Game One Alternate Histories Spreadsheet
One of the recurring features of past seasons of AI Survivor have been our "alternate histories", running additional iterations on the same maps to see if the same events would play out again. Game One saw a surprising Stalin/Ramesses duo grab hold of the game early following an early partition of Ragnar, and crush the competition together. Was that something which would unfold in each game? This was a topic that called for more investigation with alternate history scenarios. Following the conclusion of previous seasons of AI Survivor, I had gone back and investigated some of the completed games and found that they tended to play out in the same patterns over and over again. While there was definitely some variation from game to game, and occasionally an unlikely outcome took place, for the most part the games were fairly predictable based on the personality of the AI leaders and the terrain of each particular map. Would we see the same patterns play out again and again on this particular map?
The original inspiration to run these alternate histories came from Wyatan. He decided to rerun the Season Four games 20 times each and publish the results. The objective in his words was twofold:
- See how random the prediction game actually is. There's a natural tendency when your predictions come true to go "See! Told you!", and on the contrary to dismiss the result as a mere fluke when things don't go the way you expected them to (pleading guilty there, Your Honour). Hopefully, with 20 iterations, we'll get a sense of how flukey the actual result was, and of how actually predictable each game was.
- Get a more accurate idea of each leader's performance. Over 6 seasons, we'll have a 75 game sample. That might seem a lot, but it's actually a very small sample, with each leader appearing 5-10 times only. With this much larger sample, we'll be able able to better gauge each leader's performance, in the specific context of each game. So if an AI is given a dud start, or really tough neighbours, it won't perform well. Which will only be an indication about the balance of that map, and not really about that AI's general performance. But conversely, by running the game 20 times, we'll get dumb luck out of the equation.
Wyatan did a fantastic job of putting together data for the Season Four games and I decided to use the same general format. First I'll post the resulting data and then discuss some of the findings in more detail. Keep in mind that everything we discuss in these alternate histories is map-specific: it pertains to these leaders with these starting positions in this game. As Wyatan mentioned, an AI leader could be a powerful figure on this particular map while still being a weak leader in more general terms. Now on to the results as run by Amicalola:
Game One | Game Two | Game Three | Game Four | Game Five
Game Six | Game Seven | Game Eight | Game Nine | Game Ten
Game Eleven | Game Twelve | Game Thirteen | Game Fourteen | Game Fifteen
Game Sixteen | Game Seventeen | Game Eighteen | Game Nineteen | Game Twenty
(Note : "A" column tracks the number of war declarations initiated by the AI, "D" the number of times the AI is declared upon, "F" the points for finish ranking, and "K" the number of kills.)
Amicalola: This was possibly the most surprising Alternate History that I can recall even seeing, let alone running. It turned out that Game One had been a complete outlier, but it was the strength of Stalin, not Ramesses, that had been overstated. Ramesses was an absolute raid boss on this map, and it required a coordinated dogpile to bring the mighty pharaoh to his knees. In some ways, it felt like he was playing on settler difficulty, as he expanded the best in every game, while also researching the fastest, and building nearly every wonder under the sun. The Egyptian leader would consistently rocket out to a several-hundred-point score lead by Turn 100, and it wasn't that uncommon for him to be double(!) the next highest leader by Turn 150.
Even more impressively, Ramesses was not a peacenik pushover in these games, and he could handily beat every other leader in single combat. Normally, when a peaceful leader gets a snowball off, it's because they avoid war declarations for long enough to snowball into better military technology. But this was no Game-Six-Elizabeth situation where Ramesses would get left alone until it was too late - the other leaders were actively attacking him in every game! This was best encapsulated in the absolutely brutal Game 20, where Ramesses faced 9(!) defensive wars while declaring 0 himself, but still took over 300 turns to die, and was winning until about war number 8. That was an extreme scenario, but it was emblematic of the hostile environment Ramesses found himself in. The best way to see how strong Ramesses was here is the table of results, sorted by Victory Date: other than a random Willem win, every single Ramesses win came before every single other leader's wins. Something had to go badly wrong for Ramesses to get knocked out of the game, and that came in the form of a vicious dogpile of three or even four leaders. Two opponents usually weren't enough to hold the Egyptians to ground, as Ramesses repeatedly broke through two-front wars in the early game to come out ahead as the victor (e.g. Games 3, 12, and 16).
