AI discussion thread for casual/poor players

[Stringer1313]

I'm a casual player who has never beaten any civ game on emperor (or whichever difficulty setting is two higher than the default one). I find the game challenging on emperor. Am I alone here along casual gamers? I think I'm bad because I don't have the patience for min-maxing- I like to make decisions quickly. Maybe it's because of gamers like me that the AI seems to not be challenging enough for people on this forum?

 

[georgjorge]

It's good that you're now showing up and taking full responsibility for the broken AI. We need a scapegoat urgently!

Jokes aside: I don't know what you expect from an AI, but even if you play below emperor and find the game challenging, I assume that AIs having hardly any military (I'm talking three or four units total here) in the mid-ADs or not building Settlers beyond four cities is not acceptable for you either? Also, the game can be quite challenging - during the early periods. In later periods is where the brokenness of the AI fully comes to bear.

 

[Zuizgond]

Prince is supposed to be the average difficulty, where AI gets no bonus. Too bad it's not challenging at all. Is prince an adequate difficulty level for you?

I honestly think difficulties below prince are already too easy for casual/new players, and thus can be removed. 9 difficulties is too much.

 

[Stringer1313]

Sorry I should have clarified. For me,there is a big jump in difficulty from King to Emperor. I should have clarified that I find emperor challenging, but I do find Prince and King to be too easy. This has been the case for me in every civ game-- King is a bit too easy but emperor is too hard. In the last Emperor game I played the AI had at least 5-6 units very near my soil (Saladin) in the medieval renaissance era and while only 1-2 were upgraded I only had 4 units scattered among my cities only 1 was upgraded BC I couldn't afford the upgrades.

I do know that in Emperor difficulty I try to expand as quickly as possible because I feel like the AI is expanding so quickly and also I feel like I need more cities to stay competitive in science. Is that a mistake?

 

[ThERat]

The next time you start, make your first 3 builds slingers that you can use to smash the barbarians. Once you have archery research, upgrade them cheaply for 30gold each. That should be possible. warrior + 3 archers are often enough to hold off the AI even in emperor

 

[RealHuhn]

In early game, you should get 3 archers. That's enough for defense, especially on emperor.

Build one settler before the +50% settler card. Usually, it's a good idea to start with scout - builder - slinger (get archery boost) - settler. If you have a ton of production from terrain, you can get a monument or an extra slinger before the settler as well but it depends.

After that, tech-rush to commercial hubs and build them immediately (very important!, each tech and civic increases district costs, you want to build districts as soon as possible, always). Another trick is to start building them and switch production to something else to lock the costs. Send all your trade routes to your capital to boost production in new cities. Always boost the city which builds the next commercial hub.

An early encampment in your capital is also good to boost trade route yields (+1 production, so overall each trade route gets +1 food, +3 production after commercial hub + encampment).
Ignore early campus, ignore religion. Campus is decent as a 2nd district in cities near mountains but commercial hubs always take priority.
After you get the +50% settler card, expand to around 6-8 cities. If you manage to get 6-8 cities and 4+ trade routes on turn 100 (and survived the early warrior rush), it's pretty much gg, even on Deity.

Classical republic is by far the best government for this because it allows you to run 3 economic policies.


This is definitely the most efficient strategy to build a very solid infrastructure for pretty much every win condition (except religious VC obviously). Hope this helps.
Edit: An early war is also an option, of course. Just get two settlers less and build a few more archers instead (or horsemen if you can). I prefer peaceful expansion though.

 

[Victoria]

I do know that in Emperor difficulty I try to expand as quickly as possible because I feel like the AI is expanding so quickly and also I feel like I need more cities to stay competitive in science. Is that a mistake?

Emperor is a big jump and typically if you play higher you are forced to play a "pure efficiency" game. It is the highest I can play and stay peaceful which i suspect is your game style.

Expansion is fine, it is about quite a few things in the early game and getting the order right, A few things that may help.

Layout is a lot and a bad start means a waste of a few hours of your valuable time. It is worth spending a wee while at the beginning getting a fair map.

I love scouts because of the bonuses in villages and also understanding the map is part of my strategy. However scouts are not that important to many but at least 2 slingers in the first 4 builds is a must for defense and camp clearing. getting the eureka for them is also good as are all eureka's.

Grouping your first few cities so they get shared factory bonuses is very important. production is important so do not leave this avenue too long. The price of districts does go up the more you learn (science and civics).

Workers chop down wood to rush things which is fantastic, a little OP but it helps a lot to speed up your start and you need that on emperor.

Internal trade routes with the right districts give great bonuses... i.e. built the trader at the capital but send it to the new city first to trade back to the capital to get great bonuses.

At emperor it is important to understand that the civs start with bonus units and have good growth bonuses also. This is to counteract your skill level with such things as Eurekas. The AI is rubbish at these, so try to get most things as Eureka's and that may mean half learning them then changing until you can get the eureka.

