Sullla's AI Survivor Season Eight - Game 7 Thread

[a pen-dragon]

I think that Liz, Mehmed and Sury being the last three alive will be quite common. If Sury does not play this disastrously all the time I think he will win more than Liz or Mehmed.

 

[Keler]

Here is my Post game analysis

Suryavarman is the absolute representation of snake on the grass, do no trust him

 

[Plains-Cow]

Lizzy Domination ...woulda never bet on that in a million years..wow

It looked like it was going to go dom, but her offense stalled in Ottoman territory and would up being culture. She didn't turn on the slider EVEN ONCE until the turn she actually won it lolol.

I commented (Sullla quoted) about how it's crazy that Elizabeth is going to win this while essentially not even playing (choosing a victory condition) and just going through the tech tree, almost able to get dom, space, or culture just by proxy of being alive and so far ahead.

I also called Mehmed losing his war due to attrition outside of English cities. An AI just can't win with units that are TWO generations behind in military tech, and Mehmed failed to rally any followup stacks in English land.

 

[danjuno]

Sury took woke and immediately took his stupid pills today. What was that? And how did he not die?

Also, holy CRAP, that turning point at London! Mehmed was right there and he whiffed it.

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

Hold my hot air balloon, did I win? Well, tied for first at least.

Keler not far behind, and Lymond appears to have done well too--didn't you pull for Isabella last season?

Well, with Elizabeth's win we lose out on an All-England playoff but instead retain low odds for a championship. Mehmed secures his place in Pool Two, giving all former champions some breathing room before the playoffs. He also displaces the three-way tie for the 16th seed, but Cyrus has yet to play and is likely to be a favorite in the final game. Suryavarman fails to regain his place in Pool One but will have another chance as a terrifying neighbor and 11th leader in the Wildcard Game. Elizabeth's victory propels her 13 places to tie with Victoria, one point ahead of Napoléon and De Gaulle... As Sullla said, it is her first time past the opening round since the first season.

This game just had out of control levels of carnage. The sheer loss of units as Mehmed and Suryavarman relentlessly invaded England was unsettling. I am surprised we did not see a large nuclear attack.

I think Elizabeth and Mehmed both caught a lot of breaks. In a way, this game turned into another "South rolls over the North" map, but I suspect Isabella and Suryavarman will do better in the Alternate Histories. Peace weight really turned against the warmongers in the end-game, where it would have been helpful for Mehmed to annex his neighbor and aim for a rapid-conquest-fueled domination victory.

And while the results place Elizabeth and Mehmed more in line with the Alternate Histories, I think this game was more or less a case of someone has to win

 

[ManiaMuse89]

I think this game was influenced by having some of the biggest unit spammers in the game. The alternative histories will probably have a fair mix of winners.

Mehmed, Suryavarman and Monty all build huge stacks (and quite often secondary stacks unlike some AIs) which made it quite messy during the fighting. I think Mehmed was very close to getting a steamroll going after the landgrab phase. He lost out by being slightly delayed in attacking Elizabeth due to the attack by Monty. I think he could have pushed through still despite the tech difference due to the sheer quantity of units, but Elizabeth was just far ahead in tech and had enough cities to be able to hold on. If Mehmed had beelined infantry and particularly cannons a bit sooner he might have been able to win.

 

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

Exciting game! One of the most so of the season, I think. The Liz-Mehmed showdown was quite something and, pulling for Liz, I had a rather intense time. When Mehmed attacked her the second time and took Kassite, I had to skip to the end because at first I thought her fate was sealed and it would be all green/blue borders on the map - had to get it over with. I went back and watched the whole thing though once I realized I was wrong!

And I disagree with Saxo's assessment, I think Liz and Mehmed both played their games quite well. Not perfectly, of course, and luck was obviously involved as always, but each did a good job and would have been a deserving winner. Even the lesser leaders didn't play horribly this time other than maybe Izzy. Sloppily, yes, but there weren't any disasters remotely approaching what we saw last week.

Overall, I'm quite happy with my assessment on this game and I think I had a pretty good read on it, save perhaps for overestimating Sury.

Worth noting: Hannibal is now officially an unseeded leader once more. It was nice while it lasted! Mao is now on the bubble and extremely likely to lose his seeded status before the season is done! Hard to believe for one of the most consistent playoff leaders in this bunch, but he has only won a single game in the first eight seasons... Meanwhile, Charlemagne zeroed out yet again this season, but he still does require four additional leaders to pass him up in order to lose seeded status. This is definitely possible, but I think it's unlikely; he'll probably hang around in Pool Two for another year.

