Genghis the Barbarian
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2021
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S3P2 Writeup
A shocking result, to say the least. I also encourage readers to ponder the Diplomatic victory question.
To use my best Sullla voice: Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!?!
I mean, seriously. Wat?!? Gandhi winning the most games by a good amount? Against this hostile field? With Mansa Musa in the game, who looked like a massive disappointment here? De Gaulle being the 3rd best leader in this setup? Five Diplomatic finishes, all from the same two leaders? Minimal strong teching performances despite this star studded cast? The Actual Game turning out to be atypical? What the heck happened here?
For starters, this field was quite unique in that despite having a 2:1 Evil to Good leader ratio, most of these leaders had builder-oriented personalities. The only true warmonger in this field was Peter, and, well, the results made it blatantly obvious that he was the odd man out here. Although these leaders did fight early and often – with such polarized peaceweight divisions this was inevitable – their general approaches to these games were by and large through internal development rather than external conquest.
To call this a 2v4 Good vs. Evil showdown oversimplifies things. To start, Peter was a major wildcard in these games despite, or perhaps because of, his pathetically poor showing. Peter could be useful to the low peaceweights in two ways. First, he could do his job and launch cross map wars against one of the good guys, keeping them occupied while the other three baddies built up and eventually overwhelmed Team Good, like in Games 18 and 19. Otherwise, he could be so incompetent that he becomes an easy source of extra territory for one of his evil neighbors, whether it was from gifting over culturally crushed cities, fudging his expansion, or suiciding into a much stronger leader. The worst thing Peter could do for Team Evil was to be the middling or trollish kind of bad, as all this meant was wasting precious turns that could have been used to stop the ticking time bombs that were Mansa and Gandhi. Indeed, Peter was bad enough at being bad that Team Good more often than not overcame this hostile diplomatic environment, winning eleven games altogether and coming quite close to winning a few more.
Of course, it helped that Team Good happened to consist of the best economic leader and the best culture-monger in Civilization IV. Moreover, both leaders had the most and the best land in the map. In particular, Gandhi was all but guaranteed a nice peninsula to his east that secured him 3-4 extra cities – his main competition for that peninsula was Qin Shi Huang, but Qin’s expansion was slow due to his isolated coastal start and his penchant to go after early wonders (amusingly, Qin built The Great Wall in all twenty games). It was not always rosy between Mansa and Gandhi, however, as the two frequently held differing faiths. This sometimes sparked conflict between the two that derailed multiple of their games.
The elephant in the room: it was Gandhi who got the king’s ransom of the winshare. Thankfully, there is an easy explanation: Mansa’s central position gave every single one of the evil leaders easy access to him, making it a deathtrap. In many games, Mansa would be so embroiled in war that all he could do was serve as a meat shield for the Indians. As Gandhi’s eight wins can attest, Mansa did an incredible job, but it came at a cost nonetheless: Mansa only won three games, and was either dead or utterly broken in most of the other games.
There were three primarily antagonistic pairings between leaders in these games that affected map dynamics in this setup. The first one was the Pacal-Peter pairing. In most games, Peter attacked Pacal early in a desperate attempt to gain some territory. This usually backfired on the Russians, and Peter was usually Pacal’s springboard to the Championship game. Also, Peter’s propensity to avoid culture haunted him greatly, and there were multiple instances of him gifting over culturally crushed cities to the Maya. As much as Peter was a boon for Pacal, there were a couple of scenarios where he was instead the bane of Pacal’s presence. Sometimes, Peter was the catalyst to a dogpile that crippled the Mayans, like in Game 5 when he sparked an early 4v1 that led to Pacal’s one death in this set:
Now you know how it feels!
Almost equally as disastrous for Pacal’s winning prospects was if another leader, say De Gaulle, were to conquer Russia instead. Game 13, in fact, saw Mansa conquer Peter instead, permanently relegating Pacal to the role of second fiddle.
The next pairing was between De Gaulle and Mansa, and oh boy. I would never harbor such sheer hatred for my worst enemy. These two fought, frequently to the death, in every single game, and it was De Gaulle who generally came out on top. There were two main reasons:
There is an imposter among us here…
That’s enough hammers to give one Gaullestones
Like Hatty in Opening Round Game Eight, it was almost always a De Gaulle invasion that broke Mansa’s back. De Gaulle seemed to have a knack for well timed attacks this season. Upon killing Mansa, De Gaulle’s success hinged on if he could take out Gandhi early enough, or if Gandhi was already too far ahead to be stopped. Mansa would only come out on top if he had an unusually strong opening, De Gaulle had an unusually weak one, or De Gaulle attacked Mansa too late for his massive numbers to overcome Mansa’s tech disparity. In a select few, less common cases, De Gaulle merely served to soften up Mansa for Pacal to take the spoils instead, with predictable results.
Finally, there was the Qin v Gandhi conflict, one that often determined if the outcomes of the other two pairings even mattered. Qin and Gandhi’s rivalry began long before the first war horns blared out announcing their conflict. The two would initially be embarked on a settling race, especially over the aforementioned peninsula and the barbarian settlements that sprouted there.
As I previously stated, Gandhi usually won this race, but when he did not, it was a disaster for Team Good. Like De Gaulle and Mansa, Gandhi and Qin fought in virtually every game, although Qin was a slightly more forgiving opponent than De Gaulle. If Gandhi was able to stalemate (or outright win, which he did a surprising number of times), then his victory was all but assured.
