AI League (yet another AI Survivor spinoff)

[Keler]

I like how every leader appear in same amount of games, but this brings everyone's points near each other. Maybe one tournament should not take so long and it needs so many tournaments. But I really don't know. Lets try and figure out kind of way. I honestly think survivors still get so many points. Runner ups achieve nothing, and some runner ups deserve more
At worst you could just stick to Sulla's points system to determine arena draft while keeping the tournament template. I am only using finish points 5/2 for my own ranking
I also liked how end game scores added together. Total Nscore is that right? That seems very fair and reflects something. Even if someone wins culture victory. Then it could be sorted by Power ranking then end game score? I didn't really like how a runner up and one city surviver gets same score points.

Come to think of it, since you want to reward survivors other than runner ups too, end game score is best way to go. Just add 5000 points to winner and it's done. Or if someone wins so early so their score not high? Then convert end game score to percentage. You can always sum up all end game survivors score and consider that to %100, give all survivors points from total of 100. And a bonus 50 to winner maybe. Something fairer, and less complex please.
I never understood calculations of your old elo rating anyway and it is better to keep things simple.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Oh the elo ratings aren't going anywhere.
It's just that I need to work on them for this format, and they're not needed right away since elo rankings (as opposed to ratings) won't differ initially from score rankings.

There's one thing elo ratings provide that other, additive systems don't: they take into account the relative strength of the players involved. Winning a game against strong players is worth more than winning versus weak players.

As for devising other systems, I'll have the data. We can then apply all sorts of formulas and see what that gives.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Tournament 1, Round 7

Spoiler Arena 8 :

Toku completely bungles his expansion phase but manages to somewhat recover. Washington barely escapes being boxed-in with the weirdest string settling pattern.
Mehmed and Cathy found the initial religions, which sends them on a collision course leading to the first war declaration of the game. And Mehmed just rips through her.
Willem has founded the Monotheism religion and spread it to his neighbours. That doesn't prevent him from being a magnet for aggression (Viccy, Toku, Augustus).
Washington is surprisingly the tech leader, and...

... wow.
Mehmed plows into Toku, but Japan is temporarily saved by Viccy trying her luck on the Ottomans... who are about to get Rifling. Oopsie. Viccy loses her army, a city, and sues for peace.
Washington adds his name to the list of Willem bullies. But his "bullying" is of the "murdering" kind.
Freed from the English distraction, Mehmed rolls over Toku.
Washington picks the right time to attack the Ottomans: right after getting infantries, before Mehmed gets them. But that's not enough. Mehmed powers through him: he's become unstoppable.
Augustus, who somehow is in this game, trolls by declaring on Washington at the last minute and getting the kill credit.
Viccy draws the short straw.

Spoiler Arena 7 :

Genghis eschews culture for the longest time and will all his metal ressources in second ring, he is thus neutered. When he finally can build an army, it is too late. He fails an attack against Darius, fails against Freddy, and then sits back.
Napoleon avoids the 80-turn settler trap by planting his second city on the coast instead of into the jungle, but he still ends up boxed-in and weak. It's a tad surprisingly he doesn't go after the metal-deprived Mongols (the AI is usually good at launching these opportunistic attacks). He goes instead for the much stronger Freddy, and gets slowly conquered as a result.

But the real story of this game happens in the East. On this map, the blue start (Lincoln here) seems very strong, with lots of room to snowball from. JC (green) settles his first two cities towards Lincoln, in a straight line. Monty has founded the Meditation religion, JC gets a late Polytheism religion. And he lucks out here, with his 3rd city, the one in the heart of Lincoln's land, becoming the Holy City.
That really cripples Lincoln, who, as a result, settles his cities in a long line stretching all across the continent (there is even one which can't be seen on the animation as it was settled after a frame, and captured by Monty before the next frame).
Monty attacks Lincoln. JC, as Monty's religious rival, joins the war on Lincoln's side and conquers most of the Aztec cities.
JC is now a top power, with Lincoln not far behind. Conquering Darius leaves Julius as the only dominant power. A point he drives through by annexing America.

It was fun to see JC's Rome regain some of its former glory!

Spoiler Arena 6 :

Stalin fails to secure Copper and is later to IW: WK jumps at the opportunity.
Mao has failed his expansion phase and was also very late to metal. Joao, who has expanded well from his strong starting position and emerged as the top leader from the early game, conquers him.
Roosevelt and Peter duke it out inconclusively.
Hatty, boxed-in, has founded five religions...
Thanks to their respective conquests, WK and Joao are the game leaders, with WK more advanced and Joao stronger.
Joao starts the only war he can, against Peter.
WK immediately backstabs him.
For a while, Joao proves able to keep on conquering Peter while fighting off WK who has rifles when he doesn't. But his power on the graphs starts eroding before dropping more sharply.
Joao finally gets Rifling but the balance or power has shifted in favour of WK.
After a deep beeline to Mass Media, Hatty pulls the slider, and that's GG.

Damnit, girl, you're gonna mess up the stats! That starting position is BAD. How dare you win from there?

Spoiler Arena 5 :

Boudica goes full Conan on the map, with her out-of-character sidekick Elizabeth.
Zara prefers the peaceful expansion approach: a successful initial expansion phase, followed with grabbing conquered cities on his borders thanks to his strong culture.
Both approaches have their merits, but Boudica neglects science a tad too much along the way: at some point she's researching Engineering while Zara is on Physics!
When Boudica triggers the final showdown with Zara, she's bigger and has about twice the number of units. But she's a full military tech era behind, soon to be two eras.
This time, quality prevails over quantity.

Spoiler Arena 4 :

Charlie and Izzy found the first religions, their holies cities bordering one another: conflict between them is inevitable.
Charlie has no copper and is very late to IW: Alex launches an opportunistic assault, but inexplicably signs peace after getting a single city. The expected war between Izzy and Charlie is started by the Spanish who immediately get stabbed in the back by Alex.
Alex would later sign peace and get attacked right away by Bismarck.

All these conflicts in the West have allowed Hannibal, and especially De Gaulle to ace their expansion phase and build up their strength. The time has come for them to flex their muscles: Hannibal invades Bismarck, De Gaulle ploughs into Charlemagne.
Charlie proves the softer target and DG is able to finish him off while Hannibal is still rolling back Bismarck. It becomes clear at this point that one of these two is going to carry the day. DG has a headstart, but Hannibal could easily catch-up by leveraging his Financial trait.
Hannibal then makes a crucial mistake: he founds the CoL religion and converts to it on the stop. That drops his relations to De Gaulle below Pleased, and DG seizes the opportunity to strike his only rival.
Having more power, and with Hannibal's main stack in German lands, his attack is a success.
Alex declares on Bismarck and while he's proved inefficient in this game at conventional warfare, he develops a strong proficiency at vulturing warfare: as De Gaulle captures German cities from Hannibal and liberates them to Bismarck, Alex is there to snatch them right away!

Anyway, with Hannibal gone, De Gaulle is left unrivalled. GG DG.

Spoiler Arena 3 :

Asoka founds Buddhism, Suleiman Islam. Although at one point Islam is the world's religion, later reconversions turn the North (Asoka, Churchill, SB) into the Buddhist block while Islam becomes the South's (Sully, Louis, Pericles) faith.
Somewhat expectedly, Asoka gets dogpiled by Sully and Louis.
Pericles attacks SB.
Somewhat less expectedly, Asoka manages to hold his own, while Pericles runs over SB. One reason for that might be that Suleiman sends his main stack deep in the tundra after barb cities instead of having it fight the war he started!
And indeed, once the Ottoman armies rejoin the front, things take a turn for the worse for the Indians. Especially when Suleiman, very unusually for him, beelines Rifling then Military Tradition!
The Muslim block is no more as Pericles, then Suleiman go into Free Religion and Louis adopts his self-founded Judaism.
With Asoka and SB gone, Suleiman emerges as the top leader both in power and research, with Pericles second.
Unfortunately for both, they're Pleased or Friendly with everyone so can't push their advantage. It looks like the only action in the foreseeable future is the brooding conflict between France and England. France is twice larger, but the English have Red Coats while the French are still fully medieval and trailing in tech.
The wait isn't long as Churchill declares... but Louis gets peace without losing a city?
And then Louis has a brain fart: he attacks the much stronger Pericles! Which is especially bad for Suleiman who is out-researching and out-producing Pericles. But if the Greeks gobble up the French...
Louis' fate is sealed as the English join the fray.
...but that attack has dropped Suleiman's relation towards Churchill to "cautious". He starts plotting right away and launches his attack a few turns later.
When the dust settles, with both Churchill and Louis out, the Ottomans and the Greeks are of a similar size. Suleiman has more power, and is still two techs ahead but Pericles is now slightly out-researching him. Border tensions, attacks on friends and clumsy spies have dropped relations to "cautious" so a space race is not the only scenario there. Plus, Suleiman controls 5 Holy Cities so he might also (foolishly ?) pull the slider.
A well-timed golden age allows Pericles to catch-up: both leaders are at the exact same spot on the tech tree, with five spaceship techs to go and the Stealth poison pill available.
Neither goes for the pill.
Pericles finishes the tech tree one turn ahead, but Suleiman's building the parts faster.
And then Greek spies absolutely murder the Ottoman progress: both engines, the cockpit, the docking bay, and the stasis chamber go poof in a single interturn!
Suleiman retaliates in kind, but his agents are less thorough. He starts plotting.
Pericles launches first.
Suleiman attacks, but it's too late: he ends up 4% land area short.

