Game 6
Running these alternate histories quickly made it apparent that the dynamics of the real Game 6 were largely representative of the map’s broader trends. This was a somewhat unusual map mainly characterized by two factors: a rather large continent size with lots of land, and a group of AIs dominated by peaceful builder personalities, with Julius Caesar the only true warmonger of the bunch. As a result of these two factors working together, while the map did see combat, decisive wars were comparitively rare. Results with four or more of the leaders surviving were commonplace, and I even got one playthrough in which none of the seven leaders died! (A first for me.) When tallied up, this game actually had
less total kills than Game 5’s – and that one not only had long stretches of peace, but also one less AI in the field! Conquest was simply not a reliable path to victory on this map, and as a result I think the range of possibilities was a bit more limited. There were certainly some twists and turns along the way but this might be the least interesting set I’ve run so far.
When it came to individual leaders’ chances of success, the single biggest distinction that emerged was which hemisphere of the map the competitors started in. The southern hemisphere had much more available land, while the coast pressed in much more tightly on the north. Now, a lot of this southern land was tundra and ice – but it was still land, and still worth settling for the Deity AIs. As a result, these three leaders had a much higher performance ceiling than the four northern leaders, and went on to take all but one of the victories. They were just too strong; it was nearly impossible for one of the other leaders to come out in front. (It also helped that all three of these leaders had a distinctly useful trait – Creative to help flesh out territory quickly, or Financial to pull ahead economically.)
Of those three leaders, then, Elizabeth and Pericles emerged as the power duo of the map just like in the real game. Liz was the unquestioned economic leader in most games, resulting in a dominant performance, while Pericles was able to consistently expand out to one of the map’s biggest empires and make himself a contender that way, and the two combined for 70% of the map’s top-two finishes. Pacal had a much tougher time than these two thanks to his odd-one-out peaceweight and central start, but in the games where he could get going, he was a serious threat in his own right. As for the northern leaders, Caesar came out looking the best, with moderately successful warring giving him a decent score, while Darius was too cramped to accomplish much, Frederick was his usual ineffective self, and De Gaulle looked just as bad as, if not worse then, he did n the real game.
Spaceship was the runaway winner for victory type on this map. Despite Liz and Pericles being dominant, neither one went for culture more than a couple of times, this seemingly being a field that split the cultural prizes too evenly, so we only saw two wins by that victory type. The map was too big for more than two Domination victories to surface, and the UN was only important a couple of times. On the other hand, I did see quite a lot of wars declared in most games; the AP had a significant presence in this game, often forcing peace or starting unnecessary dogpiles, which helped tick that counter up. There were a few games where the fighting was decisive and I saw only 6-8 wars despite half the field dying, but more often there would be 15+ wars declared. A lot of those wars didn’t actually do that much, mind, and it could often feel like I was just watching squabbles more than real conflicts of note.
Now for a look at the individual leaders:
Elizabeth of England
Wars declared: 38
Wars declared upon: 36
Survival percentage: 85%
Finishes: 12 firsts, 4 seconds (68 points)
Kills: 16
Overall score: 84 points
Elizabeth was the premiere AI on this map, winning over half the games, failing to advance only four times, and scoring the most kills despite her generally peaceful personality. Liz had a dream setup for this map, with a fairly spacious start from which she could expand to a decent size even in the worst scenarios, and facing zero serious military threats in the early game. She leveraged this well and would basically always become the game’s top techer; sometimes others could keep up for a while, but it was rare for her to not pull ahead sooner or later, and then she’d keep going and going until reaching runaway status. Elizabeth’s shadow loomed over the rest of the map, and for somebody else to win, they’d usually need to either put on an exceptional performance or else figure out how to get rid of her.
