I haven't play Civ VI since April, has the AI improved much since then?

[Leathaface]

I heard about a couple of updates since then. Is the game more challenging? I played on Immortal and didn't get much of a difficult time.

 

[Victoria]

The answer is sometimes you can be surprised.

 

[leandrombraz]

The AI got considerably better on land combat in the September patch, specifically using ranged units. You gonna feel the difference. Not AI related but the June patch made some considerable changes to production that changed the game quite a lot. What you played in April is quite different from what is available now.

June patch notes
September patch notes

 

[tomekum]

I heard about a couple of updates since then. Is the game more challenging? I played on Immortal and didn't get much of a difficult time.

Unfortunately it didn't improve much. I just finished my 2nd game (first time I played on release and played few games in between but didn't finish them) and I won cultural victory on deity. It's really sad because this game has a lot of potential. It has great graphics and the mechanics are also fun. But the braindead AI ruin it for me. I really like to be challenged by AI, even loose some cities and reconquer them later but such scenario is impossible at current state

 

[Lord Shadow]

I hadn't played since basically vanilla launch until tackling GS with all DLCs recently, and this is my perception, playing on King difficulty:

• Increased general land warfare (including ranged unit) performance. Humans really can't be dumb/overconfident on the field, unlike Civ5/earlier Civ6 versions.
  
• Massive city defenses are still both boon and doom for the AI: humans have to make concerted, coordinated attacks to take cities, yet this defensive advantage is an offensive nightmare for the AI. They may swarm a city with melee units, yet be fearful of attacking it due to lack of siege support.
  
• AI doesn't devote enough resources to its naval forces. It only shyly plays the naval game at all. I've noticed it trying to push land units to make amphibious invasions overseas, yet the lack of escorts make the transports easy targets.
  
• AI still doesn't use airpower in any form. Doesn't even build Aerodromes as far as I could tell. I'm not sure why this is so, considering at the very least it could build some anti-air, Aerodromes here and there and put Fighters up on patrol to give human players some obstacles to air dominance. I'm not really asking for it to effectively use carriers and strategic bombing ops.

Overall, I think the AI could use some reprioritization of air and sea as far as warfare's concerned. Hopefully without weakening its land game too much.

Unsurprisingly, it's fairly competent as far as the pure mechanical game is concerned, pursuing the more numerical victory types (Science, Culture, presumably Religious but I usually leave that off).

 

[acluewithout]

The answer is sometimes you can be surprised.

Immortal. Renaissance. Peter captured my favourite City with Privateers and Medieval Horse Guys. I even had Walls.

I was surprised.

He was a lot more Surprised when I move Amani to next door Geneva, then Levied Geneva's Musket Men (I hadn't got to Niter yet) and re-took my City.

Awesome. Just awesome.

 

[tomekum]

Immortal. Renaissance. Peter captured my favourite City with Privateers and Medieval Horse Guys. I even had Walls.

I was surprised.

He was a lot more Surprised when I move Amani to next door Geneva, then Levied Geneva's Musket Men (I hadn't got to Niter yet) and re-took my City.

Awesome. Just awesome.

I started another deity game, this time with Incas and its also a cakewalk. It's another game where every AI is very peaceful and didn't declare war on me. The game was starting to get so dull that I started the war with Hungary for no reason. I just want to play with combat mechanics. Is there a mod that makes the AI more likely to declare war? It would surely spice up the gameplay and make it a bit more challenging.

 

[Victoria]

this time with Incas and its also a cakewalk.

Try a more terrain open central civ like Poland.

 

[tomekum]

Try a more terrain open central civ like Poland.

The thing is that I won with Poland the last time I played it. But you're right playing as Inca I have half of the continent separated with mountains so the AI don't see me as target. I think next time I will finally play on pangea with old world settings, so there are less mountains and select most of the available warmongers.

But the problem is that it is very easy to get declaration of friendship with AI. Well maybe next game will be more exciting.

 

[James_Champagne]

Right now I'm playing the Terra map (on King, which is a new experience for me as I usually play on Prince), with 12 civs (that's including my civ). With all of the civs starting on one continent save for one (the Maori), there's been a fair amount of warfare, and at the stage I'm currently at (the Medieval Era) 3 civs have been utterly wiped out so far. The best was at the very start of the Medieval Era, when Kongo (who had already defeated Greece) went to war with Germany and Nubia; that same turn the Mairi declared war on the Kongo, while the Aztecs and Phoenecians (also on the same turn) declared war on Rome... then a few turns later the Zulu declared war on Kongo as well (a war that I eventually joined in). So right now of the 9 remaining civs the only one who isn't in a war of some sort is Canada.

