Eauxps I. Fourgott
Victoria's Valkyries
- Joined
- May 16, 2024
- Messages
- 275
I had fun with that this time, but it was also exhausting. I think I'm only likely to be live for one more game max this season, and I don't mind that at all.
Sullla's AI Survivor Season Eight - Game 5 Thread
- Thread starter Saxo Grammaticus
- Start date
Eauxps I. Fourgott
Victoria's Valkyries
- Joined
- May 16, 2024
- Messages
- 275
But the playoffs!
Turning Culture off might also have AIs running the slider hopelessly and killing their games for no reason, right? I think it's a dimension that needs to stay.
Fippy
Mycro Junkie
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2013
- Messages
- 14,645
Oh just ignore me on that 
I got bored of them, that also comes from playing deity myself for ages.
Long before i managed to win any other victory condition (besides AP which is really silly), i could get culture.
Almost every time i tried, and while it's entertaining for some time i knew those are not real deity victories.
If AIs want them it's even easier with all their bonuses, look how fast they can get from ~10k
to victory.
I got bored of them, that also comes from playing deity myself for ages.
Long before i managed to win any other victory condition (besides AP which is really silly), i could get culture.
Almost every time i tried, and while it's entertaining for some time i knew those are not real deity victories.
If AIs want them it's even easier with all their bonuses, look how fast they can get from ~10k
to victory.
Eauxps I. Fourgott
Victoria's Valkyries
- Joined
- May 16, 2024
- Messages
- 275
All right, let's take a look at the Seeding Watch! Not much this game, though.
Ramesses II and Brennus both add to their point totals, but are still far short of a seeded position.
Darius I is not able to bolster his position at all, but still needs 7 AIs to overtake him to lose his Pool Two spot. Probably unlikely?
Pacal II continues to move up the ranks of Pool One, now the #4 seeded leader overall. He is now the first leader to make the playoffs in six different seasons! He also ties Kublai, Cyrus, Churchill, and Mao for the most career second place finishes with 5.
As for fuller game analysis:
Quite a game! Lots of incompetence which as usual made for a wackier, overall more fun match. I think those of us who thought nobody dying was feasible on this map were absolutely correct. We came pretty close here and I'm confident it will show up in the alternate histories at some point. Overall I'm pretty happy with my reads on them, as I think most were pretty good. (@Fippy wins on the cultural victory question though!)
I was a relative Ramesses believer, but even I didn't really expect him to win. But this showed convincingly that his position was not as bad as some people thought. With good city placements he absolutely could be competitive in land quantity and quality as we saw. Ramesses then went on to move into a winning position by something that was partially lucky, partially his own choice, and partially facilitated by his out-of-the-way start: sitting out of the initial bloodletting. While everybody else lost many men to no purpose, Ramesses built up his civ, and it put him in a position where even warring ineffectively and chasing culture overly early wasn't going to cost him the game so long as nobody called him out on it. And nobody did. It was a bit of a messy game even from him (avoiding culture and working on his tech lead would have given him a much safer position) but he still had one of the best performances and the culture victory was totally earned. So he's back in the playoffs! His position there has some promise, too...
I think it's clear that Pacal played the best game of this bunch. Not the early game, sure, which was as slow as us doubters expected (I think I read his poor situation well, but overestimated his competition), but his recovery from that point was nothing short of miraculous, especially after losing a core city to Darius's first strike, I thought he was a dead man walking. He turned it around, though! He was super super lucky to have multiple leaders willing to trade him metal, but then he avoided losing any more cities for more than a couple of turns at a time; squeezed out everything he possibly could after getting peace; did a fantastic job of developing his cities to super size; later on established the clear military tech edge; and ultimately took action at the end, attacking Hatty to put himself in the playoffs instead of sitting back and going to the wildcard. Obviously not the best performance ever, as I think he could have easily won if he was more proactive, but he certainly earned his (sixth!!!) playoff spot and proved why he's a Pool One leader.
And that start in the playoffs! Pacal starts with Mining and will have double gold at his capital. He also has a plains cow, and his closest neighbor is Hammurabi. If he doesn't make his fourth Championship from that start, it will be a major failure. I also suspect that the new championship map favors economic leaders, so could this be Pacal's year?