As mentioned, a big part of Liz’s success was that she was never really threatened militarily in the early game. The only rival she fought early with any sort of consistency was Darius; they fought semi-frequently, and Liz was always the stronger party in these conflicts. On most of these occassions she’d conquer him to expand her empire a little bit (only one of Darius’s deaths did not come from Elizabeth), but in any case she never came out of those fights weaker. Then later in the game, for the most part, by the time she’d get attacked she’d be strong enough to withstand the assault, if not get the better of her attackers. Liz was good at teching Rifling in a timely manner in these games, and with her tech pace, any would-be aggressors would have to work just to fight with her on an even footing – getting a military tech edge against her was pretty much out of the question. Liz was moderately aggressive in these games, declaring the third-most wars, and while she’d sometimes sign peace early she was also fairly good at pursuing her conquests to completion. Plenty of her mid-game wars saw her advance from a winning position to a runaway one.
Even in the games she didn’t win, Liz was usually still an important player and could take second place easily, as we saw in the real game. She only suffered three deaths in the alternate histories; all three came in the late 200’s and required major efforts by multiple strong civs to finally bring her down. (She also ended one more game barely clinging to life, and that was an outlier result where an unusually strong Pacal was able to grind her down solo.) In most of the games, though, she was clearly the strongest overall leader. Interestingly, she almost never pursued a Cultural victory in this set of games despite being prone to it in other seasons; clearly it just wasn’t the right field of leaders for that. She only picked up a single one of those victories, and otherwise would simply keep teching and growing her lead until she reached space (even her one Domination win came just four turns before her spaceship would have arrived). Overall, this game did a great job of showing what Liz can do when she’s actually given a favorable situation. Going into Season 8, she was clearly more than a bit unlucky to have zero wins in her real AI Survivor career.
Pericles of Greece
Wars declared: 33
Wars declared upon: 16
Survival percentage: 90%
Finishes: 4 firsts, 8 seconds (36 points)
Kills: 11
Overall score: 47 points
Pericles’ win in the real Game 6 turned out to be a fairly unlikely outcome, but he was clearly the second-strongest AI on this particular map and deserved his ticket to the playoffs. Pericles occupied the eastern mirror-image of Liz’s strong starting position; while his actual capital was stuck on the coast, he still had easy access to a lot of land in the southeast and was able to use it to grow to a large size in most games. I think the Creative trait really served him well here, helping solidify his claim to these regions and more easily poach captured cities on his borders. Pericles was often in the running for a top-two spot solely based on his peaceful expansion, and further benefited by being nice and out of the way, which combined with his moderate peaceweight to keep him largely safe from attack except by the hapless De Gaulle. Indeed, oftentimes Pericles didn’t do a whole lot in the rest of the game to secure a top-two spot, but was already in a good enough position to compete for it anyway. His quantity of cities was enough to make up for the quality of the Financial leaders’ research and be competitive in tech in most games.
When Pericles did fight, it was most often with De Gaulle, a conflict that, uh, never favored De Gaulle. Pericles was often able to take at least a couple of French cities; even when he didn’t directly fight De Gaulle, his culture could flip the closest cities once they got conquered by somebody else. Pericles wasn’t too consistent in fighting anybody else; his low declaration counter really tells the story here, as he averaged less than 2 per game despite frequently being strong and rarely being under attack himself. He just wasn’t that interested in going on the warpath most of the time. One thing that was quite uncommon was the real game’s result of him conquering Julius Caesar; this conflict was only repeated a couple of times in the alternate histories, and for the most part Greece and Rome were able to coexist peacefully. When Pericles did fight, his results were pretty average. He’d often have a power edge based simply on his bigger and better empire, and gradually leverage that to win the wars. He didn’t do anything particularly impressive or embarassing in his wars, although there definitely were some games where he delayed military tech longer than he should have. For the most part, though, it was pretty unremarkable warfare.
