AI League (yet another AI Survivor spinoff)

[Thrasybulos]

Tournament 2

Eaupx has requested that Season 1 maps be given a pass until he's completed running AH for them: not a problem.
So for this one, I just added Season 2 maps to the remaining Seasons 5, 6, and 7 maps to draw from.

Here is what random.org picked:

Arena 1 : Season 6, Opening Round, Game 3
Arena 2 : Season 2, Playoffs, Game 1
Arena 3 : Season 5, Playoffs, Game 3
Arena 4 : Season 6, Opening Round, Game 1
Arena 5 : Season 2, Opening Round, Game 8
Arena 6 : Season 2, Opening Round, Game 2
Arena 7 : Season 6, Opening Round, Game 4
Arena 8 : Season 7, Opening Round, Game 4


Round 1

Spoiler Arena 8 :

Funnily enough, random.org has assigned both Mao and Qin to this game, which is played on a Season 7 map which featured them both. Unfortunately for Qin, Mao gets the start which had allowed Qin to play a very strong game, while Qin himself is stuck with the start that Wang Kon had got in that game. That puts both Chinese as neighbours, and their lands should truly recreate the Empire of the Middle!

Each of the western leaders (Boudica, Lincoln, Hammurabi) founds his own religion. Which means that when Vicky founds the CoL religion, it becomes the Eastern faith (Victoria, Zara, Qin).
Mao is off to a bad start when barbs raze one of his cities. He launches an attack on Hammurabi, only to get assaulted from the other side by Zara. The pincer move proves fatal, and Mao is the first out of the game. Somehow Babylon has managed to get every single city, and thus gone from the weakest civ to the largest.
Boudica tries an ill-advised invasion of a much stronger America, and her cities start falling one by one to Lincoln's counter-attack. But Qin sees his moment and he ploughs into America from the other side. Lincoln, who had been the game leader until that point, collapses.
In the East, some low probability dice rolls trigger two declarations of war while at Pleased: Zara attacks Hammurabi, followed by Victoria backstabbing him. The English are by far the tech leaders at this point, and they're sporting rifles while the Ethiopians are at the bottom of the field and still medieval: it gets ugly fast.

With the conquest of America, China has become the largest and most powerful civilization... but England has a growing 13-tech lead and is in the process of absorbing Ethiopia.
Lincoln has barely fallen that Boudica makes another suicide attempt by attacking Hammurabi. No miracle this time, especially when Viccy joins up and decides to test her new toys on Celtic cities.

Qin has been catching up on Viccy, but she's nearing the end the tech tree and with her being at war (however one-sided) with all the late game tools at her disposal, her power rating has rocketed up.
Qin makes the correct move: he attacks Hammurabi. At least, that should secure his second-place finish.
Then a glimpse of hope: as she's become infamous for, Viccy pulls the Culture slider when she's almost done with the tech tree, and far, far removed from 3 legendary cities.
Qin is on Robotics, so he's almost bound to launch before then.

But he's also made an incorrect move: he's gone Free Religion, dropping his shared faith bonus with Viccy...

Spoiler Arena 7 :

SB opens with a 13-turn Sailing, followed by Hunting -> Archery. Seems wise.
Asoka (Buddhism) and Ramesses (Judaism) get the first religions.
Shaka declares on Ramesses on turn 60 (the Egyptians do have metal)! He loses his stack, then a city to the Egyptian counter-attack, before signing peace.
SB founds a late Monotheism religion (Hinduism) and becomes an instant religious pariah as the whole world is already converted to a different faith (Asoka and Willem Buddhism, all the others Judaism). Then Willem discovers Theology, founds Christianity, and converts on the spot. So there's now a 4-civ Jewish block, and 3 heretics each following a different religion.

Willem is off once again to a bad tournament start he finds himself on the receiving end of a Jeweish dogpile (Ramesses, Shaka, Hannibal) and is the first to exit the game. while Alex attacks SB, gets interrupted by Asoka, fights him off, then resumes his attack on SB.
Ramesses emerges of that sequence as the strongest leader on the field, but with still a way to go.
Meanwhile, Alex attacks SB then signs peace when he gets interrupted by Asoka, fights him off and signs peace.
And that pattern would get repeated over and over again, with the odd Shaka attack on SB and Hannibal attack on SB intermingled.
With Ramesses the only leader not involved in warring and thus able to build up peacefully, Egypt's lead now reaches runaway status.

The Alex / SB / Asoka pattern is broken when Hannibal, the undisputable second strongest leader behind Ramesses, declares on Asoka and runs him over. But on the very turn he captures Asoka's last city, he drops into Free Religion, which causes Ramesses to drop to Cautious with him.
Egypt starts plotting right away.
Hannibal is Industrial, with tanks and infantries. Egypt has nukes and a fully Modern army...

Spoiler Arena 6 :

Peter and Saladin get the early religons, Mansa gets the 3rd.
Speaking of Mansa, he encounters a weird barbarian problem:

He keeps advancing his settler to the forested tile, then I dunno, spots barbarians two tiles away (the city), so retreats to his territory. He then advances again, retreats again, etc.
As a result, he's still on 2 cities on turn 50, and Bismarck gets to settle the area.

Brennus opens hostilities by attacking Cathy. Then, unsurprisingly, Peter declares on Saladin.
Cyrus is the winner of the expansion phase, a position he reaffirmss by running over Bismarck (who shows how kind-hearted he is by using his few remaining production queues to build wonders for Cyrus to own).
Peter's war backfires as he gets conquered by Saladin, allowing the Arabs to catch up to their Persian Muslim allies.
Brennus, who's been warring on and off with Cathy and Mansa, faces his doom when Saladin's armies cross his borders. Or is it when Cyrus also crosses over?

Cathy thinks she sees an opportunity and strikes at Mansa... who has access to far more advanced units. She's soon retreating across her own territory.
Mansa has founded 5 religions: he pulls the slider. It becomes a race between Mansa's culture and Saladin's science: the Arab leader has indeed pulled way ahead of the rest of the field. But Mansa has done the common thing where he's researched every source of unhealthiness, skipped the Biology line, and pulled the slider on Plastics. As a result, his 3rd Legendary candidate has shrunk to a size seven sewer pit.
Saladin easily wins that race.

Spoiler Arena 5 :

Both Sury and Monty declare early wars (T75), their targets being Darius and Ragnar.
Monty's war is a resounding success: he crushes Ragnar and looks like he's started a snowball.
Sury's... not so much. He loses a city to the Persians and takes advantage of the Incans joining the war to get out of it. HC looks like he's going to pull off an easy conquest: his initial attack nets him a city, and his power rating is much higher than Darius's and remains so. And yet, his offensive stalls out.

Then in the same turn, Louis and Sury pile on poor Darius, while Monty invades America.
Persia is swiftly wiped out.
Washington, who until that point had been in second place, resists better, but his cities are still dropping one by one.
Louis decides he doesn't like the looks of Sury and declares on him.
And then HC forgets to plug in his brain: he declares on Monty! The Aztecs are much bigger, much more powerful, and they have unlocked rifles while HC is doing the "William special"!

After Washington and HC are gone, Louis barely has the time to finish off Sury before the Aztec hordes pour into France.

Monty Unleashed.

Spoiler Arena 4 :

Gilgamesh, with a Gold tile at his capital, delays Mining so much that he only connects it on turn 65! :weed:
Early war declaration by Genghis Khan (T66) vs Roosevelt, with New York captured right away. His attack then stalls out for some time, until JC joins him.

GK had the best early expansion, but he stopped after his attack, and De Gaulle ends up with the most settled cities (11), including one by the Gems next to Karakorum which GK didn't seem interested in.
After Roosevelt's demise, Elizabeth unsurprisingly finds herself on the receiving end of a major and fatal dogpile: the whole world declares on her!

After Lizzy's elimination, Gilgamesh, who had been boxed-in at the start, is the weakest of the remaining leaders. The others are fairly comparable, with De Gaulle slightly ahead. But France is Hindu in a Muslim world...
Gilgamesh seems to be following a backup plan: he's founded four religions and built Sistine, and is already on culture2.
JC declares on DG, but it goes horribly wrong as his power rating takes a precipitous plunge and he starts losing cities. Then GK declares on the French too, and that enables JC to make up some of his losses back before he signs peace. Inexplicably, GK soon signs peace too, when his armies were much larger and he had unlocked rifles ahead of everyone.
After a short period of peace, De Gaulle remembers the best defense is a good offense and he attacks JC. Once again, the Mongol warhorns sound... but this time the Khan opts to side with the French, against his religious ally!
Rome gets wiped out.
Gilgamesh beelines Mass Media and pulls the slider. Then he cancels it as he starts plotting. Then he cancels his plotting and after a short while, pulls the slider again.
De Gaulle cons him into signing a Defensive Pact... which gets triggered as Genghis inevitable declares on the French.
But although Gilgamesh pulls the slider off again, and De Gaulle weasels himself out of the conflict, it is too late to stop the Sumerian cities from getting Legendary.

