AI Survivor - Alternate Histories AI Ranking

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

Everything went very nicely as I had expected... and then that championship map!!!

 

[Thrasybulos]

Season 1, Opening Rounds

These are the first ones I've run, but I've postponed posting them in order to not "spoil" @Eauxps I. Fourgott 's AH, which you can find here.
Now that he's done with the opening round games, I can post my results with no interference. Unfortunately, time has passed, and since I haven't taken notes nor watched the games (only seen the replays when attributing kills and getting the win date, with a few dips when the game wasn't done after the first batch of aiplay turns), I've essentially forgotten everything about those games now, so I won't be providing any details about them.
There's one exception, a playoff game: that one, I remember. But that's for the next post, in a few days.

A word of reminder: contrary to Eauxps's games which were played with the original settings, mine were played with the S5 rules (no deity bonus techs, no AP, no huts), with the addition of no UN and new rolls (peaceweight, culture victory affinity) for each game. I've also enabled Raging Barbs for the wildcard game.

I'm reposting here the first three games, because since I first posted them, I've changed the way I attribute Power Rating kill points.

Spoiler Game 1 :

Spoiler Game 2 :

Spoiler Game 3 :

Spoiler Game 4 :

Spoiler Game 5 :

Spoiler Game 6 :

Spoiler Game 7 :

Spoiler Game 8 :

There's actually one thing I remember from this game: as in Eaupx's games, Cyrus did launch a lot of across-the-map attacks at Wang Kon.

 

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

Spoiler Game 5 :

View attachment 708321

Interesting that Washington and especially Kublai were so much more viable in your set. If I had to guess, this would be one place where it's largely a result of streakiness. That and possibly indirect effects from Augustus being weaker without extra starting techs; would leave more room for his military rivals to thrive.

Spoiler Game 6 :

View attachment 708322

Pretty similar results here, Mildly surprised that Fred managed a win. De Lol.

Spoiler Game 7 :

View attachment 708323

We discussed this already last week, but yeah, I think Charlemagne losing extra starting techs is the biggest differentiating factor here. Makes it much harder for him to win, and by extension much harder for Cathy to not win.

Spoiler Game 8 :

View attachment 708324

There's actually one thing I remember from this game: as in Eaupx's games, Cyrus did launch a lot of across-the-map attacks at Wang Kon.

The Persia-Korea rivalry is an interesting subplot in these. No wonder Wang embraced his troll side in Season 2!

Cyrus being so much more of a winner here is surprising, though. I'd have expected Hannibal if anybody, not him.

Also odd that Asoka was so much less viable. I wouldn't have thought that losing starting techs would have hurt him that much. Streakiness again? Maybe, but it does seem a pretty start difference all the same.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Cyrus being so much more of a winner here is surprising, though. I'd have expected Hannibal if anybody, not him.

The more games I play, the more I think that Cyrus is a better leader than Hannibal.
But here, I think it was mainly that Cyrus's position was safe. Hannibal could and did face multi-front invasions. Cyrus had only one front to defend (well, until he conquered Korea, that is! ).

 

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

The more games I play, the more I think that Cyrus is a better leader than Hannibal.
But here, I think it was mainly that Cyrus's position was safe. Hannibal could and did face multi-front invasions. Cyrus had only one front to defend (well, until he conquered Korea, that is! ).

That's fair. Invasions certainly do feel less of a threat for Hannibal with Churchill nerfed, but that of course is not all there is to it.

Cyrus still feels more like a runner-up sort of leader to me than a big winner (mostly because of his economic issues). But that certainly doesn't mean that's the correct interpretation.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Cyrus still feels more like a runner-up sort of leader to me than a big winner

If I were to evaluate him without looking at the stats, I'd say that in terms in AI Survivor, he's a Pool 2 leader.
While Hannibal simply shouldn't qualify as a Pool leader.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Season 1, Final Rounds

Spoiler Wildcard Game :

Peter indeed had the best position on this map, which explains his decent results. That said, Raging Barbs were on, and while I can't remember for sure, that jungle to his south must have been a breeding ground...
But anyway, Gilgamesh is a stronger leader, and he was bordering Washington who had a big target on his back. And his front. And his sides. Ragnar and Napoleon were bordering him too... but they had Alex at their back.
A note on Napoleon: he only won twice, but both were very impressive wins (still remember, so left an impression), where he managed to pull ahead in tech while conquering. Organized for the win?

Spoiler Playoff 1 :

Alright. That game.
I've hinted at it somewhere already, but this was the first time I got the impression of getting a whole outlier AH result set. It actually left me salty, and I nearly discarded the whole set. The only reason I didn't was the risk it happened again - can't afford a new computer screen at the moment.

So what happened?
Cathy got insolently lucky.
What happened game after game was that another leader would grow dominant (usually Kublai or Justinian, but happened with the other three as well), and just as either Space or Domination was within sight, he'd turn the slider for a doomed culture attempt from scratch. Even Justinian, whom I don't remember ever pulling the slider even when he 100% should have, well, here, he did it.
It was like whenever a leader was about to win, they'd go "you know what, ladies first, how about you get the win instead ?", and Cathy would be "oh, that's awful sweet of you, I'll have it, thank you".
But not only did she "steal" wins like that, on at least 3 occasions, it was by a mere couple of turns!
With game 7 being the worst: in that game, her tech pace was slow, which meant Hannibal's culture actually had a chance. Her ship landed one turn before he could win by culture and 4 turns before he hit the Domination threshold! I swear...
What?
Yeah... I'm still salty.

Now, she did have a few legitimately strong games, and, as already discussed, her starting position made her a de facto contender. But still... all 6 of her Spaceship victories should have gone to someone else!

Spoiler Playoff 2 :

With Mansa safely stuck in a corner, having another high peaceweight as his main neighbour, I thought this would be a Mansa roflolstomp.
And while Eauxps's AH of the official game have shown that this was definitely in play with a different field of leaders... that didn't happen here.
Pericles would actually usually grow much larger and stronger than Mansa, and as for being safe... quite a few of Mansa's eliminations came courtesy of the Greeks iirc.
Still, while Pericles was strong, Cyrus was even stronger here.

Spoiler Playoff 3 :

Brennus had I believe the stronger start, and that proved enough.
Saladin finished strong, beating Gilgamesh in the end, but it could have gone either way I guess.

Spoiler Championship Game :

I suppose that Saladin got tired of being called "Justinian-light" and had to show who's who.

That, or he and Brennus were the two AIs bordering the dead man walking, and he's definitely the better leader of the two.
While Justinian had to contend with the crazy lady next door, and the Arab heretics on the other side...

