AI tournament: Season 3

[Robert FIN]

I would love to give Burger some respect in terms of wilcard trophy but he screwed up himself and he is far from victory in the last turn. It feels wrong to award Darry but who was better? Pacal? Nappy? Vicky? Not for me.

 

[Gumbolt]

hahaha @ culture win. You would have thought with all those units he could of taken down the greeks.

 

[Timo33]

Yeaaaah Peri

I can't think of giving Darius wildcard, he's been really bad throughout the entire game with Nappy. Charly proved to be better than him, despite making bad decisions. In my opinion Charlemagne should get wildcard

 

[astre]

The only one to deserve a wild card is kossin
in reallity, except for suly and peri, only germany/ spectator did played correctly this game.

If spectator is offlimit , i'd propose to give it to nobody as none deserved it.

Btw, i'm glad peri did the job, he was always in my top II all game long. (The other one moved from pacal to sully, but still)

 

[enKage]

Nap had no chances with totally no commerce land Suleiman took advantage of the best start of any AIs and did weel enough to be a runner-up.

Pacal had no chances, with such a culture start of Pericles. Darius or Charlie - BK had slightly better starting position, and till some moment Darius made his game reaaly well. But not destroying French by Persia gives wildcard to HRE.

 

[pomthom]

Well I guess it would not be fair to not give the wild card to Darius since he would have won if Pericles had lost 1 of hist L cities through war... (although not very spectacular)

 

[Kid R]

Based on the above, and 2 further runs of the same start, I would say
Winner: Suleiman
Runner-up: Pericles
Wildcard: Pacal

Few notes from my 2 runs:

Spoiler :

First game was very peaceful, 2 religious blocks, approximately divided N/S. The bulk of the warfare was between Charly & Sulie, and went on in 2 long spells for most of the game. Charly vassalized Darius early. In the end Sulie won space with Pericles some way off culture.

The second was much more violent. 3 religious blocks - Vicky got Mono and Peri took it too. Again Charly fought Sulie on and off the whole game, but the whole world was at war more than once, with Pacal throwing nukes at Pericles in the end. For all the action the only gains were that Sulie took a city off Vicky and Napoleon took a city off Darius. Pacal also finally took a junk city from Pericles after launching. Oh yes also Charly vassalized Darius again - somewhat later than in the first game and after taking 3 cities instead of 1. The end result of the game was that Pacal won space with Pericles 2 turns away from culture (after running 4 spies and building wealth in his 3rd culture city for the last 50 turns - ).

Impressions:

Napoleon was a non-factor both times. After an early attack on Darius in the first game he then fell too far behind in tech to do anything except join world wars and watch the big boys play.
Victoria bravely kept up in tech for 3/4 of the game both times but otherwise did nothing except try and fail to build the UN once. Maybe her start area ultimately didn't have enough production.
Darius expanded poorly and got capped both times, which all seems a bit odd because on the face of it he had good land, and we know he has good traits. It would be interesting to look more closely at what's going wrong for Darius on this map. (FWIW though, I have never seen him as a particularly strong AI despite being good to play as.)
Charly and Sulie both expanded well but the lie of the land gave them long thin empires with long borders with each other. And fight over that long border they did, even when in the same religion, never gaining anything and no doubt wasting a lot of hammers. Charly was quite impressive in my eyes but he never got anywhere near the domination which would be the only way he could win.
Pericles expanded really well and stayed mostly peaceful in both of my games. In theory he could have won culture twice if the city AI was any good. Not sure whether these performances make him worthy to go through, or should consign him to the rubbish heap for being incapable of winning under virtually perfect conditions. (Edit: I guess 3rd time's the charm as he got there in Kossin's game )
Pacal came next to last in my first game and won my second game. The main difference was that he claimed 3 extra cities in the far-eastern jungle the second time, instead of Nap and Darius sharing that area. Neither time did he get his own religion like he did in Kossin's game.

Definitely 2 decent warmongers and 2 decent peacemongers here. Nap and Vic clearly were gimped by their starts so it's inconclusive on those 2, although does anybody think Napoleon is likely to ever show significantly in these kinds of games??!! As for Darius I would say his performance in my 2 runs casts serious doubt on his skills and I'd vote against him going through as wildcard.

 

[Fippy]

No complaint, but i think every AI would have done bad in most games with Nappy's start land.
Lyons i.e. was bound to happen, cos all that AIs care for are resources of any kind, fresh water and hills maybe..not food
+ there was not much food in his area anyways, some Tundra and desert from what i can see too..

