Civ4 AI Survivor Season 8: Playoff Two Alternate Histories

(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.)

TheOneAndOnlyAtesh: Note: I changed Freddie's and Gandhi's colors in these replays to Portugal's Dark Dark Green and the Viking purple, respectively. I could not stand the cyan German borders for whatever reason, and I thought Gandhi's and Auggie's colors were a bit too similar and made it harder to see the map when running games.

This map was a classic tale of three wolves (Justinian, Ramesses, and Augustus) beating up on three sheep (Frederick, Gandhi, Brennus). Each had their own styles of achieving glory or screwing up in this map. Regarding the winning triumvirate, there was Justinian, the isolated oddball who had to claw and scratch his way for every ounce of success; Ramesses, the wolf in sheep's clothing, opting for a more enlightened path to victory; and, last but certainly NOT least, Augustus, the cold and calculating businessman, exhibiting the same ruthlessness that he once did as the first Roman emperor. In turn, there was the Trio of Suckage: Frederick, a good-for-nothing bum who squanders the golden package he was born with; Gandhi, the conniving nice guy who is easily exposed as a troll when one peels his outer layer off; and, last and CERTAINLY least, Brennus, a felon outcast only differentiable from the barbarians by the color of his borders.

There is a simple reason for such a disparity between the winners and the losers. In normal maps, the space and security of corner starting locations are generally counterbalanced by the better quality and conquest prospects of central locations. However, this was not the case in this larger than average map, which was structured in such a way that it both amplified the advantages of corner starting positions and nullified the disadvantages of such situations. Justin, Rammy, and Auggie all occupied corner starts, and they had amazing capitals, bountiful rivers, and endless peaceful expansion prospects alongside easy snacks for conquest. The latter two leaders also had War Chariots and Praetorians to seize the barbarian cities that frequently sprouted in their lands, although Justinian himself was no slouch in barbarian warfare. A quick aside: the Big Three demonstrated why their unique units are considered top tier in these games.

Meanwhile, the opposite was true for central starting positions. If you are superstitious about AI Survivor, you are justified in believing that the gods chose to reward the best performing Opening Round leaders with the best starts whilst consigning those who had scammed or trolled their way to the playoffs to lackluster spots and telling them to git gud. Among the losing trio, only Freddie had land that gave him a chance at keeping up, but he is Freddie, so of course it did not matter, and his central starting positions tended to leave him squeezed anyway. As a result, the Big Three were able to obtain anywhere from 9-12 cities per game through peaceful expansion or barbarian conquest, while the others were only able to get 6-8 cities before running out of room or falling into conflict.

Regarding the Actual Game, although it accurately showcased Auggie as a monster and Brennus as a runt, it was abnormal in a couple of aspects. First, Gandhi's performance was extremely strange in the livestream, as has been the case in recent seasons. Not only was a successful Gandhi game a 5-10% outcome, but also, such a game was far, FAR more successful than what happened in the Livestream, in which Gandhi, despite getting crippled by Justinian, eked out a Championship appearance due to a combination of Byzantine military blunders, German ineptitude, and a premature UN finish.

Conversely, Gandhi's two top-two finishes in these Alternate Histories were much more championship caliber performances. In the 18 other games in which Gandhi played more like he did in the Livestream, he was at best an irrelevant rump state and at worst completely ripped to pieces by his neighbors. Luckily, there is an obvious explanation for his odd Livestream result. In the Livestream, Gandhi had sniped a crucial barb city in what was normally Byzantine territory with a stray warrior (in his one win, he also lucked into that exact same city in the same manner). Then, when the two eventually came to blows, Justinian had captured that former barb city and was poised to break through with Cataphracts, until he inexplicably GAVE BACK THAT CITY FOR PEACE, completely derailing his own game in the process and leaving Gandhi strong enough to contend for 2nd once a runaway Auggie chose to steamroll Justinian with Tanks. Even the last event was a stroke of luck for the Indians; Auggie much preferred to attack his neighbors when he had the opportunity. Of course, the results indicate that the Byzantines were not as forgiving in the replays.