Spoiler Arena 2 :

Mansa kills his economy going Archery instead of Pottery and declares early on Brennus. Leave this body, Monty!
Gandhi fails to connect his metals: Saladin takes the bait. India is already on its way out when Gilgamesh seals the deal by joining the assault.
HC builds about every early game wonder, then attacks Mansa. Brennus vs Mansa had turned into a stalemate, HC's intervening tips the scale.
That war is still going on when India exits the game. There's danger there for HC as both Gilgamesh and Saladin are following a different religion from his. But Gilgamesh opts to stay peaceful while Saladin sends his armies into Celtia.
HC finishes conquering Mansa, Saladin conquers Brennus.
When this is over, Gilgamesh and HC are about equal, in tech, research, power, and size.
Saladin is bigger and more powerful, but trailing in tech.
Gilgamesh has a go at HC, but that fails and he loses a core city in the process, which allows HC to slowly pull ahead of him. That said, Saladin's bigger size means he's catching up: he's still far behind in tech, but he's already out-researching his rivals.
When I see HC plotting and his power spiking, I think he's about to pay back Gilgamesh for his attack... but Saladin is the target! HC has picked his time and target perfectly: although Saladin has more cities and more units, he's still in the Renaissance while HC is fully Industrial. His offensive is a resounding success and Saladin crumbles.
Gilgamesh joins the fray... on HC's side. Wise.
There's still a bit of uncertainty at the end when HC pulls the slider: this late Cultural Victory attempt might not beat a Sumerian Spaceship. But Gilgamesh inexplicably pulls out of the war, letting HC grab all the remaining Arabian territory and thus achieve Domination instead.

Spoiler Arena 1 :

Justinian and Kublai found the early religions. Shaka founds the Monotheism religion. :shocked:
Cyrus misses out on metals: he tries to remedy that by Immortal-rushing Kublai, but Kublai connects his Copper in the nick of time.
Pacal on 3 cities when Qin and Justinian are on 7.
Shaka attacks KK, Cyrus peaces out. Shaka's sucker punch misses, he also peaces out.
KK is unhappy at not being at war: he declares on Pacal.
Qin (12 cities) and Justinian (9 cities, tech leader) are the winners of the expansion phase.
Shaka takes advantage of KK's armies being away to renew his attack. This time he punches through.
But Qin, in spite of sharing the Zulu faith, backstabs him.
Justinian is lapping the field tech-wise (T142 Liberalism, the earliest I believe I've seen since the start of this tournament).
Shaka chooses to ignore the Chinese armies ripping through his heartland and focusses solely on destroying KK. He loses two core cities but gets peace from Qin and finishes off KK.
Qin goes after Cyrus next (most likely because of the barb city Cyrus captured behind Qin's lines). Everybody's ignoring Rifling. Shaka joins the war on Cyrus.
Justinian has now got round to researching Rifling. He finally makes his move: against Qin, who peaces out with Cyrus.
Justinian's attack is initially a failure: he recaptures the two cities Qin had taken from the Zulus and liberates them back to Shaka, then his first real siege stalls because he hasn't brought along enough siege units, which lets Qin research Rifling and wipe out Justinian's army. Justinian then gets to Assembly Line and Pacal, who was in this game, opens a new front against China. China breaks.
Shaka finishes off Cyrus. The right move for him would be to attack Justinian right away, before the Byzantines become too big and too advanced.
And he does. GG.

Spoiler Rankings :

Willem is the only leader whe has been eliminated in every single game!
He's not having a good time...

 

[Thrasybulos]

Tournament 1, Round 8

Spoiler Arena 8 :

Washington and Willem get the first religions. Cathy gets the third. Napoleon gets boxed-in hard.
The first war is started by Toku: Washington has failed to connect metal in time. He loses his Holy City and his capital. Willem, then later Cathy, pile in.
And... count on Monty to spice things up: the Aztecs invade Japan from the other side.
Napoleon picks Darius as the target for his breakout attempt.
Washington gets eliminated. The wars between Toku and Monty, and between Napoleon and Darius, have turned into stalemates.
Willem has played a good early game and is in a strong position. But the Orange starting position is so OP that Cathy is already ahead of him.
Cathy turns her wrath upon Monty.
As she's busy carving him up with Toku's help, Willem makes his move: he declares on her. She buys Napoleon (who's made peace with Darius) in immediately (Napoleon declares on Willem in the same turn that Willem declares on Cathy, but Napoleon plays before Willem: so Cathy, who plays last, must have bought him in on her turn).
Willem loses a city in former America, and Cathy signs peace, hanging Napoleon out to dry. Typical Cathy.
Monty dies. Toku, who's got quite strong in his own right, now sets his sights on Persia.
Napoleon holds out and gets peace because Willem, although way more powerful (and with rifles!) has brought a single catapult along with his stack... which is now stuck in the one French city he's captured.
(It should be noted that while Toku initially rips through Persia, he then stalls out for the exact same reason, with a single trebuchet left in his stack. This is really a bad bug for those AI games. ).
After building up her forces and securing her research advantage, Cathy confirms she never lets go of a grudge: she declares on Willem.
And that's GG.

Spoiler Arena 7 :

After an initial attack which see him capture two core cities from Viccy and give one back for peace, Stalin passes the torch to Genghis and sets his sights on Rome. But Russia is weakened by the war they just fought, while Rome is on the ascent.
The next 100-150 turns see three long and slow conquests: England by Genghis, Russia by Augustus, Germany by Mao.
When this is over, Mongolia, Rome, and China end up with very comparable sizes and power. China's conquest of Germany was the slowest, but Mao has opened a tech lead.
Genghis then proceeds to annex the weak America and its juicy 51 gpt Christian shrine.
Augustus has bigger ambitions: he attacks China.
But while Augustus has rifles, he has skipped Military Tradition. Mao, for his part, has just unlocked infantries.

Womp Womp.
Genghis joins the party, and soon enough only China and Mongolia are left.
They're of the same size and same power. Genghis has mostly caught up in beaker rate, but the end of the tech tree is approaching, and Mao has a 7-tech lead. Such a gap can't be bridged at this point.
Mao launches his ship.
Genghis does make a last-ditch attempt by declaring on him, and the initial unit trades are, amazingly, very favourable to him. But Mao's ship lands two turns later.

Spoiler Arena 6 :

Bismarck has a barb city spawn on top of his Copper, 4 tiles away from Berlin, but he's able to brute-force it with archers. Ragnar steals Joao's 2nd ring Copper by planting next to it... and yet he elects to go after a strong Hammurabi instead of a weak, metal-deprived Joao.
That goes poorly but he gets peace before he loses a city. Then he goes after Joao.
Peter takes his turn having a shot at Hammurabi. But inevitably Sury attacks him (the leader starting in the Green position basically has no other choice than to attack the leader in the Purple position). And Roosevelt, the strongest leader at this point (the Yellow start really seems the strongest on this map) piles in.
Bismarck wants out: he attacks Roosevelt.
The German diversion has allowed Hammy and Sury to share the Russian spoils and catch up to Roosy in size and power, if not in tech (Sury in particular is really lagging). Ragnar is playing catch-up with a disppointedly slow conquest of Portugal.
Sury then makes his move by attacking Hammurabi... and in spite of being down Engineering, Machinery, and Civil Service compared to Hammurabi, he punches through.
Then Babylon's situation turns dire when Ragnar attacks from the other side the instant he finishes off Joao.
Roosevelt finishes off Bismarck and starts chaining Mausoleum-boosted Golden Ages leaving everyone in the dust techwise. Ragnar is the only one who isn't more than an ear behind, but even he is losing ground fast.
Ragnar then decides to throw his game: he signs peace with Hammurabi, letting the Khmer get all the spoils, converts away from Roosevelt's religion, and finally declares on the much stronger American leader.
That seals the game for Roosevelt.

(And just to illustrate how incredibly badly Sury handled his economy in this game, on turn 280 Roosy was on Advanced Flight and outputting 2500 bpt while an 18-city Sury was on Replacement Parts with an output of 245 bpt!!).

Spoiler Arena 5 :

A game of trolls.