A typical game would see Pacal kill Peter, followed by the three remaining evil leaders to continuously deal hit-and-runs to Mansa until he collapsed or became permanently crippled. From there, two scenarios could take place: either the evil coalition took Gandhi down, with the victor generally being the largest leader no matter who the tech leader was (more on that later), or Gandhi was just too far ahead to be stopped. There were three games that deviated from the game script: the Mansa victories. The livestream game was one of those weird games, where Mansa and Pacal worked together as religious allies to take down the rest of the world (the two almost always had differing religions alongside peaceweight and were by and large bitter enemies in the replays) while Gandhi was the dogpile magnet and completely failed to defend himself. Mansa’s Game 5 win coincided with Pacal’s one death, of which Mansa was the prime beneficiary. His Game 13 win saw Peter ruin Pacal’s game with a Turn 73 war declaration while his rivals generally played poorly. Meanwhile, his Game 15 win was the single most spectacular performance I have, and will have, ever witnessed by a leader in Civilization IV: he mustered a victory despite getting attacked an unfathomable ELEVEN TIMES.
Most Alternate Histories sets have 1-2 random Diplomatic finishes which stem from two scenarios:
However, with the exception of Game 12 where Gandhi was legitimately shafted out of a win (although part of it was his fault for beelining Mass Media before Rifling
), every game with a UN finish saw the most deserving winner come up on top. De Gaulle and Qin are not the types of leaders who can just sit back and coast on Financial like Pacal. They had to go out and earn every scrap for themselves, without being born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and while Pacal arrogantly sat back thinking that his Financial trait and a weak Peter suiciding into him was enough, De Gaulle and Qin put in all the hard work taking down Mansa and/or Gandhi. They may have been too far behind in tech to win in any other way, but they still played the best, and I could not conceive of any Diplomatic finish as a troll ending save for Game 12.
Religion had a minimal impact on games, as in the vast majority of cases the Evil leaders all shared a religion. If anything, religion had the potential to sow the seeds of division for Team Good. This was a violent world filled with stalemated wars, as these leaders were generally evenly matched in military tech, considerably slowing down the tech pace despite this field of elite techers. Mansa’s economy was especially mediocre by his lofty standards, although that had a lot to do with his nearly 5.5 wars per game average. When Gandhi and Mansa win eleven games, it is no wonder that Cultural is the dominant victory condition, but I still found it crazy that there were as many Diplomatic finishes as Spaceship and Domination combined.
Onto the leader summaries:
Pacal II of the Maya
Offensive Wars: 37
Defensive Wars: 33
Survival Rate: 95%
Finishes: 4 Wins, 10 Runner Ups (40 Points)
Kills: 16
Overall Score: 56
My expectation before running this set was that this was going to be a Pacal romp, with a few Mansa or Gandhi wins sprinkled here and there and the occasional random De Gaulle or Qin victory. However, this was only a romp as far as Runner Up finishes were concerned. Regarding actually winning, Pacal had to overcome three hurdles:
Pacal is one of the game's very best economic leaders, but this set demonstrated why he does not quite belong in the absolute top tier of leaders. For a Financial leader with one of the best packages in the game, a dream diplomatic setup, and two easy neighbors to kill, Pacal should have performed much better than 56 total points and four wins. There is a reason why he is a leader that we root against in every game.
Best Performance: Game 6 demonstrated Pacal’s sky high ceiling, as he actually leveraged his economic advantage and murdered the rest of his competition.
Worst Performance: I can give a pass to his one death – there is nothing anyone can do about an early 4v1. More embarrassing was his Game 12 performance, where Peter caught him without metals, leaving Pacal a complete afterthought and out of the championship game.
Hare Award: Pacal should have easily won Game 11 had he not taken a nap with his Mechs and Modern Armors and allowed Gandhi to win by Culture.
Democratic People’s Republic Of Wang Kon Award: De Gaulle was for once the tech runaway in Game 10… but Pacal baited the French into attacking him and devoting his entire production to military rather than research, allowing Qin to catch up in tech (with some help from the Internet). Then, when De Gaulle was about to run over Pacal, the Mayans used the UN to end De Gaulle’s conquest, keeping it in Mayan hands. De Gaulle then voted Qin as world leader on the same turn he launched his spaceship, and Pacal had completed a successful troll.
Gandhi of India
Offensive Wars: 13
Defensive Wars: 59
Survival Rate: 50%
Finishes: 8 Wins, 2 Runner Ups (44 Points)
Kills: 2
Overall Score: 46
For once, Gandhi was not a lamb to the slaughter in a playoff game! In many ways, this was a miraculous showing from the ultimate peacenik of Civ IV. To start, Mansa Musa should never have to pay for his drinks in Delhi ever again. Put literally any other leader in Mansa’s spot, and Gandhi would be dead meat in this setup. Mansa had Skirmishers to shelter Team Good from early dogpiles, and his economic skills kept his tech going despite being mired in a brutal struggle for his survival from Turn 100 and on. Mansa’s resilience was crucial in helping Gandhi get those precious few extra turns that meant the difference between victory and destruction.
This is not to suggest that Gandhi did not deserve his success. He executed his part of the bargain to near perfection, and was generally good at defending himself if he needed to, unlike in the official game. Normally, being in culture mode from Turn 0 is a weakness, but in this case, every turn mattered for Gandhi. Game 20, for example, saw Gandhi get three legendary cities just as Qin’s and De Gaulle’s tanks were outside of his 3rd city – one more turn, and Gandhi was done for. I noticed some utterly absurd cultural beelines: getting Meditation AND Polytheism, going for Philosophy before getting the crucial defensive Longbows, and, which I had already mentioned, going for MASS MEDIA before RIFLING, a move that directly threw away a certain victory in Game 12. Despite this extreme display of culturephilia, Gandhi’s teching was excellent (perhaps aided by the immense amount of room for cities he had), and he was more than capable of helping with military matters. This was one of the most warmongery versions of Gandhi I have observed; he really was more aggressive than his 13 offensive wars may have suggested.
