Does the AI get more realistic in the higher level game?

[Chessack]

Hey there folks. Relatively new to Civ 5 and totally new to the forums (been playing Civ 5 since Labor Day).

I played Civs 1, 2 and 4 to a great extent, but never was good enough to get into the higher level game. At this point, I am playing on Warlord and have maybe a 50% chance of success at that level. So I know I am not great at it. (At least not yet.)

And that's fine, but one thing I notice, and perhaps it's just the weaker Warlord level that causes it, is that the AI is completely strange in terms of its decisions. I know it's a computer, but I can't understand why it is programmed the way it is, unless the weaker setting is killing the algorithms.

The main thing I find odd is the ridiculous frequency of it's War Declarations and Peace Treaties. It seems like throughout the game, the AI declares war, peace, war, peace, war, peace, war, peace on other AI (not usually me because I'm strong enough that they don't dare unless it's one of the more aggressive AIs or I have done something to anger them). This doesn't wildly affect me, especially since it's often going on half a continent away, but it just seems... Silly.

To me as a human player... I am not going to declare war against another player (human or AI), unless I really want to go to war, really plan to capture some territory, and really am ready to go. Once declared, I am going to keep going until I get my butt whipped, or until they are beaten. I'm not going to declare war, fight them until 2 or 3 units die, and then declare peace (and then shortly after it declare friendship!).

This seems to happen even with city-states. The AI will declare war/peace/war/peace over and over against some puny city state with 3 armies near it. Why the heck can't an AI empire that is so strong I would not be able to successfully invade it with my 100 armies and 10 city empire, beat a single AI city state that has 2 units and a worker, and no real territory? Is it just that the Warlord AI is too stupid to figure out how to take a defended city?

Perhaps this is the case, since the AI can rarely take a defended city of mine on Warlord... Usually when I "lose" a game of Civ 5 on Warlord, it's that the AI has disrupted me enough that I resign, not wanting to bother to play another 150 turns knowing that a win is out of the question. But I rarely lose whole cities to the AI unless I have chosen not to defend them.

But if this is the case, if the AI is too dumb to capture even another AI city, why do they keep declaring war? It seems like after getting beaten back 3 or 4 times, the AI empire should realize it can't win and turn its attention elsewhere.

Has anyone noticed this, and is it fixed by moving into the higher level game? Or is it just an "AI bug"?

Thanks,

Chessack

 

[Fluffball]

It gets more aggressive and decisive but not more realistic.

A simple scale of the AI difference is that on lower levels it will generally sit there passively and only react if you poke it with a stick.
On higher levels it will more often than not be the one to make the first move and it will poke you for a reaction any time it thinks it can gain advanatage and a lot of times seemingly just because it can.

 

[headcase]

As far as aggressiveness, in Civ5HandicapInfos, AI Declare War Prob goes:

Settler - 0 - Wars against the player on Settler have been reported however.
Chieftain - 75
Warlord - 85
Prince and above - 100

There may be other factors, and certainly the handicaps the AI receives on higher difficulties makes it much more likely to be in a position to justify war with you.

I don't know the in-game code, but given the large differences in bonuses\penalties between difficulties, it's possible the AI plays with the same skill on every difficulty - even a great AI wouldn't be much of a match on Settler due to the bonuses for the player and penalties to the AI.

 

[Noatz]

The AI on higher difficulties is dangerous in the same way that a small child is dangerous carrying a loaded gun rather than a inflatable novelty mallet.

Its definately no smarter thats for sure, its tactic simply is to brute force you with its increasing bonuses. It appears more aggressive simply because it thinks it can win due to having a larger army.

And trust me you've barely scratched the surface in the area of baffling AI decisions. You can look forward to it suiciding its units by embarking them next to ships, running endless streams of trash units into meat grinders (cities with ranged garrisons usually). DoWing you from the other side of the map and demanding stupid settlements despite not sending any units your way... The list is quite long.

 

[JP1]

I know it's a computer, but I can't understand why it is programmed the way it is, unless the weaker setting is killing the algorithms.

The computer is programmed in the way it is because of limits in current AI methods and processing power. It was not a conscious, lazy decision to make the AI not behave like a human.

I found that before the patch a while ago which made cities more difficult to take, warmongering AIs were actually a huge threat to take over all the other AIs on the continent and make your life difficult later in the game. But when the city strength got upped to prevent human early rush strategies, the AI the computer uses to take over cities didn't change enough to counter this. So they don't bring enough units to get the job done, especially not enough siege.

As other people have pointed out, the way the computer gets around this on higher difficulty levels is by being more aggressive and receiving handicaps which allow them to field larger armies.

 

[TPQ]

Does the AI get more realistic in the higher level game?

The AI gets more realistic in the sense that it has much greater bonuses at it's disposal, so when it goes to war (with the player at least) it can usually back up its bluster with a decent show of force.

Sadly, unless the AI has a big tech lead, or massively overwhelming numerical superiority, it usually squanders its force against a player with good skill.

AI vs AI wars are now actually much better and somewhat more realistic than they were when the game launched. For quite a while after launch, one AI would become dominant and roll over all the other AIs in it's neighbourhood virtually every game and this led to much dissatisfaction for the player.

Since launch, cities have been made stronger and the game made more balanced so that now there's usually more of a struggle for dominance and several strong AIs will emerge instead of just one, while also leaving other AIs who are weaker, alive for longer. This is much more realistic and more natural than the hideously unbalanced outcomes that used to occur.

If you consider that the game usually takes place over several millennia, the seemingly frequent war/peace cycles between AIs make more sense and the fact that the balance of power tips back and forth is quite realistic.

