Does the AI ever get less stupid?

[Pluribus]

I don't know what to do about how dumb the AI seems to be. I'm playing at difficulty 7 and it's still pathetic. It kind of takes the wind out of my sails.


First thing I notice is when I'm attacking Napoleon's capital. It's his only city left, so in theory he should be defending it with all he has. I'm attacking with three spearmen and two catapults. He has three swordsmen in and around his capital. I kill one of the swordsmen and lose a spearmen between counterattack and city shots... Then he takes his other two swordsmen and has them hide behind the city, and stay there until I have taken the city over and they disappear.

I can accept that. At least he put up a fight. At least his city kept shooting at my attackers.


This next bit made me just get too depressed to keep going. Songhai marched a bunch of troops into my territory and declared war. He had about nine or more different troops in my territory, mostly archers and pikemen. I had two catapults and one archers in the area. He the proceeds to do... nothing. His entire strategy is-

1: stand within shooting distance of a city
2: move in troops whenever one group dies.

He never even tried to attack my cities, or even seemed to be trying to attack my units. The most he did was have his archers shoot at my archers when they were within range, yaknow, if they didn't have anything better to do, like milling back and forth. One city had four enemy troops right next to it and was able to kill them all with just city fire and a troop of archers. He even embarked one of his units and brought them back onto the same spot on land the next turn.

I had the Great Wall wonder which I suppose would have slowed him down, but I was outnumbered three to one and I absolutely slaughtered him.

So, they're dropping left and right. By the time I've destroyed about half of them Songhai asks for an even trade peace treaty. I refuse and proceed to kill the rest of his units. Once they're all gone he offers me a bunch of gold and goods for the peace treaty. Even this doesn't make sense. I have pretty much no army and he is really far away from me. I'm playing in a large map of the world, I'm in north Africa and he's in east Asia. He's as far away from me as he can get while still connected by land. There are also several nations between us. It would be exceedingly difficult to reach him, and I really have nothing to reach him with. Yet he offers me practically everything he has to not send my three troops all the way across the map to attack him.


So, is this just what I can expect from the AI? Winning won't have any significance if these are my opponents.

 

[thadian]

So, is this just what I can expect from the AI? Winning won't have any significance if these are my opponents.

You can either have inept opponents with extreme bonuses or you can play against a tactical genius on a level playing field - one of these models is used in Civ, the other is what we all want.

Unfortunately, the AI does not know how to value it's losses vs your losses, it does not understand Casus belli (meaning, it does not know you declared war on it for denouncing you and buying your city state - the AI sees these actions as independent of each other).

About the hot topic of Casus Belli, considering there ARE some instances where you can "respond" such as if you catch a spy. However im not sure if any of the AI knows that you declared over the spy or if it can tell.

 

[Piousflea]

I'm also puzzled by how bad the AI is at tactical warfare. I mean, AIs should be able to easily stomp humans in any turn based strategy game. They can calculate all the probabilities ahead of time, just look at Chess / Connect Four / etc. Instead, the Civ V AI is dumber than dirt.

What really annoys me is when they surround a city with massively overwhelming force, then proceed to wait several turns (losing several units to city attacks) before actually taking the city. This happens so often it's infuriating.

The AI's trading habits are another subject altogether. The only reason that immortal and deity difficulty are possible is that the AI's have near-infinite gold and you can make the AI give you gold in exchange for luxes, GPT, and useless SRs. It's rather ironic that the game is actually easier when the AI's have more gold.

The AI doesn't exactly need a chessmaster-level of tactical genius, it just needs to realize that giving you a 2,250 gold loan in exchange for 100 GPT isn't worth it when you can DoW immediately afterward.

 

[smallfish]

Do massively overwhelming forces have siege weapons? If so, have they been incredibly damaged or turned into non-existence? That would factor in why they are hesitant to take down a city. I do that all the time too - surround city with melee units, wait for my siege to take them down big time before I mass attack. I tend to lose one or two of those meatshields, but meh they are always replaceable. The problem comes when your siege gets taken out.

 

[Lucid_Interval]

I mean, AIs should be able to easily stomp humans in any turn based strategy game. They can calculate all the probabilities ahead of time, just look at Chess / Connect Four / etc.

Human beings are actually better at this than most programmed AI. Programming AI to challenge people is the hard part.

 

[Jabberwockxeno]

Human beings are actually better at this than most programmed AI. Programming AI to challenge people is the hard part.

Speak for yourself.

Damn you persia...

 

[PhilBowles]

I'm also puzzled by how bad the AI is at tactical warfare. I mean, AIs should be able to easily stomp humans in any turn based strategy game. They can calculate all the probabilities ahead of time, just look at Chess / Connect Four / etc. Instead, the Civ V AI is dumber than dirt.