---

I was thrilled to see Elizabeth pull off the victory! With her joining Mansa and Justinian as opening round winners, it really does feel like a bit of a resurgence of old stars this season. (Can JC or Suleiman or Cyrus keep it going next week?) I think Liz both played well and was lucky in this game. Her path forward was via econ, and overall I think she did an excellent job there. Her start was on the slow side, but I think that was more due to having fairly weak land than anything else. She still wasn't particularly slower than the rest of the field, didn't skip any essential techs for ridiculous amount of time, and was the first to econ milestones like Pottery and Writing. Then once she got off the ground, she was a tech menace and overall did a smart job of prioritization. She hit Rifling in a timely manner and thus was ready to meet Mehmed's eventual attack. She had dodgy diplo here but that was more due to peaceweight than anything else. Ultimately, she was able to hold off multiple attacks and come out in front, able to choose her victory condition at will (and given she spent most of the last 150 turns fighting tooth and nail, I don't think she can be faulted too much for not pursuing a specific one too hard!)

She didn't put a big focus on military, but honestly, I think she had to not in order to have a shot at this game. Her starting position was clearly inferior to Mehmed's to her east, and all else being equal, I think that if you replaced her with a Mehmed clone on this map, he'd have virtually no shot at winning. The military route was simply not going to fly here absent favorable dogpiles; it was instead the right position for a tech game. So she played the tech game, and succeeded. Again, not the most blisteringly fast such game we've seen, but I think iffy starting land was a major factor in that. She played one of the best games from one of the worse starting positions, and so this was a deserving win.

With that said, things certainly went well for her as well and could have been much worse. The big benefit of her position was that Mehmed was the only leader capable of posing a significant threat for much of the game; on the flip side, him as a neighbor was a huge danger with this position, as it was virtually impossible to become friends with him (as we saw on stream) and he was destined to be strong. While somewhat of an oversimplification, I think that Sullla's assessment that her chances of winning turned on whether she was attacked before T200 was overall pretty accurate; even with a major tech edge she struggled to keep the sultan back! There are a lot of ways that things could have gone worse here: Mehmed could have gone after her first, she could have not gotten that barb city close to Spain, Mehmed could have gone on the warpath again quickly after Charlemagne's elimination instead of spending some time building up (thus hitting her before she was ready), Monty could have done a cross-map assault of her instead of picking on Sury/Mehmed, Monty could have left Mehmed alone to attack Liz instead of distracting him for a crucial period, she could have turned on the culture slider earlier and failed to build the same military tech lead, Mehmed could have continued pressing her in their first war instead of signing peace, or Mehmed and Sury could have remained jointly committed to their assault in the 2v1 instead of alternating peaceful periods and keeping things manageable. Most of those events would have spelled disaster and I think that in many, probably a majority, of the alternate histories, things won't go nearly as smoothly for her. On the other hand, something like Charlemagne holding off his attackers for longer might well go better for her in alternate games and increase her odds, so this game wasn't all lucky breaks! I feel like her luck's been less than great across her AI Survivor career; while flawed, she's probably rather better than her past stats suggest, and I'm glad she finally got a chance to show what she can really do here. (It's pretty insane, and I think very unlucky, that she didn't even have a single win before now despite her economic prowess!)

As for our other star, Mehmed played a strong game in his own right but couldn't keep up with the Financial machine to his west. Mehmed has a strong start and leveraged it well with fantastic early expansion, while still managing to avoid crashing his economy, and that put him in a frontrunning position for the rest of the game. His research was never terrible the rest of the time and was clearly better than that of the other major players. He dogpiled Charlemagne at a good time to expand his empire, than expertly weathered Monty's attack and put him in his place as well to become the biggest nation of the map. I don't think this was an especially lucky performance; what was going to go wrong for him, Liz dogpiling him? Not exactly the most likely result. I think for the most part he combined a great starting position with good play. However, he did leave Liz alone for long enough to cost him the win; he fought pretty well against her and put his edge in military focus to full use, and if Sury had been more committed during the 2v1, he might have had a shot. He came very close, but ultimately couldn't quite make up for her tech edge; still, he at least kept the worst of her wrath off of himself, and thus ensured his playoff spot (and advancement into the ranks of the seeded for the first time!) Overall, I think I was right that this was an excellent position for Mehmed, and perhaps even underestimated him here, thinking that on the whole he was more likely to come in second place. Obviously that wasn't a terrible prediction since that happened, but I suspect that in the alternate histories, he'll win the vast majority of games where he knocks Liz out of contention in time.

