Got sidetracked on this for a couple of days, but here are my results for Game 2. I'll post Game 3 as well in just a moment.
Original writeup:
https://sullla.com/Civ4/survivor2.html
The original Game 2 had been the breakout performance of one of AI Survivor’s superstars, Mansa Musa, and the alternate histories proved that this was no accident. Mansa dominated these games, winning a majority, securing a top two spot fully 80% of the time, and beating the next closest competitor by 55 points – that’s eleven first place finishes’ worth! More on this below, but Mansa was given a favorable position in this game, and as quite likely the game’s best pure economic AI, he took full advantage. He would usually take the lead at a fairly early date and then never look back. These weren’t backdoor cultural victories with a small empire; Mansa was winning these games from a dominant position. (In fairness, he was also undoubtedly helped by the pre-Season 4 setup that gave the free Deity starting techs to everybody, thus losing one of his biggest handicaps in the modern competition.)
Aside from Mansa, this turned out to be a remarkably wide-open game. Despite there being only seven games not won by him, five of the other six leaders still won at least once, and after watching these alternate histories, I really believe that any of the seven could have come out on top. Certainly some leaders did better than others and some had only a very small chance at victory, but each leader did have SOME path to a win, which I don’t feel is always the case. It made for an interesting set of games to watch for sure. Sometimes who did better or worse would be determined by initial settling; sometimes by where and when the wars broke out. This plus Mansa’s dominance also made for some tight spreads in scoring among the remaining leaders; just seven points between third place and seventh, and just one between the last two. It was certainly a big contrast to Game One where half the field could be safely written off.
The other general note I have about this game is that it had a rather fast tech pace. The game was usually being won somewhere right around turn 300 – the real game ended up being slower than the average – and an overwhelming majority of games were won via the space race, with just four Cultural and two Domination victories. Oftentimes this could be attributed to Mansa’s economic prowess, but even when he wasn’t the winner, someone else would step in and do just as impressive of a job of finishing the tech tree. The big map and fast tech pace meant this wasn’t the game to try to conquer everybody, and while I did see quite a lot of cultural attempts, they usually couldn’t keep up with the tech either. The real game’s Diplomatic ending was a complete fluke, as well; nobody won via the UN in any of the alternate games.
Now for a closer look at the individual leaders:
Mansa Musa of Mali
Wars declared: 37
Wars declared upon: 50
Survival percentage: 85%
Finishes: 13 firsts, 3 seconds (71 points)
Kills: 20
Overall score: 91 points
Mansa really ruled the roost on this map. He had a great starting position: some of the best land around his capital of any leader, a wide-open peninsula to expand into, no really close neighbors, and only three rivals that he was likely to border, with one fairly weak and the other two likely to attack others first. As a result, he often would peacefully expand to a larger size than anybody else, and rarely faced significant danger from anybody else attacking him, seldom facing two-front wars and often getting to largely tech in peace during the early game. Anybody who’s familiar with Mansa’s AI performance knows that this is a recipe for him to quickly pull far ahead in technology, and that’s what happened in many of these games. Mansa would take the score lead somewhere in the area of Turn 100 and then expand on his lead from there until he won the game. If anything, his performance in the real game was a relatively weak one! Every single one of Mansa’s wins came from first place – he didn’t just take the prize, he was clearly the best-performing AI in these games.
Once Mansa got to around the era of rifles, he was usually unstoppable, and he became a dangerous foe indeed after this point. Sometimes somebody else (usually Mehmed or Justinian) would foolishly try to attack him with inferior technology; they’d learn their lesson the hard way as Mansa almost invariably started storming through their territory. Other times, once he’d assumed a dominant position, he’d decide he didn’t care for a rival (again, usually Mehmed or Justinian), blitz them, and wipe them off the map in the blink of an eye. Mansa often fought with a military tech edge – it was pretty common to see him attacking rifles with infantry and tanks, or sometimes even more lopsided contests. Being a rival of Mansa’s in the late game was quite the frightening prospect, and he defied expectations for a peaceful leader by amassing the most kills of anybody on this map, an even average of one per game, as well as declaring nearly two wars per game. He still was attacked more often than he attacked others, but this was no Gandhi or Hatshepsut. As far as how he won, Mansa almost always went for the spaceship victory. Unlike on some other maps, he rarely pursued Culture here (likely because there were so many other religion-focused AIs founding Holy Cities of their own, which as we’ve learned has a major effect on whether the AI pursues Culture), and usually he’d had his fill of conquering (or simply won by space) before he hit the Domination limit as well. He could have easily won more games by these methods, but simply didn’t choose to most of the time, and in particular going for Culture made it more likely that somebody could slip past him at the end of the game.
