Why is this AI so....

.... weak?

The AI in question I'm speaking of is named Catherine, and she's in eighth place of pointy sticks list with me in first place. I have five times as much pointy sticks than she does.



Now, why is me and Catherine so hostile towards each other?

Monty forward settled upon me halfway across the map so I wiped him out for that, then Songhai and Russia did a co-op dow together on me. I smashed Songhai for it. Russia was lucky that it was too inconvenient for me to go after her for time being.

She maintains HOSTILE attitude towards me for 200+ turns. Its turn 325 now so that you guys know. She had couple hundred of turns to build up her military to prepare to defend against me.. and she.. did.. NOTHING! Just sat there, skipping turns! wtf.

And that's not all, she's maintaining insults and denouncements and spying on me stealing techs. Surely, all those won't make me attack her.

So I decided to take a look at demographics just to see how strong I am.



Welp, 9/10 score, that darned alexander ruining what otherwise would've been a perfect score. And then I looked at my 2nd city with rather, large armada gathering to invade Russia. Frigates is offscreen.



I tell you, because Russia sat on her fat butt for last two hundred turns despite maintaining an hostile attitude towards me. She's going to get pummeled in few turns for her insolence. The war will be tragically one-sided in my favor. Russia's military looks sad and lonely!

Just.... why didn't Russia build up her military because she's been sitting next to number 1 power who would've eventually gotten around to battling her. I have already taken Aztecs, Songhai, Byzantines, and Mayans.

And now a large Armada is sitting right next her, about to strike. She has noone to blame but the Firaxis Developers!

If hostile towards Powerful Civilization with military 5 times bigger than you, build more military units. Why not!

Is there someone that can enlighten on me why Russia is not doing anything. Thank you.

What difficulty setting is it?

Well... AI decison making makes no sens at all. Its extreamly weak regarding that aspect of the game. Thats why AI needs huge bonus to be competitive. That said, you are playing prince right? Maybe King...
If you want some kind of challenge you need to play Emperor. If you want the AI to actualy have a shot at winning a game you have to play Immortal, and if you want to work your ass off to win, you have to play Deity.

If on turn 325 you can still expect to take a city with Caravels and Frigates, I can understand its a bit boring.

inthesomeday said:

What difficulty setting is it?

Click to expand...

What difficulty setting is it?

x2Madda said:

What difficulty setting is it?

Click to expand...

well.... difficulty level...

Settler level 1
Chief level 2
Warlord level 3
Prince level 4
Kink level 5
Emperor level 6
Immortal level 7
Deity level 8

x2Madda said:

What difficulty setting is it?

Click to expand...

King Difficulty.

Still no excuse for not producing military at all.

well... on the other end... if you really like AI to have lots of army, why are you playing King?

KingKong76 said:

well... on the other end... if you really like AI to have lots of army, why are you playing King?

Click to expand...

Because any difficulty above King = Eras is way too short and lasting just few turns. Science progress way too fast on Emperor and above for Civ5 to be fun at all.

Callonia said:

Because any difficulty above King = Eras is way too short and lasting just few turns. Science progress way too fast on Emperor and above for Civ5 to be fun at all.

Click to expand...

Hmmm, you know difficulty doesnt really affect eras length. It's more that it affects science output of the AIs.

Maybe you should try playing epic speed emperor.

Callonia said:

Because any difficulty above King = Eras is way too short and lasting just few turns. Science progress way too fast on Emperor and above for Civ5 to be fun at all.

Click to expand...

Wait. So you are saying the current level you are playing at is no fun because there is no challenge from the AI yet you won't step up to a higher difficulty because that is no fun either for different reasons?

In your screenshots you still have an Armada of Caravels in the 1900s so there is definitely something wrong! I think I read somewhere else that you said you play the same play style every time you play - Marathon and Domination, is this correct? Perhaps shake it up a bit and play differently and on a higher level. Why do you not like Science progress?

I'm just baffled as to why people complain about how the game goes yet refuse to change the parameters to make it more of a challenge...