Spoiler Arena 3 :

As far as I can remember, first game with an all high peaceweight cast.
Gandhi-of-the-triple-gold-start beats Charlie to Meditation AND Polytheism. And he gets Monotheism on T26 for a sub-T30 triple Holy City! Joao later founds the CoL religion, but Gandhi also gets the Theology and Philosophy religions, the latter making Bombay a quadruple Holy City! Oh, and he would also found the Divine Right religion a bit later...
A few inconsequential early wars are declared (WK vs Hatty, Charlie vs Gandhi).
Of more consequence is the 1v2 Joao faces (Augustus + Charlie) since it leads to his elimination.

Charlie then goes back after Gandhi, triggering the slow conquest of his land by the Indians while their cities start radiating Culture (already at 20K+ on turn 220 without the slider).
Things get interesting when this creates so much border tension with Rome, by far the world's top military power, that Augustus declares on Gandhi. The latter immediately signs peace with Charlie to face that threat.
WK knows easy pickings when he see them: he invades the remnants Holy Rome right away and quickly conquers them.

Bombay falls, putting an end to Gandhi's Cultural dominance dreams. Then Dehli falls, heralding the end of the whole Indian civilization.
Gandhi is down to a single tundra village (soon to be conquered) when Wang Kon makes his move and declares on Augustus: the Romans are much larger but still fielding a Renaissance army while the Koreans are fully industrialized. And then Hatty backstabs WK (or rather, pays him back for his early game aggression?): she's weaker, but at tech parity although she lacks Oil.
After a few cities change hands, they all sign peace.
Augustus takes advantage of the lull to industrialize his armies, and he renews hostilities with the Koreans who stand no chance now.

Spoiler Arena 2 :

Justinian and Pericles get the first religions. Suleiman gets boxed-in hard.
In addition to being the only high peaceweight leader in a low peaceweight game, Pericles utterly fails to spread his religion while Justinian does.
Napoleon starts the dogpile. Then Stalin joins in.
No, wait. Stalin declares on Kublai?!
That war goes nowhere and does nothing except prevent them both from joining the dogpile on Pericles.
Justinian and Suleiman do, though, lest Napoleon gets everything. But too little, too late: Napoleon does get everything, except for the last two cities (desert and tundra) which go to the Byzantines.
And now the world seems to be having a snowballing Napoleon problem...

Of which Suleiman seems unaware as he chooses that moment to drop out of the world's religion in favour of a self-founded faith.
The attack is surprisingly long in coming, and when it does, Napoleon even slows things down by agreeing to peace half-way through through his conquest before resuming hostilities a bit later and finishing off the job this time.
Meanwhile, Stalin has another go at the Mongols, which proves a fatal mistake.

Napoleon is much quicker in making his next move: he attacks Justinian.
But he's taken so long in attacking then conquering Suleiman that he's allowed Justinian to tech up to Assembly Line while he's oddly skipped Military Tradition. So while his troops outnumber the Byzantines 3 to 1, it's knights and rifles vs cavalries and infantries.
And yet, although the French suffer grievous losses, they rout the Byzantines whose last hope comes crashing when the Mongols join the attack against them.

Spoiler Arena 1 :

Pacal and Isabella get the early religions. Isabella spreads hers to the western civs (Frederick, Mehmed), Pacal his to Churchill, while Toku picks up Pacal's minority religion.

Churchill is the first to start plotting (against Toku presumably), but he gets attacked by Mehmed before he can follow through. That attack is a failure as the Ottomans end up losing a city before they sign peace.
Frederick then Mehmed convert to Pacal's religion: Izzy joins Toku in the religious pariahs club.
Toku declares on Churchill: they're number one and number two in power. Border cities get traded back and forth.
Mehmed attacks Isabella.
Left alone, Pacal is already running away with the game, techwise: T144 Liberalism.
The anglo-japanese war ends with Toku the clear winner on the battlefield... yet agreeing to peace without any territorial gain.
Freddy, who ended up boxed-in, is losing more and more tiles to Pacal's culture and slipping into irrelevance.
Mehmed's war is still going but has stalled. Toku, who is now the undisputed power leader, backstabs him.
The Ottomans collapse.
Freddy, leading the runt civ of the game, and still medieval, declares on Pacal who has rifles and is researching Assembly Line... Needless to say, it doesn't go well. Churchill, a more respectable opponent, tries to help, though. But he gets immediately backstabbed by Toku, while Izzy joins Pacal in mopping up the few remaining German cities.
Freddy and Churchill exit the game.
Izzy, still on the warpath then turns round and attacks Toku: both have rifles, but Toku lacks cavalries. Japan is nevertheless much bigger and more powerful than Spain, so unless Pacal gets involved, that doesn't bode well for Izzy.

Speaking of Pacal... he's researching Robotics while Toku is on Military Science and Izzy on Railroad!
Isabella's bold gamble pays off as Pacal invades Japan: she gets to finish second, and, more importantly, she simply gets to live.

Spoiler Rankings :

 

[Thrasybulos]

Tournament 2, Round 2

Spoiler Arena 8 :

Second game with an all-high-peaceweight cast!

Roosevelt (Buddhist) starts the first war by attacking Charlie (Christian) but finds himself in a 1v2 situation when Churchill (Christian) declares on him almost right after. And when the last Christian (Freddy) also piles in, his doom is sealed.
Elizabeth sets a new Liberalism competition record: turn 138.

After Roosevelt's elimination, Bismarck and Joao form the Jeweish block, Elizabeth has gone into Free Religion, the other three (Charlie, Freddy, Churchill) form the Christian block.
Lizzy pulls the slider very early (turn 163, while researching Communism)... and gets attacked on the very same turn by Bismarck and Churchill!
Suddenly, skipping Rifling doesn't seem that great of an idea...
Lizzy is already on her way out when Charlie seals the deal.

Freddy attempts the German reunification, but fails. So Charlie has to step in and show him how it's done.
Charlie may know how to fight and prove by getting his 3rd kill of the game, but Freddy knows how to tech: he's opened a decent tech lead over the rest of the field.
Joao would have been well inspired to notice it before trying to remind the world he exists by declaring on Freddy right as the first German mechs are built! Charlie then joins in, not that his help is needed this time, but he wants his 4th kill... and he gets it!
Churchill hasn't paid heed: he attacks Freddy. His invasion fails, he gets peace, but Charlie pounds on him. Nukes fly and England starts disappearing from the map.
Freddy launches, and it becomes a dual race: Charlie's Domination vs Freddy's ship, game end vs Churchill's end.

Charlie wins by 4 turns, but fails to get his 5th kill for one lousy English iceball city.

Four dead, one as good as dead, nukes... very peaceful game indeed!

Spoiler Arena 7 :

Sulla's AI Survivor has featured a few games already where one of the Indian leaders finds himself in a "lamb to the wolves" scenario.
Let's try and throw them both together to the wolves!

Well, with Gandhi founding the Meditation religion then Asoka getting Polytheism, team work might prove delicate.
Brennus, who raced for both and lost both isn't off to a great start... but not as bad as Hannibal who completely fails to expand early (Barb issues? He starts his expansion after building a very late Great Wall). A fact no lost on JC who declares on him.
Brennus is trying hard to reclaim the worst early game title: how about turn 95 Mining tech?
Gandhi is much better at the Religion thingie than his fellow Indian leader: he converts everyone to his faith (except Brennus who still hasn't picked a religion 100+ turns into the game and ends up picking up a minority religion!).
Too bad Peter doesn't care: he declares on Ghandhi.

Hannibal has somewhat recovered: he stays off the Roman assault and gets peace, while filling up his corner of the map.
Asoka tries to pass up as a wolf: he declares on Mehmed and sucker-punches him at Bursa.
JC has another go at trying to exploit weaknesses: he declares on Brennus who, contrary to Hannibal, doesn't pass the test and start collapsing. But Hannibal, in a show of solidarity, attacks JC; but it may be already too late for the Celts.
Mehmed captures back Bursa, destroys Asoka's armies... and signs peace. It would seem that this - let's call it "unoptimal" - behaviour is triggered by the AI being in "Defensive" mode.
Gandhi may be good at the religious stuff, but he should have paid more heed to the military stuff, apparently, as Peter colo-conquers him and takes the game's driver seat.

Asoka's prospects... look more like a total absence of prospects!

And yet, when Mehmed attacks, a dying Brennus is the target. That conquest allows to Ottomans to overtake the Russians in size in power, but they're seriously out-teched.

Asoka's downfall comes shortly afterwards, though, as Russian troops pour over his Northern borders, imitated a little while later by Ottomans from the East.

Pleased-locked with everyone, Mehmed can't leverage his military while Peter's economy soars up and leaves everyone in the dust. The Ottomans solve that quandary by finally leaving the Hinduist block: they adopt Islam, self-founded ages ago.
Mehmed is thus free to invade Rome, and he does. Unfortunately for him, so does Peter: Mehmed's last chance to close the gap with Peter evaporates.

