Sullla's AI Survivor Season Eight - Game 4 Alternate Histories Thread

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

Sullla has posted the latest set of alternate histories for the ongoing season, this time completed by Myth for the Game 4! The real game saw a leading Saladin crumple after an expertly-timed backstab, leaving no opposition as Mansa did what he does best and won by Culture without ever firing a single shot, while Alex and Pericles put on the lamest re-enactment ever of the Peleponnesian war. But was this "supposed" to happen?

Writeup: https://www.sullla.com/Civ4/civ4survivor8-4A.html

Short version: We had a true novelty for the Alternate Histories, as Mansa was not only the best, but put up a 100% win rate! It wasn't until the late 20s in unofficial extra replays that somebody else finally came out on top. The combination of the lack of other economic leaders, his comfy corner position, and two meatshields in Washington and Zara turned out to be all that Mansa needed to race out to an early Cultural win time after time, and he was as close as it gets to being guaranteed to win. Elsewhere on the map, the two worst-performing leaders in the real game, Pericles and Saladin, were much stronger in the replays, Sal not crumpling the same way and Pericles ignoring an early religion to his benefit, and so cleaned up almost all of the runner-up finishes. Myth commented that while Mansa's win was a typical outcome for this map, the rest of the real game was not particularly normal.

Discuss below!

 

[Keler]

Lucky mansa always with favorable situations, I bet he wins 20, if not 15 times in Playoff1 too.

Running this AHs must be so dull to watch, but I suppose they used autoplay of debug mode etc.

Pericles wasn't as hopeless as we thought.Not like a total FTD candidate. And Alex capital performed very poorly when I gave it a try my way, it should be even weaker when barbs have archery/overall stronger. Many people totally misread on the Peleponessian end of the map. Washington or Alex were other popular FTDs and both were correct.

At the end of the report it says they continued to autoplay until Mansa doesn't win and it took actual live game + 27th attempt to find where Mansa doesn't win. Can they do that for Game 1 too until when Hammurabi wins in the AHs?

I am a bit dissapointed in Qin here, but Saladin and him fighting all the time each other pretty much explains.

 

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

Lucky mansa always with favorable situations, I bet he wins 20, if not 15 times in Playoff1 too.

The teaser for his playoff game was posted in the Discord the other day, and somebody did have a 75% win rate...

 

[Keler]

The 5 times he lost must be Elizabeth going culture.

 

[Thrasybulos]

This was probably one of the least interesting games prediction-wise: one glancing look at the map was enough to pick the correct winner.

I had Pericles win 19/20 in S6 G1, with Gandhi sneaking a win.
I guess that's gonna be something to look forwards to to break the monotony when replaying those. At least those Culture tend to be fast.

The teaser for his playoff game was posted in the Discord the other day, and somebody did have a 75% win rate...

Well, I'm fairly certain that a 75% win rate on this map is an anomaly (Mansa and Lizzy very close + the odd wins by Gilgamesh, Hammurabi, Pacal).
So either my replays will show that... or prove me doubly wrong.