AI tougher since last update?

[chazzycat]

Just wondering if it's small sample luck or others have noticed the same. But the game seems overall more challenging to me since the last update.

I'm far from the best player or anything. I generally prefer to stay peaceful and roleplay as a benevolent leader. But I was still finding ways to beat deity pretty regularly before the update with that playstyle.

After the update, I finally lost a game for the first time. Antiquity played out pretty normally for me, got plenty of milestones and everything seemed fine. Exploration started out fine too. I was on track to pass the AIs yields like usual in this phase. But midway through, I tried to pull a "you stole that island I wanted, lets do a quick limited war" and everything fell apart. It did not play out that way at all. In my previous games I had found this limited war to grab a key island or two, to be a strong strategy that really helped hit the military & econ milestones. This time, I did take the island but the AI did a fantastic job of making sure it came at GREAT cost. They roped all the other AI into war against me, even my former close buddies on my home continent. All of the civs threw their full weight into actually attacking me. And not dumbly. They prodded me from different angles from both land & sea, aimed at weak spots, and when I would move defenders around they would pivot. They were not jumping straight into my meat grinder. Before long I was getting pressed from every direction, essentially had to devote my entire economy to war and started falling behind in econ. They all refused every peace offer and eventually the +8 bonuses on the carpets of doom were just too much to handle and I started losing my settlements, shortly thereafter calling it quits.

I was honestly impressed. This happened right around the time my yields were surpassing theirs. I wonder if they upped the aggressiveness in response to the player being on track to win the game? Kinda seemed that way, but N=1 so it's hard to say. It's entirely possible that I just messed up by having a relatively weak military at the crucial time leading up to the AI dogpile. Or maybe I should have made some alliances.

What are y'all impressions since the last update?

 

[Melkus]

I think it's a bit of both - you losing at diplomacy (declaring a war without checking the situation or having alliances - I've been there, this was possible even before the patch - but not as dangerous) and them having stronger economies generally.
Not sure if there were tactical improvements (in the small-scale sense) - their operations could just look more dangerous with the necessary unit count.

But I had my neighbor refuse an alliance in my last game - that was new.

 

[Buckets]

If you're unprepared and they dogpile, then yeah, it's almost certainly game over on deity. But I don't think that's new. The biggest difference I've noticed is their settlements are more contiguous now. I think that helps the AI a bit.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

The biggest difference I've noticed is their settlements are more contiguous now. I think that helps the AI a bit.

The AI is definitely better since the patch and I think this is an enormous part of it.

 

[chazzycat]

I think it's a bit of both - you losing at diplomacy (declaring a war without checking the situation or having alliances - I've been there, this was possible even before the patch - but not as dangerous) and them having stronger economies generally.
Not sure if there were tactical improvements (in the small-scale sense) - their operations could just look more dangerous with the necessary unit count.

But I had my neighbor refuse an alliance in my last game - that was new.

they added the allies after I declared. But yes, I don't disagree mistakes were made.

 

[aelf]

I find AI diplomacy less predictable now, which accounts for much of the increased difficulty in my recent games. It used to be that a helpful AI would always pester you for an alliance, and you'd always get the alliance if you did ask before they asked. Now, there's no guarantee.

Also, certain AI personalities seem to set their sights on the player and will, by hook or by crook, try to get into a war with me. It usually starts with a denunciation out of nowhere. It can be foiled if there are simply not enough grievances to take the relationship much below neutral. But sometimes the AI goes for multiple denunciations...

I don't remember these to be the case previously. It seemed to me like the AI had mostly reacted to whatever modifiers existed in your relationship. Now they seem to take the current modifiers into account less.

I'm not sure how much I like this. It does make for more challenging, unpredictable games on higher levels, but it's also more opaque and therefore takes away some control from the player. So it feels like sometimes you're just out of luck.

 

[Core Imposter]

First thing I've read that makes me think of actually getting the game. Human player should lose every game in which their military is deficient. With the possible exception of times when you are paying other Civs to participate on your side.

This has been almost an ironclad rule in history... as Europe is in danger of finding out.

 

[ThichN]

Yes, I have thought the same and considered asking here, as well! I had to lower the difficulty even.

 

[Taefin]

It’s hard to say. I suspect the dog pile could be explained as x is allied with y is allied with z, who is allied/friendly with you also but chooses to declare on you.

A few things I’ve noticed in my first game in 1.1.1 (with RHQ mod, so it’s a bit of guesswork pick out out possible changes in base game):

1) I lost a lightly defended town that was surrounded by AI settlements. For the most part, they attacked with their available units until they took it.
2) That AI was fighting me (to some extent) on 4 fronts, an amphibious invasion across a small sea (launched from that town they captured). Another across a navigable river into my capital. And then two lone knights participating in two of their allies fronts against me.
3) That allied AI still skipped some opportunities to attack, such as two carracks not capturing an undefended island town they sailed past.
4) That AI also held off attacking on one of our fronts while they were attacking on two others. Not sure if this was being defensive, running out of simultaneous operations, or waiting for more units before attacking.

 

[4Xtra]

Following up with other posters here that the AI seems to be better because they actually fill in their nearby territories. However, their logic and settling patterns are still wildly inconsistent sometimes. For example, Lafayette, who was my neighbor to the south, was very slow with his settlements. He started out with a burst of 2-3 settlers but drastically slowed down afterwards. By the middle of antiquity, he only had 4 cities down. On ther other hand, Napoleon and Himiko in the new world did not screw around. They had almost the entirety of their continent settled by the time I discovered them in discovery (pun unintended). Ibn Battuta was to my north and he had a fairly standard settling pace, but he skipped over empty land to his west to start settling islands immediately in the new world.