The other oddity in the Livestream game was Ramesses' embarrassing display of culture. The Sullla curse had struck HARD in the livestream, as Rammy had leaned a tad too hard on the early culture-monging, made some horrific expansion decisions, and fell so irreversibly behind that he missed out on all the crucial cultural milestones. He was never even close to this terrible in the replays, and Sullla was on point about the Egyptian pharoah's chances in this setup, as he won eight games and came exceedingly close to winning a few more. Game 20 was a particular heartbreaker: Rammy was one turn away from victory when Auggie captured one of his legendary cities. Even then, Rammy had a 4th insurance city and was still three turns away, but unfortunately, Auggie ran over another legendary city, and that was curtains for Egypt.

Ramesses lost this game.

Rammy was the ultimate boom-or-bust leader: he won eight games by culture, and died in 11/12 games in which he did not win. To tack on, that one game in which he survived and did not win was a classic case of the exception that proves the rule, as he finished that game clinging onto a two city radioactive wasteland kept on life support by UN peacekeeping. Him surviving but not winning in the Actual Game with an intact empire was a complete anomaly, but thankfully, also an easily explainable one: border tensions was the primary catalyst for the wars that were Rammy's undoing, but his Actual Game "culture" attempt was so pathetic that there was no cultural pressure to incite any conflict. A stronger than usual Gandhi may have also contributed; see the individual leader section for more discussion. Alongside Rammy, Auggie was also a king in this map: he and Rammy evenly split 17/20 victories amongst themselves. Auggie's situation could not have been more perfect. He had two soft targets to kill whenever he felt like it, large amounts of land to leverage his Imperialistic trait, a grassland Gems resource in his capital (generally regarded as the best tile in the game), Praetorians to mow down barbarian cities, and the most possible options for victory.

Justinian was the only other leader who had any realistic shot at victory. His land was also incredible, and he had a large and rich peninsula for himself that ensured that he was consistently one of the two strongest leaders merely through peaceful methods. Unfortunately, not only was he somewhat isolated from a peaceweight perspective, but he was also handicapped by his inability to spread his religion to anybody except the unreliable Brennus, for his rivers did not connect to anyone, Gandhi and Rammy (and even Freddie) proved to be stiff competition in proselytizing, and he was frequently mired in early conflict, hampering his efforts to spread his religion. In particular, he was rarely able to work with Brennus, and even if he could, Brennus was too irrelevant to be of any use; his allying with Brennus seemed to actually correlate to weaker performances.

To add on, although his land was excellent, it was not quite to the caliber of his Eastern rivals. As a result, he had to work MUCH harder than Auggie and Rammy for his success. He was still strong on this map, with two victories and a staggering ELEVEN silver medals, all of which would likely be victorious performances in a more typical map. Furthermore, he came within inches of winning Game 1, and failed to clinch a Championship Game spot in a few other games by virtue of a smaller Rammy winning by Culture while Auggie was the score leader. Unfortunately, there were two ticking time bombs to victory that Justinian had to overcome: something had to be done about Rammy before Turn 300, while Auggie was always a threat to build an insurmountable lead without lifting a finger. With two potential runaways on the opposite side of the map, Justin was generally consigned to 2nd place.

There was only one true outlier game, that being Gandhi's sole victory, in which Gandhi mowed down Justinian early (with a little help from Auggie) and snowballed. No matter the setup, Gandhi always manages to sneak in 1-2 victories in these sets. Otherwise, he, Brennus and Freddie were complete non-factors, and they usually compounded their predicaments by endlessly fighting each other to no avail. Religion played a major role in these games, and every leader except for Auggie made ploys for the status of top religious power. Religious conflicts defined the first half of these games, and they often kept the high peaceweights more disjointed than one might have thought, which certainly helped Justinian's chances. Once the dust had settled, the latter half became a race, in which Rammy either got three legendary cities or the ensuing border tensions ended his game violently.

