Sullla's AI Survivor Season Three Alternate Histories

[Genghis the Barbarian]

Hi everyone,

After the S8 season came to an end, I started knocking out some of the S3 AHs that Amicalola was unable to do. Here are the links to the writeups, some of them done by Amica:

S3O1 - done by Amica

S3O2 - done by Amica

S3O3 - done by yours truly
S3O3 Amica's Version

S3O4 - done by yours truly
S3O4 Amica's Version

S3O5 - done by yours truly

S3O6 - done by Amica

S3O7 - done by Amica

S3O8 - done by yours truly

S3WC - done by Amica

S3P1 - done by yours truly

S3P2 - done by yours truly

S3P3 - done by yours truly

S3CH - done by yours truly

 

[Genghis the Barbarian]

First teaser - S3O3.

Sullla's Writeup

A clear Big Three, and three scrubs. The question was, who was Michael Jordan/Scottie Pippen/Dennis Rodman, and who was Dumb/Dumber/Dumbest?

 

[Thrasybulos]

I'd say:

1. Hannibal
2. Peter
3. Mao
4. Genghis
5. Sury
6. Sitting Bull

4&5 could be the other way round, their stats are pretty similar...

 

[a pen-dragon]

Hanni - Peter - Mao - Genghis - Sury - SB

SB last due to peaceweight, Sury seems to have the most cramped start and is next to Genghis. Genghis is probably not doing that well due to being too aggressive, but could ruin some games. Genghis fourth due to less second places, he probably either snowballs or dies.

Peter second due to being next to Genghis, and thus liable to go out early. Mao really has lots of land and I do not see him getting eliminated half the time. Will he score more kills than Hanni? I do not think so due to Hanni not killing someone probably taking him out of the game, thus third with more wins than kills is probably not him.

The stats for the third do surprise me in this setup, due to having so few kills. I think that anyone, except SB, is able to win some medieval wars here and the people winning will either have some domination victories, requireing kills, or go to space, making some decisive late-game wars likely. I think that only Peter is likely to go culture in this bunch and Diplo is unlikely as always. Peter being third would mean him having a way better survival rate than Mao, which I find unlikely.

 

[Keler]

Ok we agree , Peter is second with lower survival rate.
But only 6 kills? Isn't that pleased locked Hanny?
1) Mao
2) Peter
3) Hannibal
4) Suryavarman
5) Genghis
6) Sitting Bull

 

[Genghis the Barbarian]

Here is the actual writeup. Note that I will wait to actually submit it to Sullla as I think the guy has a LOT going on, like his wife is about to have his second kid.

Overview

This was one of those "Big Three" sets where the three contenders (Hannibal, Mao, Peter) bully the three losers of the map (Sury, Genghis, Sitting Bull). Indeed, every single replay would see at least one of Mao, Peter, and Hannibal become formidable contenders who would dictate the events of a game. The Big Three won 17/20 games, formed the playoff ticket in 13/20 games, and were never First To Die save for one awful Peter performance.

Leader Dynamics

For obvious reasons, this analysis must start with poor Sitting Bull, or, as they say, Sitting Duck. Unsurprisingly, the Native Americans were utterly screwed in this world. This had little to do with Sitting Bull’s lackluster abilities; Mansa Musa would have suffered a similar fate in his position. While the Native Americans were obviously in an untenable diplomatic position, what really doomed Sitting Bull was his dry, resource-sparse, and jungle-choked land that happened to be sandwiched between the two strongest leaders in the map. Every game would see Sitting Bull’s economy sputter before the Big Three collectively put him out of his misery, and he never came close to even surviving to the Wildcard Game, let alone contending. It is no coincidence that the three leaders with the best access to Sitting Bull formed the Big Three of this setup.

Each contender had their own intricate set of advantages and disadvantages. The community favorite Mao certainly redeemed himself after his poor performance in the livestream. Although the Chairman usually started slow to his propensity to avoid early culture and his mediocre-at-best traits, he had a vast amount of high-quality land available to him which helped him become a formidable player no matter how slowly he started. Despite not being the best economic leader – although he was competent enough – he more than compensated by being the best politician, being shrewd with his alliances and military timing. Mao's biggest conundrum was what to do after conquering Native America due to his corner position. Should he turn on the more technologically advanced Hannibal? Attack an equally strong and sometimes larger Peter in the era of Castle defenses? March across the map to attack one of the Western leaders and risk an inopportune backstab? Do nothing and hope another leader does not run away? Throughout the replays, Mao attempted all of these strategies to varying degrees of success, although he certainly made the right choices more often than not.

Hannibal was unsurprisingly the best economic leader of the Big Three due to being Financial and having a synergistic Fishing start. He also had Elephants to help him mow down the Native Americans in vintage Carthaginian fashion. Multiple games saw Hannibal have two empires worth of territory by Turn 150 to render him completely unstoppable. However, he was more reliant on killing Sitting Bull than the others, and if he failed to get enough territory from the dogpile he would often have to compete with much larger rivals. Sometimes, this did not matter and Hannibal still just Fin/Alived his way to victory, but other times it was apparent that even his high-quality cities could not outcompete sheer quantity.

Finally, Peter was the boom-or-bust member of the Big Three. His highs were incredibly dominant, but his lows, including one First To Die performance, were quite embarrassing. Peter's biggest advantage over Hannibal and Mao was that his central position next to the two weak and backwards Western leaders afforded him more conquest opportunities. Thus, Peter did not necessarily need to partake in the sitting duck hunt to succeed in this map. Unfortunately for the first czar, Peter had a Copper resource in his capital, and early Copper-based wars proved to be a double-edged ax for the Russians. Peter spent quite a few games wasting time and resources flinging Axes and Chariots at his opponent’s walls, causing him to fall behind and become mid or late game cannon fodder for a much bigger and more advanced rival.

Sury and Genghis drew the short ends of the sticks here. Their land was not particularly good, they were the furthest away from Sitting Bull, and they usually spend most games fighting each other into irrelevance until the Big Three put one or both of them out of their misery. Despite this, they did have an extremely entertaining dynamic which did have implications for the wildcard and even the playoff round.

Sury was screwed from Turn 0 due to one reason:

Where in Sid’s name are Sury’s metals?

Having a Temujin breathing down your neck without metals is a dicey situation, to say the least. Unfortunately, Sury's non-military research preferences often made it so that he was unable to research Bronze and Iron Working in time to secure what little sources of metal he did have. He frequently found himself defending with Chariots and Catapults against the Mongolian horde, and this did not end well for him. It spoke volumes that it was not Sitting Bull, but Sury who had the earliest First To Die of the set, dying on Turn 107*. Naturally, Genghis was the prime beneficiary of Sury’s predicament, and his two victories came when he ran over Sury early and snowballed to victory.

*In the first game I ran (not included in this set), Genghis had actually mowed down Sury by Turn 96. Sadly, I had to discard that game due to a mistake when removing the AP (forgetting to also account for the hurry cost, which allowed a leader to Great Engineer the AP), which caused the Mongolian offensive to stutter out when Hannibal abused the AP and started reassigning cities to himself.

With that said, Sury was not completely dead meat here:

Quite the eKhanomy you got there, Temujin!

Genghis Khan produced some of the most unbelievably incompetent economic displays I have ever seen in an Alternate Histories. Even if Sury was too slow to acquire metals, Genghis Khan would sometimes crash his economy so hard that he would be unable to launch his attack, and Sury would be left unpunished. Game 14, in particular, showcased one of the most hilarious events I have ever witnessed in all my time interacting with AI Survivor: Genghis Khan sicced his forces onto the Khmer lands, ONLY TO WATCH HIS ENTIRE ARMY DESERT HIM DUE TO A LACK OF FUNDS:

No Mongolian blood was spilled over the course of this screenshot.

In that particular game, Genghis was lucky to have one Archer guarding his cities in the end, leaving him completely defenseless to Sury’s counterattack. Sury came close to winning Game 14, and he also won Game 19 by again taking advantage of Genghis' economic self-combustion.

With all that said, the GK/Sury conflict was a sideshow, as in most games, the winner party was too far behind, both in economy and in territory, to compete with the Big Three.

Map Dynamics

These were exciting and down-to-the-wire games. Backdoor seconds were a rarity, and there were numerous games in which the Runner Up was either the top leader in all the relevant demographics or just a few turns away from victory. In the early game, Sitting Bull and at least one of the western leaders would get carved up, while in the later stages, there would be some sort of victory race between the 2-3 strongest remaining leaders. Some games were shockingly peaceful considering the violent and backstabbing nature of these leaders. One extreme example was Game 5, where, after yeeting Sitting Bull and religious pariah Sury out of the game, the four remaining leaders held hands in a Jewish lovefest until Hannibal launched his spaceship. That game had a staggeringly low FIVE wars. Oftentimes, once the dust had settled the remaining leaders had accumulated enough mutual military struggle and other diplomatic bonuses on top of shared peaceweight and Hannibal's inability to plot at Pleased to calm things down. This is not to say that every game turned into peaceful builder-fests: there were games where the global state of affairs devolved the moment some leader’s relations dropped to Pleased or Cautious due to spy shenanigans and/or religious and civic swaps.