Pericles’ path to victory in these games was to somehow grow stronger than normal and get an edge over Liz. Once this was through an early conquest of France, once through simple very-wide expansion, and once through a lategame conquest of Caesar after having been stronger-than-normal through the rest of the game. Pericles simply outraced Liz to space in one of these three games, but in the other two he ended up going to war with her and fighting for the top spot – these were two of the most exciting games in the set as he was able to work with other leaders to gradually wear the titan down before getting the upper hand and conquering her completely, after which he was the clear winner. Pericles also picked up a fourth win in these alternate histories, pulling out a Diplomatic victory while clearly in second place, and then cleaned up eight additional second-place finishes from games where he did a solid job, but just wasn’t as strong as the leader (usually Liz). Then there were some games where he just didn’t do quite as well, and played an average peaceful game that saw him simply get outscaled. Pericles only died twice in this entire set, both times at the hand of a runaway game winner (Pacal in one case and Liz in the other), though it should be noted he was a bit lucky here as he was nearly eliminated and saved by the bell in one or two other matches. Still, early-game danger for him was nonexistent here.
We clearly saw an unusually strong Pericles in the real game, explained by his rarely-repeated conquest of Caesar that let him pull out in front. While he was still an important player most of the time, he usually played second fiddle to Liz and only rarely eclipsed her. Overall, this wasn’t an especially impressive set of games from Pericles, nothing that revealed any sort of hidden strength from him. He simply was placed in a very strong starting position and was competent enough to get decent results from it. In a broader picture, Pericles does seem to be a lesser leader as he doesn’t have any particular strength, but he at least isn’t embarrassingly incompetent. I’d say this map comes close to representing a best-case scenario for him.
Pacal II of the Maya
Wars declared: 23
Wars declared upon: 83
Survival percentage: 40%
Finishes: 3 firsts, 2 seconds (19 points)
Kills: 8
Overall score: 27 points
Pacal was the final member of the southern trio, and his start had high potential between the abundant available land and his great economic traits. However, in direct contrast to Liz and Pericles, Pacal’s position was anything but sheltered. Instead, he got stuck in a tricky central position, and furthermore was one of the only low peaceweight leaders in a high peaceweight field. His peaceweight is normally a significant asset to Pacal in these games, but here it was a liability instead, and the overall result was the highest getting-invaded rate of anybody in the game. Pacal would usually face invasions from an early date, often from multiple foes, and would resultingly either get crippled or eliminated early on, or else simply set back far enough that he had no hope of competing with a peaceful Liz to his west. He was most assuredly not playing the same game as her.
Pacal usually started his games well, expanding far and wide and often being one of the score leaders early on; the problems only started once he got attacked. The most usual adversaries for Pacal were Frederick and Julius Caesar; Darius invaded semi-often and disastrous wars with Liz and Pericles sometimes happened as well, with De Gaulle being Pacal’s only true ally on this map – and De Gaulle wasn’t able to be much of an ally. When Pacal just fought Fred, he was usually able to perform fairly well and even get the upper hand as often as not, but most of the time somebody else would dogpile him and it would all fall apart. Wars with Caesar were less successful since Pacal had no counter to Praetorians. While Pacal was rarely eliminated all that swiftly (he was only First to Die four times, one of those times quite late in a weirder game), the peaceful bent of this group tended to mean that even in the better scenarios, he’d be too far behind post-war and be permanently set back as a result. Other times he’d lose one or two cities at a time, slowly getting ground down over a series of wars.
To Pacal’s credit, he proved himself capable of performing well on the rare occasions where he wasn’t crippled by early wars. He was competitive with Liz in tech in games where he kept his empire intact, and was able to outtech her and pull out in front to collect wins on three separate occasions. All three of these games saw him either remain entirely peaceful, or else fight only one opponent at a time without a backstab and thus be allowed to complete a conquest and pull out in front. In addition to his three wins, Pacal suffered several near misses: in one game, he finished his spaceship less than 10 turns behind Liz, despite having spent the early game fighting for his life while she teched in peace; in another, he was competitive with Pericles in a space race until a suicide attack by Caesar distracted him enough for Pericles to pull out in front; and in a third, he was in a tight space race with Caesar, only to risk an all-out attack on his rival and get his butt nuked off as a result. Outside of these games, though, Pacal was a weak and bullied civ. He never scored any second-place finishes outside of the two near misses above, and all of his kills came from these more successful outings. Still, on the whole, this was a pretty impressive outing that I think bolstered Pacal’s image as one of the game’s stronger leaders. He was able to convert a difficult position into the third-best performance on the map, and did a lot better for himself than many of his competitors would have.
