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(July 20th, 2024, 12:15)ljubljana Wrote: it seems like lately too many games have been decided by who rolls an attack against the guy who bungled the opening
I mean, that happens plenty in games between humans too, right...
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(July 20th, 2024, 17:31)T-hawk Wrote: I mean, that happens plenty in games between humans too, right...
Spotting the weak civ that bungled the opening and moving to exploit that weakness...this is a good thing for the AI to do.
I think what we have been seeing is that the decision to give the AIs all the intro techs at higher difficulty levels was a good one by Firaxis. It avoids the 'no culture for ages' problem, the 'no roads for ages' problem, and also the 'military research flavor eats the archery poison pill' problem. For general Civ purposes, the additional starting techs make a ton of sense.
But for AI Survivor purposes, not giving those initial techs is a good thing. It makes the AIs much more different from one another, which adds a lot of flavor to the contest. It does cause some problems with comparing performace across the early seasons vs. more recent seasons, as some AIs have taken a much bigger hit to their early game than others. We are still seeing this work its way into the rankings, as some leaders are still hanging on to seeded status mostly due to early seasons performance that they can no longer quite match. It might be interesting to do a points breakdown starting from the season where the extra techs were removed, and see which leaders would be seeded based only on the more recent 'no bonus starting techs' seasons.
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(July 20th, 2024, 12:15)ljubljana Wrote: i am pretty confident that stalin's fraudulence of late is due mostly to the removal of the deity starting techs.... pretty much nobody is more "never research mysticism"-brained than mr 0 religious tech preferences. i think the year this change was made coincides with when his play started dropping off a cliff as well 
Actually, that was Season 4 and that year he made the Championship again, seemingly confirming that he was a good leader and not just a fluke. That included a dominant win in the opening round that he even backed up in the AHs.
At least one of his AHs in the seasons since then had him performing pretty well as well, so perhaps it's partially just bad luck in the real games in recent years. He's also been getting exclusively central starting positions for quite a while. I wonder how different it would be if he was in a corner.
Quote:that said.... ignoring mysticism doesn't explain THIS game, and i'm not sure anything can  is it me, or is this behavior where the AI makes 2 settlers and just leaves them in a border city forever a new thing? or has it always been happening and we are only now starting to notice and discuss it more?
I haven't studied closely, but I feel like building excess settlers that the AI never ends up using, especially when preparing for war, is somewhat of a common thing. I assume the nearby barb cities and ongoing war preparations made it so that the AI didn't know what to do with those settlers.
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Honestly, I'd prefer to give the AIs some of their starting techs back. First, because that's how the difficulty levels are designed. Second, because Deity AIs start with a Worker. Civ-specific starting techs are a harmless bit of flavour when you still have 10-15 turns until your first Worker. But if we had multiplayer games with a starting Worker, almost everyone would pick an Agriculture civ.
Third, because taking away the free techs leads to situations like Portugal. Joao was not bugged, that has happened to dozens of AIs in Survivor games, usually economy-poor warmongers. The Civ AI will not build anything in its cities if it has built all available buildings and can't afford more units. As I said, that usually happens to leaders with extreme unit training emphasis who don't unlock new techs fast enough. But it can also happen to someone like Joao in specific circumstances:
1. opens Mysticism-Meditation but fails to land a religion, so Monasteries and missionaries are not available as builds
2. has cheap Workers/Settlers as IMP/EXP so initial expansion sites (including the free Deity Settler) run ahead of the economy from Wheel/Pottery to pay for them
3. takes too long to hook up Horses/Copper, so early military is cheap in hammers (9/15 for Warriors/Archers with Deity discounts) but costs just as much in upkeep as more advanced units
The situation only fixed itself when Portugal lost a bunch of units (and a city) to the Vikings, which ironically meant that they could afford more and better units again. A few free techs would probably have prevented all the "buggy" behaviour.
Now, it's true that the game doesn't treat AIs fairly when it comes to free techs. If a civ already starts with a tech that it would have gotten for free, it gets no benefit. But it's not hard to design a better system. I'd give all the AIs Archery for free, plus one more tech:
Agriculture, if they didn't start with it
Wheel, if they already had Agriculture
Mining, if they had them both
That way, everyone would have 4 starting techs. The AI would still do stupid things, but it wouldn't "fail to launch" in the ancient era.
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This week, random.org has Montezuma to win a Diplo victory. Yeah, that'll happen...
Sury second place, Izzy FTD, T258, 8 wars
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Diplomatic Monty could happen, theoretically. Someone else has to build the UN, since Monty is very unlikely to have that much tech before everyone else has left the planet on their spaceships. Monty has to have the most pop (or second-most other than the UN builder), and has shared religion and mutual military struggle with lots of civs who all hate the UN builder. (This means the UN builder is far enough ahead in tech the other civs have not gone free religion yet.)
See? It could happen. Random.org is totally not drunk or anything. Really.
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Another interesting game, with a dramatic clash between a smaller higher-tech military and a larger but lagging force. Thanks again to Sulla for running these entertaining games.
And somehow I ended up as part of the multi-way tie for best prediction. How did THAT happen? Probably a bad omen of some sort. 
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Meanwhile, I have an average picking score of 3.29 after seven games. Ouch!
For this week, random.org went... a little out there. It has Lincoln to win by Domination on Turn 252(!), with JC in second place and Louis dying first.
On the other hand, it DID call Hammurabi winning by Domination back in week one...
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Hey Sullla. Last friday I stumbled on your broadcast on twitch by accident. I was immediately hooked and watched about 6 or 7 archived streams on your website since then. Can't wait till next game (this friday I think). Great work.
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