Vivarium

Welcome to the , a page dedicated to the adventures of Kris' AI-versus-AI Sid Meier's Civilization V games!

Mods
Mods are always used, cause the base game is pretty sucky amirite:
 * Robk's InfoAddict, first and foremost. Gives awesome graphs and diagrams, civ 4 demographics–esque. I might also wish to humbly add that I am given credit in that mod.
 * Gedemon's Yet (not) Anoter Earth Map Pack, high quality earth maps and shit.
 * Many, many history-based civilizations, and can be found on this spreadsheet I made
 * Don Quiche's Ingame Editor (IGE), allowing me to observe AI with minimal interruptions.

Episode 1
The first episode started on Sunday, January 31, 2016, but only began to be documented a week

Here's your line-up! In the old world:
 * Afghanistan
 * Anglo-Saxony
 * Bohemia
 * France
 * The Hunns – placed just north of the Caspian Sea.
 * Latvia
 * Lithuania
 * The Ottomans
 * Persia
 * Phoenicia
 * Spain
 * Yakutia – placed in Siberia

In the new world:
 * The Aztec – placed around South Texas.
 * The Chinook – placed around Vancouver.
 * Mexico – placed near South Mexico.
 * The Shoshone – placed around Montana.

Early on a few things were apparent
 * The Middle East would be busy, with 5 civs within 13 tiles of each other.
 * Chinook could get blocked in by the Shoshone, with only mountains to its north and east, ocean to its east and only a few tiles to its south. The Shoshone's unique ability will only compound this issue.
 * East Asia, Oceania, Africa and South American are completely uninhabited. There could be a big colony competition.

As one of the first new cities, Yakutia made its intentions clear by settling in Southeast Asia, way south of its North Asian capital, Afghanistan responded by settling North India then forward settling the Chinese coast. Latvia settled south, and Lithuania decided to spite them by settling right between their two cities. Mexico went all the way past Aztec (who decided it didn't want any part of the early expansion game) and settled the Great Plains, meanwhile Chinook took a... strange approach to being boxed in, and decided to settle their first city all the way in Florida; by the time the Shoshone had made their rival's capital inaccessible, the Chinooks had already settled the entire United States east coast. All other civs settled normally: France headed east to south Europe; the Ottomans settled Greece and the Caucasus; the Bohemians headed for East Europe; the Huns went north; and the Phoenicians headed clockwise around the Mediterranean.

The first move was made by the Shoshone and Aztecs against Chinook, who looked in dire need of some reinforcements. No one made any major moves, small pockets of invasion forces being quickly repelled by city defenses, before peace was declared. Mexico settled further cities in the midwest, the Shoshone boxed the Chinook in and began spreading like a plague across the northern regions, and the Aztec honorably self-elected to participate in a one-city challenge. Mexico founded the only religion in the Americas, Confucianism (hah). It got off to a slow start, but with no competition it would come to dominate North America.

Across the pond, Lithuania founded Eastern Orthodoxy (actually Buddhism but I'll call it what I want thankyou) early on, and it spread uncontested around its area and towards the Middle East. It looked like Eurasia could be a one horse race for a while, until Spain founded Catholicism and Persia Zoroastrianism. Yakutia, who were building a strong, large empire and topping the leaderboards already, declared war on Afghanistan. They targeted the North Indian city, and took it over swiftly, completely ignoring their Chinese settlement. That war came to a quick end as both sides had no more troops left to fight with. The Middle East and Eastern Europe began to built tight bonds. Persia, Latvia, Afghanistan, Phoenicia and Spain formed an alliance, despite almost all having their own religions (Latvia founded Protestantism but it was largely overshadowed by the local Eastern Orthodoxy, and Afghanstani Hinduism but largely the same with Zoroastrianism).

In Europe, Spain and Bohemia wanted in on France's young, sprung out empire. They both attacked the capital, but neither could deal with the large amounts of no man's land between themselves and France. The war ended, and Spain resumed valiantly championing Catholicism against the tidal wave of Eastern Orthodoxy sweeping across Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile old world civilizations begin to cautiously settle new, untouched lands. Phoenicia settles Central Africa, Persia founds colonies in West Africa as well as South India, Afghanistan settles in the Oceanic archipelago, France settles Tunisia, and Lithuania settles Libya on the doorstep of the Phoenicians. Zoroastrianism fends Eastern Orthodoxy from the Middle East, but can't keep it from the African-Mediterranean colonies, while Latvian Protestantism strikes at its heart.

The Hunnic Empire, who had long been a suspicious one (never made any friends, randomly denounced far-off civs), gets attacked by Yakutia around 1200 AD. There's lots of fighting, but with the two being separated by so much no-man's-land, the war fizzles out. Skip forward to 1500 AD, and the Huns join forces with the Ottomans to attack Persia. Atilla makes good progress, but runs out of forces before he's able to take Persia's northern city. Oh great, another war that fizzles out. But wait, what's this? Backstab?! The Ottomans ally with Lithuania and attack Atilla! They make quick work of the Huns, who only have two cities anyway: The Ottomans take its capital, and the Lithuanians take its second city on the same turn. The Hunns launch a counter-offensive, with help from their naval forces in the Caspian, and retake the city before the turn's end. Meantime, get this: Latvia and Phoenicia ally up and declare war on Lithuania. First thing's first, of course, Latvia takes that city Lithuania settled between its capital and second city. What's Phoenicia doing declaring war on a Northeast European civilization though? Well, a few turns later, they take Lithuania-owned Libya with ease. The Lithuanians are down to just their capital and a captured Hunnic city; the Ottomans are up to Greece, Turkey, the Caucasus, and a few turns later they take the Hunnic capital again and wipe Atilla off the planet.

All this backstabbing, warring, and capturing of capitals for the Ottomans gets too much, so Afghanistan, Bohemia, Phoenicia, and Yakutia declare war. The Ottomans make good with Persia, but that's pretty meaningless as Darius' defenses consist of about 10 missionaries trying desperately to keep Eastern Orthodoxy from getting too powerful. Spain, Afghanistan and Mexico (why, Mexico?) declare war on the Ottomans as well, but they're just bandwagoning for brownie points. The Ottoman-Lithuanian alliance gets steamrolled and partitioned pretty quickly because they threw everything at Atilla: Bohemia takes the Lithuanian Capital (severely weakening Eastern Orthodoxy) and Greece; Phoenicia takes Turkey; and Yakutia takes the Caucasus and Caspian Sea territories. The Ottoman Empire is now finished, and Lithuania is reduced to a single, puppeted Hunnic city. Darius sees opportunities and decides to declare war and easily take the last Lithuanian city. At an end, Eastern Orthodoxy's reign is. And not short enough it was. Yakutia doesn't like this, and declares war. But it forgot to station any sort of units inside its new Hunnic-Ottoman spoils, so Persia quickly takes the old Hunnic capital, and moves on to the Caucasus. Its military fizzles just before it's able to take the city, and the situation in the area begins to stabilize.

Quite a bit's happened on the settlement front in the ~250 years that war took to play out. As you might've noticed, the old world made contact with the new world. The Shoshone settled two cities in Central-South America; as did the Aztec slightly south; the Chinook settled a single city on the continent fairly early, which is now well-developed; and finally Anglo-Saxony as well as Bohemia made claims on the continent. Across the pond again: Persia settled a further city in West Africa; Bohemia, Anglo-Saxony and Latvia established colonies in the sub-Saharan/southern regions. Oh, and the Shoshone made the first claim on Japan.