The AI will also stop at 4-5 cities for quite a while and are slow and inefficient in developing these. More than 5 cities by turn 150 would be good and have some adjacency bonuses. Commercial and industrial are the best all round flexible for all scenario districts but you do need to scatter others in there.

the AI is also more aggressive the higher you go so expect to have war declared against you unless you do everything possible to avoid it. Wars do in fact work to your favor, when they declare you should have some archers and a few other units to put in front of them. Wait a few turns to see if they attack you and if they do not, consider attacking them, they declared after all. But the secret is to kill their units, ideally defending on your soil so they suffer the worse as a nation for it (warmonger penalties) As time goes on they start to suffer more than you and start asking for peace. If you have enough amenities you can hang on until they give you a city.
Alternatively many are warmongers here and just go full out kill early take em out... not my style.

Slingers, chop, eurekas, traders, production and expand.

And that is the crux of it. You have to follow some basic rules but there is room in there for your own style. Be adaptable to your environment and situation and efficient with your play and you will win. and once you start winning you wonder why it was so hard... until you try deity. Deity is eminently beatable but requires a lot of efficiency and violence.

 

[tekjunkie28]

I found the middle difficulty in civ3 and 4 were decently challenging. Civ5 and civ6 have become WAY WAY WAY too easy. My personal opinion is that most everyone should be able to beat the game on the easiest difficulty but oh the worlds best players should be able to beat the AI and even then they should have to REALLY think. These Twitch players should not come in and play a diety game and steam roll the AI. That's not even fun to watch.

I lost the very 1st game I played of civ6 on warlord to the AI spamming religious units and converting everyone and I didnt even realize it until it was too late. In my current game as France on prince the AI are about the same score as me (3 slight ahead and 3 slightly behind). I'm steamrolling them in tech and only have 1 campus but I also have about 1 to 2 cites more then the other AI. They have more great works and whatnot. The tech tree is way to messed up right now. I havnt had any wars or money issues and I'm just randomly building units and things with no thinking and I'm probably gonna get a science victory... just way to easy.

 

[Heklios]

I would kindly like to remind everyone that, among the total amount of people who bought Civ 6 :
- few go about reading Civ6 related stuff online.
- even fewer spend the time to write threads on forums.
- and those who do write threads are mostly men in the middle to upper age category (I said mostly).

I cant recall ever thinking about reading articles on Civ2 when I was 13 years old.
It was my very own personal adventure where the difficulty level would matter much less than extrapolating in my mind a rifleman entering a pixelated forest into a real fantasy going on in my imagination.

So the opinions you can read here are absolutely not representative of the general opinion.

Please, go on and play on Settler if you wish, my son loves it. And I watch him pinch his lips to voice out the sound of the bombard each time it fires, living his own adventure, and me, envying him.

 

[Sussemilch]

I lose the game on low settings because I'm not interested in a military victory, more interested in exploring and evolving.

 

[Victoria]

I cant recall ever thinking about reading articles on Civ2 when I was 13 years old.

So the opinions you can read here are absolutely not representative of the general opinion.

So true... just like the person posted this question is unlikely to be 13 and is asking for help on emperor so we are helping. Are you saying we should ignore them and close the forum? I am struggling with how your reply is constructive. Can you please explain?

 

[tekjunkie28]

Have any ever thought that maybe there wasnt any/many articles on civ2 is because of the internet has changed since then. I mean I didnt find this website until well after civ 3 was released. Also not many people has internet back then like they do know nor did they actively seek info online like they do now. Heck I didnt have high speed internet until 2007....

 

[tekjunkie28]

I lose the game on low settings because I'm not interested in a military victory, more interested in exploring and evolving.

You can win the game by doing that easily. I find the military victory to be the most tiring bc of the fact that you have to move all your units on at a time, really boring but "tactical" if you wanna call it that.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You don't need to min-max to win on deity, let alone emperor.

That said, while the % beating deity right now is going to be higher than it has been historically I'd estimate it's still <25% of people here playing it (keep in mind that civ 4 didn't even have 10% though, maybe not even 5% at some points).

It has long perplexed me about players who make it to hundreds or thousands of hours but hit a ceiling in difficulty. The time investment to break past that is a tiny fraction of such play times, simple adjustments if you compare "what I did" to "what I could have done that would be stronger".

Civ5 and civ6 have become WAY WAY WAY too easy. My personal opinion is that most everyone should be able to beat the game on the easiest difficulty but oh the worlds best players should be able to beat the AI and even then they should have to REALLY think. These Twitch players should not come in and play a diety game and steam roll the AI. That's not even fun to watch.