Elizabeth for planting her first city right into Ramesses' face and by being completely AFK for the short time she was in the game.
Boudica for planting her first city right into Ramesses' face and for fighting him for ages only to give him back in the end the only city she'd captured.
Wang Kon of course. For planting his first city right into Ramesses' face and for adopting his faith only to backstab him when Boudica attacked. For attacking the much more powerful Hannibal right as he was taking on the world's top power. And for surviving him.
Mehmed for attacking Wang Kon because as usual the Troll King had been late researching Iron Working and timing your attack the very turn WK completed his IW research. And failing to punch through for one redlined archer. For attacking Elizabeth, breaking her, only to sign peace so that Charlie would get all her cities.
Hannibal for declaring on Elizabeth at the very last minute and snatching her last city and the kill credit only to gift that city right away to Ramesses. For doing your Willem's best impression: researching Assembly Line, Combustion, everything. But Rifling. As Charlie's armies were tearing through your lands.
Charlie for staying the world's religious pariah the whole time and yet manage to remain the world's top power, conquering enemy after enemy... and still fail in the end.
Ramesses for failing to conquer Boudica when she attacked because you just had to build every single wonder, produce missionaries for all your religions, and just couldn't bother building units. For murdering her right as she bravely committed her forces to helping Hannibal try and stem the Holy Empire tide. For not pulling the slider when your had all thoses wonders and five Holy Cities. For researching every single unhealthiness source, including Flight, and then pulling the slider on Biology when two of your cities were already legendary and the 3rd at 40,000+ culture.

Spoiler Arena 4 :

Isabella fails to expand so hard that Caesar plants a city 3 tiles from Madrid. She misses out on the first religions (Asoka and Louis), so goes Monotheism and fails to research IW in time. Alex sees a metal-deprived neighbour: he attacks. He captures a city, but then Izzy gets IW and Alex's war stalls hard.
JC manages to expand to 10 cities while missing every single on of the 3 Iron ressources nearby!
JC (11 cities) and Churchill (9 cities) are the winners of the expansion phase, with JC even emerging as an unexpected research leader.
Churchill attacks Louis and is winning... but JC, who's sharing a religion with Churchill, attacks him instead of Izzy next door who's on a different religion. That allows Louis to recover and start beating back the English... until Asoka attacks him.
But Asoka peaces out after getting two former English cities. Churchill gets conquered with JC, while very dominant, failing to achieve runaway status when Louis lucks out on the war spoils.
A consolidation phase ensues, then Louis decides to pay Asoka back for his earlier assault.
Alex's slow progress vs 4-city Spain is painful to watch. So painful that JC decides to put an end to it by declaring... on Alex.
And with that conquest, JC does achieve runaway status, especially with Louis stopping short his invasion of India.

Spoiler Arena 3 :

With Hatty and Sully having drawn the two death spots on this map, it looks like a match between Gandhi and Mansa. Mansa should be the favourite then, but his western neighbour is Brennus, who has drawn the strongest starting position...
Brennus loses both the Polytheism and the Meditation races (to Gandhi and Mansa respectively): all his early reasearch goes to waste.
Mansa stays on 3 cities forever, and goes full Izzy, quickly adding the Monotheism, CoL, and Theology religions to his portfolio. That means he's denied the Cultural victory option to Hatty, and almost certainly to Gandhi as well.
In a rather unexpected twist, Brennus fails to secure metal...

And Mansa is the one declaring on him.
In another bizarre twist, Hatty has taken advantage of Mansa's lack of expansion to turn Egypt into the largest and most powerful nation.
She joins forces with Mansa against Brennus.
Suleiman's plotting. Could be SB, could be Gandhi. SB it is.
Gandhi joins the dogpile against Brennus. Popular fellow, this Brennus guy.
Mansa adds the Philosophy religion to his collection. And then the Divine Right one. 6/7.
Suleiman's offensive was a total failure, luckily for him so was SB's counter-offensive. They sign peace.
But when Suleiman renews the conflict, SB's power lead is more pronounced. And it becomes a death sentence when Mansa, desperate for more cities (he got nothing from Celtia), joins the war against him.
After Suleiman's demise, Mansa pulls the slider (while on Replaceable Parts, but this world is safe for him), and that's GG.

Spoiler Arena 2 :

Note: Gilgamesh playing from Brown starting position when he'd already played from there on this map in the previous round was a mistake.

Saladin misses his Iron 3 tiles from his capital.

That triggers DG into attacking him, capturing a city immediately but then stalling out.
Gilgamesh and Cyrus declare on Zara, no surprise there. More surprising is the fact he wins that war: he's tops in power. Gilgamesh (no elephants) pulls out of the war, then Cyrus yields a city for peace.
Somehow this sets what happens for the next 100 turns (until turn 220 approx.).
De Gaulle will keep attacking a crippled, 4-city Saladin, without ever being able to punch through, occasionnally signing a temporary peace to defend against a Persian incursion.
Cyrus will alternate between attacking Zara and De Gaulle, sometimes getting a city, sometimes losing one.
Gilgamesh will keep attacking Zara, only to agree to peace as soon as he starts winning.
And Kublai will do nothing in that time: sometimes plotting, then cancelling it. He's not even the tech leader: Gilgamesh is.

Then Gilgamesh, the first to Rifling, finally breaks Zara for good. And signs peace.
But worse: he stops plotting and building units altogether. Gilgamesh has renounced his violent ways and now rules Sumeria from a monastery.
Kublai finally makes a move and conquers Saladin. Cyrus for his part conquers De Gaulle, then Zara (Gilgamesh gets a coupla Ethiopian cities "liberated" to him thanks to the culture he's been projecting into Ethiopia with his former conquests).
It feels like Gilgamesh really dropped the ball there: if he'd conquered Zara, he'd be in the driver's seat. But now both Kublai and Cyrus are bigger than him, and while Cyrus remains backwards, Kublai is overtaking him in research.

When Kublai later attacks Gilgamesh and Sumerian cities start dropping, it feels like GG and a quick Domination finish.
But Cyrus intervenes. He doesn't even have Canons, he's sending Cavalries into Infantries and Tanks, with the tiniest of numerical advantage... and somehow, it works?
Kublai's offensive is stopped cold, his power rating drops until all three players register at the same level.
And then of course, Cyrus peaces out.
Gilgamesh fights on, recaptures lost cities. He's outproducing Kublai so he overtakes Kublai in power rating. Incredible. He was 100% a goner a moment ago, and thanks to Cyrus, he seems to have completely turned the game around.
He signs peace.

Kublai maintains and even increases his tech lead, and that's GG.

Spoiler Arena 1 :

Note: Qin plays in the exact same spot (Green start) as the previous game. That's not a mistake: he's already played from every starting position on this map, so he's started his second round. And Green is what random.org said for this game.

Unfortunately, this map seems to be the most unbalanced of the lot: so far, the Purple start accounts for 6 wins out of 7, the only loss being a "lamb to the wolves" situation.
Justinian has drawn the Purple start for this game, so game Justinian?

And... yes.

(Apart from Shaka murdering his early game economy

and suiciding into a much stronger Justinian, and from HC not expanding at all, nothing to this game but a Justinian roflolstomp which didn't end in a super early Domination only because cannot-plot-at-pleased.)

(Rankings in the next post because I've reached the attachment limit.)

 

[Thrasybulos]

Spoiler Tournament 1, Round 8 rankings :

The way this works, the arena 1 round 10 game winner is almost guaranteed to be the tournament winner (that game acting as a "championship" game of sorts.
So the next round will be the last occasion to get a seat at the table.
Pacal, Justinian, and Kublai will stay on.
Mansa will almost certainly move down.
The winner of Arena 2 will get invited.
And that should be the only moves: Shaka and/or HC could in theory lose their place to the winner of Arena 3 or Qin, but that seems incredibly unlikely.

At the bottom of the ladder... is Willem going to remain the only leader with a 100% elimination rate?

 

[Thrasybulos]

Tournament 1, Round 9

Spoiler Arena 8 :

Monty and Washington get the first religions with Washington's becoming the world's faith.
Willem's land is jungle-choked: he makes researching Iron Working a low priority.
Monty opens up hostilities, vs Augustus.
After the expansion phase, Washington is the game leader. Darius, Toku, and Augustus have also expanded well.
Everyone hates Monty, Toku hates everyone.
Willem declares on Lincoln but forgets to bring siege along.
With Monty's fury spent on Augustus, Washington, the power leader by quite a margin, decides to put an end to his antics.
Willem's war backfires badly as he loses a city (not that he has many of those to start with).
Darius goes for a long-range assault on Toku (certainly owing to a barb city capture creating border tension). The Persian leader has actually risen to number two in power, and seems to be making this weird venture work.
But he signs peace as he's got Toku on the ropes, before making any significant territory gains. :sigh:

Augustus and Washinton keep asking for my help in their war against Monty.
C'mon guys, he's down to a single city, can't handle you that yourselves?

They might need help, actually. Guess who doesn't have Open Borders with anyone but Monty?
I suppose that makes Darius's peace the big brain move: Augustus and Washington are now locked in war mode and neutered. That allows Darius to start catching up to them.

Willem tries to help by going for his own Japanese expedition, but he's not very good at that conquering thing. Especially when Lincoln decides to take advantage of his armies being far from home.
Darius relents and renews hostilies with Japan, but takes heed to conquer Japan from the opposite side of Monty's refuge: with his rivals still stuck and his Japanese conquests coming online, he's now taken the game lead.
Lincoln gets to Rifling before Willem (surprise)... and signs peace.

Darius completes the conquest of Japan: he's left Satsuma, Monty's gatekeeper, for last!

Augustus and Washington were thus kept needlessly locked in warmode for more than 100 turns!

