Consistent AI Leader behavior/success/failure

[Castar]

I have, so far, played 5 or 6 games that lasted long enough to get a good impression of how the world developed. This is not a very representative set of games, but I get the impression that some leader behaviors seem to be common across different games. These are all on Large Continent maps on Prince difficulty, with me not being a very warlike player, so the AI can pretty much do its thing (unless they try to get me of course -I'm competent, just not aggressive ).

- Oda Nobunaga wants his own continent, at the very least. Very aggressive and seemingly quite succesful, though he usually struggles economically as the game progresses.

- Same for Askia (Songhai). He always seems to end up with a big empire.

- Rammesses, while at first glance not overly aggressive, always seems to end up eating one or two civs and creating a massive empire, with a very decent economy to support it. Barring Human interference, he is by far the most consistently succesful AI I've had in my games.

- Bismarck seems to be absurd. He seems preposterously aggressive, even more so than Oda, yet seems to make too many enemies much too soon, which usually leads to a quick crippling of the German nation, or even outright defeat.

There are other nations that seem to have some consistent success. France always seems to carve out a decent-sized empire, but nothing extreme. Rome usually survives well, but its success in empire-building is mixed - curiously enough they appear to be aggressive and insulting, but not actually warlike. The Ottomans and the Arabs seem to do very poorly in most games. Other civs either gave mixed impressions, or I didn't see enough of them to make any kind of judgment.

Anyone else notice any emergent characteristics and consistency in the behavior of AI Leaders?

 

[Demartus]

I've played two games so far: standard, small map as Siam, and a marathon huge map as Rome. Thus hardly a valid sample size.

In both, Egypt was the first empire I conquered, because they started right next to me, and got uppity/DoW'd early.

The second game was longer, with Japan warmongering early on, then getting wiped out by the English, Indians, Chinese, and Ottomans (everyone but me, really). Ghandi become the #2 empire after gobbling up Japan; he was quite the warmonger!

 

[Castar]

Ghandi become the #2 empire after gobbling up Japan; he was quite the warmonger!

I have noticed something similar. Apparently, Ghandi's dislike for warmongering civilizations is expressed in the swift and brutal conquest of said warmongers by our beloved pacifist.

 

[Show]

Somebody already posted the actual chart of the AI behavior.

How they react to events is determined by it.

 

[Castar]

I know, but how successful they are is not. For example, I recall to have read somewhere that under Ramesses, puppet states will always build his UB, which greatly helps economy. This could (partially) explain why Ramesses manages to manage a very big empire while not crashing his economy, where other civilizations sort of seem to grind to a halt after a certain amount of cities have been built/conquered.

Also, there are a LOT of variables in that spreadsheet, and I find that an overall behavior is difficult to determine from it. This thread is an attempt at a more intuïtive, empirical discussion on the matter

 

[Guardian_PL]

Well, in my current Immortal Continents game the Rome acts exactly as in history - they've basically devoured their entire continent, with Siam and Songhai and some other nation I didn't have a chance to meet

So here I am struggling on my land (because instead of steamrolling the AI I thought "noo, I'm tired of cheesy steamroll, I've already wiped out Bismarck and that's enough, from now on only defence") . The thing is, other nations on my land are Japan, France and Russia The armies strolling around the countryside are huge, and after few declarations in the end I had to switch to full war mode, currently Catherine with her huge empire is the only one left, but in the meantime Augustus has like 25k of loose change and earns ~700/turn And he just sits there, like all laid back, not bothered by anyone

Somehow, I think I've just lost a game of Civ5 for the very first time! Catherine hadn't had pulled out her Cossacks yet, so I can deal with her. But by the time I'll manage to kill her I'll probably watch Augustus flying off to space to kill some aliens ('cause AI for now is like cats - they hate water xPPP)

 

[Syiss_]

Egypt seems to be one of the strongest AI's any time I let him live. He expands aggressively, he attacks aggressively, and build wonders like nobody's business. Even if I want to let him live, I usually have to intervene and kill him off because he starts attacking my allied city states.

China seems to be somewhat schizophrenic. Sometimes she goes on a murdering rampage, but I've also seen her attempt to for what was starting to look like a an OCC wonder spam strategy (she had only her capital and was spamming wonders non stop until about 500BC when I killed her).

Hiawatha is pretty good at expanding massively and also at warfare. I've seen him become a monster in multiple games.

