A list of how each AI behaves?

[Tamed]

Can we compile one in this topic? Let's give it a shot. I'll edit them in as people post them. Please try to not wall of text, as that's no fun for people to read -- let's be concise and to the point.

List:

Washington - Expands quickly and builds his cities in wise areas. Very open to trading, but is also one to sign many pacts of secrecy. Double crossing AI, may become notorious in later life of the game. Sort of stand-offish too, hates military on his borders and will openly contact you about it. Likes research agreements with friends.

Harun al-Rashid -

Monty - Agressive and demanding, just like Civ 4. Always seems to want to be destroying a barbarian camp or picking on a city state. Builds wonders from time to time but fails miserably at naval battles. Often attacks senselessly (EG -- crossing a river while your troops on a forested hill acrossed the river to attack.) and taunts the player frequently.

Wu Zetian -

Ramesses - Plays to his strength and builds wonders. Loves to own LOTS of tiles, to the point that he'll literally buy tiles outside of his own boundaries if you don't buy them first. Very expansive, but not in a pure city sense -- more about just buying up land. Usually ends up at war with ATLEAST one other AI because he's quite annoying. Actually builds a competent navy.

Elizabeth - Boats. Boats. Boats. Boats. She will actually scout you with a navy, all the while being very manipulative. She'll make trades with you, but only when it benefits her greatly. She's very snotty and can get annoying if you let her get out of control. Techs fairly well.

Napoleon - Very aggressive. Loves to build culture based wonders -- even at the expense of military during wartime. Spams cities early but calms down later.

Bismarck -

Alexander - Very errant and eccentric. Contacts you numerous times during the game to mock you even if he is in a weaker position than you. Seems to enjoy conquest and LOVES to deal with city states.

Gandhi - Keeps his empire small but builds good cities with high production value. Hates war, loves pacts of cooperation and research agreements. Doesn't build boats.. hardly ever. Trades very willingly. Has some secret warmonger tendencies if he gets out of control.1

Hiawatha -

Nobunaga -

Suleiman -

Darius -

A. Caesar - Very good techer and military strategist. Plays to his strengths and can often be a force of reckoning. Generally one of the best AIs at teching and really doesn't enjoy trading with him. Downside is he's not very keen on city states and he doesn't make many boats unless it's an emergency.

Catherine - Builds aggressively, snatches up strategic resources as fast as she can and generally maintains a large army force. Tries to get in good with military city states, enjoys trading but techs slowly and isn't too big on research agreements.

Ramkhamhaeng -

Askia - Builds ALOT of military, even when he doesn't need to. Seems to not be very fast\good at teching, and sometimes even causes his empire to fail due to the military spam. Despite building so much military, he's not always completely aggressive towards human players.

Try to fill it in like I filled in Gandhi. Also free free to discuss the AI's behavioral patterns -- remember this is a concise list for forum glancers, not an in-depth 5,000 word guide.

Edit: I've updated the list and refined some of the information. Please note that every AI will behave slightly differently in game. They all have tendencies like chance to build a unit. Napoleon's unit build chance is a 6 out of 10 but it can go as high as 9 or as low as 3.

 

[Scramble]

It is certainly too early to start a list like this...
As a matter of fact, I can say from experience in my last game (Huge Earth Marathon), absolutely none of those traits you listed for Ghandi are true every time. In my last game, Ghandi was a crazy warmonger, and expanded over all of Africa early, later on trying to expand into the middle east, india and europe.

He began to terrify me (greeks in Western Russia) because his power was building rapidly, so I went into a massive war conflict that resulted in a war over who could control the Mediterranean sea... he certainly built ships, and tried to bleed me dry with completely unfair trading practices.

 

[Nutteria]

Catherine - goes All out agressive if a continent is present.The only AI I`ve seen so far that builds more then 5(literaly) army units.From multiple sources here on the forum and personal exp. I can confirm that she is the strongest AI vs AI civ out there.When she filles the continent with citys she usual starts expanding toards neutral territory/your island/continent.Trades willingly.A bit slow on teching.

 

[Kid R]

I don't see why it's too early for this kind of pooled experience. Seems a good idea even though at this stage it's going to be general impressions.

