[NFP] AIs become more clever

[Villager720]

I'll say this, while their military actions weren't too noticeably better in my last two games, their infrastructure was miles away from last patch.
Their cities had improved resources and everything.

 

[japanesesamurai]

What I have noticed, but this started happening a couple of patches ago, is AI levying troops more often. Sometimes just for the sake of levying them and to wander about with. But if they do declare with levied troops, it’s not uncommon to find 15+ warriors at your doorstep

 

[agonistes]

Not combat related, but my current game may be the best I’ve played because the ai is actually expanding more, it feels like. Extra huge continents map, and its almost all covered now. Even the tundra. Russia and Canada are competing to colonize a pair of smaller continents between the two large landmasses.

Aside from poor Gorgo with one city (she spawned in an extremely high production area near both yosemite and me), and kongo with one (lost several to war and flips), everyone (18 civs) has a healthy empire. Two main alliance groupings.

Dunno if its luck or the ai is better at expanding.

 

[Depravo]

It's early days but I'm certainly feeling more pressure from the AI. It may partly be the way Dramatic Ages shakes the geopolitical bottle every so often.

In my current game, I'm holding down friendly relations with all but one AI - but the AIs are beating the tar out of each other and serious turf is changing hands, including walled cities.

 

[Mahi]

Indeed I must admit there seem to have been some improvement. I seem to be struggling a bit more in early wars as well. Walls are often fairly needed sooner than usual to defend early settlements effeciently.
Some AIs seem to be producing much more science as well.

 

[salty mud]

Great to see that one of the last remaining major complaints about Civ VI, the AI, is being addressed. Let's hope the next patch goes even further and helps cement Civ VI's place as the definitive Civilization game.

 

[JesseS]

The AI is building way more walls, keeping up in science, and frequently levying city state units. Firaxis also seem to have fixed some of the issues around "sticky queues" where the AI would not change production after a war was declared on them. In my own games, I've noticed that they seem to rush walls immediately after a war declaration. In an AI-only game I observed, they shifted production all-in to units after facing a declaration of war. Their policy choices have noticeably improved, running rationalism regularly. Also, they are actually using air units, though mostly just jet fighters to target units. I still have yet to see them take a city with medieval or better walls.

 

[Piranga]

The AI is building way more walls.

Just finished a game on Immortal. AI were as pathetic as ever. A few of them didn't even have walls up near the medieval era.

Maybe the developers have made some tiny changes in the AI, but in no way is the AI improved enough to be any but incompetent from the midgame on.

 

[Virdrago]

The AI is building way more walls, keeping up in science, and frequently levying city state units. Firaxis also seem to have fixed some of the issues around "sticky queues" where the AI would not change production after a war was declared on them. In my own games, I've noticed that they seem to rush walls immediately after a war declaration. In an AI-only game I observed, they shifted production all-in to units after facing a declaration of war. Their policy choices have noticeably improved, running rationalism regularly. Also, they are actually using air units, though mostly just jet fighters to target units. I still have yet to see them take a city with medieval or better walls.

In two games now I have declared war on an AI now who were about to finish a Wonder in the city I was attacking. Both times the AI switched to units and after a while, lost the wonder to someone else, stopping my anticipated enjoyment of taking someone else's Pyramid and Kilwa benefits. I was surprised.

I also had the Americans flank my units blocking a mountain pass by amphibious assault, while still keeping me busy at the front. Two units went by water around the spear that was helping hold my position, and another four kept going, around the mountains to attack from the back, a la the Persians in 300. I didn't have a navy, being landlocked at the time, but they did have two ships moving ahead to protect the land units, just in case. I was impressed. I actually had to sue for peace!

The AI still has a hard time with city walls unless they have an overwhelming army at the beginning of the war. Then one city may fall before the AI loses all its units. I'm still a little confused as to how a 2000 strength AI army attacking a 100 strength AI can't capture a city 75% of the time. Usually 20 turns later, both are at 300 strength, and they sign a white peace.