On the other hand, this game was a return to the Darius we all know and... know. After a strong outing last season, he was right back to incompetence here. That landgrab was terrible, and to his credit, he did seize on his one chance to still contend in this game by attacking Pacal... but he only took one city, and then stagnated while Pacal built back. Pacal probably had better land, true, but Darius should have gotten more. Darius is the biggest question mark for me in the alternate histories: how typical was this performance, and is he a good pick to win the map that failed in the real game, or just a dud? It will be interesting to find out. That northern barb city certainly did him no favors. Personally, I think Darius has to be one of my favorite leaders in AI Survivor, because he can snowball ahead economically like nobody's business - or he can completely fail to show up and play like a buffoon. You never know which version you're going to get, and that makes for a more interesting competition!
Hatshepsut was finally going to get her first points... and then had them swiped away at the last moment. Her continuing zero-point status gets more and more ridiculous each season! I think I had a decent read on her position, with Brennus's proximity preventing her from running away with things, but she did fight back better than I'd expected... but still not well enough. Her loss here is clearly her own fault; she was fighting Brennus one-on-one for ages, with comparable if not better tech and a clearly better territorial base, and in the end was able to take and hold exactly one city from him. I'm a bit surprised he never broke through and took one of her core cities. She is just so bad at fighting! This is a major reason why Hatty still has zero points, she just cannot hold her own in a hot war and it sinks her time and time again. The early attack on Asoka was also completely lunacy and an attack on Brennus or Pacal instead might very well have made the difference here. Of course, the other reason she still has zero points as that she doesn't roll good starts that let her stay isolated; I think she could have easily won if she and Ramesses had swapped positions. Overall I felt this game was extremely on-brand for her, a strong early game that fell apart once she had to fight. But since her main opponent was as weak as she was, she got to stay competitive for a long time this time, at least. Going for culture was also a big mistake, letting her fall definitively behind in tech/power. That's a big issue for the AIs that like to pursue that condition...
Asoka had a pretty quiet game and I feel like I read his position well. He didn't have enough space to become a major power, there were enough other peaceful AIs that he couldn't get significantly ahead, economically or culturally, in this game, and he was too peaceful to go to war to carve out a position for himself. Not the right setup for him to advance, but a good one to get him to Wildcard. Not much else to say about him.
Finally, I do still think that Brennus's odds of winning on this map were little to none and more than one win in the alternate histories for him would be a great surprise. The only way he beats this economic field is to snowball hard, and he's not that good of a warmonger - plus his early tech choices undermine him severely. In this case he was able to get by fine, since his main opponent was Hatty, but on the other hand... he never was able to capture anything from Hatty except for a couple of remote outposts. For a warmonger against one of the biggest featherweights in the game, that's pretty embarrassing. Bad setup for Brennus and I think he got one of his best outcomes from it.
Last note for the game: we now have nine leaders in the Wildcard! Higher PWs currently hold a 5-4 numbers advantage over the lower PWs, for what that's worth. The current record for largest WC field ever is 11 leaders, and we still have three games left in the opening round. At least 12 leaders need to die in the next three games for us to not break the record. Can we do it! I'm feeling a big wildcard for this season!
Ramesses II and Brennus both add to their point totals, but are still far short of a seeded position.
Darius I is not able to bolster his position at all, but still needs 7 AIs to overtake him to lose his Pool Two spot. Probably unlikely?
Pacal II continues to move up the ranks of Pool One, now the #4 seeded leader overall. He is now the first leader to make the playoffs in six different seasons! He also ties Kublai, Cyrus, Churchill, and Mao for the most career second place finishes with 5.
As for fuller game analysis:
Quite a game! Lots of incompetence which as usual made for a wackier, overall more fun match. I think those of us who thought nobody dying was feasible on this map were absolutely correct. We came pretty close here and I'm confident it will show up in the alternate histories at some point. Overall I'm pretty happy with my reads on them, as I think most were pretty good. (@Fippy wins on the cultural victory question though!)