Spoiler Arena 6 :

Boudica and Willem found the first religions. And that, combined with Willem's lack of Copper and him not prioritizing Iron Working right away, leads to an early DoW by the Celts (turn 60). Rotterdam falls, then Alex piles in to add to Willem's woes.
And yet, Willem defends fiercely: his next city to fall, Utrecht, is captured by the Greeks 100 turns later! And Alex throws the towel after that, agreeing to peace. Boudica also gives up shortly afterwards.

Elsewhere, Lincoln starts an ill-advised war on Stalin, and ends up getting slowly conquered.
Suleiman, who's peacefully expanded way better than the others, starts his non-peaceful expansion phase with Zara.

Now free to engage in new battles, Alex joins Stalin's campaign just in time to steal the kill credit for America, while Boudica opens a new front against an already defeated Ethiopia.

Alex renews his conflict with Willem, dashing his last hopes.
But it doesn't really matter: with his conquest of Ethiopia, Suleiman has reached runaway leader status.

Spoiler Arena 5 :

HC beats Justinian to Meditation (Taoism) while Sury gets Polytheism (Buddhism).
Justinian does get Monotheism (Christianity) but it leaves him isolated as the Western civs (Darius, Ragnar) adopt Taoism while the Eastern civs (Mao, Pericles) pick up Buddhism.

And it surely plays no little in triggering the first war: HC declares on Justinian. It seems an ill-advised venture (pre-construction, no power advantage) at first, until Pericles also attacks Justinian, from the other side.
Elsewhere, Ragnar doesn't care about that "religious ally" nonsense: he invades Persia and breaks through.
Sury goes troll mode: he piles in on Darius, from the very far side of the map. He gets two minor cities... and the kill credit.
But with Ragnar getting all of the core Persian cities, on top of having expanding very well in the early game... A Viking snowball could be in the making.
Justinian is surprisingly more than holding his own in his 1v2: he actually seems to be slowly winning it (HC and Pericles are one city down each).
Then Sury piles in. And then Mao.

How about Ragnar? This is a bad time for him: everyone's running his favourite civic. He's Friendly or Pleased with everyone. And while he can plot at Pleased, the RNG says no for now.

Pericles adopts Representation.
Ragnar starts plotting. So does HC.
But while the Vikings, as expected, are headed for Greece, HC keeps up with the suicidal tendencies he's shown in the first game: he declares on Sury, the second most powerful leader in this game (and in a display of even poorer judgement, HC who for once had researched Rifling early, waits until Sury does too to attack). I suppose the two cities Sury got from Darius, right on top of HC's border, have been generating border tension for a while: those are indeed HC's first targets.
But although HC's armies get mauled, he gets Sury to sign peace, having captured both former Persian cities, and with Sury handing him back the core Incan city he'd seized!

Pericles also gets a form of peace. In rest.

HC must have infected Sury with the suicide virus during their war: Sury declares on Ragnar!
But Ragnar gets silly too: as he's finishing off Sury, and while researching Refrigeration, he pulls the Culture slider! Bad RNG: he's got only 3 Holy Cities. And he's basically starting from scratch (his best city isn't even at 10K culture).
Mao, who's stayed at peace the whole game (except for a short participation in the dogpile against Justinian), is the tech leader. HC probably can't catch up to him in time, so he goes for plan B: he attacks China.
But Ragnar, who now owns the Buddhist Holy City, has converted. Different religion, border tension, attack against friend, clumsy spies: he's now Annoyed with HC... and plotting.
The hammer falls a few turns later.

Spoiler Arena 4 :

There are only 4 Copper sources on this map, with 3 of them in Washington's territory! As a result, none of the northern civs have Copper. Genghis and Toku kill their economy and limp towards Iron Working (GK researches Agriculture on turn 80!).
Hatty has no metal either (she prioritizes Monarchy over IW), but she has War Chariots and her neighbours have no metal units: she declares on Toku who's boxed her in. Unfortunately for her, but rather expectedly, as soon as Genghis connects Iron, he declares on her.
But instead of fighting on, Toku takes advantage and signs peace: he apparently had set his sights on America since he declares on Washington a few turns later. And with De Gaulle attacking Wang Kon, we now have three duels.
Genghis vs Hatty: She defends valiantly at first, but she has 5 build queues to Genghis's 8, and of course can't help use some of them for wonders and infrastructure while GK is all units. The dam breaks at Elephantine.
Toku vs Washington: Washington had the best expansion phase, so more cities. Toku fails to punch through. Washington's counter-attack does.
WK vs De Gaulle: De Gaulle just crushes him.

So, when the dust settles, only three are left standing.
De Gaulle has more cities, more troops, and he's the research and tech leader. Genghis is last in all categories... but that doesn't prevent him from launching himself at Washington.
Things seem simple at this point: if De Gaulle, who is Annoyed at Washington, piles in, he wins the game. But if he lets Washington conquer Mongolia, the American will pull ahead.

De Gaulle piles in.

Spoiler Arena 3 :

Isabella and Mansa found the early religions: the only non low peaceweight leaders as religious rivals... doesn't bode too well.
Qin gets boxed-in hard, and has to resort to settling the northern, icy coast. Cathy does illusion with her culture, but she actually gets boxed-in even harder: she ends up stuck on 4 cities.
On the same turn (70), Cyrus declares on Mansa, and Kublai declares on Cyrus.
The latter is a tad weird: can't have been bought in (KK plays last, and pre-writing, pre-currency what would Mansa have had to trade anyway), but KK doesn't have a stack ready to attack, and he's left a worker on the border with Cyrus, next to a Cyrus unit.
Things are looking up for Mansa: he's managed to convert everyone to Islam, but for Isabella of course and Cyrus he's already at war with. A war which the Persians are losing thanks to the Mongols' intervention.
... and then they take a sudden turn for the worse as Kublai, just as weirdly as he had declared war, now signs peace with Cyrus and gives back the city he's captured. And in the same turn, both Qin and Izzy declare on Mansa. The only good news for Mali is Cathy attacking... Cyrus (and not Izzy as you'd expect: Izzy running Monarchy, Cathy's favourite civic, just barely kept her out of Annoyed territory, in spite of the peaceweight and religious difference).

New reversal (this game is starting to look crazier by the minute): Cyrus signs peace with Mansa (expected), so does Izzy (why??). Mansa's now fighting a mure more manageable 1v1.
Kublai declares on... Izzy (sure, he's Pleased with everyone else while Annoyed with her, but she's on the other side of the map and he doesn't share a border with her).

More craziness: althoug the 3v1 has turned into a straight 1v1, Qin captures Djenne, crushes Mansa's armies, and has him in the ropes.

So of course, he signs peace!
Mansa can now take a breather and rebuild...
Nope: he immediately declares on Izzy!
... and gets backstabbed by Qin (who realized his mistake?).
And this time, although he gets peace from Izzy, there's no reprieve.

Cyrus, who looked like a goner not so long ago, barely surviving a 1v2 and a successful sucker-punch by Cathy, has recovered: he's conquering Russia and sharing the top of the leaderboard with Qin.
Kublai repeats his pattern: he captures a city from Izzy. Signs peace. Hands over the city.
And then he just commits suicide: Cyrus has barely finished Cathy off that Kublai, who is much, much weaker than him, declares on him.
Qin, after conquering Mali, then invades Spain. His conquest takes a bit longer than it should have: he refuses to have anything to do with Rifling (Assembly Line before Rifling), but in the end, Cyrus and Qin are left the only ones standing.
They both have the exact same number of cities, but Qin has the better economy and a tech lead, and he stays ahead. A desperate late game DoW by Cyrus slows the pace down, but doesn't change the outcome.

Spoiler Arena 2 :

Pacal and Hammurabi found the early religions, Louis founds the Monotheism one.
Sitting Bull picks up Pacal's religion, Shaka and Gilgamesh adopt Louis'.
Pacal shoots first: he attacks Louis. Then Gilgamesh and Shaka declare on Hammy.
Pacal and Louis sign peace, with the Mayans down one city, and the French pile on an Hammurabi who is already on the way out. Oh, and Pacal joins the party too.

After Hammurabi's exit, Louis is the lead: he's had the best expansion phase, gained cities from Pacal and Hammurabi. He's the tech leader, and his Eastern border is safe, with both Shaka and Gilgamesh Friendly towards him.
A surprisingly long period of peace ensues, with only Shaka and SB skirmishing.
It ends when Gilgamesh, who's beelined Rifling, attacks SB, while Louis, soon joined by Shaka, assaults the Maya.
Pacal is swiftly dispatched, Louis and Shaka join Gilgamesh in mopping up the remaining SB presence from the map.

The French are now unstoppable.
Louis pulls the slider, while Shaka and Gilgamesh fight it out for second place... that is, until Louis has a change of heart, and his armies pound Sumeria.

Spoiler Arena 1 :

Saladin and Monty found the early religions: collision alert?

The first war is declared by Augustus... on Ramesses. So much for the high peaceweights sticking together.
Next, rather expectedly, Saladin declares on Monty.
France and England are the largest civs, with the English boasting the strongest economy, and the French the strongest army. Napoleon decides to play to his strengths: he declares on Viccy.

