Extremely disappointed with the game.
We are arriving in the 3 year launch, 2 expansions, and to this day we do not have an AI capable of making an army.
I think that there have been important developments in the mechanics of the game, diplomacy is fine, innovations in constructions, but for any player of civilization the 1st point is to make WAR.
It is totally disappointing to play at any level and face nations that simply can not make an army.
I am in a Deity run with 10 civilizations and it seems that I am the unique one in the map with army. How annoying.
I was 2 years without playing, I waited for patches, expansions, and it just does not happen.
Firaxis, is it serious that you're expecting players to patch? Are you expecting a VOX POPULI?
What an aberration. A shame because I simply do not see any kind of challenge in civ, border the easy ridiculous. At least code the AI to massive spam army, idc, but GIVE TO THE PLAYERS SOME CHALLENGE.
I play with real strategy and smoother difficulty mods. They should affect the AI only on the rate they are granted bonus, and the focus they put to victory conditions. Though granted, these mods objectively improve AI.
I play on king, probably would play on emperor if i was not using those mods. And while the AI is usually not challenging, I think is not because they act stupidly, but more because they dont play in an aggressive way, i think is a deliberate decision not to cause frustration on the player.
Attacking by surprise with a big number of advanced units would be the end for me if the AI ever decides to do that when im focused on other fronts. When i attack them however, i rarely have an easy time.
A consistent behavior I have seen is the AI defending the borders from Forts with melee and range units, while bringing units from other cities from inside their territory and using ranged ships (including a quatrirreme army) to stop the units i dare to put in coast lands and puting me in a bottleneck of sorts. Is a smart behavior that makes me lose units, and stops my advance for a serious amount of time. That is, I dare to say, a smart consistent and competent defense.
However, im unsure if it is by design, despite they holding positions quite well, they do not counterattack or take real advantage of all my efforts being in one front. They just never take the killing blow that would make the attack to fail.
I ultimately could overwhelm them cause i kept sending new units to the battle, while they did not at the same rate. However, most consistent flaw from the AI, is them not changing the first line units to allow them to heal. Also they totally could have prevented me, by using their large navy, from bringing more samurai into the battle. Another weird flaw i have seen, is that they dont use their catapults for defense; I think this is an actual bug.
All in all, I was playing Japan, they were Maori. So my samurai were objectively better than their toa and pikemen. But still i had a very hard time succeeding in my attack. While I think there is a lot of room for improvement, and definitely the AI should be more aggressive, regarding counter attack (and attacking in general), and they should bring more units to the field, and cut supply lines. I would not call the current state of the AI bad. It is bit of a shame, that they probably designed the AI to be that way to not frustrate casual players. But is not a walk in the park at all either.