So how did Mansa not succeed on this map? Sometimes, he just didn’t get out to as strong of a start, and couldn’t pull ahead in tech like he normally did, eventually falling behind. Sometimes he recovered from slow starts to win anyway, but there were a couple of times where he never did, like in Game 9 where he was out-econ’d by Zara, or his elimination in Game 4 where he was closer to the pack than normal, refused to tech Rifling for ages, and thus got killed by a Mehmed who had no such issues. (Mansa usually teched Rifling plenty early in these games – this wasn’t as much of a problem as we’ve seen for other peaceful leaders in the past – but this was an exception.) There were also a few times where he performed well, but was outdone by a rival who had played an exceptionally strong game – Justinian in Game 14 and Roosevelt in Game 18, although Mansa was in a close second place in both games. Mansa’s other two eliminations in Games 13 and 19 came as a result of him being dogpiled early on, for an actual early exit in the former case and a weakening he couldn’t recover from in the latter. Finally, Game 20 had a wacky ending where Mansa was the runaway, only to pursue a Cultural victory and see Hatty beat him to that condition by about 80 turns. This all added up to enough non-wins to keep these replays interesting, but even when he didn’t come out on top, Mansa was always a significant player. Overall this map was an excellent chance for Mansa to showcase his economic skills, and provided one more lesson as to why he’s such a dangerous player in these games.
Justinian I of Byzantium
Wars declared: 58
Wars declared upon: 34
Survival percentage: 65%
Finishes: 2 firsts, 4 seconds (18 points)
Kills: 18
Overall score: 36 points
Justin finished second in the original Game Two, and backed that up by putting up the clear second-best performance in the alternate histories. While he didn’t quite have the second-best rate of securing a top-two spot, doing that in only 30% of games, he did still put up the second-strongest overall performance and narrowly came in second to Mansa in total kills. Justinian had a much less open starting position than Mansa’s, but it was still one from which he could reliably expand to a solid size, and its position in the corner of the map kept him safe from most aggression from the bigger civs out in the west. Justin also was the only civ on the map to start with Mysticism tech, and he leveraged that to found Buddhism in every single game. The Holy City culture from that would frequently be a significant help in claiming land for him, although there were a few places where that second city would go and he would sometimes put it on the coast where that culture went to waste.
The real strength of Justinian’s position came when it was time to fight and try to conquer more land. Justin benefited from bordering two of the weakest AIs on the map: the perpetually small Roosevelt and the chronically inept fighter Hatshepsut. He fought early with at least one of these two leaders in virtually every game, and he won the war almost every time, whether by fully conquering his rival or simply taking some cities and then signing peace. The gains from these wars tended to keep Justinian relevant – in particular, all of his eliminations came after Turn 200 – and conversely Hatty and Roosevelt’s low survival percentages were largely a result of him frequently weakening or killing them. He could almost never coexist peacefully with them, and only three times did he survive alongside one of the two: a single game where both he and Roosevelt survived in good condition, another where Roosevelt mostly conquered him but let him off the hook with just a few cities left, and a third where Justin conquered most of Hatty before being distracted by a backstab. There just wasn’t enough space out there in the east, and somebody had to go. Justin and Hatty in particular were almost always founders of rival faiths and at each other’s throats for that reason, much like we saw in the real game.
