Sullla's AI Survivor Season Seven - Game 5 Thread

[The Rook]

Really? I thought you said you just started picking as an entrant for this season as Plain Cow midway?

My post actually said "mid-season 5" (that's back in 2020). Plain Cow even won a picking contest that year (I think game 8). In season 6 Plain Cow entered every game, had several top 3 finishes and ended quite highly in the final standings. Sullla keeps the historic Survivor table forms on his site, so you could verify this if you want.

Season 5 tables
Season 6 tables

Although I never watch the games live, I do always follow the games afterward. So I know that Plain Cow has been mentioned a few times before by Sullla and in the chat. I'm 99% certain that when you arrived in the streams this year Sullla and co would have naturally assumed "Plain Cow and "Plains-Cow" were one and the same. After all, what are the chances of there legitimately being two persons who independently came up with almost identical names.

You might be shocked that Plain Cow exists, but look at it from my perspective. The CFC civ4 forums have been low traffic for years. What are the chances that:

1. In 2022 a new Plain(s) Cow user signs up.
2. The user happens to be a vocal member of CFC.
3. Sullla starts a new season of Survivor.
4. This new Plains-Cow is a Survivor fan.
5. Plains-Cow watches and participates in Sullla's live streams
6. Plains-Cow even infers to Sullla that "Plain Cow" is the imitation.

I didn't think there would be ANOTHER cow appreciator here. Where did you get the name?

I wasn't lying when I said I chose Plain Cow to be distinctive, as at the time I believe it was original. I'm actually surprised the name wasn't taken sooner, as the resource seems to carry a fair amount of notoriety among elite players (as I'm sure you know).

Edit: Just to clarify, Season 5 was my debut as well as Plain Cow's (I've never entered as The Rook). I was very slow to follow Survivor, even though I've been playing cIV since release. The great thing is Sullla's site has links to every stream since season 2. So if you are suffering Survivor withdrawal, there's tonnes of original material if you are new.

 

[Plains-Cow]

My post actually said "mid-season 5" (that's back in 2020). Plain Cow even won a picking contest that year (I think game 8). In season 6 Plain Cow entered every game, had several top 3 finishes and ended quite highly in the final standings. Sullla keeps the historic Survivor table forms on his site, so you could verify this if you want.

Season 5 tables
Season 6 tables

Although I never watch the games live, I do always follow the games afterward. So I know that Plain Cow has been mentioned a few times before by Sullla and in the chat. I'm 99% certain that when you arrived in the streams this year Sullla and co would have naturally assumed "Plain Cow and "Plains-Cow" were one and the same. After all, what are the chances of there legitimately being two persons who independently came up with almost identical names.

You might be shocked that Plain Cow exists, but look at it from my perspective. The CFC civ4 forums have been low traffic for years. What are the chances that:

1. In 2022 a new Plain(s) Cow user signs up.
2. The user happens to be a vocal member of CFC.
3. Sullla starts a new season of Survivor.
4. This new Plains-Cow is a Survivor fan.
5. Plains-Cow watches and participates in Sullla's live streams
6. Plains-Cow even infers to Sullla that "Plain Cow" is the imitation.



I wasn't lying when I said I chose Plain Cow to be distinctive, as at the time I believe it was original. I'm actually surprised the name wasn't taken sooner, as the resource seems to carry a fair amount of notoriety among elite players (as I'm sure you know).

I see! What are the chances? Did you choose it based on the resource? Most CFC members seem to just go with their forum names. I wonder how many other posters use aliases for the picking contest!

I did tell Sullla that I'm the one with the dash, that we're different people so he doesn't delete "Plain Cow" as a duplicate. I never checked the past spreadsheets, and when you said you're posting as Plain Cow, I figure you liked the name/resource, too and just started sometime this season. I never saw you in other threads, either.

If you never make it to a live game, then I'll do my best to represent BEST RESOURCE.

 

[The Rook]

I see! What are the chances? Did you choose it based on the resource? Most CFC members seem to just go with their forum names. I wonder how many other posters use aliases for the picking contest!

I think the resource is very good, especially if supplemented with additional food sources. Lets face it though, "Plain(s) Cow" just sounds better than say "Hill Sheep" or "Riverside Corn".

As you mention, most people use their forum alias in Survivor, but in my case I hadn't posted here for more than 9 years prior to last week! So when I adopted Plain Cow I wasn't even sure whether The Rook was still a thing.

