[GS] How's the AI?

[Engeez]

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.

Just change some of the military settings slightly in the yields.xml and you get this on immortal:

I agree 100% though that the problem is that the AI needs to be more bloodthirsty once your friendly they never backstab enough.

 

[Starwars]

They do sometimes though but it's rare that it matters.

Case in point. I'm playing Sweden, I'm really close to a culture victory. My alliance with Scotland ends, so I try to declare friendship again but he refuses. Like 4 or 5 turns later he declares war on me and shows up with tanks and a fricking Giant Death Robot (and he had more of them in his homeland). First war I get into in this game. I have a handful of units spread out across my empire, a really pathetic force. In the city he approaches I have a musketman. So I figure, this is gonna hurt bad even though I'm confident I'll win in a few turns.

So what does he do with the units? Well... not much of anything really. He pillage a few tiles. The GDR *sits on the same tile for the remainder of the game without doing anything at all*.

It's just so stupid. He could've completely wrecked me, I had the most pathetic defense ever. But even so, he just didn't do anything outside of pillaging a few tiles. And then I won a few turns later.

 

[RohirrimElf]

Only played one game till renaissance. I was friends with everyone i met untill i captured and annexed 3 city states. No wars so far on my side. It might get interesting when i denounce and declare war on England. I would be the big bully of the world. Just a test to see what the AI is capable of. Not my normal playstyle. What i think that would happen is a big number of nations working against me on world congress. Without much action on warfare. But i hope to be pleasantly surprised. So far Sweden did give me trouble on religious wars. I did not have enough faith to fully enhance my religion. Due to endless apostles swarms of Sweden. Playing on emperor. I had to convert religion in my capital like four times with inquisitors when i could safely aproach it with religious units.

 

[Leathaface]

From my 3 games with GS the AI is still poor at claiming victory, i've won each game easily. I can't decide if the AI is better at warfare since other Civs have all been friendly so far.

 

[PhilBowles]

Observations from my ongoing game:

I'd thought I had a long island to myself and five city states - it turns out there was a northern landbridge to the west, and the Inca used it to invade Preslav, east to Lisbon, then south towards Nazca and Bologna.

As Sweden, I was determined to keep Bologna. When Pachacuti declared war and had worn down the defenders, I declared a protectorate war. I only had a couple of crossbows, but hoped Antioch would use its forces to attack since I pulled them into the war with me.

This is just after I'd defeated the Inca attack waves. Bologna defended itself impressively well, but there was a serious issue with the Incan AI: since they'd declared war on Bologna and were still focused on taking it, the Inca units completely ignored mine (and Antioch's, though I can't recall those doing much). Worse still, Pachacuti kept throwing new units away by bringing them up in twos or threes over the water.

The AI really needs some way to adjust its priorities once a new war is declared, rather than doggedly persisting in trying to finish the last one. This seems to be an issue specific to the AI obsession with city states - if an AI attacks a civ's city and is defeated, I found in my first GS game it will often offer peace instead of sending in reinforcements. But it isn't coded to be able to make peace with city states, which can only happen at all if they end up at war with the suzerain and accept peace with the suzerain.

It is, admittedly, a comparatively niche case where the AI actually fails to take a city state and that CS is actively protected by a player, but it's yet another case where the AI suffers from its city state obsession (having said that the Inca are actually doing better scorewise in most categories than they were, so credit's due for being able to pursue a gameplan while throwing endless units away).

Right as I finished last night's session, Pachacuti was back attacking Nazca (which I liberated in the previous war). Once he moves back on Bologna the same will no doubt repeat, though he has better units now. I may just need to keep Nazca next time just so the AI pathfinding doesn't see Bologna as an accessible target - I don't want Nazca, which is just an area of flat desert, but it is at least another terrain type for the open-air museum (though I have access to a better desert site).

On the CS side, they need to be able to build units to replenish losses - Bologna still has no army, though it did at least repair its wall. Nazca never built a new wall, but it had pop 2 and was in a terrible production area so I don't know whether that's an AI issue.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I feel like this is an AI issue. The AI will often declare a surprise war early on (classical era or before), do nothing and then sue for peace and actually offer the player something in exchange for peace. This just happened to me again in my game I am playing now. Indonesia declared a surprise war against me (Sweden), moved a few chariots and spearmen around, maybe pillaged 1 or 2 tiles, I rushed some swordsmen up to the front and easily pushed them back. Indonesia offered me horses in exchange for peace. I think this happens because the AI thinks your military is weak which triggers the logic to declare a surprise war. But then when the human player upgrades units and/or builds a few more, suddenly the AI judges the human player's military as strong and so offers concessions in exchange in peace. This is what happened in my current game. I had neglected my military, spamming settlers. I only had 1 warrior, 1 swordsmen and 2 archers and they were off fighting barbarians, when the AI declared war. So the AI must have thought my military was weak. But of course, I upgrade my warrior to a swordsmen, build 2 more swordsmen and an archer. So now, I have 4 swordsmen and 3 archers, a bigger military which the AI's swarm of chariots could not handle.

