How to get Ai to wipe out civs and conquer the world?

[Taa]

Hi

I have been playing this game for some time now, and sadly the Ai seem to have lost all ability to conquer the world, domination victory look like a joke, only player do it. Ai only care about small conflicts, go to war, achive almost nothing, and then go back to normal again.

So in my frustration I have tried different things to see if Ai can wipe out other and conquer the world. So far I'm very disappointed. This is what I have tried so far:
Give Ai all traits that support war attitude
Increased minimal length of war 3 times
Used Ai mods that improve Ai behavior/strategy

So I ask for your help, what can/must I do to make it possible for Ai to conquer the world and kill of other civs or players?

Edit:
After working on tweaking mods/files to make Ai more challenging with my friends, we are pretty happy so far.
Just remember we have very limited knowledge about the game and how the mods/tweaks works, we just ended up with this settings/tweak after testing. For all I know many settings can be conflicting and counterproductive.

Here is what we have done:

Critical "tweaked" mods - remove from steam folder/unsubscribe and put into \Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Mods
AI+ - basic mod for improving Ai operations.
Aggressive AI Traits - make Ai more aggressive and remove war weariness
Aggressive AI Agenda Overhaul - give more Ai's better war/expansion related agendas
Smoother Difficulty 2.0 - give Ai combat bonus vs barbs + remove extra settlers, tech, civics and combat bonus vs players
Smoother Difficulty 2.0 - Ignore the new difficulty levels since they are not in Ai+ mod. Play only on deity.

Optional "tweaked" mods - remove from steam folder/unsubscribe and put into \Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Mods
Radiant Stronger Cities - give ai attack bonus vs districts/cities + reduce walls strength
Settlers Retreat - made both settlers and builders unable to be capture since Ai never capture them
Better AI Diplomacy - make Ai less friendly
Mod Leaders Only - remove bad performing Ai's
No AI Cheats - remove extra units/settlers etc from Ai at higher difficulty levels

Tweaked original files
Make backup of org files first, and then just overwrite or merge with other changes you have made.
DiplomaticActions.xml - Reduce/remove warmongering (Grievances) - optional find mod that do the same
GlobalParameters.xml - Reduce/remove war grievances/weariness + increased minimum length of war so Ai have enough time to achieve something
Eras.xml - remove extra start settlers/builders but give Ai extra warriors at start to fight of barbarians at deity.

Settings for starting new game:
Critical = Play on deity to enable all mechanics in Ai+ mod
Suggestions: Ai will perform better with smaller map, less obstacles and fewer landmasses. The larger map, the more mountains/water and number of landmasses, the Ai will perform worse.

What to expect with all this mods/tweaking:
Ai should settle more, more wars will happen and Ai will conquer more land.

We are still doing testing and we have a few different approaches, my friend is testing with only one continent since Ai have issues with settling several continents, but I will come with more here later.

Here is all the files and mods tweaked.
https://app.box.com/s/yrbntgddroenfg0c3k2wnn2bl83v0f65

Just remember my friends and me are complete noob's when it come to understanding mods/tweaks, all we have done is testing with spectator mod and played the game, so there can be many illogical things here but it somehow work for us. So use at your own risk
Have fun

 

[Saijiin]

One thing i tried in civ 5 ( not sure it's an option in civ 6) is set the only victory conditon as Domination. Unchecked all other boxes. Was crazy to see all the war. Good luck!

 

[Furycrab]

I'm a little curious too what happens in 6 if you turn off all other victory types.

It's a bit of a Catch 22 problem for the devs. If the AI is good at conquering other AI, then it means that same AI is also sometimes very bad at defending itself. Civ has a pretty big defenders advantage in a lot of scenarios, so it doesn't always make a whole lot of sense for that ever to be easy.

It does bring the question of should the AI be ruthless when an advantage presents itself... but that's also a bit of a cursed problem for Civ because then players complain about how their BFF for 200 turns suddenly decided to declare war.

It's also not always the most interactive games when an AI starts running away. Bad memories of finding Alex in Civ 5 games where he had managed to clean a continent.

 

[Disgustipated]

I'm a little curious too what happens in 6 if you turn off all other victory types.

Nothing happens unfortunately.

The AI seems to stop conquering in my games after 2 capitals or so. The last one to do that in my game was Alexander on the Ynamp Europe map (it's a large size one- not the Firaxis one), they conquered Gorgo and Ottomans. They did continue to conquer city states, but seemed to stop conquering AI players. Though they did take one Hungary city, but loyalty was a problem.

And loyalty is one reason I suspect the AI can't conquer the world. And I still think they cut back on conquests when amenities are a problem. Someone showed that happened, though I haven't tested it myself.