I haven't seen many cheaply-available commercial chess AIs that can beat good players, and there are many fewer considerations in chess, which is important given how the AI calculates its moves. A chess AI is basically a list plus the established chess scoring system - it looks at all possible moves and evaluates how this improves its score, and looks ahead to the turn after that and determines whether the move that improves its score most will also lead to a move that improves its score in the following turn ... and so on. Chess is also wholly deterministic; you move a piece to square X, you will capture whatever piece is on that square with 100% probability. So there's no complication added by units that can't be killed in one shot, or the uncertainty over whether a unit will or will not be killed by an attack. And you get the same board every time, with no difference in movement cost or terrain advantage between black and white squares, both sides get exactly equivalent starting armies, and there's no need to select which and how many units to produce in the first place before you engage.

Bottom line: turn-based strategy games are not equivalent for an AI. Chess has received so much development time devoted to making specific AIs that can beat chess because it is, for an AI, a rather simple game. And you only get commercial chess AIs that can do the semi-decent job they do because of massive past investments by multiple organisations into making chess AIs in the first place. On top of all that, no one's yet cracked an AI that can perform as well as a chess AI in the rather similar game Go, which differs computationally mostly in the fact that it uses more pieces and a bigger board rather than a need for more complicated programming. A much less constrained game environment like Civ needs a quantitatively different type of AI to handle it, not just a chess AI with upscaled computing power.

Also, those chess AIs can have pretty slow turn times. Imagine that for one AI opponent multiplied by the number of civs and city-states in a game of Civ.

What really annoys me is when they surround a city with massively overwhelming force, then proceed to wait several turns (losing several units to city attacks) before actually taking the city. This happens so often it's infuriating.

I haven't seen this very much since the expansion, although it happens all the time if it has less than overwhelming force (but sufficient to take the city) because the AI seems to have been reprogrammed to be more cautious with its units and not to attack if a unit is likely to be killed or exposed to a situation where it might be killed immediately afterwards.

The result tends to be that by "playing safe" it loses more units than it would otherwise - it can't think far enough ahead to determine that "If I don't attack now, then the garrison will kill me in two turns", only "If I attack now and don't take the city, the garrison will kill me next turn. If I don't attack now, the garrison won't kill me next turn. So I won't attack".

And of course next turn it looks at its now-damaged unit and thinks "Well, my unit's damaged so if I attack the city with it, it will be killed by the garrison next turn. Better fortify to heal". It seems to get caught in a vicious circle as a result.

 

[Pluribus]

Do massively overwhelming forces have siege weapons? If so, have they been incredibly damaged or turned into non-existence? That would factor in why they are hesitant to take down a city. I do that all the time too - surround city with melee units, wait for my siege to take them down big time before I mass attack. I tend to lose one or two of those meatshields, but meh they are always replaceable. The problem comes when your siege gets taken out.

Nope, they didn't bring any siege weapons, in fact I haven't ever seen them do so. Granted I have only played a handful of games. I don't see why they don't though. I mean, they know they're going to be attacking cities. They also don't bother to attack my siege weapons when I'm bombing their city with them.

 

[Jabberwockxeno]

In my games at least, the AI acts pretty smart.

It's just a matter of noticing what's seems like a "bad" move or illogical one isn't actually.

The main issue with the AI is that it's not very transparent, so it seems like it's not acting well, and it can make why they are denouncing you or X or Y rather ambiguous at times.

Generally, I feel the same as a few of the posts on this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=395421

Nope, they didn't bring any siege weapons, in fact I haven't ever seen them do so. Granted I have only played a handful of games. I don't see why they don't though. I mean, they know they're going to be attacking cities. They also don't bother to attack my siege weapons when I'm bombing their city with them.

The opposite here, my first few games I was convinced that artillery was the most overpowered thing ever.

 

[PhilBowles]

Nope, they didn't bring any siege weapons, in fact I haven't ever seen them do so. Granted I have only played a handful of games. I don't see why they don't though. I mean, they know they're going to be attacking cities. They also don't bother to attack my siege weapons when I'm bombing their city with them.

Are you playing vanilla or with the expansion? The AI has improved somewhat. Case in point: in my current game the Polynesian city I was attacking preferentially - and repeatedly - targeted my catapult. I rarely see attacks unsupported by siege once the AI has Mathematics; the pre-siege attack I've faced in my current game was supported by three archers, with the warriors leading. It was still a bad attack - not helped by my siting my second city in easily-defended terrain, and attacking the Ottoman army as it passed in case it was planning to bypass the city and march on to my flatland capital. In the end the archers just ended up trying to retreat from my defenders while the warriors pressed on, leading the whole army to become disorganised.

It was, however, an army that would normally have been capable of taking an undefended early-game city, and Suleiman did try to attack (although I didn't give him a chance to stand around passively since I declared war on him) - in this case the AI's main fault was in not recognising that its plans had been anticipated and turning back when it saw me placing defenders around.

