Civ VI is easy? I don't know...

There's always that kind of odd game :

Spoiler :

At least it was quick.

 

in my last games(played around 10 so far) i stopped even to wait for them to declare ware on me(happened EVERY game), i declare war the moment i see them.
just have some upgraded archers and meatshield unit. maybe horse unit. i have 2 groups of units to attack other civs constantly and 1-2 units per city guarding my starting cities from barbs.
my own cities i place near, not even try to get best locations, because i will conquer>raize bad locations and will keep good other civ cities anyway.
but its much, much more easy to hold barbarians off when cities are near and less units needed to control peace.
and screw science. build gold infrastructure. gold runs all after a while. what i mean is you will be able buy other buildings since your commerce disctric buildings will give huge amount of traders. send these traders to merchant cities.
in no time you will bath in gold and will able to buy all science buildings you need.
other thing is religion. if you get stone and stone circle pantheon and prophet, through religion you also can just buy lots of buildings.
what this mean is you actually do not need high production. instead you can focus on grow+gold and just buy production/science with gold and faith.
never civ games were so easy like this time.

so, my adivce. build this slinger>slinger>slinger>builder>stonhenge(maybe, if you have enough stone, builder will improve it)/faith district>settler>upgrade to archers>spearman>archer>archer>trader
from now on, just capture other civs, war with them with no worries and focus on gold/faith buildings.
tech. astrology>mining>animals>archery>bronze. to make units and possibly faith. after this, what you hart wants. but gold line shines.

my fav civ is rome. its so strong with its free trading post, roads, one FREE building and baths for even bigger population and more districts. to me strongest civ above all.

 

Hahaha, someone told the Barbs you were pretty good, Acken. They didn't let your Deity skills incubate .

I'm sad that the AI can't fight in the future eras. In BNW, the AI struggles with Artillery because of the 3-range, but otherwise is pretty decent in fighting as the game goes along. Not amazing, but decent.

Now, it's just rushes with old units. It's continually befuddling to me that the designers were content to let the game be what it is on Turn 200 and beyond... namely, really disappointing.

 

I played Civ 4 for years and even after years, I was stuck between Prince and Monarch difficulty. Emperor in Civ 6 was a cakewalk and I'm ready to move on to Immortal and probably Deity after a week. There are some real issues with the AI in 6.

 

Haha I've had a few of those myself.

Or how about this. Just rolled this amazing start! Not a single lux, pasture, mine, nor wheat. I think I landed in the Ice Age...

 

Yes it's basically my main grip with the game and tbh it's really eating at my enjoyment of it. The combination of horrible AI, horrible diplomacy and a lot of minor frustrations.

 

I got a defeat screen for no reason.

I could not see any area where I was behind except for religion which I was not able to establish.

I had been declared war on twice by the same civ and all of a sudden the defeat screen comes up out of nowhere.

 

Yes, that's annoying. It's even more annoying when it happens in the middle of your own turn!

I had just finally captured a troublesome city, and instead of acknowledgement of my little victory, I was staring at the "You are defeated" screen.

With the aid of the "Just one more turn" button, I was able to verify that indeed, my capture of the city had tipped me over the half way point for the dominant world-wide religion and the game was over.

 

Put simply... whether you build a scout first or fifth, about 2-3 of your first builds need to be army based, more if agressivy

It was a lot easier on Civ5 not to be attacked.

 

I've had India invade me with Xbows, Elephants, and Cav. The cav was quite a surprise, because I tend to upgrade in batches. I've also had a number of knight and horsemen hordes invade me. Most civs use xbows. I've seen mustketmen walking around. And I see CS's with xbows.

Rarely see swordsmen, if ever.

Haven't played to a really late state yet. But if they are using cav, I don't see why they wouldn't use tanks.

edit: I've also been barraged by frigates. Joyfully that game I'm Germany and I beelined both Venetian Arsenal and Uboats.

edit 2: I agree that archers are awesome early on. But for those having trouble, usually 3 warriors is enough to defend a city if you place it well. 3 warriors and a slinger means you have nothing to worry about. I can usually defend 3 or 4 cities with 3 archers and 3 warriors.

edit 3: In one of my current games, yeta giant map, marathon, I'm playing as Russia, and China (after about 60 turns of war) finally shows up on the doorsteps of my undefended outlier cities far to the east with a dozen knights and horsemen. Hee hee. I had just finished building the last of my first round of Cossacks, and am running with the +10 combat bonus to defenders with my religion. So I have a group of 4 Cossacks running around the steppes chasing down the Chinese invaders.

 

Think positive! You probably have oil or uranium in your cap!

 

Last night, I was beaten by Spain within 30 turns. Swarmed by 5 of her warriors and I basically had no military effective against them because I thought I was building up the economy.

I don't think CIV 6 is easy and BTW, that's KING difficulty the game was set on.

Just now, I am trying another game on DEITY, the America is my neighbor. Look at her expansion and their military, it's awesome and surely AI has been given extra resources. This is just turn#19!!

 

It IS easy. You just have to understand that the first thing to do is build military units. Once you have a half-dozen, you can start pumping settlers, and then build up an economy.
As for deity, yes, the AI starts with 3 settlers and a few warriors, probably because it was easier than to code an ai that can do something.

 

Diety AI starts with 3 settlers and a bunch of scouts and warriors. It doesn't make any difference, they get an initial boost but they aren't able to convert that into momentum.

 

This is my current game. I believe I am dead.