 

[pomthom]

No complaint, but i think every AI would have done bad in most games with Nappy's start land.
Lyons i.e. was bound to happen, cos all that AIs care for are resources of any kind, fresh water and hills maybe..not food
+ there was not much food in his area anyways, some Tundra and desert from what i can see too..

+ loads of forest. And we know the AIs are not very good Canadians

 

[Thrar]

As others said, I also don't think Darius deserves a wildcard. That was just a poor showing, the fact that he randomly decided to go for culture in the end after failing to do anything for millennia shouldn't be enough.

In my eyes, wildcards are meant for AIs that did well but got screwed by the circumstances. In this game, that's either nobody or Charlie, who had some bad luck with geopolitics and his stacks getting stuck.
Since that's partly his own fault though (making peace with Pericles in the first war?), I would prefer not to award a wildcard at all in this game.

 

[vranasm]

runner up suleiman definitely

wildcard dunno... kinda feel like no one deserves with everyone basically throwing the game.

Eh while I am at the topic of throws... what about giving "Clown" award for most hilarious play (without points of course).... I would have to decide between Darius and Victoria... but imo Darius was bigger clown in this game with his nappy war...

 

[Pangaea]

After thinking about it a little more, I think Charlie deserves the wildcard, certainly more than Darius at least. He did mess up badly by in effect declaring on big brother Suleiman, but other than that he did quite well, and was unlucky with Suleiman stealing a few cities. Without that, the vassal could have gone to Charlie instead, and the game perhaps taken a very different direction.

So in my opinion
1st Pericles
2nd Suleiman
WC Charlemagne

If there is going to be a Wooden Spoon or something like that, then Darius thoroughly deserves it for this game. How he didn't manage to stomp on Napoleon, I'll never know.

 

[Aje]

After thinking about it a little more, I think Charlie deserves the wildcard, certainly more than Darius at least. He did mess up badly by in effect declaring on big brother Suleiman, but other than that he did quite well, and was unlucky with Suleiman stealing a few cities. Without that, the vassal could have gone to Charlie instead, and the game perhaps taken a very different direction.

So in my opinion
1st Pericles
2nd Suleiman
WC Charlemagne

If there is going to be a Wooden Spoon or something like that, then Darius thoroughly deserves it for this game. How he didn't manage to stomp on Napoleon, I'll never know.

+1

Still can't belive that Perry pulled through
I thought he was gone when he got the double DOW from Sully & Charly.

It's interesting to see how different the AI play compared to the human.

 

[DanF5771]

What....

What?

What !! is happening !!

Darius lost Chartres to the French. He's got freaking Infantry against Muskets and he can't make progress? Ugh. I give up.

Darius probably couldn't make further progress because France was 'unreachable' behind (closed borders) Maya lands, requiring naval invasions on distant parts of the same landmass?
Iirc stock-AI can't do that so no other leader would have done better here...

Love these, Kossin!

 

[lymond]

Darius should get the boob award

I really don't think there is a "wildcard" in this game.

Great game and thanks, Kos

Looking forward to more

 

[nfw]

I'd give wildcard to Charles simply because his DOW on Solomon was due to the stupid vassal mechanism, which has nothing to do with his AI in particular.

 

[Manco Capac]

Darius should get the boob award

You shouldn't look at two unrelated stuff at the same time. Close your second tab pls.

 

[lymond]

You shouldn't look at two unrelated stuff at the same time. Close your second tab pls.

Actually, I was just looking at my avatar.

No, my avatar is actually supposed to be a face. I only saw your visitor message after you "closed borders" again, so I could not respond to you Open Borders, Tokuwaxon!

 

[Robert FIN]

Hahaha!! Who was laughing to my typos few weeks ago? lymond 1 - 1 me, Robert scores !!

Just joking ! By the way, are we making the C group game next? Waiting for that so when you planned to host it, kossin?

 

[kossin]

Charlemagne as Wildcard seems to get some love, which I agree with... similar to Mansa from Group A.

@DanF
Ahh, good point - I'd missed the closed borders. Nice to see you lurking

~~~

Next up is group C game 1, no ETA as I have a few busy days ahead. I'll try to run a round every two days as time allows.
I have to set up a map first - but like I said previously, I'm open to user submissions for this part.