Game Five Alternate Histories Online 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 Five saw Tokugawa run over the map in an impressive Domination victory. 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 we have since used the same general format. This particular set of alternate histories were run by Myth - many thanks for spending so much time on this task! 
Myth posted the resulting data from the alternate histories and then discusses some of the findings below 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 originally noted, 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:
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. Also, in accordance with recent changes, the Apostolic Palace was turned OFF for these tests.)
Myth: Game 5's overall story turned out to be one of dogpiles, backstabs, and war horns. This is evident by a full 80% of the 20 repeat playthroughs ending in domination!
Two early game patterns emerged on repeat playthroughs. First, Zara was screwed in the majority of games. He often got 1v2'd by Alex and Kublai Khan, leading to an inevitable demise. This led to strong Greek and (Brown) Mongolian empires. The games where Alex went elsewhere - usually Genghis, but occasionally Kublai - led to a stronger Zara. In fact, this is what happened in all 5 of the games he survived. Second, Genghis Khan's first target often led to who emerged as the top leader on the east side of the map. His most common target was Tokugawa, likely due to border tensions. This usually led to a strong Toku - he won the 1v1 the majority of the time, other than the truly wacky game #13, where Genghis solo conquered Toku and snowballed off of that.
Meanwhile, Bismarck was the wildcard on this map. His survival rate being the worst and him possessing the lowest score belies the fact that he had extremely strong early and mid games in every game he was not first to die. He often declared on Kublai or Toku, and often would weaken them or slow them down. This opened room for other leaders to thrive. His major issue was the inability to survive in the mid to late game, as after Zara was gone he was the highest peace weight in a world of insane leaders who declare at pleased. He often found himself with pleased relations from everyone else in the game, leading to a war declaration and dogpile because the other leaders were all friendly with one another. He fought valiantly every time, but was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of troops stacked against him. His one win came from being ignored; it wasn't necessarily his own strengths that led him to that victory. Along with Zara, peace weight was destiny for poor Bismarck.
In terms of who actually won, Kublai won more than anyone else. Kublai got more out of the collapse of Zara in game after game, due in part to his creative culture. Alex expended tons of units, only for Kublai to come in late and snatch many of the spoils. Toku also had an obvious path to victory: taking out Genghis after he declared war on him. This is what happened in every game Toku won.
Alexander was most likely to come in second, and stacked up the most kills at a whopping 24. This is a little disingenuous, as many of those came from “kill steals” from a stronger war partner. However, he often rode the coattails of Kublai to a second place after they worked together to take out Zara. The games where he won came at the expense of his ally, with 2 of the 3 wins ending with Alex attacking Kublai to get domination.
Genghis attacked often, with this sometimes working out for him, and sometimes not. Even when it worked, however, he wound up technologically behind and often got crushed by a technologically superior Alex or Kublai late game.
Finally, as mentioned above, poor Zara was often at the mercy of a 2v1 from his closest neighbors, who were sometimes even joined by Genghis for a 3v1. The very few games this did not occur gave him a chance, as he often had the best economy. In fact, in every single game he was not eliminated, he finished top 2! He also came very close to coming second in game #11, where Toku was the runaway and could've attacked either him or Alex and happened to choose him. If left alone, Zara was very strong, but this unfortunately was a rare occurrence.
Now for a look at the individual leaders:
Kublai Khan of Mongolia
Wars Declared: 45
Wars Declared Upon: 46
Survival Percentage: 60%
Finishes: 8 Firsts, 2 Seconds (44 points)
Kills: 15
Overall Score: 59 points
Kublai was the highest scoring leader on this map, though it was very close to Alex & Toku. His central starting position allowed him to expand well, and his aggression rate was high enough to find himself in prosperous wars without being as insane as someone like Alex or Genghis Khan. The aforementioned dogpiles of Zara and Bismarck often led to strong empires for Kublai, as even the cities he didn't capture often were crushed by his culture. He also found himself the tech leader in game after game. This combination led to his impressive 50% top-2 rate on this map.
Alexander of Greece
Wars Declared: 68
Wars Declared Upon: 21
Survival Percentage: 65%
Finishes: 3 Firsts, 6 Seconds (27 points)
Kills: 24
Overall Score: 51 points
Alexander found himself as most likely to come second, the leader with the most kills, and least likely to be eliminated. He also had the most offensive wars and least defensive wars of any leader in this game, befitting his insane personality. His success stemmed from attacking Zara in game after game, usually leading to racking up mutual military struggle bonuses with Kublai and an empire that often was large enough to ride to second. The rare times he was able to solo conquer Zara often led to the ability to outpace Kublai's superior economic game.
Tokugawa of Japan
Wars Declared: 46
Wars Declared Upon: 43
Survival Percentage: 60%
Finishes: 5 Firsts, 4 Seconds (33 points)
Kills: 16
Overall Score: 49 points
Tokugawa found himself as the most well-rounded leader, being second most likely to come both first and second, and tying Alex as the second highest top-2 rate (45%). As mentioned above, his success mostly stemmed from Genghis's insanity, capitalizing on his early war declarations to take out his neighbor. He also benefited greatly from the eventual dogpile of Bismarck, as he was often able to take the northern spoils of the German empire.
Genghis Khan Temujin of Mongolia
Wars Declared: 45
Wars Declared Upon: 32
Survival Percentage: 40%
Finishes: 1 First, 4 Seconds (13 points)
Kills: 9
Overall Score: 22 points
Genghis Khan was unfortunately second-rate on this map. Every single one of his second places was distant, finding himself way behind a runaway juggernaut and getting lucky to have good relations with them. His one first place was an abnormal map where he solo conquered Toku, Bismarck, and then Kublai Khan on the path to domination. His insanity ultimately led to his downfall, however, as he was usually unable to overcome the poor relations his early war declarations caused him, as shown by his 3rd-highest first to die rate.
Zara Yaqob of Ethiopia
Wars Declared: 13
Wars Declared Upon: 59
Survival Percentage: 25%
Finishes: 2 Firsts, 3 Seconds (16 points)
Kills: 1
Overall Score: 17 points
Zara edges out Bismarck mainly due to a pair of extremely close space wins (with victory margins of 4 turns and a same-turn tiebreak, both times with Toku). His peace weight was his destiny, being attacked 59 times. This is especially staggering when realizing he rarely survived past turn 170! In fact, it could be argued that his collapse in game after game is what carried them to victory, instead of them necessarily being better leaders. On the flip side, it's interesting to note that his survival rate and top-2 rate were identical: he had extremely strong economies in the games he was left alone, allowing him to out-tech the other leaders and survive.
Bismarck of Germany
Wars Declared: 27
Wars Declared Upon: 44
Survival Percentage: 15%
Finishes: 1 First, 0 Seconds (5 points)
Kills: 2
Overall Score: 9 points
Poor Bismarck was the worst scorer on this map due to his inability to avoid a dogpile. He often came out post-landgrab with a top 2 or 3 score, only to be attacked relentlessly by Kublai, Toku, Genghis, and Alex. The one game where he avoided early wars completely he was able to tech to rifling around turn 180 and absolutely massacre Kublai & Alex after their own typical early wars. Unfortunately for Bismarck, this was widely unlikely, and he found himself eliminated over and over despite his strong early and mid games.
The actual Game Five turned out to be semi-typical: our top 3 leaders were the last 3 to survive, and Zara was our most likely candidate for first to die. The war count of 13 was also typical, with the average across the alternate histories being 12.15. The actual finish date was a bit late, with the average across the 20 replays was 322.2. However, while our most likely outcomes did not come to pass, it was still a fairly good representation of the map as a whole.
