Game 8 had Stalin go on a murder spree to secure a spot in the playoffs, with Hannibal tagging along.
Sullla's alternate histories (well, Myth's actually, let's give due credit) confirm that narrative.
Mine produced a slightly different outcome:
Hannibal came on top, but victory was more or less evenly split between 4 leaders: Stalin, Hannibal, Ramesses, Pericles. The difference essentially boils to Pericles's performance: he won 5 games in my runs, but only one in Myth's, those wins going to Stalin and Lincoln.
Both sets agree on Hannibal as the runner-up favourite, but Myth has Ragnar the heavy favourite for FTD while I have Lincoln slightly ahead.
I was looking forward to replaying this game, jumbled edition, essentially for one leader: Ragnar. The Viking leader, as the only Financial pure warmonger, ought to be one of the better warmongers out there, with the Financial trait overcoming one their main weakness: they tend to critically fall back in tech.
But that's not been the case: throughout AI Survivor's history, Ragnar has been one of the worst performing AIs. On this map, he clearly had been dealt a bad hand, with a very poor starting position. His season 7 game also comes to mind, with a dreadful start. So is Ragnar just unlucky, just bad, or both?
I was also interested in Stalin and Pericles, both of whom having a good, if irregular track record: I suspected both were frauds, and hoped this game to confirm it.
I had no doubts about which leader would come on top here: Hannibal was clearly the best in the field, no room for debate.
... or maybe there
was room for debate, in fact!
The Egyptian leaders were on a roll, it would seem.
This game had a similar composition to Game 6, with 4 high peaceweights vs 3 low peaceweights, and it yielded a more balanced outcome which conformed better to expections: 8 wins for the baddies, 12 wins for the nice guys. And if we consider that Ramesses pulled a miracle Culture win in a game where his team mates were decimated, it's even more balanced.
Funnily, the repartition of those wins wasn't balanced: it started with 4 wins for the high peaceweights, then the low peaceweights had a long series of successes, and then the high peaceweights (well, Ramesses) concluded with their own long series. Goes to show once again that we need to play a large sample of games to get a somewhat truthful picture.
Hannibal only got two wins but has the best survival rate. Financial low peaceweights tend to do well in general, and he's no exception. He could be considered as the successful version of Ragnar (a military-focussed leader with good economy) if his one glaring weakness didn't disqualify him from a membership into the warmongers' club: he cannot plot at Pleased. This game had enough high peaceweight "targets" that it wasn't crippling, but it still prevented him from making some winning moves.
Financial also proved a curse on at least one occasion: as one of the traits which favours a Cultural victory, it led him to throw at least one game (should have taken better notes, I played those games a coupla months ago: I know it happened at least once, not sure if it was more than that) by pulling the slider when he could have easily won Space, and lose as a result.
Stalin... failed to fail. Contrary to my expectations, he proved solid, winning two very convincing games, and achieving a 60% survival rate in a hostile environment. And that's in spite of the very first game being an outlier: in a repeat of the AH position, Stalin uncharacteristically founded an early religion... which spread to exactly no one, and led to an early and massive dogpile the kind of which Gandhi would be more familiar with.
Stalin was actually neck and neck with Hannibal for second place, right to the end. So either I'm overrating Hannibal, or Stalin's AI Survivor's successes are down to more than mere luck.
As for
Ragnar... Let's be generous and say the jury's still out. He did get the most wins out of the low peaceweights (3 wins), so that's definitely something. But he was also eliminated a lot more often. "Erratic" is, I believe, a term that's been employed to describe him, and sure does seem to apply. He can have good games, where he plays to his strengths and ends up winning or at least in a good position... and he can also launch doomed, pointless, across-the-map expeditions or suicidal attacks which quickly put an end to his game.
So when granted better starting positions than the one he was stuck with in the AH, he certainly performed better overall. But "better" doesn't necessarily imply "well".
So Team Evil fielded a better team here than in game 6: two solid-to-good leaders, and a madman with flashes of brilliance.
What of Team Good ?
