AI Civs that show up in every game

[Sostratus]

I've played over 3000 hours of 6 now. That's a pretty good sample size to draw on. Or would be if I wasn't playing Marathon 99% of the time
So there realistically is only 50-60 odd games and in that I still have absolutely had more of some Civs than others. I would expect to see that gradually flatten out at two to three times the number; though the different length of time leaders have been in the game likely messes with my perception somewhat too.

Just to demonstrate this effect: a quick graph of one particular roll of the random permutation generator in matlab. (I used the randperm(n,k) function.)

Suppose you played 42 games, one for each civ. You only saw one civ twice in those 42 games, and some civs you saw 10-11 times! Maybe you play until a round 100 games. Things are a little better but some civs are in 20 games while that sad civ is at 6. That's over a 3x difference in appearances.
If you bump up to a standard size map, and play 100 games (guys, seriously, this is so many hundreds of hours...) we see that the last civ on the list was rolled 33 times- about twice the average. This guy is @labellavienna 's Shaka. If you played yet another 100 games so you had 200 total standard maps, we can see that things start to even out a little towards a uniform trend. But even here, "Shaka" has managed to poke his nose into about 51 games where a couple civs are around ~23-25.
The overwhelming majority of civ players will not play 200 standard size maps to the point of meeting everyone in the world. So even in the entire life of the game its quite unlikely that you wouldn't notice some popular civs.
On top of that, to really trigger your cognitive biases that all humans have, all that needs to occur is you see someone in a couple sequential games. And that is basically guaranteed to happen if you play enough.

 

[Kimiimaro]

It's always Lautaro and Genghis Khan. Always.

 

[blackcatatonic]

I seem to get a lot of Seondeok, Tamar, Suleiman, Jadwiga, Alexander and Genghis.

Ironically when I get Wilhelmina inevitably she is too far away to trade with until I expand, so she always ends up hating me

I used to get Harald a lot but haven't seen him for a while.

And I almost never see Laurier, Dido or Catherine these days.

It's always Lautaro and Genghis Khan. Always.

Eww. I don't care for Lautaro. I see him relatively frequently and he's usually kill on sight, especially if I think I can get him before he gets his UU which I loathe fighting against.

 

[Kimiimaro]

Eww. I don't care for Lautaro. I see him relatively frequently and he's usually kill on sight, especially if I think I can get him before he gets his UU which I loathe fighting against.

Huh, in my last game as cultural Hungary, he ended up winning a SV, with GDRs running around continent, crushing the Inca, Persians and Polish alike. He also used nuke on Poland.

Anyway, I also forgot to mention that I always end up meeting Sweden.

 

[Bagfran]

Because I'm a bit strange, and I make spreadsheets for everything, I've actually been keeping track of each opposing Civ in each game I play. So far I have played 35 games, and Germany has cropped up in 13 of those. Next come Aztec, Persia, Russia and USA, each with 9 appearances. Most of the rest have only appeared 1-3 times. I've not yet had a single game with Gorgo/Greece.

I know that it's random, and that the more games I play, the more it will even out, but being an irrational human I still can't help getting the feeling that my computer REALLY likes Germany.

 

[nzcamel]

Because I'm a bit strange, and I make spreadsheets for everything, I've actually been keeping track of each opposing Civ in each game I play.

We're a similar kind of strange except you've actually kept yours up to date by the sound of it I've started tracking them a couple of times, but I never follow through for long.

 

[Bagfran]

We're a similar kind of strange except you've actually kept yours up to date by the sound of it I've started tracking them a couple of times, but I never follow through for long.

It's a compulsion!

 

[lordhaw]

Pedro. Always Pedro...

Yes, me too. And it's to the point that I pick all my civs now just so I DON'T get Pedro. He annoys me.

 

[nzcamel]

Yes, me too. And it's to the point that I pick all my civs now just so I DON'T get Pedro. He annoys me.

Ah for the option to just be able to rule out leader X; while still retaining the mystery of who else will show up. Is there a mod that does that?
Gandhi was quite annoying and appeared often enough to get on my nerves for quite a while. I don't mind him so much anymore as I don't get him anywhere near as often!

 

[bengalryan9]

I've never had a single game with Gorgo in it.

 

[labellavienna]

Since I mostly attempt CVs, the game somehow decides to either throw Kristina oder Peters Russia at me.
Though, referring to the OP's title and judging by the variety of replies, those "AI Civs that show up in every game" seem to differ for every player ;-)

Kristina SCARES me, there is something very unsettling about her "disapproval" face, those eyes really bore into your soul and it freaks me out. I love books too and we probably would have been friends IRL but still....

I get Seondeck quite a lot and I just hate her, so tired of her telling me i crawl at the dirt etc etc....its so annoying. Kupe annoys me a bit but not really the leader, just the civ music that loops around, it gets tiresome after a while.

 

[MrRadar]

It seems like some leaders have their "seasons" or "periods"

There was a time when my games were haunted by Peter. Every time starting a new game I was dreading to meet him again and yes, there he was on the map once more, like a self fulfilling prophecy, to torture me endlessly with his Kalinka and Cossacks. And also Mvemba. Every game shaking that finger at me. Ugh. But now they just vanished. I haven't had Peter in ages and Mvemba since forever, it seems. They have been completely ousted by Kupe. He's with me now every single game (well, almost ), upsetting all the balance in the Force - starting in the ocean he leaves some nice extra settling space on the land for someone.

 

[MaryKB]

I seem to get Dido a disproportionate number of times. Very close to me. And I play as Eleanor.

Aggghhh!

 

[NukeAJS]

This came up in a thread a year or two ago. Here's my short answer.

Word of the day: Apophenia (noun) -- The universal human tendency for humans to find patterns in random information.

The slightly longer answer is that humans are really bad at noticing randomness and often think things aren't random when they really are. Actually, humans are outright terrible at recognizing randomness. We default to seeing patterns and connections. It's something fundamentally human and it's seen in nearly every aspect of human life.

And the rant is -- I wish I could find the article, but there was this great write-up about how a truly random selection of songs didn't "feel" random to listeners. Instead, people felt that a list was "more" random when patterns were actively discouraged despite the fact that patterns will inevitably happen in any random sequence. For example, in a playlist of 10 songs, listeners felt that the list wasn't random if the same song was played twice in a row even though there's obviously a 10% chance of that happening. Furthermore, if song #1 played, then song #7, then song #1 again -- listeners felt like it wasn't random to have song #1 play before and after a single song. Again, this is even though the chance of song #1 playing after song #7 is still 10%.

Humans also have a conservative tendency when it comes to predicting events based on past perceptions. A wonderful example of this is the "Monty Hall" riddle which goes like this:

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others -- goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice? (The host will never open your first choice and will never open the door with the car, to be clear).

Nearly everybody on Earth sees no advantage to changing doors at first. However, when you think about the problem carefully, it soon becomes obvious that changing doors is always a better choice than staying with your first choice. What's interesting here is that people's original basis for their prediction (It's random; it doesn't matter which door I pick) STAYS THE SAME even though it is no longer truly random (There's still a 33% chance I'm right and a 67% chance I'm wrong; but with just one other "real" option, there's now a 67% chance that the remaining option is the car). In other words, people stay with the random basis for their decision even though humans are predisposed to non-randomness -- the exact opposite of what we would expect (pun intended )

 

[Herod]

Pericles is in all of my games and 9 times out of 10 he's my neighbour. Seriously Perry jog on mate.