Game Seven 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 Seven was an absolute steamroller performance from Huayna Capac as he ran over the entire field without breaking a sweat en route to a Turn 252 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: To the surprise of precisely no one, Huayna Capac was an absolute beast on this map, winning a full 80% of the time. In every single game, he peacefully ballooned out to an amazing 500-1000 point lead over his nearest competition before anyone else even had the chance to stop him. He often found himself two full tech eras ahead by the game's end, sometimes finding himself with tanks against LONGBOWS (!!!). This also let him found at least 5 religions a game, including an incredible game where he founded all 7, leading to cultural wins in 14 of his 16 victories.
Now, while the Incan leader is obviously one of the best leaders (if not THE best) for AI Survivor, he also had some incredible map quirks that helped him with his dominant romp. To start, this peak formation between himself and Augustus ensured that Huayna got uncontested access to the north of the continent:
Augustus can not move past these peaks unless he goes around them, and we know that the AI gets funky pathfinding around peaks. Augustus never once got a city to the northeast of this cluster through peaceful means. It also pushed him south, and 90% of his early conflicts were with Churchill or Boudica. This gave Huayna more room than all of the leaders on this map and, combined with his financial trait, led to a gigantic tech lead in every game. The other geographical quirk was the giant rivers coming out of Incan territory to the rest of the map. Huayna founded one of the first two religions 100% of the time, and the holy city was always on one of these two rivers. This guaranteed that his religion would spread far and wide, whether Boudica founded the second (which happened less often than you'd think), or someone else did.
Really, Huayna needed to try to lose in order to lose, and my God did he want to lose sometimes. Every single one of his eliminations came at the hands of a too-early war declaration against Washington. All 4 games he found himself in a 1v1 with the Americans before Turn 150 (with him initiating), and every single time it backfired. I'm unsure why he struggled so much in these 1v1s - even when he had catapults, he didn't seem to be able to crack any American cities while his cities fell like dominoes. In order for an early war against Washington to work out for him, he needed Napoleon to help out, but Napoleon often had more pressing matters (more on that in a minute).
With Washington absorbing all of Incan territory in these scenarios, he was able to snowball a tech lead and win through either Space or Domination. In a way, Huayna Capac was the only person who mattered in this game - he either won or threw away the game. No one else had a chance without an Incan mistake. This explains the monopolization of wins between Inca and America: who most greatly benefits from an Incan collapse? The peaks guaranteed that it wasn't Augustus!
With first locked between our northern leaders, the other major story was the south. In a way, this region was way more interesting. The north was often static and boring, with Huayna just running away with it, while the south had constant warring and changed up game-to-game. The biggest story was something that played out in the Actual Game and most people weren't really expecting in the picking content: Boudica and Napoleon's eternal struggle.
The Celts and French fought in every single game, a full 100% of the time, with Boudica initiating the conflict in the majority of these wars. This was due to those aforementioned rivers: these two were the biggest threats to take the second religion, and the other almost always converted to the Incan religion, forcing them into a bitter rivalry. If this was strictly a 1v1, Boudica was the favorite to win the conflict, but it almost never was. Boudica would often get declared on by Augustus or Churchill, while Napoleon was the favorite target of Washington. This explains these leaders being First to Die 60% of the time between the two of them: they either snowballed off of a military conquest or died, and it was often the latter for both of them.
The true winner of the south was Churchill. This isn't because he did much - he just stayed out of conflict the most! He often found himself peaceful for the first 100-200 turns, then declared on a weak Boudica or Napoleon and got at least some spoils. This peaceful building let him get a military tech edge and just survive way easier than his southern neighbors and backdoor his way into second 40% of the time. On the flip side, the true loser of the south was Augustus. Two of his second places were extremely undeserved, just sitting there while the runaway Washington killed or weakened everyone else. Fairly, this isn't completely his fault: his land was atrocious. The aforementioned peaks forced him into the jungled south and his starts were extremely slow. He also found himself the loser of dogpiles. Not ones against him, mind you: he just didn't get any spoils out of the dogpiles on Boudica and Napoleon! All three of his seconds also came in games where Huayna faltered, which is due to him being able to vulture a couple cities from the collapse of Inca. Poor Rome was handed a terrible map situation and there wasn't a lot Augustus could do about it.
Finally, let's talk about those end dates. Our average win date was 289 - blazingly fast! If we only include Inca's wins, it drops to 281, and if we disclude the bizarrely late Game 16, it drops all the way down to 275. Actually, some of these games would be even shorter if he didn't go for culture. Our juggernaut often had the domination land requirement, then starved his cities with factories by not having biology or medicine.
Speaking of Game 16, I just have to share what happened: Huayna found himself with his third cultural city captured by Washington, then managed to get peace and sit there for 100 turns with the culture slider on… just to win with a third random city. His capital had almost 200k culture by itself by that point! I would love to see something like that happen on livestream.