 

[smallfish]

I had the Great Wall wonder which I suppose would have slowed him down, but I was outnumbered three to one and I absolutely slaughtered him.

Yeah that's the problem right there. Unless you are having Keshiks or something similar before Artillery, taking out a GW opponent is always a massive pain even in multiplayer.

 

[Ookamikun]

Weird though, that AI cities are easily taken over by another AI enemies. They don't wait around and such.

 

[whyidie]

Haven't been attacked by the AI without them having siege weapons and they have absolutely targeted my siege units. Only exception I've seen is the AI will give priority to injured units.

 

[PhilBowles]

Weird though, that AI cities are easily taken over by another AI enemies. They don't wait around and such.

That can very much depend. The AI doesn't take cities that often - in my current game, where everyone I know of has been at war at least twice, the only cities lost have been Tonga (AI Polynesia, captured and razed by me) and Akkad (AI Babylon, captured and razed by AI Ottomans). In one game I played, where my forces were in a position to "spectate", Attila had successfully destroyed the Mongol second city before I arrived on the scene, but he was just milling around Karakorum getting his units shot.

So, yes, the AI seems to exhibit the same behaviour around AI cities as well - they're just easier to take because the opposing AI will also be worse at defending its cities than a human.

 

[KillingMeSoftly]

Yeah, making a Genius-level AI isn't near as easy or practical as people suspect.

It doesn't matter what difficulty level you are on, the AI is mostly the same. The real difference is the bonuses the AI receives in extra production, gold, science, etc. Including starter techs and extra units. Try Deity if Immortal is that easy for you.

 

[PhilBowles]

Hmm, in a very interesting Emperor game at the moment that's probably giving me the best "whole-game experience" I've had since G&K came out, with both new and old elements showcased to best effect, a random selection and placement of civs that highlights several key areas (city-state conflict? Austria vs Siam. Naval AI? The Ottomans spawned across the strait from me), including the changes to the AI in all its manifestations. It is, for the most part, behaving sensibly in most respects.

My arch-rival game-long has been Suleiman, who started off coveting my land but brought things to a head by repeatedly bullying city-states under my (Siamese) protection. My refusal to back down resulted in an Ottoman army being sent my way; I attacked it as it was trying to get into position and killed the Warriors (this was pre-Mathematics). Suleiman could probably have done more damage, and should have been flexible enough to abort the attack either when his army had been spotted moving in my direction, or when he noticed defenders. But it was a reasonable first attack, although not one showing great terrain-awareness - it's unlikely that Si Satchanalai (next to mountains in front of a narrow pass, with hills and forests surrounding it and forming the only land route past the city) could have been taken with anything less than catapults in support. In fairness to the AI, that may not have been his target - he might have been trying to move on towards Sukothai when I attacked to prevent him doing exactly that, and he did embark troops to move them past the rough terrain of the pass. Either way he'd have to pass my second city because that's where the coastal tiles were.

His combat AI has generally been solid - he repelled my attacks against him, and has a worthless productivity-wise but extremely defensible city in the north that I failed to dislodge (although for no apparent reason he did at one stage remove the defending trebuchet and sent it marching on its own in my direction). When I aimed at his core territories, he used trebuchets and pikemen effectively - always moving at least two pikemen in tandem and generally trying to secure the high ground and try to surround my units to bring them down (sometimes successfully). He launched no further attacks on my cities until an invasion that's currently en route and ... well, let's just say the AI still does really dumb things sometimes.

Spoiler :

But he has repeatedly captured and razed Babylonian and Egyptian cities that encroach into territory he feels belongs to him, so he must be doing something right. The latest invasion notwithstanding, he's not done too bad in naval warfare either (though I've no idea where his Great Admiral went - I suspect the AI favours instaheal too highly, just as it does with promotions). I did come across and defeat quite a few isolated Ottoman ships when I was launching a naval attack, but where he did have a fleet he used it well - keeping it close enough to his cities to expose my attackers to bombardment, and launching joint attacks with triremes and eventually caravels (with the occasional lapse such as dealing the finishing blow with a Galleas when he could have taken a prize ship and, when he ran out of melee ships, replacing them with more Galleases - as ever the AI doesn't understand or use civ-specific UAs very well).

Even his peace offers haven't been too obviously outrageous - as ever he demands too much, but times when he's felt in a position to make demands include just after forcing my army to withdraw from his territory, and after I haven't attacked for a while and he has a bigger military, even though he hasn't been going on the offensive - he's almost permanently at war with Egypt and, through my machinations, Babylon, both of whom share borders with him. Egypt's own response to being everyone's punchbag has been quite clever, if it isn't accidental - it's maintained a game-long alliance with Almaty, as well as seeking Polynesian support for its wars (including the one just declared against me). Although for Rameses to lose cities in the Classical Era when Almaty provided him with, to my knowledge, multiple ballistae, he must be doing something wrong...