Unsurprisingly, Gandhi’s performance was boom-or-bust: he either won, almost won, or died. There were three ways Gandhi could falter. First, he and Mansa could come to blows due to religious differences, fracturing Team Good and making it easy for Team Evil to win. This was not necessarily a death knell for Gandhi’s chances, as there were two games where the two fought and Gandhi still won, one of them being the oddball Game 2 where Indira took the helm. Luckily in that game, Gandhi and Mansa eventually reconciled and worked together to take down Qin, and the Indians coasted to victory in that game. Nevertheless, fighting his one ally was not good for his prospects. Second, Mansa could fall apart too quickly, meaning that Gandhi was next on the chopping block – this was the most common cause of Gandhi’s failures. Finally, Gandhi could sometimes be his own worst enemy. With Deity starting techs removed, Gandhi was prone to crashing his economy if he combined over-expansion with the over-prioritization of cultural techs over essential development techs like Wheel and Pottery (like in Game 13). To mitigate these early research struggles, I noticed Gandhi quite effectively utilized a failgold economy (for those unfamiliar, this means to use gold from incomplete wonder builds to fuel research – a common technique on higher difficulties) in these games. Another way Gandhi faltered was to fail to properly defend himself, like in Game 15 where he died to a cross map invasion from De Gaulle. Nonetheless, this set showed why Gandhi is an elite culture-monger who would be a top five leader in the game if it were not for his extreme peaceweight. He was quite unlucky in the livestream, and based on these results and the Playoff 1 Alternate Histories, he may have had a better shot at a title than it seemed.
Best Performance: Game 14 was one of the best executed culture victories I have ever seen from a non-Financial leader.
Worst Performance: Crashing his economy in Game 13, failing to expand, and dying one turn before Mansa’s victory triggered. Dishonorable mention to Game 15, for reasons already mentioned.
Tortoise Award: With some help from Pacal’s inactivity, Gandhi won a Culture victory in Game 11 without ever turning up the Culture slider.
No More Mr. Nice Guy Award: Look at his Game 2 statline! At first glance, his zero kills may have made it appear that Gandhi is a poor warmonger, but he should have had at least two kills in that game. His first one was stolen when Peter troll sniped Qin in a last minute vulture of a dying civ, and Gandhi was in the process of running over De Gaulle and Peter at the same time when he hit three legendary cities.
Why You Should Never Give The Nice Guy A Chance Award:
De Gaulle of France
Offensive Wars: 60
Defensive Wars: 20
Survival Rate: 90%
Finishes: 3 Wins, 5 Runner Ups (25 Points)
Kills: 17
Overall Score: 42
Qin Shi Huang of China
Offensive Wars: 54
Defensive Wars: 19
Survival Rate: 80%
Finishes: 2 Wins, 3 Runner Ups (16 Points)
Kills: 4
Overall Score: 20
Although there was a large disparity in score between these two leaders, I grouped them together as in this setup, they were for all intents and purposes on the same team. One could have thought of these results as depicting a “Big Three” of Pacal, Gandhi, and the De Gaulle/Qin tandem. Even outside of map dynamics, these two leaders share many similarities. Both leaders have excellent starting techs and like-minded personalities, both being Industrious low peaceweight backstabbers who prefer more builder-focused strategies. Qin has the blah Protective while De Gaulle has the decent Charismatic as a second trait, but Qin makes up for this trait disparity with better uniques.
Regarding the map, both leaders had Fishing starts and at least one dogpile candidate as a neighbor. These two were not strange bedfellows in these replays – despite being conniving backstabbers, their goals and pathways to victory were in perfect tandem with each other. All of their wins followed the exact same pattern – run over one or more of their neighbors, wait for Pacal or Gandhi to build the UN, and then rig the UN in their favor. Yet another sign of how similar the two were: they had virtually identical offensive to defensive war ratios of 3:1. At the very least, one leader could get into the championship game by killing one of their neighbors and leveraging that into a Runner Up finish. Their strategies reminded me of a human Deity player – they tended to break out with Cuirassiers (De Gaulle’s two move Musketeers were quite useful with this), before getting enough to win through the UN. Their failures stemmed from the following: taking too long to conquer, being unable to coordinate dogpiles, and eventually getting wrecked in the late game by a much more advanced enemy.
The main reason why De Gaulle’s score was so much better: his land and neighbor situation. While Qin had to contend with Pacal and the hyper-cultural Gandhi as neighbors, De Gaulle had the hapless Peter and the more vulnerable Mansa as neighbors, the latter of whom was a more consistent dogpile magnet than Gandhi. Moreover, De Gaulle’s capital and surrounding land was better, especially regarding growth and production. Qin either needed to conquer Gandhi in due time or effectively use a Great Lighthouse-Colossus economy in order to have a chance. Switch Qin and De Gaulle’s starting positions, and their results would likely be flip-flopped. Altogether, this was a better performance from the two than I was expecting, and perhaps the community especially underestimates De Gaulle. The French leader has flailed around more often than not, but this season did demonstrate that there are situations where he can succeed.
Best Performances: Games 1 and 10, respectively, as those were the games where the two would have had a chance to win without the UN.