It would also be more helpful if the AI behaviour was described with appropriately uncertain language that can be firmed up over time. For example "it looks like Gandhi doesn't build boats very often", rather than after 1 game stating "Gandhi never, ever builds boats". (Unless somebody's looked in the code and confirmed that's the case, in which case it's very good information to have! What does he do if he's isolated though?? )

 

[Scramble]

Maybe not too early, but I can certainly confirm from solid experience that the Ghandi thing is not true. The stuff about Catherine seems to be wrong as well from that past game...
Maybe my particular game was unusual...

 

[lonemessiah]

I fear Ghandi. If i ever see 'wonder has been built in a distant land' I know it is Ghandi that has built it. Then i finally meet him and he is all 'wanna be pals, everyone loves me here' next thing i know he has wiped out every other AI player puppeting all their cities and then comes back to me with reserach agreements. It scares me loads. 3 times i have played against him, everytime has been the same.

Napleon seems to always start off agressively only to over stretch himself and get wiped out in the industrial era.

Japan never seem to get started, with them it always seems to be that another civ decides tio ask me to help wipe Japan out, and considering their special ability i don't like to see them hanging around, so i agree.

Washington seems to spread quickly in my games, but never have the army to back it up, and so gets pulverized later (normally to Ghandi).

Not sure if any of these are typical of other players' experiences

 

[Bluetooth]

In Civ 5 Leaders will change their behavior. This is an excerpt from 2K's Podcast episode 8: In game AI

Let me first start by explaining what we have that makes each Civilization play a little bit uniquely. We have what we call our flavor system. And so before any game starts up we have defined for every Civilization whether they're particularly interested in offensive military action or defensive military action. Whether they like to pursue things maybe with fast mounted units or maybe they like to build naval units and explore around the seas. So a good example of a nation that we would give a high flavor for navies would be England just because they built their empire that way and so we want to reflect that in the game. We also have flavors that define whether they like to keep their people happy, whether they like to investigate science, a lot of economic sides to the game as well are all defined with our flavor system. So for each of the different leaders and civilizations in the game we have those settings then at the beginning of the game we go and tweak them all a little bit so that nobody plays exactly the same in two games and some games you might have France particularly interested in building navies or in another game you might have a civilization that's normally interested in keeping their people happy a little bit less inclined to that and they may be a little bit more militaristic. So once we have that all established then we start to use that to drive the AI's behavior in the different games so you'll have situations where that controls both how they expand, whether they want to build more cities, whether they want to expand by conquest, it will also drive what kind of units and buildings they put into their city and also just how they relate to the players. Are they gonna take a friendly route because they're gonna go for a cultural victory this time? Or are they really trying to dominate the world militarily and they're not actually very good neighbors for you to have right on your border.

 

[lonemessiah]

oops double post

 

[JtW]

In my last game, Gandhi took over half of the world. I also fear him.

Things I have noticed in my games:

- Askia builds a lot of units, is slow on teching
- Alexander and Monty are generally aggressive

 

[Lord_Azazel]

In my current game, I played on a Terra map, Washington puppeted his part of the continent and I did mine, except from Arabia which had like 3 cities. He had 5 or 6 allied city states, and after we had destroyed China together, he took maybe 10 turns, and then declared on me. I had a tech lead, plus a nasty one tile stretch of land between Beijing and his borders which he couldn't break through. He also attacked on another front but I crushed him there, while I stopped any attempts to flank Beijing. He lost maybe 10-15 units while I lost 3-4. He had quite a formidable army, but now I was highest in # soldiers. Only played 1 game with him in it, but for my case, he likes to expand military, he didn't settle a single city in the new continent, even though i had explored it 3-400 years earlier.

 

[BjoernLars]

In two games now, Askia would offer a research agreement anytime he and someone else who was willing had the cash. In one game he must have done at least 12 research agreements.

 

[DrakenKin]

If that podcast is relevant (the are talks of the AI being different from press release, so who knows?), then it has become important now to scout the other civs and pay attention to what they are doing so you can understand their current personality trait.