I was a relative Ramesses believer, but even I didn't really expect him to win. But this showed convincingly that his position was not as bad as some people thought. With good city placements he absolutely could be competitive in land quantity and quality as we saw. Ramesses then went on to move into a winning position by something that was partially lucky, partially his own choice, and partially facilitated by his out-of-the-way start: sitting out of the initial bloodletting. While everybody else lost many men to no purpose, Ramesses built up his civ, and it put him in a position where even warring ineffectively and chasing culture overly early wasn't going to cost him the game so long as nobody called him out on it. And nobody did. It was a bit of a messy game even from him (avoiding culture and working on his tech lead would have given him a much safer position) but he still had one of the best performances and the culture victory was totally earned. So he's back in the playoffs! His position there has some promise, too...
I think it's clear that Pacal played the best game of this bunch. Not the early game, sure, which was as slow as us doubters expected (I think I read his poor situation well, but overestimated his competition), but his recovery from that point was nothing short of miraculous, especially after losing a core city to Darius's first strike, I thought he was a dead man walking. He turned it around, though! He was super super lucky to have multiple leaders willing to trade him metal, but then he avoided losing any more cities for more than a couple of turns at a time; squeezed out everything he possibly could after getting peace; did a fantastic job of developing his cities to super size; later on established the clear military tech edge; and ultimately took action at the end, attacking Hatty to put himself in the playoffs instead of sitting back and going to the wildcard. Obviously not the best performance ever, as I think he could have easily won if he was more proactive, but he certainly earned his (sixth!!!) playoff spot and proved why he's a Pool One leader.
And that start in the playoffs! Pacal starts with Mining and will have double gold at his capital. He also has a plains cow, and his closest neighbor is Hammurabi. If he doesn't make his fourth Championship from that start, it will be a major failure. I also suspect that the new championship map favors economic leaders, so could this be Pacal's year?
On the other hand, this game was a return to the Darius we all know and... know. After a strong outing last season, he was right back to incompetence here. That landgrab was terrible, and to his credit, he did seize on his one chance to still contend in this game by attacking Pacal... but he only took one city, and then stagnated while Pacal built back. Pacal probably had better land, true, but Darius should have gotten more. Darius is the biggest question mark for me in the alternate histories: how typical was this performance, and is he a good pick to win the map that failed in the real game, or just a dud? It will be interesting to find out. That northern barb city certainly did him no favors. Personally, I think Darius has to be one of my favorite leaders in AI Survivor, because he can snowball ahead economically like nobody's business - or he can completely fail to show up and play like a buffoon. You never know which version you're going to get, and that makes for a more interesting competition!
Hatshepsut was finally going to get her first points... and then had them swiped away at the last moment. Her continuing zero-point status gets more and more ridiculous each season! I think I had a decent read on her position, with Brennus's proximity preventing her from running away with things, but she did fight back better than I'd expected... but still not well enough. Her loss here is clearly her own fault; she was fighting Brennus one-on-one for ages, with comparable if not better tech and a clearly better territorial base, and in the end was able to take and hold exactly one city from him. I'm a bit surprised he never broke through and took one of her core cities. She is just so bad at fighting! This is a major reason why Hatty still has zero points, she just cannot hold her own in a hot war and it sinks her time and time again. The early attack on Asoka was also completely lunacy and an attack on Brennus or Pacal instead might very well have made the difference here. Of course, the other reason she still has zero points as that she doesn't roll good starts that let her stay isolated; I think she could have easily won if she and Ramesses had swapped positions. Overall I felt this game was extremely on-brand for her, a strong early game that fell apart once she had to fight. But since her main opponent was as weak as she was, she got to stay competitive for a long time this time, at least. Going for culture was also a big mistake, letting her fall definitively behind in tech/power. That's a big issue for the AIs that like to pursue that condition...
Asoka had a pretty quiet game and I feel like I read his position well. He didn't have enough space to become a major power, there were enough other peaceful AIs that he couldn't get significantly ahead, economically or culturally, in this game, and he was too peaceful to go to war to carve out a position for himself. Not the right setup for him to advance, but a good one to get him to Wildcard. Not much else to say about him.
Finally, I do still think that Brennus's odds of winning on this map were little to none and more than one win in the alternate histories for him would be a great surprise. The only way he beats this economic field is to snowball hard, and he's not that good of a warmonger - plus his early tech choices undermine him severely. In this case he was able to get by fine, since his main opponent was Hatty, but on the other hand... he never was able to capture anything from Hatty except for a couple of remote outposts. For a warmonger against one of the biggest featherweights in the game, that's pretty embarrassing. Bad setup for Brennus and I think he got one of his best outcomes from it.