Whoever won depended on how diplomacy played out (sometimes a leader ended up on the wrong side of a lategame 2v1), the speed and success of the partitions of the weakest leaders, and the extent to which Hannibal’s teching was able to overcome another leader’s size. One noteworthy tidbit of this map: Hannibal's primary wincon was actually Culture. The only somewhat religious leader in this setup was the weak Sury, and Hannibal's teching often enabled him to monopolize the other religions. He certainly did his best Huayna Capac impersonation here. Amongst the other leaders, Domination was the overarching victory type this was not the most inspiring group of techers outside of Hannibal. Although there were only two Diplomatic victories (both of which were early coronations of the likely winner), there were a few close calls, as the top two leaders were often large and relevant enough to have a voice in the UN. Religion had a relatively minimal effect on these games, as the leaders did not care a great deal about religious matters – in fact, going into Mao’s favorite civic of State Property was a better source of comradery than religion.

How Typical Was The Actual Game?

On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give this an 8.5. The livestream was essentially a cookie-cutter Hannibal win, down to the Cultural victory, and although Mao's terrible game was on the bottom of the spectrum of outcomes, I did see similarly moribund Mao games in the replays. Meanwhile, Sury's limping to the Wildcard game was also a reasonable, if somewhat infrequent, outcome.

Individual Leader Discussions

Mao Zedong of China
Offensive Wars: 46
Defensive Wars: 18
Survival Rate: 75%
Finishes: 6 Wins, 5 Runner Ups (40 Points)
Kills: 19
Overall Score: 59

With the best land, a Northern neighbor to turn into a Peking duck dish, and a dream diplomatic setup, it should come as no surprise that Mao would be a top performing leader. Score-wise, things were close, but ultimately Mao's consistency and controlled aggression gives him the highest score here, even if there was practically no difference in strength level between him and Hannibal. Mao’s best games came when he got most of Native America to give him enough territory to either out-scale or out-produce Hannibal. Mao was excellent at choosing his friends, and even better at selecting his enemies – in every game he won, he went on to conquer at least one other leader, sometimes having dominion over the entire West and East coast to form some sort of "Chairman Sandwich".

The livestream was the textbook example of how Mao could falter, as two issues from the Actual Game presented themselves in his worst games: 1) his generally slow starts, and 2) his propensity to delay researching military techs. The latter point was especially a problem, as in game after game, Mao would research the Biology, Assembly Line, and Combustion lines before finally realizing that he needed to equip his troops with rifles. Luckily, this folly tended to go unpunished due to Mao’s massive size and friendly diplomatic environment — note the less than one defensive war per game average — but occasionally, like in Game 1, Mao’s Rifling allergy directly led to his doom. All in all, this set reinforced why Mao is an above average leader for AI Survivor purposes: he is good at diplomacy, he is a strong and decisive military leader, and he seems to have at worst a baseline level of economic competence even with such a horrid trait pairing.

Recall that these games were run with Deity starting techs removed, while the Actual Game did not have this feature yet. Considering the amazing Chinese starting package of Agriculture/Mining, this was a significant advantage Mao had in these Alternate Histories that he lacked in the Actual Game.

Best Performance: Game 15, in which Mao executed a brilliant cross-map backstab of an about-to-snowball Genghis Khan en route to a strong Domination victory. Game 9 was a noteworthy Honorable Mention. In that game, Mao invaded Carthage when Hannibal was in the middle of a culture victory run and bypassed the time-wasting border cities in favor of Hannibal’s Legendary cities, eventually capturing one to slam the door shut on Hannibal’s winning chances.

Worst Performance: Game 14 was essentially a repeat of his awful livestream performance.

Finding Out That Political Power Indeed Does Come From The Barrel Of A Gun Award: In Game 17, Mao did the aforementioned Assembly Line before Rifling thing. He should have easily won, but because he was still fighting with Knights on Turn 250, he had allowed Hannibal to get enough of Mongolia to block a Chinese Domination win. Making matters worse, by the time he finally researched Rifling, the Chairman spent eons upgrading his Maces and Muskets through two eras of tech into Infantry, further stalling out his offensive.

Peter of Russia
Offensive Wars: 43
Defensive Wars: 35
Survival Rate: 55%
Finishes: 4 Wins, 6 Runner Ups (32 Points)
Kills: 21
Overall Score: 53

Although Peter technically outscored Hannibal due to his high and somewhat inflated kill count, he was more Dennis Rodman than Michael Jordan or Scottie Pippen in this Big Three. The biggest issue with Peter should be apparent from his 78 total wars - higher than Temujin's count for reference. The Russian leader was just too reckless for his own good, repeatedly ruining his own game with fruitless pre-Catapult warring. Game 17, for example, saw him copper-dec and cripple Sitting Bull, but his inability to finance his conquests led to economic stagnation and his eventual elimination. He also liked to launch foolish attacks against Genghis Khan when the Mongolians already had a massive army prepared in preparation for a Khmer campaign, leading to irrelevance at best and, at worst, to his one First To Die performance.

Even when Peter’s early attacks were successful, he still often fell permanently behind a Hannibal or a Mao who had patiently waited until Elephants and Catapults to start fighting. Peter’s victories relied on him benefitting the most from dog piles, unlike Mao and Hannibal who could carve out victories without any outside help – and even then, he usually needed Mao to have a bad game or to avoid Rifling for too long in order to leverage his conquests into victory. Otherwise, he just dragged himself down with another leader. Despite Peter’s relatively high score here, this set did little to convince me that the Russian leader is anything more than a middling low peaceweight backstabber.

Best Performance: Peter had an excellent economic and military performance in Game 1. In that game, I noticed the Russian Research Institutes prove to be nifty for space races, both due to their inherent science bonuses and from how they steered Peter away from spaceship delaying techs like Stealth.

Worst Performance: Peter’s poor expansion and erratic behavior led him to become First To Die in Game 11.

Hello Kitty Award: Peter should have won Game 20. However, when he had a massive stack of Cossacks at the gates of Karakorum, his siege consisted of the dreaded One Catapult. He proceeded to bombard the gates of Karakorum, one percentage point at a time, when he easily could have run over the Medieval units guarding the city. Those extra 50 turns at war cost him dearly – Hannibal won a Culture victory when Peter’s Spaceship was one stop away from Alpha Centauri.

Hannibal of Carthage
Offensive Wars: 30
Defensive Wars: 23
Survival Rate: 75%
Finishes: 7 Wins, 5 Runner Ups (32 Points)
Kills: 6
Overall Score: 51

I have always wondered if Hannibal’s inability to plot at Pleased was an advantage or a hindrance. At first, when Hannibal reeled off four victories in a row, I thought that we had a juggernaut in our hands. However, Hannibal greatly cooled off in the remaining fifteen games, although he came close to winning multiple times. My verdict: Hannibal’s loyalty to his buddies is his singular greatest weakness, a handicap that ensures that he is not quite in the Huayna Capac/Pacal/Justinian league of leaders. (Yes, Justin cannot plot at Pleased, but that meshes well with a religious strategy) Hannibal's inability to get extra territory was disastrous at times, including games where he was run over by a gigantic Genghis (Game 6) or a massive Mao (Game 9). Against this group of leaders, six kills in twenty games feels like an inexplicably small amount for a militaristic leader like Hannibal.

Now, do not be fooled by his “third place” here — his finish score was the highest, and he would have had more kills (and wins, honestly) had Culture not been his favored wincon here. However, if Hannibal was able to plot at Pleased, I truly believe he would have won at least 12 games. In most of his Runner Up games (Games 7 and 8 in particular), Hannibal was close to victory — sometimes as close as three turns — when a rival beat him to the punch. A larger empire would have certainly made a difference. In multiple games that Hannibal did not survive, he would have won or at least gotten a strong second place had he continued to press his advantage - Games 9, 15, 19, and especially 16 in which he became Pleased with Sitting Bull from shared religious bonuses were examples of this. We have enough evidence to see that, while Hannibal is as capable as any other leader, he does have some flaws that keep him out of the S tier of AI leaders.

Best Performance: Game 13 was a Hannibal masterclass, in which he essentially solo conquered Sitting Bull and coasted to victory. He also nearly made an incredible comeback in Game 18 after getting caught without metals in a Sury attack.

Worst Performance: Hannibal foolishly aligned himself religiously with the sitting duck in Game 6 and got chomped to bits by a Genghis and Peter coalition. Dishonorable mention goes to Game 10, where Hannibal uncharacteristically attacked Sury early and ruined his own game in the process.

Hippopotamus Award: Despite being on the right side of a 2v1 in Game 11, Hannibal inexplicably gave up the city of Hippo to Sitting Bull for peace just when he was about to break through. Even the so-called “Chadnibal” was capable of face planting in these games.

Wang Kon Award: In Game 14, Sury was for once in a pole position to win. However, the poor Khmer leader ended up in two 2v1s late in the game due to Hannibal twice signing Defensive Pacts with Peter, preventing Sury from making any military headway. Just when it seemed Sury was going to break through… Hannibal handed Peter a Diplomatic victory. I have to say, Game 14 was one of the best games I have ever witnessed.