Julius Caesar of Rome
Wars declared: 79
Wars declared upon: 20
Survival percentage: 55%
Finishes: 1 first, 3 seconds (11 points)
Kills: 12
Overall score: 23 points
This was a poor map for Caesar – there was virtually no way he could keep up economically with five peaceful AIs all at once – but he did his best anyway, and came out as by far the most effective of the four northern leaders. While a true snowball was almost impossible for him to achieve, he was able to get some isolated military successes to pick up a dozen kills and be in the best position to capitalize if two of the three southern leaders managed to collapse. Caesar was able to play the early game pretty competently, expanding fine if never putting together anything really special. Then when it came time to go to war, he would usually choose either the weak De Gaulle or the dogpile-prone Pacal for his first target, giving himself a winnable battle. (He fought Frederick more rarely and saw less success against him, as most of the time the two seemed to be evenly matched.) This was the source of most of his kills, although it does bear noting that there were quite a few games as well where he’d simply stall in his early wars, failing to accomplish much despite his Praetorians and stagnating as a result. Even when he did get the upper hand and score a conquest, though, he’d usually be last in GNP among the remaining leaders (unless De Gaulle was still hanging around) and fall hopelessly behind the tech leader(s) in short order. Most of the time, there simply wasn’t a path to victory.
Still, Caesar could and did hang around a majority of the time by playing smart. While he picked a whole lot of fights over these games, he was decent at avoiding ones that he couldn’t survive, and was able to usually stay friendly with his rivals despite his lower peaceweight (I’m guessing he rolled higher than normal when the map was generated, although his peaceweight is high for a warmonger regardless). In addition to a bunch of Wildcard performances, this allowed him to collect a trio of second-place finishes, in games where Pacal died early, Liz or Pericles killed the other, and Caesar was left as the next-best option. On the other hand, there were also plenty of games when Caesar found himself up against a stronger foe and was eliminated as a result. Any of Liz, Pericles, Pacal, or even Frederick could get it done – it just needed a game where Caesar wasn’t very strong and one of the others got the chance to fight him one on one (or in a dogpile). Caesar only died before Turn 200 once (and suffered the First to Die fate one additional time in an odd game where nobody died for a long time), but he did suffer eight more eliminations after that point. The specific result from the real game, where Caesar attacked Pericles and was conquered as a result, was repeated once or twice here, but was not in any way a common result.
Caesar did have one triumph in this set, though – one game where everything came together right and he was able to properly snowball. This came in a particularly war-filled game, where he was able to come in at the right moments to dogpile a rival and take a good portion of the spoils – first against De Gaulle, then Frederick, then Elizabeth in a global dogpile – to emerge as one of the top two leaders, in a tight space race against Pacal. When Pacal made a bid for glory and attacked him, Caesar was able to get the upper hand (using plenty of nukes), completely eliminate him, and thus collect his only win. While he never came close to the victory in any other games, the fact that he could win at all from this long of odds is pretty impressive in and of itself. These games suggested that Caesar is at least a decent leader, well above the lowest tiers of competition. Others no doubt could have performed better from this position (not least because their skills would have been more suited to it), but Caesar was able to perform solidly despite the deck being stacked against him.