The game's now heading for a Darius spaceship victory with everyone at peace but for Lincoln and Willem who keep bashing fecklessly. That is until Augustus, who's dropped to "Cautious" with Willem, puts an end to Willem's dreams of finishing a game alive.

In all honesty, the unreachable-last-city-behind-closed-borders bug has completely altered the outcome of this game. It was 100% Washington's game otherwise.

Spoiler Arena 7 :

No one's interested in religion in this game: Stalin lands Meditation on turn 26, Peter gets Polytheism 10 turns later! Peter's better at this religion thing, though: Stalin becomes the world's religious pariah as everyone adopts Peter's faith.
Genghis spots a metal-deprived neighbour (Joao): you know the drill. Apparently Joao doesn't, because he quickly enters full collapse mode.
Freddy's not afraid of the big bad Russian: he declares on Stalin.
Napoleon's threat to the other Russia (notwithstanding History) might be more serious, though.
Viccy joins forces with Freddy: now Joe could be in trouble.
Napoleon signs peace with Peter, having captured but a single city: it holds the world's religion's shrine, though.
Viccy has risen to tops in power, Stalin's now really hurting.
6-city Peter thinks he can take on 15-city Genghis. The Khan enjoys Russian humor very much. He laughs all the way to St-Petersburg.
Victoria's newfound bloodlust isn't satiated with Stalin's demise: she declares almost right away on Napoleon who had joined the Mongols for the mop-up operations in Peter's Russia.
The inital unit trades go poorly for the English, especially with Napoleon getting to Rifling first (Rifling before Civil Service!), so Viccy sues for peace and goes back to a pursuit she's more familiar with: teching up.
All four remaining leaders are now pretty close together, with Genghis the largest while trailing in tech.
Napoleon makes the next move: France invades Germany (for a change). The Khan joins in the fun. Germany collapses.
When Freddy goes down, Viccy is way ahead in tech (entering the modern era when Genghis is just leaving the Renaissance), Genghis way ahead in power, and Nappy somewhere in the middle. She's bound to be facing an onslaught very soon: can she hold the line with her superior units?
She can't.
And then they were two.
Genghis has kept, even increased, his territory lead but he's 3% short of a Domination win. He's caught up in research with Napoleon, and is even now researching faster than him, but Napoleon is still ahead in tech.
The war has altered the game dynamics in one respect, though: Genghis has gone for the high-value targets like London and brute-forced his way through. Napoleon has been more circumspect, going for the periphereal cities. He's thus suffered far fewer losses and has now taken the power lead.
Genghis comes short in the spaceship race: although he's now outputting 3k bpt, Napoleon still finishes the tech tree two techs ahead of him and launches his spaceship right after launching an offensive on Mongolia.
The spaceship arrives before a winner to the war can be determined.

Very strong game by Genghis Khan who so very nearly made it from the very worst starting position on this map. But the little corporal proved the craftiest.

Spoiler Arena 6 :

WK fails to research IW: Boudica, Mehmed, and Hannibal declare. Ouch.
Mehmed had the most successful expansion phase, but Hannibal was severely boxed-in: getting most of the spoils out of Korea was a lifeline for Hannibal who now joins Mehmed at the top of the leaderboard.
Sury and Ragnar are Confucians (WK's religion) while the rest are Muslims (Boudica's).
Then the other expected war starts as Ragnar declares on Bismarck. Small issue for Ragnar: Bismarck has more power. Much bigger issue for Ragnar: Mehmed (who's topping the power chart by a fair amount) attacks him from the other side!
Ragnar is getting mauled when Sury tries to help by attacking Mehmed.
Ragnar is beyond help now, though, especially with Boudica joining the dogpile. Sury manages to get peace before having to face the undivided wrath of the Ottomans, even getting to keep the city he snatched with his sneak attack (actually super smart move on Mehmed's part as this is the Confucian Holy City!).
It may be a very short-term win, though: Sury has become the diplomatic pariah in this game.
Hannibal has stayed out of the war on Ragnar, building up his economy instead. While Mehmed remains the top power, Hannibal has been catching up and he has opened up quite the tech lead by now.
Sury is of a mind that the best defense is a good offense: he declares on Bismarck.
But the expected dogpile isn't long in the coming as both Mehmed and Boudica attack him, joined a while later by Hannibal.
After the Khmer are gone, the game goes peaceful with Hannibal increasing his tech lead while Mehmed catches up in beaker rate.
Bismarck is the only leader who can plot at pleased in this bunch, and Boudica is the weakest. His path for catching up to Hannibal and Mehmed is thus obvious.

That's tough.
Mehmed deservedly gets every city (his forces are beyond comparison with Boudica's), except for two. And among those two which Boudica gets is Bismarck's last city. Mehmed has been the main military force behind every single of the four eliminations in this game, and he gets zero kill credit.
With Germany's annexion, the Ottomans have soared ahead on the leaderboard. They have 32 cities to Hannibal's 15 (and Boudica's paltry 8).
But Hannibal has by now opened an insurmountable 11-tech lead...

Spoiler Arena 5 :

Asoka gets beaten by Charlie to Meditation.
Asoka gets beaten by Lizzy to Polytheism.
Ouch.
Hammurabi later gets the Monotheism religion, which triggers the first conflict of the game as Charlie attacks him, with Elizabeth piling on a while afterwards.
And then Cathy founds and converts to the CoL religion, making it four different active religions. Should get... messy.
Alex trolls by converting to Cathy's religion and then attacking her.
Asoka, who's had the most successful expansion phase and is staying at peace, is quietly taking the game's lead.
Although Hammurabi has dropped to last place in power rating, Lizzy and Charlie can't seem to punch through: they peace out.
Alex had initially successfully sucker-punched Cathy by grabbing two cities, but she's retaken one and the front has stabilized. Then Churchill crosses Charlie's territory to invade Russia, which Charlie deems a jolly good idea as he follows suit. Cathy is now facing a 1v3 situation. She gets Alex to chill out, but she still gets overpowered.
Elizabeth declares on Alex, and Hammurabi sees an opportunity for vengeance as he immediately invades her from the other side. That's the moment Asoka chooses to renounce his peaceful ways: he crosses the map to smite the evil Greeks.
And when the mayhem stops, Russia is no more, Southern England is no more, Greece is no more (with Hammy declaring just in time to snipe the kill).
India is firmly entrenched at the top, with Babylon in second place.
Well, the mayhem hasn't actually completely stopped: Russia's corpse hasn't cooled yet that Charlie turns upon his former ally Churchill. Infidels, you understand.
That war ends more or less in a stalemate, and with Asoka soaring ahead in tech, the game seems to be heading for a peaceful space ship finish.
Except Asoka eats a bad burgher or something: he takes a sudden strong dislike to Charlie and removes Holy Rome from the map.
He launches his ship, but gets inconvenienced by cigar smoke...

Spoiler Arena 4 :

The early religions get founded as expected by Brennus (Islam) and Isabella (Christianity). Suleiman adopts Christianity, the rest become Muslims.
Everyone but Isabella expands reasonably well, Mao and SB even better. One reason for Isabella's failure to expand might be Louis' DoW, though.
Brennus joins the Jihad.
Suleiman wants revenge for the previous game: he declares on SB. SB is bigger, slightly stronger at the start of the war, and has access to elephants, contrary to Suleiman. And yet Suleiman comes on top: when they sign peace, he's gained a city.
But with Isabella's demise, he becomes the only Christian in a Muslim world...
Even though Brennus fielded the largest army, Louis got all the spoils: Brennus got one city, Louis all the rest.
Mao doesn't care about religion: he attacks Sitting Bull. Suleiman sees his chance and jumps in too.
But Louis does care about religion: he sidestabs Suleiman.
And when Brennus piles in, Suleiman's doom is sealed.
Mao probably throws his game when he signs peace with SB he had in the ropes.
Brennus gets more spoils this time. When Suleiman's gone, Louis and Brennus have exactly the same number of cities, similar research, similar power.
Mao tries to fix his earlier mistake by renewing conflict with SB, but the Native Indians have had the time to recover and the Chinese get stalled.
Louis then comes crashing into SB who collapses.
Brennus has chosen to sit this one out: as a result, Louis is now bigger and Mao has caught up in size.
But Mao is hopelessly backwards while the Celts have used the peace to open up quite the tech lead over their French rivals.
Seems familiar?
Louis turning on the culture slider when Brennus, without the slider, would get his 3rd legendary city twice as fast, sounds like his concession speech.

Spoiler Arena 3 :

Gandhi and Saladin get the first religions, Hatty gets Monotheism.
Zara has expanded the best and looks the strongest after the inital phase. It helps that he got early the 2x Corn + Gold + Copper spot nearby (a vacated original starting position that Sulla really shouldn't have left unedited): it's often a barb city site, but not this time.
Hatty has converted everyone (but Saladin) to her religion, including Gandhi! :shocked:
De Gaulle was a late convert, though: he attacks her at the same time Sally sallies against Roosevelt.
Both attacks succeed: Saladin captures Washington and rolls over America.
De Gaulle, who can field Elephants when Egypt has no ivory, punches through and captures Memphis, the Holy City. But he idiotically accepts peace. Having lost the holy city for her main religion, Hatty no less idiotically converts to a minority religion she's founded later (get the whole world to accept your faith, then turn apostate, smart move there).
De Gaulle then turns towards India where he meets no resistance and offers no peace this time.