 

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

Well, this set certainly qualifies as a surprise! I made a lot of wrong guesses

Season 1, Final Rounds

Spoiler Wildcard Game :

View attachment 708552

Peter indeed had the best position on this map, which explains his decent results. That said, Raging Barbs were on, and while I can't remember for sure, that jungle to his south must have been a breeding ground...
But anyway, Gilgamesh is a stronger leader, and he was bordering Washington who had a big target on his back. And his front. And his sides. Ragnar and Napoleon were bordering him too... but they had Alex at their back.
A note on Napoleon: he only won twice, but both were very impressive wins (still remember, so left an impression), where he managed to pull ahead in tech while conquering. Organized for the win?

The Zara spot being much weaker with Raging Barbs certainly makes sense. It was hard to see past its domination though when making my assessment. But the sheltered nature of Gilgamesh's start would mesh well with that environment, I guess.

Sad that my 4D chess thinking for Charlemagne/Ragnar's finishes wasn't right.

Spoiler Playoff 1 :

View attachment 708557

Alright. That game.
I've hinted at it somewhere already, but this was the first time I got the impression of getting a whole outlier AH result set. It actually left me salty, and I nearly discarded the whole set. The only reason I didn't was the risk it happened again - can't afford a new computer screen at the moment.

So what happened?
Cathy got insolently lucky.
What happened game after game was that another leader would grow dominant (usually Kublai or Justinian, but happened with the other three as well), and just as either Space or Domination was within sight, he'd turn the slider for a doomed culture attempt from scratch. Even Justinian, whom I don't remember ever pulling the slider even when he 100% should have, well, here, he did it.
It was like whenever a leader was about to win, they'd go "you know what, ladies first, how about you get the win instead ?", and Cathy would be "oh, that's awful sweet of you, I'll have it, thank you".
But not only did she "steal" wins like that, on at least 3 occasions, it was by a mere couple of turns!
With game 7 being the worst: in that game, her tech pace was slow, which meant Hannibal's culture actually had a chance. Her ship landed one turn before he could win by culture and 4 turns before he hit the Domination threshold! I swear...
What?
Yeah... I'm still salty.

Now, she did have a few legitimately strong games, and, as already discussed, her starting position made her a de facto contender. But still... all 6 of her Spaceship victories should have gone to someone else!

Very interesting group of results you had there. I don't think the slider was ever run in my set. I wonder if there was some roll that was made when you first set this field of leaders, that then managed to survive the WB loads to affect the entire set?

Also that is a very embarrassing underperformance by Hannibal.

Spoiler Playoff 2 :

View attachment 708562

With Mansa safely stuck in a corner, having another high peaceweight as his main neighbour, I thought this would be a Mansa roflolstomp.
And while Eauxps's AH of the official game have shown that this was definitely in play with a different field of leaders... that didn't happen here.
Pericles would actually usually grow much larger and stronger than Mansa, and as for being safe... quite a few of Mansa's eliminations came courtesy of the Greeks iirc.
Still, while Pericles was strong, Cyrus was even stronger here.

Pericles winning six games is maybe the biggest surprise from this entire set of games! As I mentioned in mine, Liz's wins were fluke results and usually if she was doing OK, then Mansa was doing OK and beating her to the win. But I guess if there's infighting among the low PWs and Pericles is conquering Mansa himself...

Spoiler Playoff 3 :

View attachment 708563

Brennus had I believe the stronger start, and that proved enough.
Saladin finished strong, beating Gilgamesh in the end, but it could have gone either way I guess.

Not too much to note about this one. I believed in Sal/disbelieved in Brennus too much but other than that this is a pretty straightforward set.

Spoiler Championship Game :

View attachment 708564

I suppose that Saladin got tired of being called "Justinian-light" and had to show who's who.

That, or he and Brennus were the two AIs bordering the dead man walking, and he's definitely the better leader of the two.
While Justinian had to contend with the crazy lady next door, and the Arab heretics on the other side...

Impressive work by the top two! Knowing that Pericles was on that map might have indeed affected my read of it. But, uh, I never suspected that he might be there.

lol Brennus

 

[Thrasybulos]

I wonder if there was some roll that was made when you first set this field of leaders, that then managed to survive the WB loads to affect the entire set?

That would be Black Magic. This is just code. So no, can't happen.

I suspect that Cathy was, in this field, one of the least likely leader to found a religion at any point. So when someone had conquered most of the world except Russia, they got de facto control of all Holy Cities.
And since all of these leaders have at least one "cultural" trait... From memory (but would have to be checked to be sure), 7 Holy Cities + 1 culture trait means the attempt is all but guaranteed?

 

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

That would be Black Magic. This is just code. So no, can't happen.

I suspect that Cathy was, in this field, one of the least likely leader to found a religion at any point. So when someone had conquered most of the world except Russia, they got de facto control of all Holy Cities.
And since all of these leaders have at least one "cultural" trait... From memory (but would have to be checked to be sure), 7 Holy Cities + 1 culture trait means the attempt is all but guaranteed?

Aside from the peaceweight rolls, all the other start-of-game rolls might as well be Black Magic for all that I properly understand them

 

[Thrasybulos]

Season 8, Opening Round

There we go, the most recent season.
All "official" AH have now been published, so we know how each game was supposed to unfold. Right? Right?

Spoiler Game 1 :

Official AH

There's a Peter conspiracy in the AH world. This isn't the first game (and, spoiler alert, not the last game either) where the official AH have Peter as the top leader... a result I don't reproduce.
Instead, I'm getting an even more surprising result: the Community was correct!
Kublai was designated as the heavy favourite for this game, and well... he was indeed.

It should be noted that Hammy did win one game, so his live game success was not a 1% occurance.

Spoiler Game 2 :

Official AH

This one is pretty similar as far as the top leaders are concerned, with Justinian's dominance a bit more pronounced than in the official AH.

It differs a bit behind them, though.
First, Genghis did way better: he won a game, and scored a lot more kills. So maybe not the "biggest dud" on the map, actually. But still a far cry from the baddest dude, granted.
Second, Bismarck: he was clearly the 3rd best leader on this map, and seems to have performed better than in Eauxps's games, since his two wins were not atypical. Rather, they seemed like just deserves for a repeated series of strong games. Unfortunately for him, peaceweight is often destiny: out of the top trio on this map, he was the only high peaceweight, so usually got knocked down in an endgame 2v1.

Spoiler Game 3 :

Official AH

If you merely look at the wins, similar story to the official AH: HC wins the most, closely followed by Willem.

But the Shaka-Willem is different: Willem doesn't survive 60% of the time, he drops to 40% here. And Shaka gets 50% more kills (22 to 14). So Shaka did much better here, to the point that with 3 wins to Willem's 6 wins, he's the one getting the runner-up spot.
So I can't really subscribe to the view expressed in the AH write-up that "Shaka was the worst leader in this setup"! He definitely was not.