HughFran said:

Wait. So you are saying the current level you are playing at is no fun because there is no challenge from the AI yet you won't step up to a higher difficulty because that is no fun either for different reasons?

In your screenshots you still have an Armada of Caravels in the 1900s so there is definitely something wrong! I think I read somewhere else that you said you play the same play style every time you play - Marathon and Domination, is this correct? Perhaps shake it up a bit and play differently and on a higher level. Why do you not like Science progress?

I'm just baffled as to why people complain about how the game goes yet refuse to change the parameters to make it more of a challenge...

Click to expand...

Because those people dont wanna play civilization, they wanna play Simvilization

Callonia said:

Because any difficulty above King = Eras is way too short and lasting just few turns. Science progress way too fast on Emperor and above for Civ5 to be fun at all.

Click to expand...

Turn off science victory.

I like to play huge maps, 12/24 civ/cs games. You wont be even top 3 in tech on immortal or higher and the AI never gangs up on the civ about to build the spaceship.

There is always a runaway on the other side of the globe you can never reach. Just turn off science vic. Its not a real victory anyway. War, diplo or culture are the only legit victory types.

adsin15 said:

Its not a real victory anyway. War, diplo or culture are the only legit victory types.

Click to expand...

Erm, please explain. Why is Science not a legit way to win??

HughFran said:

Erm, please explain. Why is Science not a legit way to win??

Click to expand...

lol, yeah. Especially as diplo victory is really a cheap one considering how dumb AIs are at securing CSes despite having tons of money

Diplo is essentially just a Science Victory... If Science isn't legit then Diplo isn't legit.

This thread has some really "contradicting" information in it. I won't say anything but this:

Playing on King and complaining about incapable AI is like beating your six year old niece in chess and bragging about it to your friends. Don't do it.

I agree, there are some bizarre statements being made on this thread. Saying Science victory is not legit is a weird thing to say. As is complaining about the ability of the AI at King level

Not that I disagree with you guys that his tech rate could be improved upon and he'd enjoy a higher difficulty more, but have any you even played huge/domination before?

It's a challenging task and you get some awful science and culture penalties. In addition to this it looks like Callonia likes to keep a lot of the cities from each conquest rather then burn them so I'm not surprised his tech rate is slower and he dislikes science victories since they end the game prematurely.

In addition to this Huge maps have techs that cost 130% of normal (to make the game longer and balance with larger empires) as opposed to 110% on standard. Even puppeted cities get the 2.5% tech penalty but their science output is nerfed so of course his tech rate is slower with this playstyle. He'd do better to burn more of his cities but I can understand how this would break the role-playing. I never liked how in civ V you had to burn so many cities to stay competitive on complete domination and sniping capitals seems a bit cheap. I assume he prefers to fully crush each enemy which is also the way I like to play.

Callonia: my advice for you would be to disable science victory and play epic/marathon. It's in the advanced options. Then you won't have to worry about a runaway tech leader winning too quickly on huge before you get to them but they will still stay very competitive. I'd recommend immortal difficulty.

However as you can see in the opening post his problem wasn't Science at all, he was complaining about how the AI was building no military even though it was threatened. This has everything to do with difficulty and nothing to do with speed/map size. I have no problem with roleplaying

"Why is the AI so weak"

Because you are playing on easy.

yung.carl.jung said:

However as you can see in the opening post his problem wasn't Science at all, he was complaining about how the AI was building no military even though it was threatened. This has everything to do with difficulty and nothing to do with speed/map size. I have no problem with roleplaying

Click to expand...

true, I was more addressing his comment that if he increases the difficulty then the AI will win science race before he can take them over. This can be prevented by disabling it. That's all he needs to do.

I agree he needs a stronger difficulty. I find immortal pretty fun for wars on large maps. The amount of units the AI build between emperor and immortal is pretty dramatic. They prepare for war much better. Deity is just a slog-fest though on these big map sizes. Their unit discounts are ridiculous.