Ai too easy?!

[kcmarkwell]

ok, so i would consider myself a veteran civ player but by no means perfect, i can beat deity on civ 4 but not every time so...

is it me or is the AI on civ 5 far too easy? my first game ever was prince and it was ridiculously easy to win, i figured well better step it up then

immediately jumped to immortal and still an easy win... i wiped the greeks off the map with 6 samarai vs his unit spamming and 20 or so cities, i am not really even micro managing on purpose (because i only halfway understand civ 5 rules and regs right now, other half is i dont want to beat the AI even worse!)

anyone else experiencing the same thing? i am going to jump to the highest difficulty level tonight and see if it makes a difference?

 

[lilnev]

I've been cruising Emperor in my first game. I think. I keep getting DoW'ed, and then I mow down a bunch of incoming units with 2 or 3 archers/cho-ko-nu, and then I go on offense and capture one AI city, and then the AI offers me all the rest of his cities in exchange for peace, and then I've got like -30 happiness. But that only nerfs city growth (entirely) and city production (by 50%), while leaving science and gold intact, so I'm not sure I care. So my impression is that the AI is incompetent at both war-making and diplomacy; it might or might not be possible to choke on your own success if you keep too many of those almost-free-for-the-taking cities. I'm trying Immortal next....

 

[Brota]

The only thing that's hard about Civ5 is how to keep your empire expanding and happy at the same time. AI are pretty ******ed right now.

 

[Ahriman]

I find the biggest problem is that it doesn't understand how to concentrate force to achieve an objective, and it doesn't compare its army strength to potential objectives before deciding whether to attack or not.
I can declare war on a weaker power, have them throw their army across the border at me (where I bombard it with cities and siege units and then mop them up with my oligarchy bonus), and then go take their cities once I've dealt with their army.

 

[Brota]

I find the biggest problem is that it doesn't understand how to concentrate force to achieve an objective, and it doesn't compare its army strength to potential objectives before deciding whether to attack or not.
I can declare war on a weaker power, have them throw their army across the border at me (where I bombard it with cities and siege units and then mop them up with my oligarchy bonus), and then go take their cities once I've dealt with their army.

They do consider your total strength in quantitive numbers before they declare war on you. However, they can not take advantage of troop formation and the geography. WTB AI mod.

 

[Cymsdale]

I feel like they simply don't build enough military units. They build lots of wonders, and then I take their wonders with the military I was building instead.

 

[Iberian]

The only thing that's hard about Civ5 is how to keep your empire expanding and happy at the same time. AI are pretty ******ed right now.

I agree about 100% with this.

Typically I play Civ IV by getting my core cities and maybe an early war. Building my infrastructure and getting as many hammers/pop as I can then going to war with rifles if it is a close game or waiting for tanks because it is faster and I am lazy. I can play a game in 2-3 hours at Immortal. Generally fun sometimes boring.

In CiV I was pretty much at war for 80% of the game. From the barbs straight to a city state to my unlucky neighbors to stupid Ottomans thinking they had a chance. The problem is two AI who managed to get a large empire were crushed under their own weight. The Ottomans and the Egyptians. There were so many units on the Ottoman territory that I could hardly move, some turns I had to just hit spacebar and wait for a spot to open. He had about 15 cities and culurally filled them all so there was no break in his landmass. Technologically backwards. For some reason though the AI fails to consider that just because they have 100 units that doesn't mean much to a civ that has mech inf and tanks.

In the end I think it was fun playing always war but in the future I will just go back to civ IV style play. Build 4-5 cities, get to the modern era and steam roll the incapable AI.

 

[WuphonsReach]

The AI definitely needs at least 3 months of work... but on the flip side, there are still some game balance issues with bonuses, scaling for large maps, etc. (Kind of hard to tune the AI when bonuses and base values are changing daily during the development process.)

 

[Iberian]

The AI definitely needs at least 3 months of work... but on the flip side, there are still some game balance issues with bonuses, scaling for large maps, etc. (Kind of hard to tune the AI when bonuses and base values are changing daily during the development process.)

I wasn't winning Immortal on Civ IV for a good while.

I think they bit of a lot of work and they did not have the resources like Blizzard does to develop it till it is done.

That said this may work out better for us because we can mod it now instead of waiting another year. Though I don't know how we can fix the AI.

 

[Abremms]

honestly, i think the tactical AI is not too bad... as long as it has a decent economy to back it up. thats where the AI really fails. so far, Wu seems to be the only one capable of manging a proper economy thanks to her Paper Makers.

let Wu grow into a modern era continent sized super power sometime, she will suprise you. The only worthy opponent in the game right now.

 

[King Jason]

I feel like they simply don't build enough military units. They build lots of wonders, and then I take their wonders with the military I was building instead.

So far, Germany, China, Siam, and France have all seemed competent on the war side for me, especially germany, his i'm in a game right now on the earth map and he literally control africa, europe, and bit of the middle-east and his military is just insanely huge. Wars occured between siam china and france which is why I mentioned them because they all had big territories and armies until Germany and I conquered them, effectively splitting the map between us.

In terms of force concentration, I saw Napoleon and Bismark being ok with this, and Otto totally took advantage of embarking to achieve an objective. I fortunately have a city-state ally smack dab in the middle east so I got to see his entire campaign there unfold. Granted, it was against another A.I. ~ Germany still had a massive force and new where to send it, it seemed.

All this occured on King.