Zara remains passive, but as I've noted elsewhere, that's an effect of the crippling diplomatic bonuses he's afflicted with: +8 for shared religion, but only -3 for different religion, Theocracy as favoured civics, cannot plot at pleased. He's actually Friendly with both De Gaulle and Saladin!
He's running away with the game tech-wise, but can he win as a 10-city civ?

De Gaulle and Saladin then ally to finish off a still-hanging-there-but-crippled Egypt, who keeps bulding wonders for them to enjoy.
Zara finally makes a move... by joigning the dogpile against Hatty! She no longer shares his religion, she's not running Theocracy, border tensions...
Funny thing, Saladin is Pleased with Zara at 0, but only Cautious with De Gaulle at +2. Yeah, peaceweight 0 is a tad extreme.
A 50-turn lull follows Hatty's demise, where De Gaulle manages to catch up with Zara in tech and Saladin doesn't.
Then the French invade Ethiopia.
And it goes poorly at first (must have been some tactical blunder I missed as they were at tech and power parity, yet De Gaulle's graph took a sharp drop), then disastrously as Saladin joins forces with Zara.
And that's GG Zara as not only is Saladin too backwards to be a contender, he signs peace after helping deplete De Gaulle's forces, leaving Ethiopia with all the spoils... and the land.

Spoiler Arena 2 :

Qin and Ramesses found the early religions, with both holy cities 3 tiles from one another. Gilgamesh (Ramesses' other neighbour) then founds the Monotheism religion.
Qin is boxed-in with 4 cities, a barb city having spawned on his south coast, blocking the way (both western civs, Red and Brown starts, are really squeezed hard for land on this map).
Two early war declarations: Gilgamesh attacks Ramesses, JC attacks Pericles.
JC and Pericles trade cities, but Gilgamesh can't break through. After a while, he signs peace.
Qin then joins JC against Pericles, but Ramesses backstabs him on the next turn and Pericles signs peace with JC. China seems in some trouble, but that was a feint, as Sumeria reopens the Egyptian front, and with Ramesses' armies away, does break through this time.
All seems put in jeopardy as Rome declares on Sumeria... but Persia invades Rome. Chaos!
The Sino-Grecian war ends in a stalemate, Cyrus conquers two Roman cities before signing peace, Sumeria conquers Egypt (and then signs peace with Rome after capturing two Roman border cities, liberated to Greece).
Persia and Sumeria emerge of this phase as the two dominant powers. With that threat looming, Qin and JC ally... against Greece.
Cyrus is quick to seize the opportunity and his conquest of Rome is fast and efficient.
With this move, Persia become to sole dominant power. China is about to finish off Greece and catch up to Sumeria, though. Gilgamesh disapproves and attacks Qin.
His conquest of China is almost as efficient (except for the very last city where the one trebuchet bug hits) but for one small detail: he hit Qin before he had finished off Pericles. And the one remaining Greek city was enough to trigger a chain reaction of city liberations. Greece ends up regaining its whole territory, and Sumeria thus fails to overtake Persia as the game leader.
Which in turn makes Gilgamesh's later attack on Cyrus suicidal (he is significantly behind both in power and tech), and leads to the preposteruous end result where Gilgamesh is eliminated and Pericles finishes second!

(A special mention for the inhabitants of Corinth: their city was founded by Pericles, captured by Rome, then captured by Sumeria, liberated to Greece, recaptured by Rome, conquered by Persia, liberated again to Greece, captured by China, then recaptured by Sumeria, and eventually liberated back to Greece yet again.)

Spoiler Arena 1 :

HC likes living dangerously.
He spends his early turns building wonders instead of spreading and thus yields all his northern lands to Justinian.
He founds the Monotheism religion and fails to spread it, except to Mansa. He's thus the only one not taking part into the inevitable dogpile (no shared military struggle bonus for him) and a religious pariah.
When the Zulus attack a first time, instead of conquering them to get to a safe size early (Shaka was oddly weak in this game), he signs peace at the earliest opportunity: too many wonders to build, can't be bothered with a war.
When Kublai attacks, what should have been an easy counter-offensive turns into a bloodbath because HC has opted to skip Military Tradition (he ends up getting Industrialism first!).
When Justinian takes advantage of HC's warring to overtake him in research, HC adamantly refuses to research the biology line, crippling his cities and thus research power. He gets those techs through the Internet, thanks to Pacal!

But well... although not a stellar performance by the Incan leader, this starting position is apparently so OP that he still ends up ultra-dominant and carries the day.

Spoiler Rankings :

So, HC, Pacal, Justinian, Cyrus, Kublai, and Shaka are going to compete for the overall title.
Except there's no real suspense: Kublai is the only one among those leaders not to have played the Purple start on this map.
So he'll get that start.
And he'll win.

But some of the other games should have some interesting, like the Hannibal vs Gilgamesh rematch for instance.

As a heads up, I'll be away for the rest of the week and the week-end, so I won't have the final results ready before the latter part of next week.

 

[SittinDown]

I noticed on Arena 8 that the winner is always position 3 or 7 and more so 7 than 3. Only once did that not happen, and that was when 3 and 7 were held by Washington and Augustus, who are very weak on your rankings (and generally regarded as weak).

I didn't spot check other games, but it would be interesting to compile a "winning position by map", to help us read maps better.

 

[SittinDown]

Also of note, on Arena 8:

Your setup seems pretty good at modeling map strength, and shows that leaders are less important than map position.

Spoiler Analysis :

* The favorites from the picking contest were the leaders in positions 1 and 4, which never won in your contest.
* In the real game Churchill was in position 7, and won! Cyrus was in position 4, and came in 2nd. He was a heavy favorite for FTD in the picking contest.

Positions (in order of strength from eyeballing your games):

Pos 7: Coastal start with copper in capital, 3 different types of seafoot in cap. Close gold. Usually expands north towards wine-rice, and often takes out 1. (Even Gandhi took out 1 from this spot!) Usually wins.
Pos 3: Good river, decent variety of resources, nothing special. Metals far, but has some space. Sometimes wins. Elizabeth on from here, and you can see how a FIN leader can use this spot.
Pos 6: Central, huge river, little low on happy resources, besides gold, maybe barb trouble. Only won in the game where 3 and 7 had bad leaders (7 failed to take 1, and 4 [monty] predictably backstabbed 3 [washington]).
Pos 4: Off to the side. Double wet corn, stone horse capital. But just 1 ivory for happiness, and lots of jungle. Did not win in any of your matches.
Pos 5: Corner, lots of forest, early copper, no happiness, lots of forests. Nobody did well here.
Pos 2: Squeezed heavily. Often FTD. Looks okay on paper, but runs out of land at about 4 cities.
Pos 1: 5! seafood start. Lots of forests. no great 2nd spot. Often spreads due East towards happy resources into the jungle, and dies. Usually got conquered by 7. I didn't check thoroughly, but I think always eliminated.

 

[Thrasybulos]

I didn't spot check other games, but it would be interesting to compile a "winning position by map", to help us read maps better.

If you look at my "Rumble Jumble", I provided graphs per map position.
I entend to do the same here, maybe going a bit further (more stats).

But first, I need to decide on what reporting format I'll be going for, and put the tools in place for that.
So it'll be available... at some point.

And yeah, while Arena 1 proved to be the most unbalanced of all, other maps also featured very unbalanced starts. That Arena 8 position 7 (Orange) is indeed one of them.

 

[SittinDown]

I found some really interesting things about this.

Before you read the spoiler, I recommend you look at https://www.sullla.com/Civ4/civ4survivor6-5-preview.html and try to assess the map positions ignoring the leaders!

I decided to try reading the map, and predicting the outcomes of the alternative histories.

Spoiler results :

I did a quick take on the map positions on 3 broad categories:
Space / Squeeze
Capital quality.
Likely 2nd city site, and it's strategic value. (aka, don't settle towards your back line when you need to grab land).

Out of this I came up with a rough prediction of land quality.
Great: 6
Good: 4
Mid: 3, 1, 5
Bad: 2



Then I gathered up the data from the alternates and scored the positions on relative strength, with the best position getting a 100% score and the worst getting a 0% score.

Then I measured that against my earlier predictions, to see which map positions I rated well, and which I rated poorly.

So, my assessment of positions 6 and 2 was excellent. Position 1 I also rated as fairly week, but I slightly overrated it.
I mis-evaluated position 4 a lot. Though you can see it was the most polarized position, either dying or coming in 1st or 2nd every game!

[in the actual game Bismark was in position 6, and was a 2nd place favorite for FTD, and won]

I think the whole analysis to me shows that reading the map is more important for predicting a game than the leaders. The leaders absolutely matter, but it's like a 2:1 ratio of map to leader importance, maybe.

 

[Thrasybulos]

I think the whole analysis to me shows that reading the map is more important for predicting a game than the leaders. The leaders absolutely matter, but it's like a 2:1 ratio of map to leader importance, maybe.