 

[japanesesamurai]

They are able to “blitzkrieg” their way on a pangea map without many choke points. I’ve seen Germany conquering 3/4th of the map once. However, for some reason, they fail to eliminate the human player later in the game. Even with 10+ robots and nuclear weapons built they still cant do it. At some point they halt their way to victory for some reason. Also smaller maps are easier for the AI to play

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I'm a little curious too what happens in 6 if you turn off all other victory types.

The AI don't know the victory types are switched off so will still try and win in ways that aren't enabled.

 

[Tech Osen]

Saw Shaka throw wave after wave of cuirassier and cavalry armies at a Scottish city with Renaissance walls. To very little avail of course. Kept putting units in spots where the city and one or two encampments could finish them off. AI can't handle proper walls.

 

[oSiyeza]

Not the first time this question is on the table. There are two different things at play here in my opinion. The lack of competence of the AI, and the lack of expansionism.

First, the AI is not very good at attacking, the problem in my opinion is not so much the lack of competence of the AI, as how much the game is designed to favor the defender; This makes very easy for the human player to hold a position against a superior force, and is very easy also to abuse the defensive combat system. Regardless, I would love some more love in AI combat. Though, it has improved a lot and can still improve much more...

More importantly, the AI is limited by design to stop expanding in most cases once one or two cities are conquered.
Specially in the later game, designers try to implement a system where the player is not dominated by an AI that has grown too powerful to avoid frustration, and tried also to simulate the war weariness and the totally utopycal over-wellminded conception of a world where modern and democratic societies dislike war and favor human rights, and AI just worries too much about being considered a warmonger...

Unfortunately, the lack of expansion makes the AI look much more weak than it is. As expansionism is related to science and production, and lack of aggresion means the AI is rarely perceived as proactive... Such a shame.

 

[fantsu]

I am a big fan of smaller maps and faster game speeds, and I can tell AI does better when the map is small, I dont know how it works, but when the empires are smaller and have fewer cities, AIs cannot stop the invasion as well. It certainly feels that sometimes the AI just gives up the invasion even when it succeeds taking the first city.

 

[japanesesamurai]

Also a major prblem is their fascination with city states. If you declare on your neighbour for instance, the AI prefers to attack one of your allied city states on the other side of the map. Probably because this CS is the weakest target.
Now this also happens when AI fights AI. Instead of fighting each other, they fight city states, lose half of their army and peace out.

A mod which deletes the terra incognita for AI would improve the AI a lot I think.
As in EU4. Actually in EU4, the FOW is removed for AI.
Someone should really consider making this

 

[Taa]

As player I can raze cities and never worry about loyalty or other expanding issues, and this way I can wipe out other civs easily. I have never see Ai do this, it seems like the developer don't want wars and domination victory, look like they want everyone to live in harmony and deal with conflicts in "UN", so political correct of them, but a horrible idea for a game.

Anyway Im using several mods now to improve Ai's war and conquering ability.
AI+
Real Strategy (AI)
[URL='https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1276884437']Better AI Diplomacy (unchanged Joint War version)[/URL]
Aggressive AI Agenda Overhaul
Aggressive AI Traits
Smoother Difficulty 2.0 (updated for GS and added tourism scaling)
AI Experience Boost
AI Slight Food Boost
Gold Deflation

I also made this tweaks to make things easier for Ai/harder for player:

Reduced wall strength 50% (Easier for Ai to capture cities)
Less trade/friendship/peace offers from Ai
More minimum war turns (So Ai have to fight longer wars and hopefully achieve more)
Reduced all war weariness and grievance penalties (I think all this war regulating mechanics have too much effect on Ai)
Reduce cost of producing units 50%/buildings 25%/districts 25% (on marathon) (Make it easier for Ai to react to invasion)
Reduce size of city when captured to 30% of original size (Reduce benefit of war)

Im still testing and things is much better now, but Ai still is slow wiping out other civs.
Anyone have any mod suggestion or tweaks that have improved Ai's ability to conquer and wipe out others?

 

[kaspergm]

Someone might correct me on this, but am I right in assuming that the way AI is coded with respect to peace deals actually prevents them from actively elimination other civs?

I have seen AI civs eliminate other civs (albeit rarely), and all the cases I can remember, the eliminated AI lost their last city not to conquest, but from loyalty drop. It feels like the attacking AI will always value whatever peace deal the loosing AI throws at them higher than eliminating the civ (which may bound in loyalty problems, poor deal evaluation, fear of warmonger penalty, a combination of those or something entirely different).