Worst Performances: De Gaulle’s expansion was moribund in both the games he died, and Qin tried to backstab Pacal in Game 18, only for it to completely backfire in his face.
Civil Disobedience Award: In Game 14, De Gaulle (and Pacal) were about to finish off Mansa… when his last city became ensconced in Gandhi’s borders. Since Gandhi refused to sign Open Borders, De Gaulle was stuck in a forever war, and Gandhi was safe to pursue his patented Cultural victory.
South Park City Wok Award:
Gotta keep out those darn 北京人.
Mansa Musa of Mali
Offensive Wars: 26
Defensive Wars: 93
Survival Rate: 40%
Finishes: 3 Wins, 0 Runner Ups (15 Points)
Kills: 4
Overall Score: 19
Poor, poor Mansa. 93 defensive wars says it all. His games were painful to watch, as the Malinese leader would frequently explode out into what appeared to be a dominant position, until the first of what would become a relentless barrage of attacks took place, taking down the titan through death by a thousand cuts. It was impossible to keep track of the number of times Mansa was about to stabilize his situation only for some leader with a gigantic and fresh army to come barreling in from the opposite side of where Mansa’s forces were currently concentrated. In every game, Mansa was teetering on the knife’s edge, never sure if the latest invasion would cause the whole moneybags machine to collapse. Even if he survived, he was more often than not a husk of himself, failing to advance in more than half of the games he survived. Ultimately, Mansa’s true survival rate – where he was not clearly on his way out – was 30%.
With that said, it was still clear why Mansa is one of the best leaders in AI Survivor. No other leader, in my opinion, would win 3/20 games while being attacked 93 times. In fact, they would be lucky to win one game. Mansa only had one easy game, that being Game 5 where Pacal uncharacteristically died early. In the other 19 games, Mansa had one major issue: this was not the right field for culture-monging, not in this hostile field and especially not with Gandhi in the game. Mansa could have done better had he played more like he did in his opening round game, rather than trying to build missionaries while being in a 3v1 and still missing out on the cultural milestones. When Mansa did exhibit aggression, it was not always smart – he attacked Gandhi more often than I thought he would, and taking out his only potential ally tended to backfire on him. At the end of the day, Mansa’s central position proved to be a deathtrap.
Best Performance: In Game 15, Mansa had to contend with a 3v1 on five separate occasions. Also:
Worst Performance: Game 1 was perhaps the one game where Mansa looked extremely pedestrian, and was deservedly First To Die.
Living Long Enough To Become The Villain Award:
Peter of Russia
Offensive Wars: 40
Defensive Wars: 6
Survival Rate: 25%
Finishes: 0 Wins, 0 Runner Ups (0 Points)
Kills: 1
Overall Score: 1
I have read Alternate Histories sets where leaders scored zero points, where leaders died in all twenty games, and where leaders squandered starting positions that would make a human Deity player jump in joy. Yet, there is a valid argument that this may be the single worst Alternate Histories performance ever. To start, look at the war count. Despite only being attacked a total of six times – that’s 0.3 invasions per game – Peter died in three quarters of the replays, was the overwhelming favorite for First To Die despite his majority status, did not ever come remotely close to advancing to the championship game, had the UN nearly tie him in score, and would have laid a complete egg had he not randomly sniped what should have been Gandhi’s kill in Game 2. This was an utterly inexcusable performance for a warmonger with a dream diplomatic setup and golden dogpile opportunities.
The huge problem with Peter: in this field, he might as well have been Ragnar or Genghis Khan. Indeed, if you replaced him with one of those leaders, there would have been little difference (actually, I think those guys might have performed better). For whatever reason, Peter would stop expanding after five cities in order to plot a war he had no chance of winning, whether it was against one of his neighbors or a fruitless cross map venture. Most games saw him either launch random attacks without rhyme or reason, get absorbed by one of his neighbors, or derail the evil gameplant with troll war declarations. His only usefulness to the bad guys was his being so incompetent that he became a mechanism for extra territory for his evil neighbors. Now, here is the caveat: Peter had BY FAR the worst land. He had a coastal capital without coastal resources, little room to expand (exacerbated by his poor cultural output), and lots of jungle with land that was not good enough to compensate post-Iron Working. His land was so awful, I think Huayna Capac would have struggled in his position. Nevertheless, although there is some debate over if Peter is an underestimated or overrated leader, I see him perfectly rated as a mediocrity.
Best Performance: Surely, you must be joking…
Worst Performance: Game 1, where his expansion was so awful that De Gaulle was able to jam border cities right next to Moscow.
Temujin Award:
Three cities on Turn 73…
Conclusions
This was yet another fascinating set, full of twists and turns, some shocking results, and some of the most exciting and awesome individual games I had the pleasure of watching. Some people enjoy seeing pure dominance, while others like to see evenly matched Alternate History sets – as I have done more, I personally find my favorite sets to be the ones with clashes to the death between Good and Evil, like in both this and the first playoff game. Some final food for thought: maybe we underestimate high peaceweights a little bit? This was not the first set in this season where the high peaceweights were able to overcome long odds to find success. For readers who have not yet made it to future seasons: do not be surprised when the goodie two shoes of Civ IV eventually get their time to shine.
A shocking result, to say the least. I also encourage readers to ponder the Diplomatic victory question.
To use my best Sullla voice: Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!?!
I mean, seriously. Wat?!? Gandhi winning the most games by a good amount? Against this hostile field? With Mansa Musa in the game, who looked like a massive disappointment here? De Gaulle being the 3rd best leader in this setup? Five Diplomatic finishes, all from the same two leaders? Minimal strong teching performances despite this star studded cast? The Actual Game turning out to be atypical? What the heck happened here?