Although these games surprisingly had a lot of action, the number of war declarations was quite low. As a matter of fact, the war counter was artificially inflated a good amount by the vulturing of dying civs and late-game shenanigans such as Defensive Pacts, UN enforced peace treaties, and irrelevant post-Spaceship launch conflicts. There were a few reasons for this:

1) The map was quite large, which allowed for more time to build up and for wars to be more decisive. Note the rarity of Domination finishes, a common feature of large maps.
2) Wars tended to be well-timed, coordinated, and fast, and they usually consisted of a strong leader developing well, amassing a huge army, and running over a weaker civ to establish a game leading position. I was impressed at the patience shown by these leaders - quite a few games did not see a war breakout until it was past Turn 100, and there were also some VERY late First To Dies. Game 11's Turn 277 FTD would have broken the all-time record for the latest first elimination.
3) EVERY single leader here cannot Plot at Pleased, and once Free Religion became all the rage, it was not difficult for these leaders to be Pleased with each other as long as there were not excessive border tensions.
4) As is often the case, Cultural finishes tend to be quicker and thus have fewer wars. Game 18, which ended on Turn 268, had an incredibly low FOUR conflicts.
5) The tech pace was shockingly fast for a field with zero Financial leaders. With the sheer number of cities, shrines were quite lucrative economically, and stalemated wars were rare, further driving up the tech pace.

Another factor worth mentioning that affected this map was, believe it or not, turn order. Although turn order usually has a negligible effect on games, it was quite relevant regarding the religious race. As a refresher, the turn order for the Playoff Two Game was:

1) The Opening Game Two winner (Justinian)
2) The Opening Game Five winner (Ramesses)
3) The Opening Game Eight winner (Augustus)
4) The Opening Game Three Runner Up (Frederick)
5) The Opening Game Six Runner Up (Gandhi)
6) The Wildcard "Runner Up" - in this case, the Wildcard Game Two Winner (Brennus)

With Justinian being first in turn order, he had first dibs on a religion, and indeed, he founded Christianity in all twenty replays. Turn order also gave Rammy a good shot at a religion despite all the leaders with Mysticism. In turn, Gandhi and Brennus were much more likely to barely miss the Meditation and/or Polytheism religions, and thus they could waste up to twenty turns failing to get a religion. With their already tenuous positions, this usually proved to be disastrous for the two.

Before delving into individual leaders, I will say that the score rankings are a tad misleading when looking at the Big Three. It would appear that Auggie was head and shoulders above everybody else, and that Justinian was stronger than Rammy in this map, when in reality, Auggie and Rammy had about equal winning chances while Justinian was a strong second fiddle to both leaders. The kill count and Rammy's feast or famine strategy definitely combined to distort the scores in that aspect. The scores do accurately depict Gandhi, Freddie, and Brennus as the losers here, though.

Augustus Caesar of Rome
Wars Declared: 42
Wars Declared Upon: 8
Survival Percentage: 90%
Finishes: 9 Firsts, 7 Seconds (59 points)
Kills: 22
Overall Score: 81 points

Usually, it is the leader with the most avenues to success who performs the best in these Alternate Histories, and this was no exception for the Actual Game winner. While Ramesses was culture or nothing and Justin had to brute force his way through Brennus or Gandhi early enough in order to keep up, Augustus had a variety of winning ploys, and could break out at virtually any opportunity. He could cripple Ramesses with Praetorians and snowball, like in Games 5 and 9. He could murder Gandhi with Praetorians and snowball, like in Game 1. He could catch Rammy with his pants down in the middle of a culture attempt and coast from there, like in Games 11 and 12. He sometimes expanded so well that he could just sit back, do nothing for 250 turns, and do his best Financial/Alive cosplay, like in Games 8 and 13. With his incredibly safe position (facing only EIGHT attacks is absurd, and most of those "invasions" were suicidal war declarations) and gorgeous land, Augustus had the best spot on the map, and he took full advantage. I admit that I was skeptical of his chances due to his forest heavy capital, especially since the AI tend to struggle with such starts, but this was no problem for Auggie due to his grassland gems tile and his propensity to go Bronze Working early on the way to Praetorians - in fact, I noticed that those forests actually boosted his game as he was able to use them to chop out Settlers and expand with abandon.

