I'm on settler difficulty and civs constantly declare surpise war on me

[BackseatTyrant]

Why? Because I'm their neighbour, and prioritized civilian efforts over military expansion. Even when I don't get outright defeated, the war requires so many resources I end up falling behind on things intended to focus on.

What irks me the most, is that this is apparently the type of gameplay people here want, apparently. I've seen nothing but complaints about the AI being "too passive" and "too peaceful", and they play on deity!

 

[Equilin]

Because this is Civilization, not a Sims game. If you're weaker then it's logical to attack and take stuff from you. No great empire in history got away with little military to defend itself (not necessarily expanding even).
The complains i see is that AI has a really high bar of military strength comparison, so if you have a decent force then they will never declare despite clearly having an advantage, at least an era or two into the game.

 

[Evie]

Yeah, that's a bad argument Equilin, because the game lets you get away with the opposite - focusing entirely on Total War (building/buying units, researching units, upgrading units, and using units to attack your enemy) all game long without a problem. Yet no great empire in history got away with that for long, either. Those that tried generally collapsed within a generation.

The anti-peaceful-play mechanisms in VI are not about realism. They're about enforcing conflicts.

(It's also criminally bad design because the AI is completely unable to grasp that just because you don't have an army *now* doesn't mean you don' thave everything you need to build/buy a large, advanced one in the space of the few turns it will take for them to walk from your border to your cities - especially on Settler! Those attacks aren't smart AI or AI being agressive against a weak opponent; they're the AI committing suicide while being an annoyance at most to the human)

 

[Torvald]

Evie, the way that Civ 6 works may seem like bad game design to you, but the way that Equilin described it to BackseatTyrant is accurate.

In this game, if the other civs perceive that you have a weak military, they do tend to gaze longingly at your territory. Therefore, the best defense is to build at least a few military units. If possible, you should also position your military units where your neighboring civs can see them, so they don't accidentally declare war on you by mistakenly thinking you're weak. Yes, this does sap energy away from building up your economy. However, you'll need to stay alive in order for your economy to do you any good.

 

[Tech Osen]

Under the leader icons on the main screen you see a serie of stats. One of them is the military strength. If a neighbor has a (far) higher rating than you you're going to be in trouble, especially with the more aggressive leaders.
You need to have a decent army to prevent this. Another strategy is to please the agendas of your neighbors and try to befriend/ally with them.
I play on emperor and I usually manage to avoid wars.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Why? Because I'm their neighbour, and prioritized civilian efforts over military expansion. Even when I don't get outright defeated, the war requires so many resources I end up falling behind on things intended to focus on.

What irks me the most, is that this is apparently the type of gameplay people here want, apparently. I've seen nothing but complaints about the AI being "too passive" and "too peaceful", and they play on deity!

I have no idea how you manage to get surprise warred on Settler difficulty, but you must be neglecting your military entirely for the AI to do so.
Post a screenshot where it happens, and people might give you some pointers.

In general, try to have few units around at all times.
I imagine you can get away with 2-3 warriors on Settler for a long time until the AI decides to declare on you.
If you turn on the leader icons, you can see the military score.
If I play peacefully and don't want a war, I generally try to keep a military score of half the value that my neighbours have (if they have 200, having 100 yourself should keep you safe).
The lowest amount you can usually get away with is 1/3, and at that point and below it mostly becomes a question of when the AI will declare a war.

 

[Linklite]

Why? Because I'm their neighbour, and prioritized civilian efforts over military expansion.

The AI is seeing you as easy pickings in an era of the game that is deliberately intended to be violent, so yes, they will declare war on you. When you make contact with your first civ, just build a couple of warriors, and they'll never declare war on you. You can then use those units as more scouts, they don't need to stand guard.

Even when I don't get outright defeated, the war requires so many resources I end up falling behind on things intended to focus on.

Just having 3 or 4 warriors will be enough to keep the peace. That shouldn't delay development too much, but at the same time, you'll never have to worry about being DOWed.

What irks me the most, is that this is apparently the type of gameplay people here want, apparently. I've seen nothing but complaints about the AI being "too passive" and "too peaceful", and they play on deity!

Firstly, the AI is fundamentally the same on any difficulty, for the most part. It's just a "If, then" machine, and have more boosts on higher difficulties, such as higher production, starting with more settlers, etc. The early game is actually pretty hard, but the difficulty is pretty much drops away to nothing after your empire is established, which I'll talk about in a minute. That mid to late game is the part they are talking about. The early game is actually either good or possibly too hard.

