd marches them off.
I disagree. AI ensembles well-composed stack much more often than mere chance would predict. They do not adjust their behaviour, however, if the stack gets unbalanced, say by losing a bunch of siege in an attack. They neither just storm the next city if they can, nor reinforce primarily with siege.
(May 21st, 2023, 06:04)civac2 Wrote: They do not adjust their behaviour, however, if the stack gets unbalanced, say by losing a bunch of siege in an attack.
Mehmed's single catapult in a giant doom stack problem was at the start of the war. I suppose he could have somehow lost some siege units by leaving them alone and unguarded, but there really had not been time for that to happen.
Also, we have seen this problem happen many times over seasons of AI Survivor. It is definitely a flaw in the Civ 4 AI.
The problem may have been that he had the choice between cats/trebs and rifles/grennis and the heuristics overwhelmingly chose to build the modern units.
There seemed to be at least two connected problems:
A) The well-known 'single catapult' problem, causing a large doom stack to sit around for many turns waiting for defenses to be reduced by 1% per turn
B) Not building additional siege units to speed up siege efforts due to higher strength units being available
The result of the combination is very large numbers of units sitting in place and never being used. It is a flaw in the Civ 4 AI generally, and is not specific to a particular AI. It just happened to occur in this game and derail what should have been a swift conquest by a technologically superior AI that also had a bigger economy.
By the way, registering this prediction publicly now...the way every peacenik has been declaring on a natural ally this season, the Liz/Hatty war in game 7 feels inevitable.
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
Get healthy, man, and we will see you in two weeks for game 7.
It just shows that the Civ4 AI really has no concept of stack composition. It just throws together whatever units it has already built plus whatever it is currently building (generally its current "best" unit) amd marches them off.