Saladin, Napoleon, and Ramesses win their respective wars and eliminate their opponent, with Saladin piling in against Augustus near the end as he was done with Monty much faster than the others.
The three survivors end up of a similar size, with Saladin significantly ahead in tech, and Ramesses significantly behind in military power.
Saladin is pleased-locked with everyone, but Ramesses and Napoleon, Annoyed with one another, seem bound to fight. As you'd expect, Napoleon doesn't wait long: he declares on Ramesses...
...and triggers the Defensive Pact the Egyptian leader has signed with Saladin, who's just upgraded to infantries!

Spoiler Rankings :

 

[Thrasybulos]

Tournament 2, Round 3

Spoiler Arena 8 :

Brennus gets beaten to Meditation by Gandhi, then to Polytheism by Elizabeth.
Bad start? It gets worse... Brennus has Copper and has researched Bronze Working, but not The Wheel: his metal isn't connected. Bismarck notices and declares on him... on turn 48!
The Germans capture a city but sign peace soon afterwards.

JC crosses the map to invade Portugal, the largest civ on the map.
Bismarck redeclares on Brennus, this time to finish the job. And with this conquest, Germany, already the most powerful civ, also overtakes Portugal as the largest.

But JC's war backfires as Rome ends up in the process of getting conquered by Portugal. Only two Roman cities remain free when Bismarck goes for the win by attacking Joao.

Gandhi pulls the slider while on Steel, but he has only two Holy Cities (Elizabeth has the others) and his culture is actually pretty weak: 225 turns until victory!
Elizabeth waits until Bismarck hands his capital back to JC to declare on the remnants of Rome.
Bismarck's attack on Joao is a success: he conquers the whole of Portugal and becomes the world's superpower.
But Roosevelt and Elizabeth are pretty far ahead in tech, and Lizzy could easily win if she pulled the slider...

She does.
Bismarck attacks Roosevelt, triggering the Defensive Pact America has signed with India: he's strong enough to conquer both, so that's actually a good thing. But it's too late.

Spoiler Arena 7 :

Asoka beats Justinian to Polytheism, Willem founds the Meditation religion.
Zara really wants Horses: he plants a city 4 tiles from Washington to get them.
Asoka has no Copper and delays IW: Alex accepts the invitation and declares earlyish (T75), but fails to achieve anything.
Willem builds the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus on the same turn!
Zara, Lincoln, and especially Willem have expanded the best. Willem is also crushing the competition research-wise.

More serious warfare starts soon enough: after a brief and pointless Greek civil war, Alex joins Willem in destroying India, while Justinian and Zara tear America apart.
After that, peace is short-lived as Alex suddenly faces a coalition made of Zara, Justinian, and Pericles. This ends as you'd expect.

Now, just a reminder of why we call it the "Willem Special":

And this is, of course, after he's declared on Justinian. Wouldn't be fun otherwise, I guess.
Luckily for him, the Byzantines are having a bad game: they still haven't really recovered from a botched early game, and Willem's attack comes before they've had time to turn their conquests into a working economy.
Willem does get Rifling after that, and things get real nasty for Justinian.

Then Willem turns on the slider... but most of his Holy Cities come from his conquest of India, when he was already running Free Religion and had already (or was about to) obsoleted monasteries. As such, most of his core cities only have Christianity, and with a single cathedral in his 3rd Legendary candidate, the attempt isn't the fastest there is... which could leave time for Zara to overtake him in tech and power.
Especially as Zara gets even bigger by quickly conquering Pericles...

When Willem finishing the Plastics research, he turns off the slider and researches a few techs before turning it on again (the AI often does that). But when I see him 2-turning Robotics, I get curious and have a look at his beaker rate:

I've seen late game AIs break the 4K mark in a Golden Age, even get to 4.5K. This is 5K, and Willem is NOT in a Golden Age. Jeez. If he'd kept researching, his ship would have landed by now!

Spoiler Arena 6 :

No surprise on the religious side: Isabella and WK get the early religions, but Izzy goes a tad crazy with her early research path (Meditation -> Masonry -> Polytheism -> Monotheism), which slows her initial development.
At the end of the expansion phase, Washington (9 cities) is ahead and Isabella (5 cities) is last.
WK's religion has spread to Darius and Hatty, while Izzy's has been picked up by Washington and Sury.

Tokugawa opens hostilities by declaring on Washington, while Izzy picks a fight with Sury, one of her religious would-be allies.
Izzy signs peace with one city down. Toku also loses a city to Washington, but then WK attacks America from the other side... and yet Washington prevails: he does yield back the city he's captured to Toku for peace, but gets one from WK.

Sury crosses the map to invade a weakened Korea.
Persia and Egypt have so far stayed out of conflict, and both play the peaceful game you'd expect from them: Darius has opened a tech lead, Hatty is building wonders and developping her culture.
Peace ends for Egypt when Isabella declares war, but Egypt has rifles, Spain doesn't.
War between America and Japan is an on-off affair, with Toku usually re-declaring as soon as peace expires and then suing for peace again as his armies get smashed.

The Khmer complete their long conquest of Korea.
Washington finally gets tired of Toku's antics and tuns him over.
Sury can't celebrate his victory for long: his new neighbour, Darius, lets it be known he doesn't want him there. Persian tanks are already more than the Khmer can handle, but when Washington also declares, Sury's fate is sealed.
Hatty turns on the culture slider, while at war (not an issue: although Hatty isn't interested in fighting, Izzy is by far the weakest). But Egypt has factories and coal plants while their scientists haven't unlocked the secrets of Biology. Size 6-7 cities tend no to have an impressive output...
...but it ends up being enough anyway.

Spoiler Arena 5 :

How do you spot a batch of bad AIs? When 5 out of 7 beeline Archery at the start of the game...
Cathy and Hammy get the not-so-early religions, with Cathy's spreading to Mehmed and Freddy, Churchill and SB adopting Hammy's, while Kublai later gets Hammy's minority religion.

Kublai strikes early at SB and cripples him, but he gets backstabbed by Cathy.
Churchill declares on Hammurabi, in spite of their shared faith.
Cathy's attack achieves nothing except provide a temporary reprieve for SB. Churchill, on the other hand, runs over Hammurabi (although Cathy, declaring at the last minute, performs the perfect kill steal).

Mehmed, who had expanded well and was ready to start a snowball, pays the price for his cannot-plot-at-pleased flaw: prevented from attacking his neighbours and unwilling to launch a cross-continental venture, he starts wiltering.
And when he finally resolves to make a move against Churchill, it's too late: his window has closed, and Churchill, thanks to his Babylonian conquest, is now stronger than him.

After absorbing SB's lands, Kublai becomes strangely passive, no longer building units in spite of several renewed Russian attacks (quickly followed by peace each time). Until Cathy, who hasn't stopped building units, ends up massively outpowering him: she breaks through, and there's no stopping the Russian flood.
Anywhere.

Spoiler Arena 4 :

The first religions go to HC (Buddhism, spread to Stalin and Boudica) and Mansa (Islam, spread to Mao), with Mansa doubling up on a very early Monotheism (Christianity, spread to Hannibal).
HC doesn't expand at all initially: he gets his 4th city on turn 75, when everyone else is at 7! But he then picks up pace: on turn 100, he has 10 cities, which is more than anyone else.

Mao doesn't care about religion: he rather unsurprisingly declares on Mansa. Hannibal, Boudica, then Stalin pile in. Mansa was doomed in this field.
Hannibal joins the Buddhist club while Mao, who's captured the Islam Holy City, choses to go his own way.

Boudica beelines Liberalism, and thanks to a Golden Age, beats HC to it by one turn.
This might have been a portent of the Inca's impending doom: they had been peacefully gearing up for a fast Cultural victory attempt, confident in their good diplomacy to keep them safe.
But "Pleased" is not "Friendly": Stalin declares war on his much weaker neighbour (HC is more advanced, but they're at military tech parity and the Russian are fielding a much larger army).
Mao's choice of religious isolationism proves unwise: Hannibal and Boudica launch a crusade against him.

Hannibal is the first to Rifling. He takes advantage... by signing peace. But what seems like the dumbest move proves opportune: Hannibal builds up his forces while Mao starts rolling the Celts back. And when Hannibal strikes again, he just sweeps through China, getting everything.

A rather long period of peace ensues, where in spite of Stalin controlling the Shrine for the world's religion and its major income, Hannibal is able to pull ahead in tech and power.
Stalin, the only one who can plot at pleased, finally makes his move and attacks the weaker Boudica.
Who has an ongoing Defensive Pact with Hannibal.

Spoiler Arena 3 :

Genghis, Shaka, Napoleon in the same game. Oh boy. As for Augustus, he's a dead man limping in thisn field: the only high peaceweight, with the worst start...
Pacal plants his second city right into Genghis's face: brave man.
Cyrus and Shaka(!) get the early religions.
Pacal keeps displaying a death wish: he stays on 3 cities, skips IW which would provide him with metal, and while Cyrus's and Shaka's religions gets adopted throughout the world, he founds his own religion.