Genghis Khan of Mongolia
Offensive Wars: 46
Defensive Wars: 24
Survival Rate: 30%
Finishes: 2 Wins, 1 Runner Up (12 Points)
Kills: 10
Overall Score: 22

When it came to entertainment, Genghis Khan certainly did not disappoint! His two victories were won in style, running over Sury before going on to kill the rest of the world. His failures were even more spectacular, as was discussed above. In all fairness, the Khan was not entirely to blame for his economic issues. Genghis’ land exhibited the dangerous combination of having too much production yet too little commerce, which made it easy for him to overexpand and crash his economy. Although Imperialistic is normally considered one of the strongest AI Survivor traits, this was one of those scenarios in which it turned out more harmful than good. Moreover, his Game 14 faceplant may have stemmed from a faraway barb city capture from a wandering Mongolian Warrior. Nonetheless, it should be apparent that Genghis Khan’s incompetence at managing anything that does not involve violence and bloodshed drags him down, much like it hinders other similarly crazy leaders. No matter the circumstances, it was hilarious yet embarrassing to witness a Deity AI have an economy go on strike in a quarter of these replays. Good thing the Mongolians start with the Wheel, or else things could have been even more dire.

Best Performance: Game 8 was Genghis at his peak, running over Sury on Turn 107 before methodically picking off the remaining competition en route to a pre-Turn 300 Domination victory, made even more impressive by the fact that Hannibal was less than five turns from winning by Culture.

Worst Performance: Game 7 was, to my eyes, Genghis' most inexcusable economic performance he failed to research Writing until Turn 178!

Wang Khan Award: While he pretty much was a non-factor in Game 12, Genghis Khan was somehow able to ruin Hannibal’s game by sacking one of his legendary cities.

Suryavarman II of the Khmer
Offensive Wars: 26
Defensive Wars: 40
Survival Rate: 30%
Finishes: 1 Win, 3 Runner Ups (11 Points)
Kills: 10
Overall Score: 21

As a leader with no easy access to metals and Genghis Khan breathing down his neck, Sury was truly cursed in this setup. The Mongolians were not his only problem. Sury often founded an early religion but was never able to spread it due to having to expend all of his resources to deal with the existential threat to his south. Being a religious pariah left him susceptible to dogpiles, contributing to a surprising number of games where he ended up being First To Die instead of Sitting Bull, even in cases where he had withstood the Mongolian horde. Although Sury was sometimes able to conquer Mongolia for himself, it came at a cost, as he would fall behind both in technology and in territory. It was telling that it took Genghis Khan reaching unprecedented levels of economic failure for Sury to have his best games - put someone like Gilgamesh or Julius Caesar in Genghis’ spot, and Sury might have been almost as screwed in this map as Sitting Bull.

However, if Sury was able to deal with the Mongolian threat and be left alone for long enough to unlock his Ballista Elephants, he could make something of his situation and keep up with the Big Three. However, these games exposed a major weakness for the Khmer leader, one that I have observed in other games: Sury is a warmonger with builder tech preferences. Although this could sometimes make him a dangerous player as an economically competent warmonger, in this scenario it ended up biting him in the rear end. Sury needed to get to Iron Working ASAP, but instead he mucked around too much on Calendar and Currency and generally got to Iron Working too late to chop his jungle and to defend himself. I am not exactly sure what to think of Sury; he is a seeded leader for a reason, but I have witnessed some truly terrible performances from the Khmer leader.

Best Performance: Game 19 was a very cathartic performance for Sury, in which he rolled over Genghis Khan, became the dominant leader, and unleashed a wild nuclear outburst to make up for the bullying and trolling he had endured over the previous 18 games (19 if you count the one ruined by the AP):

Worst Performance: Game 8. Being First To Die on Turn 107 is pretty bad no matter the circumstances.

Angry Pacal Award: Getting shafted out of a victory by the Russian-Carthaginian alliance in Game 14, involving TWO Defensive Pact triggered 2v1s.

Sitting Bull of the Native Americans
Offensive Wars: 2 (Yes, seriously)
Defensive Wars: 58
Survival Rate:

Finishes: Surely, you must be joking…
Kills: Surely, you must be joking…
Overall Score: -Infinity

There is nothing that needs to be said here. Give the sole high peaceweight in the field the worst land and surround him with backstabbing warmongers, and, well, you have a massacre on your hands.

Conclusions

All in all, this was a very intriguing set of games. Most Alternate Histories usually involve the same 1-2 leaders consistently snowballing ahead of the competition over and over again, but this one was unique in that there were multiple leaders who had a chance, with most games being close nail biters in which 2-3 equally strong leaders consolidated their positions before engaging in a showdown or a race. When it comes to predicting future season games, we should derive the following lessons from this set:

1. Neighbors matter a lot. Switch Sury and Hannibal’s starting locations and Hannibal gets sewed into a horse and Sury is one of the top performers.
2. As we saw with Peter and Mao, central positions are more likely to be boom-or-bust while corner positions are much more consistent. This is especially so when the central leader has early access to Copper.
3. A notable exception to this is when a leader is Financial. However, note that even the best of techers may have difficulty competing against much larger empires.
4. Being unable to plot at Pleased may be quite a roadblock for more military-minded leaders.
5. It is remarkable how not being overly swayed by religion and religious differences can allow for much more strategic flexibility.

Amica's AHs

Comparison

Essentially, turn most of Hannibal's near wins into wins, and take out all the good GK and Sury games. Hannibal was clearly the strongest in this map, with Mao as his Robin and Peter the only other truly viable leader.

 

[Genghis the Barbarian]

Ok we agree , Peter is second with lower survival rate.
But only 6 kills? Isn't that pleased locked Hanny?
1) Mao
2) Peter
3) Hannibal
4) Suryavarman
5) Genghis
6) Sitting Bull

Good catch!

 

[a pen-dragon]

Finding Out That Political Power Indeed Does Come From The Barrel Of A Gun Award:

I really enjoy reading those additional awards and especially their names. Thank you for writing them!

 

[Thrasybulos]

Neighbors matter a lot

Yes, most definitely.
Although, in this case... when I played this game 20 times last year while switching the leaders around, that didn't really improve Sury's performances: see here.

 

[Thrasybulos]

mainly because removing huts could be a bit of a pain and mistakes could easily be made

By the way, it's easy to do from the wb file: just search all instances of "goody" and delete those lines. Then add the relevant option (Option=GAMEOPTION_NO_GOODY_HUTS) at the beginning.

Doing through the worldbuilder would indeed be error-prone.

 

[Genghis the Barbarian]

By the way, it's easy to do from the wb file: just search all instances of "goody" and delete those lines. Then add the relevant option (Option=GAMEOPTION_NO_GOODY_HUTS) at the beginning.

Doing through the worldbuilder would indeed be error-prone.

Lmao I don’t know why I just didn’t think of find and replace

 

[Genghis the Barbarian]

A quick update -

So... Amica actually ALSO did O3 and O4 Alternate Histories. Sullla had just forgotten to update his HTML code - no worries, we all make such mistakes! Well, we now have 40 games for two sets. You can see the links to Amica's version on my first post.

Note that Amica forced all the AIs to have their listed peaceweights, so take that into mind when comparing his and mine.

Note: I discarded what was likely to be a cookie cutter Justin 1st Sal 2nd Monty FTD game due to screwing up with the AI Autoplay. I also changed Louis’ color to the Spanish pink as there were already two other leaders with blue-colored borders.

Overview

After seeing Sullla run five games, I expected this to be a relatively uninteresting Justinian stomp. That did not quite happen. Yes, Justinian was by far the strongest leader here, securing a playoff spot in 80% of my games. However, some of his 2nd place (and even 1st place) finishes were not all that impressive, and it occasionally felt like his successes stemmed less from his innate abilities and more-so from the ineptitude of his competition. Despite his dominance, this was a more open-ended setup than initially thought, with Saladin and Louis proving capable of pulling off good games and Darius and FDR exhibiting a few shockers. Nevertheless, Justinian was still the ruler of the roost, and he more or less dictated how these games went.

Map Dynamics

The most surprising aspect of these games was how well Darius and FDR performed despite their diplomatic situation. In fact, a high peaceweight leader advanced to the playoffs in 40% of these replays. Moreover, a “Good” leader did not necessarily need the other to do well in order to advance; Darius and FDR each won a game despite the other being First To Die.

There were two main reasons for the relative success of the high peaceweight duo. First, calling this a 2 v. 5 good vs. evil split turned out to be a tad misleading. In reality, there were three factions in this game: the Good (Darius, FDR), the Bad (Monty, Cathy, Louis), and the Fanatically Handsome (Justin, Sal). If a Good leader religiously aligned himself with a handsome fanatic, he could garner himself a powerful and reliable ally and ride that to a playoff spot (Games 8, 11). In a select few situations, the fanatics found themselves so mired in fighting that one or more of the Good leaders were able to outscale everyone and come out on top (Games 6, 19). Something to note is the shockingly low defensive war count from the two. One would have expected the two to face upwards of 60-70 invasions considering the "2v5" situation. However, both FDR and Darius faced fewer than fifty invasions in this set, which was particularly noteworthy for the centrally-located Darius.