Where Justinian really struggled was in keeping up with the rest of the map. He frequently had one of the game’s worse economies, was rarely able to keep peace with Mansa, and also struggled to beat out Zara and, in the rare games where they prospered, Mehmed and Roosevelt. It wasn’t uncommon for him to emerge from a war with Hatty or Roosevelt with significant territorial gains, only to still be stuck in fourth or fifth place because he’d gotten too bogged down in those wars and not fought efficiently enough, and so be out of the running for a win and sometimes even for second place. Justinian also did die seven times and ended two additional games on death’s door; usually this was at least partially a result of fighting a technologically advanced Mansa late in the game, but there were also three matches where his neighbors did manage to get the upper hand on him and knock him down without Mansa’s help. Justin’s path to victory was to get out in front early and ride an early lead to a win; he did this in Game 11 off an early partitioning of Roosevelt, and then in Game 14 where his economic game was unusually strong and he conquered Egypt and (bizarrely) the Netherlands en route to a narrow win over Mansa. Otherwise, Justinian played fairly well, more consistently than most of the crowd, and had a significant mark on this game, but he clearly didn’t have the best starting land, and that resulted in his successes being only sporadic.
Zara Yacob of Ethopia
Wars declared: 34
Wars declared upon: 32
Survival percentage: 65%
Finishes: 0 firsts, 7 seconds (14 points)
Kills: 9
Overall score: 23 points
Zara has the dubious distinction of being the only leader on this map to win zero of the alternate histories. On the other hand, he still was the leader most likely to advance outside of Mansa, thanks to racking up seven second-place finishes across the alternate histories. All but one of these finishes came behind a Mansa win, suggesting that Zara was an excellent junior partner to the Malian leader. The two rarely fought, although there were a few games where they did come into conflict and each was at least partially responsible for the other’s ouster at least once. Zara had an interesting central position on this map but did a good job of filling it out; his empire would usually be fairly large, but very wide, with a long northern front and cities far to the east and west. This usually equated to a fairly strong score and one of the better economies aside from Mansa. Zara was a leader to be reckoned with, not easy pickings; most of his relatively rare eliminations came late in the game, and he was only First to Die once.
On the other hand, he struggled to actually convert this position into strong performances and couldn’t get out in front on his own. Zara’s path to success was to work with another leader to partition a third party; all seven of his second-place finishes saw him do this at some point, whether attacking Mehmed, Roosevelt, or Hatshepsut. (One outcome that rarely occurred was Zara and Willem fighting. His early attack on the Dutch in the real game was a true oddity.) Unfortunately, he was only getting part of the spoils this way, failing to snowball enough or get out to a big enough size to compete with Mansa over in the west – hence all the second-place finishes. Even though Zara was the only leader to win none of these games, I do think he was a bit unlucky in this regard and certainly had the possibility of coming out in front. He suffered two very close losses in these games: one where he was about to narrowly beat Mansa to space, only to see Mansa go on the warpath and tick over the Domination threshold first; and another where his spaceship was beaten out by just 5 turns by a Hatshepsut Cultural victory. If either of these games had gone a little differently, Zara would have won, and I’m confident that he’d eventually pick up a gold medal if I ran enough of these. But it clearly wasn’t likely.
Perhaps the most telling statistic about Zara’s performance is his low number of kills. He had half of Justinian’s total despite surviving the same number of games, and less than Mehmed despite advancing over triple the number of times. It’s true that he also wasn’t fighting as much to begin with, but overall these numbers (and the dynamics of the games themselves) suggest that Zara just isn’t that effective of a fighter. We’ve seen his reputation diminish over the years since his astounding performances in the rest of Season One, and these results suggest that this is no accident. Zara isn’t great at fighting or economy, likely a below-average leader who was once in the right place at the right times. He’s far from being totally impotent but we’re unlikely to ever see him nearly winning a season again.