Hannibal seems to have performed worse, though: while he has the best survival rate behind HC, he rarely was a major actor here.

Spoiler Game 4 :

Official AH

So, the now famous game 4 with a 100% win rate from Mansa.
Well, as you can see, that wasn't reproduced here.
Mind you, an 80% win rate is still a very impressive performance!
So the main narrative for the game is essentially the same: Mansa was the overwhelming favourite here, which should surprise no one who'd even glanced at the map.

But.
These games did differ in a major way from those played by Myth: Pericles.
According to Myth, Pericles was the second best leader here, performing strongly game after game.
Well, not so much in my games: he got repeatedly pummelled into irrelevance by either Alex (who was much stronger than him) and/or by Saladin. He had exactly one good game, which, to his credit, he managed to carry all the way to a win. But apart from that... it was a forgettable showing at best.
The strongest leaders in my games were Saladin and Qin. There were two differences between them, which explain Saladin's much better results:

1. Saladin had a path towards victory: conquer Washington, then Mansa. He did it 3 times, and could have done it a few more times if he hadn't been hit on at least 3 occasions by the horrible "stuck at war with an unreachable one-city civ" bug: Washington tended to settled the Northern coast, and at least one of the cities there would get locked behind Mansa's culture.
   Qin, on the other hand, didn't have a path to victory: his strong games, like game 1 for instead, involved him conquering the whole Southern hemisphere (Zara and Alex). By the time he was done, it was always too late to deal with Mansa's culture.
2. Qin faced a tough opposition: he would end up at war with Zara and Alex in most games, and they were much, much stronger than Saladin's usual opponents (Washington and Pericles). So Qin still prevailed in a number of occasions and become the dominant AI on the map, but he would also succomb in a fair number of other occasions. And of course, there were the games, like the live game, where Qin and Saladin would clash, but those tended to end badly for China (who would already be busy with another strong opponent).

Spoiler Game 5 :

Official AH

When the results for that game's AH were published, I viewed them with a fair bit of skepticism.
Pacal ending up as the dominant AI in this setup just felt wrong.
And one aspect in particular made me think those might have been played with an outlier set of peaceweight values: the described near constant fighting between Asoka and Ramesses. Now, Asoka is in the upper range of the high peaceweights while Ramesses is in the lower range. There was also, between two strong cultural civs, border tension to expect. Plus the chance they might be religious rivals.
So some fighting between those was to be expected.
But fighting recurring game after game? Pretty odd...

And indeed, the games I ran conformed a lot more to expectations: Brennus was dogpiled game after game and got eliminated early, usually by Asoka. Hatty got strong, and was usually in the process of eliminating (or had done so) Pacal when she won by culture.
Darius never failed to disappoint.
Ramesses didn't seem to have a path to victory: Hatty and Asoka were usually stronger both in culture and tech, and he wasn't bordering the low peaceweights for a Domniation attempt.

Spoiler Game 6 :

Official AH

And here as well, I'm getting a result which is significantly different from Myth's.
In his games, Stalin is a weak favourite, Joao is consistently strong, but rarely enough for the win, Gandhi and Viccy suffer the dogpile bait fate. A hint that it might be an abnormal setup is the fact Joao often attacked Gandhi in his games, while not suffering the same dogpile fate: did Joao roll low on peaceweight there? It would explain some of the differences at least.

Anyway, what I got here was a game reminiscent of my S7 game 5 runs: a wildly unpredictable game, where most leaders had a real shot at victory.
Only Roosevelt was a doomed man, and, in direct opposition to Myth's results, Joao also seemed to have a harder time.
But the other 5 leaders were good candidates for a win. Nappy takes the crown here, I bet a different set of 20 games would see a different result.

A word on Ragnar: like most leaders here, and in common with Myth's games, he had good and bad games. But good-game-Ragnar had a Gandhi catch-22 issue.
If Ragnar conquered smartly, like in game 1 for instance, where he conquered Viccy, Roosy, Stalin, and was in the process of eliminating Joao... he would lose to Gandhi's culture.
If, on the other hand, he launched a cross-the-map assault on India (and that happened a lot: it would seem Gandhi's neighbours needed Ragnar to get involved or they'd fail at beating India)... then the logistics of his empire became too awkward and all he'd accomplish would be setting the stage for a Stalin/Napoleon win.

Spoiler Game 7 :

Official AH

My predictions for that game for the picking contest were, in a nutshell:

• Sury would be weak (contrary to popular expectations).
• Mehmed would be strong.
• As a result, Lizzy would be the favourite for FTD.
• The game would be unpredictable, with every leader (even Monty and Sury) winning at least one game in the AH.
• If a main scenario had to be guessed nevertheless, it would be a Mehmed-Charlie finish, in which Charlie would be a slight favourite.

The official AH confirmed my first two predictions, but had me way off-the-mark for the last three.

So I was kinda surprised, but feeling vindicated when my runs actually conformed to my predictions!
Except for the Monty/Sury wins: those didn't happen here either.

I'm not sure how to explain the difference between the official set and mine, but I can tell what was key in mine: whether Charlie founded an early religion or not, and whether it spread to Mehmed or not. If those things happened... it was an almost garanteed Charlie/Mehmed finish, with Charlie ahead in tech, as I'd predicted. Mehmed could and did win without that alliance, but Charlie needed it.

Spoiler Game 8 :

Official AH

And finally game 8, where the initial batch of runs led me to believe I'd get something strangely different from Eaupx's games (especially since he's now running his games with the same protocol I use, the only difference being the UN absent in my games)... but in the end, we're getting mostly similar results.
Cyrus was a bit less dominant in my games, Augustus fared better.
De Gaulle did win one, but still disappointed me: I really thought he'd do better here. I'm also disappointed with Julius: I did expect him to have a hard time, which he did, but I thought he'd manage to pull a coupla wins nevertheless, which he didn't.

The one thing to observe is once again the "result streaks": games 1-11 + 20 have Suleiman non existant, Augustus and Louis strong. Games 12-19 have Suleiman a strong second, Augustus and Louis nowhere to be seen...

 

[Keler]

Some of these Season 8 results are very interesting and different.
But first, please share some screenshots of the game where Hammurabi won please
score and power graphs etc.

For the most different ones;

Game 3: I found Frederick winning only 1 time with that awsome capital however HC wins 8 times from that spot!! That is crazy outstanding. I must give it a try with my settings sometime. I just can't believe it.

Game 5: I can relate why Hatty won so many times from a position where no one really won when I gave it a try. Barbs with archery is a total different story probably. I think I will run AH for that game as well to find the difference.

