MP AI broken, non-existant?

As in, almost completely? Been trying for a couple months now to play some MP games, and we usually do a couple of us and several AI players.

But the AI never interacts, never declares war, never complains about settlers or territory, never offers research deals, nothing, no matter what happens in the world. They remain completely silent, save for the occasional notification on the side of the screen when they build wonders or offer to protect city-states.

Any ideas? Apologies if I overlooked something obvious!

Unfortunately, Firaxis are one of the most lazy developers in existence and refuse to give a functional multiplayer AI. Real shame -- I'd love to play this game with my friends.

This isn't really a solution, but don't forget that the AI is set by the human player who chooses the lowest difficulty setting.

Actually they do declare war, among themselves and against the player, and in my experience can even bribe each other to go to war.
The only difference is that they don't interact with the player, allowing abusive pre-war troops positionning or blatant converting.
I really have no idea of why it is that way, and it's really a let down since i mostly play coop with friends and have a very limited diplo experience because of that...

Hmm, I've definitely been DoW'd in BNW multiplayer games by the AI. Granted, it feels like it doesn't happen as often as it should.

In 3 recent games:
1st game: was DoW'd by 2 or 3 AIs (probably because I was aggressively spreading my religion or expanding.)
2nd game: was DoW'd by 2 AIs simultaneously, though 1 AI was too far away to matter, so nothing came of it. Though I did have tons of sea battles with the other AI. (Actually, I wiped out 2 civilizations before this, so that might have something to do with it - though one I destroyed quite early on.)
3rd game: was never DoW'd by AIs.

The AI isn't non-existent, it's just non-interactive. It doesn't contact you except for DoW, you have to contact it.

I think this is because it doesn't work well with essentially slow turn-based multiplayer, where, depending on the game, some games may go up to 24 hours between turns. Basically, the entire game would freeze while waiting for the players response - i.e. the AI wants to see if Player 3 wants to sell his luxury for 6 gold per turn. The whole game is now frozen waiting for player 3 to respond so the AI can continue his turn. Player 3 sees this when he comes home from work and says 'yes'. The game continues and the AI has to yell at player 4 about his land (and wait for 'I'm sorry' or ' you' as the response), etc. Player 4 sees this and answers. None of this is on their next turn yet - it's still during the AI's turns. It would get dragged out very long.

The declaration of war essentially doesn't require a response from the player, so they can do it.

Granted, it would be nice to have the option as checkbox or such - so if you knew you were playing a game with your friends all sitting in front of their computers, you could have an interactive AI. If you were playing pitboss with 24 hours between turns, you couldn't

Even when all players choose the same high difficulty setting, I'm not sure that the AI is really up to the challenge, even where diplomacy is not involved. I'm currently playing a game where two of us are set on immortal and one on Emperor. I've been watching the Netherlands now for the last 10 or so turns moving a settler back and forth in an out of the lake. I've wanted to attack them for a while, but am playing the Aztecs. I was hoping that by turns 70 or so, they would have more than two units in their entire empire.

bbbt said:

The AI isn't non-existent, it's just non-interactive. It doesn't contact you except for DoW, you have to contact it.

I think this is because it doesn't work well with essentially slow turn-based multiplayer, where, depending on the game, some games may go up to 24 hours between turns. Basically, the entire game would freeze while waiting for the players response - i.e. the AI wants to see if Player 3 wants to sell his luxury for 6 gold per turn. The whole game is now frozen waiting for player 3 to respond so the AI can continue his turn. Player 3 sees this when he comes home from work and says 'yes'. The game continues and the AI has to yell at player 4 about his land (and wait for 'I'm sorry' or ' you' as the response), etc. Player 4 sees this and answers. None of this is on their next turn yet - it's still during the AI's turns. It would get dragged out very long.

The declaration of war essentially doesn't require a response from the player, so they can do it.

Click to expand...

It worked perfectly fine in Civ IV, both in turn based and simultaneous turns; which also had options to delay AI messages until after you moved your units.

i.e. There's no real excuse besides they were too lazy/incompetent to program it in the first place.

I think there are some bugs in AI in multiplayer. Sometimes it plays well but sometimes it just doesnt build any units or cities. I think it has something to do with barbarians taking their workers. I think the same bug existed in singleplayer but they fixed it.

Also very rarely i see AI rushes in multiplayer like i see in singleplayer. It can be just a coincidence. I usually play on immortal with 2 players + AIs.

I think in some patch they fixed AI in multiplayer so it would play like in singleplayer. I'm not sure if patches after that which fixes singleplayer AI also fixes the AI in multiplayer.