AI Broken?

[Ozurson]

So I just started playing Civ 6 again, after not having played for several years. The first thing I noticed was how easy it was. The AI basically did nothing over several games, to the point where I dont even have to build any military, 1 warrior and 1 slinger can hold the AI off until I get gunpowder.

I play on Diety difficulty, with no special settings. Standard size maps, like Continents, with 7 AI and no zombies.

Last time I played Civ 6 I remember the AI being quite brutal in the early game on diety difficulty, quite often rushing you almost immediately. But now even though my lands are undefended and we have bad relations, the AI will most the time not even declare war on me and if it does, all it takes is to buy 1 unit where they attack and the attack is halted.

I am by no means a top civ 6 player, although I have played every civ games and spend a few thousand hours on the games. I just remember the AI being much, much better the last time I played civ 6 to the point where you could actually lose some games if you didnt play your best and/or had some bad luck. While now it is pretty much impossible to lose to the AI.

 

[Linklite]

There's a science bug that makes the AI do a mad drive for science at the expense of all else - including gold. That means that they end up building units that they can't afford and their army disbands, from which they never recover. That's probably your problem. A hack is to sell them diplo favour. That crashes their economy in no time.

There is a fix that changes the focus for science from 150 to 15, which is more like what it should be, but it's only for the PC. I don't remember where it was brought up - someone else might be able to find it.

If you have Monopolies & Corporations on, turn it off. There is a bug with that mode that means the AI doesn't improve their luxuries, which makes it hard for them to maintain a large empire.

Otherwise, there's not much else I can suggest. I don't know any other "fixes" other than self imposed challenges such as no trades, OCC etc.

 

[SaboteurINT]

I can not find a fix to science bug - is this a mod or other thing ?

 

[aieeegrunt]

There's a science bug that makes the AI do a mad drive for science at the expense of all else - including gold. That means that they end up building units that they can't afford and their army disbands, from which they never recover. That's probably your problem. A hack is to sell them diplo favour. That crashes their economy in no time.

There is a fix that changes the focus for science from 150 to 15, which is more like what it should be, but it's only for the PC. I don't remember where it was brought up - someone else might be able to find it.

If you have Monopolies & Corporations on, turn it off. There is a bug with that mode that means the AI doesn't improve their luxuries, which makes it hard for them to maintain a large empire.

Otherwise, there's not much else I can suggest. I don't know any other "fixes" other than self imposed challenges such as no trades, OCC etc.

This is the most passive AI of the series by far. Just pathetic

Another thing to try is only playing the base game. The expansions add a bunch of mechanics the AI can’t deal with.

Turn Barbarian Clans on. The barbs are often an impressive challenge and will give you ample reason to have and use a military

 

[Eddie Verdde]

I can not find a fix to science bug - is this a mod or other thing ?

Try this mod:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2577006856&searchtext=April+Change+reverted

 

[Ozurson]

Thanks for the replies. I was playing with Monopolies and Corporations, so will try turning that off

and also give that mod a try that reverts the AI changes

 

[Joch]

I find it depends on the game settings you use. I recently played a game on the offical TSL Med map using none of the new game options as Dido and Cyrus declared war on me and captured one of my cities.

One thing I find is that the AI seems to have trouble if you use the "Dramatic Age" game settings. AI Civs often seem to enter Dark Ages and lose some of their cities. In my current game, I am picking up cities just by having the AI lose them in rebelllions and they then come over to me on their own.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Don’t expect much from the AI if you go past Rise and Fall or have any of the modes except Barbarian Clans on. The AI cannot handle them

 

[Katzenkrimis]

So I just started playing Civ 6 again, after not having played for several years.

The first thing I noticed was how easy it was.

I play on Deity difficulty, with no special settings. Standard size maps, like Continents, with 7 AI and no zombies.

Last time I played Civ 6 I remember the AI being quite brutal.

I am by no means a top civ 6 player, although I have played every civ games and spend a few thousand hours on the games.

it is pretty much impossible to lose to the AI.

Same.

Haven't been to these forums in 12 years.

This calls for a song.

---

As far as the game's difficulty goes, I find that hard to believe. Too easy on Deity?

I'll play my first game today, since it was released unfinished. We'll see how it pans out.

Bought the Anthology Bundle. Finally get to play the game the way is was meant to be played.

If you truly have logged thousands of hours on these games, then maybe it's time to shuffle the maps and customize your game settings. Players like yourself, that downplay the 'thousands of hours' part, are generally really good at these types of games. In the fifty years that the gaming industry has been around, I've only played a handful of games for 'thousands of hours'. It's very rare that a video game is deserving of that much of my free time, since most of them are garbage.

I played Civilization V for 1,399.9 hours. That's my record for a Civ game.

Civ VI, I only logged 534.7 hours, due to how broken it was on release.

 

[Linklite]

How does the AI handle Red Death?

 

[ThunderLizard2]

AI is a joke OP. Community has been trying to get dll code released so they can fix it like they did for Civ V but Firaxis isn't budging even though they claims Civ VI "would be the most modable" Civ ever.

 

[aieeegrunt]

The AI is much better if you play the Basic Game or Rise and Fall

Gathering Storm it’s a practise dummy

 

[Planktonic]

The AI is much better if you play the Basic Game or Rise and Fall

Gathering Storm it’s a practise dummy

So what's the difference between R+F and GS? Are the weather elements the only things different? Curious because there are some GOTM games from R+F that look interesting but I've never played it.