The big outstanding issue I find with the AI generally is its inflexibility, and apparent failures in strategy. The Ottomans commit to a naval invasion they launch even after losing all their ships (hence no protection for embarked units). I'd attacked with a frigate and Privateers - and when I next attacked the Ottomans were still using caravels and galleases. A player in that situation would have done what I did earlier in the game, and invested in naval technology after perceiving a risk of naval invasion.

Suleiman has also several times sent settlers out with the apparent intent of colonising somewhere north of Si Satchanalai, a route which involves going through the rebuilt Akkad as well as my own borders - but he blithely does so regardless of whether or not he's at war with Babylon at the time (or me, but then he's always at war with me). He actually does the best that can be expected to extricate himself from the resulting situation - when his escorting Pikeman was destroyed by fire from both Akkad and my Galleas (another error on Sully's part, moving through hexes within reach of the coast) he promptly embarked it to prevent capture - and, after it survived the attack from the ships I had patrolling that area, he moved it back onto land safely out of Akkad's firing arc. Unfortunately he then carried on its planned mission, despite the loss of its escort, until it strayed into my second city's borders and I promptly captured it. It's an AI failing that he put the settler in a situation he couldn't extricate it from to begin with, but once in place he did the best anyone could to keep it alive; several other times he's made sensible use of embarkation to move injured units away, sometimes in parts of the map where my ships can't get at them.

So yes, the AI's stupid, but it's not that bad - the ultimate answer to "what to do about a stupid AI" is "play multiplayer games", but then it always will be.

 

[smallfish]

So I'm playing Large Hemispheres on Quick Emperor, and my neighbor Sejong who is busy REXing has also decided to declare war on me. I was short on troops, and seeing that nobody has picked up the Great Wall and that I should have a decent chance at it, I decided to go for it.

3 turns before completion, Sejong completes it. Few turns later, Sejong enters the Renaissance. The only good thing I'm seeing out of this is that he has a lack of Turtle Boats headed to my coastal capital.

 

[SurplusInk]

I'm also puzzled by how bad the AI is at tactical warfare. I mean, AIs should be able to easily stomp humans in any turn based strategy game. They can calculate all the probabilities ahead of time, just look at Chess / Connect Four / etc. Instead, the Civ V AI is dumber than dirt.

What really annoys me is when they surround a city with massively overwhelming force, then proceed to wait several turns (losing several units to city attacks) before actually taking the city. This happens so often it's infuriating.

The AI's trading habits are another subject altogether. The only reason that immortal and deity difficulty are possible is that the AI's have near-infinite gold and you can make the AI give you gold in exchange for luxes, GPT, and useless SRs. It's rather ironic that the game is actually easier when the AI's have more gold.

The AI doesn't exactly need a chessmaster-level of tactical genius, it just needs to realize that giving you a 2,250 gold loan in exchange for 100 GPT isn't worth it when you can DoW immediately afterward.

Yeah, making a Genius-level AI isn't near as easy or practical as people suspect.

It doesn't matter what difficulty level you are on, the AI is mostly the same. The real difference is the bonuses the AI receives in extra production, gold, science, etc. Including starter techs and extra units. Try Deity if Immortal is that easy for you.

These two quotes pretty much sum it all up for me, ironically. AI receives extra bonuses to improve difficulty which player then attempts to utilize to their advantage by using loopholes in the system. However I have seen it quite often that the AI tactics are quite bad at times. There have been instances in my own gameplay (about 200 hrs under my belt) that AI declares war on me, walks around my territory then proceeds to request peace. In which case I'm assuming AI wanted to scout my territory cause a little havoc and try to slow my pace down then withdraw, but maybe that's just me giving the AI a little more credit than most.

 

[Professor Pedo]

The same thing happened to me once.The celts didnt bother fighting even, the only one attacking was a pictish warrior.
I sent a scout to check out her army and it was crazy big.
But she just kept running into a trap.

But it was kinda fun cause i was monty
Lotsa culture yaaaayh

 

[VictusUmbra]

I have never found the Civ V AI to be any kind of a challenge. I usually play up around Deity, but even there I find them laughable. They come out strong in the beginning due to their advantages but I have never lost a game to an AI.
The Ai's strategic capabilities are even lower. I'm not much of a warmaker (I prefer cultural or scientific victories) so I generally have a small standing army, just enough to fend off barbarians. Despite this I always completely flatten the AI. I don't just mean beat, I mean demolish. My forces are pretty much always outnumbered 3 or 4 to 1. I find the AI's diplomatic maturity more irritating. They act and negotiate like three year olds.