I like this. The more dynamism, the better.

 

[Scramble]

If that podcast is relevant (the are talks of the AI being different from press release, so who knows?), then it has become important now to scout the other civs and pay attention to what they are doing so you can understand their current personality trait.

I like this. The more dynamism, the better.

This is HUGE. Scouting an AI is very important to know when they are doing a Military Buildup... They cannot hide it in cities anymore, and often they will move out with a huge Military and it will suddenly be outside your cities... You can easily see their troop buildups if you look for them.

 

[JtW]

A pity they don't scout back.

 

[stethnorun]

After 2 games, Rome was the dominant force on his own continent by the Medieval era, and the ONLY one on his continent by the Renaissance. He builds units in mass numbers and still retains the highest tech level throughout. He wiped the floor with Catherine in my current game before she could even expand.

This is 2 games in a row. Rome is fierce in terms of unit numbers AND tech. Truly frightening. Piss poor navy though.

 

[HeavyTwenty]

Catherine - goes All out agressive if a continent is present.The only AI I`ve seen so far that builds more then 5(literaly) army units.From multiple sources here on the forum and personal exp. I can confirm that she is the strongest AI vs AI civ out there.When she filles the continent with citys she usual starts expanding toards neutral territory/your island/continent.Trades willingly.A bit slow on teching.

She tries to expand quicker than any other AI I've seen. She'll skip a worker and go straight to settlers.

Actually, Washington tends to expand fairly quickly in my games as well.

 

[Thormodr]

Well, after a few games I can confirm that Monty is as psycho as always. lol

He loves to spam units and start wars. He is the consummate warmonger as per usual.

I did beat him down horrifically in my Bollywood India game though. War Elephants rock.

 

[klokwerk]

Played 2 prince games. In both, England was the most powerful and agressive nation, wiping every single AI on earth.

In the first game, only England and me as Egypt were left at the end, each one on a huge continent. I had to use nukes to win by taking their capital. It was a bit disappointing he couldn't stop my carrier before I drop the bomb but hey, it was still a great game and he fought well overall.

AIs should defend their capital a bit better though, especially when there are only 2 capitals left since losing them means instant defeat.

England backstabbed me too and used a good navy and a powerful army including devastating unique units (longbows). They were also extremely rich.

In this same game, they tried both military AND diplomatic victories. Using all their money (around 10k gold at most) they came close to 10 votes using city states alliances, but I let them use their money too early since UN was not coming before dozens of years anyway. Ultimately they ran out of money due to probably paying too much gold to city states (or overexpanding, but I their problems clearly started when they allied with like 7/8 city states simultaneously).

Arabs were doing ok too, not so much military wise, but they were peacefully trading a lot of resources.

Askia was weak but he still dogpiled me.

Washington / America was weak in both games due to a lack of military units, he didn't seem to build enough of them. Expansion was ok though, he was probably buying tiles according to his traits.

Rome was strong military in my current (second) game and it's now challenging England.

I'm 3rd on 8 civs right now in this second game, I'm being pushed back from the England continent by a 10+ high tech units, I didn't play well and let my partners drag me in too many wars.

Siam was doing ok (not great) and unsurprisingly they tried making alliances and be nice, though they backstabbed me once in a dogpile (the whole world dogpiled me except Moctezuma and Alex actually).

I also sold Siam an English city for a huge sum (more than 2k gold and resources).

Alex (greeks) and Moctezuma (aztecs) were surprisingly good and reliable partners in my second game. While Alex was killed by England, he helped me by giving good sums of money every time I sold him something.

 

[DrakenKin]

A pity they don't scout back.

They do scout. I see them paroling my borders then pulling back sometimes, especially if i am at war with them they will do it a lot, even stand there being hit from my city. I was wondering if they did that to farm experience from being attacked (they put themselves on healing posture and can stay there forever), but it might be scouting after all.

 

[JtW]

From this thread, a pattern emerges: the AI are dynamic, which is a good thing.

E.g., in my last game, England got wiped off the planet by an unholy alliance of China and Aztecs.

Whereby China was terribly behind in tech, and Aztecs were almost on par with me...