I'm really not sure whether this is culture or leader based, or some other third factor entirely. Amina, who was my other neighbor on homelands, did not settle more than one city throughout the entirety of the antiquity. She is always a hyper-aggressive expansionist in my games with her, so it was really weird to see her act this way. All of this makes me want to have more options for leader spawns, because the starting maps that I play feel emptier than they should be. The 'third' unforeseen variable might be settlement limits. Maybe the AI has a weird way of how they factor into how they settle cities, but leader and culture attributes feel like a smaller piece of a much larger pie.

 

[Disgustipated]

AI seems more ruthless towards ip's. And I've been attacked twice on age transition. They are definitely detecting my troop strength and acting accordingly. I need to remember to build more units/commanders before crisis ends.

 

[Isca Dumnoniorum]

I would say yes (and for the better) although yesterday Ahsoka made some very strange moves.

First he moved a cavalry unit out of a 35 pop city that I’d just destroyed the defences of, allowing me to take it for free. His unit and my unit were the only two in the battlezone - by coincidence my army and his army (both a similar size) were each one turn away from entering the heart of the city and were sizing up for a great clash.

Having surrendered the city, the cowardly cavalry unit then sped off to the core of his empire (this was his antiquity city, which had been encircled by Harriet’s aggressive forward settling - he’d moved his capital to the contiguous part of his empire in exploration).

The rest of the relief army just dissolved. Some units did a half hearted attempt at scattering with strange movement choices that basically shuffled them but kept the chunk of the units in broadly the same area. The rest literally stood on the spot as my army slammed into them and wiped them out.

 

[sixty4half]

In the two games I've played since patch i have experienced the opposite. In both games; the AI preferred to settle empty space behind and beside their capital, leaving tons of room for me to expand where I wanted. In 1 of the 2 Isabella allowed me to take all 4 tiles of a Nat Wonder in my 2nd city simply because she didn't expand the borders of her Capital, Carthage, in the right direction. It was in Carthage's 2nd and 3rd ring so she didn't even settle one Rural or Urban tile in that direction.

In both games there was 1 AI that would settle close (but not boxing me in) and denounce me for this or that. It felt very mild compared to the previous patch, however I may have gotten lucky with the AI i played against. All of them but 1, each game, seemed pretty content with their new empire building directive, almost like it held their expansion back a little.

 

[queenpea]

The AI is definitely better since the patch and I think this is an enormous part of it.

I find the AI to be more competitive, but in my games, the aggressive forward settling has increased a great deal since the patch.

I have played about three games since the patch, and Confucius has spawned all three times as Han to Ming to Qing and he easily won the first two (my first ever losses), and in my current game he seems like it's about the do the same for a third time. Something with the Han/Ming/Qing transitions and his bonus to specialist seems very OP compared to other AI civs as you can see in his insane yields here (in the thousands compared to everyone else in the mid to high hundreds).

In this game, I was aggressively forward settled by Napoleon, whose settling pattern caused a great deal of chaos in my homelands (continent on right). Between Confucius and Napoleon, Isabella was pretty easily squeezed out, and my borders look a mess.

 

[Menocchio]

Maybe Napoleon specifically is programmed to annoy other players as much as humanly possible, for that extra anger-gold.

 

[Melkus]

Confucius has spawned all three times as Han to Ming to Qing and he easily won the first two

There's a massive bug / balancing problem with the two Great Walls -

Problem: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/community-bugfix-mod.695898/page-9#post-16807610

Solution: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/community-bugfix-mod.695898/page-10#post-16807748

- that he probably takes advantage of. (This compounds aggressively if you take both of the Chinese dynasties in the first two ages.)
I can see it on the right of your screenshot - there's no way Wai-Pahu has only 7 "pop" if the walls are counted.

 

[Navelgazer]

In my experience, the AI is acting both smarter and more aggressively, but that's hard to quantify. Two things I know for sure, though, which are really changing how the games are progressing:

1. In Antiquity, Civ starting locations are no longer dropped evenly into four corners of a square or diamond shape, which they reliably seemed to be before the update. As a result, I'm regularly seeing three or even four civs starting piled onto one side or one corner of the map, which certainly raises tensions from the get-go (and can get you snowballing pretty quickly if you're not personally boxed-in.)

2. In Exploration, the two Distant Lands civs are much more likely to have diligently settled their continent. Pre-update, there was always like 70% of the distant lands continent available to settle when I got over there. Now it's very slim pickings, and Treasure Fleets has gotten a lot tougher.

 

[bbbt]

Ibn Battuta was to my north and he had a fairly standard settling pace, but he skipped over empty land to his west to start settling islands immediately in the new world.

I mean...I also skip over empty land I haven't filled in in the ancient era to settle islands immediately in the new world for exploration era. That's sort of what you have to do to get treasure fleets out asap.

 

[Calcifer]

Not only is the AI better at settling, they now are able to cash in their treasure fleets. I had 2 games with the new patch and in both cases an AI managed to complete the exploration economic legacy path.

Last game I also got declared war in modern age and the AI was attacking me with bombers.

 

[Serenya]

Not only is the AI better at settling, they now are able to cash in their treasure fleets. I had 2 games with the new patch and in both cases an AI managed to complete the exploration economic legacy path.

Last game I also got declared war in modern age and the AI was attacking me with bombers.

Yes, before the patch I tended to let my fleets stack up w/o turning them in while I finished other lines, and I could easily hit 70-90 fleets turned in. Now I have to pay attention to the AI as they might finish it off and trigger end game w/o my noticing/turning my own in! It's really the only path like that too; they would settle lands, convert religions, and place specialists even prior to the patch.