Genghis the Barbarian
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2021
- Messages
- 61
Official Writeup
Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! Sorry for the long wait, let's just say I may have sputtered a bit at the finish line... admittedly this was not the most interesting set especially when compared to the playoff games, and this set should demonstrate why mirrored maps should not be used for all games. I will say though, that IMO, this is the best Championship map and I would not mind if it was used for future championship games as compared to the "starfish" one or the overtuned S4-7 one (maybe with a little bit more happiness added).
Here is the Championship writeup!
Overview
I am not sure I have ever seen a set with such easily definable tiers as this one. There were the two winners, Justin and Pacal, who won 75% of the parallel universe titles; the two enforcers, Julius Caesar and Stalin, who garnered most of the season silver medals while notching a pair of trophies each; and, saving the worst for last, there were the two suckers, Kublai Khan (!!!) and Mansa Musa, who equally split amongst themselves 70% of the First To Dies and died in nearly every replay (all of them in Mansa's case).
These are easily explainable results. Justin might be the only leader in this setup who is arguably elite both economically and militarily, while Pacal was the sole viable Financial leader blessed with the two suckahs as neighbors. Both Caesar and Stalin just were not good enough economically to be consistent contenders, but their conquest opportunities helped them get large enough to compete for a top two spot in most replays. Finally, Kublai may have had the worst neighbor situation of the warmongers, but he gets little sympathy from me due to what poor Mansa had to deal with here. This was an extremely hostile world for Mali, as every leader here hated Mansa’s guts from Turn 0 and proceeded to collectively rip them out of his soul in all twenty replays.
Map and Leader Dynamics
These games were primarily determined by religious spreads. Justin and Pacal almost always held rivaling faiths, and whichever of the two formed the strongest religious alliance almost always won the game. Religion was crucial for making friends and being on the right side of dogpiles, while also providing a major economic boost in a mirrored map where city quality was relatively even. Moreover, the map was limited happiness wise (particularly early), further boosting the value of a strong religion. Although Mansa and Kublai were the runts of the map, killing them was not necessarily a championship-winning guarantee. Expending too much time and resources into fighting was a risky proposition in this field, as with this richer than normal map it was difficult for many leaders to recover and catch up following an arduous campaign, even if their empire size was double that of their rivals. Instead, leaders were better served building up and striking at the perfect time for a quick and decisive victory.
The 75% of games that Justin or Pacal won would go one of two ways:
1) One leader would gather the most religious allies, take out the infidels, and then coast to victory.
2) Half of the map would devolve into ceaseless fighting, while the titan on the other half focuses solely on development and coasts to victory.
Although Justin’s religion + Cataphracts game plan and Pacal’s "tech away while everyone else kills each other" strategy are practically patented at this point, both leaders did win through both scenarios. In most of these games, one of Julius Caesar, Stalin, or Kublai would successfully leverage a conquest of one of their neighbors into a second place showing. There were also four games where Justin and Pacal were equally strong and embarked on a victory race, with Justin more often winning due to his better military initiative; Pacal only won one such showdown.
Conversely, Justin could have a much weaker game due to getting boxed in by his neighbors, failing to spread his religion, and/or facing betrayal from his supposed religious allies. Furthermore, Pacal could be caught unawares with an army too small to overcome his invaders, sometimes when he was two eras ahead in military tech. The five games that veered off script saw both these situations happen at once. Both leaders had to be taken out; if one remained strong, he was certain to snowball out of control. Among the five atypical games, Justinian only managed one backdoor second, either dead or irrelevant in the others. Pacal’s results were even more dire, as he died in four such games with the below screenshot capturing the one exception:
Notice anything unusual?
Overall, Stalin and Caesar were evenly matched. Like how a track race would have a frontrunner and a “sit and kick” guy (think Cole Hocker's amazing finish in the Paris 2024 1500m run), Caesar was more of a frontrunner with his synergistic start, Praetorians and aggressive expansion while Stalin was a “sit and kick” runner with his Cossacks, relatively competent teching, and opportunistic warmongering.
Even in the non-Justinian and Pacal games, Kublai still struggled more often than not, and his only shot at anything was for Caesar to have an unusually weak game. Of course, there was poor Mansa, and he had three outcomes all of which resulted in his doom. First, he could get ripped apart by an early dogpile, something no leader can overcome. Secondly, he could go out through death by a thousand cuts, facing attack after attack even from leaders who shared his faith. Finally, and most tragicomically, Mansa could actually get out to a strong position, only to throw by turning on the Culture slider while still sporting a Medieval army. This was just an untenable diplomatic position for Mansa Moneybags, who was trying to play a glass cannon cultural strategy while in an Always War situation.
There was ostensibly an even split between Spaceship, Domination, and Cultural finishes, but this was a tad deceiving, as most of the Cultural finishes saw a leader conquer all seven holy cities and then switch on the slider extremely late. No games were ever thrown in this manner a la Victoria in the Wildcard Game, but there were a couple of close calls, namely Game 14 for Justinian and Game 18 for Pacal. This phenomenon had a simple explanation: Mansa tended to monopolize the post-Monotheism religions, which made it easy for his eventual conqueror to garner all seven holy cities and be tempted to pursue a late Cultural victory. Nevertheless, there were only two "true" cultural victories in this set, and Stalin happened to win one of those.