Last note for the game: we now have nine leaders in the Wildcard! Higher PWs currently hold a 5-4 numbers advantage over the lower PWs, for what that's worth. The current record for largest WC field ever is 11 leaders, and we still have three games left in the opening round. At least 12 leaders need to die in the next three games for us to not break the record. Can we do it! I'm feeling a big wildcard for this season!
Saxo Grammaticus
Clerk
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2021
- Messages
- 893
I liked that Ramesses went hard after the later religions and translated that into victory. It was surprising to see him fail to make more progress against Asoka given his overwhelming multi-dimensional lead and numerous opportunities. My guess is he will do well in the Alternate Histories. Even without the whole river valley, his backline proved valuable, as Eauxps you mentioned.
Likewise, I agree Pacal played a good game. The quick war against Hatshepsut to nab second place seemed very on-brand. I also appreciated his recovery from not just the seafood start but also disadvantageous early conflict. It seems likely he would get that much land in the Alternate Histories, but I also suspect he will not hold up consistently against early conflict.
Oh, Darius... I wonder if his land was illegible. It occurred to me he might settle the tundra, but I honestly thought he would go for the corn. His core settles just seemed like one missed opportunity after another. He even seemed proficient at expansion last season. And while an early peace to consolidate gains in the first war made sense, he just could not consolidate his bilateral lead when he had one.
Hatshepsut played a competitive game, but lacked the focus to navigate the hostile neighbors. I understand attacking Asoka from a strategic perspective, but exposing her strong start to a 2v1 basically tabled the Cultural-Victory-in-a-corner. I suspect Brennus refused to make peace, leaving Hatshepsut unable to peacefully tech/build, while Ramesses enjoyed more peacetime. One diplomatic success was sharing religion with Pacal, which essentially limited both of them to single front wars through the mid-game. Unfortunately, declaring on her coreligionist betrayed that understanding. I think Hatshepsut can war effectively, but the AI tends to do much better with an advantage than at parity.
I liked Asoka's performance. He responded to being boxed in with repeated aggression--great--and maintained a competitive tech lead despite significantly reduced resources. He could be dying a lot more in the Alternate Histories!
Despite his very underwhelming start, Brennus impressed me in terms of diplomacy. He managed to switch religions twice, which shielded him while he warred against Hatshepsut.
Overall, I wasn't all that confident in any of these leaders heading into the game, but I am leaning toward viewing Ramesses as significantly undervalued. I agree the first playoff game is shaping up to be rather interesting!
Likewise, I agree Pacal played a good game. The quick war against Hatshepsut to nab second place seemed very on-brand. I also appreciated his recovery from not just the seafood start but also disadvantageous early conflict. It seems likely he would get that much land in the Alternate Histories, but I also suspect he will not hold up consistently against early conflict.
Oh, Darius... I wonder if his land was illegible. It occurred to me he might settle the tundra, but I honestly thought he would go for the corn. His core settles just seemed like one missed opportunity after another. He even seemed proficient at expansion last season. And while an early peace to consolidate gains in the first war made sense, he just could not consolidate his bilateral lead when he had one.
Hatshepsut played a competitive game, but lacked the focus to navigate the hostile neighbors. I understand attacking Asoka from a strategic perspective, but exposing her strong start to a 2v1 basically tabled the Cultural-Victory-in-a-corner. I suspect Brennus refused to make peace, leaving Hatshepsut unable to peacefully tech/build, while Ramesses enjoyed more peacetime. One diplomatic success was sharing religion with Pacal, which essentially limited both of them to single front wars through the mid-game. Unfortunately, declaring on her coreligionist betrayed that understanding. I think Hatshepsut can war effectively, but the AI tends to do much better with an advantage than at parity.
I liked Asoka's performance. He responded to being boxed in with repeated aggression--great--and maintained a competitive tech lead despite significantly reduced resources. He could be dying a lot more in the Alternate Histories!
Despite his very underwhelming start, Brennus impressed me in terms of diplomacy. He managed to switch religions twice, which shielded him while he warred against Hatshepsut.
Overall, I wasn't all that confident in any of these leaders heading into the game, but I am leaning toward viewing Ramesses as significantly undervalued. I agree the first playoff game is shaping up to be rather interesting!