Darius I of Persia
Wars declared: 32
Wars declared upon: 13
Survival percentage: 65%
Finishes: 0 firsts, 2 seconds (4 points)
Kills: 4
Overall score: 8 points
The bottom three leaders were largely hopeless on this map, and luck played as big of a role as anything in Darius finishing as the best of them. Darius was probably stuck with the worst starting position on the map, crammed up against the northern coast on the narrowest part of the continent, with Elizabeth straight to his south. Look at the map for this game and you’ll see that they were competing for the same land between them and to the east… and Darius had nothing else to vie for, whereas Liz had another half a continent to her south free to settle! To further the disparity, Liz had nice temparate terrain around her capital that could more readily be used, whereas a lot of the land Darius could settle was buried in jungle for a far slower start. Thus, Darius was doomed in this direct comparison – a leader with the same economic hat as him was right next door and guaranteed to get a stronger empire. With Liz next door and as strong as she was, there wasn’t room for Darius to flourish on his own.
Even leaving the direct comparison aside, Darius was awfully cramped. Liz, who was inevitably strong in culture, would push up from the south, while Pacal and Frederick loved to try to expand into the far eastern land, and as a result Darius never had room for more than four or five cities in his main area. Sometimes he could expand southwards, stringing cities down towards the tundra in space between England and Maya, but this wasn’t reliably available and the resulting cities weren’t very strong. Darius also didn’t help himself here, seemingly a very slow expander. This could have been partially because of the jungle around his start – not sure – but there were in any case some particularly telling games where he would simply stop trying to expand at just three or four cities, his inertia that fans are familiar with coming into play once more.
In any case, once the landgrab was over, Darius was inevitably stuck near the bottom of the scoreboard, and had no hope of competing with the southern trio (or usually Julius and/or Frederick) who had more land to work with. He could sometimes keep up all right in tech, but that was about it. The good news about his start was that it was pretty sheltered, and thus he rarely faced invasions; he was able to probe at distant enemies with his own (usually ineffectual) forces at his leisure but wouldn’t have to worry about retaliation. The only real danger to him, responsible for six of his seven deaths, was Elizabeth; sometimes she’d attack him and sometimes he’d boldly try to take her down early, but as a direct result of their available land, Liz was guaranteed to be stronger. The best Darius could hope for was a white peace, and more often Liz would conquer his nation and knock him out. Even when this never happened, though, he was pretty much stuck sliding into the wildcard as happened in the actual game. Darius did collect two second place finishes in the very first two games I ran, both games where he managed to expand his territory some against De Gaulle of all leaders (despite their distance, the two fought quite a bit in these games) and thus gain a competitive position for second place. He was genuinely strong in one, later working with Liz to conquer Pacal, but the other relied on him backdooring second at the end of the game, and in both he was well behind Elizabeth in any case. Overall I think Darius is a capable techer who can be dangerous in the right position, but this was the wrong position. It wasn’t really a map where we could draw a lot of broader conclusions about him; he was just handed a raw deal and struggled to perform accordingly.
Frederick of Germany
Wars declared: 45
Wars declared upon: 38
Survival percentage: 65%
Finishes: 0 firsts, 1 second (2 points)
Kills: 5
Overall score: 7 points
Frederick was completely uncompetitive on this map despite enjoying a favorable peaceweight situation, a decent start, and good conquest opportunities nearby. His games in the alternate histories tended to go along similar lines as in the real game: he expanded to a decent size, performed decently in tech but could never sustainably compete with whoever was leading the particular game, didn’t accomplish a whole lot else, and generally survived to reach the Wildcard without coming particularly close to a top two finish. Fred did fight Pacal and Julius Caesar a fair amount, with results all over the spectrum: sometimes they would get the better of him and conquer him (they were responsible for his demise in all but one of his deaths; the last one was an outlier result where Liz attacked him), sometimes he would get the better of his rival, often with assistance (and thus he picked up five random kills across the set), but most often they would stalemate. What never happened was Fred emerging from these wars as a major power or competitor for the win. He did finish in second place a single time; in this game, he conquered a random barb city in a choice location and was noticeably stronger as a result, then worked with Liz to conquer Pacal in the midgame to pull into second place. Aside from this result, though, Fred was just the tagalong kid for the high peaceweights.