Justinian cosplaying as a high peaceweight leader. An important caveat to this set: Justinian may have high-rolled on peaceweight if he was Pleased with FDR at only +2 relations.

The other reason for FDR and Darius' relative success: the Bad leaders were bad in every definition of the word. Monty being terrible was expected: he may very well be the worst AI leader in Civ IV. The ineptitude of Louis and Cathy, however, was perplexing. The final results way overstate Louis’ true strength in this setup; all four of his wins were fool's gold, where he turned on the Cultural slider before Rifling and was somehow not punished for it. Cathy was even more of a dud here, barely mustering two backdoor second-place finishes and flailing around otherwise. The biggest issue with the Evil leaders was that in a world defined by the unbreakable religious bonds, overt aggression and backstabbing was not an optimal pathway to success. Most games saw these three weaken themselves with fruitless pre-Catapult warring and silly cross-map wars, make too many enemies from unnecessary betrayals, and eventually become backward and isolated rump states waiting to be conquered.

There were also games where the two handsome fanatics just decided to work together (Games 10, 14, 18), as even with different religions the two were predisposed to like each other due to identical peaceweight and shared civics (both leaders love Theocracy). Naturally, this was bad news for everyone else.

Leader Dynamics

There were three key antagonistic pairings that impacted these games. The first one was Justinian and Montezuma: the two fought early in all twenty games, and Justinian’s success was correlated to the efficiency in which he was able to conquer the Aztecs. In fact, he won every single game in which Monty died before Turn 150. The more interesting and/or varied outcomes always took place when Monty was pricklier than expected.

Next was the contentious relationship between Louis and Saladin. The early cultural emphasis of these two frequently sparked massive border tensions that would derail any chance of cooperation, and the two were prone to fighting even if they shared the same religion. Louis, one of the most unreliable allies in Civ IV, was almost always the instigator, and the result of his fighting against Saladin ran the entire gamut of results. Sometimes, Louis destroyed Saladin early on, usually with help from other leaders, giving him enough momentum to win (Games 7, 20). Other times, Louis would foolishly attack a more advanced Saladin in the midst of an early culture gambit, leading to his demise (Games 9, 15 – Louis only survived Game 15 because Saladin inexplicably forgave the French monarch when he had just one city left). Finally, the two could just war each other into irrelevancy (Games 5, 14). No matter the outcome, one leader always provided both an opportunity and a trap for the other.

Finally, there was the hostile relationship between FDR and Cathy. While Justin v. Monty was an entirely one-sided conflict and Sal v. Louis encompassed a wide range of outcomes, FDR v. Cathy tended to be a fight where both contestants lost. FDR’s territory was a defensive fortress, and Cathy almost always struggled to break through his defenses and overall technological superiority. Unfortunately for the Americans, they were squeezed on territory and thus lacked the production queues to make any meaningful military headway against Cathy. By the conclusion of the Russo-American deathmatch, the victor was typically too exhausted to contend for anything more than a Runner Up finish.

Cathy and FDR were not at war at the time of this screenshot.

The two fought early and often, sometimes so early that they were both made irrelevant by Turn 75. Cathy attacked FDR before Turn 50 on three separate occasions, including a Turn 38 attack in Game 12. FDR was metalless in two of those games and eventually murdered as a result. Darius was the true winner of these fights; his victories in Games 12 and 13 were direct results of Cathy completely ceding contested expansion opportunities to the Persians in order to bash her skull against New York City.

Despite the violent nature of these games (an average of 12.5 wars) and the presence of only one Financial leader, shrine income and the general land quality helped make the tech pace fast. Games tended to go three ways:

1. Justin killed someone early (almost always Monty, but occasionally Darius like in the Actual Game) and became an unstoppable runaway.
2. Justin stalled out warring and another leader, usually Saladin or a Good leader, took advantage.
3. Justin played well but Louis got enough territory and was sane or lucky enough diplomatically to sneak out a Cultural victory.

Justinian was also a contender for culture victories, as if he conquered or founded enough Holy Cities he could be tempted to switch on the slider. Otherwise, and notwithstanding the Louis games, there was an even split between Spaceship and Domination finishes, usually depending on how strong or suicidal the 2nd or 3rd place leader was.

How Typical Was The Actual Game?

6/10. Justinian winning and Darius getting ripped apart early was quite normal, but some factors were quite strange. Monty, for example, survived to the Wildcard Game, while he died in every replay. His stronger performances tended to coincide with Justin's weaker performances, so Monty surviving reasonably intact while Justin was still a monster was certainly an anomaly. Louis was also unusually docile in the livestream and managed to secure a (not very impressive) second place finish; he either won, died, or almost died in the Alternate Histories.

Delving deeper into individual performances:

Justinian of Byzantium
Offensive Wars: 38
Defensive Wars: 43
Survival Rate: 100%
Finishes: 9 Wins, 7 Runner Ups (59 Points)
Kills: 27
Overall Score: 86

I can come up with two reasons for Justinian’s relative lack of dominance as compared to Sullla's five replays. First, having the Apostolic Palace really seemed to rig this setup in favor of Justinian, as with Saladin generally starting slow (more on that later), Justin was almost certain to get to Theology first, secure the AP, and use it to take complete control of the game, if he had not already. That explains why Justin did so well in the livestream despite failing to deal with the Aztec threat. The other explanation could simply be that a five-game sample size is too small to make any conclusions. After all, Games 14 to 19 was also a five-game stretch in which Justinian won four games.

The predictability of these games almost solely hinged on one factor: the location of Justinian’s 2nd city, which was a Holy City in the vast majority of games.

The two possible locations of Justin’s 2nd city

More often than not, Justinian settled his Holy City in the amazing Spot 1. This was an incredible city in every way imaginable, from its resources to the river for natural religious spreading to essentially rendering Monty irrelevant and easy pickings from the get-go. Such games were all but decided by Turn 120 as Justin ran over Monty and snowballed out of control.

If Justin instead settled the far inferior Spot 2, these games got a lot more interesting. With more breathing room, Monty could turn into a significant thorn in Justin's side, and the lack of rivers made it harder for Justin to spread Christianity around. When combined with his central position, this created dogpile opportunities for Justinian’s rivals that gimped the Byzantines, forcing Justin to settle for a Runner Up spot, or in some rare circumstances, the Wildcard game. Sullla spends lots of time analyzing 2nd city spots during the livestream for a good reason.

Altogether, this was one of the stranger Justinian sets that I have run, one in which the Byzantine emperor was simultaneously dominant and disappointing. Even after Monty, Justinian frequently benefitted from an equally as insane and technologically backwards Louis as well and the perfect anti-Cathy buffer zone in his American neighbor, and this directly factored into his more undeserved Runner Up finishes. Although a 100% survival rate in a central position surrounded by this bloodthirsty bunch of leaders is ridiculous, and Justinian was a contender in every single game, this felt like an underwhelming result when considering his lofty standards and this seemingly perfect setup.

Best Performance: Game 14 was vintage Justinian.

Worst Performance: Justin’s fighting was not great in Game 4, and he missed the playoffs as a result. Dishonorable mention to Game 9:

For what it's worth, Justin snuck a Runner Up finish in this game.

Louis Award: Justin nearly threw away a certain victory in Game 11 by going for a slow and ill-advised Culture victory attempt. He did occasionally have moments of waffling between Culture and Researching mode.

Saladin of Arabia
Offensive Wars: 38
Defensive Wars: 40
Survival Rate: 65%
Finishes: 3 Wins, 6 Runner Ups (27 Points)
Kills: 15
Overall Score: 42

Saladin is regarded as a budget Justinian for good reason. They have identical peaceweights and research preferences, they are both hyper-religious leaders, they both cannot Plot at Pleased, and they have the same starting techs, a culturally focused unique building, and a Knight replacement. However, Saladin trades the excellent (for the AI) Imperialistic for the completely worthless Protective; his Madrassa, while solid, does not provide the same happiness benefits as Justinian’s Hippodrome; his Knight replacement is far inferior to the Cataphract (Let’s just say that his Camel Archers are a far cry from their Civ 5 counterpart, which is one of the most overpowered unique units in Civilization history.) However, Justinian-lite is still really, REALLY good. Saladin’s three wins very much mirrored Justinian’s, although he usually won much later than Justinian would have, while five of his six second place finishes saw him play the role of Justin’s right-hand man. His other 2nd place finish, Game 5, saw him contend for the win the entire game but just get edged out by an abnormally strong FDR.

Saladin’s problems were not merely limited to his subpar package, however. His land was not great, especially for the early game, and Saladin frequently struggled with expansion, barbarian activity, and failed attempts at founding a religion. Adding insult to injury, Saladin was prone to facing dogpiles from peaceweight enemy Darius, religious enemies to his north, and the untrustworthy Louis. One particularly tragic scenario for the Arabians came in Game 20, in which Saladin was effectively in a 3v1 due to being at war with FDR and Cathy yet also losing cities to the encroachment of French culture. Even if Darius was out of the picture, Saladin next had to contend with yet another Creative backstabber on his borders in the form of Cathy. For Saladin to have had a nearly 50% advancement rate in such hostile conditions is a testament to his competence and toughness as a leader. Saladin in general has been pretty unlucky in AI Survivor, and he should be more highly regarded than he is.