 

[apocalypse105]

Well if you are the leader of the Siam's people and you see that you're neighbour have military with rifles and thinx lets go to war with our strong pikeman is realistic yeah sure

It is deffinitly not realistic makes stupid decleration of wars that normal leaders wouldn't do..

And will backstabb you just for fun to be defeated a few turn later..


And if you thinx that allies and friendship between countries doesn't exist in the real word and everyone hates eachother yes then its realistic but i thinx nope

 

[timtofly]

Only to the point you become "even" with the AI. It is only getting to that point that makes it interesting.

If the AI won all the time it seems it would get old fast. The game has enough variables to make it replayable. I am not sure if "scaling" the AI to always win would be continuously enjoyable though.

 

[Strategist83]

No offense, but this is the 100 trillionth 'I saw the AI do something stupid' post. Just pointing out that searching first is a good idea.

That aside, your post:

The AI is badly programmed, especially when it comes to battle tactics. That's why you see it being unable to take a city-state. A human player controlling those AI units would have taken the city with ease. Because the AI's tactics are so bad, it gets into these stalemated situations you describe. The way the AI is programmed is it will look to military strength rating (demographics screen) to see if it is sufficiently 'stronger' than the opponent. When it is, it then declares war and loses all its units in a horribly executed attack. Then, it evaluates (demographics again) that it is no longer strong enough to fight and sues for peace. It then rebuilds its army and the cycle starts again.

Consequently, to answer your question directly: No, the AI does not get more realistic at higher levels. It just cheats more (production/gold/science bonuses) and thus has a larger army which it throws away just the same.

 

[Camikaze]

Well if you are the leader of the Siam's people and you see that you're neighbour have military with rifles and thinx lets go to war with our strong pikeman is realistic yeah sure

It is deffinitly not realistic makes stupid decleration of wars that normal leaders wouldn't do..

And will backstabb you just for fun to be defeated a few turn later..


And if you thinx that allies and friendship between countries doesn't exist in the real word and everyone hates eachother yes then its realistic but i thinx nope

Moderator Action: This isn't actually answering any of the OP questions. Just because the thread's about diplomacy doesn't mean you need post a complaint about it when it's not really relevant to the OP.

 

[Lexicus]

Yes. I recently moved up from Prince to King, and find the AI to be much more "engaged," so to speak. On Prince I found they tended to be passive, with a few exceptions (maniacs) like Alexander or Montezuma.

In higher difficulty levels it seems much more like you're playing against competitors, rather than just playing in a sort of sandbox where, if you interact with the other Civs at all, you just conquer them easily.

 

[RonMar]

Listen to, or read the transcript of podcast 8 under Media on the Civ 5 website. This podcast discusses the Civ AI. It gives some of the different kinds of AI programming that go on in Civ. The decisions the AI ranks as "best" for any action are considered for action. The lower the difficulty the more options are listed as best. Then the random number generator is used to select the chosen decision. The lower the player difficulty, the more options are enabled for the selection and the greater the chance that a decision the AI does not consider to be the best is selected. At least, that is what I got from it when I listened to it again last night.

So at a lower level maybe 6 or 7 options might be possible. At higher levels fewer options. This should give a better overall AI result the higher the level of the game. Of course, this is in addition to the bonuses given to the player at lower levels and to the AI at the higher levels.

 

[headcase]

Listen to, or read the transcript of podcast 8 under Media on the Civ 5 website. This podcast discusses the Civ AI. It gives some of the different kinds of AI programming that go on in Civ. The decisions the AI ranks as "best" for any action are considered for action. The lower the difficulty the more options are listed as best.

This is a bit hairsplitting and probably better for the a thread about mods, but I find this to be a flawed implementation and since this thread is about realistic AI...

It should assign a value to each option, then randomly adjust each option +/- 10% (more on lower difficulties, less on higher ones), and pick the option with the highest value afterwards.

This would make it more human-like: if there were 10 options that all look pretty ok, the AI might pick any one of them, but if 1 option is very obviously the best, the AI (on a decent difficulty) would always pick it instead of randomly picking something that's much worse, just because it's still technically in the top 3.

If that implementation takes longer to process with all the random numbers involved, then I understand why they'd want to take a faster cheaper route.

 

[R17MCMLXXIX]

Although I'm struggling to catch up on IMMORTAL, I find the computer AI is still dumb. Was playing Japan fighting Greece, I had about 5 Level 6 units. Because Greece would keep sending out units to fight me, and they would lose every single unit.

I Just don't like it when an AI sets up a research agreement with you then declares war, Yeah it could possibly be an attempt to take cash away from you. I sometimes sell luxuries to civs on my borders and take their gold, for protection.

 

[jtb1127]

No the AI does not act more realistically on a higher level. There irrational desire for war is even greater and thus less realistic.

 

[timtofly]

No offense, but this is the 100 trillionth 'I saw the AI do something stupid' post. Just pointing out that searching first is a good idea.

That aside, your post:

The AI is badly programmed, especially when it comes to battle tactics. That's why you see it being unable to take a city-state. A human player controlling those AI units would have taken the city with ease. Because the AI's tactics are so bad, it gets into these stalemated situations you describe. The way the AI is programmed is it will look to military strength rating (demographics screen) to see if it is sufficiently 'stronger' than the opponent. When it is, it then declares war and loses all its units in a horribly executed attack. Then, it evaluates (demographics again) that it is no longer strong enough to fight and sues for peace. It then rebuilds its army and the cycle starts again.

Consequently, to answer your question directly: No, the AI does not get more realistic at higher levels. It just cheats more (production/gold/science bonuses) and thus has a larger army which it throws away just the same.

It is nice though when they are trying to take out your Allied CS instead of throwing all their units at you.