The fundamental problem I'll agree with though is the function of both size, and how the A.I. uses their army... because as a poster above me said, if you go to war with a civ ~ as soon as you beat their army ~ you've conquered them. There's essentially no way for them to retaliate if they attack you and the attack fails, you simply cross into their border and take as many cities as you want because cities totally aren't strong enough to defend themselves from 3 units by themselves.

So they really need some concept of defense. Having said all this, I'm really looking forward to my Inevitable war with germany this game, cause it'll be the largest nation/army I've fought thus far.

 

[muxec]

honestly, i think the tactical AI is not too bad... as long as it has a decent economy to back it up. thats where the AI really fails. so far, Wu seems to be the only one capable of manging a proper economy thanks to her Paper Makers.

let Wu grow into a modern era continent sized super power sometime, she will suprise you. The only worthy opponent in the game right now.

You are not the first to say Wu AI can build large empires. The famous Babylonian playthrough game ended with Wu taking all Eurasia and Africa.

I myself found AI really stupid. Playing on King.

 

[Syiss_]

If the AI would just station an archer or siege unit in each of their cities it would go a long ways towards making them challenging. At the very least I might actually lose a unit if I dont come in with overwhelming force. In my latest game (king difficulty) I steamrolled 6 civilizations with an army of 6 Naresuan (sp?) Elephants (the Siam unique unit) and 3 chariot archers. The only units I lost were 2 of my chariots when I suicided them to entice some pikemen out into the open grassland.

I know that for the last 3-4 civ's I attacked, they at least had access to crossbows and trebuchets, but not a single one of their cities was garrisoned with even an archer. This may have to do with the ridiculously large maintenance cost of units though.

 

[Abremms]

I had an epic series of wars with China in my last game, her tactical AI performed well even though i was deeply entrenched and focused on being a small defensive powerhouse from turn 0. i had the social policy bonus for fighting on home turf, as well as the wonder, so i was a tough nut to crack. It was on an earth map and i was surrounded by liberrated city states and allies. China and I shared just one border, to the south in the mountains around where IRL turkey is (geography fail for not know thier name). there were 4 seperate invasions:

invasion #1: very early modern era, she attacked with riflemen and artillery in a basic land thrust. i counter by introducing the world to a new concept: air power

invasion #2: she learned from he previous attempt and this time brought a contingent of AA guns that kept my bombers in the hangers. by this time i had upgraded 5 rocket artillery that had been defending my nation since they were just wee catapults. I built a railroad parallel to the border, 3 tiles back so they could be moved quickly from one place to place, often setting up and firing in the same turn. the invasion was repulsed.

invasion #3: She apparently recognized the threat my artillery posed. this time, she sent 3 attack helocopters all the way up to the arctic around my allies, they came down and pillaged my only source of aluminum just as a larger land invasion (spearheaded by modern armor this time) reached the mountain passes. Her armor pushed through the weakened bombardment, brushing aside my mechanized infantry and forcing me to pull my valuble artillery back. never before in Civ have i known such a moment of pure panic. i dropped my entire treasury into buying guided missles and shifted production to AA and AT units. thanks to the defensive structures in my southernmost city, and the home-turf fighting bonuses i was just barely able to repel the invasion.

at this point, she decided i was just too hard a nut to crack and started work on her spaceship. I was already working on mine (as had been the plan from the start), but i did not have the production capability of an empire spanning all of africa and asia. only one thing for it, i built a nuclear missile, loaded it in a nuclear sub and sent it towards Bejing. I waited till i could see two parts on the road and one in the city, then pushed The Button.

Invasion #4: She was really pissed this time. I had the entire might of the Chinese empire to deal with, modern armor supported by jet fighters and stealth bombers. luckily i learn too and had my aluminum properly defended this time. I was nearly done with my last SS part, so i put up what defense i could. Somehow i managed to last untill the part was finished and en route to my capital. then, one turn from victory, stupid Siam pops a stupid cultural victory from over in the stupid americas.

that got a little wordy, sorry. but i wanted to illustrate that the AI isn't terrible at war, when they get a decent economy established. i think once the AI learned to mange thier economy better, there will be alot more fun bits like what i just shared.

 

[King Jason]

If the AI would just station an archer or siege unit in each of their cities it would go a long ways towards making them challenging. At the very least I might actually lose a unit if I dont come in with overwhelming force. In my latest game (king difficulty) I steamrolled 6 civilizations with an army of 6 Naresuan (sp?) Elephants (the Siam unique unit) and 3 chariot archers. The only units I lost were 2 of my chariots when I suicided them to entice some pikemen out into the open grassland.

I know that for the last 3-4 civ's I attacked, they at least had access to crossbows and trebuchets, but not a single one of their cities was garrisoned with even an archer. This may have to do with the ridiculously large maintenance cost of units though.

I agree with that, it should be hard-coded that A.I. garrison a unit in most, if not all of their cities, specifically a ranged unit for the extra attack. With the army-sizes I've been seeing, they should be able to afford it.

 

[incubuspawn]

The AI needs to learn some new tricks. I expected that however with the kinds of changes in Civ 5. Stackless armies means more effort in AI military abiolity.

Also there is a missing difficulty level. Noble is gone, Prince is now the normal setting and not the first challenge. So emperor is basicly Monarch. Not sure how games past that are affected by this change.

 

[Venereus]

Better get the high difficulty achievements before the nerf!