[GS] How's the AI?

[_ViKinG_]

The AI can be a bit passive and it makes mistakes but it is quite capable of capturing your cities. I had America declare a surprise war on me and capture one of my cities which I struggled for a bit to recapture. Also, the AI can win a religious victory pretty easily, especially on smaller maps. You got to be very careful about that. I've lost plenty of games because I was minding my own business, aiming for a science or culture victory and missed an AI that wins a religious victory from under me.

You say they are capable of capturing your cities. But still they tok only one of your city and you got it back? They can capture maybe one city but thats it as i have seen so far.

 

[Victoria]

They won't attack adjacent units while garrisoned,

That can be quite a difficult assessment to make for coding, do you really want to reduce the strength of your fortification for what benefit.
What bugs me is walking between two walled cities and only 1 shoots at you. To me that’s a much simpler decision.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

You say they are capable of capturing your cities. But still they tok only one of your city and you got it back? They can capture maybe one city but thats it as i have seen so far.

Well, the AI (Roosevelt) took my first city and did push on towards my capital. I was in a bad position and rather than risk my capital also falling, I sued for peace. The AI might have taken my capital too if I had tried to fight it out. But lucky for me, the AI accepted peace and went home. I upgraded my units, declared war and retook my city and then made peace again.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

What is wrong with it doing this?

Its the limit of the AIs ability.

It also kicks out ranged units that could safely bombard in favor of bumping the cities strength and doing nothing with the melee unit. (which buys a couple turns at best)

 

[PhilBowles]

That can be quite a difficult assessment to make for coding, do you really want to reduce the strength of your fortification for what benefit.

The problem is, sitting statically boosting defence isn't a very good tactic to win fights - the AI is coded better than to sit units on fortify next to enemies instead of fighting back or retreating, for instance, and the Civ V AI was able to appropriately attack out of cities. You can happily leave a nearly dead unit next to a city knowing that the AI can't attack it, but it can sit there helping to besiege or be the final attacker once the defences are down.

If it genuinely can't be coded effectively for Civ VI, it would be a better solution simply to code the AI to only garrison with ranged units so the dilemma doesn't arise - which comes back to the complaint that the AI shouldn't garrison with melee units.

 

[Aristos]

Which makes sense given Civ is an empire building game not a war game

There wasn't, isn't and never will be empire building without war.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

But that's been the case throughout the series though, hasn't it? People seem to romanticize the past games.

Or we go back to playing the old versions. It's not romanticizing. My memory's bad, but I've finished a handful of Civ 5 games so far this year, including one only two weeks ago. My memory's not that bad.

As of R&F, Civ 6 is an exponential level of difficulty less than Civ 5, which was already a step down from Civ 4. The AI is significantly worse than Civ 5's (unmodded) at finishing a victory condition and fighting wars. That isn't 1UPT, it's a game design decision to make Civ 6 easier for the player to win.

None of this need necessarily interfere with your enjoyment of Civ 6; it really depends on what you want out of a civ game.

I can't help the OP out re GS, as I haven't bought it, but I can sympathize, because those are the same concerns I have in Civ 6. I wanted to read reviews about GS that suggested the AI was at least approaching Civ 5 levels, but what I've seen suggest it hasn't.

Will still eagerly await the third expansion. Maybe it will be different.

 

[acluewithout]

Getting better AI opponents is going to be a combination of better computer decision making, looking at what bonuses AI players get and when and tweaking rules to suit the AI better.

It’s clear FXS are doing the first and third. I’ve certainly seen improvements in how challenging the AI is. But yeah, more work needed.

FXS haven’t really touched the second issue - bonuses. Particularly with the new resource system, I think they really need to look again at the AI’s bonuses.

There’s also maybe a more general issue about pacing. I find that the slower I play the game, the better the AI is able to respond. Slowing the game down more (particularly research times) would really help the AI a lot.

 

[Cedbird77]

But that's been the case throughout the series though, hasn't it? People seem to romanticize the past games

I think it's a little better than pre-expansion. Not a mind altering difference and that's just the impression from a few games: I'm sure it still has big blind spots and issues but what doesn't.

Civ 5 AI was more competent in bringing overwhelming force .

It would knock me out on Emperor or at least keep me busy for 100 turns or more if they were having a good game.

The AI was also very good at being so strong end game they steam roll more.

