Computer military AI is abysmal even on Diety

[Acrobatc101]

On Diety they just have more units to be dumb with.

I just play huge map type Diety with domination as only victory type, and it's very easy to win.

Granted if enable cultural victory and such, they will tend to get that before I kill them all, but otherwise its always a slaughter house

 

[joncnunn]

Yes, it's the same AI at every difficulty level in Civ V, just like it was in Civ IV, and Civ III; and mostly * in Civ II / SMAC ...

* Both of those had a couple of rules dealing with Spies / Probe Teams the AI wasn't allowed to use below X difficulty.

The AIs really, really suffer when you disable victory conditions as is most cases the underlying flavors of their build preferences are better at some victory conditions than others.

 

[Pnothy]

What bugs me most about the military AI is that they don't really try to defend. AI never seems to put extra effort in building defending units when it's needed (trying to buy walls, units... anything to avoid losing key cities).

Yesterday I was attacking Morocco's 84 capital very inefficiently with Keshiks (took 12 turns to get its health down to zero), just to see what the AI would do about it, if anything.

They had +40% Berber cavalry running around, some crossbowmen. Especially the Berbers were quite strong indeed, as I needed to shoot them 5 times to kill one off. However, they didn't organize anything to attack even one of my keshiks, even though they would have been pretty easy to challenge. Instead, the Berber cavalry even embarked to be killed off easily (-76hp per shot instead of -18).

During my long siege they managed to build one cannon (hardly a defensive piece) that they didn't actually use. A settler was sent on a suicide mission, trying to run for a new size 1 capital some place safe I guess. They tried to recapture their other city with a laughable force, but the slightest defense from my side made them retreat again.

 

[Ryika]

That seems to depend on their defensive unit production though. Some Civs will just swarm you with Rush-Built units if you dare to step onto their territory. And others will basically don't do anything, even if they're drowning in money. It's kind of dumb.

 

[Pnothy]

I can understand that the initial reaction to defense is different between civs. I find myself neglecting defense too much as well, so I tend to get surprised by barbs or civs harassing my undefended spots from time to time. However, after losing its first city and seeing things are going to end pretty badly unless something happens really fast, it would be nice to see an AI do everything it can to try to save its back. Or at least do anything, really.

The same goes for city states, which seem to be too passive if you ask me. They may have a decent army or not, but they don't seem to use it effectively in any case.

 

[4N4C0ND4]

I'm surprised, for me it's usually the other way around;
How many times I though my comp bow rush won't be stopped.
Next turn AI buys walls and archer every turn. And when the city is coastal and range boats are teched, it can become even uglier.

tl;dr: try to dry out the AI's money when possible before downing

 

[4N4C0ND4]

double post, Mauritanian net at its finest, sry.

 

[tetley]

That's what deity is all about: exploiting the AI.

 

[number51]

The dumbest thing I see regularly is: "we're under attack, quickly, get the catapults into the water!"

The dumbest thing I have read and seen here was after a very long attack a civ about to get conquered offers up a peace treaty including 60,000 gold. Really, all this time not buying units every turn, saving up for a peace treaty were you?

I'm no programmer but shouldn't those two things be easy to fix?

 

[Waywocket]

It seems like the way the AI works in Civ V is that it makes a detailed CPU-intensive strategic model of the current and past state of the game, in order to infer the most likely actions other players would take and calculate the odds of specific moves maximising its immediate tactical and long-term strategic goals, then discards it and moves its units about at random.

 

[BrokTheFanatic]

It is a shame that it is so poor at attacking and defending. In previous civs at least the stacks of doom were a threat but with 1upt it is tougher to code AI combat to be mildly effective (tougher, not impossible nor even very difficult).

Firaxis just hasn't given it the effort. The proof is in some of the AI combat mods, which help the combat AI in very noticeable ways with (from a coding standpoint) minor 'fixes' or modifcations. With access to the code it wouldn't take that much effort to make the AI combat reasonable. And you know that there are coders at firaxis who would love to work on it, therefore this must be a business decision. They want the AI combat to suck.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

I'm no programmer but shouldn't those two things be easy to fix?

Have a look at the code through the Civilization V SDK, you can download it if you have Civ V.

It's spaghetti.

Still, there is this

@Waywocket: I lol'd.

 

[joncnunn]

The dumbest thing I see regularly is: "we're under attack, quickly, get the catapults into the water!"

The dumbest thing I have read and seen here was after a very long attack a civ about to get conquered offers up a peace treaty including 60,000 gold. Really, all this time not buying units every turn, saving up for a peace treaty were you?