Augustus also had another, more subtle advantage in this setup: by caring little about religion, he was able to zig while everyone else zagged. While the other five leaders (including Freddie) frequently spent their early beakers on founding and spreading religions, Auggie focused on development techs that enabled him to maximize his amazing land. His lack of religious focus also helped him from a diplomatic perspective, as he not only did not blindly blow up friendships due to religious differences (he only gives -1 penalty for heathen religions when he does not own the shrine), but he also did not let shared religion freeze him into inaction. When Auggie saw an opening for victory, he seized the day ruthlessly.

There was really only one way to stop Auggie: simply defeat him. Either conquer the rest of the world, or get three legendary cities as fast as possible. Otherwise, one had to hope that Auggie would get in his own way. Occasionally, Auggie got a little bit too Ragnar-like for his own good, launching poorly planned, ill-advised wars that squandered his advantageous position. Such moments were rare, however, and there is an increasing body of evidence that suggests that Auggie is one of the best at playing spacious corner starts.

Best Performance: A tie between his Financial-esque performance in Game 6 and his Game 5 stomp that would have made his uncle proud.

Worst Performance: Game 14 was his only truly subpar performance, in which he face planted against Gandhi, marched an army to the other side of the continent against Brennus, fell behind, and got murdered by Justinian.

Willem Award: In Game 2, Auggie researched Combustion before Rifling and was duly punished for it by Justinian.

Augustus Getting His Legions Back Award:

Augustus won this game.

Justinian of Byzantium
Wars Declared: 47
Wars Declared Upon: 21
Survival Percentage: 80%
Finishes: 2 Firsts, 11 Seconds (32 points)
Kills: 21
Overall Score: 53 points

On a normal map, Justinian's performance would have been more than good enough to be the strongest leader by a mile, but alas, this was not a normal map. His Actual Game performance turned out to be one of his very worst, and these replays showed why Justinian is one of the strongest leaders in the game. Despite a hostile diplomatic environment - he had zero natural allies in this game - he still managed to be a force, usually murdering at least two of the three wimps in this map. Unfortunately, Rammy and Auggie were just a bit more dominant, and their presence on the opposite side of the map meant that it was usually too late for Justinian by the time his gray borders had reached them. Moreover, he frequently built up diplomatic brownie points through trade relations and mutual military struggles with them, with the result that by the time the world started to become secular, he would be Pleased locked out of conflict anyway. This especially bit Justinian in Game 1, where he only needed a few more tiles for Domination but had to watch Auggie go to space instead.

Justinian's bad games came when, for whatever reason, he was unable to expand as effectively, allowing Brennus and/or Gandhi to claim land that was usually his, or when he got mired in wars for so long that he fell too far behind Auggie and got run over in the lategame. He was even First To Die once, in the outlier Game 7 where Gandhi and Auggie joined forces to take him down. Nevertheless, Justinian did just about everything he could to win, which is more than you could say about many other leaders, and he was able to leverage his terrifying Cataphracts to ensure a spot in the Championship game. Sometimes, that is all one can ask for, and had Justinian more deservedly occupied Gandhi's Championship slot, he would have been a formidable foe and a good pick for the first repeat champion. All in all, this was a solid bounce back season for one of the titans of AI Survivor.

Best Performance: Game 3 was just utter brute force, and one of the more gritty victories I have witnessed.