Game 6: This is the most shocking outcome. Real different. Vicky wins 4 times from that squezed position. Napoloen wins 5 times too. Because Roosevelt was awful in these AH. But in fact he had better capital. After you are done with rest of the seasons, if you continue your AI League, please give this map a privilage. Make sure you complete this one first actually! The only thing I can relate is Joao doing poorly compared to official results. Gandhi and Ragnar's results are also normal.

Game 8: This is the second most interesting outcome after game six. First of all, Augustus winning 4 times is quite unexpected. And then Julius being super bad. You better give this map a privilage too, by the time you continue AI League. I really wonder how your outcome per position graphs will look like. Louis is the second most outperformed leader after Augustus here. Rest looks compatible results with mine. I understand them.

Other four game's results are also no big surprise to me.

 

[Thrasybulos]

But first, please share some screenshots of the game where Hammurabi won please
score and power graphs etc.

Nope, because I simply don't have them.

As for the new League map selection, I've indeed decided to forego the random selection process.
I'll do the Season 8 maps first, then Season 7, etc...

 

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

Thrasy, you never fail to deliver interesting results.

Spoiler Game 1 :

Official AH

View attachment 709268

There's a Peter conspiracy in the AH world. This isn't the first game (and, spoiler alert, not the last game either) where the official AH have Peter as the top leader... a result I don't reproduce.
Instead, I'm getting an even more surprising result: the Community was correct!
Kublai was designated as the heavy favourite for this game, and well... he was indeed.

It should be noted that Hammy did win one game, so his live game success was not a 1% occurance.

So chalk was right after all! This is a pretty dramatic difference from Sullla's set, though. Especially Mao's underperformance. Very odd.

Spoiler Game 2 :

Official AH

View attachment 709270

This one is pretty similar as far as the top leaders are concerned, with Justinian's dominance a bit more pronounced than in the official AH.

It differs a bit behind them, though.
First, Genghis did way better: he won a game, and scored a lot more kills. So maybe not the "biggest dud" on the map, actually. But still a far cry from the baddest dude, granted.
Second, Bismarck: he was clearly the 3rd best leader on this map, and seems to have performed better than in Eauxps's games, since his two wins were not atypical. Rather, they seemed like just deserves for a repeated series of strong games. Unfortunately for him, peaceweight is often destiny: out of the top trio on this map, he was the only high peaceweight, so usually got knocked down in an endgame 2v1.

You covered the big differences already, but this is definitely the same overall vibe as my set. It did feel like Gilgamesh was on the lucky side in mine, mainly with regard to kill points, so it makes sense that he drops back down some here.

Spoiler Game 3 :

Official AH

View attachment 709273

If you merely look at the wins, similar story to the official AH: HC wins the most, closely followed by Willem.

But the Shaka-Willem is different: Willem doesn't survive 60% of the time, he drops to 40% here. And Shaka gets 50% more kills (22 to 14). So Shaka did much better here, to the point that with 3 wins to Willem's 6 wins, he's the one getting the runner-up spot.
So I can't really subscribe to the view expressed in the AH write-up that "Shaka was the worst leader in this setup"! He definitely was not.

Hannibal seems to have performed worse, though: while he has the best survival rate behind HC, he rarely was a major actor here.

Despite the better showing from Shaka, it's still definitely a disappointment from him compared to the pregame expectations.

Spoiler Game 4 :

Official AH

View attachment 709282

So, the now famous game 4 with a 100% win rate from Mansa.
Well, as you can see, that wasn't reproduced here.
Mind you, an 80% win rate is still a very impressive performance!
So the main narrative for the game is essentially the same: Mansa was the overwhelming favourite here, which should surprise no one who'd even glanced at the map.

But.
These games did differ in a major way from those played by Myth: Pericles.
According to Myth, Pericles was the second best leader here, performing strongly game after game.
Well, not so much in my games: he got repeatedly pummelled into irrelevance by either Alex (who was much stronger than him) and/or by Saladin. He had exactly one good game, which, to his credit, he managed to carry all the way to a win. But apart from that... it was a forgettable showing at best.
The strongest leaders in my games were Saladin and Qin. There were two differences between them, which explain Saladin's much better results:

1. Saladin had a path towards victory: conquer Washington, then Mansa. He did it 3 times, and could have done it a few more times if he hadn't been hit on at least 3 occasions by the horrible "stuck at war with an unreachable one-city civ" bug: Washington tended to settled the Northern coast, and at least one of the cities there would get locked behind Mansa's culture.
   Qin, on the other hand, didn't have a path to victory: his strong games, like game 1 for instead, involved him conquering the whole Southern hemisphere (Zara and Alex). By the time he was done, it was always too late to deal with Mansa's culture.
2. Qin faced a tough opposition: he would end up at war with Zara and Alex in most games, and they were much, much stronger than Saladin's usual opponents (Washington and Pericles). So Qin still prevailed in a number of occasions and become the dominant AI on the map, but he would also succomb in a fair number of other occasions. And of course, there were the games, like the live game, where Qin and Saladin would clash, but those tended to end badly for China (who would already be busy with another strong opponent).

Same overall picture for Mansa, just a bit different in the specifics

I wonder if Sal had a high peaceweight roll in Myth's set?

Spoiler Game 5 :

Official AH

View attachment 709283

When the results for that game's AH were published, I viewed them with a fair bit of skepticism.
Pacal ending up as the dominant AI in this setup just felt wrong.
And one aspect in particular made me think those might have been played with an outlier set of peaceweight values: the described near constant fighting between Asoka and Ramesses. Now, Asoka is in the upper range of the high peaceweights while Ramesses is in the lower range. There was also, between two strong cultural civs, border tension to expect. Plus the chance they might be religious rivals.
So some fighting between those was to be expected.
But fighting recurring game after game? Pretty odd...

And indeed, the games I ran conformed a lot more to expectations: Brennus was dogpiled game after game and got eliminated early, usually by Asoka. Hatty got strong, and was usually in the process of eliminating (or had done so) Pacal when she won by culture.
Darius never failed to disappoint.
Ramesses didn't seem to have a path to victory: Hatty and Asoka were usually stronger both in culture and tech, and he wasn't bordering the low peaceweights for a Domniation attempt.

Interesting results and analysis. One thing remains constant: Darius had most of us fooled.

Spoiler Game 6 :

Official AH

View attachment 709284

And here as well, I'm getting a result which is significantly different from Myth's.
In his games, Stalin is a weak favourite, Joao is consistently strong, but rarely enough for the win, Gandhi and Viccy suffer the dogpile bait fate. A hint that it might be an abnormal setup is the fact Joao often attacked Gandhi in his games, while not suffering the same dogpile fate: did Joao roll low on peaceweight there? It would explain some of the differences at least.