Keler
Prince
Hatshepsut is just as undervalued as Ramesses. After all that game ruining events, she was still the first to tech divine rights.
I think these live games always get bugged fighting outcomes, Mehmed got stuck vs Tokugawa last season..
Kubilay Khan got stuck vs Churchill for all game..
Today many of these wars has no major logic for being a stalemate.
There was no reason for Ramesses to not destroy Asoka, and rest of the wars seemed like one side should have eventually won 1v1.
I never see something like this in autoplays. There seems no logic for why they can't peace out. Any game mechanics in that regard?
Overall Hatshepsut is a faster ai for culture victories than Ramesses.
I will stay tuned for alternative histories after season ends.
I think these live games always get bugged fighting outcomes, Mehmed got stuck vs Tokugawa last season..
Kubilay Khan got stuck vs Churchill for all game..
Today many of these wars has no major logic for being a stalemate.
There was no reason for Ramesses to not destroy Asoka, and rest of the wars seemed like one side should have eventually won 1v1.
I never see something like this in autoplays. There seems no logic for why they can't peace out. Any game mechanics in that regard?
Overall Hatshepsut is a faster ai for culture victories than Ramesses.
I will stay tuned for alternative histories after season ends.
urbestfriend
Warlord
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2014
- Messages
- 166
I do think sometimes they struggle to sign peace because of the lack of tech trading. I wish civ4 had an option to disable tech trading in peace but enable it only in peace deals. I think that's why they give away cities in peace deals so often. If they have no gold and really want to sign peace, and find themselves calculating they are losing by .1%, giving up a city is the only thing they can do.
I think some of the other things you are noticing are various biases though. Or not considering larger picture. Yes in theory Hatty should win culture faster than Rammy. But she had a much worse practical situation. Yeah in theory Rammy should have crushed Asoka in war. But Rammy just doesn't build many units and the AI is much better at defense.
.
Eauxps I. Fourgott
Victoria's Valkyries
- Joined
- May 16, 2024
- Messages
- 275
Sullla has already confirmed that he's running alternate histories for this game!
Fippy
Mycro Junkie
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2013
- Messages
- 14,645
My conclusion on Hatty who did scoreboard lead for almost the entire game:
Good builder AI (bit like Mansa without financial)
Unit building isn't the problem here imo, despite often being mentioned first..we saw her high on power several times.
But this AI like several others (Augustus comes to mind first) has problems with forming them into big stacks and focusing on one target city.
We saw her running around with split & smaller stacks all game..which means they all get cleaned up eventually, and no city capture stays in her hands.
All AIs can run into that problem, but it's especially visible when they have "low courage".
Good builder AI (bit like Mansa without financial)
Unit building isn't the problem here imo, despite often being mentioned first..we saw her high on power several times.
But this AI like several others (Augustus comes to mind first) has problems with forming them into big stacks and focusing on one target city.
We saw her running around with split & smaller stacks all game..which means they all get cleaned up eventually, and no city capture stays in her hands.
All AIs can run into that problem, but it's especially visible when they have "low courage".
The Rook
King
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2007
- Messages
- 782
4 winners in a row.
Justinian, Sitting Bull, Mansa, and Ramesses.
It will be less easy for Plains-Cow to pick first place in game 6 as we have 4 potential winners (Stalin, Gandhi, Joao and Napoleon)!
Plains-Cow
Best Resource; Always Wins
I have made a new thread! Let me know if anything needs to be edited or changed:
Sullla's AI Survivor Season Eight - Game 6 Thread
Sullla's AI Survivor Season 8 continues this Friday, July 19th on Sullla's Twitch Channel at noon EDT. AI Survivor returns this week with a field ranging from peaceniks to warmongers to those in-betweeners that like to make-or-break games; there's quite some hype about these AIs. Joseph Stalin...
forums.civfanatics.com
Eauxps I. Fourgott
Victoria's Valkyries
- Joined
- May 16, 2024
- Messages
- 275
I was rewatching an old season and came upon this gem from nine years ago. But it sounds like it could have been from last week!
clips.twitch.tv
LCSullla - Wise advice for the future, later to be ignored
Watch LCSullla's clip titled "Wise advice for the future, later to be ignored"
clips.twitch.tv
Similar threads