Worst Performance: Other than his First To Die game, which stemmed from a bit of bad luck, Game 16 was an incompetent military display where Justinian failed to conquer a much weaker Brennus, exhausted himself, and was later brutally murdered in a 3v1 to become the source of Brennus' only point in these games.

Standing Bull Award: His other victory in Game 20 saw Justinian make an incredible come from behind victory by using spies to continuously blow up Auggie's spaceship parts, thus winning the space race.

Ramesses of Egypt
Wars Declared: 26
Wars Declared Upon: 19
Survival Percentage: 45%
Finishes: 8 Firsts, 0 Seconds (40 points)
Kills: 4
Overall Score: 44 points

I will preface this by repeating this fact: in the replays, Ramesses was NEVER, and I mean NEVER, even REMOTELY as horrible as he was in the Actual Game, where he played so awfully that Gandhi WITHOUT the slider was on pace to beat Rammy WITH the slider to a Cultural victory. I suspect that terrible expansion combined with a stronger than usual Gandhi taking many wonders from him contributed to this. The second point is important: a strong Gandhi seemed to have some links to a weaker Rammy, as the Egyptians died in three out of the four games Gandhi survived. In the other Game 18 that Gandhi survived, Rammy had played AMAZINGLY well and won a Mansa Musa-esque Turn 268 victory, and I suspect Gandhi would have been run over in due time had that game been a more typical length for this map.

On that note, getting a piece of the Indian (or Celtic) pie was quite important for Rammy's winning prospects for a few reasons. First, those were crucial extra cities for Rammy, allowing him more sets of temples so that he could build more Cathedrals to boost his culture. Secondly, by preparing for war, he ensured that he maintained an up-to-date standing army to keep him safe. Finally, and most importantly: by participating in dogpiles, he could build up diplomatic bonuses with Auggie and Justinian, and thus stay at Pleased relations once Free Religion became en vogue and the primary culprit for deteriorating relationships was border tensions, greatly exacerbated by the relentless cultural pumpage of Egyptian cities:

Sporting Muskets when a Caesar or a Justinian sporting Tanks and Mechanized Infantry is Cautious with you is a less than ideal position, to say the least. Thus, that extra +2 mutual military struggle bonus time and time again proved to be the difference between victory and extinction for the Egyptians. While Rammy won eight games here, every possible pitfall there is to having a single-minded focus on Culture was apparent in this set. Rammy sometimes struggled with expansion, just like in the Livestream, because he was beelining religious techs and building wonders and missionaries instead of War Chariots and settlers. He made cultural tech diversions that were so crazy that they hurt his economy, similar to Hatshepsut in her Wildcard game this season. Sometimes, his poor early game bit him in the rear end long before he could get any momentum, like in his one First To Die performance in Game 5. He tended to turn on the slider WAY too early - there are zero cases in which it is ever a good idea to turn on the Culture slider before having a Rifling era military. Had Rammy been a tad more patient with the slider, he would have easily won more games and been atop the leaderboard in this set of Alternate Histories. He was not, however, and he died in 10/11 games in which he did not win while being a smoldering radioactive shell of himself in the other game. With just four kills in the entire set despite his strong position, we can see why leaning too hard into the cultural gameplan can be a problem.

With all that said, Rammy's Actual Game performance was an extreme outlier, and one should not use it as evidence that he is a poor leader; he just happened to have a stinker that day. The community's faith in him was absolutely justified, and Rammy proved that he belongs in the Gandhi/Mansa echelon of culture mongers. Save for his excellent Season Seven, he has been rather unlucky in this tournament, and he should be someone to look out for in future seasons.

Best Performance: Despite his blistering quick Game 18, I found Game 19 to be his best game. In that game he was attacked in the middle of his culture run, but because he had teched extremely well and waited till Infantry to run the slider, he was able to defend himself and win on the not-too-shabby Turn 286.