Not too interested in playing the base game at this point....

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

So what's the difference between R+F and GS? Are the weather elements the only things different? Curious because there are some GOTM games from R+F that look interesting but I've never played it.

Not too interested in playing the base game at this point....

GS isnt too bad, but NFP is.
NFP contains a lot of broken mechanics that can be easily exploited by the player for ridiculous effects, while the AI often doesnt understand how to use some of the most basic features.
You can for instance see the AI spam cultists in SS mode, but not knowing how to use them and thus just suiciding them one by one.
Simularly, not improving their luxuries in monopolies mode, and getting steamrolled on tourism.
The player however can win some easy T100 culture victories on "deity", because of how broken tourism gets.

Most NFP modes are so brokenly unbalanced that I personally dont play with them on anymore.
It was fun the first couple of playthroughs, but is honestly tedious when the difficulty level plummets as you just do the same abuse game after game.
Most youtubers play with them on and claim to be great at the game, but honestly they are just abusing the broken modes and turning their "deity" plays into King difficulty level - that's how broken NFP is (especially SS, heroes and monopolies).

Exceptions - random tech tree and barbarian clans, those are good and dont break the AI that much.

 

[Linklite]

To be fair, I don't think players "exploit" the modes. You just play them as they're supposed to be played, and because the AI at best ignores them or worse is broken by them (M&C I'm looking it you), the AI just becomes a pushover.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

To be fair, I don't think players "exploit" the modes. You just play them as they're supposed to be played, and because the AI at best ignores them or worse is broken by them (M&C I'm looking it you), the AI just becomes a pushover.

The definition of "exploiting" is a bit unclear I'll admit, since we all "exploit" the mechanics of any mode in order to win.
With NFP however, the amount of such "exploits" both went up dramatically while also having gamebreaking impact, to the point where the game becomes a pushover.
Sub-200 deity wins used to be quite respectable, but now several youtubers boast of being able to get T100 wins (or less), and it always turns out that they abuse NFP mechanics to the extreme to reach these win times.
It's imo a lot less impressive then, and is honestly more of a testament to how poorly balanced these modes were before release.
I wish Firaxis would properly balance these modes, since some of then (like monopolies) had some interesting potential if it wasn't for the fact that they (still) completely trivialize any culture victory even after the nerfs.

The worst part about them is imo that they also further water down the already bad late game in civ 6.
Even a T200 win suffers from lack of late game, as the pacing and progress in techs/civics just ramps up too fast in the late game.
I almost never see the interesting late game WC votes or dedications for instance, because I usually win before the game reaches the Atomic era, even when I just try to have a nice and slow paced game.
Then comes NFP and further cuts down on victory times by several magnitudes because of how poorly balanced it is, which I think is a real shame and detracts from the overall game experience for me.

 

[Linklite]

Personally, exploits means more pushing the rules or your power to get an unfair advantage or power over someone else. With NFP, you just play normally and it makes the AI a pushover.

 

[UWHabs]

Personally, exploits means more pushing the rules or your power to get an unfair advantage or power over someone else. With NFP, you just play normally and it makes the AI a pushover.

Yeah, to me an exploit is using a game mechanism in a way it wasn't intended to be used. So like back when you got a refund for selling, running the Scythia "horse economy" by building horsemen and simply disbanding them is an exploit.

But yeah, turning on monopolies mode, building industries, and trying to gain access to copies of a resource isn't really abusing the system. You could argue it was back when Maui could plant a new unique resource and it would give you an immediate monopoly on it. But now, it's just plain unbalanced and at times makes the game not fun because of it, but it's not really abusing an exploit since you're using it 100% as intended.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Yeah, to me an exploit is using a game mechanism in a way it wasn't intended to be used. So like back when you got a refund for selling, running the Scythia "horse economy" by building horsemen and simply disbanding them is an exploit.

But yeah, turning on monopolies mode, building industries, and trying to gain access to copies of a resource isn't really abusing the system. You could argue it was back when Maui could plant a new unique resource and it would give you an immediate monopoly on it. But now, it's just plain unbalanced and at times makes the game not fun because of it, but it's not really abusing an exploit since you're using it 100% as intended.

I mean exploit in the sense as one of the four X'es in a 4X game in this particular instance, not necessarily as an "exploit, exploit".
Thought to be fair, it's getting kind of hard to distinguish between the two, due to what is (at least to me) quite apparent as being a result of poor balance testing on Firaxis' part.
Things like spamming hero relics as Rome with a near monopoly in the ancient era shouldn't be a thing regardless if you wanna designate it as "clever use of game mechanics" or mechanics abuse.
Or perma-flooding a city having Great Bath with (unnerfed) soothsayers and SS mode (Void Singers) activated, being another one among plenty of examples.

It's a shame really, the game was already somewhat easy, and NFP modes just outright break the game.

 

[Alaindor]

But yeah, turning on monopolies mode, building industries, and trying to gain access to copies of a resource isn't really abusing the system.

Agreed, except that this mode is so broken on the AI side that turning it on is by itself an exploit: AI does not improve luxuries anymore, with all the consequences suffered (lack of amenities for the AI, etc.), not speaking about the tourism multipliers (which is also an issue).