They need to hotfix AI agression now

[Enrico Swagolo]

In my opinion they're not "smarter" about starting a war. They're actually less smart if they don't attack defenseless cities anymore since they would have won the game this way.

Looking at the player cruising to victory with zero military defense is hardly "smarter".

Agreed. Had only a warrior and a scout while being right between the Zulu and the Huns. They kept spamming units so much they forgot to settle more cities while letting me comfortably spam wonders.

In Civ 5 G&K, they would've quickly denounced me and a man of Shaka's caliber would quickly say "hey Atilla, wanna attack this wonderwhore? Even Ramesses would be disgusted by so many world wonders, and he has a single warrior to defend his stuff!", the Hun's response would be "HAYEREYAH HATILLA! DECLARE WAAAAAAR"

After that they'd attack me together. The only thing I could've done in that case would be ragequit. (I saw Shaka's army. 2 catapults, maaany spears, 5+ composite bowmen. Huns according to the advisors had a much, much bigger army)

But they waited and waited, letting their pointless, huge armies waste a lot of GPT, until I got so many wonders and GPT from TR I had little to no reason to fear. It's not like they even wanted to attack me...

 

[klokwerk]

That's the strange thing. They DO build huge armies, they just don't start the war sometimes, which is strange and makes even less sense because they lose a lot of money or hammers doing so.

Looks like a buggy DoW check. It seems too restrictive right now. Looks like something that could be easily patched, especially since they generally build the army and only the DoW is the problem.

I'd like them to build more siege units too, they'd be a lot more successful at taking cities, especially if they come with multiple siege units on the same turn.

 

[feralminded]

I admit to missing about 5 pages in this thread over the weekend but my question is specifically in regards to the "shuffle of doom". Has any investigation been done into this? I will try and get a save and screens up later but specifically I have seen it in two games now where I under-build military while adjacent to a warmonger (in the latest case Monty) who then builds a massive, unstoppable army and sends them at me only to NOT DoW and instead shuffle his troops mindlessly in my territory (we have open borders). Obviously the AI wanted to take me out ... in fact it was easy and the right choice but at the last minute something broke in the script and now has a massive army just chilling in my territory. While this is a net-gain for me the truth is he has so many troops in my territory I can't properly develop the land. I'd like him to (and force me to start the game over) or get off the pot (and take out someone else with his mega army). He's got at least 12-13 troops chewing up my tiles right now taking 20-30 seconds a turn to shuffle around in circles. It's annoying! Kill me already!

Clearly this is not an aggression bug ... he had the right idea and had he DoW'ed I would have instantly lost but something along the way broke. This is on Emperor.

 

[kaspergm]

That's the strange thing. They DO build huge armies, they just don't start the war sometimes, which is strange and makes even less sense because they lose a lot of money or hammers doing so.

Looks like a buggy DoW check.

Yes, I've definitely had several cases of this going on also. Like someone building 10+ Swordsmen, Archers, Catapults, etc., marching them all up to my borders and then just have them stand around there doing nothing, sometimes for eras on end. It might be the AI re-decides based on my actions in response to their army marching up - which might be smart, but that's not very good for the game, sadly. First of all AI ends up having wasted all that production/gold, and on top of that it makes the game a bit boring.

I do think it's nice that some of the more peaceful civs don't DoW you automatically anymore, but some of the more maniac civs probably need to have a bit higher chance for an all-or-nothing early rate.

 

[klokwerk]

I admit to missing about 5 pages in this thread over the weekend but my question is specifically in regards to the "shuffle of doom". Has any investigation been done into this? I will try and get a save and screens up later but specifically I have seen it in two games now where I under-build military while adjacent to a warmonger (in the latest case Monty) who then builds a massive, unstoppable army and sends them at me only to NOT DoW and instead shuffle his troops mindlessly in my territory (we have open borders). Obviously the AI wanted to take me out ... in fact it was easy and the right choice but at the last minute something broke in the script and now has a massive army just chilling in my territory. While this is a net-gain for me the truth is he has so many troops in my territory I can't properly develop the land. I'd like him to (and force me to start the game over) or get off the pot (and take out someone else with his mega army). He's got at least 12-13 troops chewing up my tiles right now taking 20-30 seconds a turn to shuffle around in circles. It's annoying! Kill me already!