Rather expectedly, when the war horns sound, it's Shaka invading Rome and Genghis answering Pacal's call.
At the end of the expansion phase, the game seems already in part decided, with Pacal, Augustus, and Napoleon on 3,3 and 4 cities respectively.

The death wish streak is running high in this game: Augustus, who's got peace from Shaka by yielding a city, declares on Cyrus!
Shaka, meanwhile, turns his sight towards Napoleon.
Pacal and Augustus get eliminated on the same turn. Napoleon resists a bit longer. Barely.
(By the way, 3 eliminations before turn 140: isn't that some kind of a record?)

Cyrus is a bit bigger and a bit stronger than the other two, while Shaka has the tech lead (those 3 Gold tiles at his capital still paying off).
But Shaka and Genghis are religious allies, Friendly towards one another, while Cyrus is running a different religion...

Shaka shoots first. But Genghis stays oddly peaceful for a long time and doesn't join him. As a result, Shaka, after a successful sucker punch, is driven back and has to sue for peace.
Even worse for him: Genghis converts to Pacal's religion, and *then* starts plotting.
And with armies intact, Genghis declares on a weakened Shaka.

Cyrus stays out of it: he opts to tech ahead while Genghis grows more and more powerful. That seems unwise when shortly after despatching the Zulus, the Mongols hordes pour over the Persian borders and start taking city after city.
Genghis is 0.4% away from a Domination win when his advance is stopped and momentum reversed.

Spoiler Arena 2 :

Charlie and Monty get the early religions, with Gilgamesh founding the Monotheism faith and Suleiman founding and adopting the CoL religion: four major religions in this game!
Gilgamesh, and to a lesser extent Peter, expand way better than the other AIs.
Monty opens hostilities by attacking Viccy while Charlie declares on Peter. Only problem for the Aztecs: Sumeria ends up completely envelopping England, and Gilgamesh doesn't fancy opening borders with heretics.
Gilgamesh actually fancies those Aztec herectics so little that he declares war on them.
On the other side of the world, Charlie's war has backfired badly: he's already dying to Peter when Suleiman piles in.

With Charlie and Monty out, the early game situation has been confirmed: only Gilgamesh and Peter remain as actual players, with Gilgamesh on top.
The religious situation has been simplified a lot too: everyone's following Gilgamesh's religion... except for Suleiman, who then commits suicide by attacking Peter.

Gilgamesh's RNG causes him to have a brain fart: with 3 Holy Cities, he turns on the Culture slider super early (turn 200), while on Printing Press... and with the slider still on, he declares on Peter!

Well, who I am critizising Gilgamesh's strategy: his unconventional approach nets him a pre-turn 250 Domination victory!

Spoiler Arena 1 :

Another game with a doomed AI, this time Ramesses.
Louis and Ramesses get the early religions (Saladin opens Hunting -> Archery).

Qin ends up boxed-in very fast between Saladin who settles all his first cities towards him, and the mountain range to his East. He tries to break out by declaring early on De Gaulle (turn 65).
Ragnar has also settled in mainly one direction: towards Louis who reacts to border tension by declaring on the Vikings.
Ramesses tries to protect his borders with the Great Wall doubled up with a barb cities wall. Not sure that's gonna be enough as on top of being the only high peaceweight in the game, he ends up as the religious pariah: Louis' religion spreads to everyone else.

Qin attacks first.
Luckily for Ramesses, Saladin converts to his religion, so when Ragnar gets peace from Louis, he picks Arabia as his new target. Only after that attack fails does he attack Ramesses, but Saladin renews hostilities, and Ragnar starts getting torn apart.
Things are looking up for Egypt... then both French leaders attack, on the same turn.
But Ramesses gets peace from Qin, Ragnar, and De Gaulle and is left to fight a fair 1v1 against Louis (well, it would be fair if he could reach Louis' territory).
This looks like a perfect opportunity for Saladin to grab all of the remaining Viking cities... but he signs peace right as he unlocks rifles!

Ramesses gets peace with Louis and turns on the slider (strangely enough, on Printing Press, just like Gilgamesh in the previous game). But his third candidate is lacking cultural infrastructure so unless he can remedy that, the attempt seems doomed to fail.
Meanwhile, Saladin finally decides to put Ragnar out of his misery.
Arabia has been the most powerful civilization for a while now, but Louis's France has opened what could be a decisive tech lead.

What looks like the moment of truth comes very soon after Ragnar's elimination: Saladin declares on Louis. He has more than twice Louis's units, but Louis has infantries and machine guns to counter Saladin's rifles and cavs.
And Louis had an active Defensive pact with De Gaulle... which Saladin counters by getting Ramesses to declare on De Gaulle.
This proves fatal to De Gaulle but Saladin, who was winning decisively, signs peace without making any real progress. Louis immediately signs a Defensive Pact with Qin.

It looks like all that dilly-dallying from Saladin is about to give the time Ramesses needs to actually pull off his Cultural victory: he already has two Legendary cities, and the third one is now coming along at a reasonable pace.
...Ramesses declares on Louis (and thus Qin through the DP).
But... although Ramesses quickly loses his conquests in De Gaulle's former territory (he's fighting tanks with cuirassiers!), Louis cannot actually reach him: Saladin's territory completely isolates Egypt's core from France.
An opportune Great Artist spawn then seals the deal for Ramesses who, against all odds, pulls off his victory!

Spoiler Rankings :

A bad tournament start for the usual suspects, but there's still way to go.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Tournament 2, Round 4

Spoiler Arena 8 :

No surprise religion-wise: Asoka and Brennus found the early faiths.
Joao has no metal (skipped IW): Alex declares early (turn 57). Lucky for Portugal: their border city with Greece (Coimbra) is on a hill.
Sury founds the Monotheism religion: war with Asoka is now a certainty.
Lincoln must feel some confusion: he adopts Brennus' religion, and the Celts declare on the very next turn!
Sury declares on Asoka. Surprise, surprise.
When Lincoln is down to coupla former barb cities, JC finally makes a bold move: he attacks America.

With Lincoln out and Asoka headed the same way, the Celts are actually in trouble: the rest of the world had adopted Sury's religion.
The Romans attack. Historically appropriate.
Turns out to be a bad idea, though: JC and Brennus start at the same power level, but the Celts defeats the Roman in the field and start tearing through the Empire.
Joao and Asoka get eliminated: Sury and Alex are now free to pursue further ventures.
...which is bad news for Brennus. He's still busy mopping up the remnants of Rome when Alex attacks.
Greece is now the military top power: Brennus is defeated, then conquered.

Sury has stayed out of the fight against the Celts: he's used that time instead to build up his economy. His teching picks up pace, until he leaves the rest of the field hopelessly behind...

Spoiler Arena 7 :

Justinian and Mansa found the early religions, Hammurabi founds the Monotheism one.
Mansa, who has failed to expand, loses his 3rd city to the barbs! Skirmishers are great, but Mansa had skipped Archery... He's on 2 cities on turn 60. Ouch. Luckily for him, he manages to recapture it (I guess it would have game over for him if another AI had got that city).
Even more lucky for him: Wang Kon also loses a city to the barbs... and Mansa appropriates it.
Wang Kon founds the CoL religion and converts: 4 major religions in this game.

No early war this time: the first DoWs happen on turn 105, with Toku declaring on WK and facing an immediate 1v2 when Mansa declares on him in the same turn. Both wars being a tad silly by the way, since Toku borders neither.
To be expected with the Troll King involved?
It should be noted that the 3 low peaceweight civs follow the same religion, while the 4 high peaceweights follow 3 different religions.
... which probably accounts for the next DoW: Pericles attacks Mansa.
And when Justinian, who had been plotting for some time, crosses the map to invade Mali, it starts to look like a dogpile. Well, except for the fact that Toku, who has signed peace with WK, of course doesn't have the Open Borders agreements which would allow his armies to reach Mansa!
So Toku signs peace to instead attack one of the most powerful civs on the map: Babylon. He loses a city before Hammy consents to peace.

Unfortunately for Mansa, that's no reprieve as Justinian and Pericles are enough to carve him up. Wang Kon doesn't fare any better when Kublai's Mongols invade.
After these eliminations, the world seemingly becomes a lot simpler: the Christian low peaceweights with the Mongols as the largest and most powerful civ, versus the Buddhist high peaceweights with Hammurabi the clear tech leader and the Greeks as the second most powerful civ.
But the ghosts of the departed exert their influence: Kublai converts to WK's religion, Pericles to Mansa's, and we're back to a 4-religion world!
And as Toku declares again on Hammurabi, only to once again get beaten and lose two cities this time before getting peace, Justinian declares on the much more powerful Mongol apostates.

Watching with alarm the Mongols get huge, Hammurabi decides to annex more territory: he declares on Toku, to finish the job this time... but Pericles also declares, at the very last moment, and steals the kill.

It is Hammurabi who takes the initiative to start the inevitable war between the two major powers. The Mongols are 50% larger, but Babylonian technology prevails.