49 turns into the game, Brazil and Arabia have aggressively taken both Kandy and Carthage the former being my Envoy partner. And now Brazil has declared war against me. At the same time, as you can see, Barbarians are all over me. And btw, Barbarians are much more active than in CIV 5. Those who whine about AI being weak seems not very reflective about the real situations.

I enjoy the game actually. Maybe I have not found out the formulae about the AI algorithm, but at least, if I go for economy rather than building up a decent force, the AI will beat me to hell. Still, AI is very strong and organized.

 

You have 2 heavy chariots and a spear. You invested shields into the wrong units. Warriors and archers. Warriors and archers. Upgrading the warriors to swordsmen asap. I usually pick up swordsmen as soon as I can. A fast offense is great, but a great defense is better. As an example, for my first 4 Russian cities (read as: very spread out), I used something like 3 or 4 warriors and 3 or 4 archers to defend them, upgrading to swordsmen, and really didn't have to invest into more troops until I was around 12 cities and built some Cossacks - maybe just 2 more archers as city guards, and a spearman to squat in my holy site. Although at some point I did upgrade to xbows.

Your next start, try going warrior-warrior-monument-warrior-slinger. Toss in a scout if you play with goody huts.

 

The real situation is that, past classical era, the AI is a pushover and a joke.
Early on, they have a tech advantage, they suffer no damage from cities and therefore aren't afraid of attacking them, so they end up being dangerous for a (very) short while. Also, there are tons of barbarians around so...
But even then in your screenshot, does the ai actually manage to take a city? Like, why is it not attacking Osaka? It's less defended, they won't suffer fortuitous barb attacks, it's nearer to their territory... Why is Osaka still standing? Is the ai actually dealing you damage or is it just standing in yourtirf, repaying its gold upkeep with the pillaging it is doing but not actually conquering anything?

Well, yes, if you play badly, you may get beaten. In Civ VI, not building a lot of units early on, if only because of barbs, is playing badly. If you play decently, the ai will show you how poor a tactician it is, how poor a diplomat it is. Sometimes, AIs with a single city and a tech disadvantage will attack their huge, technologically advance neighbour for obscure reasons. The war will end in a stalemate because the ai just doesn't know how to wage a war.

 

Played a couple of games on Deity:

Game 1: Spawned as Russians and went for early scout. Turns out no opposing civs were remotely close, the only threat was a lone barbarian encampment. Since if you don't go religion early you don't get one deity I felt my position allowed me tech up early with my one warrior and scout being enough to hold off till the barbarians started spawning horsemen. Nope. The AI actually attacked with 4 warriors and 2 slingers and took my capital, completing the fastest game of civ in any version that I've ever played.

Game 2: Spawned as Ghandi with both the Germans and Norwegians very close by. Since I felt there was close to a 100% chance I would be sandwiched early I decided not to mess around and went straight to fast archer into Verus (elephants). Turned out I needed all of it as I was indeed sandwiched. The archers actually went down pretty fast, if I hadn't went straight to elephants I would have lost. Anyway, I was able to counter with 6 elephants and a battering ram and take out Germany. Rome, which wasn't exactly close but still on the same continent was my next target. As I have no respect for the AI, despite having plenty of legions, I decided to attack anyway with around 8 elephants and a siege tower to see if I could swing around and take out the capital without actually engaging the legions. It turns I was able to get through to the capital but the defense value of it was high enough that my attack actually failed by just one hit. I tried again with a second this time with about 4 catapults, but that attack was actually much worse. Catapults are fragile and the AI seems to correctly target them with city defenses. Also the defense value for the city was higher at that point. I was committed (at least mentally), for a domination victory at that point so I decided my best course of action was to dig in and wait for artillery/balloon. I sent a small force of just one artillery army and one support unit to see if I could chip at both close by Norway and faraway Greece on another continent. Both attacks failed. So again I had to dig in and wait for rocket artillery, better infantry, and missile cruisiers. Finally, with two missile cruisers armadas, a submarine armada, two rocket artillery armies, and a mechanized infantry army I was able to swing around and take capital after capital. While I was finally able to overtake other civs with ease and was never under threat of being taken over militarily after the first 50 turns or so, the game actually turned out to be quite close with Rome just one step away from a science victory and Greece very close to a cultural victory.

 

I just finished my first deity playthrough. Standard everything, fractal, Germany, domination. Germany is a very strong civ for domination but I feel beating the game was still way too easy. Winning Civ V on deity was a real challenge for me, but on Civ VI it seems only the early game matters. Find a way to grab lots of land early = win. By the time I had developed gunpowder the game was already won. Although the actual completion of conquering all enemy cities took time, it was all about tedious finishing work on an already settled outcome. What really surprised me was that NONE of the AI civs built a real army to counter my attack. I could take any city at will and the only challenge was how to move my troops there. The game was frankly quite boring. Late game, all you need is a bunch of tanks and battleships. If cities aren't near shore, then bring some artillery.
Cities that are one tech era behind you don't even require any ranged units to conquer.

Now, I absolutely love the game Civ VI and all its new features, it's just such a complete package and everything has been thought of - everything but the AI.

I imagine there could be more challenge if the starting position was bad and nearby civs were very aggressive early.

But how can it be that no AI builds an army when it's clear I'm going for a domination victory? I mean, it was supposed to be deity for crying out loud.

Again, the game is mostly great. But if there is no challenge in beating it that will soon end the love affair.

 

I don't know how obvious this is to any of you, but the AI never gets better up from King or Prince. It just gets more bonuses. So lambasting the Deity AI for being stupid doesn't make sense. It's the same script, it just has more bonuses. It's not any smarter. If you want to have a challenge, you need to play under personal constraints.