While we're waiting for future updates that will make the AI more competitive, I was thinking about what civs the AI would function better as.
First the AI does not yet handle spells very well, so the Amurites are out, and the Khazad being limited to adepts in, although I've often seen the Khazad not do well because in the creation map script they get placed around hills and they never seem to have enough food.
Anyone else have thought on this?

AI Khazad sucks because their gold limits restrict early expansion. I've never seen them with more than 3 cities. Civs I see consistently powerful are the Balseraphs, Sidar, Svartalfar, Calabim, and Malakim.

Best AI leaders in my experience:

Perpentach
Ethne
Mahala
Faeryl
Varn
Both Lanun leaders if and only if you're playing on the highest difficulty levels. (Their Iron Working beeline is horrifying there, but it doesn't really work without immortal/deity level bonuses to speed it along)

Note that the first 3 are also the only good leaders, for AI or humans, for their civs. Keelyn, Einion, and Charadon are comparatively bad whether it's a human or AI using them, especially Charadon.

Guy above me mentioned the Sidar. They are the India of FfH. They look impressive on the tech screen, but they never have an army to protect those beakers.

Hippus also tend to do well in my games, particularly Rhoanna. Seems to expand well, financial gives her the economic chops to back it up, and obviously builds a good amount of military. Both leaders like to declare war out of nowhere (at least on Aggressive AI, dunno about normal), and their early uber-cavalry rushes can be pretty lethal if you haven't built up your defences. Tasunke is more of a military threat to your weak points, and will kill half your workers, but Rhoanna is a better all-round threat and general empire-builder, I think.

Yeah, Sidar are not a good AI civ. Seems like every game they're in I see them wiped out by barbarians or a neighbor incredibly early.

Flauros is a good AI. Haven't seen AI use River of Blood right, but leveraging Fin/Org to make it to Feudalism and vampires fast seems to be something they do very well.

Well, the fact that the Sidar never settle any of their Shades hurts a bit.

Best AI leaders in my experience:

Perpentach
Ethne
Mahala
Faeryl
Varn
Both Lanun leaders if and only if you're playing on the highest difficulty levels. (Their Iron Working beeline is horrifying there, but it doesn't really work without immortal/deity level bonuses to speed it along)

Note that the first 3 are also the only good leaders, for AI or humans, for their civs. Keelyn, Einion, and Charadon are comparatively bad whether it's a human or AI using them, especially Charadon.


Really, Ethne over Enion? That's philosophical vs. creative right? I think I prefer philosophical in that case, it certainly doesn't strike me as a clear dominance for Ethne.

Perpentach always seems to do well and he is the only one I've had summon the Infernals.

Creative works far better than philosophical for the AI, and that is the matter here. Human wise is quite a different matter, of course.

Human wise is quite a different matter, of course.

http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/7811/mst3kcr2.gif

Alex (Consumes barb cities like snacks)
Perp (aggressive, AI can optimize coordinate change resulting from trait change instantly)
Sheelba (Expansion and SoD)
Sand (HN/Invis Units killing my doods)
Card (culture, resource/buildingless horses w/defensive bonuses)
Faeryl (Stack of HN units moving like it is grouped?)
Teb (Barb city snacker, AI uses skels)
Hippus (but once you become horse archer immune, they done)

Ranking depends on their luck and any can become a real problem on immortal.

The best way to resolve this debate IMO is this method http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=269993

The best way to resolve this, IMMHO, is this:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=273660

Judging by its behavior, I don't think the AI is too good at figuring things out. After all, we are interested in an AI competing against us as a player, not each other? And considering how they treat each other is easy to figure out. The AIs I listed above kick people and AI butts all over the map (sometimes me).

Regarding unrestricted: Perp, Teb, Keelyn, Kandros, and Cardith are commonly successful. (I've only tested a couple hundred times).

Capria- REXs, builds big stacks, and uses them.

Agreeing on:

Perpentach
Mahala
Capria
Faeryl
Rhoanna
Tasunke
Hannah

I've seen these do well:
Auric
Beeri
Jonas
Sheelba

Oh yeah, Auric is consistant too.

Yea, from my experience, the only AI's that will consistently do well are Auric and Tasunke.

which is quite funny actually, since Auric isn't even finished yet. That's going to be one monster civ in ice...
generally, the Ljos do rather well aswell, atleast in midgame when they've got their FoL going full force and rangers running about.

The main reason Auric Ulvin does so well is his massive numbers of experienced units; any unit produced by his capital starts at level 3, and that gives him a huge edge in the early game, which is where many AIs suffer.

The main reason Auric Ulvin does so well is his massive numbers of experienced units; any unit produced by his capital starts at level 3, and that gives him a huge edge in the early game, which is where many AIs suffer.

That doesn't hurt, but for some reason - perhaps the fact that he mostly ignores the religion line due to settings - he's usually also got a solid economy going after the +4xp units from his palace let him stake out a whole bunch of turf. It's completely counterintuitive for the reincarnation of Mulcarn to be a genius of urban planning, but by the standards of the AI, he sort of is.

Auric is strange in that he does very well (score leader by far) if he decides to make his capital a unit production center and doesn't do as well otherwise (I've seen him wiped out by the barbarians in plenty of games). It makes sense based on his capital bonus but I think the AI needs to realize what that really means for him.

Since the elven worker AI is going to be improved in .32, I'm scared of the impact on Faeryl, since she's always one of the top AIs. This might also make the Ljosalfar a force that has a major effect on games.

What's this about Auric doing well?

He consistently does -okay-, but he never, ever does anything really impressive like Ethne's retarded land grabbing and vassalizing, Varn's crazy tech pace, Faeryl's brutal backstabs, the Lanun iron sledgehammer, Perpentach's choosing or combination of any of the above, etc. Auric's not bad, but the only way he's ever the best AI is if he gets really lucky or is competing with rather bad AI civs like the Khazad, Amurites and Bannor.

In my current game, he's number one by over 400 points and that's how he usually does in my experience (if he doesn't go down early). This is with Cassiel, Faeryl, Garrim, and Cardith in the game, in order of score. I think that he does well because his heavily promoted units are great at taking barbarian cities as they pop up.

I want to say Cassiel usually does well but just doesn't seem right. Unless of course, he just does well because no one goes to war with him because of religion.

That doesn't hurt, but for some reason - perhaps the fact that he mostly ignores the religion line due to settings - he's usually also got a solid economy going after the +4xp units from his palace let him stake out a whole bunch of turf. It's completely counterintuitive for the reincarnation of Mulcarn to be a genius of urban planning, but by the standards of the AI, he sort of is.

I'm not sure thats it either. In .30 he couldn't adopt religions but also didn't have agnostic trait, so he could still found them. He often founded 4 religions (wasting his research since he could do nothing with them) but was still one of the est leaders.


Also, the +4 xp is only for melee units and only in his capital. In my version I gave the Doviello palace +3 xp global xp, and they still don't seem to do nearly as well as Auric. (Of course, I also made the buildings that they can't build give xp to the appropriate unitcombats)

Perpentach always seems to do well and he is the only one I've had summon the Infernals.

Best IMHO. The AI does not fit its strategy to its traits particularly well, so they might as well be random. In which case Perpentach just has one extra trait.