There are many lists out there ranking Civilization VI's leaders, but which one would actually triumph in a fair fight?
That's what this little exercise is about. Pitting each of the AIs against each other in a series of matches, and seeing who comes out on top.
In the game's current state, there are 78 different leader/civilization combinations. Some leaders command more than one civilization, and some appear in different forms, with varying strengths and weaknesses.
Each will be considered a distinct competitor in this tournament.
Civilization VI has a dev tool that allows the computer to play against itself, without human input - so this is what will be used to run each match. The game's default difficulty - Prince - will be used.
Because one of the civilizations has to be deemed the 'player', and therefore gets penalties/bonuses against the other teams, in each match a 'dummy' civilization will take this slot. It will play in the game, but won't be considered part of the match for the purposes of this exercise.
I've developed a four-round system, which can be found here. In the first round, there will be six groups of 13, playing two matches each on large maps. The best six performers from each group will go to round two, the draw randomised again, into three groups of 12. Again, the best six from two matches will go through.
Round three will see the remaining 18 randomised into two groups of nine, the top three from each group going to the finale.
The finale will consist of a series of matches on medium-sized maps until one of the civilizations has chalked up two victories.
Then we'll know our winner!
Nerd stuff: the maps will be Shuffle; gameplay-affecting mods turned off; corporations, secret societies and great heroes turned on. Games will run until the turn timer has run out (during autoplay, the game ignores when someone has reached a victory condition and just keeps playing); if someone has reached a victory condition, they will be considered the winner of that round, the others ranked by score; on the condition more than one civilization, or none, have reached a victory condition, the score will decide the winner and rankings.
Here is the draw for round one's matches.
So, let's go...
