Sullla's AI Survivor Season Eight - Playoff Game 3 Thread

[lymond]

Vicky was rubbish.

The issue was he turned off the auto saves completely. Churchill was winning that game. He switched back to each 10 turns. Faster game vs backed up saved game. I think Churchill will win a lot of these games. Double gold and no pressure expansion wise. Such a great start for him.

Churchill has been solid in almost every game but one that I have seen, which was the one game where he did not expand as well. (Vicky almost always gets boxed in by Peri and Church and sometimes a barb city or two...her position really is just not winnable on this map)

Game 5: Last game on stream. Church once again Gallipoli'd Mehmed across that map, which he has done most every game. SB on Qin and Peri on Vicky. By about the medieval age, Qin, Mehmed and Vicky are wiped out. Just Peri, Church and SB remain and they are all fairly even in score and land. Church just attacked SB and has a tech advantage. Peri could attack SB soon too. Peri and Church are both Xtian so pleased locked for now or at least until they adopt Free Religion. At turn 223 it seems anyone's game here but Church is on top and really depends on if he can fight effectively against SB.

Churchill won a fairly dominant Domination victory in Game 5 on turn 305..not a bad date. He wiped out SB(who wiped out Qin), Mehmed and Vicky. Just Peri and Church at the end. Peri had an outside chance to win cultural victory, but Church's spies dropped the diplo below Pleased and Peri stupidly declared on a MUCH stronger, larger, and advanced England.

The first few games clearly showed that Church's Playoff 3 win was no outlier. Vicky just can't seem to get launched and is usually attacked early on by Peri. I doubt she wins any game here in the AHs. I do believe Peri and SB could nab some games though. The funniest trend I saw was Church declaring on Mehmed across the whole map and, if I recall correctly, smushing him every time.

 

[The Rook]

@Eauxps I. Fourgott: Extracted from your recently published Playoff Three Writeup:

However, as time went on, she was not able to keep her momentum. As we've seen from her and many other leaders, especially Financial ones, in the past, she simply stopped expanding at this point. (Is this behavior somehow related to the Financial trait? We often see it from those leaders - like Vicky, Huayna Capac, and Darius - which certainly seems indicative. It's worth some good community discussion.) That lovely settler pump of a capital never built a settler again, instead going for lengthy wonder builds, first Stonehenge and then the Temple of Artemis immediately afterwards.

I have a simple theory for this – the AI just builds what it can. AI build decisions are basically coin flips (partially weighted to their personality). If an AI can only make warriors, scouts and settlers, then the odds of a settler are very high. However, when you add granaries, monasteries, wonders and other choices it massively dilutes the chance of a settler build. I don't think this is specifically a Financial problem, but rather a potential by-product of when an AI has a very strong economy and a resulting tech lead. Obviously, Financial increases the likelihood of this occurring though.