Best Performance: Game 10 was by far Saladin’s best teching performance. The only reason for the late finish date was that the final confrontation between Justin and Saladin had devolved into a nuclear apocalypse.

Worst Performance: Saladin attacked Darius too early in Game 7 and fell victim to a brutal backstab from Louis, leading to his one First To Die game.

Challenger Award: This happened in Game 18:

The Real Poverty Point Award:

What kind of tundra 3rd city is that?

Louis XIV of France
Offensive Wars: 40
Defensive Wars: 18
Survival Rate: 40%
Finishes: 4 Wins, 0 Runner Ups (20 Points)
Kills: 9
Overall Score: 29

The Sun King truly was his own worst enemy in these games. As I had mentioned, every single one of his four victories were backdoor Hail Mary Culture victories in which he was extremely lucky to not get attacked by Infantry and Tanks while Cuirassiers still formed the backbone of his army. He played terribly in the other 16 games, his overly aggressive personality causing him to self-combust over and over and over again. The key issue with Louis was that much like in real life, he blew himself out trying to place all his eggs in the military and cultural basket at the same time. He declared reckless wars, committed unnecessary backstabs against loyal religious allies, and still tried to accomplish every cultural objective under the sun. There were multiple instances of him being 20 or so turns from three legendary cities, before throwing it all away by siccing Grenadiers against a Modern Era Justinian or Saladin. Had he just chosen to be only a warmonger, or only a culturemonger, he may have been much more successful. At least he did have a clear win condition unlike his evil counterparts, and he should always be viewed as a ticking time bomb in any game he is in.

Best Performance: Probably Game 20, when his culture was so good that he effectively culturally conquered Saladin, leading to a quick victory for the French. He needed time to be on his side, as Justinian was knocking on the gates of his cities with Tanks. He also made an extremely savvy military maneuver for once, seizing the valuable Islamic Holy City for himself before peacing out right as Saladin was going to unlock Rifles.

Worst Performance: Louis made the throw to end all throws in Game 11 with an invasion of Justinian as he was turning on the slider still holding a Medieval army.

Willem's Gambit Declined Award: Louis went RADIO before Rifling in Game 4… and somehow still won.

Darius of Persia
Offensive Wars: 20
Defensive Wars: 48
Survival Rate: 30%
Finishes: 3 Wins, 1 Runner Up (17 Points)
Kills: 8
Overall Score: 25

In many ways, Darius was a foil to Louis. Like the French king, he had four strong games and was irrelevant, dead, or dying in the remaining 16, and his offensive-to-defensive war ratio was inverse to Louis'. Moreover, his best performances were also somewhat lucky – as I had stated in the overview, two of his wins were aided by Cathy’s utter insanity. Unlike Louis, however, this set improved my opinion of Darius. Darius has been much maligned for good reason: despite holding the best pure economic trait combination in the game, he has become infamous for churning out extremely moribund performances. His propensity to forget to expand or build military is well known, but I also observed another key weakness: Darius is the rare high peaceweight leader who is prone to ignoring early game culture for too long (I think this is also an issue for Vicky, another leader with overpowered traits yet perplexing incompetence).

Due to the above, his central starting position and peaceweight isolation, and his other well-documented early game weaknesses, I fully expected this to be a total massacre for Darius. However, Darius was more competent than expected in these replays. Even his “bad” games were not all that bad all things considered. In many games, he just got dogpiled into oblivion, as is the nature of the game. His biggest issue in this setup was his neighbor situation. Having Cathy and two religious leaders was an unenviable position to be in, and he unsurprisingly had the most First To Dies of all the non-Monty leaders. Despite that, Darius was surprisingly effective at seizing what opportunities he did get and was a scary force when he was able to vulture territory from a Cathy or a Saladin (or even a Monty). This version of Darius was one that could keep up with anybody in almost any game.

Best Performance: A tie between his Game 13 and Game 19 wins. Game 13 was the best economic performance of any leader in this set – he would have landed his Spaceship on Turn 305 – while Game 19 was the only game in which he won without getting lucky that Cathy eschewed settling cities to throw Axes at FDR.

Worst Performance: Darius had his most “Darius-esque” game in Game 10, not expanding and then launching a pointless cross map war against Louis, before eventually getting yeeted out of the game by Cathy and Saladin.

When American Interventionism in the Middle East Goes Awry Award: Darius dragged FDR into a Defensive Pact triggered war in Game 14 against Justinian, costing FDR a likely playoff spot when Justin predictably ran them over at the same time. Ironically, that may have ensured his survival, as Justin reached Domination before he could kill two players at once.

Roosevelt of America
Offensive Wars: 29
Defensive Wars: 45
Survival Rate: 45%
Finishes: 1 Win, 4 Runner Ups (13 Points)
Kills: 5
Overall Score: 18

FDR was a good bit better than his low score may have suggested, and with more expansion room, he would have been a dark horse contender. Unfortunately, being sandwiched between two Imperialistic culture pumpers, he only had room for 6-7 cities, and although he was great at developing them, that was just not enough to compete for a top spot. FDR did have three other factors in his favor:

1. His proximity and river connection to Justinian gave him easy access to Byzantine Christianity, thus securing him a steadfast and powerful ally.
2. His corner gave him relative safety against the Eastern leaders, as long as they did not march across the map to attack him, which did happen quite a few times.
3. Cathy was in many ways FDR’s “Monty”, someone who would veer into insanity and eventually become a free source of territory. That is, if she did not bum-rush and cripple him in a pre-Turn 50 war-dec.

As a result, FDR was a playoff contender when he was able to overcome his early game difficulties. However, since his best games tended to coincide with Justin's, he generally had to settle for 2nd. His sole Game 5 victory saw Justin be significantly hampered by a T58 Monty invasion. Instead, the Americans ended up marching east to conquer the Aztecs, giving them two empires worth of territory to coast off of, literally. He was also lucky enough in that game for Cathy to choose to fight Darius instead – by the time she attacked him, FDR had Infantry and easily ran her over (she survived with one city due to Saladin coming to her rescue late).

FDR’s peaceweight outlier status still haunted him, much like it did Darius. Although he could handle Cathy alone, dealing with Cathy and Justinian and one or more of the Eastern leaders was more than he could handle. His deaths either stemmed from dogpiles or from ridiculously early wars, and there were multiple instances of him trying to recover, only to face a fatal attack from a leader on the opposite side of the map. Occasionally, he got run over by a 20 city Justinian or Saladin once modern ideologies and spy shenanigans caused old historical alliances to fade. Nevertheless, this was a gutsy performance from the normally moribund American leader, and to have secured five playoff worthy finishes in this hostile field should be something that FDR can hang his hat on.

Best Performance: Other than his win, he actually outteched and defeated Justinian to secure a Runner Up spot. FDR would have likely edged out Darius had he not had to fight so much.

Worst Performance: I am not counting Game 12 as there was nothing he could do about a Turn 38 war declaration, while his other First To Die performance in Game 2 stemmed from an early dogpile that would destroy any leader. He was pretty bad in Game 6, however, where he stubbornly stuck to his own self-founded religion and was quickly became cannon fodder.

Judas Award: FDR shockingly backstabbed his religious ally Justinian late in Game 13, helping pave the way for a Darius victory.

Catherine of Russia
Offensive Wars: 50
Defensive Wars: 25
Survival Rate: 50%
Finishes: 0 Wins, 2 Runner Ups (4 Points)
Kills: 9
Overall Score: 13

To address the elephant in the room: Cathy was terrible, and even her kill count was inflated by last minute vulture kills. Worse, she was boring, a far cry from her usual entertaining self. I noticed a couple of patterns in her games. First of all, she enjoyed starting wars more than fighting them and tended to halfheartedly meander around with a pitiful stack before signing peace with absolutely nothing accomplished except for making a lifelong enemy. Secondly, she jumped into wars way too early (she died in all of those three games where she attacked FDR before Turn 50). Most embarrassingly, in Game 12, when she attacked a metalless FDR on Turn 38 and almost immediately seized his capital, she somehow was unable to finish him off until Turn 129 – that’s 91 early game turns at war – and by the time she had completed her conquest, she was too far behind to be relevant.

I observed three reasons for this being such a bad setup for Cathy:

1. She had no good targets. FDR's territory was too defensible, and Darius was enough of a dogpile magnet that attacking him brought little reward to the Russians.
2. She had a coastal corner capital, and I have seen similar leaders struggle in such situations. Cathy’s traits and personality lends itself to getting in her opponents’ faces and conquering them, but this was not a good setup for such a strategy. I witnessed her open the game with a SAILING beeline a few times, despite not having any coastal resources in her capital.
3. Somewhat paradoxically, I think her Creative trait actually hurt her here, as she did not settle as many cities because her culture would swallow everything up – the AI are not smart enough to settle viable cities within their cultural borders. Moreover, the ensuing Creative border tensions seemed to race ahead of her ability to prepare for the resultant conflicts.

Cathy’s most successful games came when she was lucky enough to get multiple cities off of a Darius or FDR dogpile, but such cases were few and far between. Of her two playoff finishes, one of them saw her as the score leader but way too far behind to do anything about Louis’ culture run, and another was a backdoor finish behind a Justinian who had killed everyone else. This was just an awful setup for Cathy, and I do think many leaders would have struggled in her position; the land was not good at all.