One of the problems is that the AI onlynseems to look at absolute strength, not relative. So, I've had a three continent sprawl of cities defended by three warriors, all on explore. For a human, that's a fatal mistake - no way could I defend that on a short notice without lots of reserve gold. But the AI just saw that I had my three warriors and so was scared stiff of me. I don't think I've received a DoW outside of the Ancient or Classical Eras.

Which gets us to the next part. Once your empire is estabilished (I don't know the number, but certainly by 10 cities), you'll never see much challenge. The AI will just passively sit there. If you're [un]lucky, one might have a go at a Cultural or Scientific Victory, but generally speaking, you'll be fine.

There are the odd occasions where the stars will align and one civ will snowball and break that rule. My last game had Teddy capture all but two capitals before I got my CV. Doubtful that he would have won even if given time - my empire was simply too large - but it was impressive to see him absorb so many other civs even into the late game. Given time, he would have taken the Mapuche as well. But, that's rare, something I've only seen a couple of times.

So, there you have. Why it seems so hard when everyone else is complaining, how to solve it, and the timeframe to do it in.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

Why? Because I'm their neighbour, and prioritized civilian efforts over military expansion. Even when I don't get outright defeated, the war requires so many resources I end up falling behind on things intended to focus on.

What irks me the most, is that this is apparently the type of gameplay people here want, apparently. I've seen nothing but complaints about the AI being "too passive" and "too peaceful", and they play on deity!

Trade with them, send delegation, open boarders to improve relations, declare friendship an they will not attack.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

One of the problems is that the AI onlynseems to look at absolute strength, not relative.

This right here is very key.
The AI looks at absolute strength, and does so by only looking at the military score which is derived directly from the sum of the individual unit's combat strengths.
This has some very odd consequences, which can be abused by the player.

Last year for instance I had Rome declare war on me.
He had an army value of 1000, while my "small" army was about 300-400 in army value score.
However, my army consisted of Cavalry corps/armies, Bombards/Artillery and Battleships.
His army?
A ragtag Classical Era mashup of Legions, Spearmen and Catapults, all sailing mindlessly on the open seas.

Due to how the game calculates the army score however, the Rome AI didn't grasp that relative difference.
It looks at a Single Legion as being worth 40 army value as it just copies the raw base combat strength, and given enough of them, it added up to a total of 1000 army score.
My Cavalry corps on the other hand, while few in numbers (prolly only had 3 or so running around wreaking havoc) had an army value of 72 each (the individual combat strength).
When it comes to a 72 combat strength unit however, such a unit can single handedly take on and defeat at least 3-4x 40 combat strength units by itself before it should heal for a turn or two.
The AI doesn't recognize this however, and thinks it has the upper hand and therefore DOWs you, before getting promptly killed by a vastly superior force.

The reverse is also true.
While your "super far ahead technologically"-neighbour might have fielded a handful of Tanks or even GDRs, they will often not recognize their immense military advantage and stay peaceful and friendly.
In my last game, Scythia had several Coursers, but mostly stayed friendly (apart from when she got a lot of them, for a high army value score) because she saw my "military power" as not worth messing with.
My army at that point was a mishmash of one Warrior, one Heavy Chariot, one scouting Bireme, one Catapult, one Horseman and some of Archers from the Ancient/Classical Era, where I hadn't bothered upgrading a single one of those.
Still, the game showed my army value of being at about 250 or so, which was a joke compared to Scythia's 380 army value consisting of (far superior) Coursers.

 

[Evie]

I never said he was wrong about how the game works. I said he was wrong about it being a question of making "unrealistic" playstyles impossible.

And I stand by saying that the way the game works is stupid - because the AI's method for evaluating relative military strength doesn't lead to a threatening AI; it leads to AI committing suicide-by-player because they cannot account for a peaceful player on Settler being able to quickly upgrade/buy/build a larger army in the time it takes to actually go from entering your territory to attacking your units. So they throw themselves at you, and get destroyed after barely managing to disrupt you for a few turns at best.

 

[bengalryan9]

Keep in mind that you can probably survive with less troops than you might otherwise need on higher difficulties... you get a bonus to combat strength on Settler, so even a couple of warriors are probably going to be able to last awhile.