If Ramesses was the raid boss, then the raiding party was comprised of Ragnar, Stalin, Kublai, and a surprising Willem. These leaders doggedly harassed Ramesses in game after game, nipping at his heels and trying to draw blood before the full might of the Egyptian war machine could be brought to bear. When this plan failed, it was because the leaders failed to work together effectively. Sometimes, Ragnar would go charging in before anyone else was remotely ready, and find himself at the wrong end of ~20 war chariots (e.g., Games 6 and 10). Alternatively, Willem and Ramesses could clash early on, and this would cripple the team's scaling member before he could get off the ground. The coalition could also crumble to infighting, most commonly between Willem and Kublai (disastrous, as it weakened the party's best researcher and fighter), but also sometimes between Ragnar and Stalin/Willem. In these games, where Ramesses was given enough breathing room to pick off just one or two of his rivals, it was already too late for everyone else, and these factors were responsible for Ramesses winning around 2/3 of the time.
On the other hand, the raiding party's successful games were equally impressive, easily some of the best games of AI Survivor I've ever seen. It was as close to a dance as the Civ4 AI could manage, as each leader would take turns tanking aggro, securing peace just as another leader swapped in, taking a city or two at a time and whittling Ramesses down via death by a thousand cuts. Sometimes Ramesses would have Rifling, but Kublai, Stalin, and Willem (or Ragnar) would simultaneously be knocking at the gates of Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis - even if two besieging armies collapsed, the third might be successful, and the pattern would repeat until Ramesses suddenly had two or three cities left and was out of the game. It really did feel like a boss battle, and it only took a few missteps from one member of the party to spell doom for everyone else, which made the successful games extra rewarding.
As seen in the above table, Kublai Khan and Willem were the biggest beneficiaries of the group's successes, with Stalin trailing a little further, and Ragnar profiting by far the least. This was for a few reasons. To start with Kublai Khan, he had the most land available from the start, and was also frequently able to eat Augustus Caesar in the early game. This often set him up nicely to play the decisive role in the dogpile of Ramesses and score a late victory. Kublai's other option was to play second fiddle to Ramesses and betray the party in the mid-late game, usually by attacking Willem. In this way, Kublai would simultaneously lock in Ramesses to first, but ensure he would advance in second as well. Willem, alternatively, would occasionally stay out of the wars until the other players were exhausted, before taking out Ragnar or Stalin in the midgame. This similarly could set him up for second behind Ramesses, as he backstabbed Kublai Khan or Stalin, or could set him up to occasionally challenge Ramesses successfully in the lategame alongside another low peaceweight ally. Stalin was considerably weaker than I'd expected, given all the land he had available, but the reason why was obvious:
These two barbarian cities popped up early on in basically every game, and Stalin took his sweet time in capturing them, usually after Turn 150 or even Turn 200. This meant that Stalin had three less cities than expected in every game, and alongside his refusal to research Mysticism, Stalin was never in the position of strength to solo-conquer Ragnar/Augustus that Kublai and Willem sometimes were. Stalin was very well-placed to come second behind Willem or Kublai, doing so nearly every game those two won, but he was almost never the decisive factor in the Ramesses dogpile. His role was similar to Ragnar's - weakening Ramesses enough for Willem/Kublai to strike the decisive blow, or dying in the process. When he did place second behind the Egyptians, it was because the other leaders had drawn aggro instead. The final member, Ragnar, was also by far the weakest. He attacked Ramesses as the first war in nearly every game, but was totally incapable of winning that war, and relied on outside help. Even when it came, Ragnar was typically swept up in the midgame, committing suicide against either Ramesses, or whoever had killed him. Lastly, Augustus existed in this game as pure dogpile-bait, acting out a basic mob role to Ramesses' boss. He was never in a position approaching victory, but he did sometimes last long enough to distract one or two leaders away from Ramesses and let the Egyptians take out another leader. That was the closest Augustus came to success here, in a pitiful performance that displayed few strengths, and a lot of weaknesses.