Best Performance: Cathy was really only ever close to winning one game, Game 20. There, she killed Darius early and was actually the tech leader… except Justinian was larger and everything went right for Louis, so she was still relegated to the Wildcard game.

Worst Performance: Being First To Die despite catching FDR off guard in Game 13.

Femme Fatale Award: In the game I had to discard, I witnessed Cathy ruin Louis’ culture attempt by dragging the French into a Defensive Pact triggered war against a runaway Justinian.

Montezuma of the Aztecs
Offensive Wars: 34
Defensive Wars: 30
Survival Rate: 0%
Finishes: Surely, you must be joking…
Kills: 0. Yeah…
Overall Score: Lol.

This farcical output represented a new low for a leader that I thought could not sink any lower. In all fairness, anyone would have struggled in his spot, as it had little in the way of quality land and was sandwiched in between a Creative culture-monger and a religious fanatic. Nevertheless, this was a comically bad showing by Monty, and it speaks volumes that someone as aggressive as him had only 34 offensive wars, a nearly 1:1 offensive-to-defensive war ratio, and ZERO kills – Monty could not even muster a troll kill snipe. Monty’s problems were on full display here: his starting techs are horrible, he spams a unique unit that is worse than its vanilla counterpart (at least in the manner the AI use it), he founds a religion but never spreads it because he is devoting all of his resources to fighting, and he could not maintain a functioning economy to save his life. It was no accident that the three leaders closest to him combined for 17/20 of the victories in this set.

Best Performance: Well, he did come close to killing Justinian in Game 9

Worst Performance: There are too many contenders for me to make any sort of judgment.

Wang Kon Award: In Game 17, FDR had valiantly WON a 2v1 against Justinian and Cathy, even getting Justinian to cede one of his core cities for peace. Until, suddenly, Monty came charging in from the other side of the world, stole that Byzantine city FDR had worked so hard for, and handed it back to Justinian. That sudden cross map invasion was the first domino to FDR’s eventual exit. Poor FDR.

Conclusions

There were two major takeaways that I got from observing these games. First, this set made it more clear than ever how destructive and pointless pre-Catapult warring really is. The contenders usually waited patiently till Construction to start fighting, while the pretenders wasted precious development time on early wars that netted little to no gain, and a whole lot of loss. It was sometimes good to be invaded, as the initial aggressors would throw away their stacks, leaving their cities undefended and thus vulnerable to counterattack. This happened to Cathy, Monty, and Louis multiple times.

Secondly, with the right field, religious bonds can and do overcome peaceweight differences. One should pay attention to context regarding peaceweight split: a 2 v. 5 situation may seem hopeless for the goodie two shoes, but not when those five baddies consist of religious fanatics and crazy backstabbers. It turned out to be the low peaceweight backstabbers who were diplomatically isolated in this setup, as they made too many enemies and did not manage their economies well enough to succeed. No matter the setup, a game with Louis, Justinian, Cathy, and Monty in it is always going to be riveting, and this game certainly did not disappoint. This was a fantastic choice by Sullla for the OG Alternate History.

Amica's O4 AH

Comparison:

Much more static than my set, but still the same general results: Justin was the clear cut #1 with Saladin as a secondary contender and Darius as a fringe one. The main difference was that Louis was way luckier in my set than in Amica's, and Justinian was both way more dominant yet a little bit more vulnerable, being First To Die twice. Monty was a little better, but not by much.

O5 teaser coming soon this week!

 

[Thrasybulos]

Note that Amica forced all the AIs to have their listed peaceweights

At work so will read it all later, but this piqued my interest. Care to expound?

 

[Genghis the Barbarian]

At work so will read it all later, but this piqued my interest. Care to expound?

Just a “self created mod” (his words), you probably have to dig into the xml or something

 

[Genghis the Barbarian]

Ok, here is the teaser for Opening Game Five, one of the all-time classic Mansa Musa stomp games.

I am switching it up a little bit, as I think the answer to the standard teaser would be blatantly obvious. Instead:

See if you can determine the victory condition and turn for each of these games.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Nah, not gonna try and guess at end turns.

For victory condition:

• Lincoln / Hammy: Space
• Gilgamesh: Domination (but could be any, really)
• Mansa: wars <= 6 Culture else Space (bet there's a coupla Domination in there though)

(Ignoring troll Diplo)

Now, what's more interesting is that Lincoln's only won once. That's actually a pretty shocking result, since he had by far the best start on the map, and when I played this last year jumbled-style, he won convincingly the one game in that configuration.
Mansa had the second best start, next to the worst leader on the map, so no surprise that he'd prevail overall though.

 

[Genghis the Barbarian]

Nah, not gonna try and guess at end turns.

For victory condition:

• Lincoln / Hammy: Space
• Gilgamesh: Domination (but could be any, really)
• Mansa: wars <= 6 Culture else Space (bet there's a coupla Domination in there though)

(Ignoring troll Diplo)

There were two Diplo wins but they were not troll wins, thankfully.

Now, what's more interesting is that Lincoln's only won once. That's actually a pretty shocking result, since he had by far the best start on the map, and when I played this last year jumbled-style, he won convincingly the one game in that configuration.
Mansa had the second best start, next to the worst leader on the map, so no surprise that he'd prevail overall though.

We'll soon see if it was the land or the leader/setup that was the issue.

 

[Genghis the Barbarian]

S3O5 Writeup

My O5 writeup, AND the first game that had not yet been touched, is ready! Hopefully it is obvious why I switched up the teaser a bit.

Overview

On one hand, this was a Mansa Moneybags masterclass, but on the other hand, this was an incredibly un-Mansa like showing for the fan favorite. The typical Mansa playbook is to peacefully build, race ahead in tech, and then cash in on a quick Cultural victory. However, Mansa was much more aggressive on this map and only ever opted for Culture once, and that one attempt in of itself was extremely bizarre (he for some reason switched on the culture slider at Optics tech).

Mansa cared little for culture in this map. He was relatively uninterested in the first three religions – Suleiman, Hammurabi, and Lincoln all went for those more often – and he also eschewed other cultural pursuits like later religions and the Sistine Chapel in favor of pure commerce paths like Currency and Economics and military beelines like Guilds and Rifling. Instead, Mansa wisely preferred to steamroll through the tech tree and/or through his rivals. In game after game after game after game after game, Mansa expanded like crazy, exploded into a military tech lead, and then Thanos snapped another leader’s lands into fine additions to his own. Most often, that unlucky sap was Alex, but no leader save for Hammurabi was fully safe from Mansa's wrath here. (Something I would later come to realize is that Hammurabi's pure Culture research flavor may have caused him to hoard all the cultural prizes, making Mansa more likely to spend his beakers elsewhere).

Map Dynamics

In most maps, the bad guys would bully the good guys, but the tables were completely turned here - this was an utterly dominant showing by the high peaceweights despite the even good to evil split. Even if Mansa faltered, Hammurabi and/or Lincoln filled the void admirably, imposing their wills on the three evil leaders. The high peaceweight trio altogether won 19 games, secured 37/40 of the possible playoff spots, and more than 85% of the total kills.

The reason for this disparity was simple: land quality. Lincoln had by far the best starting position, with an excellent capital and ample room for 10+ good quality cities; Hammurabi's corner was rich in resources and commerce and scaled well; Mansa's land was fine, perhaps not as good as his peers, but good enough for Mansa Musa.

Gilgamesh was stuck with an ill-fitting seafood capital and a tundra-infested corner that had room for seven cities at most. To tack on, his neighbors were the Mansa death machine and the Americans with the best land. Meanwhile, Alex's land was sparse in resources, especially strategic ones. When combined with his propensity to treat Mysticism as if monuments would give him leprosy, Alex frequently found himself without metal units to defend himself against aforementioned death machine. Finally, the Silly Man’s corner was choked in low quality jungle, and as had happened in the livestream, the Ottoman sultan was drawn to a horrific zero-production 2nd city location that he always queued his next Settler in, rendering him essentially irrelevant from Turn 5.

Leader Dynamics (aka the Mansa Story)

The 16 Mansa games had two sub-categories: the fast and slow Mansa games. Like with Justin in Game 4, Mansa's speed generally depended on his ability to quickly conquer one of his neighbors, and his 2nd city location was quite important. Mansa always considered two spots: a flood plains river spot to his east that secured him elephants (the correct choice), and a jungle spot to his south redeemed by a corn resource and its good long-term prospects. The first spot almost always led to the fast Mansa games, as it afforded him Elephants for conquest, guaranteed him a fast start – he is freakin’ Mansa Musa, he will scale long-term anyway – while making Alex an easier target by locking him out of what little fertile land he had. The southern spot was alright, but it did afford Alex more breathing room while also getting in Gilgamesh's face too much. The slow Mansa games would see Mansa get suckered into an early 2v1 against his hostile neighbors. This was where being Mansa Musa was especially important; while most other leaders would have stalled out and become irrelevant, Mansa would eventually econ well enough to overwhelm his enemies and win, even if he was limping to the finish line. It was not a totally uncommon occurrence for Mansa to miss out on key Renaissance prizes like Liberalism or the Taj Mahal and only finally establish a tech lead deep in the Industrial Era in his slower games.