The war counter was quite average, as while this field was aggressive, the bunched up nature of the map meant that it was easy for religious alliances to form. Meanwhile, every game saw a Mansa and another leader (usually Pacal or Kublai) who the others could gang up on and build up mutual military struggle bonuses. By the time the dust settled, there was typically one final showdown between the top two contenders that was fought to the end of the game. The tech pace was on the fast side, and the longer games were artificially lengthened either by late Culture attempts (those two games I mentioned should have ended much earlier) or nuclear warfare.
How Typical Was the Actual Game?
5/10. Stalin's shocking livestream upset was twice repeated, and his victories followed quite a similar pattern to the Actual Game as will be discussed in his section. Even though the outcome was not the most common, there were a lot of patterns present, including Mansa getting dogpiled, Kublai being awful, and Pacal struggling militarily. The two less typical aspects were 1) Mansa being more resilient than usual and 2) the tight three leader showdown at the end of the game. In the vast majority of the replays, the games were all but over by Turn 200. We were quite lucky to have such an incredible, down-to-the-wire livestream game, because many of the Alternate Histories games were far, FAR less interesting.
Onto the individual leader discussion:
Justinian of Byzantium
Offensive Wars: 36
Defensive Wars: 25
Survival Rate: 70%
Finishes: 9 Wins, 2 Runner Ups (49 Points)
Kills: 17
Overall Score: 66
The Season Three silver medalist proved to be the “rightful” champion, for lack of a better word. This was the perfect setup for him: plenty of land, lots of potential religious allies with friendly peaceweights, and excellent candidates for the Cataphract Death Squad. Moreover, once Free Religion became en vogue to break religious bonds, there was always a willing neighbor to Leeroy Jenkins himself into Justin’s arms, pushing the Byzantines above the Domination limit. In nearly half of these games, Justin’s exemplary fighting and shrine econ was enough to help the Season One champ get his second ring.
However, Justin was not as consistent as one might have expected considering this field, as the pitfalls of being overly reliant on religion were laid bare in his bad games. Even the best religious leader in the game could fail – sometimes spectacularly, as evidenced by his two First To Die games – if Mansa or Pacal were to outcompete Justin in proselytizing. There were also a couple of games where Justin straight up failed to found a religion, and the results were not pretty, to say the least. Justin's economic strength was clearly predicated on his ability to spread his religion. Moreover, Caesar and Stalin were not always the easiest neighbors, as they were not only aggressive warmongers but also fast expanders, and if Justin was not careful enough, he could find himself squeezed on territory with two leaders willing to backstab him at any moment. All in all, this was just your average Justinian set, the only true surprise being his propensity to pursue late Culture wins in this map.
Best Performance: Most impressive was his Game 12 win, where he held off multiple inopportune betrayals from his supposed religious allies before using nukes to finally cement his win.
Worst Performance: Game 10 saw Justinian channel his inner Vicky and expand horribly, making him irrelevant and eventually First To Die.
Et Tu, Judas Award: Justin somehow decided to attack his own brother in the faith Julius Caesar in Game 2 – and this was a dumb attack that left him friendless and eventually eliminated.
Julius Caesar of Rome
Offensive Wars: 52
Defensive Wars: 20
Survival Rate: 70%
Finishes: 2 Wins, 8 Runner Ups (26 Points)
Kills: 18
Overall Score: 44
After his disappointing Opening Round and nightmarish Playoff set, there was a LOT that Caesar needed to do to redeem himself. This was a start, with the caveat that it was a decent map for him, for he was the only leader to start with Fishing on a map where every leader had fishing starts. In combination with starting with Mining and his Imperialistic trait, that immediate extra food gave him a massive head start on expansion. Moreover, while other leaders were slowed down by having to devote early research to Fishing, Caesar could immediately gun for essential development techs like Agriculture and The Wheel. Caesar was always one of the frontrunners on the map, sometimes ballooning to a double-digit city count by Turn 80 or so. To tack on, Caesar had the weak Kublai Khan to sic his Praetorians on and a reliable diplomatic shield through his fellow “Roman” Justin. Having a weak enemy and a strong benefactor played a major role in his Runner Up dominance here.
Unfortunately, as in his other Alternate Histories sets, Caesar’s primary weakness was exposed: his poor builder abilities. Somewhat atypically, he was good enough with early culture, even founding his own religion at times. However, for whatever reason, Caesar’s economic management was really, really bad, as in still having a Rifling-based army on Turn 300 bad. The best explanation I can give is that Caesar lacked economic bonuses (Organized is not a great economic trait for the AI, as their inherent Deity bonuses greatly muffle its effects) while his levers were a tad too geared towards military matters. Oftentimes, Caesar found himself a backwards relic who had made too many enemies to survive. Even his two wins felt like outlier games. His Game 7 victory saw both Justinian and Pacal have bottom of the barrel performances and was only won due to a throw by Mansa Musa. His Game 13 win was legitimately impressive, but it also saw him peacefully expand out to more than a dozen cities in a crazy land grab before he decimated Kublai to build an insurmountable snowball. This season's Alternate Histories set has conclusively proven that Caesar is a second-rate warmonger when Deity starting techs are removed, and I would be curious to see what his results are with Season Three settings.
Best Performance: Game 13 easily – this was the vintage Caesar that we had gotten used to in early seasons of AI Survivor.
Worst Performance: Although Caesar was First To Die twice due to getting culturally squeezed by Justinian and Kublai and failing to pick up Justin’s religion for diplomatic protection, Game 8 was his most pathetic output in my eyes. Caesar just completely forgot to expand.
