AI still in the habit of making severe strategic blunders

[Horizons]

So I am a long-time but not expert player. I play at Prince because Monarch is way too difficult. My observation is that at Prince the AI builds/techs/cultures etc perfectly in other words its building game is spot on, but its warring is embarrassingly awful and thus the reason to play at higher difficulties is to give it more units to play with to compensate. But unfortunately the higher difficulties also give the AI production/happiness etc bonuses which it doesn't really need, thus making the game near-impossible to those who haven't got a PhD in Civ Studies.

The most pitiful example is this: when invading an AI, it will sometimes siphon off units in significant numbers to go and fruitlessly attack city states allied to the invader. It seems totally unaware that an invading force might be 'life threatening' rather than an incursion or an army with limited objectives. The sad thing is that if it consolidated all its available units instead of dividing them up and sending them off in groups to attack various different points, it might be able to save its own life. This is THE most obvious limitation of the AI and it makes me sad to think the only way to compensate for this is to give the AI enormous bonuses to every aspect of its game, not just military.

Secondly, the AI takes no notice of the fact that the player might have his armies spread over different locations. So if I am fighting a war in the south of my sprawling empire and reaching a kind of stalemate with the AI's forces down there, yet I have a second army in the far west of my empire, many tiles away from the war in the south, the AI to the south of my borders will sign peace giving me one of its main cities because it thinks I am 'life threatening' to it with my second army that is too far away to be of any use. In this circumstance I would have made peace on parity terms, but since it gives me one of its best cities I'd be masochistic to refuse.

Any chance that we can have egregious blunders like this ironed out for Civ6? I'm not naieve enough to think we'll get any more significant updates for Civ5 because Firaxis have wrung it for all its worth.

 

[Sonereal]

I think one solution would be to edit a line or so to make the increased difficulties after Prince simply give a military production discount instead of across-the-board-bonuses. This seems like it would work as mod.

The AI learning to prioritize better would be a godsend. It has a habit of splitting up its army if such a way that both halves are effectively useless, including sending an army with no siege equipment after a city.

The AI, even in early game wars, will try to do too much at once. The AI should prioritize protecting its annexed/non-puppet cities first and foremost. At no point should the capital of an AI civilization be completely undefended because the AI thinks sending its troops clear across the map to a war that has no chance of being won is a better bet.

If the AI sesnes a significant hostile force near its city, especially the capital, it should waste little time recalling the troops to defend the capital. Yeah, this opens up a new door for stupid, but it is a tolerable stupid that the human can at least understand.

 

[MisterBoomBoom]

I have often seen that Barbs do a better job of invading and even attacking cities and units than the AI civs.

 

[NordicExpanse]

I have a good example (playing Prince level). Darius declares war and sends archers and swordsmen after one of my little backwater towns (which is, admittedly, only slightly more vulnerable than my equidistant capital and has almost no strategic value). My hoplite unit is down to a single on-screen fighter and I send it to a hill on a neutral hexagon between our empires to recuperate and I didn't realize he was within reach of Pasargadae's defenses. Well, they killed him off, but it caused all other Persian units threatening my town to suddenly retreat back into Persian borders. I've picked off all the Persian units, but haven't made an incursion into his territory because I'm not that strong either, so basically a stalemate and he still thinks he has the upper hand.
Oh, and Dido, with another empire and a city state between us, also declared war. I kinda laughed at that one.

 

[General_Sahib]

"If the AI sesnes a significant hostile force near its city, especially the capital, it should waste little time recalling the troops to defend the capital"...

This is an interesting issue. On difficulty 7 which I play on, I have noticed that the AI does sometimes recall its forces to aid dfence against a surprise attack. AI Portugal screwed me with a random Dow, then advanced with 5 units on my poorly defended classical era second city (one comp arch). She failed as, I had a natural choke point, she lacked catapults and I could recall 2 other units to assist and I targeted her melees so even when the city was at 0 for a few turns she cud not enter it. Anyway, the point is as her troops arrived in my city range, I had an expeditionary force of a siege tower and 2 comp archers and randomly, Greece dow'ed her.....so together with their hoplites, we made mincemeat of two of her cities.
the point is it was highly realistic that she did not recall her troops as a) they wud not have returned in time to make a difference and b) she did have a better chance of acquiring my city than of saving her own. However i am sceptical that this was a decision based on any of the above and was more likely just a stubbornly standard coding outcome in such a scenario. I suspect that even if she cud get back and save her cities, she wud not have done so.

Separately, i find that having raging barbs on....and having fewer ai's than the standard for the map size actually, perversely, makes a better game experience for warmonger players. This is partly issue to a group of 2 or 3 barbs can complicate human city defence when at war and also, having fewer cities on a larger map seems to help ai's target your city instead of apparently splitting its forced and e.g. chasing a city state as some have pointed out. I have had some pretty good battles against a focused so enemy on difficulty 7, such that i need to have a high level of suspicion against specific enemies based on their diplomatic behaviour, prompting me to use horses to scout for their invasion forces, and then rearrranging my defenders depending on which of my cities their invasion horde is galloping over open land towards. I have played both congested and open maps and i just think the ai handles congestion poorly but has a better crack at it when there is reduced city:free space ratio. Has anyone else noticed this?