Nevertheless, most Mansa victories followed the general pattern of the Mali knocking out a weak Alex and snowballing, like in the Actual Game. Gilgamesh and Suleiman would then get picked off next, while the remaining high peaceweight leaders sat together and sung Kumbaya in a Next Turn fest. These games were more dynamic than the results suggested, especially regarding Lincoln's performance. Lincoln’s central position rendered him vulnerable to dogpiles, and he faced multiple attacks from every leader over the course of these twenty games. However, due to his abundant land and his ability to vulture (no pun intended) off territory from Gilgamesh, he was the best at riding the Mansa wave into a respectable playoff appearance. The performances of Hammurabi and Suleiman also varied, albeit not to the same extent as Lincoln’s. In most games, the two fought stalemated wars into irrelevance, but Mansa could betray Lincoln late to ensure that Hammurabi was 2nd place by default (like in the Actual Game), Hammurabi could conquer Suleiman to establish himself as the #2 guy, or Suleiman would partition Alex with Mansa to ensure that he had curried enough favor with the Moneybags machine to survive to the Wildcard game - the Ottomans were never even remotely competitive otherwise.

There were three oddities among the 16 Mansa games. One of them was his Cultural win that I already touched on. Another one was Game 3, where a multitude of inopportune backstabs just as one leader seemed to be about to break through led to a prolonged global stalemate, only broken when Mansa had at last built enough of a tech lead to conquer Sumeria and limp to a Turn 364 spaceship. Note how ridiculously late Gilgamesh’s First To Die came, on Turn 309, which would have shattered the “latest First To Die” record as of this writing. (I truly believe a post T300 First To Die is actually more unusual than having no leaders die in a game). Finally, there was Game 10, which veered into the opposite extreme with a stunning T251 MANSA DOMINATION victory. That game saw Gilgamesh benefit the most from a dogpile of a weaker-than-usual Lincoln and then bring Hammurabi to the brink of death. Once the Mansa-Musa-ninator came calling, Gilgamesh had just enough to hold onto a playoff spot.

The four non-Mansa wins all shared one trait: for whatever reason, Mansa completely bungled his conquests and ended up permanently gimping his game. Usually, a combination of the following lead to this:

1. Alex researching Mysticism in a reasonable timeframe, and thus being stronger and more evenly matched – those extra cultural defenses made a significant difference, as a lot of Mansa's fights were pre-Catapults
2. Mansa making questionable expansion choices, either getting squeezed on territory or overextending into the South and making his border cities difficult to defend
3. Mansa getting into an early 2v1
4. Mansa investing too much in early wonders to the detriment of everything else

In three out of the four non-Mansa wins, Mansa remained a contending leader but ended up failing to outscale leaders with 2-3x as much territory. In two of those games, his empire was so small that he was relegated to the Wildcard game! There was also the utterly bonkers Game 19, where Mansa utterly fumbled his attack against Alex and was run over by Gilgamesh to become First To Die. That game was a 1 in 100 type of game that nevertheless made this entire set worthwhile for me.

Religion played a larger than expected role in diplomacy, even if it was rarely able to smoothen over first impressions. For example, Suleiman’s ability to salvage a Wildcard spot generally depended on if he religiously aligned himself with the good guys. Moreover, Lincoln had a tendency to be in a minority religion, leaving him vulnerable to backstabs (especially since Mansa can plot at Pleased). With Mansa ignoring culture and this being a high peaceweight fiesta, Spaceship was the runaway victory condition. There were as many Diplomatic as Domination wins (three apiece)!.

How Typical Was The Actual Game?

9/10. The Actual Game was a cookie cutter fast Mansa game, and even his late betrayal of Lincoln turned out to not be out of left field.

Delving into individual leader performances:

Mansa Musa of Mali
Offensive Wars: 30
Defensive Wars: 34
Survival Rate: 95%
Finishes: 16 Wins, 1 Runner Up (82 Points)
Kills: 23
Overall Score: 105!!!!!!

Scoring more than 100 points is a rare yet impressive feat, and it would have been more had Mansa not choked in the final two games. This was the most aggressive I have ever seen Mansa: his 23 kills would have made any warmonger happy, let alone a peacenik like Mansa. He should have had more kills, by the way, as Suleiman and Hammurabi did snipe some kills after Mansa had done all the heavy lifting.

Mansa’s aggression was also controlled and smart. I can recall just one foolish Mansa attack, where in Game 2, when Alex had only Chariots defending his cities, Mansa sicced his forces on… a Protective Gilgamesh with Vultures and Creative culture defenses. Otherwise, there were still hints of Mansa’s weaknesses, namely his propensity to struggle early if he got too bogged down by wonders or was unable to establish military superiority. The removal of Deity starting techs definitely hampered Mansa, as he never had quite as good of an economic game as in the livestream (although he did come pretty close). Mansa benefited a lot from Alex's extreme weakness, and a slightly stronger Alex could have meant a drastically worse Mansa, as Game 19 showed. Nevertheless, I truly believe that this is the absolute best version of Mansa Musa, and the other leaders should consider themselves lucky that Mansa is usually not the warmonger he was here. Going for culture is a glass cannon strategy, and considering Mansa's high peaceweight, he might be better off focusing purely on commerce and military like he did in this setup. The results say everything.

Best Performance: Either his stunning Turn 251 Domination win in Game 10 or his almost as amazing Turn 286 Spaceship win in Game 13.

Worst Performance: Other than the obvious Game 19 and Game 2, Mansa was quite bad in Game 20, requiring a bailout from other leaders in order to deal with Alex. That may have been the first time I have ever seen Mansa backdoor into 2nd place.

Gandhi Award: Mansa sparked his snowball in Game 5, not through military conquest, but through settling a bunch of cities in open spaces while other leaders were murdering each other.

Lincoln of America
Offensive Wars: 14
Defensive Wars: 40
Survival Rate: 75%
Finishes: 1 Win, 10 Runner Ups (25 Points)
Kills: 16
Overall Score: 41

Although Lincoln's performance was ostensibly good, it was apparant why he is an AI Survivor bottomfeeder. Admittedly, Lincoln was actually quite excellent at most aspects of playing Civ IV. He expanded well, managed his economy effectively, and was a surprisingly competent fighter when pressed. So why do I think so lowly of Honest Abe’s AI Survivor capabilities? Well, there was one major caveat: Lincoln’s ultra-pacifistic personality - which could not have been more historically inaccurate - proved to be extremely detrimental in these games. Lincoln did just about everything he could to not fight, launching a paltry 14 wars despite his strong position and an abundance of weak targets. A stat I never thought I would see: Lincoln had more kills than offensive wars. That is simultaneously hilarious and sad. He had to wait for others to attack him, and this was a dicey proposition, as dogpiles were the primary catalyst for his eliminations. Moreover, I witnessed him do everything he could to NOT research military techs over the course of these replays. In a select few extreme cases, he was deep into the Renaissance Era in the tech tree, yet still lacked Gunpowder tech. Not Rifling. Gunpowder.

Luckily for Honest Abe, his land, suicidal enemies, and natural diplomatic bond with Mansa ensured that he was the runaway pick for second place. To his credit, he actually fought well when he had to, and he certainly had the means to keep the military momentum going into crushing wins if he just had the willingness to do so. Unfortunately, the Civ IV iteration of Lincoln was saddled with the cowardly George McClellan rather than Ulysses S. Grant or William T. Sherman as his commanding officer. As a result, Lincoln failed to take any sort of initiative to win, preferring to sit back and watch Mansa go to space, and with his land, he should have had more than one win even with Mansa in this game. It is no wonder that Lincoln has done little of note beyond Opening Round fodder since winning in his AI Survivor debut: in the majority of situations, his stubborn refusal to fight becomes a fatal flaw for the Great Emancipator.

Best Performance: I really thought his Game 2 win was rather lucky, as it saw a weak Suleiman suicide into Lincoln. His Game 16 near-win was more impressive to me, as he nearly outteched Mansa and lost the space race by one turn.

Worst Performance: His near First To Die finish in Game 10 was quite embarrassing, to say the least.

Shaka Award:

That’s a gigantic army for 740 AD. What wasted potential from this leader.

Hammurabi of Babylon
Offensive Wars: 28
Defensive Wars: 13
Survival Rate: 95%*
Finishes: 2 Wins, 7 Runner Ups (24 Points)
Kills: 8
Overall Score: 32

*This survival rate is fool's gold; Hammurabi was saved by Mansa multiple times, either through the UN or through military liberation.

Hammurabi was clearly born in the wrong universe. His Aggressive/Organized trait combination is a warmonger’s dream, combining the stronger units from Aggressive with the ability to maintain and quickly develop one’s conquests with Organized. Unfortunately, Hammurabi preferred to play peacefully, and he was ill-equipped to do so save for a good-but-not-great unique building – even his defensive unique unit is just an inferior version of Mansa’s Skirmishers.