Too Much Lead In The Pipes Award:
Sitting Bull Award:
Pacal II of the Maya
Offensive Wars: 24
Defensive Wars: 40
Survival Rate: 55%
Finishes: 6 Wins, 3 Runner Ups (36 Points)
Kills: 7
Overall Score: 43
Low kill count? Check.
More defensive wars than offensive ones? Check.
Dying in most games he did not place? Check.
Shockingly low score considering how well he did? Check.
This was yet another classic Pacal Alternate Histories set to cap off a strange season for the Mayan leader. At the time of the Championship livestream, Pacal was the least popular leader in the field due to the perception, backed by his Opening Round and Wildcard Alternate Histories, that he had scammed his way to the Championship Round. Indeed, he played terribly in the Opening Round and really should not have survived, backdoored out of the Wildcard Game, and was a thoroughly unexciting leader in his Playoff game, even if the Playoff AHs backed him up. His eventual elimination sure generated a lot of schadenfreude for the community.
However, Pacal for once had the tables turned, playing terribly in the Actual Game yet being one of the most dominant leaders in the replays, at least as far as winning a title is concerned. I wonder how crazy the riots would have been if Pacal had become the Season Three Champion instead. Truth be told, this was an incredible setup for the Mayan leader. His two neighbors were the two weakest leaders on the map, and that alone gave Pacal some victories. Moreover, Pacal was well insulated from the action on the western hemisphere, leading to other games where Pacal won by virtue of the rest of the world burning. To add on, his Holkans made him extremely difficult to kill early (especially against Kublai’s Keshiks) – the only game where he was First To Die saw his elimination come relatively late and required a dogpile. Pacal was also the sole leader capable of beating Justinian at his own game, founding a religion of his own and then spreading it far and wide to add shrine income to his Financial abilities – this happened in his two stunningly quick pre-T300 Spaceship wins.
Pacal's bad games were usually due to two reasons. First, he failed to spread his religion (or in some cases converted to a random Mansa-founded minority religion) and became a diplomatic pariah, facing enough attacks to either collapse or be too behind to contend. Second, and more embarrassingly, was, surprise surprise, his military incompetence. Even with a tech lead, there were moments where Pacal was either too small or too unprepared to deal with his enemies. One particular blooper came in Game 14, where Pacal, despite having Tanks, lost a war to a Justinian who still had Rifles.
I am a broken record at this point, but it bears repeating that had Pacal mustered just a bit more military initiative, he would have won more than half of these games, including his three silver medal worthy performances. There were so many games where he sat back as the runaway tech leader and allowed another leader to win by Domination. I think Pacal is given more hate than is warranted – if you really want to see leaders who squander the Financial trait, just look at the likes of Darius and Willem – but he can certainly be a frustrating leader to watch.
Best Performance: Other than his two blistering Spaceship wins, Pacal impressively held off a 3v1 in Game 5 and won.
Worst Performance: Losing a city to the barbarians in Game 7, and then later invading a Castle-fortified Mansa without any siege units.
Wang Kon Award: Turning on the Culture slider late in Game 18 when he would have reached Alpha Centauri by Turn 320, wasting my time (and the alternate universe community’s time), and then making us collectively Angry Pacal after he won anyway despite nearly blowing things.
Stalin of Russia
Offensive Wars: 52
Defensive Wars: 15
Survival Rate: 60%
Finishes: 2 Wins, 5 Runner Ups (20 Points)
Kills: 16
Overall Score: 36
In truth, Stalin was at the same power level as Julius Caesar, the main reason for his worse score being that he was more likely to declare late game suicidal wars than his Roman counterpart. Stalin’s biggest problem was, surprise surprise, his early culture, or lack thereof, compounded by bordering two religious leaders, and many games saw him irrelevant by Turn 100 due to his inability to expand his borders. However, Stalin compensated in many games by being one of the best expanders, and weirdly enough he was quite good with mid-to-lategame culture, building the Sistine Chapel quite a few times and even winning a legitimate culture victory (Game 19). Interestingly, Stalin’s best games tended to coincide with Justin’s worst, as Stalin’s expansion would cut off Justin and leave the Byzantines with too few cities to compete (this was not the case for Caesar, who was much more often the Byzantine muscle).
Unfortunately, Mansa was in many ways a poison pill for the Soviets. What really won Stalin the Season Three title was his patience; in the Actual Game, he waited for every other leader to try and fail to take down Mansa (who admittedly put up an incredible defense), before pouncing on his hobbled neighbor with Cossacks to claim most of the spoils and juicy wonders. Stalin’s two wins followed a very similar pattern. In most games, however, Stalin attacked Mansa early, frequently before Catapults, and all this served to do was to either soften Mansa up for another leader or cause the Soviet leader to fall irreparably behind in tech. Even if he conquered Mansa, Stalin had a tendency to adopt his victim’s religion, bringing him at odds with a runaway Justin or Pacal. With that said, Stalin’s official victory, while an unlikely result, was not completely out of leftfield, and to his credit, his two wins in this set looked more believable than Caesar’s. Altogether, this was a fascinating season from one of AI Survivor’s more infamous leaders.
Best Performance: Game 19 was fun to watch, but Game 11 was a true stomp by Stalin.
Worst Performance: Stalin's early culturing was so bad in Game 14 that he got attacked without metal units for defense, garnering him the earliest non-Mansa elimination of the set.