Anyway, what I got here was a game reminiscent of my S7 game 5 runs: a wildly unpredictable game, where most leaders had a real shot at victory.
Only Roosevelt was a doomed man, and, in direct opposition to Myth's results, Joao also seemed to have a harder time.
But the other 5 leaders were good candidates for a win. Nappy takes the crown here, I bet a different set of 20 games would see a different result.

A word on Ragnar: like most leaders here, and in common with Myth's games, he had good and bad games. But good-game-Ragnar had a Gandhi catch-22 issue.
If Ragnar conquered smartly, like in game 1 for instance, where he conquered Viccy, Roosy, Stalin, and was in the process of eliminating Joao... he would lose to Gandhi's culture.
If, on the other hand, he launched a cross-the-map assault on India (and that happened a lot: it would seem Gandhi's neighbours needed Ragnar to get involved or they'd fail at beating India)... then the logistics of his empire became too awkward and all he'd accomplish would be setting the stage for a Stalin/Napoleon win.

The overall vibe (this map is a crapshoot) remains, but the specifics are of course different. Joao being much worse is odd but perhaps his strength was partially from absorbing Gandhi in Myth's set?

Spoiler Game 7 :

Official AH

View attachment 709285

My predictions for that game for the picking contest were, in a nutshell:

• Sury would be weak (contrary to popular expectations).
• Mehmed would be strong.
• As a result, Lizzy would be the favourite for FTD.
• The game would be unpredictable, with every leader (even Monty and Sury) winning at least one game in the AH.
• If a main scenario had to be guessed nevertheless, it would be a Mehmed-Charlie finish, in which Charlie would be a slight favourite.

The official AH confirmed my first two predictions, but had me way off-the-mark for the last three.

So I was kinda surprised, but feeling vindicated when my runs actually conformed to my predictions!
Except for the Monty/Sury wins: those didn't happen here either.

I'm not sure how to explain the difference between the official set and mine, but I can tell what was key in mine: whether Charlie founded an early religion or not, and whether it spread to Mehmed or not. If those things happened... it was an almost garanteed Charlie/Mehmed finish, with Charlie ahead in tech, as I'd predicted. Mehmed could and did win without that alliance, but Charlie needed it.

Burger King being this strong is a true surprise.

Spoiler Game 8 :

Official AH

View attachment 709286

And finally game 8, where the initial batch of runs led me to believe I'd get something strangely different from Eaupx's games (especially since he's now running his games with the same protocol I use, the only difference being the UN absent in my games)... but in the end, we're getting mostly similar results.
Cyrus was a bit less dominant in my games, Augustus fared better.
De Gaulle did win one, but still disappointed me: I really thought he'd do better here. I'm also disappointed with Julius: I did expect him to have a hard time, which he did, but I thought he'd manage to pull a coupla wins nevertheless, which he didn't.

The one thing to observe is once again the "result streaks": games 1-11 + 20 have Suleiman non existant, Augustus and Louis strong. Games 12-19 have Suleiman a strong second, Augustus and Louis nowhere to be seen...

Finally, this is overall quite similar to mine, I'd say looking at the results, but with most differences between leaders less pronounced (Cyrus wins less which results in the other middling leaders being stronger). The biggest things would be De Gaulle being semi-viable and Lincoln not getting any lucky breaks; certainly feels like a sample size thing there.

 

[Genghis the Barbarian]

Hi everyone, this is "TheOneAndOnlyAtesh" (I am gonna change my current username, I came up with it when I was like twelve lol). I wrote a bunch of S8 writeups as well as the AHs for S8O3, S8O7, and S8P2. Also, I have some S3 AHs ready, so stay tuned...

I've been lurking here for a while and finally decided to post my thoughts (and also wanted to ingratiate myself here in preparation for upcoming S3 releases)

Season 8, Opening Round

There we go, the most recent season.
All "official" AH have now been published, so we know how each game was supposed to unfold. Right? Right?

Spoiler Game 1 :

Official AH

View attachment 709268

There's a Peter conspiracy in the AH world. This isn't the first game (and, spoiler alert, not the last game either) where the official AH have Peter as the top leader... a result I don't reproduce.
Instead, I'm getting an even more surprising result: the Community was correct!
Kublai was designated as the heavy favourite for this game, and well... he was indeed.

It should be noted that Hammy did win one game, so his live game success was not a 1% occurance.

Spoiler Game 1 :

Peter winning official AHs was very surprising considering his cramped start, but I wonder if his success depended on Mao being much stronger as a buffer for KK and for Peter to vulture territory from dogpiles. Mao was clearly MUCH worse here and thus KK dominated.

Spoiler Game 2 :

Official AH

View attachment 709270

This one is pretty similar as far as the top leaders are concerned, with Justinian's dominance a bit more pronounced than in the official AH.

It differs a bit behind them, though.
First, Genghis did way better: he won a game, and scored a lot more kills. So maybe not the "biggest dud" on the map, actually. But still a far cry from the baddest dude, granted.
Second, Bismarck: he was clearly the 3rd best leader on this map, and seems to have performed better than in Eauxps's games, since his two wins were not atypical. Rather, they seemed like just deserves for a repeated series of strong games. Unfortunately for him, peaceweight is often destiny: out of the top trio on this map, he was the only high peaceweight, so usually got knocked down in an endgame 2v1.

Spoiler Game 2 :

Spoiler Game 2 :

Not a surprise at all, even with Gigs just a bit more disappointing here.

Spoiler Game 3 :

Official AH

View attachment 709273

If you merely look at the wins, similar story to the official AH: HC wins the most, closely followed by Willem.

But the Shaka-Willem is different: Willem doesn't survive 60% of the time, he drops to 40% here. And Shaka gets 50% more kills (22 to 14). So Shaka did much better here, to the point that with 3 wins to Willem's 6 wins, he's the one getting the runner-up spot.
So I can't really subscribe to the view expressed in the AH write-up that "Shaka was the worst leader in this setup"! He definitely was not.

Hannibal seems to have performed worse, though: while he has the best survival rate behind HC, he rarely was a major actor here.

Spoiler Game 3 :

Spoiler Game 3 :

In my games Shaka was definitely the worst leader because his two wins were very lucky, stemming from the "true" winners throwing in dumb culture victory attempts. SB at least earned his two wins. It appears, however, in your set that Freddie was MUCH worse (no surprise, he's Freddie) and thus Shaka was much better as a result. Also hurts Willem a lot.

Hannibal definitely as expected, he just had no land.

Spoiler Game 4 :

Official AH

View attachment 709282

So, the now famous game 4 with a 100% win rate from Mansa.
Well, as you can see, that wasn't reproduced here.
Mind you, an 80% win rate is still a very impressive performance!
So the main narrative for the game is essentially the same: Mansa was the overwhelming favourite here, which should surprise no one who'd even glanced at the map.

