Does the AI know how to use their cultists?

[iammaxhailme]

I used a combination of Eleanor's ability and cultists to snatch tons of Scottish and Mayan cities. The Maya could easily get some of theirs back, but it seems they don't know how to activate their cultists. They just... sit there.

 

[Piranga]

The answer is No.

The developers are releasing an expansion full of content that the AI is incapable of handling.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Cultists are being classified as Support Units rather than Religious Units.

AFAIK, there are codes limiting AI's religious units spam currently - religious spamming was much worse in vanilla and R&F - but there isn't any limits or caps regarding support units. So AI will just spam them.

As a result I usually enable the Unit Limit Enforcement mod when playing Secret Societies, in which the number of support units are based on the number of Encampments, and the max cap is based on map size. I nearly begin to treat this mod as a must-have now.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

They do use the cultists, but are unable to do so efficiently. For purposes of generating relics, the AI does mostly just fine.

 

[Tech Osen]

They use them very efficiently, as roadblocks.

 

[Pfeffersack]

They do use the cultists, but are unable to do so efficiently. For purposes of generating relics, the AI does mostly just fine.

"Use" in the sense of trying to reduce loyalty of others city or only, as Tech Osen points out, in the way of positioning them around cities and waiting to have them killed for relicts? I have never witnesses an AI cultist using a load for loyalty reduction, but I could be easily wrong as I played only a few games in the mod and I also don't know if the following patches changed any behaviour. For me it would be already an improvement, if the AI would use the loads for loyalty reduction at all - at least that should be possible to code, IMO. And even if they still miss the last efficiency in actually bringing doen loyalty enough to take the city, they would be still better of than with just that blocking behaviour (for relic generation it doesn't matter how the cultists are taken from the map and reducing loyalty still hurts ressource yields of an enemy city)

 

[Haig]

When they are patched to reduce loyalty they will bring a big twist to games with Secret Societies. Opponent with a cultist army will be a big danger!

 

[Glassmage]

Just like a lot of other features in civ6, AI don’t know how to use these things properly...

 

[Palo]

If the AI knew how to use cultists properly there would be 300 decibel screams for a nerf. They would be terrifying.

 

[Zenstrive]

maybe they know how to use it, calculate the required numbers of unit to convert a city, then go "huh" since it's mostly useless without accumulating summoning ritual project and just use them for relic generators and roadblocks

 

[Pfeffersack]

The Elder Ones have send their Cultists to necro this thread After the governor title flood has be banned and HO entered the scene of secret societies you can consider worth to be picked, Voidsingers Cultists and the AI are literally the last roadblock (needed to do that pun ) I see for this mode to be truly entertaining:

Can we please stop the AI from mindlessly spamming Cultists (unless they really have cities with dwindling loyalty as target available) and/or change their unit class to something allowing other units to enter the tiles they are on, when at peace with the Cultists owning civ? I'm really struggling with passing through the land of a Voidsinger AI, as the limited LOS makes it nearly impossible to find a passage (if you send your units "blind" in tiles with FoW and the target tile is blocked by a Cultists, the movement is aborted, but your movepoints are deducted...)

 

[iammaxhailme]

Yeah, i have stopped using SS mode as often as I used to. The main reason is that it's just really imbalanced (voidsingers almost always being my society of choice) but also becuase I'm tired of seeing a zillion AI cultists sitting there doing nothing.

 

[Abaxial]

The AI can't use soothsayers either.

 

[Nerevatar]

Has this finally been fixed in the january patch?

 

[InsidiousMage]

Has this finally been fixed in the january patch?

NOPE!

 

[TreVor_ish]

Has this finally been fixed in the january patch?

not at all

 

[iammaxhailme]

I don't think this'll ever be fixed unless a modder does it tbh

 

[Nerevatar]

It is stuff like this that stops me from buying more DLC to be honest... Blantantly broken and visible stuff not fixed for months upon months.

I will just have to change voidsingers in my SS mod so cultists is removed and replaced by something else - that is if I feel like returning. So sad it is needed..

 

[Pfeffersack]

From the patchnotes...

AI will make better use of cultists.

The good news is that the AI now indeed uses Cultists vs. cities to reduce their loyalty - see my "smoking gun":

You can critize the targets they pick in the above case (both targeted cities are full loyalty and gain more than +10 p.T. back), but at least we have clearly moved from "AI never uses their Cultists to reduce loyalty of opponents cities" to "they do it, but [insert frequency of this happening] waste them vs. targets they can't effectively hurt". Taking in account that above game is Marathon one and Babylon is not a religious civ per se, I even have hope that under better circumstances they might achieve something with their new voidsinging acitivites

I'm curious if now someone can come up with an example where they manage to flip a city

 

[iammaxhailme]

That's cool. I haven't played since the Portugal patch was out, but I'm gonna play an SS game and see how it goes.