[BNW] Civ5 passive/bad AI in Co-op MP any way to fix it?

[desolace12]

I always play Civ5 with my friend and we noticed AI is super passive even at high difficulty. We played already several different matches and it's always the same, they only build. They can't even defend against barbarians, i declared war on Indonesia and was camping next to his capital with my 6 units for like 40 turns and guess what? He didn't do anything. He didn't make any army, he didn't repair his tiles destroyed by barbarians. He had 3 more cities just around but didn't even try to defend from me. So after 40 turns of doing nothing i just took his capital. This is ridiculous.

Multiplayer AI is not the same as singleplayer AI in this game, there are many sources on internet where people say that aswell. Why is it like that? Is there any way to change AI for MP to be like in SP? Cus there is really no point to play with such bad AI.

 

[Volcanon]

What difficulty are you playing at?

 

[desolace12]

I play Immortal or Emperor but tried even Deity. It looks like difficulty only makes AI to more cheat and gives player penalties and it's impossible to build wonders. It doesn't make AI more aggressive or make them declare war more often.

Me and my friend are in separate teams as well as all AI civs but it doesn't make them less passive anyway.

 

[beetle]

The usual complaint with AI as partners is that they make peace at the drop of pin.

You should definitely be playing at Deity since that will give the AI civs enough of a production bonus so that they are more likely to build units.

How do you have the teams set up? 1 v 1 v 6?

I would suggest trying 2 v 6 at Deity. That might be okay.

 

[desolace12]

We play FFA, every civ has their own unique team including me and my friend. We play together as allies but in separate teams, we find it more realistic and we were hoping for some interesting AI vs AI wars but..

I know multiplayer AI is not as good as singleplayer AI, there are no leader animations, AI will never talk to you and ask anything you have to do it instead. Even AI turns are much faster in MP than in singleplayer. But i can't understand why they NEVER attack, declare war, rush you or anything. Even if i disable all win conditions but military, even if they are 20 times bigger than me, they never attack me even the most aggressive civs like Zulu, Greece, Huns etc. I read somewhere that it happens only when you share borders with AI, otherwise they don't care and just sit there and do nothing. I'm really disappointed, in singleplayer they would crush me 100 times already while in multiplayer i just take their cities.

 

[beetle]

How many teams are there? How many civs on each team?

We play FFA, every civ has their own unique team including me and my friend. We play together as allies but in separate teams, we find it more realistic and we were hoping for some interesting AI vs AI wars but...

Can you please explain your game settings? Free For All is not compatible with Teams. And every civ cannot each have their own team. (But of course, each civ can be on a team.) And I have no idea what you mean by allies. DOF? Or do you just have a verbal agreement to cooperate? Thanks.

 

[desolace12]

Me (team 1)
My friend (team 2)
AI (team 3)
AI (team 4)
AI (team 5)
AI (team 6)
AI (team 7)
AI (team 8)

By ally i mean as you said, verbal agreement so we don't attack each other etc. Other settings are:

Pangea Plus
Standard map size
Epic speed
All victory except time
Quick combat
All DLC's enabled

I wanted to add more AI and less city-states but it's not possible to set more than 8 civs on standard map. Also what i have notice is i can ask AI for declare war on someone in trade panel and usually most AI's are willing to declare war on other civ but why they don't do it at their own? And even if i bribe them to go to war with other civ they declare war and don't attack them anyway.

 

[beetle]

Thanks @desolace12, but I am still confused! Am I correct to understand that you have 8 teams, but each team is a single civ? Why not just play the usual 8 person multi-player with 6 of those being AI NPCs?

EDIT: Edit I just looked at the Multiplayer set-up screen. The UI the term teams even when each team is just one civ. That is not really the way people talk, but okay.

Anyway, people’s experience is that Multiplayer is clearly oriented for human players and the AI are just filler. So I am back to my earlier suggestion:

Deity difficulty for you and your friend. Split the AIs into two team. So 1 v 1 v 3 v 3. But you might get have better success if you are not fooling the UI, so 2 v 3 v 3 might be more interesting. Good luck!

 

[desolace12]

Still it's not a solution really. Deity is making AI only cheat more and build all wonders. Even on Immortal i had one civ that had 2x more points than the rest and he was 1st in everything. He was building wonders each 10-15 turns this was ridiculous. I had 1 civ playing with it's starting city all the time even tho he had lots of space around to make more. Ofc he was last in points because of that. Another civ had 0 military units all the time even after i took his city he didn't learn to make any units.

About teams i didn't test it by myself but i read on internet that it's better to have AI's in separate team. Plus it's what i expected from this game, i didn't want team vs teams fights but 1vs1vs1vs1 etc. but Civ5 AI is just broken in multiplayer.

 

[beetle]

If you haven’t tried it, how can you say it is not a solution? In any case, the AIs will not give you the competition you are looking for unless you play at Immortal or Deity.

 

[desolace12]

Because i don't want to play Deity with cheating AI. In singleplayer i don't even play on Immortal and AI is much much better (still far away from ideal tho). They fked up AI in multiplayer, no matter what settings you use. I can't believe they didn't make any fix/patch for it, seriously.

 

[beetle]

Because i don't want to play Deity with cheating AI.

Sorry, but it is just silly to refer to game balance buffs given to the computer as “cheating”. Lots of games do this, and Civ has been that way since II (at least).

…no matter what settings you use.

Except that you do not actually know if this is true or not, because (for religious reasons afaik) you refuse to try 2 (human players, at Deity) vs 3 vs 3.

If you try the settings I suggest, and you and your friend get your hats handed to you, that would be a good thing! You now know that the multiplayer AI can be competitive, so just dial the AIs down to Immortal and try again.

If you try the setting I suggest, and you and it’s still a cakewalk, well at least you gave the game the best opportunity to entertain you.