Now for a look at the individual leaders:
Ramesses of Egypt
Wars Declared: 20
Wars Declared Upon: 78
Survival Percentage: 70%
Finishes: 13 Firsts, 0 Seconds (65 points)
Kills: 19
Overall Score: 84 points
Wow. I mean, what a performance! Ramesses played by far the best games of everyone here, and it wasn't close. I used the raid boss analogy a lot earlier, because that's really what watching this game felt like! In some ways, this was the perfect setup for Ramesses to shine. He had an excellent capital with double grains to match his starting techs (which suffered the least to the Deity removal), and he was nearly guaranteed to get one of the first two religions due to no one starting with Mysticism. This also left Stonehenge highly available for Ramesses to build, which then led nicely into a shrine, while he settled onto the greenest land on the map, and… you get the idea. Ramesses would balloon out to a ridiculous score lead in the midgame, and every single game revolved around whether he could be dragged back down. The successful Ramesses games came in a few fashions. Sometimes, only one leader (most commonly Ragnar, but sometimes Stalin or Willem) would attack him, and he'd consistently be able to turn that war around and massacre them. Less often, Ramesses would strike the first blow, with one game in particular (Game 5) seeing him rush Ragnar with war chariots and take his capital in BC years. But usually, the Ramesses wins were even more impressive - he'd get dogpiled early on by at least two leaders, stalemate that, and go on to smash the field in tech and soldiers anyway, at which point he'd make a decisive conquest. This is evident in the war counter for Ramesses - 78(!!) defensive wars is amongst the highest I've ever seen, and that Ramesses was able to consistently win these games regardless is a testament to how strong he was.
The bad Ramesses games could play out in two ways. Occasionally, Willem or Kublai could get a snowball rolling on each other, or Augustus, while the Ragnar/Stalin duo slowed Ramesses down. This left one of the Eastern duo to declare the decisive war on Ramesses, always leading to their victory. Alternatively, Ramesses could experience death by a thousand cuts, as all four of his opponents repeatedly attacked, stealing 0-2 cities, and forcing a peace as some other leader joined the dogpile and freaked Ramesses' AI out. This was best exemplified by Game 20, where Ramesses experienced a (record?) 9 defensive wars, and was still the strongest leader until about war 7-9, when he was finally knocked out. A remarkable performance against formidable odds, this is probably the most surprised I've ever been by a leader in the Alternate Histories. Perhaps, with the right setup, Ramesses is stronger than we think.
As far as why Ramesses was so strong, I do have a theory: I think Ramesses is probably one of the leaders who (relatively speaking) benefited the most from the removal of Deity starting techs. Ramesses starts with Agriculture/Wheel, one of the best combinations for early growth and commerce. But he's also a rare leader to do so who doesn't also ignore Mysticism (e.g. Mehmed), which means Ramesses gets a fast start with Agriculture, and also gets the two bottleneck techs (Myst/Wheel) completed early enough to avoid being crippled.
Kublai Khan of Mongolia
Wars Declared: 41
Wars Declared Upon: 41
Survival Percentage: 80%
Finishes: 4 Firsts, 6 Seconds (32 points)
Kills: 10
Overall Score: 42 points
He was no Ramesses, but Kublai Khan was the next strongest leader on this map, and that was reflected in his point total. Of the four dogpiling leaders, Kublai was consistently the strongest coming out of the landgrab phase, and he was also well-placed to profit off of the frequent early exits that Augustus made. Kublai had a few routes to success here, more than any other leader, and this reflected his general flexibility as an AI leader. The first way that Kublai won games was simple: getting lucky during the mass dogpiles on Ramesses, and happening to take most of the high-value cities. From there, no one else could match the Mongolians, and it was an easy (if lengthy) path. But Kublai was also the main leader to find some success challenging the Egyptians directly. This was partly because he had prior expansion options that Stalin, Willem, and Ragnar did not (in the form of Augustus and less commonly Willem), which meant that even if he fell behind in peaceful techs, Kublai sometimes had enough production queues to match Ramesses' better individual cities. These games were rare though, evidenced by Kublai only winning a fifth of the time. Kublai was also the most likely leader to place second behind Ramesses - this was because he was the most likely to betray the group, and often turned on a weaker Willem or Stalin in the latter turns. Ramesses and Kublai were not friends in these scenarios, but the Egyptians typically won the game before that mattered.
