AI really more aggressive on higher difficulty?

[sanchopanda]

Is the AI really more aggressive on higher difficulties or is this just the result of them being much stronger than the player?

I like being attacked but the AI does not attack me (even if it hates me). Maybe one or two wars total per game. I disabled joint wars, but that's another topic. Difficulty is emperor, large map with less water and 11 civilizations.

The thing is that I like playing tall which is more difficult in Civ 6 than it was in Civ 5. Most of the time I have two or three cities, so playing above emperor is not an option (on higher difficulties I would be too far behind in culture, tech, could not build wonders, ...).

That's where it comes to the question of this topic: if I set the tech and culture AI bonus of deity to zero and maybe reduce their gold and production bonus a little bit, would the AI still be more aggressive?

 

[FractalAdvocate]

If I understand correctly: the AI is exactly the same on all difficulties, except for a couple limitations like it literally will not start wars on Settler. The AI attacks when it feels it has a good chance to pull something off, and it having more resources/military tech/whatever will increase the chances of that.

With the changes you say, I'm guessing it'll probably be about as aggressive as normal deity at first, but may lose aggressiveness if you military tech faster. Joint wars also make it think an attack is more viable, I think.

 

[aguliondew]

Both. On emperor and above the AI starts with 2 or more settlers so they can produce more unit than you and that is before you take into account their other bonuses. I guess it depends on the civs you are up against and how close they start to you. My last game I had 3 back to back wars because I took an aggressively placed city from kongo. He took my first planned city spot so took Their city with the units I had int he area. Late they attacked me I defended, then Rome dow me my other neighbor and the final civ was America which was not even on my continent. I lost one of my emperor game because of Spain doing the same thing that America did to me (attacking from an unseen location across the ocean). The game before that I had a war around turn 100 because China was doing a city state conquest across the continent. Most of the time its between turn 50-150 until the AI forces you to go to war or they come for you.