 

[Trigan Emperor]

I am a big fan of smaller maps and faster game speeds, and I can tell AI does better when the map is small, I dont know how it works, but when the empires are smaller and have fewer cities, AIs cannot stop the invasion as well. It certainly feels that sometimes the AI just gives up the invasion even when it succeeds taking the first city.

I also play Small map size (with 10 civs, 15 city-states) and Civs often get eliminated. On a small map size with an increased number of Civs, a weaker civilization might only have, maybe, four cities, and so it's easier for them to get taken out.

Here's a screenshot from a recent game, from 1780 AD, I had to abandon because Alexander was so far ahead (in land, tech, culture). Alexander, in grey, eliminated Mali, and Eleanor of Aquitane, in pink, has almost eliminated the Swedes.

Spoiler :

Also, for more challenging warfare against the AI, you could try the Tough A.I. mod (which increases AI Combat Bonus against the human player).

 

[679x]

The AI don't know the victory types are switched off so will still try and win in ways that aren't enabled.

From my anecdotal experience, that doesn't quite seem to be the case. When religious victory is turned on, the AI goes wild to try to get the great prophets before the player can, and unless I run the holy site project, I don't get one in time. With religious victory turned off, though, multiple great prophets remain unclaimed all game long, and many areas around the map - often my own cities, since I don't often go for a religion - remain unconverted.

I remember a while ago we had a thread on this topic and it was suspected that the AI will only capture cities if they actively WANT to conquer, rather than if they are capable of doing so, and, like @oSiyeza said, the AI seems to be too concerned about warmonger penalties to keep going.

Without knowing too much definitively about how the AI functions, my hypothesis is this:
- Some AI that don't have it in their minds to conquer end up building up grievances against other AI through normal gameplay.
- The AI starts to hate other AI because of said grievances, and they go to war.
- One or both of the AI don't keep a goal of conquering in mind, so while they may fight and weaken cities, they won't actually capture any.
- The AI makes peace with few cities flipping, even if there were easy opportunities to gain cities.

Or, if the civ is being a warmonger, they may want to capture some stuff, but eventually slow down the conquering because they are concerned about amenities, war weariness, or diplomatic warmongering penalties.

I would say that they'd also be concerned about loyalty, but really, I find that hard to believe, considering how frequently the AI settles cities in crazy spots that end up immediately flipping to the player.

 

[Dotsworthy]

I'm pretty sure there was a post on here which showed what happened if AIs were given a large boost to amenities and they became super happy to go to war, and when it comes to settling they dont mind loyalty issues once the map begins to fill up.

If there was a smoother difficulty type mod that have a boost to amenities and extra gold to buy units that would definitely help.

The other thing we need is for the AI to actually chase a victory condition and as they dawdle far too much and choose victory conditions they have no chance of winning at turn 250.

 

[Chefofrats]

Whatever the developers do to improve AI combat, I hope they will refrain from using cheap tricks like the bonus to amenities and extra gold to buy units proposed above. Such "solutions" make any planning in a war against the AI impossible. How can I know what army will be enough against the AI if they can just randomly buy units left and right? What's more, it would be an excuse to refrain from making more sensible adjustments to AI combat behaviour, like telling it not to move a unit with a sliver of life left onto water within range of walls or archers. "Let's just give a stupid AI more units". What kind of a fix would that be? Not a good one, that's for sure.

 

[Beaver79]

Wait a very very long time. Have you ever watched any of the Drew battle royals on youtube? He puts all of the civs on 1 map and doesn't stop until someone conquers everything. The one I'm looking at right now ended on turn 4448 when everyone had death robots. It's the only way they can take each others walls down.

I've watched another video where a guy gave a civ a death robot in the ancient era and they just take a few cities and stop.

 

[Abaxial]

Once players have walls round their cities, the AI has a very hard time trying to take them, and often just sends mobs of low-grade units against high-level walls. It's interesting to see how their army strength abruptly decreases as they waste units.

 

[Chefofrats]

I once had the AI quickly reduce my walls to rubble and take the city down to 0... And then refrain from taking it. The attack was a surprise and it happened so fast there was nothing I could do - I had no gold to buy units and my army was far away. But it all proved pointless in the end. The developers should fix algorithms that cause such glitchy behaviour, not give the AI more artificial bonuses.

 

[Dotsworthy]

We are four years into Civ Vi with Vii a couple of years away so it's unlikely there will be major improvements in AI other than some slight tweaks here and there. Bonuses are not ideal but they can help make an increasingly complex game simpler for the AI and at least give us a challenge.

Started up a new game and watched Norway send two unescorted settlers near my lands for me to steal, presumably because he didn't build any units other than boats. So bonuses can't solve everything.