 

[Noob Fanboy]

Go to Civ V Modding for real IA experience. The IA on Civ6 is a complete joke.

 

[Mahi]

I actually thought AI want allowed to declare war on settler difficulty

 

[BackseatTyrant]

The AI is seeing you as easy pickings in an era of the game that is deliberately intended to be violent, so yes, they will declare war on you. When you make contact with your first civ, just build a couple of warriors, and they'll never declare war on you. You can then use those units as more scouts, they don't need to stand guard.


Just having 3 or 4 warriors will be enough to keep the peace. That shouldn't delay development too much, but at the same time, you'll never have to worry about being DOWed.


Firstly, the AI is fundamentally the same on any difficulty, for the most part. It's just a "If, then" machine, and have more boosts on higher difficulties, such as higher production, starting with more settlers, etc. The early game is actually pretty hard, but the difficulty is pretty much drops away to nothing after your empire is established, which I'll talk about in a minute. That mid to late game is the part they are talking about. The early game is actually either good or possibly too hard.

One of the problems is that the AI onlynseems to look at absolute strength, not relative. So, I've had a three continent sprawl of cities defended by three warriors, all on explore. For a human, that's a fatal mistake - no way could I defend that on a short notice without lots of reserve gold. But the AI just saw that I had my three warriors and so was scared stiff of me. I don't think I've received a DoW outside of the Ancient or Classical Eras.

Which gets us to the next part. Once your empire is estabilished (I don't know the number, but certainly by 10 cities), you'll never see much challenge. The AI will just passively sit there. If you're [un]lucky, one might have a go at a Cultural or Scientific Victory, but generally speaking, you'll be fine.

There are the odd occasions where the stars will align and one civ will snowball and break that rule. My last game had Teddy capture all but two capitals before I got my CV. Doubtful that he would have won even if given time - my empire was simply too large - but it was impressive to see him absorb so many other civs even into the late game. Given time, he would have taken the Mapuche as well. But, that's rare, something I've only seen a couple of times.

So, there you have. Why it seems so hard when everyone else is complaining, how to solve it, and the timeframe to do it in.

Yeah, I've heard from time to time that the difficulty in Civ6 is very front-loaded, which frankly is the complete opposite of what a learning curve should look like

 

[Linklite]

I actually thought AI want allowed to declare war on settler difficulty

It can, and does. It just doesn't build up its army very fast so as long as you have some units cranked out, it is usually intimidated. Of course, if you're playing 100% peaceful and don't build any military units at all, the AI will see easy pickings.

 

[Pitohui]

Send Delegation on turn 1 when you meet a new AI.This doesn’t cost much and helps massively with displomacy.Remembereclared Friends can not declare war on you!And you can habe them from the start of the game.

 

[Dedrytus]

It would be easier if you just share a save game then we could give you some tips. For me, when I want easy and peacful game and just act liike: no improvements on forests, or just always war with everybody... yea peacful ;-) I choose king level and I am not very capable civ player.

 

[Linklite]

Yeah, I've heard from time to time that the difficulty in Civ6 is very front-loaded, which frankly is the complete opposite of what a learning curve should look like

Ideally, but in a 4X game, competent AI is very hard to do with the resources at hand.

For example, let's look at a civ with 10 units in its army, each unit being able to move 2 tiles. That's 19 tiles each unit can choose from, or 19^10 or about 6 trillion possible configurations, it would take a computer about 5 seconds to work through that if it was a single process (it isn't, it's a lot more), and that's just one army - to be effective, it would need multiple armies. It would also have to evaluate what to build with each city, what to do with each builder, what techs and civics to research, what cards to slot. Of course it has to speculate what other people are doing and formulate strategies to inform these other decisions...you are talking about minutes per civ, and that's before you talk about generating images etc. And that's per civ, so multiply that by the number of civs, and turns take too long to process.

Of course, they make shortcuts in the code, they don't evaluate every single possible configuration, etc, but still. As time goes on, there is just much more information to process. More cities, more Wondsrs, more armies, more units, more of everything. It just overloads the AI, and it's hard to design one that is both competent and doesn't take an hour to process a turn.

 

[Henri Christophe]

i had the same issue

 

[chazzycat]

on settler like 1 archer in each city should be more than enough. The best way to get archers early is to build slingers before researching archery (ideally with agoge policy) and upgrade them with gold.

its true you cannot completely ignore military. but it really does not take a lot of effort at all to get a few archers.