Worst Performance: Other than his First To Die when he got Praetorianed by Auggie, his Game 7 resembled his Livestream performance the most, as he failed to net a viable 3rd city in his culture run.

Apostolic Palace Award: In Game 16, Rammy used the UN to stop not one, but TWO invasions, ensuring his victory.

Elizabeth Award: Getting mowed down by a Caesar within five turns from a cultural victory in both Games 11 and 20.

Gandhi of India
Wars Declared: 13
Wars Declared Upon: 50
Survival Percentage: 20%
Finishes: 1 First, 1 Second (7 points)
Kills: 4
Overall Score: 11 points

With this set, Gandhi cemented his place as the troll of Season Eight, and it feels like the AI Survivor gods particularly reserved their wrath for one of the hallmark meme leaders of Civilization, punishing him for his scam opening round performance by siccing the worst starting location in the map onto him. Below is a list of the myriad of reasons why Gandhi had the highest First To Die rate of the leaders not named Brennus:

1) There was barely any happiness save for an Ivory resource (plus his religion in most cases), and Gandhi greatly struggled with scaling due to his inability to grow his cities past a certain size.
2) His capital and surrounding territory was dry and lacking in commerce.
3) Gandhi was in a central position between two Imperialistic leaders, and he consistently only had room for six cities, seven on a good day. Against the 11-12 city behemoths around him, that just was not enough to compete, especially with how terrible his land was.
4) Because of the above factors, when Gandhi had a religion, he was unable to spread it, and Rammy (and sometimes Freddie) would instead lead the religious bloc, leaving Gandhi the diplomatic black sheep. Even in a high peaceweight dominated field, Gandhi's extreme high peaceweight and religious isolation meant that he might as well have had Brennus' peaceweight of 0, in a sort of "so nice he becomes an annoying prick" manner.
5) What little land he did have was just bad and devoid of commerce, netting him an extremely slow early game that was often exacerbated by barely missing out on religions.

Admittedly, Gandhi did not always help his case in these games. Sometimes, it felt like he was doing a Brennus cosplay, spending 20 turns on Meditation/Polytheism, before beelining Archery and then Masonry tech.

I do think a more aggressive high peaceweight leader like Joao, the "rightful" Opening Game Six Runner Up, may have stood a much better chance in Gandhi's spot. Gandhi's capital did have a Corn and a Copper, and an Imperialistic leader like Joao could have used it to expand well, and then eventually made some military headway, especially if he could have taken advantage of dogpile opportunities. Unfortunately, Gandhi is not a fighter, although, as is often the case, he did prove to be a fierce defender in these replays, and so that avenue to success was generally closed off to him, leaving Gandhi either as a sacrificial lamb for the world or as cannon fodder for a runaway Auggie or Justinian (or, occasionally, Ramesses). 13 offensive to 50 defensive wars tells the story. Gandhi's two Championship clinching performances stemmed from the rare games where Indira, rather than Mahatma, was at the helm. In Game 7, (s)he conquered most of Byzantium and snowballed to victory, while in Game 8, he was the biggest beneficiary of Brennus' demise and rode that to a decent second place finish.

No matter how you feel about Gandhi, you will be satisfied. With these results, his fans can continue to gloat about how he has trolled the competition, while his detractors and haters can feel vindicated that Gandhi once again turned out to be a fraud. This is not to say that Gandhi is generally a fraud. Place him in any other position on the map, perhaps save for Brennus', and he is easily one of the strongest leaders in this setup. Gandhi was merely a victim of positioning and map dynamics here, and was incredibly lucky to make it to his first Championship game.

Best Performance: The one game he won, of course. He was very good in Game 8, and would have likely won had he and Auggie not been stuck in a forever lategame war.

Worst Performance: Gandhi got murdered by Freddie in Game 9.