 

[CrabHelmet]

To be fair, it's quite hard for the player to take cities once they start hitting the later walls. Early warfare grinds to a halt for me by Renaissance, it's an enormous slog and very difficult to make progress. I don't blame the AI for being bad at it! I genuinely think Walls are just too good.

 

[agonistes]

The AI is building way more walls, keeping up in science, and frequently levying city state units. Firaxis also seem to have fixed some of the issues around "sticky queues" where the AI would not change production after a war was declared on them. In my own games, I've noticed that they seem to rush walls immediately after a war declaration. In an AI-only game I observed, they shifted production all-in to units after facing a declaration of war. Their policy choices have noticeably improved, running rationalism regularly. Also, they are actually using air units, though mostly just jet fighters to target units. I still have yet to see them take a city with medieval or better walls.

Ah, yes, levying... I saw that too.

Early Otto game, I raced for first religion and so was slow to get a second city out. Spawned just north of tundra, so constant barb attacks too.

My warrior scout sees a nice valley for two cities, all forest plains hills with deer, silk, and two volcanoes.

So I send my first settler that way, only to see the best pertra spot I’d ever seen... nothing but desert hills except one flat hex, 3 iron, and one sheep. So I settle there first.

Second settler heads to the valley, and *poof* gorgo border appears. So I forward settle and dow.

Unbeknownst to me, brunei is right there and she levied. And Sparta was close by too, so I had to deal with reinforcements. Then the barbs came...

That was an amazingly early levy. I hadn’t even met a city state yet, had zero envoys.

 

[borad]

Dunno if coincidence, but in my current game I was about to get a very late religion (the two other potential competitors weren’t even trying, were on zero points) and everyone voted to kill Great Prophet points. Sneaky little bastards!

 

[Pfeffersack]

That would be a good change as that resolution is far too predictable. I'm almost positive I've seen Campus win in the past (only once, though), so we'll have to see if this is the exception rather than the new rule.

That resolution showed up again in the same game...and again I was pleasently surprised about how varied the AI voting was:

Spoiler :

Leaving my vote aside, Campus would have won narrowly, so that might be the new most likely outcome - but the clear leaning towards city center is gone for sure and it seems at least not impossible that occasionally other districts might win.

 

[kaspergm]

To be fair, it's quite hard for the player to take cities once they start hitting the later walls. Early warfare grinds to a halt for me by Renaissance, it's an enormous slog and very difficult to make progress. I don't blame the AI for being bad at it! I genuinely think Walls are just too good.

Renaissance Walls are a real PITA. Even promoted Bombard Corps will only take like a tiny fraction of their health.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Renaissance Walls are a real PITA. Even promoted Bombard Corps will only take like a tiny fraction of their health.

Renaissance Walls are simply far too strong even for some of the later era units. It basically makes Bombard obsolete and can be only effectively taken down via mass Battleship/Artillery Corps bombardments or Planes/Bombers.

It's more Maginot Lines than Renaissance Walls.

 

[Cpt Chaos]

Renaissance Walls are a real PITA. Even promoted Bombard Corps will only take like a tiny fraction of their health.

That's why Mongolia & The Ottomans (probably Byzantium too now) are so good. Turns AI fortifications into crumbly cheese. There definitely is a balance issue outside those kinds of civs, however. We need trebuchets, and we need bombards to be made stronger.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Renaissance Walls are a real PITA. Even promoted Bombard Corps will only take like a tiny fraction of their health.

Heck, I'd say walls in general are too strong, even if Renaissance Walls are the epitome of frustration to beat down.

I don't understand why, but with GS the developers had the bright idea to both nerf battering rams working with cavalry units, and increasing their combat strength overall (was it a doubling from 50 to 100? Can't recall the exact pre-buff number, but I think it was 50).
Either one of those buffs to walls would have been ok, but both combined made the walls too over the top, especially Renaissance walls where the combined health pool is just ridiculous.
(Granted, I think wall combat strength in general is too over the top, and should definitely be reverted to +50 or at least +75 per level of walls).