Kublai's bad games tended to coincide with Willem's good ones, as the pair were competing for the same land, and were the most likely low-peaceweight leaders to infight. Sometimes, Willem and Augustus would team up against Kublai early on and knock him out of contention before his land quantity could become relevant; this happened most notably in Game 17, where Kublai suffered the earliest death of the whole alternate histories on Turn 112 due to some very unlucky dice rolls. Otherwise, Kublai could falter in the same way as everyone else, which was by finding himself on the wrong side of a 1v1 with Ramesses. But of the four, he was the least likely to find himself in that losing battle, and the most likely to make it out of the game alive, and Kublai overall did a good job in getting out of the Egyptian apocalypse alive.
Willem of the Netherlands
Wars Declared: 43
Wars Declared Upon: 19
Survival Percentage: 55%
Finishes: 3 Firsts, 4 Seconds (23 points)
Kills: 9
Overall Score: 32 points
Willem was by far the best researcher out of the four allies, but that was about all he was good at. Unlike every other member of the raiding party, Willem was able to compete with Ramesses in technology, but his land was not very good, and that meant that unlike in some other games, he was unable to create a foodhammer lead via peaceful expansion. That left Willem in an unenviable position where he needed to fight a neighbour to expand, but his only neighbours were the two strongest leaders on the map (Ramesses and Kublai). Willem went in either direction about half the time, and experienced success and failure from both. Sometimes, he profited the most from Ramesses' death, establishing an iron grip on the tech lead - he might be set behind, but so was everyone else. Willem also attacked Kublai a lot, and although Kublai Khan was more likely to win that (lengthy) fight, it wasn't a guarantee, with Willem taking out the Khan early on in multiple games (most notably Game 17, where Kublai died before catapults and Willem killed every leader except Ramesses!). Once Willem had two leader's worth of land, his Financial trait was sometimes enough to catch back up to the Egyptian monster, in classic Financial/Alive fashion.
But Willem only advanced a third of the time, and his starting position was difficult to escape. Willem's failed games could occur in two ways. Sometimes, as with everyone else, Ramesses would catch Willem with his pants down as other leaders were either too weak, or otherwise occupied, and butcher the hammer-poor Dutch. In multiple games, Ramesses would have Ragnar on the ropes as Willem tried to save the hapless Vikings… only for Ramesses to swat Willem's stacks like flies, finish eating Ragnar, and then turn around and kill/cripple Willem as well! The other way for Willem to lose was by being the odd man out in his coalition. Frequently, Willem would assist the other members in killing Ramesses and Augustus, before suddenly finding himself backstabbed by former allies (in fairness, he also stupidly attacked them first sometimes). It was a harsh diplomatic world for the Dutch, and Willem found himself being too low-peaceweight to consistently befriend Ramesses and Augustus, but too high-peaceweight to profit from their demise.
Stalin of Russia
Wars Declared: 50
Wars Declared Upon: 20
Survival Percentage: 50%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 9 Seconds (18 points)
Kills: 12
Overall Score: 30 points
Stalin advanced almost as much as Kublai, and more than Willem, but don't let that fool you - there was a large drop-off between the first two members of the anti-Ramesses coalition and the second two. Stalin was consistently weaker than Willem/Kublai coming out of the landgrab phase, for a few reasons. As mentioned, he was screwed by barbarian cities repeatedly, and this was not his fault. Stalin also refused to research Mysticism in most games, and a lot of his strongest ones saw him tech Mysticism unusually early. These factors left Stalin to frequently have amongst the fewest cities by Turn 100, and he had to profit off of Ramesses- or Augustus-dogpiles to find success. To his credit, Stalin was an effective dogpiler, frequently joining Ragnar, Willem, or Kublai in assaulting one of the central powers - he almost never started the first war. But Stalin was never able to profit off of the central leader's deaths in the same way as Kublai or Willem (or even Ragnar, occasionally), and he was only ever competitive in his second-places behind Kublai Khan. In those games, his best (particularly Games 1, 2, and 20), Stalin could match the Khan in land and power, but he always fell behind in tech, and in their inevitable final confrontation this cost Stalin the win literally every time.