Bismarck Award: Failing to get Agriculture, The Wheel, and Pottery until Turn 70, and then backstabbing Freddie in Game 4 in the one game it seemed Freddie might have broken through Brennus early.

Frederick of Germany
Wars Declared: 25
Wars Declared Upon: 30
Survival Percentage: 45%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 1 Second (2 points)
Kills: 9
Overall Score: 11 points

Imagine a leader with the expansion abilities of Darius and the military prowess of Hatshepsut. Slap him with the early game research preferences of Bismarck alongside Willem's propensity to avoid military techs. Give him the personality of Joao, and the meekness of Lincoln. Then, slap him with super late uniques, a trait the AI cannot use well, and another trait that provides a marginal benefit with Deity starting techs. That is Frederick in a nutshell.

Freddie is among the worst of the worst because there is neither rhyme nor reason to the way he plays. He does not have any win condition. He does not culture like Rammy or Gandhi, he does not expand like Auggie or Justin, and he puts in the bare minimum when fighting. I will say, I thought Freddie had potential, especially since I thought his triple gold start would help overcome his early game deficiencies. I wrote in my Opening Round Game Three Alternate Histories how he might be a decent lategame leader due to his research preferences. Here, I must eat my words. Although I was correct about his start - Freddie was frequently an early tech leader, and could even found one of the games dominant religions - I was very, very wrong about his lategame "prowess". Not only is Freddie the type of leader who will beeline Iron Working at the beginning of the game, amass an army, and then do nothing with it, but also, he beelines his Assembly Plants when his cities are ill-prepared for industrialization - alongside sometimes completely neglecting Rifling tech - and the Great German Famine ensues as a result. We saw this cost him a Championship slot in the Actual Game, and this pattern repeated itself multiple times in the replays.

I will say, despite his boring personality, he had a surprising amount of amusing faceplants. Take Game 5, for example, where he was primed to punch a ticket to the Championship Game with a backdoor runner up finish as Auggie was reuniting the Roman Empire... when Auggie hit the Domination limit and Justinian had held on by less than 40 points. (His one second place finish stemmed from the same scenario, where this time Auggie had run over enough of the Byzantine empire for Freddie to backdoor into the Championship). That was not even his most hilarious blooper in this set. That honor goes to Game 8, in which a 3rd place in score Freddie somehow won the Space Race... before he threw his championship spot out of the window BY ELECTING AUGGIE AS WORLD LEADER IN THE UN. Freddie's only other shot at victory came on Game 16, in which he was the tech leader due to Rammy's slow culture run and the other leaders being exhausted from fighting, but Rammy's 3rd city eventually went legendary and Freddie was once again locked out of the championship game. As it turns out, the "hope nobody has won by Turn 375" strategy is not a reliable one.

It was frustrating watching Freddie squander his excellent situation and early tech lead over and over and over again. There were numerous times in which Brennus was easy pickings, whether it was due to a dogpile or from Brennus' lack of metals... and yet, Freddie did nothing. Even when he did try to fight, he was unable to make any progress against a much smaller and weaker enemy without outside help. It was not a good sign that Gandhi or Rammy from the other side of the world proved to be better at fighting. Looking at the Opening Game Three Alternate Histories, we definitely missed out on having a Hannibal or a Willem in that spot. Even the unlikely Sitting Bull would have been far more entertaining. At the end of the day, with a great capital and two (maybe even three, if you consider Rammy to be vulnerable) weak neighbors, this was an absolutely unacceptable result from Freddie, and no tears will be shed if he is forever consigned to being Second To Die in the Opening Round for all of eternity.

Best Performance: Welp, he did launch a spaceship in Game 8, before the dog ate his Championship ticket.

Worst Performance: Having a full Iron army yet failing to so much as scratch a metalless Brennus.

Industrial Zara Award:

Freddie somehow did not have oil and could not build his Panzers! Freddie's lack of Oil played a role in multiple lategame dismemberments in this set.