---

Another section for the others since the first two went on so long. Suryavarman was a disappointment here and extraordinarily lucky to get another shot in the Wildcard. I was right in assessing his starting position as strong; despite his sloppy play, he never faced a serious threat to his survival until very late, and was very close to slipping through to the playoffs anyway. His geopolitical situation on this map was great and partially bailed him out. My read on this game was that his biggest problem was mismanagement of his early economy; poor tech paths and an early crashing of the economy made it take far, far too long to get things up and running, and that cost him the ability to be competitive. The other thing that cost him, of course, was all of the core cities that he lost early on; there was some sloppiness here with light defenses, but overall I'm inclined to take this more as bad luck. A random barb archer coming and killing the warrior garrison of one of his cities can't be a typical outcome, and Monty going from "assaulting Charlemagne" to "attacking a Khmer core city" in less than five turns is hard to react to in a timely manner. Given Sury was in a war at that time, I don't think he can be blamed too much for suffering a sudden alpha strike to his core, and indeed he did a good job of fighting Monty off despite the disastrous start. But that certainly did stunt his development. Taken together, these two factors set Sury too far back to be very relevant for the rest of the game, other than helping Liz by sweeping Izzy off the map quickly later on. His play after that wasn't particularly bad (other than the last attack on Liz, that is), but he was far enough behind that it just wasn't going to work. He's perhaps the most intriguing leader for the alternate histories, as I really have no idea: will he always start this slowly on this map, or can he be a strong competitor in some replays?

Montezuma was greatly entertaining here, with his rapid-fire attacks on both Sury and Mehmed making me chuckle... while also possibly being quite important! Of course, he went all-in on the attack too early for it to consistently work; it was quite impressive that he was able to make so much progress against Sury's core at first, but ultimately he couldn't sustain the assault and devoted too many resources to pre-Catapults attack, and there was no recovering from that; he just crashed himself and Sury at the same time. Later, the attack on Mehmed was utter suicide but may well have bought Liz enough time to make the difference between a win and an elimination. Farewell, Monty, it was a fun ride, but also a good demonstration of why you're terrible at this competition.

Isabella may have played the weakest overall game here. Her expansion was absolutely terrible and that largely marginalized her from an early date; the only things she did very well were spreading her religion (admittedly important to this game, although Liz's overall stronger economy still far outshone her monk economy) and defending against Sury early on. That defense was pretty impressive and, ironically, quite possibly was part of saving the game for her later-enemy Elizabeth; a weaker Izzy and stronger Sury probably turns that lategame conflict against the English. However, her poor opening (quite possibly largely due to pretty yucky local territory, to be fair) pretty much ruled her out of playing any more important part of the game; it would have taken something really crazy for her to have a shot at top two. Thoroughly unimpressive.

Finally, Charlemagne suffered an early exit not due to a disaster of a game by him, but rather due to an ordinary substandard game punished by a terrible diplo situation and some rotten luck. His early game wasn't great; econ was slow, research choices were iffy, settling wasn't as good as it could have been. But it wasn't horrible, and I think he could have recovered with a more sheltered position. However, I think I was very right about his bad diplo in this game. The light southern defenses and initial lack of metals caused Monty and Mehmed's early attacks to be very successful, but no matter how initially successful those were, I think they would have still served to cripple him, dragging him down enough for him to fall out of contention for the win. An early 2v1 with two strong militaristic neighbors simply isn't going to work out well. Thus his weak opening sped up his ouster, but I don't think it turned a good position into a bad one; he was doomed either way and I expect this to be true in most alternate histories. Burger King isn't a great leader, but I do think he's suffered an inordinate number of early attacks across his AI Survivor career, and that's been a major reason for his dry streaks in performance. As for the lack of metals, I think that was bad luck as much as anything; probably not likely to recur much in the AHs, and he himself didn't do anything wrong here except delay BW/IW research a bit long. Sury was honestly trolling him a bit with some of those aggressive plants.

