Civ4 AI Survivor Season Six

[Commodore]

I'm giving my broader prediction here: The winner of the wild card wins this season.

[Charriu]

You can add images to the comment?

[Amicalola]

Why are my apostrophes screwed up, but everyone else's are ok?

[Ramkhamhaeng]

Why are my apostrophes screwed up, but everyone else's are ok?

At one stage between you and Sullla's post the UTF8-encoded quote (three bytes 0xE2 0x80 0x99 ) is interpreted as CP-1252 encoded text. The three bytes are interpreted as â, € and ™.
How did you send him your text. By the google docs page?

[Amicalola]

Why are my apostrophes screwed up, but everyone else's are ok?

At one stage between you and Sullla's post the UTF8-encoded quote (three bytes 0xE2 0x80 0x99 ) is interpreted as CP-1252 encoded text. The three bytes are interpreted as â, € and ™.
How did you send him your text. By the google docs page?

Yeah, just the same way as everyone else I assume. It doesn't really matter, just strange.

[Reverent]

It’s been a while!

One interesting thing about this map is the rivers. Huayna, Louis, and Pericles share a major river. Once Huayna has a road connecting the river to his capital, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if these three end up sharing the same religion.

The western part of the map is dominated by a massive, snaking river that passes near almost everyone else. Wang Kon, Gilgamesh, Zara, and Gandhi are all very close to this massive river. With two religious leaders, this area might be a mess of surprise conversions as religion spreads throughout the area. Alternatively, if two of the early religions fall to the eastern leaders, everyone might enjoy religious harmony here.

The Americans are the odd ducks out. Roosevelt only has a couple of minor creeks, without easy access to the major rivers. They won’t make a difference unless he completely fails to expand. His broader location in the far west is more consequential. He’ll probably pick something up from his immediate neighbors, Zara and Gandhi. I think he’s too far away from the eastern civs to get something from them, even with his coastal start.

Lincoln is in a weird spot. He’s located midway between the western and eastern river, without ocean access. He’ll probably pick something up via land spread. (Although Wang could be weird and connect Lincoln to the trade network if his early settlers run for the hills. It would only take a couple of roads.)

Beyond religion, the western civs might have an easier time establishing early trade connections.

Looking forward to making my picks again!

Edit: On second thought, there’s not a lot of food between Lincoln and Gandhi. I think Lincoln’s going to send more settlers east than west, putting him into Huayna’s sphere of influence. (And probably end up with border skirmishes.)

[Sullla]

Well that was... quite a Wildcard game this afternoon! Thanks to everyone who turned out on the Livestream today for our usual Friday livestream session, it was a lot of fun sharing the experience with you. Here's the big list of links as we continue with Season Six:

Main Season Six Webpage

Sullla Twitch Page

Sullla Discord Channel

Current Bracket and Standings

YouTube Playlist of Season Six AI Survivor Games

Civ4 AI Survivor Season Six: Leader Previews

AI Reference Guide from CivFanatics

Complete AI Survivor Archives



Next Game: Playoff Game One

Schedule: Scheduled for Friday, 16 July 2021 at Noon EST

Playoff Game One Video Preview

Playoff Game One Written Preview

Playoff Game One Picking Contest Entry Form

Congratulations to Takuan as the winner of the Wildcard Game's picking contest with 21 points. Scoring was excellent for this game at an average of 10.93 point as some of the favorite predictions came through, if not in the way that we necessarily expected. We continue with our normal Friday schedule for next week's game. This time we have the first game of the playoffs kicking off - who do you have this week?

[Reverent]

Fun game!

I’m not sure what happened to Gandhi. Questionable tech path aside, he seemed to have some major beaker problems. Here are his research finish dates, with beaker costs:

• Turn 11: Agriculture (60) (5.5 per turn)
  
• Turn 18: Hunting (40) (5.7 per turn)
  
• Turn 25: Archery (60) (8.6 per turn)
  
• Turn 39: Masonry (80) (5.7 per turn)
  
• Turn 65(!): Bronze Working (120) (4.6 per turn)
  
• Turn 77: Animal Husbandry (100) (7.1 per turn)
  
• Turn 87: The Wheel (60) (6.0 per turn)
  
• Turn 92: Meditation (80) (16.0 per turn)
  
• Turn 102(?): Polytheism (100) (10.0 per turn)
  
• Turn 109(?): Monotheism (120) (17.1 per turn)
  

(This has a couple of errors. See my next post for better info.)

It looks like Gandhi’s research rate majorly crashed around Masonry, then led to an incredibly slow bronze working. He ended up slower than his initial rate! 

I’m not sure what happened. It wasn’t that he founded too many cities and crashed; Gandhi was stuck on two cities for quite a while. He couldn’t get his settler out safely for quite a while. The lack of a wheel prevents acceleration, rather than causing a crash. Maybe he lost his worker to the barbs?

Edit: I went through more thoroughly and will make a new post with revised numbers for everyone.

[Commodore]

Wheel failure mode seen there. Mysticism failure mode for Roosevelt was there too.

For a game that wasn't particularly whacky, it was possibly the best game of the season, all the way down to the 5 points in the last turn.

[Reverent]

I put together each player's research order and turns they took to complete it for the last game. Here the info:

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Some things to note:

• Wang Kon's Pottery and Archery research took a while. This coincided with his war preparations, hence the drop.
  
• Most everyone slowed down around turn 40. My guess is that this is when they were (generally) having peak barb problems.
  
• Gandhi left the wheel for the latest, both in absolute research date and in quantities of techs researched.
  
• I don't think Roosevelt ever researched Mysticism in the first 100 turns! (Maybe 1 turn, instant swap research at some point?)
  
• Pericles also had a surprisingly hard time in research. It's strange, because he never felt like he was struggling much. (Though he was a bit invisible.)
  

Even with his iffy tech path, I don't know why Gandhi did as poorly as he did. His research rate started significantly slower than everyone else's and never picked up. I'm guessing we missed seeing him lose a settler/worker to the barbs, then struggled to make any headway against them. (He did struggle to get out to a 3rd city for a long time, dancing his settler back and forth between from his capital and back.) Still, I'm curious about running some alternate histories to see if Gandhi flops on his face every single time or not.

It's kind of shocking that if you put together one of those "Greatest Works" things that pops up 101 turns in, it could have looked something like this:

1. Huayna Capac
   
2. Gilgamesh
   
3. Wang/Roosevelt/Zara/Maybe Pericles?
   
4. That one guy who lost San Francisco to the barbs
   
5. That other one guy who lost Lyons to the barbs AND let them steal a worker
   
6. Gandhi
   

Pretty awful outcome from one of the game's favorites!