Berlin Wall Award:
Kublai Khan of Mongolia
Offensive Wars: 31
Defensive Wars: 34
Survival Rate: 20%
Finishes: 1 Win, 2 Runner Ups (9 Points)
Kills: 7
Overall Score: 16
Kublai was better than his score indicated, but barely. There were quite a few games where he looked like he was in good position for 2nd place until the game runaway decided to direct his wrath toward the Mongolians. Kublai's terrible performance mainly stemmed from him having the worst neighbor situation in this field - I actually think it was worse than Mansa's. The major diplomatic issue for Temujin’s most famous grandson was his distance from Justinian, which made it so that Kublai almost never adopted Christianity. Thus, in the Justinian games, the Mongolian leader was a diplomatic pariah, and his teching was just not good enough to overcome that. Adding insult to injury, Kublai did not have any viable early game targets, as his two neighbors were Julius Caesar, whose Praetorians made him a nightmare to fight, and Pacal, whose Holkans are direct counters to Keshiks and whose teching was too fast to be an easy foe early (in this setup, the correct time to attack Pacal was at Rifling tech). Meanwhile, Mansa was a cross map target, and as Stalin often found out, was more trouble than he was worth - a good number of his eliminations came when he faced a fatal backstab while his armies were deep in Mali. Kublai’s Creative trait was also a curse, as they fermented early border tensions that made him vulnerable to getting 2v1ed by his fast starting neighbors. Kublai's situation was so dire that he literally was First To Die as often as Mansa.
Kublai’s strongest performances all coincided with Caesar’s worst games. Sometimes, Julius Caesar just failed to expand, and that was Kublai's opportunity to fill the void. He was in contention to win in three games: Game 8, where he killed Caesar and then perfectly timed his attack on Pacal to actually win; Game 14, where he partitioned the map with Justin before losing the final showdown; and Game 18, where he threw away a winning position with some bad strategic errors (see below). Even his best games felt like a struggle, as his teching was mid at best and he was often limping to the finish line. Although Kublai is historically the most consistent warmonger in this field – and his pre-Championship Alternate Histories performances proved this – he drew the short end of the stick here.
Best Performance: He was ok enough to win Game 8 when everybody else played worse than ok.
Worst Performance: Kublai had a lot of stinkers here, but his early Game 19 elimination where he expanded to five cities and then got carved up by his neighbors takes the cake.
Beheaded Khan Award: In perhaps his most tragic First To Die performance, Kublai Khan had actually gotten out into a dominant position in Game 18, until he decided to cash in by marching through Mayan territory to attack Mansa. Unfortunately, he got backstabbed by Pacal just as his forces had entered Malinese territory, which cut off his supply lines and decimated his forces. Ultimately, Kublai got ripped apart, especially once Julius Caesar joined the fray.
Mansa Musa of Mali
Offensive Wars: 9
Defensive Wars: 70
Survival Rate: 0%
Finishes: Surely, you must be joking…
Kills: 0
Overall Score:
Unfortunately for Mansa Moneybags, Financial/Screwed is not a viable trait pairing in Civ IV. The poor guy had not one, not two, but (at least) three fatal flaws that combined to render him hopeless here. First, there was his peaceweight situation, which warrants no further discussion. Next was another diplomatic whammy in the form of religion. Unfortunately for Mansa, he liked to have his own religion, which placed him at great odds against the two powerhouses of the map. Since nobody would give him Open Borders, he had an uphill battle regarding spreading his religion. Sometimes we have seen leaders overcome being a peaceweight pariah, other times they overcome being a religious one, but rarely can a leader handle being BOTH a peaceweight and religious outcast.
Mansa was one of the few leaders who might have been able to do so… had he not had this third whammy: Mansa was in culture mode from Turn 0 (the technical details are beyond the scope of this writeup, but a good sign of this is that the leader tries to found all three of the early game religions). The best culture games see leaders develop economically and then go into Culture mode, usually turning up the slider at Plastics tech. Conversely, being in Culture mode from Turn 0 can sometimes make leaders completely neglect expansion and development in their cultural pursuits, while also being prone to delay growth techs in favor of Monotheism and Priesthood. The absolute most destructive aspect of being in T0 Culture mode, however, is that leaders often decide to turn up the slider before Rifling tech, leaving them extremely vulnerable to attack. Indeed, there were a few games where Mansa might have pulled a rabbit out of a hat, except he turned up the Culture slider at Communism tech with a Cuirassier army. Most notable was Game 7, where both Justinian and Pacal had bad games, it was just Mansa, Caesar, and Stalin remaining, and Mansa would have easily won had he continued teching. I would be interested in seeing how many games it takes until Mansa finally wins in this setup. Altogether, this was an interesting season retrospective for Mansa, where he was totally screwed in one game, had a lucky result from a tough position in another, and also displayed one of the single greatest Alternate Histories sets ever. It seems the only way to stop Mansa is to surround him with low peaceweight enemies.
Accepting His Fate Award:
Adopting Pacifism with 8 cities!
Conclusions
In a mirrored map, the flaws of a civ get increasingly magnified. Mansa was utterly exposed here; the warmongers could not keep up with the economic leaders when given an equal footing; bad fighters could not turtle up forever. In the end, the results were as expected: Justinian was dominant, Pacal was boom or bust, Caesar’s fishing start worked well with the map, and the other leaders more often than not had too much to overcome in this setup.
Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! Sorry for the long wait, let's just say I may have sputtered a bit at the finish line... admittedly this was not the most interesting set especially when compared to the playoff games, and this set should demonstrate why mirrored maps should not be used for all games. I will say though, that IMO, this is the best Championship map and I would not mind if it was used for future championship games as compared to the "starfish" one or the overtuned S4-7 one (maybe with a little bit more happiness added).
Here is the Championship writeup!
Overview
I am not sure I have ever seen a set with such easily definable tiers as this one. There were the two winners, Justin and Pacal, who won 75% of the parallel universe titles; the two enforcers, Julius Caesar and Stalin, who garnered most of the season silver medals while notching a pair of trophies each; and, saving the worst for last, there were the two suckers, Kublai Khan (!!!) and Mansa Musa, who equally split amongst themselves 70% of the First To Dies and died in nearly every replay (all of them in Mansa's case).
These are easily explainable results. Justin might be the only leader in this setup who is arguably elite both economically and militarily, while Pacal was the sole viable Financial leader blessed with the two suckahs as neighbors. Both Caesar and Stalin just were not good enough economically to be consistent contenders, but their conquest opportunities helped them get large enough to compete for a top two spot in most replays. Finally, Kublai may have had the worst neighbor situation of the warmongers, but he gets little sympathy from me due to what poor Mansa had to deal with here. This was an extremely hostile world for Mali, as every leader here hated Mansa’s guts from Turn 0 and proceeded to collectively rip them out of his soul in all twenty replays.
Map and Leader Dynamics
These games were primarily determined by religious spreads. Justin and Pacal almost always held rivaling faiths, and whichever of the two formed the strongest religious alliance almost always won the game. Religion was crucial for making friends and being on the right side of dogpiles, while also providing a major economic boost in a mirrored map where city quality was relatively even. Moreover, the map was limited happiness wise (particularly early), further boosting the value of a strong religion. Although Mansa and Kublai were the runts of the map, killing them was not necessarily a championship-winning guarantee. Expending too much time and resources into fighting was a risky proposition in this field, as with this richer than normal map it was difficult for many leaders to recover and catch up following an arduous campaign, even if their empire size was double that of their rivals. Instead, leaders were better served building up and striking at the perfect time for a quick and decisive victory.
The 75% of games that Justin or Pacal won would go one of two ways:
1) One leader would gather the most religious allies, take out the infidels, and then coast to victory.
2) Half of the map would devolve into ceaseless fighting, while the titan on the other half focuses solely on development and coasts to victory.
Although Justin’s religion + Cataphracts game plan and Pacal’s "tech away while everyone else kills each other" strategy are practically patented at this point, both leaders did win through both scenarios. In most of these games, one of Julius Caesar, Stalin, or Kublai would successfully leverage a conquest of one of their neighbors into a second place showing. There were also four games where Justin and Pacal were equally strong and embarked on a victory race, with Justin more often winning due to his better military initiative; Pacal only won one such showdown.
Conversely, Justin could have a much weaker game due to getting boxed in by his neighbors, failing to spread his religion, and/or facing betrayal from his supposed religious allies. Furthermore, Pacal could be caught unawares with an army too small to overcome his invaders, sometimes when he was two eras ahead in military tech. The five games that veered off script saw both these situations happen at once. Both leaders had to be taken out; if one remained strong, he was certain to snowball out of control. Among the five atypical games, Justinian only managed one backdoor second, either dead or irrelevant in the others. Pacal’s results were even more dire, as he died in four such games with the below screenshot capturing the one exception:
Notice anything unusual?
Overall, Stalin and Caesar were evenly matched. Like how a track race would have a frontrunner and a “sit and kick” guy (think Cole Hocker's amazing finish in the Paris 2024 1500m run), Caesar was more of a frontrunner with his synergistic start, Praetorians and aggressive expansion while Stalin was a “sit and kick” runner with his Cossacks, relatively competent teching, and opportunistic warmongering.
Even in the non-Justinian and Pacal games, Kublai still struggled more often than not, and his only shot at anything was for Caesar to have an unusually weak game. Of course, there was poor Mansa, and he had three outcomes all of which resulted in his doom. First, he could get ripped apart by an early dogpile, something no leader can overcome. Secondly, he could go out through death by a thousand cuts, facing attack after attack even from leaders who shared his faith. Finally, and most tragicomically, Mansa could actually get out to a strong position, only to throw by turning on the Culture slider while still sporting a Medieval army. This was just an untenable diplomatic position for Mansa Moneybags, who was trying to play a glass cannon cultural strategy while in an Always War situation.
There was ostensibly an even split between Spaceship, Domination, and Cultural finishes, but this was a tad deceiving, as most of the Cultural finishes saw a leader conquer all seven holy cities and then switch on the slider extremely late. No games were ever thrown in this manner a la Victoria in the Wildcard Game, but there were a couple of close calls, namely Game 14 for Justinian and Game 18 for Pacal. This phenomenon had a simple explanation: Mansa tended to monopolize the post-Monotheism religions, which made it easy for his eventual conqueror to garner all seven holy cities and be tempted to pursue a late Cultural victory. Nevertheless, there were only two "true" cultural victories in this set, and Stalin happened to win one of those.