Now for a look at the individual leaders:
Huayna Capac of the Incas
Wars Declared: 44
Wars Declared Upon: 31
Survival Percentage: 80%
Finishes: 16 Firsts, 0 Seconds (80 points)
Kills: 11
Overall Score: 91 points
There isn't too much to say about the Incan leader here: hand one of the best leaders in the game an incredible start, and he's going to dominate. Honestly, after watching just how dominant his performance was in the first two games, I thought he was going to win every single time, so when the third game rolled around it was a true shocker. I guess one thing to note is that cultural hegemons are usually backdoor winners, or winners who probably wouldn't win a different win condition. This wasn't the case with Huayna - as aforementioned, he actually had the land percentage to win domination in many of his wins, but not the population. Turning on the culture slider after factories but before Biology actually made his wins take longer! 
That's dizzying, and shows the true power of the Incan powerhouse.
Washington of America
Wars Declared: 23
Wars Declared Upon: 46
Survival Percentage: 40%
Finishes: 4 Firsts, 1 Second (22 points)
Kills: 11
Overall Score: 33 points
The pre-game favorite for First To Die winds up being the only other leader able to win the game for all of the reasons detailed above. After it happened, I thought Game 3 was a major outlier, only for it to repeat in Game 7, then twice more over the course of the reruns. Whoops! This at least shows that this was in fact not a near-impossible outcome. This isn't to say it wasn't all peaches and cream for America, of course. A 40% survival rate shows his average fate on this map: fodder to the Incan flames. Most games played out with him getting either double teamed by Huayna + Napoleon or, more rarely, solo conquered by Napoleon. That being said, he was only First to Die 20% of the time, showing that the Actual Game was correct in this regard, and the community was not. What was truly impressive for Washington was that he defended so well against a leader who was consistently at least 500 points ahead by the time he was attacked in his four wins. This solidifies my personal opinion that Washington is the best of the three Americans, though that in and of itself isn't truly impressive. 
Churchill of England
Wars Declared: 32
Wars Declared Upon: 23
Survival Percentage: 65%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 8 Seconds (16 points)
Kills: 6
Overall Score: 22 points
Our English leader was the undeniable best leader to pick for second. As mentioned above, this was mostly due to his early inactivity leading to tech leads when his neighbors inevitably got into war and then backstabbing one of his neighbors (usually Boudica) to grab cities. His corner start also let him survive most of the time, letting him be generally insusceptible to dogpiles (outside of Game #13). He also had a weak northern neighbor in Augustus that let him have a safe flank and often let him conquer extra territory for himself later on in games. He was boring to watch, but he played his opportunities correctly.
Napoleon of France
Wars Declared: 41
Wars Declared Upon: 27
Survival Percentage: 50%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 5 Seconds (10 points)
Kills: 12
Overall Score: 22 points
Although his score is tied with Churchill, Napoleon had a much different fate in a lot of these games. He was second most likely to come second with 5 silver places, but also most likely to be First to Die, with 7 "honors" in that category. This makes sense: Napoleon is certifiably insane. He spent almost every game fighting anyone and everyone who looked at him funny or made a short joke at his expense. He especially could not get along with his Celtic neighbor, and his worst games came when he was solo killed by her. His best games came from a conquering of Washington, either with or without Incan assistance (one place where he greatly outplayed Huayna), and was able to snowball the south from there. Unfortunately for Napoleon, however, he was never able to match Incan technology and could never conquer the golden menace even when strong.
Boudica of the Celts
Wars Declared: 34
Wars Declared Upon: 38
Survival Percentage: 40%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 3 Seconds (6 points)
Kills: 10
Overall Score: 16 points
A direct parallel to Napoleon, Boudica only scored slightly worse due to being centralized in the south, leading to more opportunities to get ganged up upon. She often came out swinging early, taking a border city or two from Napoleon - or, rarely, Churchill or Augustus - only to get stabbed in the back by her other neighbors. The Boudica from the Actual Game showed a perfect example of what happened when things went well: she rolled up Napoleon and just kept going. More often, however, the poor girl found herself trying to get out of a bad situation as her civilization disintegrated around her.
Augustus of the Romans
Wars Declared: 30
Wars Declared Upon: 40
Survival Percentage: 40%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 3 Seconds (6 points)
Kills: 7
Overall Score: 13 points
Augustus scoring only slightly less than Boudica is helped greatly by his pal Washington; if it wasn't for Washington winning games, Augustus would probably be around 4-5 points. He wasn't even close to placing in any game Washington didn't come first, and even when America won, he was a distant second in 2 of his 3 silver medals. He was never able to put his praetorians to any use other than sniping cities and kills from his neighbors, and usually found himself getting swallowed up by Huayna's golden borders. Again, this was mostly due to map position, but his passive personality sure didn't help him at all.
It turns out the Actual Game Seven played out almost exactly how it should have: Huayna winning a dominatingly fast victory, someone in the south coming second, and Napoleon being first to die. The only place it didn't follow the "standard" is the domination victory, but he wasn't too far off domination in many of the culture wins. It would have been absolutely hilarious to have had Washington win on livestream, but we instead got the standard ending. The one thing you could say is that Churchill was robbed of a second place, but he survived to the Wildcard at the very least. If it wasn't for the Apostolic Palace, he truly would have been!
I once again hope everyone enjoyed looking at this game from Season 4!