For starters, this field was quite unique in that despite having a 2:1 Evil to Good leader ratio, most of these leaders had builder-oriented personalities. The only true warmonger in this field was Peter, and, well, the results made it blatantly obvious that he was the odd man out here. Although these leaders did fight early and often – with such polarized peaceweight divisions this was inevitable – their general approaches to these games were by and large through internal development rather than external conquest.
To call this a 2v4 Good vs. Evil showdown oversimplifies things. To start, Peter was a major wildcard in these games despite, or perhaps because of, his pathetically poor showing. Peter could be useful to the low peaceweights in two ways. First, he could do his job and launch cross map wars against one of the good guys, keeping them occupied while the other three baddies built up and eventually overwhelmed Team Good, like in Games 18 and 19. Otherwise, he could be so incompetent that he becomes an easy source of extra territory for one of his evil neighbors, whether it was from gifting over culturally crushed cities, fudging his expansion, or suiciding into a much stronger leader. The worst thing Peter could do for Team Evil was to be the middling or trollish kind of bad, as all this meant was wasting precious turns that could have been used to stop the ticking time bombs that were Mansa and Gandhi. Indeed, Peter was bad enough at being bad that Team Good more often than not overcame this hostile diplomatic environment, winning eleven games altogether and coming quite close to winning a few more.
Of course, it helped that Team Good happened to consist of the best economic leader and the best culture-monger in Civilization IV. Moreover, both leaders had the most and the best land in the map. In particular, Gandhi was all but guaranteed a nice peninsula to his east that secured him 3-4 extra cities – his main competition for that peninsula was Qin Shi Huang, but Qin’s expansion was slow due to his isolated coastal start and his penchant to go after early wonders (amusingly, Qin built The Great Wall in all twenty games). It was not always rosy between Mansa and Gandhi, however, as the two frequently held differing faiths. This sometimes sparked conflict between the two that derailed multiple of their games.
The elephant in the room: it was Gandhi who got the king’s ransom of the winshare. Thankfully, there is an easy explanation: Mansa’s central position gave every single one of the evil leaders easy access to him, making it a deathtrap. In many games, Mansa would be so embroiled in war that all he could do was serve as a meat shield for the Indians. As Gandhi’s eight wins can attest, Mansa did an incredible job, but it came at a cost nonetheless: Mansa only won three games, and was either dead or utterly broken in most of the other games.
There were three primarily antagonistic pairings between leaders in these games that affected map dynamics in this setup. The first one was the Pacal-Peter pairing. In most games, Peter attacked Pacal early in a desperate attempt to gain some territory. This usually backfired on the Russians, and Peter was usually Pacal’s springboard to the Championship game. Also, Peter’s propensity to avoid culture haunted him greatly, and there were multiple instances of him gifting over culturally crushed cities to the Maya. As much as Peter was a boon for Pacal, there were a couple of scenarios where he was instead the bane of Pacal’s presence. Sometimes, Peter was the catalyst to a dogpile that crippled the Mayans, like in Game 5 when he sparked an early 4v1 that led to Pacal’s one death in this set:
Now you know how it feels!
Almost equally as disastrous for Pacal’s winning prospects was if another leader, say De Gaulle, were to conquer Russia instead. Game 13, in fact, saw Mansa conquer Peter instead, permanently relegating Pacal to the role of second fiddle.
The next pairing was between De Gaulle and Mansa, and oh boy. I would never harbor such sheer hatred for my worst enemy. These two fought, frequently to the death, in every single game, and it was De Gaulle who generally came out on top. There were two main reasons:
- Mansa was THE dogpile magnet, and there were many instances where Mansa’s army was struggling in China or Maya while De Gaulle was primed to start toppling the Malinese dominoes with a fresh army in Mansa’s Western border.
There is an imposter among us here…
- De Gaulle’s land had a TON of production, while Mansa’s land was on the flatter side, which meant not only that it was relatively sparse on hammers, but also was easier to attack.
That’s enough hammers to give one Gaullestones
Like Hatty in Opening Round Game Eight, it was almost always a De Gaulle invasion that broke Mansa’s back. De Gaulle seemed to have a knack for well timed attacks this season. Upon killing Mansa, De Gaulle’s success hinged on if he could take out Gandhi early enough, or if Gandhi was already too far ahead to be stopped. Mansa would only come out on top if he had an unusually strong opening, De Gaulle had an unusually weak one, or De Gaulle attacked Mansa too late for his massive numbers to overcome Mansa’s tech disparity. In a select few, less common cases, De Gaulle merely served to soften up Mansa for Pacal to take the spoils instead, with predictable results.
Finally, there was the Qin v Gandhi conflict, one that often determined if the outcomes of the other two pairings even mattered. Qin and Gandhi’s rivalry began long before the first war horns blared out announcing their conflict. The two would initially be embarked on a settling race, especially over the aforementioned peninsula and the barbarian settlements that sprouted there.
As I previously stated, Gandhi usually won this race, but when he did not, it was a disaster for Team Good. Like De Gaulle and Mansa, Gandhi and Qin fought in virtually every game, although Qin was a slightly more forgiving opponent than De Gaulle. If Gandhi was able to stalemate (or outright win, which he did a surprising number of times), then his victory was all but assured.