Unlike Willem and Kublai, who were sometimes vaguely competitive in their post-Ramesses second place finishes, Stalin nearly always backdoored this position by pure chance, coming second because everyone else was dead or dying. He was also by far the least likely of the trio to place behind Ramesses, because the two were often mortal enemies. Most of Stalin's second-places came behind Willem or Kublai, and this was primarily because he was on the other side of the map; once Willem/Kublai had killed Ramesses, and each other, Stalin was just sort of second by default. It certainly wasn't going to be Ragnar or Augustus! Stalin was obviously and considerably stronger than those two dunderheads, but he was a lot weaker than the former three leaders despite neighbouring the weakest AIs in the game. In that light, this was a disappointing performance from the Season 3 Champion.
Ragnar of the Vikings
Wars Declared: 54
Wars Declared Upon: 20
Survival Percentage: 15%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 1 Second (2 points)
Kills: 8
Overall Score: 10 points
Ragnar was the obvious weak link of the raiding party, responsible for few of their wins, and a lot of their losses. In fairness, Ragnar's start here was weak, badly-suited to his techs and surrounded by plains and tundra tiles (actually, Ragnar's had a lot of terrible starts; maybe he's better than we think…). Ragnar tried to break out of this position, and in nearly every game he charged into Ramesses' territory faster than you can say ‘Leeroy Jenkins.' But these wars were completely hopeless for Ragnar, and without help he quickly found himself dying to swarms of war chariots and swordsmen. Even when Ragnar did get help, he was usually too far behind to profit much off of Ramesses' fall, and he was the most likely target for the Egyptian counter-attack when Ramesses survived the initial onslaught. This led to the lowest survival rate of the group, at only 15%, and even when Ramesses did falter, Ragnar would inevitably suicide into Kublai or Stalin anyway. To his credit, Ragnar did have two good games (Games 11 and 20). Game 20 in particular saw Ragnar kill Willem, Augustus, and (with a lot of help) Ramesses, taking the top half of the map (including Egypt's treasure trove of wonders) for himself. But even in that context, Ragnar fell hilariously behind in tech, and fell to a Kublai/Stalin coalition late in the game. Ragnar was, despite his Financial trait, absolutely incompetent at researching in every game, and this pretty much always cost him.
Augustus of Rome
Wars Declared: 19
Wars Declared Upon: 49
Survival Percentage: 20%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 0 Seconds (0 points)
Kills: 3
Overall Score: 3 points
Poor Augustus. The Roman Emperor didn't have much of a chance on this map, and I'm not convinced that it was especially his fault. Augustus had a rough central position, a lot more jungle-bound than Ramesses' one and with only two plains-cows for food. To make matters worse, he was in a shocking diplomatic spot, surrounded by enemies and completely incapable of competing with the one leader who didn't hate his guts. Thus, I was unsurprised when Augustus performed miserably here, although the extent to which he suffered was extreme. Augustus never got out of the early game without fighting in at least one, usually more, wars. He expanded worse than Kublai, and could never secure a 1v1 fight against Stalin, which meant that there were no wars he could win. This left Augustus with no outs, no paths to victory, and that was evident in his results. The closest Augustus came to success was surviving, and there was not a single game in which he was particularly close to even second place, let alone winning. One to forget for the Roman leader, then.
This was probably the most interesting game I can recall running or seeing an Alternate History for. It's not often that there is such a dominant narrative, that is also so unexpected (by myself, at least). I mean, who thought that Ramesses of all people would put up such a dominant performance here?! The closest thing I can recall is Season Six Game Two, where Napoleon unexpectedly crushed the competition, but at least Nappy had a good diplomatic environment. In any case, it turned out that Ramesses and Stalin were technically still the most likely duo to advance, but just in the other order! Stalin overall was much weaker than in the real game though, and these games revolved around the dominance and dogpile of Ramesses - either the other leaders were able to drag him down, in which case Kublai Khan or Willem won a late victory amidst the smoking ruins, or Ramesses was able to take on all comers, in which case he won a dominant and deserving victory. The games were very binary in that sense, but they were extremely enjoyable to watch, and my biggest worry is that other AHs will be less fun to run by comparison. With that said, I hope you enjoyed this insight into Season Three as much as I enjoyed creating it.
Cheers ~ Amicalola 