Yes, setting aside the other crucial factor (the diplomatic environment), it seems to me that it boils down to something like:

• A strong leader will almost always (80%+) win from a strong start while a weak leader will only win often (40-50%?) from such a start.
• A strong leader will sometimes (10-20%?) pull a win from a weak start, a weak leader never will.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Tournament 1, Round 10 (final round)

Spoiler Arena 8 :

Willem gets the best starting position on this, and his colour (almost): will that be enough for him to break the curse at last?
Well, he's off to a bad start: he fails to expand so hard (4 cities on turn 70) that Toku gets to settle the double Gems spot just north of his capital...
And yet, his starting position is so strong and so forgiving that by turn 100, Willem is nevertheless at the top of the leaderboard, and has been able to double his number of cities.
Stalin opens up hostilities, vs Augustus, followed by Toku attacking Washington.
Victoria, Willem, and Monty(!) emerge as the winners of the initial phase. Time for war: Monty attacks Stalin (similar peaceweight, same religion, but well, he's Monty), Willem crosses the map to attack Augustus, Viccy targets Toku. So Augustus, Stalin, and Toku are in a 1v2 situation, and it quicly starts showing on the power graph, then on the map.
Willem is trying, guys:

Toku and Stalin are the first to go. Washington and Viccy have shared the spoils from Japan, with America ending up somewhat bigger and more powerful, England more advanced.
But with their solo conquest of Russia (although Augustus has stayed at war with Stalin, he's been busy getting conquered by Willem), the Aztecs are now the largest and most powerful civilization on the board. They invade American next.
Washington offers no resistance, and Willem and Victoria are facing the prospect of a runaway Monty.
Willem sees an opening when Monty fails to research Rifling (SciMeth, Steam Power, Combustion before Rifling: WTH Monty?) and attacks as the Aztec armies are away, finishing off Washington.
The Dutch cavalries allow for a strong and successful sucker punch. But then Monty regroups, and his much bigger size allows him to reverse momentum. He takes back the cities that the Dutch captured, and core Dutch cities start to fall.
But Monty has taken such a weird and inefficient path through the tech tree that Willem is able to field infantries, marines, tanks, and Gunships when Monty has barely got round to equipping Rifles.
That ends up taking a severe toll, and the Aztecs' advance is stopped. Then they start retreating. And once they're truly gassed, Viccy attacks.
The retreat turns into an utter rout.

So Willem finally gets his win. But in spite of him getting the strongest starting position on the map, it took a weird set of circumstances for that to happen: him very uncharacteristically prioritizing Rifling, while at the same time Monty ignoring it forever!

Spoiler Arena 7 :

Wang Kon founds the Meditation religion, Joao gets Polytheism. Initially both religions spread, but progressively WK's faith gets abandonned until he becomes religiously isolated.
Peter tries to break out by striking at the much stronger Lincoln. It goes as expected: poorly. With that conquest, Lincoln's America becomes the largest civ on the map.
Ragnar flails around: he attacks Bismarck and fails to get through. Next he attacks Korea and is forced to retreat after some initial successes. He tries Bismarck again, fails again. Then he attacks Frederick, gets dogpiled by Bismarck, but manages to hold on and gets peace from both.

Lincoln is catching up, but Korea is still fielding the most powerful army. WK starts plotting: he's Furious with Ragnar... looks like the Vikings' antics are about to end.
But that's the Troll King we're talking about: he attacks Joao (whom he was Cautious with) instead.
After another skirmish with Bismarck, Ragnar sees his luck run out when Lincoln declares on him, soon joined by Frederick.
Meanwhile Bismarck has a go at Korea whose armies are in Portugal. But WK is way too tough an opponent for the backwards Bismarck who quickly sues for peace.

With Ragnar and Joao gone, we're down to four civs.
Bismarck is the runt of the lot: the smallest and least advanced.
Frederick is smaller than Joao or Lincoln, but has managed to stay relevant tech-wise, although he's starting to lose ground.
Lincoln's and Wang Kon's situations are have been swapped: Korea is now slightly larger, but Lincoln has overtaken WK in research.

Although Frederick threatens a surprise win to the spaceship race thanks to his Internet build, Lincoln stays ahead to the end.
Bismarck faces elimination when WK decides to pay him back for his earlier attack, but the Germans had just signed a Defensive Pact and Freddy's intervention slows WK enough for Bismarck to make it.

Spoiler Arena 6 :

Genghis(!) and Elizabeth found the first religions: Taoism and Christianity. They're bordering one another, Genghis having drawn the best start on the map, Elizabeth arguably the worst: seems like she's already signed her death warrant?
Sury gets the Monotheism religion (Buddhism).
The first war of the game is indeed Genghis declaring on Lizzy. Then a more surprising Mehmed declaring on Cathy, although she's culturally crushing him so that may explain it.
And finally Sury attacks Darius who, although he has researched IW and has Iron connected at his capital, hasn't built a single metal unit.
At the end of the expansion phase, Genghis, Sury, and Darius are in the lead while Lizzy is already dying.
Then the Ottomans punch through the Russian defenses, and Cathy also seems in dire trouble.
But wait... isn't Alex in this game? Well, he's been oddly restrained so far, but now (at last?) his armies plough into Persia's back and Darius, who's been on top of the leaderboard and stalling the Khmer efforts, collapses almost immediately.
Elizabeth is the first to go, quickly followed by Cathy and Darius.
All four remaining leaders are pretty comparable in size, power, and tech. With England and Persia gone, Christianity is also gone as a religion: Genghis and Alex are Taoists, Sury and Mehmed are Buddhists.

Genghis isn't long making his move: he attacks Sury, and that goes terribly bad for the Khmer who lose half their power right away. But Mehmed starts plotting... and attacks Genghis almost immediately.
Meanwhile, Alex is staying put and quietly taking the tech lead(!).
Mehmed's intervention has allowed Sury to stabilize: he signs peace.
Mehmed looks like he's in trouble when Genghis researches Replaceable Parts... but then he skips Rifling to queue up Chemistry -> Military Science instead!
Alex finally gets bored of all that peaceful building stuff and declares on Sury.
In spite of his erratic path through the tech tree, Genghis does get to cavs before Mehmed, and his slow, grinding advance picks up pace. As for the Khmer, they collapse almost immediately in the face of the Greek assault.

And then they were two.
Genghis has slightly more territory and more population, Alex has slightly more cities.
Genghis has nearly twice as many units as Alex does, but he's got cavs when Alex has tanks.
And Alex has an 11-tech lead.
Alex wins the 15-turn peace: when war inevitably breaks out, he's nearly caught up with Genghis in number of units, but his are more advanced.
And once again, the Mongol leader comes close... but comes short.

Spoiler Arena 5 :

Isabella and Boudica get the first religions (Charlemagne opens Fishing so loses the race), Hammurabi gets the Monotheism's.

Unsurprisingly, the first war breaks out between Boudica and Isabella. Although Izzy being the one to start it is a bit unexpected... except if we consider that Boudica had no metal when Izzy started plotting.
The conflict then spreads as Napoleon attacks Isabella, while Charlie launches an assault on Boudica.
Then a new war erupts as Suleiman declares on Churchill. The Ottomans pull off a successful sucker-punch by capturing a city immediately. Except the target of their main offensive was an iceball fishing village. Hardly a crippling blow.

Charlemagne, after an initial successful strike, is now collapsing under the Celtic counter-attack. Hope resurfaces when Izzy gets peace from Napoleon. Even better news for the Burgher King: Hammurabi joins what's turning into a dogpile on Boudica.
In the other war, although Suleiman's target priorization is debatable, the Ottomans clearly have the upper hand.

Izzy pulls out of the coalition as Napoleon strikes back with a vengeance.
And the conflict between the northern leaders loses relevance: with the Ottomans' conquest of England, quickly followed by the French's annexion of Spain, it becomes apparent the game will be decided between Suleiman and Napoleon. The Ottoman leader seems to have the edge: he controls a larger territory. Napoleon tries to remedy that by launching an attack on Charlemagne while Suleiman attempts to fix his faltering economy.

Although Charlie gets access to rifles and cavs way before everyone else, he can't contain the furia francese.
With his ally now neutralized, Hammurabi quickly succombs to the Celtic assault. Charlemagne puts up a better fight, but at this point, he's doomed.

Suleiman has managed to pull away in research, but Napoleon, thanks to his Organized trait and prioritizing Assembly Line, isn't hopelessly distanced. Boudica doesn't seem like she can compete with either at this point: she could play the role of Kingmaker... if she weren't "pleased-locked".
Napoleon makes his move and attacks Suleiman. He's been building up his forces while Suleiman was in peaceful mode so he now has the numerical advantage while the Ottomans have just unlocked tanks and artillery. The French forces target the very border city when Suleiman is keeping his stack: that battle could prove decisive.
It's a bloodbath, and a French victory.
But instead of collapsing, Suleiman slowly stabilizes.

And then he unlocks nukes.