A typical game would see Pacal kill Peter, followed by the three remaining evil leaders to continuously deal hit-and-runs to Mansa until he collapsed or became permanently crippled. From there, two scenarios could take place: either the evil coalition took Gandhi down, with the victor generally being the largest leader no matter who the tech leader was (more on that later), or Gandhi was just too far ahead to be stopped. There were three games that deviated from the game script: the Mansa victories. The livestream game was one of those weird games, where Mansa and Pacal worked together as religious allies to take down the rest of the world (the two almost always had differing religions alongside peaceweight and were by and large bitter enemies in the replays) while Gandhi was the dogpile magnet and completely failed to defend himself. Mansa’s Game 5 win coincided with Pacal’s one death, of which Mansa was the prime beneficiary. His Game 13 win saw Peter ruin Pacal’s game with a Turn 73 war declaration while his rivals generally played poorly. Meanwhile, his Game 15 win was the single most spectacular performance I have, and will have, ever witnessed by a leader in Civilization IV: he mustered a victory despite getting attacked an unfathomable ELEVEN TIMES.
Most Alternate Histories sets have 1-2 random Diplomatic finishes which stem from two scenarios:
- Coronating the obvious game winner 30 or so turns before that leader would have won anyway – this is the more common scenario.
- A backdoor troll scenario where a much less deserving leader wins because he had better diplomacy with the non-ballot leaders, while the non-ballot leaders were relevant enough to play kingmaker – we always remember these cases, but they occur far less frequently than we think.
However, with the exception of Game 12 where Gandhi was legitimately shafted out of a win (although part of it was his fault for beelining Mass Media before Rifling
), every game with a UN finish saw the most deserving winner come up on top. De Gaulle and Qin are not the types of leaders who can just sit back and coast on Financial like Pacal. They had to go out and earn every scrap for themselves, without being born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and while Pacal arrogantly sat back thinking that his Financial trait and a weak Peter suiciding into him was enough, De Gaulle and Qin put in all the hard work taking down Mansa and/or Gandhi. They may have been too far behind in tech to win in any other way, but they still played the best, and I could not conceive of any Diplomatic finish as a troll ending save for Game 12.Religion had a minimal impact on games, as in the vast majority of cases the Evil leaders all shared a religion. If anything, religion had the potential to sow the seeds of division for Team Good. This was a violent world filled with stalemated wars, as these leaders were generally evenly matched in military tech, considerably slowing down the tech pace despite this field of elite techers. Mansa’s economy was especially mediocre by his lofty standards, although that had a lot to do with his nearly 5.5 wars per game average. When Gandhi and Mansa win eleven games, it is no wonder that Cultural is the dominant victory condition, but I still found it crazy that there were as many Diplomatic finishes as Spaceship and Domination combined.
Onto the leader summaries:
Pacal II of the Maya
Offensive Wars: 37
Defensive Wars: 33
Survival Rate: 95%
Finishes: 4 Wins, 10 Runner Ups (40 Points)
Kills: 16
Overall Score: 56
My expectation before running this set was that this was going to be a Pacal romp, with a few Mansa or Gandhi wins sprinkled here and there and the occasional random De Gaulle or Qin victory. However, this was only a romp as far as Runner Up finishes were concerned. Regarding actually winning, Pacal had to overcome three hurdles:
- Gandhi having a Gandhi game and winning
- Mansa having a Mansa game and winning
- De Gaulle or Qin getting large, building camaraderie, and then using the United Nations to pull the rug underneath Pacal.
Pacal is one of the game's very best economic leaders, but this set demonstrated why he does not quite belong in the absolute top tier of leaders. For a Financial leader with one of the best packages in the game, a dream diplomatic setup, and two easy neighbors to kill, Pacal should have performed much better than 56 total points and four wins. There is a reason why he is a leader that we root against in every game.
Best Performance: Game 6 demonstrated Pacal’s sky high ceiling, as he actually leveraged his economic advantage and murdered the rest of his competition.
Worst Performance: I can give a pass to his one death – there is nothing anyone can do about an early 4v1. More embarrassing was his Game 12 performance, where Peter caught him without metals, leaving Pacal a complete afterthought and out of the championship game.
Hare Award: Pacal should have easily won Game 11 had he not taken a nap with his Mechs and Modern Armors and allowed Gandhi to win by Culture.
Democratic People’s Republic Of Wang Kon Award: De Gaulle was for once the tech runaway in Game 10… but Pacal baited the French into attacking him and devoting his entire production to military rather than research, allowing Qin to catch up in tech (with some help from the Internet). Then, when De Gaulle was about to run over Pacal, the Mayans used the UN to end De Gaulle’s conquest, keeping it in Mayan hands. De Gaulle then voted Qin as world leader on the same turn he launched his spaceship, and Pacal had completed a successful troll.
Gandhi of India
Offensive Wars: 13
Defensive Wars: 59
Survival Rate: 50%
Finishes: 8 Wins, 2 Runner Ups (44 Points)
Kills: 2
Overall Score: 46
For once, Gandhi was not a lamb to the slaughter in a playoff game! In many ways, this was a miraculous showing from the ultimate peacenik of Civ IV. To start, Mansa Musa should never have to pay for his drinks in Delhi ever again. Put literally any other leader in Mansa’s spot, and Gandhi would be dead meat in this setup. Mansa had Skirmishers to shelter Team Good from early dogpiles, and his economic skills kept his tech going despite being mired in a brutal struggle for his survival from Turn 100 and on. Mansa’s resilience was crucial in helping Gandhi get those precious few extra turns that meant the difference between victory and destruction.