It's time Civ 6 catch up. I would say about 20% behind

 

[Tarkin1980]

I think the AI is worse now than it ever was. The biggest problem is of course that the AI doesn't build units. They have 5 units and once they are dead, they do not replace them no matter how long the war is. I play on Immortal, which is supposed to be a challenging level. I don't want to think about what it must be like on lower levels. I'm not a coder but I can't believe it can be that hard to make the AI use it's production to build units.

Back at release, the AI was perfectly capable of beating each other. Most of my games had only a handful of civs left in the end game. Steamrolls happened. Now they rarely capture a single city.

It is also way too easy to out tech the AI, even at higher difficulties. I'm not a hardcore optimizer at all, and I still manage to beat them at Immortal.

Another gripe of mine is that the AI is way too easy to please. In all my GS games (3 finished so far), I have been best friends with all civs. Even the ones who "simply don't like me" in the beginning. Before GS, some empires always hated me no matter what I did.

One positive thing, though, is that they actually make sensible trade proposals now. I trade a lot with them and the deals are fair. Only problem is they can't take a no. They'll pester you every turn until you cave in and accept.

In conclusion, I am pretty disappointed. I don't think I will be playing Civ6 much until a major overhaul or a good AI mod comes out, which is sad because I love all the features of the game.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I think the AI is worse now than it ever was. The biggest problem is of course that the AI doesn't build units. They have 5 units and once they are dead, they do not replace them no matter how long the war is. I play on Immortal, which is supposed to be a challenging level. I don't want to think about what it must be like on lower levels. I'm not a coder but I can't believe it can be that hard to make the AI use it's production to build units.

Back at release, the AI was perfectly capable of beating each other. Most of my games had only a handful of civs left in the end game. Steamrolls happened. Now they rarely capture a single city.

In my current game India steamrolled his entire continent. I think we need to be careful about short sample size.

 

[Tarkin1980]

In my current game India steamrolled his entire continent. I think we need to be careful about short sample size.

Of course, but in 3 games on Marathon, Huge Continents, and not a single successful AI conquest...

I 100% conquered about 20 civs in these games combined, and not a single one had a proper army. Many of them didn't even have a single unit.

Something is seriously wrong.

 

[V. Soma]

I just had a game with mods:

I list the mods that are changing the game for the AI:

- FortifAI
- Jam’d Difficulty Mod
- Real Tech Tree
- Real Science Pace
- some non-tech parts of Slower Tech and more req+tweaks


I played this modded Emperor, small maps.

I was Japan, had AI Korea and Germany on my small continent. I had not much space, only 4 cities...
I went for early religion, and had only few military - Korea DoW-d me in classical age, and boy, she had iron-made swords - I had no such thing…
Korea easily captured my city on her border, it was my best city with good science and holy site…
then after the peace she attacked again in the middle ages, with knights (!) and more swords, and captured another city of mine with ease
- I was left at two cities, and I gave up… (Korea had about 6-8 cities)

Tha AI was efficient, I have to say…

 

[_ViKinG_]

Of course, but in 3 games on Marathon, Huge Continents, and not a single successful AI conquest...

I 100% conquered about 20 civs in these games combined, and not a single one had a proper army. Many of them didn't even have a single unit.

Something is seriously wrong.

Thats just sad for a big game like this. annoying from Firaxis do act like this

 

[Engeez]

Of course, but in 3 games on Marathon, Huge Continents, and not a single successful AI conquest...

I 100% conquered about 20 civs in these games combined, and not a single one had a proper army. Many of them didn't even have a single unit.

Something is seriously wrong.

Change the values in the yields XML so they build a ton of units. I did this and went overboard. 100 turns in and I had 247 military strength, 3 AI’s were over 2500. I had to levy troops with Hungary just to survive an onslaught by Norway when they DOW’d me 80 turns in. I luckily made peace b4 the 30 turns were up or I would have been dusted. Now at turn 122 scythia has a carpet on my border with 3700 strength I can see 6 catapults in my view so I luckily hit civil service already and made an alliance with Monty who borders both me and scythia. He currently has 3300 strength. Norway is also back to about 2800 strength and as I was exploring I saw about 12 longships so nothing looks good at the moment.

Also, I’m thinking of changing the values in the diplomacy actions XML so it’s waay tougher for the AI not to hate you, I love the idea of a relentless military AI

 

[PhilBowles]

In my current game India steamrolled his entire continent. I think we need to be careful about short sample size.

At release I have to say I never experienced AIs even taking each other's cities - it was a very long time before I saw one being wiped out, and that was because the defeated AI had launched all its units at me and so had nothing to defend itself with.

