Does the AI know how to use their cultists?

[Pfeffersack]

I really had hope for a moment that I would see the AI the first time using Cultists like a human players do...

They surrounded a city with already weakened loyalty and no quick recovery for two turns...

...only to disperse then again

No idea what causes the AI to act like that after the really promising opening. Babylon is at peace with Mali (they are even allied, but AFAIK that doesn't prevent Cultist use, right?), the Spanish they are at war with can't enter Mali territory to harm their cultists (so no need to flee) and even the Mali action of putting Victor in the city is no good reason for the inactivity between 1st and 2nd pic and aborting the operation - if Babylon would have just used their Cultists consequently here, they could have suceeded. And as shown above, the AI can now use their loyalty reducing ability (see my earlier post).

Attached is the save where the 1st screenshot was taken from; ending the turn twice should cause the AI behaviour described here.

 

[Chris41336]

In Civ VI, the response to "Does the AI know how to..." Is almost always "No".

 

[Haig]

I wrote this on another threas too, but on my game Babylon used cultists to reduce Nubia's city loyalty that turned it into a free city.

 

[MrRadar]

Another confirmation that AI now use their cultists somewhat. At one point, China, my scientific ally, decided to send some cultists my way. I was at 19/20 DV by then, btw. They used it on my three cities: Wak Kab'nal, Coba and Xunantunich for some time, but strictly one cultist per city per turn, despite having a small cloud of them around, for a hopeless -10 Loyalty hit per city per turn, which was immediately negated by positive +30 or so from my Golden Age. After a couple of dozens of turns of this vain effort, all Chinese cultists left my territory in good order, taking a different exit route from the entry, it was interesting to watch

I guess, the devs reprogrammed the AI to create some illusion of activity, but, god forbid, to present no real threat. Apart from temporary traffic blocking, as before.

 

[iammaxhailme]

^^^ Sadly, I had a similar experience in the one game I've played since the portugal patch. One guy had a big cloud of cultists, and actually moved them around unlike before... but didn't really use them well at all. I thought he was going to bomb me because my city was near his border and we weren't friends, but he just sent one or two cultists at my city and moved the others away somewhere where I couldn't see. Not sure they ever actually accomplished anything

 

[InsidiousMage]

I guess, the devs reprogrammed the AI to create some illusion of activity, but, god forbid, to present no real threat.

I feel like the AI should be able to additional things the higher up the difficulty levels you go. That would help solve some of the issues people have with the game while still keeping it enjoyable for people who play at the lower difficulty levels.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I feel like the AI should be able to additional things the higher up the difficulty levels you go. That would help solve some of the issues people have with the game while still keeping it enjoyable for people who play at the lower difficulty levels.

Please not. Thats IMO the worst possible way of doing difficulty levels, especially for feature rich games like Civ6. Also I don't see how this thought fits with the current situation: The AI might have gotten better with Cultists, by moving from none-use to insufficient/ineffective use. The diffculty level probably makes zero difference here ATM - aside from the AI having probably more Cultists around on high levels, getting them earlier and -if targetting the human player- a weaker target (and that's enough difficulty scaling for my taste).
But the matter is that even on Deity AI Cultists are still no real threat, even in situations where they easily could be, if used properly. If now a 2nd behaviour improvement should come, why restrict it to high difficulty levels? Why we should hard-protect Settler difficulty players from such a "threat"? Beside that this makes playing boring, it is also bad for creating a learning curve (as it means that if you move up a level suddenly you play a new game in regard to what your opponents do). Numerical handicaps (like boni to production/science output) in the background do this a lot better. Already the extra starting units are a problematic tool for separating the difficulty levels for me, but special AI rule exceptions or even dumbing them down on purpose is a no-go for me.