Spoiler Arena 6 :

With both Mansa and Justinian stumbling in the previous game, can HC be the one big name winning this round? Neither the diplomatic environment in this game nor the starting position he's drawn favour him, though.
The initial religions go to Gandhi and... Washington. SB later founds and adopts the Monotheism religion.

Washington initiates the first war: against Mao, his only potential religious ally.
HC is next: he declares on Roosevelt.
At the end of the expansion phase, Washington, Sitting Bull, and Gandhi seem to have done a better job than the others.
Washington's war is a success as he conquers China.
HC is also winning his war (he's grapped two cities and has Roosevelt on the ropes), but as often happens with him at this stage of the game, he stops fighting: he's still at war, but is too busy building other stuff to send more than a trickle of units in his opponent's territory.

In the West, Gandhi(!) opens hostilities, against Bismarck (who has picked SB's religion). Unfortunately for him, SB soon comes to the help of his religious friend, and the both of them tear him apart.
HC's trickle seems to be working as Roosevelt keeps slowly losing cities. He's down to one city when disaster strikes the Inca: Washington, their much more powerful neighbour, attacks.

As Washington is finishing off HC, I check the diplomatic screen to see whether any of the Western powers would consider attacking him. And sure enough, while SB is Pleased with him in spite of their religious differences, Bismarck is only Cautious.
And on the very next turn, the war horn sounds: Bismarck declares on... Sitting Bull. Wait, what??

With his two rivals duking it out, Washington, who was lagging in tech, is able to consolidate.
SB gains the upper hand and rolls over Germany. Washington successfully pulls off "operation kill steal", though.

The game then turns into a very close Spaceship race between SB and Washington: the former starts with a tech lead, the latter is now seriously outresearching the former (3k vs 2k).
In the end, Washington is able to eke out a 2-turn advantage. I expected spy shenanigans to win the day for SB, but apparently poisoning water is his thing, not sabotaging space parts.

Spoiler Arena 5 :

Isabella and Zara (neighbours) found the initial religions.
Shaka declares on Isabella on turn 44! But his initial stack lacks heavy hitters and attacks across a river, and Izzy is researching Bronze Working.
Zara beats Darius to Monotheism by 1 turn: no religions for the Eastern side of the map! As a result, religion adoptions are more or less random, with no religion having more than two followers.

Zara piles in against Isabella who looks like a goner: Shaka has kept at it and was already winning on his own.
Mehmed declares on Darius, but gets attacked almost immediately by Frederick.
Stalin seems like the winner of the early game: with Shaka busy fighting instead of expanding, the Russians have claimed quite a lot of land.
Shaka draws the short stick: when the Russian behemoth marches, the Zulus are the target. They put up a good fight, but while they slow the Russian advance, they can't stop it.
Isabella thus gets a reprieve, especially when Zara, after capturing the Christian Holy City (and converting!), pulls out of the war.

The Ethiopian leader's strategy seems dubious: he calls off an easy conquest of Spain... to declare on Stalin!
This ends as you'd expect.

With the conquest of the Zulus and the Ethiopians, Stalin, already very strong to start with, is now completely unstoppable by anyone... but himself.
Although he's merely "Cautious" with his neighbours and sitting at close to 60% land area... I end up clicking "next turn" for more than 80 turns as he peacefully techs his way to Space.
Sigh.

Spoiler Arena 4 :

The early religions go as expected to Pacal and Boudica, with Churchill founding a late Monotheism religion.
The first war is also one you'd expect: Genghis invades his neighbour, Churchill. What follows a few turns later is a tad more surprising: Pacal declares on Genghis! (and religion doesn't expain it, since Genghis is still an atheist).
In the South, Boudica has squeezed Napoleon for land with her well-placed Holy City. The French attack... and promptly get run over.
With the English armies in the East besieging the last Mongol city, the Roman troops invade England from the West (Augustus has picked Boudica's religion, not Churchill's).

Amazingly, Pacal is number one in power, and with his only religious ally, Napoleon, dying to the Celts, he starts plotting...
Against Churchill. I guess that explains his DoW on Genghis? He wanted to attack Churchill all along, he just misclicked earlier.
Or maybe not: he signs peace after capturing all of the former Mongol cities which had fallen to the English. He just wanted all of Mongolia for himself.

And then they were three: the Maya, having absorbed Mongolia, the Celts, having absorbed France, the Romans, having absorbed England.
Pacal is the tech leader, Boudica is the military leader.
The issue for Pacal, though, is that Augustus and Boudica are Pleased with one another (sharing Boudica's religion), and merely Cautious with the Maya...

Boudica declares on Pacal. Fortunately for him, she displays a very poor sense of timing: she was two turns away from discovering Rifling! In spite of that, he's hard-pressed to contain the flood, and starts losing core cities. When Augustus joins the attack, the end seems nigh.
And yet, he soon gets peace with the Romans without losing territory to them, and manages to stop the Celtic advance, getting peace with them too.
When the dust settles, Augustus emerges as the big winner: although he hasn't gained any territory, Boudica's military edge is gone, and Pacal's territorial losses to the Celts mean he's lost a lot of his economic power. Augustus is the new tech leader.

When Boudica resumes hostilities a while later, she's now attacking from a military tech generation behind: she's quickly put on the defensive, then starts ceding territory. But with Pacal's armies tied in the South, Augustus's sudden strike from the North is met with but a token resistance. Plus, the Romans armies are a military tech generation *above* of the Maya's.
This time, it is the end for Pacal, and Augustus can cruise to an easy Space win over Boudica.

Spoiler Arena 3 :

No one's interested in religion: Charlie gets Polytheism on turn 22, Monty gets Meditation on turn 35! I believe it must be some kind of a record for a late Meditation on Deity.
De Gaulle then founds the Monotheism religion.

The first early war is started by Monty who attacks Willem: the Dutch have picked Charlie's religion and haven't connected metal (but are about to, which Monty doesn't know). That doesn't go well as the Dutch are soon the ones capturing Aztec cities. And it gets even worse as Elizabeth piles in on Monty.
Elsewhere, Ragnar, feeling squeezed, decides he could do with more land: Charlie's land to be exact. Charlie is of different opinion, though, and the whole thing turns into a stalemate.

Lizzy's dreams of conquests are cut short where De Gaulle (aka "Trois Gold") invades. She reluctantly signs peace with Monty (he's in full collapse, that means letting the Dutch get all the spoils) to face that threat.
In Vain.

Willem, who's becoming the dominant power after his conquest of Azteca, goes for the fast win: he attacks De Gaulle, his only rival.
With the French armies suddenly distracted, Ragnar (who's signed peace with Charlie to end that fruitless conflict) crosses the map to nab Lizzy's last remaining city.
French cities are falling one after the other to the Dutch advance: feeling opportunistic, Charlie attacks the French.
...and feels stupid as Willem has a sudden change of heart and signs peace. Although weakened, the French are still packing a punch, and Charlie gets to experience it as he starts losing core cities (not that he ever had many of them to start with) to De Gaulle's troops. Of course, Ragnar piles in.

Once again, Willem declares on De Gaulle as the French's opponent is down to one city. This time, the Vikings can't take advantage: the Dutch borders are closed to them, they can't reach Charlie's last hideout.
De Gaulle's musketeers prove no match for Willem's infantries, cavalries, and tanks.

Spoiler Arena 2 :

Qin and Hatty found the early religions, Suleiman gets Monotheism.
Suleiman declares earlyish on Hatty, stopping her expansion. But instead of Peter seizing the opportunity to escape his little corner of the map, it's Victoria who settles across the map into Hatty's backlines!
Viccy founds Christianity... and immediately converts to Confucianism (Hatty's religion)!

Hatty has managed to defend herself against the Ottoman assaults when suddenly it's game over: Qin attacks her, breaking her resistance. Peter also joins in. So does Hannibal.

Viccy should be the next target... Peter jumps the gun and gets roughed up.
Until the rest of the world comes to the rescue.

It's been clear from the early game that Suleiman or Qin would win this one, and after the eliminations of Hatty and Viccy, that assessment remains true: Peter has failed to take advantage and Russia is still a stunt civ. Hannibal has managed to carve a second core for himself, but that's low quality land, and while his situation has greatly improved, he's still no match for either of the two game leaders.
A long period of peace ensues, and Qin wins the peace: he builds up his economy faster than Suleiman and is able to outtech him.

For once, an AI shows a good sense of timing: Qin gets to Assembly line before Suleiman. He builds factories, upgrades his units... and attacks.
Although Suleiman makes Qin fight for every inch of ground, the move proves decisive.

Spoiler Arena 1 :

The early religions go to Saladin (Islam) and Ramesses (Confucianism), with Gilgamesh later getting Monotheism (Judaism).
Cathy and Cyrus convert to Islam, Louis to Confucianism.

Cyrus and Saladin open hostilities, against Ramesses. Louis piles in a bit later, in spite of shared faith with Egypt.
Amazingly, Ramesses holds on, with his power graph steady. And then Cathy also joins in, turning Ramesses into the proverbial camel.
No miracle win in a hostile environment for the Egyptian leader this time!