Spoiler Arena 4 :

The early religions go to Gandhi (Hinduism) and Hatty (Islam) who also later founds the Monotheism religion (Taoism). Islam spreads to the northern civs (Sitting Bull, Roosevelt), Louis adopts Hinduism while De Gaulle picks up Taoism before converting to Islam.
At the end of the expansion phase, all civs have done fairly well (8-9 cities). Hatty has done slightly better (10 cities), Roosevelt slightly worse (7 cities) but he makes up for it by being the tech leader.
The first war comes suddenly when De Gaulle attacks SB (he wasn't plotting two turns earlier) and ends almost as suddenly after a city gets traded back and forth.
Hatty adds the CoL, Theology, and Divine Right religions to her collection, but Roosevelt has got to Philosophy first and Gandhi gets Sistine.

The second war is started by Roosevelt who declares on Louis, but that goes nowhere.
SB then starts round 2 versus De Gaulle... who is a fair bit stronger at this point, so the attacks backfires spectacularly: SB loses 4 cities before peace is signed.
Hatty is the score and tech leader, but Gandhi is keeping up by chaining Golden Ages and De Gaulle is catching up thanks to his strong starting position and his Native American conquests.

Gandhi's peaceful ways get disrupted when Louis attacks... which may not be the best idea for the French leader as Gandhi's no weakling at this stage.
SB starts round 3 vs De Gaulle, but it no longer qualifies as a declaration of war: it's pure suicide.
Hatty is the first to Rifling but isn't planning on exploiting the situation.
Louis gets mauled by Gandhi, but the Indian leader agrees to peace. If Gandhi won't grab the opportunity, Roosevelt will: he declares on Louis.
Hatty looks like she's about to pull the slider (culture4), but she starts plotting instead. Then she has a change of heart: she cancels her plotting and pull the slider.
Louis gets another reprieve as although the remnants of his armies are in full rout, Roosevelt signs peace after capturing a mere two cities (one of which is now swamped in Egyptian culture).
No reprieve for SB though: all his bases are belong to De Gaulle now.

Louis' luck comes to an end as Gandhi, who's sharing the game lead with De Gaulle now, attacks and swiftly wipes him out.
Vexed at no longer being the largest, De Gaulle invades Roosevelt's territory.
America is down to a single city when Alexandria goes Legendary.

Spoiler Arena 3 :

The early religions go to Saladin (Islam) and Mao (Buddhism) who beats Ramesses to Meditation thanks to the turn order advantage. The Egyptian leader later gets Monotheism, though (Hinduism).
Gilgamesh and JC convert to Buddhism, Hannibal adopts Islam.

Poor Ramesses is doomed in this setup, which he's made worse by failing to expand properly (a fact Gilgamesh has taken advantage of) and of course going for a religion no one shares.
Hannibal initiates the dogpile: Mao and Gilgamesh join up.
But JC didn't get the memo: he attacks Hannibal instead. That war is short-live but profitable for the Romans: they snatch a border city and sign peace.
Saladin's playing for the win: he's leading on the scoreboard and he declares on Mao who is in second place.
His attack is initially a success, until this game's agent of chaos strikes again: JC declares on him. That forces Saladin to sign peace with Mao. He beats back the Roman invasion, captures a city, and gets peace.
But the whole thing has stalled his momentum: he's still leading in score, but Hannibal and Gilgamesh, who have completed the partitioning of the former Egyptian lands, are now as large as Arabia, and they're fielding stronger armies.

What feels like the second phase of the game is kicked off by Hannibal declaring on JC (pay back time), Mao declaring on Gilgamesh (who's become Hindu), and Saladin renewing hostilities with the Chinese.
This ends badly for the Romans and the Chinese.
Hannibal, with the weirdest-shaped empire, emerges as the new game leader: he's leading in size, power, and tech.
Gilgamesh follows in second place, Saladin has dropped to third (which means last now). That said, both the Arabs and Sumerians are actually out-researching the Carthaginians, so Hannibal isn't yet the runaway leader.
Diplomatically, Saladin is friendly with both, Hannibal pleased-locked with both, so Gilgamesh (also pleased with both) is the only one who could attempt something.
...except growing border tensions cause Hannibal to drop to Cautious with Saladin: he starts plotting right away and attacks soon afterwards.

Saladin is helpless before the Carthaginian might, his cities start dropping one after another. Until Gilgamesh, who is now out-teching Hannibal, makes his move: he backstabs Hannibal.
The Carthaginian position shatters.

Spoiler Arena 2 :

Asoka founds the West Coast religion (Buddhism), Brennus the East Coast religon (Confucianism). Pericles likes neither and founds Islam instead.
Mansa and Qin contract Buddhism.
Zara declares on Pericles and sucker-punches his way into Corinth. He gets infected by Islam as a result.
Qin founds the CoL (Taoism) and Theology (Christianity) religions (he apparently agrees with the devs).
Asoka, boxed-in, goes for an across-the-map expedition against Brennus.
The initial conflict spreads as Mansa declares on Zara while Qin declares on Pericles.
The Indian expedition is a failure (surprise) and Asoka signs peace. China also signs a quick peace with Greece, but only after grabbing a city.
Mansa, after heavily contributing to the depletion of the Ethiopian armies, gets conned into agreeing to peace without gaining anything. That leaves Pericles with a golden opportunity. He recaptures Corinth, then an Ethiopian city, then... Qin strikes again. Immediately followed by Brennus. Even the barbarians join the party and capture a Greek city (on turn 156, without Raging Barbs!).
(That city, on the north-east tundra coast, is subsequently captured by Asoka who sends his whole army across the continent after it, and then detonates a Culture bomb there!)

With the demise of Pericles, Qin and Brennus emerge as the strongest leaders. Zara, who wasn't able to get any spoils, is now irrelevant. Asoka and Mansa are the tech leaders but lack an actual production base.
Brennus is an adept of perfect timing: he waits until Asoka gets Rifling to launch his medieval armies at India. It actually goes better than you could expect: the Celts suffer huge losses, but they manage to nab a core city before signing peace.
Qin is more or less diplo-locked: with shared religion and a massive +6 for favourite civics (Bureaucracy, which everyone is running at this stage), he's actually Friendly with most of the field! He tries to remedy that by adopting Taoism, but that doesn't help that much (he drops to Pleased with some, and while he can plot at pleased, it's still not very likely).
Brennus rebuilds his forces, gets better military techs, and attacks Mansa this time, with perfect timing once again: had he waited for 2 turns, his forces could have been equipped with rifles.
Asoka, always helpful, gets Qin out of his diplomatic lock by attacking him.
But Qin isn't actually interested: he crushes the Indian forces and accepts a quick peace for a city.
That's because Qin is playing for the win: Brennus, in spite of his blunders, has gutted Mali and is in the process of fully annexing its lands. So the Celts are China's most serious rival in this game.

Qin declares on Brennus.
The attack is brutal and efficient: Brennus collapses.
Asoka joins the party and also declares on Brennus, speeding the mop up operations but mostly vulturing the Chinese spoils while consolidating his second place position.
Zara has a brain fart and he declares on Qin, who ultimately has a brain fart of his own by signing peace when Ethiopia is down to one city (another nail in the coffin of the misconception that the AI never signs peace when their opponent is down to a single city).

Qin is now at last in a great diplomatic situation: he hates everyone (no more shared religion, people have dropped out of bureaucracy, spies, war declarations). And China is the most powerful civ on the board now, by far.
After a longish buildup phase, time to actually win.
Qin declares on Asoka.

Spoiler Arena 1 :

Justinian gets the Meditation religion (Christianity) and sends his settler to the correct spot: he secures metal, and his Holy City culture locks the area. HC beats KK to a late Polytheism (Hinduism), but KK beats him to Monotheism (Buddhism).
Shaka the Builder gets the GLH and Colossus.

At the end of the expansion phase, Justinian, Kublai, and HC have done the best; Shaka has picked up Hinduism, Pacal Buddhism, and Cyrus Christianity.

HC opens hostilities by declaring on KK, while Shaka declares on Cyrus a bit later.
HC's initial attack was a success: he had catapults, and was able to capture a first city (Turfan). But KK has won the following attrition war, and now HC's prospects have significantly darkened: he loses back Turfan, then his Holy City.
Shaka's not faring any better: his assaults have been repulsed, and he's already lost a city to the Persian counter-offensive.
Justinian, who's been the research leader since the get go, gets an early Liberalism prize (turn 145). He celebrates by invading Mongolia. His power has been spiking for some time, far above Kublai's. Could this attack do some real damage?

It does more than deal some damage: it proves fatal! :shocked:

In the post-Kublai world, everyone but HC has been converted to Christianity, and Justinian is ultra-dominant (more cities, far more power, and runaway tech leader).
Shared religion, civics, military struggle, etc. mean Justinian and Cyrus are pleased-locked with everyone while Pacal is actually Friendly with everyone.
So only Shaka and HC can make a move.
Unsurprisingly, Shaka does, and he actually locks the situation further by attacking HC.
He sues for peace almost immediately, though, after losing a city.
Then nothing happens untils HC renews hostilities with Shaka, conquering him this time.

And then Justinian lands on Alpha Centauri.

Spoiler Final Rankings :

So Kublai didn't end up winning the tournament, after all: Justinian did, with an impression 50% win rate (5 wins).
HC is second, with 4 wins.
No one else gets more than 3 wins.