Wang Kon Award: In Game 9, while Rammy was in the middle of a culture run, Freddie dragged him into a Defensive Pact triggered war against a much stronger Justinian, ultimately leading to the Egyptians demise. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Brennus of the Celts
Wars Declared: 18
Wars Declared Upon: 44
Survival Percentage: 5%
Finishes: 0 Firsts, 0 Seconds (0 points)
Kills: 1
Overall Score: 1 point

I once read somewhere on the news about a fox going hunting in a chicken coup... only for the hundreds of hens to be too much for the fox, who got pecked to death. Well, that was what happened here. We have seen the aftermath of a Gandhi or a Hatty getting stuck in a low peaceweight field, and pitting a Brennus against a bunch of goodie two shoes netted the same results. With a Fishing start, an overabundance of jungle in his available land, a toxic combination of bad starting techs and poor early game tech preferences, and likely religious isolation, Brennus was absolutely hopeless here, and his primary role was to serve as Justinian's springboard to the Championship game. He did play a secondary role as well, serving as a poison pill for the Eastern leaders. Despite the futility of his chances, he was still a tough nut to crack, and both Rammy and Auggie would sometimes waste time launching cross map wars that amounted to lots of effort for not enough reward.

I am shocked that he managed to survive a game, let alone score a single point, and the one game in which he survived came when he was rescued from being ground down by Justinian by the rest of the world. In that game, he also landed a troll kill snipe on the Byzantines to avoid laying an egg in this set. Although Brennus is a below average leader stuck with an awful package, this would have been an uphill battle for any ultra low peaceweight.

Best Performance: There was one other game in which Brennus played a role other than dead meat: he actually managed to expand well and conquer most of India in Game 9 and become one of the top three score leaders, although he was too technologically behind to truly compete and got wrecked later on.

Worst Performance: Getting run over by Gandhi in Game 8 probably takes the cake here.

Caveman Joao Award: In Game 16, the one game he survived, he was sporting a rabid army of Grenadiers when Auggie and Justin had nukes, Stealth Bombers, and Modern Armor. Rammy had not teched past Rifling for nearly a hundred turns, and his army was STILL more advanced than Brennus'.

Conclusions

After watching the Livestream, I was very curious to see how this strange map would play out in these Alternate Histories. First, we saw the entire gamut on the cultural gameplan, from its incredible highs to its equally spectacular lows. I am unsure what to think of Rammy - although I now consider him one of the elites in culture, I wonder how much better he could be if he were a more balanced leader, especially with his amazing civ and excellent traits. I do think that two things make him better than Hatty: his less extreme peaceweight (6 vs. 9), and his having Industrious instead of Creative, which punishes him less for wonder-whoring while at the same time making him far less prone to the early game border conflicts that have often led Hatty astray. (As a side note, I think Creative is a much better trait for warmongers, and can actually be dangerous and/or unhelpful for peaceful builder types.)

Another takeaway is that we should not underestimate the risks of having an extreme peaceweight in any direction, no matter the field. Nothing need be said about Brennus' situation, but time and time again, Gandhi suffered from being in a central position with an extreme peaceweight, even if it was on the "correct" half of the spectrum. Many games saw him get to "Annoyed" with Rammy and Auggie solely from religious differences, and if someone were to take a blind look at the results without knowing who the leaders were, they would presume that this was a typical "Gandhi surrounded by the Khans and Cathys of the world" situation.

Ultimately, it became obvious that if you give any leader with a baseline level of competence abundant room for expansion, that leader is going to be strong. Auggie in particular seems to be one of the very best at the "sit in a corner" strategy, and I think his Praetorians help a lot with this, as the unlucky hill barbarian cities would derail such a strategy are a meaningless trifle to the Romans. In the case of Freddie, it also became evident that some leaders are just so bad that they would squander any winnable position. Nevertheless, this set should hopefully bring some insight on larger map dynamics and guide predictions for future similar scenarios.