Gilgamesh stays out: he's busy getting a T146 Liberalism. Which may be a mistake, as Louis ends up the sequence almost twice as big as anyone else (15 cities for everyone's 8 cities, except for Cyrus at 11).
Nothing happens for the next 50 turns where it seems that Gilgamesh, who got to Rifling way before everybody else, lets his opportunity pass: Louis is able to leverage his bigger size to catch up in tech.

Then the world is at war again: Gilgamesh declares on Cathy (who's had now time to get rifles of her own), Louis declares on Cyrus.
Louis crushes the Persian armies, captures a few cities... and signs peace.
Gilgamesh fails to break through and also gives up: he tries a different approach, pulling the Culture slider. 173 turns until victory: not a very convincing decision it would seem.

He seems to realize it, as he pulls the slider off some time later: he's back invading Russia. But this time his troops fare a lot better, and core Russian cities start falling.
It seems too late, though: catching up to Louis at this point seems impossible.

Then I notice Gilgamesh's big Three culture values, and have to double-check: he's outputting way more culture now than when he had the slider on! He's less than 60 turns from victory, and while that doesn't seem enough to beat a French spaceship, it's way closer.
And then he pulls the slider back on.

Spoiler Rankings :

Still some conspicuous absences at the top.

 

[Thrasybulos]

That last entry is going to be just that: the last entry.

I'm calling quits on the project in this form, for a few reasons:

• Mainly, simple burnout: I've been doing mostly this in my spare time over the past four months, need to do something else.
• September has been unusually cold and wet: Winter is coming. I'm a seasonal creature: in winter, I prefer reading or watching the odd movie or TV show to playing computer games (or watching games play themselves!). My reading armchair is beckoning stronger every passing day.
• Reality check: it takes me north of 1h30 for each game, that's way too long to get to the needed game volumetry.

I wanted each game to be more than just a data point: to be its own story. So that when you view the data, you could go "Ramesses winning an all low-peaceweight game? That's odd, how could that happen?" and get the answer.
But that's not realistic.
It would take me 100+ hours to finish this tournament alone when the drive is no longer there, so I'm not making the mistake I did with Jumbled Rumble: I'm stopping it now, instead of spending an inordinate number of hours putting the wrap to a doomed venture.

But.
The League isn't dead.

It's time to embrace the pure data approach: I'll leave the stories to AI Survivor.
Why not just keep on with autoplay then?
Because I'm going to change the format a little to take advantage of that new approach.
So it's not an end, it's a reboot.

New format

One issue with the current format is that when a map is particuliarly unbalanced, it tends to greatly affect the tournament progression. That was illustrated in Tournament 1 when both the top and bottom arenas were unbalanced arenas, which led Willem for instance to get stuck at the bottom until he drew the OP start.
So I'm going to take a leaf from the Jumbled Rumble book:

• Each round will consist of 6 games (7 games for 7-player maps) instead of a single game.

I'll keep the original starting position orders on the maps instead of reordering them in a consistent pattern and then simply rotate players:
For game 2, player 1 moves to team (start) 2, player 2 moves to team 3, etc.
For game 3, player 1 moves to team 3, player 2 to team 4, etc.
Etc.
Since starting positions are spread in a haphazard fashion all over the map, it will mean different neighbours as well.
It won't ensure a 100% fair repartition, but each AI will get to play once from each start, and won't have the same neighbours every time: that's fair enough.

Another issue was that moving to a specific arena after each round was dependant on the scoring system used, which "tainted" alternate scoring systems.

• Tournament progression will be based solely on the number of wins.

Couldn't really do that previously, as it would have resulted in mainly ties and thus a random distribution.
But with a lot more games played, ties shouldn't be an issue.
So I'll have a progression system independant of the scoring system, allowing me to change the scoring system if needed without "tainting" previous results.

Scoring system

The "NScore" will be gone, since I'm no longer going to track in-game score.

Sullla's Power Rating will be modified as per what I'm using for the "AH AI ranking": 1 point for suvivors instead of 2 points for the runner-up. That's again a consequence of not tracking the in-game score, but also, I actually like it better this way, as it makes the total points for each game a constant.

As for my system, the elos will be introduced right away: they'll be adjusted after each round.
I've had another idea about how to calculate the underlying scores which seems a bit crazy at first, but should actually work nicely.
I'll put it to the test first, though: if it results in Monty or Freddy as the "best" AI, I'll know it's just crazy.


So, for now, I need design and build the database to store the game data, and try and find the best way to report on the games and their data.
That's gonna take a while, but once it's done, League v2 will start.

If there's some data you think would be important to include, tell me so I can think about how to do it.
In the same way, if there are some maps you're curious about, just tell: I can make them part of the initial map selection instead of just going for a full random draw.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Other projects

AH AI Ranking

This one is proceeding along nicely (Season 1 done, postponing posting it until Eauxps posts his, Season 5 well underway), but with the League moving to aiplay, there's going to be competition between the two.
For the near future, I'll be working on the support tools for the League, so only AH games will be played in the background.
With a bit of luck, the AH will be done when I restart the League. If not, then the League will take priority with the AH proceeding at a much more sedate pace.

Now, I had also thought about doing them again with switching starting positions a coupla times to measure the impact of the starting positions on the final outcome.
That is now extremely unlikely to ever happen.

AI Survivor new format

The idea was to aiplay a lot of tournaments, Keler-style, but with a different format from AI Survivor.

Quite a few people have an issue with Sullla's kill points, I have an issue with the runner-ups: both for scoring and for tournament progression.
I think that runner-up is a very hit-or-miss thing.
Take this season's playoffs for instance.
In playoff 1, Elizabeth made it to the Championship owing to her runner-up finish. I believe the AH will show that she and Mansa were indeed the two best performers on this map. So that would be a hit.
But then take Playoff 3: Qin had no business making it out of this game. Mehmed and SB played much stronger games. And the first AH played definitely point at Qin being very weak here.

So the idea was to have a tournament format where only winners moved on.

That project won't happen now.
I'll leave in the next post the format I'd come up with, in case some one else should be interested.

Exploit Keler's data.

Try and get Keler's data to a database so that it can be used as an alternate source to mine for some statistics.
I'll work on that once I get the League restarted, so that's still on.

AI "team" competition

There are four civilizations with 3 leaders, and most AI games we play are 6-player games... pitching them one against the other seems obvious.
If we pick a map where the starting positions are clearly separated in 3 to one side, 3 to the other side, and add the constraint that leaders from the same civ should be on the same "side" of the map:
A B C | 2 1 3 | B C A | 1 3 2 | C A B | 3 2 1
1 2 3 | A C B | 3 1 2 | B A C | 2 3 1 | C B A
We can play 6 games covering all combinations of starting positions, direct neighbours, opposing neighbour.

Four civilizations gives 6 match-ups.
6x6 = 36 games to determine the "best" civilization out of those four.

Those wouldn't be actual "team games", but scoring would be:
0 pt for the civ who loses the game
1-3 pts for the civ who wins the game (1 pt/surviving leader)

This is "light-snack" compared to all other projects, and something I've meant to do for some time.
I'll probably do that next year when the burnout phase is over and I get the urge to watch AI games again.

Where it could get interesting is in a potential follow-up: the "teams" could be leaders picked by four people.
A kind of mash-up of AI Survivor and Fantasy team.

If there's an AI Survivor Season 9 next year, this probably won't happen. But if Sullla gets baby-swamped, and if people are interested, maybe we could try to have that to fill the gap?

 

[Thrasybulos]

Alternate AI Survivor Season format

Opening

Round 1
4 x 6-player games
4 x 7-player games
Winners move to playoff and score 3 pts
FTD are eliminated
Others play round 2

Round 2
6 x 6-player games
Winners move to playoff and score 2 pts
FTD are eliminated
Others play round 3

Round 3
4 x 6-player games
Winners move to playoff and score 1 pt
Others are eliminated

Playoffs

Round 1
3 x 6-player games
Winners move to championship and score 5 pts
FTD are eliminated
Others play round 2

Round 3
2 x 6-player games
Winners move to championship and score 4 pts
FTD are eliminated
Others play round 3

Round 3
8-player game
Winner moves to championship and scores 3 pts
Others are eliminated

Championship
6-player game
Winner scores 8 pts.

 

[Keler]

So much work but so little participation, I can relate
Stuff like this usually for pure data and tables and not for stories so I can understand that. No need to spend so much effort into that.
Be it debug or autoplay mode, your call, unless you are not in the mood to watch, then they are there for fast results. Alt tab and runing the game multiple instances at same time is possible. I run 4 games at same time after editing my worldbuilder files, depends on how many times a computer can handle.

