Sullla's AI Survivor Season Eight - Championship Thread

[Keler]

What a game, but unfortunately it is also The END, always a bit sad for events like this to come to an end

At least there will be some AHs to be released.

As for map review,

-I think the map is a lot bigger than what it should be. Maybe tentacles can be trimmed for next tournament and so capitals moved closer to center part be redesigned. I will happily give this map a test with its current form though
I think this overall favors space over culture as I predicted earlier. I would like to have my own results where I compare victory condition percentages for this and older championship map later on.
-This map punishes conquests and favors teching a lot, breaking the balance in scale in that direction. No way should Augustus be this badly penalized
this badly for solo conquering entire China... this wouldn't be this extreme of a case in other normal pangeas. Can be debated. But what I see is everyone one teching everything in the tree, Augustus fall like 20 techs behind and after his double land size he was just able to protect his 20 tech difference instead of catching up.

As for game review,

Big events of the game started as Niani of Mansa Musa razed by barbarians then followed up by Gandhi barb city snipes and getting away with it.
I think that random barb captures such as Parthia and that painful Gepid (again?(appeared in oppening round game of Darius or Playoff 1 above Hammurabi iirc? ) villain city name of the tournament) had huge impact in tech speed rate as Gandhi's culture crushed all his neighbours except Elizabeth.

For war counts,

There were far less wars than I expected, I would still guess 7-8 wars would happen. Churchill did nothing and constantly get pleased lock. There were no cross map wars on Qin or even Mansa Musa too. Would the maintanece cost become so high if they did?

 

[Fippy]

Hmm i thought the large amount of resources was a bigger problem.
Most AIs had size ~20 cities everywhere.
They were literally unable to settle any bad cities.
~10 cities seems okay..but on other maps they are forced to settle "fishing villages" and stuff like that too.

 

[ManiaMuse89]

Hmm i thought the large amount of resources was a bigger problem.
Most AIs had size ~20 cities everywhere.
They were literally unable to settle any bad cities.
~10 cities seems okay..but on other maps they are forced to settle "fishing villages" and stuff like that too.

The Elizabeth hanging gardens build was a bit ridiculous.

 

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

Even once we have alternate histories, it will be difficult to fairly judge the map based on this field. Mansa and Liz and Gandhi all present makes any non-economic game difficult to pull off on almost any map.

 

[Keler]

I would have wanted tip of those capital peninsulas tundra and ice so there weren't any valuable backlines.
We can try tests with other leaders but I don't see domination happening on this map often enough. %5 probably.

 

[Fippy]

But you can replace those with Pacal, Darius, HC, Willy, even Hatty if she wouldn't be so constantly unlucky.
On a rich map they are in little danger cos they will get better units so quickly.
Warmongers are already unlikely to have much success..on this map even less so imo.

 

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

Well, I'll post any thoughts I have on the map balance itself that comes from the AHs, and we can start a discussion from there if desired.

The contrast is amusing, though, because the current Discord conversation is rather anti-shrinking the map.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Standard AI Survivor maps have usually total 63-64 cities at the end of the game for 6 civs.
But as mentionned, a lot of those cities are low-quality fishing villages.

I still have doubts about the suitability of the map.
But once it's made available, I'll be able to run tests of my own on it, so I'll reserve further opinions until then.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Everybody forgetting that Liz literally COULDN'T tech Stealth before Composites was amusing.

Was about to post that.
That's why it's usually a good thing when they keep Composites for last.

Gandhi forgot to build Stasis Chamber.
GG

Wasn't watching, only listening, so I can't tell whether the Statis Chamber was actually left unbuilt or not.
But the AIs definitely do sabotage parts in the end game.
So maybe he did not forget to build it at all. Maybe even Mansa sabotaged it (since he really disliked Gandhi).

 

[The Rook]

I tied with @The Rook / Plaincow

Wish I'd picked 5 turns faster.

I wish Mansa had just one more turn to force his way into 2nd place (I'd picked Liz for 2nd).

@Kaitzilla - it seems we are tied once again, this time at lucky 13th. Well lucky for me, it's EXACTLY where I finished last season too.

Also, well done to @civac and @Saxo Grammaticus for their good scores in today's game and to @SittinDown for their strong finish in the overall contest. Very impressive final average of 12.57 for @Thrasybulos too!

Finally, many thanks to Sullla for that last shoutout today, but much more importantly for hosting Season 8!

 

[danjuno]

Ironic that Gandhi easily wins this game if irrelevant Church doesn't declare on him

Churchtroll the Troll King pulls his greatest troll of all!

 

[ManiaMuse89]

Was about to post that.
That's why it's usually a good thing when they keep Composites for last.

Wasn't watching, only listening, so I can't tell whether the Statis Chamber was actually left unbuilt or not.
But the AIs definitely do sabotage parts in the end game.
So maybe he did not forget to build it at all. Maybe even Mansa sabotaged it (since he really disliked Gandhi).