The war counter was quite average, as while this field was aggressive, the bunched up nature of the map meant that it was easy for religious alliances to form. Meanwhile, every game saw a Mansa and another leader (usually Pacal or Kublai) who the others could gang up on and build up mutual military struggle bonuses. By the time the dust settled, there was typically one final showdown between the top two contenders that was fought to the end of the game. The tech pace was on the fast side, and the longer games were artificially lengthened either by late Culture attempts (those two games I mentioned should have ended much earlier) or nuclear warfare.
How Typical Was the Actual Game?
5/10. Stalin's shocking livestream upset was twice repeated, and his victories followed quite a similar pattern to the Actual Game as will be discussed in his section. Even though the outcome was not the most common, there were a lot of patterns present, including Mansa getting dogpiled, Kublai being awful, and Pacal struggling militarily. The two less typical aspects were 1) Mansa being more resilient than usual and 2) the tight three leader showdown at the end of the game. In the vast majority of the replays, the games were all but over by Turn 200. We were quite lucky to have such an incredible, down-to-the-wire livestream game, because many of the Alternate Histories games were far, FAR less interesting.
Onto the individual leader discussion:
Justinian of Byzantium
Offensive Wars: 36
Defensive Wars: 25
Survival Rate: 70%
Finishes: 9 Wins, 2 Runner Ups (49 Points)
Kills: 17
Overall Score: 66
The Season Three silver medalist proved to be the “rightful” champion, for lack of a better word. This was the perfect setup for him: plenty of land, lots of potential religious allies with friendly peaceweights, and excellent candidates for the Cataphract Death Squad. Moreover, once Free Religion became en vogue to break religious bonds, there was always a willing neighbor to Leeroy Jenkins himself into Justin’s arms, pushing the Byzantines above the Domination limit. In nearly half of these games, Justin’s exemplary fighting and shrine econ was enough to help the Season One champ get his second ring.
However, Justin was not as consistent as one might have expected considering this field, as the pitfalls of being overly reliant on religion were laid bare in his bad games. Even the best religious leader in the game could fail – sometimes spectacularly, as evidenced by his two First To Die games – if Mansa or Pacal were to outcompete Justin in proselytizing. There were also a couple of games where Justin straight up failed to found a religion, and the results were not pretty, to say the least. Justin's economic strength was clearly predicated on his ability to spread his religion. Moreover, Caesar and Stalin were not always the easiest neighbors, as they were not only aggressive warmongers but also fast expanders, and if Justin was not careful enough, he could find himself squeezed on territory with two leaders willing to backstab him at any moment. All in all, this was just your average Justinian set, the only true surprise being his propensity to pursue late Culture wins in this map.
Best Performance: Most impressive was his Game 12 win, where he held off multiple inopportune betrayals from his supposed religious allies before using nukes to finally cement his win.
Worst Performance: Game 10 saw Justinian channel his inner Vicky and expand horribly, making him irrelevant and eventually First To Die.
Et Tu, Judas Award: Justin somehow decided to attack his own brother in the faith Julius Caesar in Game 2 – and this was a dumb attack that left him friendless and eventually eliminated.
Julius Caesar of Rome
Offensive Wars: 52
Defensive Wars: 20
Survival Rate: 70%
Finishes: 2 Wins, 8 Runner Ups (26 Points)
Kills: 18
Overall Score: 44
After his disappointing Opening Round and nightmarish Playoff set, there was a LOT that Caesar needed to do to redeem himself. This was a start, with the caveat that it was a decent map for him, for he was the only leader to start with Fishing on a map where every leader had fishing starts. In combination with starting with Mining and his Imperialistic trait, that immediate extra food gave him a massive head start on expansion. Moreover, while other leaders were slowed down by having to devote early research to Fishing, Caesar could immediately gun for essential development techs like Agriculture and The Wheel. Caesar was always one of the frontrunners on the map, sometimes ballooning to a double-digit city count by Turn 80 or so. To tack on, Caesar had the weak Kublai Khan to sic his Praetorians on and a reliable diplomatic shield through his fellow “Roman” Justin. Having a weak enemy and a strong benefactor played a major role in his Runner Up dominance here.
Unfortunately, as in his other Alternate Histories sets, Caesar’s primary weakness was exposed: his poor builder abilities. Somewhat atypically, he was good enough with early culture, even founding his own religion at times. However, for whatever reason, Caesar’s economic management was really, really bad, as in still having a Rifling-based army on Turn 300 bad. The best explanation I can give is that Caesar lacked economic bonuses (Organized is not a great economic trait for the AI, as their inherent Deity bonuses greatly muffle its effects) while his levers were a tad too geared towards military matters. Oftentimes, Caesar found himself a backwards relic who had made too many enemies to survive. Even his two wins felt like outlier games. His Game 7 victory saw both Justinian and Pacal have bottom of the barrel performances and was only won due to a throw by Mansa Musa. His Game 13 win was legitimately impressive, but it also saw him peacefully expand out to more than a dozen cities in a crazy land grab before he decimated Kublai to build an insurmountable snowball. This season's Alternate Histories set has conclusively proven that Caesar is a second-rate warmonger when Deity starting techs are removed, and I would be curious to see what his results are with Season Three settings.
Best Performance: Game 13 easily – this was the vintage Caesar that we had gotten used to in early seasons of AI Survivor.
Worst Performance: Although Caesar was First To Die twice due to getting culturally squeezed by Justinian and Kublai and failing to pick up Justin’s religion for diplomatic protection, Game 8 was his most pathetic output in my eyes. Caesar just completely forgot to expand.
