Civs AI doesn't do well with

Which Civs have you guys never really witnessed the AI be successful with? Personally Mongolia has never been a runaway or in the top half of the Civs in my games. They are typically always one of the lowest or in the middle.

Indonesia and Portugal alway getting eatten by some warmonger.
The Mongols can sometimes be scary.
Pasiv Civs with no real Special Unit bonus will end up with a low military score and be the punching back of almsot everyone.

There's also a pack of civs that the AI does well with early game, but always fail with come Rennaisance - Zulu, Aztecs, Huns (Though they're more stable then the others), Denmark and indeed Mongolia. The AI is also pretty poor with Brazil, who rarely survives long even if they're starting next to more passive civs.
Then there's a few civs that beeline too much to their UU which is at a poor tech tree point - the Ottomans is the prime example, they seem to beeline for the Siphai and Janissary. While they're good units, it also means they're mostly ignoring science, causing them to fall behind regulary.
Oddly enough, China tends to do very poorly too, don't really have an explanation for that one.

Loucypher said:

Oddly enough, China tends to do very poorly too, don't really have an explanation for that one.

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Not sure I agree with this, I've had China at or near the top in many games. Weirdly, though in general I don't see them succeeding, in my last Deity game the Aztecs managed to grab two other caps.

Has anyone ever had a Civ that made a switch from good to bad or vice versa? The Ottomans did that on me recently, typically they were always a low level civ in my games and now each time I play they are in or near the top 3. It's weird how that type of stuff happens but the makes the game so enjoyable and replayable

Chris3894 said:

Has anyone ever had a Civ that made a switch from good to bad or vice versa? The Ottomans did that on me recently, typically they were always a low level civ in my games and now each time I play they are in or near the top 3. It's weird how that type of stuff happens but the makes the game so enjoyable and replayable

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I think it simply boils down to the AI just having good or bad luck with a Civ depending on the different game variables (map type, lay of the land, alone on a continent or sharing with others, VC aspiration, etc.) For example, the AI might have a lot of success in one game as the Zulus because it started on a continent with several passive AIs that it could zerg rush. But the next time it plays the Zulus, it might be on an Archipelago map and is stymied until it can Embark and attack other civs, at which point the other civs will have had more time to build themselves up and might not be such easy targets.

To go with your example, in one game the Ottomans might have been on a Pangaea or there might have been other civs (like England, Byzantium, or Carthage) who are taking out all the barb ship and neutering Sully’s UA. But in the next game, they might be on a Small Continents map building up their fleet of commandeered barb ships. This will make it look like the AI can suddenly play the Ottomans better, when in fact it’s just the result of the many intricacies of the game.

Most civs never bother relying on their UAs

otaman1 said:

Most civs never bother relying on their UAs

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Maybe not intentionally, but they might accidentally use their UA out of sheer dumb luck.

ETA: the AI-controlled Ottomans might not be attacking barb ships with the intent to amass a large armada. But they might happen to attack random barb ships that wander within range of their Trireme and inadvertently capture some as a result, allowing them to attack more barb ship and capture some more. Same result; different reasoning.

Oh I understand why it happens like that I just find it really interesting and enjoy how it happens

Mongolia #1 worst hands down. he herp derps try to kill CS over and over and over, world hates him and ofc so do i because i want those CS's to stay free. it's a shame because his AI personality is almost always very friendly towards the human. just a dumb horribad UA

Other worsts are Brazil, and it seems the Celts a lot of the time.

The ones I notice that seem fairly consistently not to do so well in the hands of the AI are Mongolia and Brazil...and often the Dutch... In some situations any of the AI can do poorly.

The Mongols were one of my favourites in G&K...I still like them, but in the hands of a human player, they seem to run their course and get boring by the Industrial era...just too hard to keep up...

The AI handling of the Keshiks UU is laughable....they leave them sitting around to be easily picked off. When I play as the Mongols, if I have five or six Keshiks they are pretty well unstoppable until their effectiveness dries up. I can usually go the whole game without losing any Keshiks...(or their upgrade descendents).... and often have them nicely upgraded with "Logistics" and other nice promos...

It is always just so easy to suck the AI into traps.... or repetitous patterns ... One I like is catching them with a settler and a military unit at some choke point ...then kind of "opening and closing the door", so to speak....for example, if they are headed for a particular spot to found a city, they will endlessly try to use the shortest open route and you can "open and close the door" to this route.... they never seem to catch on....

The Huns never do what they should: destroy everybody. They tend to conquer a lot, but not enough, and mostly go for a science victory.

To me, Boudicca and Pacal have the sexiest leaderboards, and the poorest performance as AIs.

Venice. Most of the time they take 1-2 City States, try to play peacefully and lose their Cities to a warmonger-AI shortly after.

I've had civilization ais do bad with maya , Aztec or even pedro.

I usually play standard deity.
And I manually pick the AI which I feel the most challenging.

Usually, I almost always include Poland,Korea,Greece,
Sometimes Atilla,Shaka,Caesar,Bismarck, Hiawatha, or Siam and I always leave 1 or 2 random civ for different flavor. (but I hate it when they randomly picked overly passive/bad AI)

I cant really remember which civ that always does very bad, maybe Indonesia,Venice,Portugal,Babylon,Brazil,France,Assyria, Netherlands. If possible, I would like that these civs never been chosen for the random opponent AI.

Gandhi also always not doing very well in my game, dunno why. He always stuck with only 3 or 4 city, and almost never war. I read a lot about Gandhi warmongering and nuke in forum or reddit, but I never actually saw it. Note that I usually finish my game before turn 350.

IMO, AI which consistently become a runaway in my game are Greece,Atilla,Bismarck. Sometimes Rome and Shaka.

No mention of Byzantium? Always a non-factor in my games.

And of course Denmark.

As mentioned, AI China often doesn't do well despite being considered a top-tier civ. I mentioned it again because unlike civs where the reason for the poor AI performance is well-known (i.e. Mongolia), I don't really know why AI China does poorly. They often play tall and go Tradition and only build a few cities. But this in itself should not be a problem because Tradition is the most OP policy tree, and besides going wide is penalized even more in BNW anyway.

Sagax said:

No mention of Byzantium? Always a non-factor in my games.

And of course Denmark.

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Byzantium ALWAYS(no exception) gets conquered before they get to create a third city. Except for once, they were number 1, definitely going to win, but then the Ottomans attacked. History, gotta love it

LoneRebel said:

As mentioned, AI China often doesn't do well despite being considered a top-tier civ. I mentioned it again because unlike civs where the reason for the poor AI performance is well-known (i.e. Mongolia), I don't really know why AI China does poorly. They often play tall and go Tradition and only build a few cities. But this in itself should not be a problem because Tradition is the most OP policy tree, and besides going wide is penalized even more in BNW anyway.

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1) Perhaps because their UU is ranged, and the AI doesn't know how to use ranged units properly.

2) They also seem to get ganged by other AI quite regularly, perhaps because ranged units count low towards military score, and because they don't like making DoF (no allies).

3) When not immediately under the kosh, they can be very reckless, starting wars at poor odds and generally being annoying.