Clearly this is not an aggression bug ... he had the right idea and had he DoW'ed I would have instantly lost but something along the way broke. This is on Emperor.

It seems to me they do that if they feel they won't be able to take the city. Which is smart in a way.

What isn't smart though is they didn't acknowledge that earlier.

They should have built more siege weapons and try to send them all at once. That's the way you successfully take cities after all.

I had 10+ zulu impis (melee) coming to my city and just stay here waiting to get bombed by the city. It just doesn't make sense. It's true they won't get the city without siege / range but then, why do you come and suicide under my city's bombardment ?

The AI needs better unit / hex threat check. Suiciding military land units against my navy is another thing they like to do alot. Why can't they see I already sank 10 of them at the same place just a few turns ago ?

 

[feralminded]

It seems to me they do that if they feel they won't be able to take the city. Which is smart in a way.

What isn't smart though is they didn't acknowledge that earlier.

They should have built more siege weapons and try to send them all at once. That's the way you successfully take cities after all.

I had 10+ zulu impis (melee) coming to my city and just stay here waiting to get bombed by the city. It just doesn't make sense. It's true they won't get the city without siege / range but then, why do you come and suicide under my city's bombardment ?

The AI needs better unit / hex threat check. Suiciding military land units against my navy is another thing they like to do alot. Why can't they see I already sank 10 of them at the same place just a few turns ago ?

Perhaps but the simple truth is his army was complete overkill (or conversely my defense was completely amateur). It was more than enough to take the city (he had CBs and Jaguars), it was enough to take out my race. He had Jaguars and CBs against a city with walls and a warrior. I know the AI isn't as good at exploiting the tactical combat as we are but he had enough army to make quick work of my very poorly defended city. He just didn't. Honestly there's a CS just on the other side of me and for a few turns I thought maybe he was going to swarm them (since we have open borders it made a kind of sense) but nope, the AI just broke and has parked his mega army in my land around the city he wanted to kill but opted not to. Now the AI is really broken since he's Monty/Honor and he's not breaking things with his army he's playing a very inferior game.

 

[JustinianIV]

I used to be in the camp of thinking the AI was no smarter simply because it didn't attack like it used to.

Then I realized it is like the saying "better to say nothing and be thought a fool, then to open your mouth and no for certain." We all knew the AI was foolish in GnK, but now because it doesn't DoW we think it's doing something clever behind the scenes.

 

[Lucarius]

I somewhat agree.
I played on Pangaea yesterday as Caesar. To might left - first thing I see - is Shaka's capital.

After recovering from the shock of what seemed to be a tough early game, I kept scouting, and directly south from me (maybe 7-8 tiles) was Monty.

Now I am very bad at early game aggression, so you can imagine how I felt being pinched in between these two warmongers.

Nothing happened....and nothing continued to happen. I went expansive and after I got what I aimed for, I started building my production up. Nothing happened a bit more.
After my production was satisfying me, I started building an army - all the while nothing happened.
Now I had the land, production and the raw army strength that I was settled with - and something happened: I wiped the two worst warmongers of the history of Civilization - the terrible Two - off the face of the earth, and restarted another game.

This was standard map size on Pangaea on King (yes, I'm not as good as you guys )

 

[feralminded]

See I'm not saying nothing happened. Quite specifically Monty played smart and properly built an absolutely staggering army to take out his peaceful, backwards, and undefended player who was only 7 tiles from his capital (only a desert separated us). He even sent it my way. Its like he forgot to click the DoW button and sent all of his men into my lands (since we had open borders) to sit there and surround my city in hopes that I would just give it to him peacefully. I won't lie when I first saw his army I almost immediately quit because I knew it was over and the only reason I continued playing was to see how well I could defend with a couple of rush-buys and strong tactical work ... honestly I fully expected to lose completely.