As noted in the OP, the Ottomans and Arabians generally aren't a threat, especially if they end up next to an aggressive AI. I suspect it has something to do with their poor uniques.

Germany does well at massing warriors and then his UU, but never seems to leverage it into world wide conquest like some civs can do.

 

[Sable]

Really? You guys weren't impressed by Arabia? I've played four complete games now, and in the two of them that had Arabia, it held out pretty damn well. In my Bollywood game, Arabia built up a huge empire and a massive treasury, then started taking out its enemies on my continent by buying up the remaining city-states and declaring war, and just letting the CSs take them out O.O They would've won a time victory if I hadn't eked out the cultural. In my Songhai game, the only reason Arabia fell to me was because I caught them at a bad time, and their capital was coastal

Napoleon in my experience has been pretty bad--he usually pisses off enough people that I don't have to deal with him since he pretty much tanks himself. China's a mixed bag, sometimes insanely powerful, sometimes pathetic.

 

[DarkMaster]

So far the one I got every time is that if there's a city state near Montezuma, don't bother allying with it. Good old monty can't help himself.

 

[qyll]

In my games:

Loses the game by being too passive: Suleiman, Elizabeth, Catherine, Rammy
Loses the game by being too aggressive (and either gets stomped by another AI or me): Bismarck, Monty, Oda
Legitimate threats: Gandhi, Napoleon, Alexander

 

[Tyrael]

Somebody already posted the actual chart of the AI behavior.

How they react to events is determined by it.

Link please?

 

[dalowrider]

I never see washington with a large empire and many times he gets stomped early

kinda funny since its supposed to be america,

The UA and UU's arent that great though, I guess there would be more complaints if america were too OP, Id complain too probably

Napolean is probably the consistent best in my games

bismark and catherine are trouble too if they eat their continent

 

[ecki2k]

in my actual game, Washington is a pain in the ass. He´s conquered France and swallowed big parts of Rome and as of now I have no real clue how to stop him

That said, my overall impression is that the Egyptians make a good rival, Gandhi got wiped out in every single game of mine (and that not by me but another AI), Monty is still the good old freak and Catherine can get real y if left alone for building her empire.

 

[JanissaryRush]

I've only played a few games. In a couple of them on immortal Lakes Napolean amassed a huge empire pretty quickly.

 

[Lyoncet]

China seems to be somewhat schizophrenic. Sometimes she goes on a murdering rampage, but I've also seen her attempt to for what was starting to look like a an OCC wonder spam strategy (she had only her capital and was spamming wonders non stop until about 500BC when I killed her).

I think this is due to her particular criteria for DoWing. Whereas some are really touch about people settling near their land (Ramesses, Hiawatha), some seem to like to have their own landmass (Oda), and some just like killin' (Suleiman, Monty, Otto, etc.) Wu seems to have a penchant for attacking only the really (militarily) weak civs. Unlike Civ IV, in which having a pathetic army didn't make people more likely to attack you (although having a big enough one stopped the AI from DoWing), small armies are, to a degree that varies by leader, invitations to get declared on. Wu pretty much seems to measure only this and occasionally the "bloodthirstiness" of a leader in deciding to declare war.

 

[Callonia]

I've seen siam field rocket artillery while me and everyone else was still using samurai and musketmen. He seems to hate warmongers, he gets hostile when he is powerful and i'm at war against someone else, so i signed peace just to see what happens, hostile attitude disappeared.

He was about to pull the same joke in my today's game, cuz he was rexxing very rapidly with no consequences whatsoever so I got mad and attacked him. Ended up killing him cuz he only had spearman/archers vs swordmen/spearmen and archers. xD

I've seen Monty declare on a city state and only have one warrior. U'd think he'd had a dozen warriors O_o I had ten units by then when I attacked monty.

 

[Shafi-is-back]

Persia seems to be the top dog in most of the games i have played.

 

[cembandit]

The iroquois had a massive score in my game. I got industrialized first so it didn't end well for him.

 

[Poomermon]

Persia seems to be the top dog in most of the games i have played.

I agree. Darius special ability with golden ages seem really help the ai who gets them more regularly. I assume they get big bonus to happiness in higher levels. Immortal is also a decent unique unit and ai actually builds them in every game. I have seen two games so far where Darius becomes a super-power eating up all its neighbours.