The other significant thing to note about Frederick’s performance here was that he displayed heavy amounts of the classic economic leader’s tendency to ignore Rifling research for ages. Normally, it’s a sign of an extraodinarily bad case of ignoring Rifling when a leader techs Assembly Line first – for Fred, it was pretty much his habit! Teching Industrialism before Rifling also happened on multiple occassions, and I’m guessing this is primarily due to the German unique stuff being at those two techs (though Fred’s Production flavor undoubtedly didn’t help either). In any case, I did see at least one game where he went straight from musketmen to panzers. These delays cost him at least one game, where he should have been a generation ahead of Caesar and Pacal in military tech with infantry, but instead was a generation behind, fielding muskets against rifles, and was killed from a solid position as a result. That might be something to keep in mind for any future games where it looks like he might be relatively strong. Overall, though, this was a very telling performance, one that strongly reinforced the narrative of Frederick as one of AI Survivor’s very worst leaders. He can’t hold out in violent fields and he couldn’t keep up in this peaceful one; it seems that victory for him requires particularly narrow and favorable circumstances, and otherwise he’s destined to be an also-ran.
De Gaulle of France
Wars declared: 23
Wars declared upon: 67
Survival percentage: 15%
Finishes: 0 firsts, 0 seconds (0 points)
Kills: 2
Overall score: 2 points
De Gaulle performed exactly as his reputation would suggest in these games: terribly. It wasn’t just that he had a rough start, although this didn’t help either; his very low peaceweight made him quite unpopular in this field, leading to plenty of dogpiles and the very lopsided war counter, and starting next to Caesar and his Praetorians did him no favors. Still, he wasn’t always dogpiled or attacked by Rome right away. There were plenty of times when he had time to get established, and chose his first conflict himself (almost always against Rome or Greece, of course). And he was no more successful in these instances. He could sometimes wrest away a small border city or force a stalemate, but almost never accomplished more than that. His landgrab and especially cultural development weren’t great, either, resulting in him routinely occupying last place on the scoreboard even before fighting. In any games where De Gaulle survived a decent while, he’d end up horrendously behind in tech, hanging around waiting to be knocked off by somebody at some point or other. More often, though, he was knocked out early, by a solo-operating Caesar or Pericles or by multiple leaders working together. De Gaulle was the heavy favorite for First to Die in these games, and his performance in the real game was completely typical.
De Gaulle had exactly one comparatively successful game, one where he managed to backstab Caesar at the perfect moment to conquer him with Pacal and had the highest power rating on the map coming out of that conquest. Despite then backstabbing an already-at-war Pericles, though, he wasn’t able to conquer more than a couple of extra cities, failing to convert his power lead into anything useful and thus settling into a third-place position behind Pacal and Elizabeth. Aside from that, there were two games where he managed to limp to the end alive, and he scored one more kill in an opportunistic strike against a single-city Frederick, and that was it. Overall these games strongly reinforced the idea of De Gaulle being one of AI Survivor’s most incompetent leaders. His start was bad, but it wasn’t
that bad, and he should have been able to make something out of it in some games. Instead, he was just a punchline in this contest, time and time again.
Conclusion
As is becoming the norm for these, the real Game 6 hewed fairly close to the alternate histories while differing in some of the particulars. Pericles and Elizabeth were indeed the two dominant leaders on this map, although it was Liz who normally came out on top. De Gaulle was the usual pick for First to Die, and Darius, Frederick, and Pacal all had mostly-normal games as well. The most unusual aspects were Pericles’ strength, Julius Caesar’s early death, and the Diplomatic ending, all of which were seen in alternate histories, but only a couple of times.
Up next, the game of Russian dominance: Catherine and Stalin’s debuts in Game 7!