It's quite clearly some kind of logical bug as there's literally no "good" reason not to attack me. He played right and I should have lost, if he was the human and I the PC I would take his lands and turn into a run-away with so much solid territory. I'm not trying to say the AI isn't trying to be aggressive, Monty here clearly IS and is doing it quite well, it's just unable to quite pull the trigger for some bizarre reason I can't see. It's a completely bizarre bug and it's costing the AI dearly.

What I *believe* is happening is as others have alluded the AI is doing some kind of check to determine if it should build an army, then is doing another check once it has the army and is ready for war on who to attack, then does some final sanity check as to whether or not to pull back. The issue I believe is those checks are all the same check so if somewhere along the way the variables change the AI is essentially giving up the war routine and has now wasted a ton of production and opportunity cost. While that's not bad in principle the check to see if you are willing to build an army or march on an enemy should NOT be the same as the final sanity check ... either that or its WAY too conservative. I was dead as dickens, no player could dig their way out of that hole ... and he didn't find me tasty enough anymore. Something is wrong.

He's Monty, he's bananapants and Honor and Jaguars and Culture on kills, his best possible playline in the majority of games is to do this. Its how a human plays Monty to victory.

 

[Czer]

I've always felt from vanilla on that the AI city-taking mechanics are way too lame. I don't know if they've coded some kind of barrier to AI's going for cities but they do always seem to just shuffle around while you pick them off from behind your city walls, rather than launching an actual attack, the exception being Attila with Rams goes straight for cities (as he should). I read that the ranged AI was supposed to be 'smarter' now but still rarely see archers attack cities, which is quite frankly how I start almost every game against the AI and usually have a couple civs conquered or beaten down while coming out of classical, catapults are way overrated heh. (fwiw always thought they should be buffed and composite nerfed on the offensive)

As for general AI agressiveness, I haven't seen a problem with it so far in BNW. I've had AI launch attacks on me fairly early on, Genghis Khan did his usual capture 3 city states asap and Portugal took over most of their continent, while China skirmished with them and the Ottomans who were on an island near that continent for the entire game.

 

[kaspergm]

It seems to me they do that if they feel they won't be able to take the city. Which is smart in a way.

What isn't smart though is they didn't acknowledge that earlier.

They should have built more siege weapons and try to send them all at once. That's the way you successfully take cities after all.

What feralminded reports definitely sounds downright bugged, but even if we assume that above is the correct explanation, then they need to tweak the code that tells the AI how many units it needs to capture a target city. If the AI constantly builds the army and marches it up only to find the army is too small, clearly something is wrong with the calculations on army size.

 

[steveg700]

Played a game yesterday as Morocco. The Mongols started in right away, conquering a CS and taking the Aztec capital. I settled a city close to them to see if I'd see this peace-loving behavior I keep hearing about, and not only did they send a wave of archers, swordsmen, and catapults my way, they actually ignored the new city and went straight for my capital. Fortunately, I actually do have the forces ready to receive them, and I suspect the Mongols are going to be pretty unhappy with the results.

I've lost count now of how many brutal BNW games I've played.

 

[steveg700]

That's the strange thing. They DO build huge armies, they just don't start the war sometimes, which is strange and makes even less sense because they lose a lot of money or hammers doing so.

Looks like a buggy DoW check. It seems too restrictive right now. Looks like something that could be easily patched, especially since they generally build the army and only the DoW is the problem.

I'd like them to build more siege units too, they'd be a lot more successful at taking cities, especially if they come with multiple siege units on the same turn.

What it sounded like the dev's were saying in the civ podcast is that civ's don't necessarily build units for the sake of attacking. Rather, they build units and when they have enough to wage war against someone they make an attack plan.