When the design decision to go 1UPT was made and retained knowing the limitations of current CPUs and AI programming, civ 5 and 6 were made easier by design. That's the reality. You could give deity AI +20 strength or some other artificial nonsense, but if it is even playing remotely the same game it can't leverage the production advantage well. As it is deity AI starts with 3 settlers and what, 6+ warriors, getting a builder on founding. Yet a chunk of players really do just stomp it without issue...right now I'm screwing around using swords and knights + battering ram on deity and stopped yesterday in the process of mowing down 3rd AI. Human player can routinely kill units without losing them and that snowballs with promotions and ability to build other stuff since the army is borderline immortal, meanwhile cities roll in and you get more trade routes. +80% production matters less when the player has districts set up in 2.5 or 3x the cities.

 

[Baba Yetu VI]

I would tend to guess casual or poor players are quite the intended targets of the game's AI.

I don't play the game a great deal. But I've observed the followings.


It's a great build, the card system is a refreshing features. In Civ 5 you don't change policies once they are committed whereas in Civ 6, you can choose which policies to be effective each time you are allowed to change. It adds more combinations to the input and alters the total possible outcomes in terms of probability. Put it simpler, what you choose affect greatly the outcomes which follow now. What has it to do with the AI? Here is my thought.

Assuming the AI is chasing up with your progress, the policies you choose and the government which you have selected will give the AI a vast different possibilities to consider. As a consequence of that, the AI should then responds accordingly, and this interaction will lead to different moves made by other AIs.

For casual and poor players, they will try different move, policies, civics or tech and check if they will get what they are expecting. I believe this is how you enjoy the game. If you already know how the AI behaves, you will not have the unexpected, then you will lose all the fun playing the game.

If there would be an AI programmer dedicated to improve the AI engine, one would expect him creating capabilities which he himself cannot win. That AI engine product would be an invincible AI engine which will keep everyone happy.

 

[Socratatus]

Actually this is a great thread topic!
I was wondering if those people who`ve been saying the AI is rubbish are the same people who routinely beat Civ games on Diety? This then made me wonder if it`s a different story for the average user who doesn`t follow the numbers perfectly.
I consider myself a `poor` player, never winning beyond WarLord, so good topic and interesting to see people`s responses.

 

[Heklios]

So true... just like the person posted this question is unlikely to be 13 and is asking for help on emperor so we are helping. Are you saying we should ignore them and close the forum? I am struggling with how your reply is constructive. Can you please explain?

I'm disappointed at myself for not being able to explain my view more clearly. How could it be misinterpreted so badly ?
I was being neither sarcastic nor condescending, and I certainly never meant anybody should ignore people on this forum or close the forum (really? what?)

I was genuinely trying to reply directly to the OP, who said - quote :
"I find the game challenging on emperor. Am I alone here along casual gamers?I think I'm bad because I don't have the patience for min-maxing- I like to make decisions quickly. Maybe it's because of gamers like me that the AI seems to not be challenging enough for people on this forum?"

To me, it felt like Barshy was feeling a little lonely having issues with certain difficulty levels lower than the higher ones people on this forum label as "too easy".
So I just tried to help him lean back and realize that in fact, he is far from being the only one not playing on the higher difficulty settings.
And most importantly, that he should certainly not think he is bad, because there is a lot more to the game than "min-maxing" or "beating Deity".

I thought I'd dare share some personal stories on the matter and it backfired badly.
Maybe I should have mentioned my colleague from work instead who barely ever plays videogames, but who accepted to purchase Civ6 to share one game with me, we played one during a weekend, he enjoyed it, and will probably play another one or two more games of Civ6 in his life, just like a Monopoly or Scrabble game. Of course we played on Settler Difficulty. How's that for casual ?

I let you guess if he will ever read or write on a forum.

 

[Victoria]

How could it be misinterpreted so badly ?

I read it 3 times before replying and apologize for misunderstanding what you were intending. The written word is such a dangerous thing.
I get how you read the emotion in their post.
I will probably be the one told off for not reporting but I did query because I know we all sometimes do things in haste.

Its a good post in my view and a good question and what these forums are for. They are struggling and asking for help on emperor mode.
I felt for the person so reply in quite a helpful manner because they are not bad, just not using the skill required at that level.
I also encouraged them not to be too rigid, for most including me it is a game of fun, I do not finish most games, do not care about winning, just love the journey.
I suspect a lot of people on this forum share that view but do not state it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

To be fair, you should only really consider yourself "bad" at these kinds of games if your own level is below where you want it to be. Short of striving and becoming the best player in the world, most people draw the line somewhere in terms of how much they want to try to master something, and even that goal is technically not enough to reach theoretical ceiling.

So should you feel bad if deity doesn't feel easy? Only if you want to be a deity player. Otherwise it doesn't matter at all.

 

[CBE Player]

Prince is supposed to be the average difficulty, where AI gets no bonus. Too bad it's not challenging at all. Is prince an adequate difficulty level for you?

I honestly think difficulties below prince are already too easy for casual/new players, and thus can be removed. 9 difficulties is too much.

If you remove levels of play you should remove levels of accomplishment like say..."Al Gore"