For unlucky Willem case- maybe you could just not assign a map for each arena but make that random too for each round as well. Give pure randomness a chance. If not, we would be trying to create symmetric custom maps and I tried and it sucked

Now, while I respect this new format, if there is one thing to note from jumble rumble or yet to come Alternative History ranking, it is that all the effort just gets reduced to a single game result. If that is not too much for you then go ahead. 6 or 7 instead of 20 is less tiring but still. I like your torunament ideas, AI League and this new tournament format. I hope you can settle on this new format, it looks like a very nice idea

Scoring system is your call. I have done at least three more rankings in the past in this forum. I found out that kill points were so rewarding and my system for survival points were too rewarding too. But they are different then yours so I have no advice or opinion on that. But sometimes in games, be it Victoria or Churchill or Zara Yaqob with end game score 5500 can't win a game because it is robbed by Hatshepsut culture victory with 2500 end game score. Rest of the survivors are at around 2500 points as well. Now I don't know if that's a fair call here. When I read your new format, I see only winners earn points and I think that should be enough. No need for survival points for the new format.

So per new tournament format you will have
4x6=24
4x7=28
6x6=36
4x6=24
3x6=18
2x6=12
1x8=8
1x6=6
156 games for just one tournament!
or 25 if you don't swap positions.

I honestly look forward for what you come up, I would give priority to season 7 and season 8 maps because poeple remember them, since you give barbarians archery tech, I wonder how much that effect a map balance because I did not bother in my series. I will update my series in about 2 weeks with season 8 results, increasing number of my games from 2006 to 2300. You can exploit then, maybe if you create an empty excel file as template for me to fill that would be easier for cooperation

and about team competition, so is it for a small competition you want to make in the forum if ai survivor does not happen next year?

 

[Keler]

since we should hate runner ups, surviver points, kills and everything other than winners, I liked your new tournament format, I made few changes and want to share. Same concept. No more cruelty to ftd eliminations. And we can use all sulla's 6-7 player maps too. No need for 8 player map.

Spoiler NEW FORMAT :

oppening round 2 and 3 and play off 2 can have random shuffles or something else.
Scoring system?
Since someone wins at first attempts wins 1/1,
someone wins at second attempt should get 1/2 points and so on I think. But who cares, it could be just anything arbitrary we decide. Say no more to stupid uefa championship top 2 finisher only getting eliminated at knockout of 16 but third place finisher wins europa league and wins the cup being better unfair system.
Or in this ai survivor case, wildcard winner gets more points than a runner up at first attempt. Huh

I liked it, if it happens I will follow up

 

[Fippy]

Sorry i cannot get excited for AI Survivor without streams like Sulla does them
Same with alternate histories etc for me..after ~15 years of Civ4 i need something playing on screen.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Alt tab and runing the game multiple instances at same time is possible.

Good to know, might try that at some point. Would allow me to stay away from the computer for longer spells while keeping the same pace of games played per day.

For unlucky Willem case- maybe you could just not assign a map for each arena but make that random too for each round as well. Give pure randomness a chance.

That would have the advantage of getting more maps into play faster, but the disadvantage of having to wait for much longer before we have extensive data on any one map. It would also greatly weaken the thematic notion of "arena" (not that this matters ver much).

Now, while I respect this new format, if there is one thing to note from jumble rumble or yet to come Alternative History ranking, it is that all the effort just gets reduced to a single game result.

No, every game will count here. Reducing to a single game result is the AH Ranking. For Jumbled Rumble, it was the ratio of repeated games per different setups which was bad: 20 repeats for 1-3 different games only.
Here it'll be 6-7 repeats but with 10 different games (so 60-70 games total): so one bad setup or one extremely favourable setup won't completely skew the results.

I hope you can settle on this new format, it looks like a very nice idea

Well, thanks.
But... I'm not going to use that new format: you may have missed it, but I said it was something I was planning to do via aiplay. Now that the League moves to aiplay, there's no room for it.
I put it there in case someone else (or way into the future me) could find a use for it, and looks like you did.

I would give priority to season 7 and season 8 maps because poeple remember them

Sure, noted.

I will update my series in about 2 weeks with season 8 results, increasing number of my games from 2006 to 2300.

You can exploit then, maybe if you create an empty excel file as template for me to fill that would be easier for cooperation

Yes, once I've looked carefully at your file, I'll let you know.
But if you want a first pointer, you can look at my AI League Excel file. The format I used (one row per leader result) was chosen specifically because it would be super easy to export.

and about team competition, so is it for a small competition you want to make in the forum if ai survivor does not happen next year?

Yes, exactly.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Sorry i cannot get excited for AI Survivor without streams like Sulla does them
Same with alternate histories etc for me..after ~15 years of Civ4 i need something playing on screen.

Sure, no problem.
The last idea I've mentionned would be something I could try my hand at streaming.
But only if Sullla has to postpone next year's Season: I don't think there's really room for two such events.

 

[Thrasybulos]

since we should hate runner ups, surviver points, kills and everything other than winners, I liked your new tournament format, I made few changes and want to share. Same concept. No more cruelty to ftd eliminations. And we can use all sulla's 6-7 player maps too. No need for 8 player map.

Spoiler NEW FORMAT :

View attachment 705132

oppening round 2 and 3 and play off 2 can have random shuffles or something else.
Scoring system?
Since someone wins at first attempts wins 1/1,
someone wins at second attempt should get 1/2 points and so on I think. But who cares, it could be just anything arbitrary we decide. Say no more to stupid uefa championship top 2 finisher only getting eliminated at knockout of 16 but third place finisher wins europa league and wins the cup being better unfair system.
Or in this ai survivor case, wildcard winner gets more points than a runner up at first attempt. Huh

I liked it, if it happens I will follow up

That would certainly work too.
I introduced the FTD eliminations to avoid having an unbalanced repartition between 6-player and 7-player games in a given round. And when I noticed it lead to exactly 25 games (so four runs = 100 games), it was a keeper.

But it would certainly work your way too, and as you mentionned, it would have the advantages of doing away with the somewhat unfair FTD eliminations and of getting more 7-player maps into play!

As for the specific point values, they're indeed arbitrary.
Just a few points they should respect imo:

• Winning the Championship should always give you more points than losing the championship: so if someone gets into the championship through the lowest scoring route, a championship win should still put that leader above another who got into the championship through the highest scoring route
• Same for "winning" the playoffs: someone who gets into the championship should get more points that someone who gets eliminated in the playoffs.

 

[Keler]

For score system I might as well write maths problem
I admit I enjoy doing it hahaha

Lets say
For openning round 1= x points
For oppening round 2= y points y<x
For oppening round 3= z points z<y

For play off 1= m points
For play off 2= n points n<m

For championship= k points

Now
z+n>x
z+n+k>x+m

Should n>x? Or doesn't matter? Find minimum value for n moment, takes me back
I love doing this

Now, since you will continue AI League with fast autoplays and share your results there, it will be nice to have an easy demonstration for which starting positions wins, and runner ups if you keep track of them. I read sullas ah results but man they really hate some leaders a lot I like what I do in response to is it really the darius ai that sucks so much or is it his starting position should be blamed in season 8 game 5? It gives me some idea. With your settings I want to see difference and similarities of barbarians with archery tech in both map starting positions and leader ranking.

 

[Thrasybulos]

An update on League 2.0 : I've had quite some thinking about it, and I'm pretty happy with the concept I've come up with now...

... but it requires a lot of work to automate things, including some Civ4 Python modding, which I have no experience with.
So it won't happen for some time yet. Hopefully sometime this year ?

But I have a much simpler project coming soon (next month ?). It's a bit goofy, and its results won't be directly applicable to AI Survivor, but it should be fun and still interesting.

In the meantime, I tinkered with other tournament formats.
And since @Keler had expressed interest in having results for some of the S8 maps, here are the map results of the most extensive experiment (full results in the attached file).

The idea here was to have only 7-player games.
At first, 3 AIs were randomly excluded and put in a "queue".
Then each round consists of 7 games.
The winners play a round "final".
The winner of that game is the round winner and scores 1 point. He then gets put in the "queue" and will thus sit out the next 3 rounds.
The losers of the "final" get to seed the next round's games, along with the one AI who leaves the queue.
And so on...

I played 50 such rounds, which yielded the following results :

Spoiler S8_Opening_2 :

Spoiler S8_Opening_4 :

Spoiler S8_Opening_8 :

Spoiler S7_Opening_2 :

This one takes the cake as the most unbalanced map of the lot, with Suleiman's start (in the live S7 game) accounting for 60% of the wins.

Spoiler S7_Opening_4 :

Spoiler S7_Opening_6 :

Spoiler S7_Opening_8 :

Spoiler S8_Opening_6 :

I used this map for the "finals" because the AH results had pointed at it seeming pretty balanced.
Turns out that was a lie.
Somehow the game roster had managed to make up for the map.

Those games were played with my usual settings (AI Survivor S5 rules + no UN), with the addition of No Barbarians.
Same reasonning as for the no UN rule : Barbs just add noise. Also, it turns the buggy civ-locked-at-war-with-an-unreachable-one-city-opponent from a 5-10% occurence to a < 1% occurence.

Does it have an impact on the games ? Probably, but I don't care.
The scant data I have would point at a "yes" answer : I had mistakenly left barbs on for the first 17 games on the S8_Opening_8 map. The results after I disabled them seem much less scattered, with Cyrus's position suddenly accounting for a majority of the wins. That said... it could also be read as Archery-less barbs leading to more random outcomes.