AI Victory? Has anyone seen this happen?

I seem to recall hearing during the pre-release hype possibly in a video with Pete Murray that the AI now tried harder to win and city states didn't try and win. I haven't once seen the AI get close to winning though or heard other people say the AI had troubled them? Quite the opposite infact, the AI has been in a position of power yet made stupid errors like leaving it's capital undefended when out conquering other AI's. Admitedly I haven't played many games. I completed 4 games back to back over the first week on settler, chieftain, warlord and prince then got bored on King and I haven't been back since.

Has anyone actually been defeated by the AI and which victory did the AI achieve? I'm guessing the only victory I'm going to hear about is an AI conquest victory.

Even Pete says in the video that he was trying to achieve a culture victory in his latest playthrough but ended up winning via conquest and he mentions "easy-mode diplomatic victory" as the Greeks, though quickly adds "but it's very, very satisfying".

Video here.

That concept now looks like they were preparing for the complaints about the AI and the diplomacy. They had to know how bad it was so they prepared for the release so each time something erratic happened they could say: it's because they are playing to win, so they try to surprise you!

EDIT: I think the idea was brilliant, since it got them several followers that keep repeating that each time we show an example of how random and nonesense diplomacy and AI decissions are.

Not me. Even if the AI is in the position to win, it simply don`t try. I remember one of my games, where the lasr AI has an entire continent, larger then mine. It had a tech lead, it had more production. Still I won a space race, because the AI did neither try to win nor try to stop me ...

In an other game, Ramses build the UN - but fail to bribe the city states to vote for him.

MRM said:

Not me. Even if the AI is in the position to win, it simply don`t try. I remember one of my games, where the lasr AI has an entire continent, larger then mine. It had a tech lead, it had more production. Still I won a space race, because the AI did neither try to win nor try to stop me ...

In an other game, Ramses build the UN - but fail to bribe the city states to vote for him.

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Hmmm, this was the example I thought we would see more than an AI victory.

i never finish a game...but i only see Ai fighting continuos war between the others ai player achiving nothing...i've reach the medieval era, but now i'm really bored about press continuosly the next turn button (why all the things cost so much? 50 turns for a barrackS? :| ) , and i'm at the top of the ranking ( i like the point victory above the others)....with praticaly no competitor....

same here, I was playing on emperor level and babylonians entered modern era then I was still laging in medieval, they finally conquered pretty much all the world except me, had several times bigger production capacity and population, but never went for a science victory, nor did some effort to win diplomatically, somehow I don't think AI can ever win culturally,
and obviously they coudn't conquer me either even with much more advanced units..
so finally I was catching up quite well on science, but got bored of the map as I really was supposed to have lost by that time, that didn't seem fair..
so the answer is NO - in the games I played I never seen an AI win, in all the games either I won or I dumped the map

Oh, the AI does try to win. I played a chieftain level game lately in which Bismark led a very successful campaign to conquer the world. In my experience (about 15 games total now), the AI can be very good, and has quite some surprises in store - like one of my neighboring civs declaring war on me because I was building too many wonders for their taste.

I know the AI tries to win by conquest, diplomacy and the space race - I have not seen any indications of it trying to win by culture, but then you do not have enough info on them to see if they do.

Globally I really like the new AI because it keeps things interesting

I think around game 7 or so I decided to give Ghandi (King) and a cultural victory a chance. I did everything in my power to stay peaceful and try to manipulate the world via diplomacy. Ha ha! Silly me. The Egyptians took a small Russian city and the Russians gave up all their cities for peace. I tried to manipulate my neighbors to work against the evil Egyptians but no dice. The Ottomans, with their army miles away fighting the much weaker Germans, folded like a tent to the Egyptians. At this point I saw the writing on the wall and I got my 3 cities to start building an army but oh too late. The Egyptian riflemen easily breached my 70+ defenses and no one came to my aid. Caesar sent me a message telling me how bad the Egyptians were but next turn dow'd the Small American empire.... While I was staging a last ditch effort at my last city the Egyptians than swallowed the Romans. This only left the Germans who than finally decided to act. They dow'd me!! I was able to take back my capital but the overwhelming Egypian/German forces finally got me.