This is not to suggest that Gandhi did not deserve his success. He executed his part of the bargain to near perfection, and was generally good at defending himself if he needed to, unlike in the official game. Normally, being in culture mode from Turn 0 is a weakness, but in this case, every turn mattered for Gandhi. Game 20, for example, saw Gandhi get three legendary cities just as Qin’s and De Gaulle’s tanks were outside of his 3rd city – one more turn, and Gandhi was done for. I noticed some utterly absurd cultural beelines: getting Meditation AND Polytheism, going for Philosophy before getting the crucial defensive Longbows, and, which I had already mentioned, going for MASS MEDIA before RIFLING, a move that directly threw away a certain victory in Game 12. Despite this extreme display of culturephilia, Gandhi’s teching was excellent (perhaps aided by the immense amount of room for cities he had), and he was more than capable of helping with military matters. This was one of the most warmongery versions of Gandhi I have observed; he really was more aggressive than his 13 offensive wars may have suggested.
Unsurprisingly, Gandhi’s performance was boom-or-bust: he either won, almost won, or died. There were three ways Gandhi could falter. First, he and Mansa could come to blows due to religious differences, fracturing Team Good and making it easy for Team Evil to win. This was not necessarily a death knell for Gandhi’s chances, as there were two games where the two fought and Gandhi still won, one of them being the oddball Game 2 where Indira took the helm. Luckily in that game, Gandhi and Mansa eventually reconciled and worked together to take down Qin, and the Indians coasted to victory in that game. Nevertheless, fighting his one ally was not good for his prospects. Second, Mansa could fall apart too quickly, meaning that Gandhi was next on the chopping block – this was the most common cause of Gandhi’s failures. Finally, Gandhi could sometimes be his own worst enemy. With Deity starting techs removed, Gandhi was prone to crashing his economy if he combined over-expansion with the over-prioritization of cultural techs over essential development techs like Wheel and Pottery (like in Game 13). To mitigate these early research struggles, I noticed Gandhi quite effectively utilized a failgold economy (for those unfamiliar, this means to use gold from incomplete wonder builds to fuel research – a common technique on higher difficulties) in these games. Another way Gandhi faltered was to fail to properly defend himself, like in Game 15 where he died to a cross map invasion from De Gaulle. Nonetheless, this set showed why Gandhi is an elite culture-monger who would be a top five leader in the game if it were not for his extreme peaceweight. He was quite unlucky in the livestream, and based on these results and the Playoff 1 Alternate Histories, he may have had a better shot at a title than it seemed.
Best Performance: Game 14 was one of the best executed culture victories I have ever seen from a non-Financial leader.
Worst Performance: Crashing his economy in Game 13, failing to expand, and dying one turn before Mansa’s victory triggered. Dishonorable mention to Game 15, for reasons already mentioned.
Tortoise Award: With some help from Pacal’s inactivity, Gandhi won a Culture victory in Game 11 without ever turning up the Culture slider.
No More Mr. Nice Guy Award: Look at his Game 2 statline! At first glance, his zero kills may have made it appear that Gandhi is a poor warmonger, but he should have had at least two kills in that game. His first one was stolen when Peter troll sniped Qin in a last minute vulture of a dying civ, and Gandhi was in the process of running over De Gaulle and Peter at the same time when he hit three legendary cities.
Why You Should Never Give The Nice Guy A Chance Award:
De Gaulle of France
Offensive Wars: 60
Defensive Wars: 20
Survival Rate: 90%
Finishes: 3 Wins, 5 Runner Ups (25 Points)
Kills: 17
Overall Score: 42
Qin Shi Huang of China
Offensive Wars: 54
Defensive Wars: 19
Survival Rate: 80%
Finishes: 2 Wins, 3 Runner Ups (16 Points)
Kills: 4
Overall Score: 20
Although there was a large disparity in score between these two leaders, I grouped them together as in this setup, they were for all intents and purposes on the same team. One could have thought of these results as depicting a “Big Three” of Pacal, Gandhi, and the De Gaulle/Qin tandem. Even outside of map dynamics, these two leaders share many similarities. Both leaders have excellent starting techs and like-minded personalities, both being Industrious low peaceweight backstabbers who prefer more builder-focused strategies. Qin has the blah Protective while De Gaulle has the decent Charismatic as a second trait, but Qin makes up for this trait disparity with better uniques.
Regarding the map, both leaders had Fishing starts and at least one dogpile candidate as a neighbor. These two were not strange bedfellows in these replays – despite being conniving backstabbers, their goals and pathways to victory were in perfect tandem with each other. All of their wins followed the exact same pattern – run over one or more of their neighbors, wait for Pacal or Gandhi to build the UN, and then rig the UN in their favor. Yet another sign of how similar the two were: they had virtually identical offensive to defensive war ratios of 3:1. At the very least, one leader could get into the championship game by killing one of their neighbors and leveraging that into a Runner Up finish. Their strategies reminded me of a human Deity player – they tended to break out with Cuirassiers (De Gaulle’s two move Musketeers were quite useful with this), before getting enough to win through the UN. Their failures stemmed from the following: taking too long to conquer, being unable to coordinate dogpiles, and eventually getting wrecked in the late game by a much more advanced enemy.
The main reason why De Gaulle’s score was so much better: his land and neighbor situation. While Qin had to contend with Pacal and the hyper-cultural Gandhi as neighbors, De Gaulle had the hapless Peter and the more vulnerable Mansa as neighbors, the latter of whom was a more consistent dogpile magnet than Gandhi. Moreover, De Gaulle’s capital and surrounding land was better, especially regarding growth and production. Qin either needed to conquer Gandhi in due time or effectively use a Great Lighthouse-Colossus economy in order to have a chance. Switch Qin and De Gaulle’s starting positions, and their results would likely be flip-flopped. Altogether, this was a better performance from the two than I was expecting, and perhaps the community especially underestimates De Gaulle. The French leader has flailed around more often than not, but this season did demonstrate that there are situations where he can succeed.