Mehmed II of the Ottomans
Wars declared: 54
Wars declared upon: 49
Survival percentage: 40%
Finishes: 1 first, 1 second (7 points)
Kills: 13
Overall score: 20 points
Mehmed was the only true warmonger personality on his map, and his stats reflect that reality. He fought in more wars than anybody else, had by far the highest ratio of kills to survived games, but only finished in the top two twice as he usually couldn’t keep up in tech with every single peaceful leader. Mehmed’s central position in this game gave him enough room to expand and access to easily attack almost any leader; he most often fought with Zara and Roosevelt in the early game while clashing with Mansa more often in the lategame. Mehmed benefited from having a weak Roosevelt next door; he’d often be at least partially responsible for the American leader’s demise, and the games that Roosevelt made it through never ended well for Mehmed – he only survived one, and that with only a few cities left to his name. This helped beef out his territory a bit more, and up until the era of muskets he was usually one of the top leaders. He would often tech Gunpowder at an early date and get good use of his Janissaries while their bonus was relevant.
The big problems for Mehmed came later in the game, though. He simply could not manage his economy properly – from a rather early date he’d usually have fallen laughably behind in GNP, and the results would make themselves felt by the Renaissance as his foes would be able to tech rifles, or more advanced units, well before he could. Mehmed only died once before Turn 200, but he was eliminated an additional eleven times after that point, showing how he’d fallen behind and exited as a late casualty. This fate most often came at the hands of Mansa like we saw in the real game, and there were several occasions where Mehmed attacked Mansa just a bit too late and lost only due to his inferior technology. Mehmed’s central position also proved quite hazardous at times; he was just one war behind Mansa for being attacked the most of any leader, and he was first to die five different times thanks to getting dogpiled or backstabbed.
For a long time I thought that Mehmed’s economic weakness doomed him here, and that it wasn’t possible for him to pick up a win. However, he finally proved me wrong on the second-to-last game and showed that he too had a path to victory. This game saw him get off to a stronger start than normal, snowball off conquests of Roosevelt and Hatshepsut while Justinian and Willem kept Mansa down with two-front wars, then slam his army into Mali at a critical moment to kill Mansa and put himself in the driver’s seat to win. This game notably saw none of the high peaceweight leaders survive; it seems this was a necessary condition for Mehmed to not fall behind in tech. His lone second place finish came in a similar scenario, where it was just the three low peaceweights left and Mehmed had a slight lead in a space race, only to lose to a cultural bid by Willem. These results suggest that Mehmed is strongest when paired with other warmongers, where his economic struggles are less of an issue. Put him with a bunch of economic AIs instead, and he’s simply not effective enough of a militaristic leader to usually come out on top.
Roosevelt of America
Wars declared: 23
Wars declared upon: 40
Survival percentage: 30%
Finishes: 1 first, 4 seconds (13 points)
Kills: 3
Overall score: 16 points
Roosevelt had the most binary outcomes on this map; he was first to die eleven different times, including in a staggering 9-game streak, but on the other hand he took a top two position in all but one of the games where he did survive. This can virtually all be chalked up to his starting position; Roosevelt had a very cramped position with neighbors on all sides, which meant that all of the land around him would invariably fill up quite quickly. He didn’t do himself any favors in this regard either, frequently being one of the slowest AIs to expand thanks to prioritizing wonder builds and whatever else instead. The result was that he could rarely have more than five or six cities, which usually was less than anybody else. This issue was then compounded by two of his neighbors, Justinian and Mehmed, both of whom were almost always bigger and stronger and one of whom would usually come after him fairly early in the game (or, in some cases, come slamming back into him after he’d made an ill-advised war declaration of his own). Roosevelt usually couldn’t hold out against this assault and would eventually succumb, leading to his frequent early eliminations. It also wasn’t uncommon to see him in multi-front wars, and while a less common occurrence, Zara did attack him several times as well.