I have noticed weird things at the end of games where AIs randomly flip incomplete spaceship part builds around cities for no apparent reason.

 

[Thrasybulos]

That reason is sabotage.

 

[a pen-dragon]

My rule of thumb for this is that if there is an AI less than pleased on the same continent that has some espionage points something will be sabotaged. Also they can support about one sabotage (of a completed part) every 2-10 turns depending on the situation.
With Gandhi nuking everyone I would not be surprised if the others would have been able to set back his spaceship by 10 more turns.

I have never had an AI that was pleased with me sabotage my spaceship.

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

Well, then, some thoughts on how the leaders did.

I was disappointed with Qin's slow start to the game. What with Agriculture, one would think he could easily settle toward the center. Not only did he avoid farming resources with his first settle, he was the only AI to commit to his backlines. The early barbarian city would have been more of a problem had he settled like the rest. He proved to be the worst case on the island of simply lacking the basic economy to even think of competing with the tech leaders. While the Great Lighthouse helped, and he did settle the coast, there was no catching up for him. The other big issue was inefficient tech choices. When Augustus invaded, Qin could clearly have researched Cho-Ko-Nus. Even though Qin lost his first two cities fairly quickly, his lasting influence proved to be wrecking Augustus' game by drawing out the war for ages.

Augustus expanded well and did the best out of the three in terms of rapid expansion and a serviceable economy. He attacked a coreligionist with nearly zero diplomatic repercussions, and did so with an opportunistic push. Unfortunately, he did not execute the war cleanly, and perhaps bringing siege would have given him a tidier invasion. Nonetheless, he emerged in the late game as the default candidate for second. Maybe if he had just built score at home he could have been Runner Up. Unfortunately for him, his backwards tech invasion of Gandhi left him irrelevant.

Churchill expanded well, in my opinion, but suffered economically such that he couldn't quite claim the center where he needed to. He basically needed to turtle all game just to get rifles, but he did research Rifling in line with the tech leaders. Obviously invading Gandhi didn't help, but it's not like Churchill was remotely in the running for second at that point. He illustrates potential issues with the map. Whereas Augustus had Imperialistic to expand, Churchill and Qin had to choose more between expansion and economy.

Mansa Musa had a clean game with really two flaws in my opinion. First, losing Niani was a haunting setback that proved particularly memorable during the competitive space race. We know AI leaders do not lose cities that often, so this was probably bad luck or a moment of incompetence. Second, he plotted once without declaring war. Again, in tight tech race, just shifting cities from research to units for ten or so turns can give away an edge. That said, he suffered no penalties to being a religious pariah, and his dogpile on Gandhi came too late to matter. Dogpiling Qin or just attacking Gandhi a few turns earlier could have secured second place.

Gandhi, what's not to like? We got to see religious hegemony, nukes, and a global pariah! On a map where we saw real potential for competition over religions, Gandhi's early one became dominant and profitable enough for him to not only expand but also support distant conquests of the barbarians. It's too bad he didn't have enough Holy Cities to go Cultural, but he showed some glimmers of brilliance on two occasions. The greatest in my opinion was rapidly militarizing when it seemed likely Elizabeth was plotting against him. Gandhi rapidly made up his military tech deficit to dissuade the other tech leaders from invading. Of course, this didn't stop Churchill, but Gandhi secured enough land to take a substantive lead over the competition for second. His downfall ultimately was also the warring. While his nuclear doctrine turned the world against him, all of his military endeavors clearly came at the cost of a very early space victory. At war with all but one of his neighbors, his score cratering, Gandhi just didn't have enough to win but he did get second place by 30 points.

As for our new champion Elizabeth she also played a clean game like Mansa Musa but nearly jeopardized it with her late-game plotting. While Elizabeth did not ultimately invade Gandhi or any of the other leaders, this deviation from pure research put her in a precarious position relative to her neighbors. Her Spaceship victory benefited immensely from Gandhi's warring and the sabotage of his space program in light of his nuclear war crimes. It also came on the wings of a sweeping Golden Age that proved fitting for her traits and historical person.

 

[Fippy]

Gandhi has always been entertaining, didn't he start the first war last season?

 

[AcaMetis]

Gandhi last season was having a weirder day than he did during this season's championship, from what I recall.

 

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

I should be starting to run the Alternate Histories for the finale in the next couple of days. Anybody have specific requests as to an aspect of the game that you want me to specifically keep an eye on and note?

 

[Thrasybulos]

Whether Qin being comparatively so weak was a bug or a feature: when Sullla said "As expected, Qin is FTD", I thought "Hmm, no: him being FTD was indeed largely to be expected, but it didn't happen as expected at all! Everybody thought he's suffer a major dogpile, not be solo-conquered early!"

Whether everyone but Gandhi ignoring religion for so long was a fluke or not.

Whether 3 good techers + two Industrious leaders not among them + super rich map does mean that Space is much more frequent than Culture (I expected that, but was that a good read or just luck?).

 

[danjuno]

How often does Ghandi go for space instead of culture?