But.
These games did differ in a major way from those played by Myth: Pericles.
According to Myth, Pericles was the second best leader here, performing strongly game after game.
Well, not so much in my games: he got repeatedly pummelled into irrelevance by either Alex (who was much stronger than him) and/or by Saladin. He had exactly one good game, which, to his credit, he managed to carry all the way to a win. But apart from that... it was a forgettable showing at best.
The strongest leaders in my games were Saladin and Qin. There were two differences between them, which explain Saladin's much better results:

1. Saladin had a path towards victory: conquer Washington, then Mansa. He did it 3 times, and could have done it a few more times if he hadn't been hit on at least 3 occasions by the horrible "stuck at war with an unreachable one-city civ" bug: Washington tended to settled the Northern coast, and at least one of the cities there would get locked behind Mansa's culture.
   Qin, on the other hand, didn't have a path to victory: his strong games, like game 1 for instead, involved him conquering the whole Southern hemisphere (Zara and Alex). By the time he was done, it was always too late to deal with Mansa's culture.
2. Qin faced a tough opposition: he would end up at war with Zara and Alex in most games, and they were much, much stronger than Saladin's usual opponents (Washington and Pericles). So Qin still prevailed in a number of occasions and become the dominant AI on the map, but he would also succomb in a fair number of other occasions. And of course, there were the games, like the live game, where Qin and Saladin would clash, but those tended to end badly for China (who would already be busy with another strong opponent).

Spoiler Game 4 :

Spoiler Game 4 :

I definitely agree with Eaxups hypothesis that Saladin had high rolled on peaceweight in Myth's set, your result seems a tad more realistic.

Spoiler Game 5 :

Official AH

View attachment 709283

When the results for that game's AH were published, I viewed them with a fair bit of skepticism.
Pacal ending up as the dominant AI in this setup just felt wrong.
And one aspect in particular made me think those might have been played with an outlier set of peaceweight values: the described near constant fighting between Asoka and Ramesses. Now, Asoka is in the upper range of the high peaceweights while Ramesses is in the lower range. There was also, between two strong cultural civs, border tension to expect. Plus the chance they might be religious rivals.
So some fighting between those was to be expected.
But fighting recurring game after game? Pretty odd...

And indeed, the games I ran conformed a lot more to expectations: Brennus was dogpiled game after game and got eliminated early, usually by Asoka. Hatty got strong, and was usually in the process of eliminating (or had done so) Pacal when she won by culture.
Darius never failed to disappoint.
Ramesses didn't seem to have a path to victory: Hatty and Asoka were usually stronger both in culture and tech, and he wasn't bordering the low peaceweights for a Domniation attempt.

Spoiler Game 5 :

Spoiler Game 5 :

Ram and Asoka never fighting probably made a huge difference. Still kind of surprised how much of a fraudulent winner Ram was, he's a top tier culturemonger and his land was nice, but I think Asoka and Hatty just had much better military prospects and they (especially Hatty) are almost as good at the culture thing.

Spoiler Game 6 :

Official AH

View attachment 709284

And here as well, I'm getting a result which is significantly different from Myth's.
In his games, Stalin is a weak favourite, Joao is consistently strong, but rarely enough for the win, Gandhi and Viccy suffer the dogpile bait fate. A hint that it might be an abnormal setup is the fact Joao often attacked Gandhi in his games, while not suffering the same dogpile fate: did Joao roll low on peaceweight there? It would explain some of the differences at least.

Anyway, what I got here was a game reminiscent of my S7 game 5 runs: a wildly unpredictable game, where most leaders had a real shot at victory.
Only Roosevelt was a doomed man, and, in direct opposition to Myth's results, Joao also seemed to have a harder time.
But the other 5 leaders were good candidates for a win. Nappy takes the crown here, I bet a different set of 20 games would see a different result.

A word on Ragnar: like most leaders here, and in common with Myth's games, he had good and bad games. But good-game-Ragnar had a Gandhi catch-22 issue.
If Ragnar conquered smartly, like in game 1 for instance, where he conquered Viccy, Roosy, Stalin, and was in the process of eliminating Joao... he would lose to Gandhi's culture.
If, on the other hand, he launched a cross-the-map assault on India (and that happened a lot: it would seem Gandhi's neighbours needed Ragnar to get involved or they'd fail at beating India)... then the logistics of his empire became too awkward and all he'd accomplish would be setting the stage for a Stalin/Napoleon win.

Spoiler Game 6 :

Spoiler Game 6 :

Probably one of the most unpredictable games we've had in a while. Anyone could win, and you could run this set again and get a completely different result. A major indictment on Stalin, considering Myth's experiment with Justin and HC in that spot.

Spoiler Game 7 :

Official AH

View attachment 709285

My predictions for that game for the picking contest were, in a nutshell:

• Sury would be weak (contrary to popular expectations).
• Mehmed would be strong.
• As a result, Lizzy would be the favourite for FTD.
• The game would be unpredictable, with every leader (even Monty and Sury) winning at least one game in the AH.
• If a main scenario had to be guessed nevertheless, it would be a Mehmed-Charlie finish, in which Charlie would be a slight favourite.

The official AH confirmed my first two predictions, but had me way off-the-mark for the last three.

So I was kinda surprised, but feeling vindicated when my runs actually conformed to my predictions!
Except for the Monty/Sury wins: those didn't happen here either.

I'm not sure how to explain the difference between the official set and mine, but I can tell what was key in mine: whether Charlie founded an early religion or not, and whether it spread to Mehmed or not. If those things happened... it was an almost garanteed Charlie/Mehmed finish, with Charlie ahead in tech, as I'd predicted. Mehmed could and did win without that alliance, but Charlie needed it.

Spoiler Game 7 :

Spoiler Game 7 :

Very, very surprised at how strong Charlie was in your set, in mine Charlie was very very good but faced too many 2v1s from Sury and Monty. My best guess is that Sury and Monty were even more pathetic in your set than in mine. Regarding what you said about religion, Izzy was generally better at spreading her religion so the Charlie/Mehmed alliance did not happen nearly as often as it did in your set.

Spoiler Game 8 :

Official AH

View attachment 709286

And finally game 8, where the initial batch of runs led me to believe I'd get something strangely different from Eaupx's games (especially since he's now running his games with the same protocol I use, the only difference being the UN absent in my games)... but in the end, we're getting mostly similar results.
Cyrus was a bit less dominant in my games, Augustus fared better.
De Gaulle did win one, but still disappointed me: I really thought he'd do better here. I'm also disappointed with Julius: I did expect him to have a hard time, which he did, but I thought he'd manage to pull a coupla wins nevertheless, which he didn't.