And their is a dice roll of sorts, so perhaps the roll kept coming up in your favor.

The logic that seems popular here is that there is no such thing as cassus belli, but rather it's NOT attacking someone that has to be justified. Which in and of itself is informative.

 

[Tachii]

In BNW I remember the AI got a bit smart over oversea conquests. Now with less aggressive AI and the insane bonus from ship trade routes, will oversea conquests ever happen?

The AI against themselves are good enough though. I saw Shaka take over 3 civs in my entire game, but the way they act against human players are weird indeed. There shouldn't even been the shuffle/dance around borders when their military strength totally beats yours just because they want a "sneak attack".

Then again, I don't really care that much. Culture victories are soooo much better now and the less aggressive AI but still aggressive enough keeps culture and diplomatic victories fresh. In BNW it was too predictable. If a civ is near you, they will DOW on you, no matter who they are. That needed fix. This, however, I can live with this.

 

[Buccaneer]

"Still aggressive enough to keep cultural and diplomacy victories fresh"? Meaning that they will beat you if you don't play effectively or they offer token competition so you can always win at the level you are playing at?

 

[Buccaneer]

Regarding overseas conquests, that is always a hard thing to pull off, even for the human player (assuming not playing at a level beneath you). In my current game, I am isolated on a continent with another civ; and easily last in military. But only one out of six civs (Huns) ever attempted to take advantage of that situation. At least they tried and caused me to divert resources away from culture/tourism, city-states and the top tech lines. That's what a good opponent should do in a challenging game and it doesn't have to be just military means either (I'm dominating the WC so they're being passive there too).

 

[feralminded]

In general the aggression has felt fine for me. This specific bug is bothering me quite a bit because I realize I played wrong and should lose because of it but I didn't and I guess I extrapolate that to wonder if the same exact kind of bug is preventing the AI from building their army in the first place. If Monty can build the army, march to my gates, then opt out due to a poor calculation on his part ... isn't it logical to conclude the same poor calculation in some circumstances would prevent Monty from fielding an army whatsoever?

That leads to the next question. Is it ever valid, as Monty, to NOT build an army? That's the sanity check here. I can confidently say that as a player it has to be no less than 95% of games it's my best line of play, as Montezuma, to attack something and the sooner the better. Same goes for most of the aggressive civs ... it's simply their optimal line of play. That's not to say that clever play can't force you (or them) to re-evaluate ... we have to be careful from forcing AI players into only one line of play (specially at higher difficulty levels where they must adapt), but still it's simple math to see the optimal playlines for most games. If you are playing Genghis Khan and going for a peaceful cultural victory you're more or less "doing it wrong". Sure it may be fun for the challenge on deity or whatever, but it's in no way optimal. Build your Keshiks and murder the world or go home.

 

[ivonbeton]

Feels way more convincing and more like the previous civs than before the DLC if you ask me.

 

[dexters]

So have we decided if we just want early AI dow as a rule to satisfy people's checklist or have we emperically shown it's better?

I mean, if you had all AIs wanting to war as a default, you could get an AI that grows quite large from the sheer momentum of victories, but you could get equally crippled AIs from endless fighting.

I mean, there is certainly a school of thought out there whereby the human player wins by keeping the AI perpetually at war with each other. Is that the desired outcome?

This is separate from the already proven trade route check by Aristos, which is also evidence of new systems moderating behavior.

But before asking for that to be 'hot fixed' or changed; I just want people's views on this. Having played a few games, I happen to notice the moderated behavior. So I'm not disputing that. I'm just not sure we want to just fix aggression to the way it was. I'm not sure if it's making the game easier or harder. LOL.

 

[Heart Break Kid]

I've only played two games, and one where I've gotten far, and the Civs are way more passive than before...


which is a breath of fresh air. There were still wars and aggression, but no one was declaring war on me for no reason (which makes sense, since I pissed no one off except one civ who I ed up personally).

This was multiplayer though.