Civs the AI can't play

In my experience the AI Babylon always puts off researching writing for as long as possible, well beyond the other AI. I've never understood this.

After my most recent game I rescind my complaints about the Netherlands. They did seem to often have nothing available to trade, meaning they were trading their last copy, and when I tried to trade my last of a resource for their last they only wanted a 1:2 ratio rather than 1:3.
However I restate my Indonesia complaint, as they had a great island off the coast of their capital that could have fit two cities and late into the game they still never settled it. By the end part of the island was even inside their territory because their capital had acquired tiles out to a fifth ring.
Also Portugal still never used their UI and CSs were easy to access.

GoStu said:

Brazil. Brazil always dies, because he's almost totally vanilla in the early and mid-game, and has a really poor set of AI flavors to survive.

I can only really see him being a threat if totally isolated, and after astronomy his collected artworks and wonders combined with fast golden ages combine to make him a tourism threat.

Click to expand...

Brazil is hilarious. He turtles like crazy (reminds me of ethiopia) and yet, for some reason, will not build many units or walls. He also refuses to explore much. I just played a game near him and found 3 ruins just 5-7 tiles from him, AGES after he should have found them. He had 3 warriors hanging around his capital but would never move more than 2 spaces away. He just kept circling the city. One game, I found him on an island, got open borders for spreading my religion and noted that the guy had only 2 huge cities (a spot for a 3rd but never built it) by the INDUSTRIAL era. He also had only 3 way outdated troops. I think his main problem is the jungle bias, plus not beelining universities, and sucking at building his defenses. He also goes tall without fail but refuses to settle the full 4 cities so misses out on the potential of tradition. Many failings with this guy--reason he gets wiped out is mainly his atrocious habit of never building a decent military. Just an open invitation to the AI.

The reason behind these civs failing (
England, Spain, Byzantium, Netherlands, Indonesia, Songhai, Venice, Carthage, Portugal, Denmark) is because they all have a high naval flavour (>6). The only other civs that have >6 in naval preference are Korea, Japan and Ottoman, and they don't usually do very well either.

I vote for celts for the simple reason that they never actually die - they start wars that they lose and then hang out at the bottom of the pond for the whole game. Props for stayin' alive Boudica!

danaphanous said:

Brazil is hilarious. He turtles like crazy (reminds me of ethiopia) and yet, for some reason, will not build many units or walls. He also refuses to explore much. I just played a game near him and found 3 ruins just 5-7 tiles from him, AGES after he should have found them. He had 3 warriors hanging around his capital but would never move more than 2 spaces away. He just kept circling the city. One game, I found him on an island, got open borders for spreading my religion and noted that the guy had only 2 huge cities (a spot for a 3rd but never built it) by the INDUSTRIAL era. He also had only 3 way outdated troops.

Click to expand...

Sounds like the way I used to play. If you're isolated there's not much point building a large land army or investing in upgrading the units you've got, until a threat or opportunity is present.

Some of the AIs aren't so much bad as bad Civs. Brazil doesn't have much. Venice is doing a OCC. Mongolia has a dubious UA and an OP UU. They should probably concentrate on playing nice until they get chivalry then going permawar. Instead they typically attack multiple CS in the ancient era and get dogpiled. AIs generally make poor use of their UUs.