 

[ThunderLizard2]

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.

Is it possible to do a good AI mod like Vox Populi now? Civ 5 is again not working on my Win 10 machine and I'd like to get back into Civ after a long break. Civ IV BTS graphics are just too old for me to enjoy anymore.

 

[PhilBowles]

Is it possible to do a good AI mod like Vox Populi now? Civ 5 is again not working on my Win 10 machine and I'd like to get back into Civ after a long break. Civ IV BTS graphics are just too old for me to enjoy anymore.

Not a modder, but I doubt it. From what I understand the highly praised AI mods for both Civ IV - Rhyse and Fall - and Civ V - Vox Populi - only became possible after the game's source code was released. It hasn't been for Civ VI and probably won't be until the game's release cycle is considered fully complete.

 

[PhilBowles]

Observations from my ongoing game:

I'd thought I had a long island to myself and five city states - it turns out there was a northern landbridge to the west, and the Inca used it to invade Preslav, east to Lisbon, then south towards Nazca and Bologna.

As Sweden, I was determined to keep Bologna. When Pachacuti declared war and had worn down the defenders, I declared a protectorate war. I only had a couple of crossbows, but hoped Antioch would use its forces to attack since I pulled them into the war with me.

This is just after I'd defeated the Inca attack waves. Bologna defended itself impressively well, but there was a serious issue with the Incan AI: since they'd declared war on Bologna and were still focused on taking it, the Inca units completely ignored mine (and Antioch's, though I can't recall those doing much). Worse still, Pachacuti kept throwing new units away by bringing them up in twos or threes over the water.

The AI really needs some way to adjust its priorities once a new war is declared, rather than doggedly persisting in trying to finish the last one. This seems to be an issue specific to the AI obsession with city states - if an AI attacks a civ's city and is defeated, I found in my first GS game it will often offer peace instead of sending in reinforcements. But it isn't coded to be able to make peace with city states, which can only happen at all if they end up at war with the suzerain and accept peace with the suzerain.

It is, admittedly, a comparatively niche case where the AI actually fails to take a city state and that CS is actively protected by a player, but it's yet another case where the AI suffers from its city state obsession (having said that the Inca are actually doing better scorewise in most categories than they were, so credit's due for being able to pursue a gameplan while throwing endless units away).

Right as I finished last night's session, Pachacuti was back attacking Nazca (which I liberated in the previous war). Once he moves back on Bologna the same will no doubt repeat, though he has better units now. I may just need to keep Nazca next time just so the AI pathfinding doesn't see Bologna as an accessible target - I don't want Nazca, which is just an area of flat desert, but it is at least another terrain type for the open-air museum (though I have access to a better desert site).

On the CS side, they need to be able to build units to replenish losses - Bologna still has no army, though it did at least repair its wall. Nazca never built a new wall, but it had pop 2 and was in a terrible production area so I don't know whether that's an AI issue.

Tried the same trick much later when Pachacuti eventually declared war on Bologna again. He'd learned from last time, it seems, and came prepared to attack me back. Lost my small standing army and, having lost Bologna already, made peace before he took one of my cities - I'm on course for cultural and diplomatic victory and it wasn't worth the resources to jeopardise that by trying to fight off tanks and rocket artillery with biplanes and field cannon (somehow, despite being an early science leader, my tech progress stalled - while Pachacuti owns half the map to help power his science).

 

[Acken]

Not a modder, but I doubt it. From what I understand the highly praised AI mods for both Civ IV - Rhyse and Fall - and Civ V - Vox Populi - only became possible after the game's source code was released. It hasn't been for Civ VI and probably won't be until the game's release cycle is considered fully complete.

Yes. Until there is access to the code like for Civ5 and Civ4 you won't get big overhauls. The best you can do for the AI in civ6 at this stage is through number tweaking. Which can achieve some improvement nonetheless.

As for the thread regarding the state of Civ6 AI it is hardly surprising to me. After the initial release and looking at where the expansion/patches were going the game is clearly aiming for immersion and story telling rather than challenge and strategic depth. There is simply zero effort being put in re-balancing the game (depth) or AI (challenge). We may be just too small a public for them to put resources into it. I don't know how it will work long term but we'll see. I've personally made my mourning and either play older game for that: Civ4 and Civ5 (modded) or entirely different games. Between the AI and balance issues, min maxers are going to keep getting sad with civ6.

Civ6 works for my girlfriend who is the 'please don't hit me' kind of player so at least she's making it worth the money paid.