AI far behind in tech on Immortal

sveint

Warlord
Joined
Oct 9, 2006
Messages
187
Something must be wrong, did someone flip a switch and the AI gets a malus to tech? I'm fighting crossbowmen with tanks on Immortal!

Anyone else have the same experience?
 
The AI doesn't seem to upgrade units much at all on any difficulty, unfortunately. They might be behind in tech, but you can check the tech tree to see if that's actually the case.
 
The AI doesn't seem to upgrade units much at all on any difficulty, unfortunately. They might be behind in tech, but you can check the tech tree to see if that's actually the case.

AFAIK The big thing is the AI doesn't get as much (as civ 5) in terms of bonuses to yields and it's more about the slightly ridiculous amount of stuff they are given at the start and a reasonably significant combat bonus. Means they can get rough games just like players from time to time, but also means less likely to break the game when they got on Deity.
 
Something must be wrong, did someone flip a switch and the AI gets a malus to tech? I'm fighting crossbowmen with tanks on Immortal!

Anyone else have the same experience?

Not sure it's a matter of tech. Might be lack of strategic resources to upgrade or a mistake in the AI coding.
 
Just to be clear I am talking about tech, in the victory overview one can see the number of techs each civilization has. I've played a mediocre game and only 2 AIs are anywhere near me in the number of techs they have researched. Some AIs have half my tech, it almost seems impossible based on population alone...
 
On deity when i had 40 techs the next best AI had 23. Some games the AI across the board do poorly, I've had more competetive emperor/immortal games than a deity game.
 
in my deity game one ai reached information era in 1300 ad, I was still industrial. However game says I'm leading science victory..
 
The AI doesn't seem to upgrade units much at all on any difficulty, unfortunately. They might be behind in tech, but you can check the tech tree to see if that's actually the case.

In my current game there is an epic siege going on of Rio. Scythia's never ending wave of Horsemen versus Pedro's artillery. My spy is plinking eurekas in Rio while laughing at it.

For what its worth, I'm behind on tech (Immortal), but i only have 5 cities because for the first time ever I was able to try a peaceful game so i ran with it. Well behind one AI anyway. Gorgo is a runaway.
 
In my current game there is an epic siege going on of Rio. Scythia's never ending wave of Horsemen versus Pedro's artillery. My spy is plinking eurekas in Rio while laughing at it.

For what its worth, I'm behind on tech (Immortal), but i only have 5 cities because for the first time ever I was able to try a peaceful game so i ran with it. Well behind one AI anyway. Gorgo is a runaway.

That sounds pretty great, I am pretty sure similar things happened in my england game, but I never bothered to get diplomatic access, so I didn't know until I checked the endgame screen that Arabia and Egypt were at war a fair bit during the game, they had like 9 declarations of war on each other throughout the game. I don't think cities ever changed hands though, I would have probably noticed if that happened.
 
Some enemy civs just seem to be way behind compared to others, but I've played ~5 games on immortal and at least 2-3 civs always have me out-teched.
 
in my deity game one ai reached information era in 1300 ad, I was still industrial. However game says I'm leading science victory..

The AI could have hit information era through the civics tree, I guess?

Anyway, I find outteching the AI pretty trivial on Immortal and Deity, especially if I conquer a neighbor early and can expand to 8-12 cities. You don't even have to spam campuses to do it. The AI cities don't have much population and there aren't very many of them.

I think the AI needs more late game bonuses. Give them more free housing and amenities, plus a larger % boost to science, culture, and growth. And program them to expand faster. Deity AIs should pose daunting late game challenges. Right now, they don't.
 
Last edited:
One of the reasons AI doesn't upgrade much is because they make some insane beelines in tech three skipping the most of military techs. This would also explain why they are era in front of you while having less techs total and being behind in science victory score. Actually some suggest that the tech tree progressions in beyond broken cos advancing through eras of other civs can make your actual stuff more expensive, and warmongering penalties bigger. MadDjin has a Tech-tree mod that fixes some of this stuff, and people that played it report that AI is much more likely to show up with upgraded units.
 
The AI has serious issues with upgrading/deleting units.

And as Konfuchie said, it seems like the AI bee-lines the tech tree.
 
In my current game there is an epic siege going on of Rio. Scythia's never ending wave of Horsemen versus Pedro's artillery. My spy is plinking eurekas in Rio while laughing at it.

For what its worth, I'm behind on tech (Immortal), but i only have 5 cities because for the first time ever I was able to try a peaceful game so i ran with it. Well behind one AI anyway. Gorgo is a runaway.


Ok, it seems it was more a case of AI beelining. I was able to win science victory pretty easily (although it was turn 350) with only 5 cities (all of them at least partially in Tundra...my fifth city was a garbage canal city with all tundra/water tiles and a Lavra on ice..it actually ended up okay)

Between great scientists and spying I think i had all the Eurekas in the late game. They are mostly easy early game, more random mid game, but then easier again end game.
 
I think the AI needs more late game bonuses. Give them more free housing and amenities, plus a larger % boost to science, culture, and growth.
I don't think the solution is to give the AI more bonus but to fix the AI code - or better yet throw it out and hire a team of programmers who know what they're doing.

Giving more bonuses is like giving a chess AI a few extra queens instead of writing a program to play the game correctly.
 
I don't think the solution is to give the AI more bonus but to fix the AI code - or better yet throw it out and hire a team of programmers who what they're doing.

Giving more bonus is like giving a chess AI a few extra queens instead of writing a program to play the game correctly.

Well, I would love it if they programmed a better AI code, and I'm sure they're working on it. But that's a long-term fix. For now, the game is way too easy on Deity. Outteching a large Deity AI should be difficult and require serious optimization on the player's part. Right now, it doesn't. A pretty easy way to fix that in the short term is just to give the AI much larger late-game bonuses.
 
and I'm sure they're working on it

I wouldn't be so sure. AI quality doesn't seem to be a Firaxis/2K priority at the moment. How could this have gotten out of QC/QA review? Don't they have requirements documents?

Deity should be a genuinely difficult game. Bonuses can be a part of that but just throwing more bonuses on a broken AI does not make for a fun and challenging game.
 
I actually think it's a lot of factors.

To guage tech level, go to the tech tree and it will tell you excactly where everyone is. I had no problem finding an AI (Kongo) way ahead of everyone. But as some people said, some of the AI have rough games, and this is one game with 3 civs got eliminated before Industrial era.

The unit upgrades might be tied in part to how military score is calculated, as many later units aren't necessarily tied to resources. The score weighs quantity heavily over quality, so an AI fielding a largely medieval army would be rated higher or even to a smaller modern army.

You can find the military rating by hovering over the Civ icons in the domination victory row under the Victory section of the tool tip. If they fix that , it could help the AI decide to upgrade more often and sooner.
It's not like they don't upgrade, they do. Kongo ended the game with an entirely modern military, as did China, the other score/world leader.
 
I wouldn't be so sure. AI quality doesn't seem to be a Firaxis/2K priority at the moment. How could this have gotten out of QC/QA review? Don't they have requirements documents?

Deity should be a genuinely difficult game. Bonuses can be a part of that but just throwing more bonuses on a broken AI does not make for a fun and challenging game.

If/when they're able to make the AI significantly better, they can scale the bonuses back at that time. For now, I just want a challenging experience, and that means more bonuses.
 
Personally I can't stand seeing AI archers and other ancient era units around when the AI has obviously progressed in era, so I'd have no problem just modding the upgrades to cost nothing. For more of a challenge I'd be happy with just the AI getting free upgrades and me still having to pay for it.
 
Top Bottom