The one thing to observe is once again the "result streaks": games 1-11 + 20 have Suleiman non existant, Augustus and Louis strong. Games 12-19 have Suleiman a strong second, Augustus and Louis nowhere to be seen...

Pretty much the same as Eaxups set although I am absolutely shocked that the Silly Man was able to win a few games here. De Gaulle being terrible at Civ 4 probably had something to do with this.

A final thought: on the UN being absent, I've never had any troll Diplo wins in my sets, every Diplo game just made the deserving winner win 30 turns earlier. Sets with higher than normal diplo finishes also can also lead to good assertions on map dynamics - for example, a set with a 4 or more Diplo finishes tend to indicate that there were more than two leaders strong at the end of the game, hinting at its competitiveness. Also common with lots of similar peaceweight leaders.

 

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

I've definitely had a few random Diplo finishes in my set. But it's not very common.

Leaving them out in this thing where the results are all that are really being looked at makes sense.

 

[Thrasybulos]

I'll publish the results for the final rounds later tonight. Wanted to get it done yesterday... but I kinda crashed on the couch after getting back from work.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Season 8, Final Rounds

Spoiler Wildcard Game 1 :

The two sheltered positions, at both extremities of the map, proved the strongest, with Hannibal and Augustus being repeatedly the dominant AIs.
Stalin's result may seem surprising, except: he's been largely debunked by now, his start had been identified as the most exposed to Barbarian mayhem, and he was surrounded by three high peaceweights.
I'm a bit surprised at the other three leaders' results:

• Pacal clearly underperformed, and I'm not sure why.
• So did Gandhi: with a strong ally (Augustus) he should have done better, but no, he was the early victim we've come to expect.
• Isabella, on the other hand, performed surprisingly well, with 4 wins: that's explained mainly by her neighbouring a weak Stalin she was able to conquer pretty often.

Spoiler Wildcard Game 2 :

Well, it would seem Brennus's start was indeed strong on this map, and particularly suited to the warmonger style!
Ragnar crushed this one, as I bet Brennus will in the AH for the live game.
Bismarck had Cyrus's spot, which had been identified as a deep hole, out of which the Germans could never extract themselves.
Elizabeth had the kind of result we could expect in this situation: quickly dying all the time, except in the few miraculous occasions where the low peaceweights were so busy fighting among themselves that she had the time to safely out-tech them.
Willem turned out to be the third punching bag in this setup, fighting Mao nearly all the time, Genghis pretty often, and usually dying to them. Which led to some successes for the Mongols, but none for the Chinese.
The other strong leader on this map was Louis, but that's mostly explained by the fact he was bordering both Elizabeth and Bismarck.

Spoiler Playoff 1 :

I bet those results are going to seem surprising to some!
And I must say that when the first games played out, I was baffled too. And then it made sense.

You would expect that Mansa having Kublai as a neighbour, and in a strong starting position to boot, would change things a lot, and that Kublai would conquer him often, and snowball from there.
Instead, Kublai ends up as the worst performer on the map!
Gilgamesh had a bad start, with no commerce initially, and lots of jungle. Poor Suleiman, after drawing a very poor start in his opening round, gets an outright abysmal spot here. So two out of the three low peaceweights in this map were out before the game even started. Sure, they both won one, but it took extremely favourable and very low-odds circumstances for that.
Charlie would fight Suleiman nearly every game, and come on top most of the time.
So that left Kublai surrounded by Mansa (with a huge backline), Asoka (with a godly capital), and big Charlie (having absorbed the Ottomans). He was simply doomed.
There were quite a few games were he expanded very well, and when I looked at the map, I thought "Ok, this time he's got this", only to discover when I looked again at the end of the game that he was gone!

Now, this setup did make things harder for Mansa, but while he sure did get killed a few times by Kublai, the opposition came from the other high peaceweights: Asoka with that capital, and who'd benefit a lot by the conquest of Mongolia, and Charlie who'd get to snowball from his conquest of the Ottomans, usually followed by Sumeria and/or Mongolia.
So in the end, it was a very close game: if Asoka had won the last game, Mansa was out!

Spoiler Playoff 2 :

Alright, not surprised enough by Playoff 1? How about this one?
Yes, a Shaka roflolstomp.
But look at the finish dates!
Not only am I sure that that turn 206 victory is the fastest ever in these games, Shaka's beaten the record several times as I don't think there's ever been a sub-T220 victory before!
Shaka sure was in a hurry in that game 14, as he started it with a turn 73 elimination of Hatty:

And there I had to scroll over the log several times until I spotted it:

Geez.
The only rival Shaka had on this map was Cyrus, from Augustus's very strong start.
And as in the live game's AH, Justinian's start was safe, but apparently not strong enough for him to win.

Speaking of starting positions, I hope you're taking notes, Freddy!

Spoiler Playoff 3 :

This game, on the other hand, held no surprise as far as the winner was concerned: HC given the strongest start on the map, in a favourable diplomatic context? Come on!

There was a surprise, though: Saladin's underperformance.
Before I started running this game, I thought it was a no-brainer: the two best AIs given the two best starts, HC 1, Sally 2, next.
Well... Saladin had two issues.
The first one was bordering Napoleon. Although, to be honest, it could also be considered as an opportunity since Saladin was consistently stronger than Napoleon.
The second issue, and more crucial one, was that HC and Sally were the only civs starting with Mysticism. So they tended to found the first religions, but HC had a central position, Saladin did not: game after game, the Arabs found themselves the religious pariahs of the world, and faced dogpile after dogpile.

The rare times that HC floundered (by turning on the slider way too soon for instance), it was instead Hannibal who rose to the occasion. He had a cramped start from which he could never grow large. So instead he played, for once, the financial game: he grew tall, and when HC turned on the slider, Carthage became the tech leader. And when Free Religion kicked in, and some diplo maluses appeared, he was Pleased-unlocked, and could use his superior military to start a rampage.

Spoiler Championship Game :

On this map, considering the diplomatic situation, of course it was once again an HC game.
The question instead is: how come he "only" won half the time?
One word.
Shaka.

Shaka was between HC and Hannibal, and while he often started by taking part of the crusade against Mansa and Charlie, he also as often didn't bother and started by one of his neighbours.
And on a map with a tight timer, being Shaka'd early tends to mean being too late at the finishing line.

 

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

I'd started to type up a reply, but then accidentally clicked away and lost all my progress. Screw that, not typing it all up again.