---

Final note: playoff implications. All three playoff games are now guaranteed to be at least half full of higher peaceweight leaders! A first for this series and we'll see how that pans out. (Mansa Musa two-time champ, anybody?)

Sury probably is a relatively good leader for the Wildcard but there's no telling for that game until we see the map.

Liz might well be exactly what Mansa needs to make it through Playoff One. I don't think her position there will be great; Pacal to the south isn't aggressive but could still be a problem, and I expect a warmonger to take the final spot to her west, which won't be too good. Her position won't be as sheltered as it was here. (On the other hand, if Augustus manages to take that spot, then suddenly she has great odds.)

Mehmed doesn't have very goods odds of making it to the Championship, I think, unless he manages to ride coattails. His starting area is pretty yucky. Who makes it through the mess of a Wildcard to neighbor him to the east could also be very important.

 

[Fippy]

Just saw Pacals unbelievable capital in the first playoff game

 

[NickGabben]

Just saw Pacals unbelievable capital in the first playoff game

Is that the one with plains cow, wet corn and double gold? And some horses thrown in on top for good measure? Looks like a standard HOF start

 

[danjuno]

If Sury could crap the bed on his start this game, Pacal's more than capable of crapping that one.

 

[AcaMetis]

No starting position survives contact with the Civ IV AI .

 

[Thrasybulos]

So, my read on this game, pending AH results, remains largely unchanged : every leader has a shot on this one.

But, if I were to guess at the most common scenario ("most common" here being far from "very common" : 25-30% range ?)...

Live game outlier aspects :

• Charlie not getting a religion.
• Charlie totally whiffing on metal access.
• Elisabeth being left alone.
• Elisabeth popping Copper.
• Monty getting the Copper spot next to Istanbul (but low-impact event).
• Sury losing a city to the barbs (on the other hand, he shouldn't have had that city in the first place).

Live game standard aspects :

• Mehmed expanding well and being strong.
• Sury botching his early game and being weak (I think he was actually stronger in the live game than he'll be in the AH : no holy city culture to contend with, getting a city spot that should have been Spanish, getting that Iron + Ivory spot next to Charlie).
• Monty starting the first war vs Charlie, Sury and Izzy at war.

So, how would a "standard" game go ?
Charlie does expand towards Sury, and pops a holy city there. That religion ultimately spreads to Mehmed, so no early conflict there.
Mehmed gets the Copper immediately to his East, putting him in "can plot" mode a tad sooner.
Monty starts the first war, vs Charlie, except Charlie is protective and has metal : the war is a stalemate with Monty suffering bad losses.
Lizzy skips Iron Working for ages, triggering Mehmed into an opportunistic assault, and that goes badly for the English : by the time she gets Iron access, she's lost core cities, Mehmed has reached critical mass and is on his way to Construction.
Sury joins the war against Charlie but Monty immediately peaces out and declares on Mehmed.
Except it isn't an actual 2v1 : Lizzy is on her way out. Mehmed may lose a coupla border cities, but he's much stronger at that point than Monty.
If Mehmed turns his armies towards the Aztecs, Monty is FTD. But most likely he'll finish off Lizzy first.
Isabella declares on Sury who peaces out with Charlie.
Holy Rome takes advantage of the reprieve to build up their economy, then joins up with Mehmed in the latter stages of the conquest of the Aztecs, nabbing some cheap prizes.
At this stage, the Ottomans are by far the strongest and largest civ on the field (20ish cities).
Holy Rome is the second largest (10ish cities), but with a much better economy.
Spain has the second best economy, but lacks cities. The Khmer are lagging. Their war ends, inconclusive.
Then Sury, still looking to expand his territory, attacks Charlie (or the other way round). This time the war has a conclusion : the Khmer are gone.
Mehmed and Izzy also get into a fight, resulting in Spain becoming Ottoman land.

So only Mehmed and Charlie are left. Bigger Mehmed, more advanced Charlie.
And I think that Charlie is big enough that the "more advanced" gets to trump the "bigger" more often than not.
Whether the game ends up in a Domination win (shared religion dropped) or a Spaceship win, Mehmed wins some, but Charlie wins more.

In conclusion, I believe the live game to be representative of the most common scenario... just with Winner and FTD in reverse positions !

 

[Keler]

I wouldn't count on Charly advancing fast
No way he out techs Mehmed, who solo ate Elizabeth.
AH winner is probably going to be Mehmed. With 6 victories probably.