Anyway, I think I edited the end of my last post just as you were responding to it, so at the risk of repeating myself, if you haven't already, you might want to check the links to the streams for past seasons on Sullla's site. There are tonnes of crazy games, and plenty of salt from Sullla. In fact, I'm going to link Wang's Immortal Game, where he trolls Sullla right the way to the VERY finish. I would link the preview, but Wang is the obvious pick for a win, as he starts with the BEST RESOURCE:

The Troll King S3G7

If you never make it to a live game, then I'll do my best to represent BEST RESOURCE.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Not sure I can share Sullla's view that what we saw is how the game unfolds in general.
I'm fairly certain that most of the times Roosevelt goes for an early attack, it's directed Boudica's way, not Asoka's. And with her still far from metal units, that would spell trouble...

Here, it drove Roosevelt into irrelevance (he stopped expanding in favour of an attack that produced nothing), and weakened Asoka a lot before Kublai's attack.
So IMO that attack shaped the game, and was a very unusual development.

Could be wrong, of course.

 

[Slashninja1467]

Not sure I can share Sullla's view that what we saw is how the game unfolds in general.
I'm fairly certain that most of the times Roosevelt goes for an early attack, it's directed Boudica's way, not Asoka's. And with her still far from metal units, that would spell trouble...

Here, it drove Roosevelt into irrelevance (he stopped expanding in favour of an attack that produced nothing), and weakened Asoka a lot before Kublai's attack.
So IMO that attack shaped the game, and was a very unusual development.

Could be wrong, of course.

There is one major unfortunate roll that's being overlooked here that I doubt makes this the case. PW variance rolls add 0-3 to any leader's starting pw, and we got a glimpse of the diplo screen to see that Asoka and Roosevelt were cautious at +1. This is very very unlikely with same pw leaders, and suggests to me that Asoka may have rolled a +3 on pw while roosevelt rolled 0, and this can be confirmed by seeing that roosevelt was pleased with churchill at +1 but not for Asoka. Roosevelt doesn't have a high chance to start plotting, but he did this game and with Asoka being the closest via capital distance (borders did not touch for anyone for roosey so everyone was considered a distant power in terms of wardec possibilities), the chances Roosevelt marches his stack towards Asoka when this scenario happens is likely.

Very very unfortunate for asoka (and my fantasy contest as a result, as i put a hefty bid on Asoka), as Asoka looked to have a very solid game and I would have loved to see how an Asoka that wasn't trolled by early wardec from a same PW neighbor would have played out. A series of unfortunate rolls really hurt my picks here and it's a type of variance you can't really account for. Had roosevelt started plotting after buddhism spread and the same religion gotten them to pleased, had asoka and roosevelt rolled closer pws to pleased, or had roosevelt not started plotting so early, we would have had a drastically different game. All 3 unfortunate things happend however, and Asoka got his unlikely sabotage that doomed his game. However, that variance is what makes ai survivor what it is, and keeps us on our toes.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I think the resource is very good, especially if supplemented with additional food sources. Lets face it though, "Plain(s) Cow" just sounds better than say "Hill Sheep" or "Riverside Corn".

As you mention, most people use their forum alias in Survivor, but in my case I hadn't posted here for more than 9 years prior to last week! So when I adopted Plain Cow I wasn't even sure whether The Rook was still a thing.

Anyway, I think I edited the end of my last post just as you were responding to it, so at the risk of repeating myself, if you haven't already, you might want to check the links to the streams for past seasons on Sullla's site. There are tonnes of crazy games, and plenty of salt from Sullla. In fact, I'm going to link Wang's Immortal Game, where he trolls Sullla right the way to the VERY finish. I would link the preview, but Wang is the obvious pick for a win, as he starts with the BEST RESOURCE:

The Troll King S3G7

View attachment 662123

S3G7 was hard to watch.

Charlemagne had 2 plains cows and Wang Kon had only 1.

The winner should have been obvious at a glance, but that ending was truly unbelievable.

Troll King!

 

[Fippy]

Asoka and Roosy both have +1 base attitude as well, so in most games they would have been around +4 at start.

 

[ManiaMuse89]

All the Keler research and ManiaMuse, our current picking contest CFC point leader, had Churchill as the #2.

Good pick

I have not been amazing at picking leaders to win but have done quite well at hedging to pick up consistent points in the other categories.

Next game is tricky though. Lots of pumped up starts and much stronger leaders. There could be lots of possible outcomes (other than Toku not winning with that crummy start and Darius disappointing anyone foolish enough to pick him). Part of me wants to go Willem cultural victory which I see has having a pretty high chance of occurring (maybe 30%+) but equally that could flop and I could end up with very few points by not backing Caesar.

 

[Thrasybulos]

There is one major unfortunate roll that's being overlooked here that I doubt makes this the case. PW variance rolls add 0-3 to any leader's starting pw

Yes, that's a major reason why when I replay those, I restart everytime from the WB file and not the savefile.

Does anyone know if there's a debug command that would allow to see the actual PW of the leaders in-game?