Too Much Lead In The Pipes Award:
Sitting Bull Award:
Pacal II of the Maya
Offensive Wars: 24
Defensive Wars: 40
Survival Rate: 55%
Finishes: 6 Wins, 3 Runner Ups (36 Points)
Kills: 7
Overall Score: 43
Low kill count? Check.
More defensive wars than offensive ones? Check.
Dying in most games he did not place? Check.
Shockingly low score considering how well he did? Check.
This was yet another classic Pacal Alternate Histories set to cap off a strange season for the Mayan leader. At the time of the Championship livestream, Pacal was the least popular leader in the field due to the perception, backed by his Opening Round and Wildcard Alternate Histories, that he had scammed his way to the Championship Round. Indeed, he played terribly in the Opening Round and really should not have survived, backdoored out of the Wildcard Game, and was a thoroughly unexciting leader in his Playoff game, even if the Playoff AHs backed him up. His eventual elimination sure generated a lot of schadenfreude for the community.
However, Pacal for once had the tables turned, playing terribly in the Actual Game yet being one of the most dominant leaders in the replays, at least as far as winning a title is concerned. I wonder how crazy the riots would have been if Pacal had become the Season Three Champion instead. Truth be told, this was an incredible setup for the Mayan leader. His two neighbors were the two weakest leaders on the map, and that alone gave Pacal some victories. Moreover, Pacal was well insulated from the action on the western hemisphere, leading to other games where Pacal won by virtue of the rest of the world burning. To add on, his Holkans made him extremely difficult to kill early (especially against Kublai’s Keshiks) – the only game where he was First To Die saw his elimination come relatively late and required a dogpile. Pacal was also the sole leader capable of beating Justinian at his own game, founding a religion of his own and then spreading it far and wide to add shrine income to his Financial abilities – this happened in his two stunningly quick pre-T300 Spaceship wins.
Pacal's bad games were usually due to two reasons. First, he failed to spread his religion (or in some cases converted to a random Mansa-founded minority religion) and became a diplomatic pariah, facing enough attacks to either collapse or be too behind to contend. Second, and more embarrassingly, was, surprise surprise, his military incompetence. Even with a tech lead, there were moments where Pacal was either too small or too unprepared to deal with his enemies. One particular blooper came in Game 14, where Pacal, despite having Tanks, lost a war to a Justinian who still had Rifles.
I am a broken record at this point, but it bears repeating that had Pacal mustered just a bit more military initiative, he would have won more than half of these games, including his three silver medal worthy performances. There were so many games where he sat back as the runaway tech leader and allowed another leader to win by Domination. I think Pacal is given more hate than is warranted – if you really want to see leaders who squander the Financial trait, just look at the likes of Darius and Willem – but he can certainly be a frustrating leader to watch.
Best Performance: Other than his two blistering Spaceship wins, Pacal impressively held off a 3v1 in Game 5 and won.
Worst Performance: Losing a city to the barbarians in Game 7, and then later invading a Castle-fortified Mansa without any siege units.
Wang Kon Award: Turning on the Culture slider late in Game 18 when he would have reached Alpha Centauri by Turn 320, wasting my time (and the alternate universe community’s time), and then making us collectively Angry Pacal after he won anyway despite nearly blowing things.
Stalin of Russia
Offensive Wars: 52
Defensive Wars: 15
Survival Rate: 60%
Finishes: 2 Wins, 5 Runner Ups (20 Points)
Kills: 16
Overall Score: 36
In truth, Stalin was at the same power level as Julius Caesar, the main reason for his worse score being that he was more likely to declare late game suicidal wars than his Roman counterpart. Stalin’s biggest problem was, surprise surprise, his early culture, or lack thereof, compounded by bordering two religious leaders, and many games saw him irrelevant by Turn 100 due to his inability to expand his borders. However, Stalin compensated in many games by being one of the best expanders, and weirdly enough he was quite good with mid-to-lategame culture, building the Sistine Chapel quite a few times and even winning a legitimate culture victory (Game 19). Interestingly, Stalin’s best games tended to coincide with Justin’s worst, as Stalin’s expansion would cut off Justin and leave the Byzantines with too few cities to compete (this was not the case for Caesar, who was much more often the Byzantine muscle).
Unfortunately, Mansa was in many ways a poison pill for the Soviets. What really won Stalin the Season Three title was his patience; in the Actual Game, he waited for every other leader to try and fail to take down Mansa (who admittedly put up an incredible defense), before pouncing on his hobbled neighbor with Cossacks to claim most of the spoils and juicy wonders. Stalin’s two wins followed a very similar pattern. In most games, however, Stalin attacked Mansa early, frequently before Catapults, and all this served to do was to either soften Mansa up for another leader or cause the Soviet leader to fall irreparably behind in tech. Even if he conquered Mansa, Stalin had a tendency to adopt his victim’s religion, bringing him at odds with a runaway Justin or Pacal. With that said, Stalin’s official victory, while an unlikely result, was not completely out of leftfield, and to his credit, his two wins in this set looked more believable than Caesar’s. Altogether, this was a fascinating season from one of AI Survivor’s more infamous leaders.
Best Performance: Game 19 was fun to watch, but Game 11 was a true stomp by Stalin.
Worst Performance: Stalin's early culturing was so bad in Game 14 that he got attacked without metal units for defense, garnering him the earliest non-Mansa elimination of the set.