In general the AI remains rather poor at taking out entire civs in my experience, and I think in only one game I've ever played have as many as two civs died to other AIs - but that was one of the last games I played pre-GS.

In GS itself I've seen AIs take one another's border cities with some regularity, and when they fail to it's more an issue of simply not attacking a vulnerable city than a case of not having enough units or not attacking in force when they od choose to attack. In the late game in my last game the Khmer were able to defeat a somewhat half-hearted French attack on New York, but then I wasn't able to take the city either.

I can't conclude anything about the AI's ability to take out civs in GS from their failure to do so in one game (or three, as mentioned above), as it was a very rare occurrence previously. It was also rare - although not to the same extent as in Civ VI - in Civ V.

Also, I’m thinking of changing the values in the diplomacy actions XML so it’s waay tougher for the AI not to hate you, I love the idea of a relentless military AI

I think the new friendly AIs are a consequence of the grievance system. In normal play a nonaggressive human player won't do anything to upset AIs so they'll mostly be friendly - if you want to upset them just do things that you'd expect to annoy them, like seizing city states, breaking promises etc. (though I repeatedly broke promises not to spy on my allies and they always agreed to a new alliance).

My sense is that the grievance system is too forgiving - not enough things cause grievances (for instance settling nearby or rejecting a trade deal could cause a minor grievance), and grievances decay too quickly and/or are set at too low values (especially with cassus belli, which pretty much remove grievances altogether for declaring war). For once this is not an AI issue - as far as I can tell the AI responds appropriately based on what the grievance level is telling it to do.

This of course is a common issue with GS, and Civ VI in general: every new mechanic is set to be too forgiving for the player. Climate change has minor impacts, disasters are more often a positive thanks to added fertility than a negative. I really think Firaxis' in-house pool of playtesters is too limited.

That the designers play on low difficulties is one thing - knowing how to design the game and how to play it most efficiently are different skill sets, and their job necessarily means they need to play at a level where they will succeed most of the time in order to fully test new mechanics at all game stages. But the streams indicate that they have one or two primary 'drivers', and they play at difficulties no higher than Emperor.

They really need both better and weaker players testing the game at all difficulties, because the poor difficulty scaling is the core problem rather than the fact that the default difficulty is fairly low. Comments from the devs on the stream imply to me that they genuinely don't appreciate that Immortal and Deity aren't much more difficult than King or Emperor.

 

[Fippy]

But that's been the case throughout the series though, hasn't it? People seem to romanticize the past games

If you play IV deity, you will lose badly.
If you try for the 10th time, you will still lose badly.
After 6 months - 1 year, you might survive..but will you win?

Nopes, Civ series has always been very challenging on max difficulty.
Only with V and VI has this changed, no romance there.
Winning III & IV deity has been among the biggest challanges i had in SP,
usually coming from multi AIs are easy but they did well in keeping things interesting there.

Please wake up, you cannot compare games programmed with passion to what gets made for $$$ only.

 

[Aristos]

I just got strafed by an AI enemy fighter deployed on interception. Multiple times. It also intercepted one of my bomber runs. Other AIs are building a good amount of planes. Interesting.

Maybe it's time to give all civs more time to use the toys, Science costs are childishly cheap, especially in the later eras. More time will give the AI, and players, to deploy more weapons, including planes.

Yes, I know, I know, "mod it". I know, and will do it, but the solution should reach everyone, not only the mod addicts.

 

[glider1]

This of course is a common issue with GS, and Civ VI in general: every new mechanic is set to be too forgiving for the player. Climate change has minor impacts, disasters are more often a positive thanks to added fertility than a negative. I really think Firaxis' in-house pool of playtesters is too limited.

Thanks for your thoughts they are very useful. Keep in mind that it i set that way for a reason which is not create cheap reward thrills for new players. Forgiving settings make it much easier to write the AI code because decisions are less critical and so less detailed AI code needs to be written and bad AI decisions don't compound. Adding more punishment for bad play will cause skeleton AI code stubs to execute in highly irrational even unpredictable ways.

 

[PhilBowles]

I just got strafed by an AI enemy fighter deployed on interception. Multiple times. It also intercepted one of my bomber runs. Other AIs are building a good amount of planes. Interesting.

Planes on intercept are automated - it's essentially sentry for aircraft. That they will intercept isn't a testament to AI use of air power, it just means it will sometimes physically build planes. It's been doing that since the last patch, but still apparently can't use fighters to attack. I have been surprised that it will now bomb with some regularity, but it still won't attack cities with bombers other than those with nukes, and it doesn't use bombers to support other units' attacks.