Lincoln was clearly the weaker member of that team. He sometimes achieved a tech lead, he sometimes fought back well. But the fact he was the only leader never to achieve a win is no coincidence. He was a priority target for the low peaceweights, which often led to his elimination. His generally peaceful nature meant he wouldn't press his occasional successes. And while a decent eco leader, that was never close to enough to have a shot at beating Ramesses' Culture in a race.
Hammurabi is basically the less successful, high peaceweight version of Pacal: a mostly passive leader who loves building every wonder, but shoots for Space instead of Culture. His tech preferences meant he would often found a religion, and thus be at odds with Ramesses, while failing to spread his religion and get allies. Not a healthy situation.
Still, teching in your corner while the world is at war is something that often works for Pacal, and it did work a few times here for Hammurabi too.
Pericles is a bit of a mixed bag. He was often, after Ramesses, the strongest member of Team Good, and thus a crucial element in their conflict against the low peaceweights. But as for winning... he would often turn the slider late, with a less than adequate Culture output. 120 culture/turn in your 3rd Legendary candidate? With the slider on? You do know the game ends on turn 500, don't you?
Now, it might simply be that with Ramesses and Hammurabi nabbing most of the wonders and religions, his go-to game plan just couldn't work in the context of that particular game. Or just that he's in fact not very good at it.
Ramesses was the success story of that game. He achieved a similar result to Hatty's, but in a much more hostile environment: with stronger opponents, and weaker allies. His gameplan was essentially the same: Culture, with the odd Space victory. But it usually went through a military dominance phase first. He had so secure the attempt himself, and couldn't count on his allies to shield him while he went for it. Hatty did it too at times, but she mostly had Mansa and Darius clear the way for her, and Culture was often the only way she could win. Here, Ramesses could often also have won by Domination or Space had he not chosen to go for Culture.
So he felt stronger than Hatty.
Ragnar's (F) start was confirmed as awful, leading to 14 eliminations and no win. A boxed-in coastal start, with the only prospect for expansion being into the jungle. And with no Copper for an attempt at an early breakout.
Nearly as bad was
Hammurabi's (C): again, a boxed-in coastal start. To make matters worse, the occupants of these two awful spots would often fight one another in the early game, weakening them further. Essentially, two starting positions had been assigned to an area of the map which could only accomodate a single civilization. Only Ramesses was able to get a win from there, and it was a miracle Culture attempt which he was lucky to pull off while never being able to develop beyond his limited initial core.
Lincoln's (E) wasn't much better, and that's harder to explain. The land and room to expand is decent, and it's bordering in the East and North-East the two weakest spots. I suppose it owes to being central and bordered on the other sides by stronger spots? Or it could just be a quirk of the dataset.
Ramesses' (G) was just a notch better (one fewer elimination, one more win). It suffered from one weakness mainly, but a major one: no Copper, while sitting next to a spot (B) which had Copper at the Capital. In the AH, that spot "performed" better, because it was the best AI (Ramesses) occupying it, but also because Pericles in B wasn't very likely to exploit the situation. Hannibal or Stalin for instance, on the other hand, had no such qualms. Starting with Mining, they could connect that Copper very early, and DoW at a very early date.
Pericles' (B) position was thus one of the best positions on the map, mainly on account of that metal situation, and on account of its weak neighbours.
Stalin's (A) led to the most wins. It was position E's better twin: bottom center of the map too, but just better. Better land, more room to expand. Stronger neighbours, and that may explain in part the situation: whoever was in position E was the natural target on account of being the weaker neighbour, which in turn led to poorer results from E?
Finally,
Hannibal's (D) position was also a strong starting position: good land, sheltered. Its one issue was that expansion usually meant trying to conquer the strong tenant of position A.
So Mansa gets a strong friend to join him in the playoffs, brightening his prospects. If the wildcard goes to another high peaceweight, we could have one of the playoffs where Evil would be vanquished.
when it started running the espionnage slider, dropping behind in tech as a result. And yet... it won the race: its opponent had to rebuild engines 8 times (!!) and was still rebuilding when it launched.
Glad you have it all sorted.