I'm no programmer but shouldn't those two things be easy to fix?

#1: What's happening here is the code notices the catapult is at risk of attack from a land unit and retreats to where it can't get to it; disregarding both ranged and water threats.
Meanwhile if an AI unit started in the sea and was at risk it would take shelter from those, sometimes landing but then also disregarding the land units.

#2: That actually was fixed in the G&K Fall patch. It was reverted back with BNW because it had the side effect of turning every AI into a warmonger. (AI Austria even preferred to conquer a nearby city state as opposed to using their UA)

 

[kaspergm]

The dumbest thing I see regularly is: "we're under attack, quickly, get the catapults into the water!"

That is indeed the AI's favorite move.

 

[number51]

#1: What's happening here is the code notices the catapult is at risk of attack from a land unit and retreats to where it can't get to it; disregarding both ranged and water threats.
Meanwhile if an AI unit started in the sea and was at risk it would take shelter from those, sometimes landing but then also disregarding the land units.

#2: That actually was fixed in the G&K Fall patch. It was reverted back with BNW because it had the side effect of turning every AI into a warmonger. (AI Austria even preferred to conquer a nearby city state as opposed to using their UA)

Again not a programmer so I should probably shut up about it, but I won't.

Those reasons for the AI behavior sound right. But can't they just tweak some variables to correct threat assessment and when to purchase units? It just seems like a moderate effort could correct these major AI blunders. I'm not expecting military brilliance, but a minor degree of competency would feel like a huge upgrade.

 

[BrokTheFanatic]

I think the AI would be better off just attacking player units. Basically, check who can hit what and attack the player unit that the most AI units can hit. And just repeat. Don't attack cities until all nearby player units are gone. The one caveat would be to keep the AI units in a 'packed' formation. I actually believe set formations would help the AI a lot.

The above sounds horrible but would end up being a lot more effective than what I see in every game, AI units dancing around dieing to my ranged units.

 

[kaspergm]

#1: What's happening here is the code notices the catapult is at risk of attack from a land unit and retreats to where it can't get to it; disregarding both ranged and water threats.
Meanwhile if an AI unit started in the sea and was at risk it would take shelter from those, sometimes landing but then also disregarding the land units.

Actually, in most cases this is not what happens. In most cases, the cause is the fact that they forgot to tech the AI that fortify is an option, which means AI doesn't understand that *not moving* a unit is an option - and hence will always try to move a unit if there's a free space adjacent. And if the only free space is an water hex, the unit will embark regardless of circumstances.

 

[Acrobatc101]

The AI just storms a city and mindlessly melee attacks not waiting for ranged motions.

That's why I always immediately ban nukes once I control the world congress, which I always do. Level up your spies to III and then take world congress next. Then declare war on everyone and kill them all.

Without nukes, they have little if no hope of ever taking a city in the late game because the cities are too big for them to attack without knowing how to use ranged stuff aka gun boats, rockets launchers, etc

Since they have more units than you in general sometimes 10:1 ratio or more on Diety they sometimes nuke spam, which is really the AI's only hope.

 

[gamemaster3000]

I give the developers a little slack on this because computers are awful at long-term planning. Evaluating how to move ground units in front and archers in the back in ways they can shoot but not get killed by enemy ranged, etc. is all really easy for humans but difficult to write an algorithm for.

OTOH I think the poor military AI is hurting sales; I know I tabled this game because of the poor military AI and didn't buy Gods and Kings as a result.

 

[joncnunn]

Again not a programmer so I should probably shut up about it, but I won't.

Those reasons for the AI behavior sound right. But can't they just tweak some variables to correct threat assessment and when to purchase units? It just seems like a moderate effort could correct these major AI blunders. I'm not expecting military brilliance, but a minor degree of competency would feel like a huge upgrade.

Concentrating on #2: This is well known in the programming field as making small change here has a large effect elsewhere in the code base.
The AI's code is almost entirely flavor driven and includes modifiers including ratio of perceived military strength. When the AI cash buys units at will, it quickly reaches the thresholds where the modifier for superiority completely overwhelmed the aggressiveness flavor; which was originally tuned for AI not allowed to cash buy units.

Designing and programming a flavor driven AI system in the first place was complex. Going into the code and messing with the variables is an order or two more complex than making it in the first place.

There's also a skeleton of Civ IV buying of buildings in the Civ V XML. That was turned off early in Civ V development entirely because they didn't have time to rewrite the algorithm behind that would have caused the AI to prefer to cash buy buildings close to completion [left over from Civ IV as well where there was a discount for cash buying a building you had already started]