With the possible glaring exception of Willem, that list doesn't seem shocking. Let's see how it shapes up after more tournaments.

Ok, next I'll be doing Tournament 2.
After that, it'll be tooling & reporting development time before I proceed further.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Comparison of the different scoring systems:

Spoiler :

There are some disparities, but the odd one out is the survival score, a close approximation of my previous scoring system.
So I believe the move to a new scoring system was warranted, but we'll see when more results are available.

 

[Keler]

Average victory turn at 327 for 80 games
it is 322 for me without the archery barbarians have

I believe you should make shorter but more tournaments to rank the AI in this format. I would end a tournament at round 5 and make more tournaments for ranking the AI. Thus you can also get to use your elo ranking more.
Since you present the replays in gifs, instead of giving the same color for every starting position, I would use the civs original color. It is easier to follow around, for me at least. Also I know some people love to read but I surely enjoy looking at tables instead so if that consumes so much time of you, you don't have to write a report to please me

I honestly don't know what scoring system make more sense. There is no right answer to that either. When I think about it, because high PW leaders love each other, they don't destroy each other which should help their NScore more. But instead I see the opposite. PW 0-3 leaders have 28k, PW 4 leaders have 35k, PW-6-10 leaders have 21k average. It seems balanced enough though but of course you needed to sort arena groups based on that instead of Total Score=Win+Survive. Therefore it is not logical to compare your score with other score systems when arena groups are not sorted based on them. I think score survive points is somewhat unbalanced. I enjoyed NScore more, and I would love if you used that as main instead. Although you can't apply that for tournament 1 elo ranking results right now. Obviously the whatever score that determines the arena groups should be used only.

I don't have much to contribute for the moment. It will be fun to compare what you got with my ranking when I'm done

 

[Thrasybulos]

I believe you should make shorter but more tournaments to rank the AI in this format. I would end a tournament at round 5 and make more tournaments for ranking the AI.

Nah. At round 5, I still had winners from the bottom arenas jumping almost all the way to the top. It needs a bit more than that for them to more or less settle in a range group.
8 to 12 rounds seems like what's needed. 10 looks alright, and it's a nice round number.

Since you present the replays in gifs, instead of giving the same color for every starting position, I would use the civs original color. It is easier to follow around, for me at least.

I know, it's confusing at first. As I've said in the intro, it makes referencing the starting position easier.
But the main reason is that I still intend to develop a tool to generate the files. I had started thinking about how to deal with similar colours, by introducing the notion of "colour group"... and then it occured to me that assigning colours to positions instead of civs would simply make the issue go away.

Also I know some people love to read but I surely enjoy looking at tables instead so if that consumes so much time of you, you don't have to write a report to please me

The objective is to keep track of the weird stuff that happens, and to give people a sense of how the game unfolded.
But I need to keep them shorter. Full reports are indeed totally unnecessary.

Therefore it is not logical to compare your score with other score systems when arena groups are not sorted based on them.

There's a distortion effect, for sure. But don't think it's that dramatic?

I enjoyed NScore more, and I would love if you used that as main instead.

I dunno about that. Roosevelt got 15,000 points from a single game for instance. That's almost as much as Hatty got in 10 games, and those games include 3 wins. And in particular, Roosy got that score on a map where he had drawn the absolute best starting position... a map on which Hatty won from one of the worst starts!
But the main thing is, providing elo ratings remains the objective, and I can't derive elo ratings from that score.

 

[Keler]

If you are going to proceed with win+survive score, could you at least change the survive points from 3 to 1 instead, and only keep the runner up with 3 points so being second can mean something?

A tool that edits worldbuilder file so no more need to copy paste from the word file sulla already prepared? only downside is it edits by reading player color code because that's how it will work? And you can do that? Wow I like this

 

[Thrasybulos]

If you are going to proceed with win+survive score, could you at least change the survive points from 3 to 1 instead, and only keep the runner up with 3 points so being second can mean something?

The thing is... I don't think that being second means anything special.
It does means something in the specific context of Sullla's AI Survivor, with the runner-up moving to the next stage along with the winner.

But as far as assessing the performance level of an AI?
Sure, there are games which end in a tight race, and where the runner-up performed as well as the winner, and in those games it means something.
I haven't run stats, but watching so many games, it sure feels like those games are outnumbered by the games where the second best performer runs afoul of the game leader and either gets outright eliminated, or gets knocked into 3rd place before Domination hits.
So the actual runner-up very often happens into that position by chance.

My system isn't perfect (none is), and it ends up rewarding undeserving lucky one-city survivors for instance. But I think it's fairer than systematically rewarding the runner-up and none of the others. Also has the advantage of a more varied point distribution.
But for comparison purposes, I can certainly provide a ranking list where only the runner-up is considered a survivor, all others losers whether they lived or died.
That would mean a fixed 10 / 4 / 1.5 for 6-player games and 12 / 5 / 2 for 7-player games.

 

[Thrasybulos]

I've played the first two games of the next tournament, and... it might be sheer coincidence, but they've done nothing to dispel the notion that runner-up is nothing special!

In the first game, Qin drew a start the AH have identified as very weak (we'll see whether this is confirmed, or whether diplo caused that situation - I except a bit of both) and yet played a superb game, balancing his eco and smart conquests to rise to prominence.
Except Viccy had drawn a very strong start, with a big backline. She was left in peace the whole game, and thus able to get to an unstoppable tech lead. A late game conquest of a weak neighbour improved her production base, although she was still half China's size.
Only Hammurabi was left and Qin started conquering him: that would secure his second place (as Viccy's launch was imminent). But Viccy turned on the slider with only a few techs left on the tree and a 60+ turn Cultural victory (she does that a lot it would appear). So Qin, who was on Robotics, suddenly had a shot: he would launch before Viccy could achieve culture, and given 15-20 turns, he would make up his tech and power deficit, so could even win by Domination.
But Viccy attacked right there, at the perfect time, when she still had a huge power lead.
She won by Domination, Qin having slipped into 3rd place.
So Hammy, who at no point was in contention for the win, and had actually been in the process of being eliminated by Qin, gets 2nd place.

In the 2nd game, Ramesses played a strong early game and then became the runaway leader in tech and power.
Hannibal was a distant second, but still way above the rest of the field, a position he confirmed by conquering Asoka, who was the 3rd power.
Hannibal and Ramesses had been religious allies, but when Hannibal adopted Free Religion, Ramesses plotted immediately and attacked almost right away, wiping Carthage off the map.
So Sitting Bull got 2nd place: he'd done nothing at all in the game, except barely resist Alex's attacks until Asoka repeatedly saved him and weakened Alex enough for SB to take finally advantage. When the game ended, SB hadn't yet reached Hannibal's tech level at the time of his elimination!


There's yet another, more practical reason to not taking into account runner-up status.
If at some point I decide to stop running the games "manually" and use game.aiplay instead... that information becomes impossible to collect reliably. It you're not in front of your screen when the victory message appears, with the screenshot key ready, endgame scores along with the precise relative positions of the survivors become unavailable.
The replay can only tell us the winner, victory type and date, and who got eliminated at which date. Even kill credit can't be attributed with certainty if the game features leaders from the same civ.
So I'd rather my scoring system to remain compatible with that limited information set.

 

[Keler]

If at some point I decide to stop running the games "manually" and use game.aiplay instead... that information becomes impossible to collect reliably. It you're not in front of your screen when the victory message appears, with the screenshot key ready, endgame scores along with the precise relative positions of the survivors become unavailable.

Yes this is why I use AI autoplay mode

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For score system maybe it is then better to sort arena groups based on number of victories and then your score system as second parameter? (Rank by wins then total score)
Oh well it probably wouldn't make the biggest change. I don't have anything to add, I enjoy watching this thread.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Yes this is why I use AI autoplay mode

Thanks, I'll check it out at some point I guess. I remember seeing it, but I guess I just dismissed it when I saw "2006".

For score system maybe it is then better to sort arena groups based on number of victories and then your score system as second parameter? (Rank by wins then total score)
Oh well it probably wouldn't make the biggest change. I don't have anything to add, I enjoy watching this thread.

You really don't like the "survival score" part, do you?

Remember, if I want to take into account the game composition (ie winning a game featuring Justinian and HC is better than winning a game featuring Monty and Washington), the score needs to be a grid:

vs	Player 1​	Player 2​	Player 3​	Player 4​	Player 5​	Player 6​	Score​
Player 1 (winner)	XXX​	1​	1​	1​	1​	1​	5​
Player 2 (survived)	0​	XXX​	0.5​	1​	1​	1​	3.5​
Player 3 (survived)	0​	0.5​	XXX​	1​	1​	1​	3.5​
Player 4 (eliminated)	0​	0​	0​	XXX​	0.5​	0.5​	1​
Player 5 (eliminated)	0​	0​	0​	0.5​	XXX​	0.5​	1​
Player 6 (eliminated)	0​	0​	0​	0.5​	0.5​	XXX​	1​

with the matching cells (player X vs player Y / player Y vs player X) adding to 1.

It's not an additive and arbitrary flat score when I can say a win is worth X points, a 2nd place Y points, an elimination 0 points.