Best Performances: Games 1 and 10, respectively, as those were the games where the two would have had a chance to win without the UN.
Worst Performances: De Gaulle’s expansion was moribund in both the games he died, and Qin tried to backstab Pacal in Game 18, only for it to completely backfire in his face.
Civil Disobedience Award: In Game 14, De Gaulle (and Pacal) were about to finish off Mansa… when his last city became ensconced in Gandhi’s borders. Since Gandhi refused to sign Open Borders, De Gaulle was stuck in a forever war, and Gandhi was safe to pursue his patented Cultural victory.
South Park City Wok Award:
Gotta keep out those darn 北京人.
Mansa Musa of Mali
Offensive Wars: 26
Defensive Wars: 93
Survival Rate: 40%
Finishes: 3 Wins, 0 Runner Ups (15 Points)
Kills: 4
Overall Score: 19
Poor, poor Mansa. 93 defensive wars says it all. His games were painful to watch, as the Malinese leader would frequently explode out into what appeared to be a dominant position, until the first of what would become a relentless barrage of attacks took place, taking down the titan through death by a thousand cuts. It was impossible to keep track of the number of times Mansa was about to stabilize his situation only for some leader with a gigantic and fresh army to come barreling in from the opposite side of where Mansa’s forces were currently concentrated. In every game, Mansa was teetering on the knife’s edge, never sure if the latest invasion would cause the whole moneybags machine to collapse. Even if he survived, he was more often than not a husk of himself, failing to advance in more than half of the games he survived. Ultimately, Mansa’s true survival rate – where he was not clearly on his way out – was 30%.
With that said, it was still clear why Mansa is one of the best leaders in AI Survivor. No other leader, in my opinion, would win 3/20 games while being attacked 93 times. In fact, they would be lucky to win one game. Mansa only had one easy game, that being Game 5 where Pacal uncharacteristically died early. In the other 19 games, Mansa had one major issue: this was not the right field for culture-monging, not in this hostile field and especially not with Gandhi in the game. Mansa could have done better had he played more like he did in his opening round game, rather than trying to build missionaries while being in a 3v1 and still missing out on the cultural milestones. When Mansa did exhibit aggression, it was not always smart – he attacked Gandhi more often than I thought he would, and taking out his only potential ally tended to backfire on him. At the end of the day, Mansa’s central position proved to be a deathtrap.
Best Performance: In Game 15, Mansa had to contend with a 3v1 on five separate occasions. Also:
Worst Performance: Game 1 was perhaps the one game where Mansa looked extremely pedestrian, and was deservedly First To Die.
Living Long Enough To Become The Villain Award:
Peter of Russia
Offensive Wars: 40
Defensive Wars: 6
Survival Rate: 25%
Finishes: 0 Wins, 0 Runner Ups (0 Points)
Kills: 1
Overall Score: 1
I have read Alternate Histories sets where leaders scored zero points, where leaders died in all twenty games, and where leaders squandered starting positions that would make a human Deity player jump in joy. Yet, there is a valid argument that this may be the single worst Alternate Histories performance ever. To start, look at the war count. Despite only being attacked a total of six times – that’s 0.3 invasions per game – Peter died in three quarters of the replays, was the overwhelming favorite for First To Die despite his majority status, did not ever come remotely close to advancing to the championship game, had the UN nearly tie him in score, and would have laid a complete egg had he not randomly sniped what should have been Gandhi’s kill in Game 2. This was an utterly inexcusable performance for a warmonger with a dream diplomatic setup and golden dogpile opportunities.
The huge problem with Peter: in this field, he might as well have been Ragnar or Genghis Khan. Indeed, if you replaced him with one of those leaders, there would have been little difference (actually, I think those guys might have performed better). For whatever reason, Peter would stop expanding after five cities in order to plot a war he had no chance of winning, whether it was against one of his neighbors or a fruitless cross map venture. Most games saw him either launch random attacks without rhyme or reason, get absorbed by one of his neighbors, or derail the evil gameplant with troll war declarations. His only usefulness to the bad guys was his being so incompetent that he became a mechanism for extra territory for his evil neighbors. Now, here is the caveat: Peter had BY FAR the worst land. He had a coastal capital without coastal resources, little room to expand (exacerbated by his poor cultural output), and lots of jungle with land that was not good enough to compensate post-Iron Working. His land was so awful, I think Huayna Capac would have struggled in his position. Nevertheless, although there is some debate over if Peter is an underestimated or overrated leader, I see him perfectly rated as a mediocrity.
Best Performance: Surely, you must be joking…
Worst Performance: Game 1, where his expansion was so awful that De Gaulle was able to jam border cities right next to Moscow.
Temujin Award:
Three cities on Turn 73…
Conclusions
This was yet another fascinating set, full of twists and turns, some shocking results, and some of the most exciting and awesome individual games I had the pleasure of watching. Some people enjoy seeing pure dominance, while others like to see evenly matched Alternate History sets – as I have done more, I personally find my favorite sets to be the ones with clashes to the death between Good and Evil, like in both this and the first playoff game. Some final food for thought: maybe we underestimate high peaceweights a little bit? This was not the first set in this season where the high peaceweights were able to overcome long odds to find success. For readers who have not yet made it to future seasons: do not be surprised when the goodie two shoes of Civ IV eventually get their time to shine.
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