However, on the rare ocassions where he wasn’t roughed up early, Roosevelt could be surprisingly competitive thanks to the quality of his land. Roosevelt’s starting position lay in a fertile floodplains region, and he’d usually have at least two cities with lots of the wetland to work, plus a third site with double gold resources. As a result, his early economy was generally one of the best, and he would often be keeping up with the leaders in tech before getting knocked down in his wars. When he wasn’t killed early, whether due to his neighbors being more merciful or him getting help from an ally, he was able to leverage this economic strength to eventually become the premiere leader in the east of the map. Note that all four of his second-place finishes came behind Mansa; Roosevelt was growing stronger at the expense of the other leaders, but his small early size and need to split his conquests with partners prevented him from being able to catch up to the Mansanator.
There was one exception, though, the unusual Game 18 where Roosevelt led from an early date. The opening to this game saw Justinian send his Holy City into the northern tundra, Roosevelt plant his second city aggressively in Justin’s direction, and America thus control the entirety of the river valley between the two, when normally Justin’s culture covered at least some of this region. A rougher game than normal from Mansa allowed Roosevelt to maintain a lead until he teched Rifles and conquered portions of both Mehmed and Justin’s land, and he leveraged that to narrowly win a spaceship victory. Thus things needed to line up just right for Roosevelt to come out on top, but it COULD happen! Overall this was an impressive performance from a normally underwhelming leader. Roosevelt had a tough position, but when he was able to get off the ground he proved up to the task of leveraging its benefits and finishing well. Someone who dies first in over half the games scoring this well is quite the feat, but he pulled it off here.
Hatshepsut of Egypt
Wars declared: 18
Wars declared upon: 43
Survival percentage: 30%
Finishes: 2 firsts, 0 seconds (10 points)
Kills: 1
Overall score: 11 points
This game was, to me, an excellent showcase of just why Hatty is the last leader to score any power points in AI Survivor’s history. She had a solid starting position in this game and only one rival whom she commonly clashed with, but still couldn’t accomplish anything of note in 18 out of 20 games. Hatty did a solid job of developing her empire early and was usually one of the better researchers in the early game, but as far as converting this advantage to a strong finish? It almost never happened. Hatty’s path to success in these games was to go unmolested for the whole game, then flip on the culture slider and squeeze out a victory this way. To be fair, this strategy did work in two of the four games where she tried it, and she was just five turns away from beating out Roosevelt for a third win. If nothing else, she was at least clearly ahead of Willem in the culture game. On the other hand… she didn’t even get to try this in 80% of games, and if she couldn’t do this, she couldn’t do anything of note.
The big problem was that Hatty is simply terrible at fighting. She and Justinian were virtually guaranteed to come to blows in this match, as they’d almost always found rival faiths and both took this VERY seriously. There were only two or three games in the entire set where the two could share a religion and become friends instead. And when the two did come into conflict, Justinian won almost every time. Regardless of their relative strength, Hatty simply could not gain ground against him; most of the time her best-case scenario was stalling him out long enough for peace. I even watched one game where Hatty was fielding infantry and tanks against Justin’s rifles, and STILL lost! She just does not know how to fight! To be fair, she usually did a good job of holding out for a while in these conflicts, and was only first to die twice, but she was unable to get the upper hand, and that ultimately would prove fatal. There were only two games where Hatty came out on top; one was Roosevelt’s win, which saw Justinian hamstrung and Hatty beat him to rifles by a significant margin, only to take ages and ages to conquer just two border cities before Roosevelt and Zara plowed in and did the rest. She also once successfully 2v1’d Justinian with Mehmed’s help, and this led to one of Hatty’s two cultural wins. Her other cultural win came in a rare game where she never fought Justin. There were other games where she avoided getting knocked down by Justin – only to get attacked and killed by Mehmed or Zara instead. This wasn’t a super hostile map for Hatty (in particular, I don’t believe she fought her neighbor Roosevelt once across the entire 20 games!), but she did have to do some fighting in order to get through… and she could almost never handle the fighting.
This match paints a clear picture of Hatty as an AI Survivor contender that I think matches what we’ve seen across the rest of the competition. Hatty is good at culturing in situations where she is left entirely alone. However, as we know, this is an extremely rare occurrence; in most cases a leader is going to have to face a hot war at some point or another. And when Hatty has to do so, she’s one of the worst leaders in the game. Hatty lives a very dangerous life in these games, and as of post-Season 7 it’s never worked out for her – but at least she CAN cash in on the occasions in which it does.