Suffice it to say that this was another very interesting group of games. Playoff One in particular was a for me despite having got 2/3 of the top leaders correct, and Playoff Two was a

 

[Genghis the Barbarian]

Season 8, Final Rounds

Spoiler Wildcard Game 1 :

View attachment 709498

The two sheltered positions, at both extremities of the map, proved the strongest, with Hannibal and Augustus being repeatedly the dominant AIs.
Stalin's result may seem surprising, except: he's been largely debunked by now, his start had been identified as the most exposed to Barbarian mayhem, and he was surrounded by three high peaceweights.
I'm a bit surprised at the other three leaders' results:

• Pacal clearly underperformed, and I'm not sure why.
• So did Gandhi: with a strong ally (Augustus) he should have done better, but no, he was the early victim we've come to expect.
• Isabella, on the other hand, performed surprisingly well, with 4 wins: that's explained mainly by her neighbouring a weak Stalin she was able to conquer pretty often.

Spoiler Wildcard Game 1 :

Stalin being screwed is no surprise, even the gems doesn't redeem that start. Pacal disappointing isn't all that surprising to me either - I did not think very highly of that spot because it's not very good for raging barbs, no copper especially. Also, something I learned from running AHs, Aug is NOT a natural ally for Gandhi - Gandhi does have PW 10 after all, Aug doesn't care about religion at all (I think he's only -1 for different religion) but Aug cares a heck of a lot about border tensions.

Spoiler Wildcard Game 2 :

View attachment 709503

Well, it would seem Brennus's start was indeed strong on this map, and particularly suited to the warmonger style!
Ragnar crushed this one, as I bet Brennus will in the AH for the live game.
Bismarck had Cyrus's spot, which had been identified as a deep hole, out of which the Germans could never extract themselves.
Elizabeth had the kind of result we could expect in this situation: quickly dying all the time, except in the few miraculous occasions where the low peaceweights were so busy fighting among themselves that she had the time to safely out-tech them.
Willem turned out to be the third punching bag in this setup, fighting Mao nearly all the time, Genghis pretty often, and usually dying to them. Which led to some successes for the Mongols, but none for the Chinese.
The other strong leader on this map was Louis, but that's mostly explained by the fact he was bordering both Elizabeth and Bismarck.

Spoiler Wildcard Game 2 :

If I were to rig a map for Ragnar this would be the exact situation I would create. Tons of room, Financial + Fishing, a bunch of poor saps to murder...

Spoiler Playoff 1 :

View attachment 709508

I bet those results are going to seem surprising to some!
And I must say that when the first games played out, I was baffled too. And then it made sense.

You would expect that Mansa having Kublai as a neighbour, and in a strong starting position to boot, would change things a lot, and that Kublai would conquer him often, and snowball from there.
Instead, Kublai ends up as the worst performer on the map!
Gilgamesh had a bad start, with no commerce initially, and lots of jungle. Poor Suleiman, after drawing a very poor start in his opening round, gets an outright abysmal spot here. So two out of the three low peaceweights in this map were out before the game even started. Sure, they both won one, but it took extremely favourable and very low-odds circumstances for that.
Charlie would fight Suleiman nearly every game, and come on top most of the time.
So that left Kublai surrounded by Mansa (with a huge backline), Asoka (with a godly capital), and big Charlie (having absorbed the Ottomans). He was simply doomed.
There were quite a few games were he expanded very well, and when I looked at the map, I thought "Ok, this time he's got this", only to discover when I looked again at the end of the game that he was gone!

Now, this setup did make things harder for Mansa, but while he sure did get killed a few times by Kublai, the opposition came from the other high peaceweights: Asoka with that capital, and who'd benefit a lot by the conquest of Mongolia, and Charlie who'd get to snowball from his conquest of the Ottomans, usually followed by Sumeria and/or Mongolia.
So in the end, it was a very close game: if Asoka had won the last game, Mansa was out!

Spoiler Playoff 1 :

As it turns out, Mansa is a MUCH better military leader than we realize. I'm not surprised at all by Mansa doing well, I've seen him dominate in a similar situation.

Spoiler Playoff 2 :

View attachment 709512

Alright, not surprised enough by Playoff 1? How about this one?
Yes, a Shaka roflolstomp.
But look at the finish dates!
Not only am I sure that that turn 206 victory is the fastest ever in these games, Shaka's beaten the record several times as I don't think there's ever been a sub-T220 victory before!
Shaka sure was in a hurry in that game 14, as he started it with a turn 73 elimination of Hatty:
View attachment 709513
And there I had to scroll over the log several times until I spotted it:
View attachment 709514
Geez.
The only rival Shaka had on this map was Cyrus, from Augustus's very strong start.
And as in the live game's AH, Justinian's start was safe, but apparently not strong enough for him to win.

Spoiler Playoff 2 :

Here is the thing - Shaka's land was really awesome. The only reason we did not get to see that was because FREDDIE was in that spot. It also helped that Hatty was likely in Culture mode from T0 based on Ram's games and... well that's a death warrant next to any warmonger. Wow, I'm really bummed out that O3 happened the way it did - yes Standing Bull was awesome, but we may have missed out on something much cooler in this game.

Quite surprised at Justinian, but I guess Ragnar is a much tougher opponent especially with a Fishing start.

Speaking of starting positions, I hope you're taking notes, Freddy!

Spoiler Playoff 3 :

View attachment 709516

This game, on the other hand, held no surprise as far as the winner was concerned: HC given the strongest start on the map, in a favourable diplomatic context? Come on!

There was a surprise, though: Saladin's underperformance.
Before I started running this game, I thought it was a no-brainer: the two best AIs given the two best starts, HC 1, Sally 2, next.
Well... Saladin had two issues.
The first one was bordering Napoleon. Although, to be honest, it could also be considered as an opportunity since Saladin was consistently stronger than Napoleon.
The second issue, and more crucial one, was that HC and Sally were the only civs starting with Mysticism. So they tended to found the first religions, but HC had a central position, Saladin did not: game after game, the Arabs found themselves the religious pariahs of the world, and faced dogpile after dogpile.

The rare times that HC floundered (by turning on the slider way too soon for instance), it was instead Hannibal who rose to the occasion. He had a cramped start from which he could never grow large. So instead he played, for once, the financial game: he grew tall, and when HC turned on the slider, Carthage became the tech leader. And when Free Religion kicked in, and some diplo maluses appeared, he was Pleased-unlocked, and could use his superior military to start a rampage.

Like with Freddie in P2, SB's not doing much in that start (he's been quite bad in the AHs Sullla has run so far) speaks volumes about his capabilities...

Spoiler Championship Game :

View attachment 709517

On this map, considering the diplomatic situation, of course it was once again an HC game.
The question instead is: how come he "only" won half the time?
One word.
Shaka.

Shaka was between HC and Hannibal, and while he often started by taking part of the crusade against Mansa and Charlie, he also as often didn't bother and started by one of his neighbours.
And on a map with a tight timer, being Shaka'd early tends to mean being too late at the finishing line.

Curious how Shaka and Cyrus were able to win games in this ultra economic setup. Also curious if this altered your opinion on the championship map.