Unless playing as Byzantium, I find that walls in general force me into the same old boring meta every time I try to do domination:
Kill off a player or two early in the ancient/classical era before walls are up, and then slog veeery slowly through the game as walls simply halt any meaningful conquest either outright, or make pushes ridiculously slow.
Then once you hit Flight and Advanced Flight, balloons and Bombers let you blitz through the cities almost immediately.

This is ok for a few games, but it's getting very boring with the meta to rush flight every damn domination game in order to do any meaningful conquest.
I still think Byzantium is OP, don't get me wrong, but they are refreshing to play now that you can actually keep doing domination without bunkering down and try reaching flight.
Byzantium for that reason is actually my favourite (even if OP), not because of how strong they are, but how they change the domination meta game back into what it used to be - steady domination throughout the game, giving a choice on how to do it.

 

[Mahi]

I don't understand why you think flight is necessary to take cities with renaissance walls when Artillery is quite powerful as well. Agreed flight is great for speeding things up but definetely not necessary.

 

[RealHuhn]

To be fair, it's quite hard for the player to take cities once they start hitting the later walls. Early warfare grinds to a halt for me by Renaissance, it's an enormous slog and very difficult to make progress. I don't blame the AI for being bad at it! I genuinely think Walls are just too good.

Isn't that how it should be on Deity? If your tech progression is fast enough and you pre build catapults and immediately upgrade them into cannons, those cannons will decimate city walls. Good timing should be an important element of every war.
If you nerf walls and add trebuchets, war becomes too easy again very quickly.

Instead of lowering the difficulty for the player, Firaxis could just add an AI exclusive combat bonus against walls, couldn't they? This might make AI vs AI wars a lot more dynamic as well. Right now, I couldn't care less about medieval and renaissance walls other than for the tourism bonus maybe. Let them one shot my cheap ancient walls in renaissance please.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I don't understand why you think flight is necessary to take cities with renaissance walls when Artillery is quite powerful as well. Agreed flight is great for speeding things up but definetely not necessary.

Because my experience is (rough estimate) that about half of the target cities usually involve hard terrain to properly set up siege weapons, and a portion of these again are nigh impossible to get in range of. Chokepoints due to mountains are one culprit, but especially unfavourable terrain (hills with rainforest around a city) can be extremely hard to break as long as the AI has decent good city combat strength with walls. In the worst cases you only get one spot (or have to drive up basically to the city entrance) where you can set up your siege engine before it is killed either on the turn before you shoot, or killed on the turn afterwards. A typical domination game on Deity often involves several of these cities throughout a game (high combat strength is a given there), and the overall game deteriorates usually into an extremely slow push, or an outright halt to progression.
At that point I (for all intents and purposes) play a (mostly) peaceful science game until Flight and Advanced Flight.

Flight speeds it up tremendously at that point because of Balloons, both giving you more hexes from where to set up siege weapons, and more importantly, letting you do so from outside the city attack range. Hence why (if I have to choose) I nearly always go for Balloons for my Bombards before teching Artillery. It usually leads to a much easier push, and with the extra hexes usually also nets more wall damage per turn due to all the Bombards that can fire.
Then come bombers, and the game is basically won from that point on.

It's this Flight meta that I'm getting sick of, and only Byzantium which can really ignore. In my current Deity game as Byzantium I'm about to win in the modern Era without any siege engine built so far, but as any other civ it would have been a massive slogfest at several stages before that. In civ 5 at least we had the option to range upgrade and indirect fire upgrade siege engines, but in 6 we dont.
These upgrades made civ 5 far more interesting to play through for a domination victory, in my opinion at least, as even a very well defended city could be taken down that way eventually (even if it took about 15 turns to do so).

To be clear, I dont necessarily think that facing the occasional "difficult to take" city is a problem, but Flight and especially Advanced Flight are like night and day in terms of domination speed. There should be a lot more balanced pacing of domination speed pre- and -post (Advanced)Flight. I'd generally like a wall nerf and a bomber nerf too in that regard, as It's extremely boring at this point.