Willem van Oranje of Netherlands
Wars declared: 39
Wars declared upon: 15
Survival percentage: 50%
Finishes: 1 first, 1 second (7 points)
Kills: 3
Overall score: 10 points
Willem was by far the biggest disappointment on this map. I’d thought going into these games that his early First to Die result in the real game was a fluke, and in this I was proved correct: Willem only died before Turn 200 once across the alternate histories, and never was the first to die. His position was quite sheltered, he went completely unattacked in many games, and Zara’s early attack in particular was an extremely unlikely result. He had the freedom to build and tech in peace for long periods at a time, and for a Financial leader who’s commonly regarded as one of the best techers in the game, this surely would translate to some excellent performances, right?
Wrong. Willem could never get in front of the economic game on this map; at his peak he’d usually be keeping pace with the weaker leaders in tech, while being soundly outpaced by Mansa or Hatty or even Roosevelt. After some analysis, I’ve concluded that this must be mainly a result of his starting position, which was indeed a quite weak one. There were a lot of low-food tiles, almost no food bonuses of any type, and almost no rivers either – thus leaving his cities stuck at relatively low sizes without any really commerce-rich tiles to work. But even in the couple of games where he was able to break out of this area, he didn’t fare significantly better. Once he took most of Mansa’s core in a 2v1 war, but still couldn’t keep pace and finished second to a strong Justinian in the east. Another time he expanded out to a far larger size than normal and seemed poised to finally have his big game… only to still fall behind in research to a Mansa who had less cities, before getting solo conquered by Mehmed like any other game. (There was also a game where Willem backstabbed Justin while up infantry, trapping him in a two-front war, and still could barely manage to take three cities. His fighting was not good in this game.) Willem survived to the finish in half of these games, and scored points in exactly three of those. Even Hatty had a better conversion rate; for a Financial/Alive leader, these results were simply embarrassing.
Willem did still have a path to victory, though. His one win saw all of the high peaceweight leaders eliminated, paving the way for him to get a Cultural win ahead of Mehmed and Justinian. He came close to doing the same thing in the only other game where those three were the final three, but couldn’t pull it off in time. Willem tried for cultural wins in a number of other games as well, but was never close to success in any of those; in this map against a lot of religious or culturally inclined leaders, he wasn’t able to assemble an effective culture machine, and in particular Hatty would be well ahead of him in any games in which both of them were attempting this win condition. Overall, this was a performance to make me wonder if Willem just got lucky for two seasons, made everybody think he was the bee’s knees, but is truly a mediocre leader who’s simply outclassed much of the time. I need to see alternate histories for more of his less successful games – this may just have been a rotten setup for him – but it may not be entirely coincidence that he was a nobody for the first three seasons of AI Survivor. [Edit from the actual posting of this writeup: I've looked over Willem's other alternate histories and honestly still am not sure what to think of him! This game was clearly at the lower end of his performance due to a bad setup, but I still don't have a good read on his true threat level.]
Conclusion
In some ways, and especially in the broad strokes, we saw a quite typical outcome for the real Game 2. Flip Hatty and Roosevelt and the leaders even finished the alternate histories in the same order that they finished in the real game! Mansa was the normal winner for this game, Zara and Mehmed and Justinian would all often be major players with Mehmed dying late, and the other three were usually also-rans. The game length and number of wars were also fairly typical. On the other hand, other specific aspects were fairly unusual: Willem as the first to die and the Diplomatic victory were both total fluke results, and Zara was significantly more likely to come out in second place than Justinian. So while this was far from a crazy game, it certainly did have its oddities.
This game was also the one that firmly hooked me and got me addicted to the alternate histories. They're a significant project, but I have a lot of fun watching the different scenarios unfold and tracking the bigger competition as teams rack up points from game to game. I'm now in mid-Game 8 in these, and don't plan to permanently stop any time soon!