Berlin Wall Award:
Kublai Khan of Mongolia
Offensive Wars: 31
Defensive Wars: 34
Survival Rate: 20%
Finishes: 1 Win, 2 Runner Ups (9 Points)
Kills: 7
Overall Score: 16
Kublai was better than his score indicated, but barely. There were quite a few games where he looked like he was in good position for 2nd place until the game runaway decided to direct his wrath toward the Mongolians. Kublai's terrible performance mainly stemmed from him having the worst neighbor situation in this field - I actually think it was worse than Mansa's. The major diplomatic issue for Temujin’s most famous grandson was his distance from Justinian, which made it so that Kublai almost never adopted Christianity. Thus, in the Justinian games, the Mongolian leader was a diplomatic pariah, and his teching was just not good enough to overcome that. Adding insult to injury, Kublai did not have any viable early game targets, as his two neighbors were Julius Caesar, whose Praetorians made him a nightmare to fight, and Pacal, whose Holkans are direct counters to Keshiks and whose teching was too fast to be an easy foe early (in this setup, the correct time to attack Pacal was at Rifling tech). Meanwhile, Mansa was a cross map target, and as Stalin often found out, was more trouble than he was worth - a good number of his eliminations came when he faced a fatal backstab while his armies were deep in Mali. Kublai’s Creative trait was also a curse, as they fermented early border tensions that made him vulnerable to getting 2v1ed by his fast starting neighbors. Kublai's situation was so dire that he literally was First To Die as often as Mansa.
Kublai’s strongest performances all coincided with Caesar’s worst games. Sometimes, Julius Caesar just failed to expand, and that was Kublai's opportunity to fill the void. He was in contention to win in three games: Game 8, where he killed Caesar and then perfectly timed his attack on Pacal to actually win; Game 14, where he partitioned the map with Justin before losing the final showdown; and Game 18, where he threw away a winning position with some bad strategic errors (see below). Even his best games felt like a struggle, as his teching was mid at best and he was often limping to the finish line. Although Kublai is historically the most consistent warmonger in this field – and his pre-Championship Alternate Histories performances proved this – he drew the short end of the stick here.
Best Performance: He was ok enough to win Game 8 when everybody else played worse than ok.
Worst Performance: Kublai had a lot of stinkers here, but his early Game 19 elimination where he expanded to five cities and then got carved up by his neighbors takes the cake.
Beheaded Khan Award: In perhaps his most tragic First To Die performance, Kublai Khan had actually gotten out into a dominant position in Game 18, until he decided to cash in by marching through Mayan territory to attack Mansa. Unfortunately, he got backstabbed by Pacal just as his forces had entered Malinese territory, which cut off his supply lines and decimated his forces. Ultimately, Kublai got ripped apart, especially once Julius Caesar joined the fray.
Mansa Musa of Mali
Offensive Wars: 9
Defensive Wars: 70
Survival Rate: 0%
Finishes: Surely, you must be joking…
Kills: 0
Overall Score:
Unfortunately for Mansa Moneybags, Financial/Screwed is not a viable trait pairing in Civ IV. The poor guy had not one, not two, but (at least) three fatal flaws that combined to render him hopeless here. First, there was his peaceweight situation, which warrants no further discussion. Next was another diplomatic whammy in the form of religion. Unfortunately for Mansa, he liked to have his own religion, which placed him at great odds against the two powerhouses of the map. Since nobody would give him Open Borders, he had an uphill battle regarding spreading his religion. Sometimes we have seen leaders overcome being a peaceweight pariah, other times they overcome being a religious one, but rarely can a leader handle being BOTH a peaceweight and religious outcast.
Mansa was one of the few leaders who might have been able to do so… had he not had this third whammy: Mansa was in culture mode from Turn 0 (the technical details are beyond the scope of this writeup, but a good sign of this is that the leader tries to found all three of the early game religions). The best culture games see leaders develop economically and then go into Culture mode, usually turning up the slider at Plastics tech. Conversely, being in Culture mode from Turn 0 can sometimes make leaders completely neglect expansion and development in their cultural pursuits, while also being prone to delay growth techs in favor of Monotheism and Priesthood. The absolute most destructive aspect of being in T0 Culture mode, however, is that leaders often decide to turn up the slider before Rifling tech, leaving them extremely vulnerable to attack. Indeed, there were a few games where Mansa might have pulled a rabbit out of a hat, except he turned up the Culture slider at Communism tech with a Cuirassier army. Most notable was Game 7, where both Justinian and Pacal had bad games, it was just Mansa, Caesar, and Stalin remaining, and Mansa would have easily won had he continued teching. I would be interested in seeing how many games it takes until Mansa finally wins in this setup. Altogether, this was an interesting season retrospective for Mansa, where he was totally screwed in one game, had a lucky result from a tough position in another, and also displayed one of the single greatest Alternate Histories sets ever. It seems the only way to stop Mansa is to surround him with low peaceweight enemies.
Accepting His Fate Award:
Adopting Pacifism with 8 cities!
Conclusions
In a mirrored map, the flaws of a civ get increasingly magnified. Mansa was utterly exposed here; the warmongers could not keep up with the economic leaders when given an equal footing; bad fighters could not turtle up forever. In the end, the results were as expected: Justinian was dominant, Pacal was boom or bust, Caesar’s fishing start worked well with the map, and the other leaders more often than not had too much to overcome in this setup.
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