In most games, Hammurabi stubbornly stuck to his favored “sit-back-and-devlop” strategy, to generally mediocre results. He was excellent at surviving due to his corner position, his easy-mode neighbor situation, and his ability to befriend Mansa (the two never fought), but there was still much left to be desired. His wars were usually of little note, either pitiful attempts at conquering the Ottomans or a meaningless cross-map wars against a dying civ. Hammurabi was in many ways the troll of the map, either twiddling his thumbs on his way to an undeserved playoff appearance (like in the Actual Game) or stealing kill points from others who had done all the heavy lifting. In the unusual Game 19 where Mansa died, Hammurabi’s small size also came back to bite him, as despite his tech lead, the combined efforts of the much larger Gilgamesh and Alex would overwhelm him to bring the evil leaders their one turn in the limelight.

In the rare cases where Hammurabi actually utilized his warmonger traits, he was able to succeed in this friendly diplomatic environment. His primary avenue to success was to murder Suleiman – his three best games, including his two wins, all saw the Ottomans as First To Die – and with the entire Eastern slice of the map to himself, his Organized trait made him a viable economic contender, occasionally helping him outscale Mansa. He was certainly more impressive than Lincoln. Nevertheless, Hammurabi still proved to be a tragic case of a leader who continuously tries to jam his square peg into round holes to no avail.

Best Performance: His Game 20 teching performance was legitimately strong, and he was on pace to win around Turn 310 when he was prematurely elected World Leader.

Worst Performance: Nearly suiciding into a much stronger Lincoln in Game 8, requiring Mansa to swoop in and save him.

Wang Kon Award: Somehow losing a war against five city Suleiman while Suleiman was stuck in a 2v1 yet still making the playoffs in Game 12.

Chivalry Is Dead Award: Hammurabi’s Game 10 teching was uncharacteristically terrible – he did not have Knights until Turn 230, and had to be saved by Mansa to survive.

Gilgamesh of Sumeria
Offensive Wars: 29
Defensive Wars: 20
Survival Rate: 20%
Finishes: 1 Win, 1 Runner Up (7 Points)
Kills: 2
Overall Score: 9

I must say, this was the most impressive single-digit Alternate Histories performance I have ever witnessed. Gilgamesh was the only viable evil leader for two main reasons. First, he was by far the most competent of the low peaceweights in this field, scratching and clawing his way towards what little success he could get. He was the only evil leader to win, the only one to make the playoffs in a Mansa game, and the only one who could maintain a semblance of an economy and accomplish anything militarily. Secondly, if one or both of Mansa and Lincoln failed, he was best placed to take advantage. His second place showing saw him run over Lincoln relatively early and use that to hold on when Mansa came calling, and the wild Game 19 of course saw him attack Mansa at the perfect time to become the game leader and eventual winner. His teching was pretty bad – he would have had a post-Turn 400 Spaceship win had Alex not suicided into him – but it did the job and was still impressive considering his horrible land and situation.

His issues did not stop at his cold land. He was always atop the hit list of a much more advanced Mansa or Lincoln, and he was effectively in the wrong side of a 3v1 due to the ineptitude of his fellow low peaceweights. Despite these insurmountable obstacles, he still toughed it out and managed two miracle playoff finishes, demonstrating why he is generally regarded as an above average leader for AI Survivor purposes.

Best Performance: Game 19, obviously, but also Game 10 was probably good enough to win if there was any leader other than Mansa there.

Worst Performance: Getting shredded early by Lincoln in a war he started in Game 13.

Apostolic Palace Cheese Award: Being denied an easy kill on Hammurabi by the UN in Game 10.

Suleiman of the Ottomans
Offensive Wars: 24
Defensive Wars: 27
Survival Rate: 35%
Finishes: 0 Wins, 1 Runner Up (2 Points)
Kills: 3
Overall Score: 5

Season Three was played on a Tropical map, and an unfortunate side effect was that many games saw a leader doomed from Turn 0 due to having too much crappy jungle. In this game, that leader was Suleiman, who settled this exact city and queued a 30-turn Settler in every single replay:

This was emblematic of the HURR DURR MUST GET RESOURCES mindset ingrained into the Civ IV AI coding, which baited the Silly Man into believing that a location with only Calendar resources locked underneath jungle was a viable one for a second city. Making matters worse was that his third city was usually not much better, as he opted to settle a food poor coastal spot that claimed zero contested land. If Suleiman was not Imperialistic, things would have been even uglier.

By the end of the expansion phase, Suleiman would only have 5-6 weak cities to his name and be a non-entity as a result. There is little else for me to say: he was a boring and irrelevant leader. Sometimes he helped dogpile Alex or Lincoln, other times he launched random wars against Mansa and Ham, but I never cared to pay much attention. I noticed myself multiple times nearly forgetting to record Suleiman's war declarations; he was that bland. I guess he did make the playoffs once, when Gilgamesh had murdered everyone else in the outlier Game 19.

With that said, this set should not have had any bearing on Suleiman's true capabilities. Even Mansa Musa would have failed in this spot due to the quirks of AI programming.

Worst Performance: His Game 20 exit was peak embarrassing Silly Man, dying on Turn 144 to pave the way to a runaway Hammurabi.

Frederick Award: Still getting murdered by Mansa on Game 14 even when Mansa had turned on the Culture slider with just a Cuirassier army.

Alexander of Greece
Offensive Wars: 36
Defensive Wars: 27
Survival Rate: 5%
Finishes: 0 Wins, 0 Runner Ups (0 Points)
Kills: 3
Overall Score: 3

Like the Silly Man, Alex was screwed by his land, but unlike the sultan, he was entertaining. Alex was plagued by the same affliction that other ultra-warmongers suffer from: a complete aversion to Mysticism. This was even more apparent in this setup, as Alex’s only source of Copper was in a faraway peninsula, and he would always settle his cities in such a way that his iron was in the second ring, like in the livestream. Thus, Alex was a car without an engine, unable to fight the wars that he lives and breathes for. If Mansa was typical Mansa, Alex might have fared a little better, but this was an aggressive Mansa who was more than glad to continuously spank Alex in these replays.

Notice the Iron resources outside of the Greek borders

Even if Mansa was feeling more forgiving, Alex was still running on borrowed time. Mansa could culture flip cities, he could tech up and run over Alex whenever he wanted, or someone else could bring an end to the Greek farce. All Alex could do was play the role of spoiler, whether it was slowing Mansa down or helping out with dogpiles. This was just not Alex's time to shine.

Best Performance: Believe it or not, Alex did come close to winning the crazy Game 19, as he was within 20 delegates from being elected World Leader of the UN. Perhaps if he had patiently developed his Babylonian conquests, he could have won or at the very least punched a ticket to the playoffs. However, being Alex, he instead threw away his ticket trying to attack a much more advanced Gilgamesh.

Worst Performance: Getting rekt by Mansa on Turn 137 in Game 10.

Ooga Booga Award:

A nice attacking force you got there, Al!

Conclusions

Putting it simply, the best economic leader in Civ IV had easy conquest opportunities which he gladly took advantage of. Combine this with some incredibly mediocre competition, and well, you have the recipe for a 100+ point Alternate Histories showing.

 

[Thrasybulos]

I did suspect something fishy about Mana's victory conditions, since you were asking.
But that would have been pure guesswork based on a hunch.

You do have a seemingly plausible explanation here, but I've certainly seen my fair share of games where a leader who'd normally aggressively pursue a culture victory condition ignores it most of the time, for no apparent reason.

It's funny how AI Survivor's games have ingrained some preconceptions about some leaders.
Both Keler's and my various experiments have shown "Silly Man" to be a strong and successful leader. But setting aside Season 1 (not broadcast, so didn't leave a strong impresion), Suleiman's AI Survivor history is a bit similar to Hatty's: screwed time and time again by the game draw, and when he finally got a favourable draw (S7), the live game went horribly wrong for him.

When I played this map by switching the leaders around for each run, Mansa won the most, but Suleiman scored similar (sligher higher with scoring system I used, a bit lower with Sullla's):

And Lincoln's start was clearly the strongest, with a 45% win rate:

 

[Genghis the Barbarian]

I did suspect something fishy about Mana's victory conditions, since you were asking.
But that would have been pure guesswork based on a hunch.

You do have a seemingly plausible explanation here, but I've certainly seen my fair share of games where a leader who'd normally aggressively pursue a culture victory condition ignores it most of the time, for no apparent reason.

It's funny how AI Survivor's games have ingrained some preconceptions about some leaders.
Both Keler's and my various experiments have shown "Silly Man" to be a strong and successful leader. But setting aside Season 1 (not broadcast, so didn't leave a strong impresion), Suleiman's AI Survivor history is a bit similar to Hatty's: screwed time and time again by the game draw, and when he finally got a favourable draw (S7), the live game went horribly wrong for him.

I do agree Sulei has been a bit unlucky, although I was still shocked that he was the dominant 2nd place finisher in S8 (which I guess should have been determined from most games being “Cyrus kills everyone else” games)

And Lincoln's start was clearly the strongest, with a 45% win rate:
View attachment 710147

Yeah Lincoln’s was easily the best, if for nothing else than it had the most space. Lincoln the leader IMO was a poor fit for it, however, and any more competent leader would have done WAY better. All Lincoln could do most games was ride Mansa to the playoffs