Civ4 AI Survivor: Season Four

[haphazard1]

Very interesting, Grey Wolf! Thanks for posting this report.

Willem was overrun earlier than in the championship game, never really getting the time to pull ahead economically and in tech. Then the Russia/Mongolia and Sumeria/HRE wars kept those four busy while Darius teched away in peace until he was well ahead. Just about perfect for an economic AI to execute its preferred game plan.

I also find it interesting that Stalin did significantly better in your game. I am still not sure just why he stalled out so completely in the championship game, although being slow to expand and having those barb cities take prime spots all around him was a big part of it. But why was he so slow to expand early?

[yuris125]

Pretty sure Staling struggled in the championship game due to no Mysticism. Sulla didn't mention it, but most Stalin's cities didn't have 2nd ring 80 turns into the game or so - a sure sign

[GreyWolf]

Same thing happened to Stalin in my playthrough re: Mysticism, as you can see from screenshots. Not that he was that successful there, either. I guess sometimes the random factor causes the AI to make bad decisions.

[GreyWolf]

As opposed to the final, Playoff Game One turned out to be fairly predictable, in retrospect: both of my playthroughs of it had a similar scenario:

Always, Kublai attacked Byzantium early, marginalizing and eventually destroying it, then the Incas launched an inept attack on Mongolia, leading to their own ruin, and after this, Kublai, with some minor difficulties, conquered Spain. Hannibal, meanwhile, launched attacks against Willem, capturing one core Dutch city, but unable to capture Amsterdam. Finally, the Dutch eventually discovered Rifling, and pwned Carthage, leading to their Culture Victory.

I did another playthrough of the finale, btw, I'll provide only the victory screen:

Stalin eliminated Kublai right on the turn the Dutch won their victory.

[haphazard1]

More interesting reports, GreyWolf. Thanks for sharing these!

Wow, that last shot with mini map flooded with Willem's orange. If he is not attacked and stopped, Willem can turn into quite the powerhouse.

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

KUBLAI. KHAN. IS. A. FRAUD. He lucked into a dominant position here thanks to Willem's incompetence and still couldn't turn it into a victory.

Burger King is a fraud as well, but nobody questions that.

[shallow_thought]

I've replayed the final game. I forgot to activate the cheat code.

Which cheat code is this? I'm interested in setting up a couple of scenarios to try out, but have struggled to get vision. I'm sure there's a full set of instructions somewhere for saetting up one of the these games but I can't find it ...

[yuris125]

Go to My Games\Beyond the Sword, in CivilizationIV.ini find the line CheatCode at the very end of the config section, and set it to

Code:

CheatCode = chipotle

This will give you full vision in debug mode. If I remember right, you need to press Ctrl+Z in-game to activate it (my Civ isn't working atm, can't check)

[Sullla]

KUBLAI. KHAN. IS. A. FRAUD. He lucked into a dominant position here thanks to Willem's incompetence and still couldn't turn it into a victory.

Burger King is a fraud as well, but nobody questions that.

Kublai Khan has a pretty good track record over four years of AI Survivor, and he's been in enough games by now that I don't think he's a fluke performer. He's also been doing quite well in my replays of the Championship game. More on this when I'm back from vacation in a few weeks. (Yes, I've been running AI Survivor alternate histories on my laptop while waiting in airports. There are worse ways to kill time. )

[antisocialmunky]

 The real fun of Civ4 AI is that each leader has such personality. Forcing Gandhi to research rifles and tear Monty to shreds kind of takes the fun out of both of them.

While I do enjoy personalities I also want the AI to play a decent game, I've never enjoyed beating up on AIs that simply refuses to research rifling. And it's not like it's just 1 or 2 AIs that takes forever to pick up rifling.

Getting military techs when at war isn't "personality", that's just basic gameplay.

Would be interesting to hand craft a "winning" AI personality and give them no traits or UU/UB just to see how they do.

Darrell

Wouldn't be too surprised if it's along the lines of "Mansa but designed to get to Archery and Rifling quicker".

Maybe Stalin of Rome?