 

[tomekum]

Right now I'm playing the Terra map (on King, which is a new experience for me as I usually play on Prince), with 12 civs (that's including my civ). With all of the civs starting on one continent save for one (the Maori), there's been a fair amount of warfare, and at the stage I'm currently at (the Medieval Era) 3 civs have been utterly wiped out so far. The best was at the very start of the Medieval Era, when Kongo (who had already defeated Greece) went to war with Germany and Nubia; that same turn the Mairi declared war on the Kongo, while the Aztecs and Phoenecians (also on the same turn) declared war on Rome... then a few turns later the Zulu declared war on Kongo as well (a war that I eventually joined in). So right now of the 9 remaining civs the only one who isn't in a war of some sort is Canada.

Did any AI declared war on you? I think that if the player is doing well and is on par with other civs then they are less likely too declare war and more inclined to declaration of friendship.

 

[Victoria]

Yeah Terra map is a good option.

 

[James_Champagne]

Did any AI declared war on you? I think that if the player is doing well and is on par with other civs then they are less likely too declare war and more inclined to declaration of friendship.

No AI has declared on me yet, but the thing is, I'm not doing very well: currently in a dark age, losing cities to loyalty, kind of behind on the tech game compared to the other civs, and so on. The civs that are doing well are Kongo, Zulu and Rome, and they've been the most aggressive so far this game.

 

[tomekum]

No AI has declared on me yet, but the thing is, I'm not doing very well: currently in a dark age, losing cities to loyalty, kind of behind on the tech game compared to the other civs, and so on. The civs that are doing well are Kongo, Zulu and Rome, and they've been the most aggressive so far this game.

In my current game my neighbors also waged some wars but at the same time they were both friendly towards me. Maybe they changed the AI to be more friendly to player.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Try a more terrain open central civ like Poland.

You aren't kidding... I've had some horrid grassland starts with this Civ in the last couple days.
Deity Standard Pangaea.

 

[Leathaface]

Playing on Immortal, i'm in the Industrial era with Rome. I've 150 Science and my nearest rival Kupe has 103 Science. I feel like i'm going to cruise to a Science victory like in the past.

 

[bbbt]

The AI is a decent bit better in unit handling, tho they are building walls a lot later now, which hurts them. On the balance though, I much more feel the need to be more advanced technologically to steamroll the AI in a conquest attempt, where that was previously not true.

Haven't seen any improvement in terms of empire building/victory focus/etc though.

 

[acluewithout]

I think the AI is being criticised a little unfairly regarding walls. It seems the AI builds Walls and Encampments more situationally, which is probably actually a good thing rather than just spamming walls. I’ve noticed in a few games that if I start ramping up military, that seems to trigger the AI doing the same and then it starts getting Walls up.

The AI is also building better Cities. Not always the best layouts, but some cool Cities and less terrible decisions (although I did just see the return of the one tile Chicken Pizza).

The AI is still fairly passive though. Mid to late game, relationships and balance of power seem very static unless I actively poke other Civs.

 

[vladisimo]

The answer is sometimes you can be surprised.

This. I m playing now as jefferson's america and montezuma is realy giving me a hard time ever since the start of the game for the first time. He actualy used his bigger army and just threw them at my cityes and din t let me advance, I think I ll make the breakthrough in his defence in a couple of turns, but for the first time since I played this game I had an AI give me a hard time in a war. Throwing their units at your cityes and targeting your ranged siege weapons are easy things that should be implemented for the AI to use and that shoukd definetly give us a harder time conquering (this is on immortal difficulty on a TSL map).

Playing on Immortal, i'm in the Industrial era with Rome. I've 150 Science and my nearest rival Kupe has 103 Science. I feel like i'm going to cruise to a Science victory like in the past.

Well I gues games are just diferent sometimes. I'm America in the industrial era and have 340 science, koreea has 350 , brazil 300 and australia(the leader ) has probably science above mine(haven t discovered them yet but I know they are the leader).This is also on Immortal.

 

[miaasma]

the AI is kind of randomly nice or aggressive depending on mostly behind the scenes factors and nothing evident

i've gone directly against some people's agendas and had them be friendly towards me afterwards, and satisfied other people's agendas and have it make no difference