AI League 2.0

[Thrasybulos]

Looks like it indeed, thanks.

But damn, I was positive turn order mattered.
I guess those ties simply don't happen that often, and that the very few times they did happen and I paid attention, the RNG produced the same result turn order would have.

After all these years, keep learning stuff about this game.

 

[Genghis the Barbarian]

I’ve had a couple ties when running sets and I think at a certain point it’s just purely random, especially for same victory conditions

BTW I love the awards @Thrasybulos I wonder if I inspired them?

 

[Thrasybulos]

The one case which happens often enough for me to notice and remember is the same AI achieving two different victory conditions on the same turn (Domination / Space or Domination / Culture).
Domination has always taken precedence in those cases.

I also remember a few same turn Space races, but those were decided by one of the ships missing case(s) and failing.
If I witnessed other instances, I can't remember them, so they must have gone (by chance apparently) according to turn order (and thus didn't strike me as odd).

As for the awards, it wasn't a direct inspiration, but since you planted that context association (AI games <=> awards), I'd say the idea to present those stats in that form certainly owes in great part to you.

 

[Thrasybulos]

I also remember a few same turn Space races, but those were decided by one of the ships missing case(s) and failing.

See, that didn't take long to happen again:

Now, when you think about it, it's actually not surprising.
The AI may not be programmed to optimize its research path towards the Space race, but it is aware of where it stands in the race. Which is why for instance it will simply not launch its ship if it's too late to win the race.
So it actually makes sense that when two AI ships arrive at the same time, the odds are that one of them is incomplete: it is more likely to have one AI in the process of completing its ship when another AI launches, than to have two AIs complete their ships on the very same turn.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Series 5 Results

Spoiler Results :

Oh, look who's back on top.

Now, watch him utterly crush the next League Series?

Called it !

Now, HC didn't actually "crush" that series. In fact, he had a pretty bad first half: when he finally joined the top pool in round 5, he wasn't able to win a single game there and dropped out immediately.
Then he won 4 games the next round, in a lower pool, which got him back to the first pool, and this time, he won 3 games, which propelled him to the top of the leaderboard where he stayed to the end.
But his results do not invalidate what I wrote for the previous series: out of his 21 wins, 3 were by Spaceship, only 2 by culture, and 16 were Domination wins!
While I'm not watching the games (just the replays, and getting a glimpse of the situation when my first batch of aiplay turns completes without the game being over), I can tell for instance that he did lose his very last game in the series because he turned the slider on: he was far ahead, but lost to a rather slow Hannibal's spaceship only because he stopped teching.
(Of course, as I write this, HC's first win the next series comes thanks to the slider: he would have lost otherwise. )

Justinian had the complete opposite progression through the Series: he was far ahead of the rest of the field after 5 rounds, with 13 wins. And then, he just stopped winning: only 4 games in the last 5 rounds.

Once again, both Egyptian leaders did well (Hatty overall actually did better than Ramesses, but she faltered in the very last round while Ramesses had an extremely good last round), but we were back to the pattern where the few high peaceweights who made it to the top pools weren't made to feel welcome there.

Sury and Cathy had an appalling performance (somewhat alleviated on the leaderboard by a decent last round result, but you can see that they stayed throughout in the lower half of the pools, with even a prolonged stay in the very bottom pool).

Qin would have actually fared slightly better than Mao this time, had the RNG not decided otherwise (see previous posts). But it's increasingly looking that my original assessment (Qin = Good, Mao = Meh) is indeed wrong, with both of them being just average leaders.

Peter repeated his miracle round from the previous series (4 wins), and did slightly better this time: 4 wins in the remaining 9 rounds instead of just 2.
Amazingly, Freddy also had such a miracle round.

Spoiler Awards :

Spoiler Map Data :

Spoiler Pool 1 (S8 Game 7) :

Spoiler Pool 2 (S7 Playoff 3) :

Spoiler Pool 3 (S3 Playoff 1) :

Spoiler Pool 4 (S1 Game 5) :

Spoiler Pool 5 (S3 Game 4) :

Spoiler Pool 6 (S8 Game 8) :

Spoiler Pool 7 (S7 Game 8) :

Spoiler Pool 8 (S7 Game 4) :

 

[Thrasybulos]

Regarding ties...

Spoiler :

And the winner is...

Joao!

I know it's confirmation bias at play, but I swear most of Joao's wins happen with him being a runt civ and getting an opportunistic and lucky spaceship victory.

Joao's ship landed on the very same turn that Saladin hit the Domination threshold.
Joao had the turn order advantage.

So either this is yet another case where the RNG happened to yield a result aligning with turn order, or turn order prevails when the tie involves a non-spaceship victory?