So I learned my lesson. The diplomacy is absolutly broken. If you want a cultural victory you still
need a real army and to use domination like tactics but just puppet so you don't get the culture
hits. Yes, I lost a match!!! Shhhh, don't tell anyone

Lemmy101 did a thread in the Stories and Tales section of his first game, and it showed the AI pulling a victory out that seemed to be unexpected.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=380899

It may not be the best example, but it showed the AI making an adjustment and dealing with the situation it was in.

Antmanbrooks said:

Quite the opposite infact, the AI has been in a position of power yet made stupid errors like leaving it's capital undefended when out conquering other AI's.

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The fact that they were out conquering other AIs proves that they are trying to win. AI vs AI war was very unlikely in previous Civs and rarely led to one Civ dominating a continent. Not quite so in Civ5, although it sucks at intercontinental warfare and thus gets stuck there.

AeonOfTime said:

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I know the AI tries to win by conquest, diplomacy and the space race - I have not seen any indications of it trying to win by culture, but then you do not have enough info on them to see if they do.

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Really ? In my games they build sometimes the apollo project, yes. But then no space ship parts ...

And conquest - most time only the continent they sit on, but nothing else.

I lost a couple of games on Immortal and Deity. Not on the lower levels.

Attached below is a replay of a game I lost, my first try at Immortal. Unzip and view in Firefox

Junuxx said:

. AI vs AI war was very unlikely in previous civs .

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Surely you jest... AI vs AI war was quite common in 3 and even more so in IV due to religious differences and NOTICEABLE personality differences/civic differences. In case you forgot leaders had a favorite civic and were more or less friendly to others based on their current civics vs others.


As for cultural wins i seriously doubt it.. the fact that all AI are more warmongering pretty much defeats any chance of it. They may formulate the plan to do so and only build 1 or 2 cities but then they inevitably declare war on someone and get wiped out. So i'm rather certain the AI is not actually trying to WIN via culture or science.

A very wise man once said - "The AI in civ V are all brain dead psychos"!!!

Cosmic_Fist said:

I lost a couple of games on Immortal and Deity. Not on the lower levels.

Attached below is a replay of a game I lost, my first try at Immortal. Unzip and view in Firefox

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That's an intersting reply, and it at least shows the AI winning. That's a good thing in my opinion. I guess a lot of it has to do with people quitting before a victory? But that's part of the reason I only reckon that a conquest victory is likely as the AI never seems to shock with a surprise culture, diplomatic or science victory. It's easy to spot the AI heading towards a conquest victory.

I lost to AI twice on Prince. Both times to AI's time victory, and both times when I was trying to get a culutural victory, so I wasnt expanding too much.

In my first game I played on immortal and had a great time.

I first allied with Siam to fight Arabia. Once it was obvious that I would crush Arabia my relations with Siam soured and relativly soon they attacked. It makes perfect sense given that I was ahead in land but behind in army and technology.

They ran over me and the rest of the game I was trying to scheme to prevent them from winning. I think they had build three parts of the spaceship when Iroqious won a cultural victory.

Their actions are very reasonable If you think of them only as competitors. In my second game on Immortal I won a diplomatic victory when Persia had 27+ cultural policies. In my third game I played diety and won a diplomatic victory when two of my opponents had started building the space ship.

Folket said:

Their actions are very reasonable If you think of them only as competitors.

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Exactly true.. diplomacy is simply a gameplay dynamic now not a crude geopolitical simulator

In 2 posts here somebody said, and they attacked me, which made total sense.

Well, of course sometimes it will make sense that they attack. The problem is, they always attack. So it's not that they were smart and saw that attacking was the best option. They always finally do, and in that case, it was reasonable.

Having a warmonger AI is cool. But it's cool if it's unique. But it's not because they all are.

Cosmic_Fist said:

I lost a couple of games on Immortal and Deity. Not on the lower levels.

Attached below is a replay of a game I lost, my first try at Immortal. Unzip and view in Firefox

Click to expand...

If I'm reading the replay correctly, Augustus had 2 ways of entering your lands via 1-hex-wide narrow path between mountains and ocean? How did you loose?